Author: veeskitchen

Posted in Political

What India can learn from Middle East – Part 1: Economy, Banking & Telecom

Posted on by veeskitchen

When we Indians fueled by our mainstream and social media are gloating over Twitter chief coming from India, among other global CEOs born and schooled in India, it may also be time to point out some brutal facts to which we close our eyes and mind: that these top men are probably picked for the markets they may represent or market share they may help cultivate/retain. This can be simply a matter of management. Clever management. However, our Indian government has a lesson or two to learn from the Arab countries in Middle East who have viable economies outperforming ours. A quick peek here into the Arabian Gulf:

  • Google pay is banned in the richest arab nations. Only proper banking channels can be used for transaction purposes including for funds transfer. The phones assembled in the middle east do not even have access in Google playstore/Apple to download the app. Whereas in poor India, our banks are losing heavily to apps such as Phonepe and Googlepay and now even to Whatsapp pay. There is simply no Wallet concept in middle east. All financial profits belong with the banks that do not share a cent with the Google or any other nonbanking entity. Now you know why Google CEO is Indian.
  • No Whatsapp calls are allowed to go through in the oil rich arab countries. In some gulf countries, whatsapp calls are possible with vpn downloads. But in most arab nations, whatsapp calls don’t work even with vpn. Only whatsapp texting is permitted. Rule applies for Skype/Viber/Google Duo/Facebook Messenger calls or whatever with the telephone departments still staying alive and ploughing back profits. Ban on social media calls also is enforced strictly for security reasons. The encrypted calls are simply a big no-no. Transparency of highest order is followed in telecom sector.
  • No Amazon office is open in Middle east. Only old fashioned courier services like DHL and local ones cater to delivery line. Local businesses flourish not fattening up Jeff Bozos with many more million dollars as India is doing. In case you order something from a Facebook seller, then the delivery happens not via Amazon, that is the point. There is no local Amazon website that I find to be strange, but Amazon India or Amazon US is accessible (although you cannot place order for delivery within middle east).
  • No startup apps in the lines of Dunzo for local delivery or shopping. Orders have to be placed straight in the website addresses or over phone or via whatsapp and the business houses may take to deliver door to door the orders placed/received. Rare exception is the restaurant food delivery app (of Swiggy kind in India) that caters to the tastebuds of the arabs within minutes from multicuisine restaurants!
  • No subsidized broadband connection is possible in middle east. The charges may not be steep but not cheap either as in India. You cannot afford watching pictures in mobile or gamble as big percentage of ignorant Indian population is doing with their smart phones. Quality of internet usage is therefore efficient. Luckily the arab countries do not have an Ambani like from Reliance who their governments have to patrionize.
  • Phone call clarity is too good in middle east. Recently when I flew back to India, I noticed a strange phenomenon. The local calls made from my mobile phone were not clearly audible whereas my whatsapp calls were crystal clear. I inquired on this with my friends who confessed to a similar experience. When the phone calls even from our latest upgraded phones were not as clear as whatsapp calls, we were forced to switch to whatsapp to make our calls. Or was this the idea at all? Our calls are now commercial statistics for businesses. I wonder whether the purpose of muted or inaudible call owing to poor connection is deliberate. Are we Indian citizens discouraged from making regular phone calls from our mobiles? Are we subtly coerced to make whatsapp calls? Are we led to buy data packs from mobile operators? What about our privacy. For a fact I am aware, our local calls are more secure than the calls made through whatsapp.

So in short, all our Modi govt has to do is to boot out Gpay from India alongwith Amazon. Broadband rates need to be revised. Telecom industry is in dire need of a revival for which, the data packs must not be subsidized. Neither should broadband connections through private operators be.

Whether we really do ‘make in India’ or not, we can at least do something not to UNDO India. We can follow the Arab example to protect our local economy and save the domestic business community. Our small and retail traders and cottage industries need our government’s backing. We cannot allow ourselves to succumb to multinationals. We cannot sell the interests of our nation for a pittance. China has lived without You Tube and Google for years. Social media and IT companies and multinationals have to work in tandem with out national economy. They must not be allowed to mint money at the cost of our banks profits. They should not be driving out of business our delivery services and small scale industries. Arab leaders are not talking much and giving sermons from the podium like our desi leaders do, but they are doing a wonderful job nevertheless. Here, the multinationals heed to the local laws or get kicked out. Now, that is patriotism to me.

Posted in Women & Family

Miss India Universe 2021

Posted on by veeskitchen

Harnaaz Sandhu of India crowned Miss Universe hardly makes me jubilant. India is a big, big, colossal market and they just know what buttons to push to tap into the resources here, to my reckoning. A series of women have won the Miss World and Miss Universe title from India who have all subsequently become Bollywood heroines chugging the beaten track. So that kind of makes me sick that a fellow Indian must win the title now that can later become her passport to stardom. In fact I was told of this news by a pretty filipino girl in a medical clinic last morning. She congratulated me as if it was I who had won the beauty pageant! She said, Indian girls are beautiful. I was kind of embarrassed. I said, Indian women were beautiful and brainy and she smiled nodding her head. She got her third shot and I had to reschedule my appointment.

After Aishwarya Rai and Sushmitha Sen won the Miss world and Miss universe titles the same year in the early ’90s, it became even more easy for the multinationals to gain access into Indian consumer markets. Up until then, we Indian ladies hardly used to groom so readily. Overnight, every little girl seemed to want to become the next Ash which was kind of insane. I was pretty worried like, what was happening to my country.

Girls in my country today are spending too much on chemical skin and hair care and garish make-up that looks cheap and vulgar on them. The painted faces are like a cruel joke. How can we even try to impersonate the models on catwalk or the Hollywood belles. We just cannot and do not become them. We don’t have to. My friend who was visiting the US told me how she spotted the top models in Miami. Nobody gave a damn! It is the young women in India who are shamelessly mimicking the celluloid stars. The Miss India universe crown is only going to precipitate the matter. A good chunk of our women’s earned income these days is spent on personal grooming. Self care is undeniably important, one has to feel good and even best about oneself. Of course we have to live it up, but never like this! But the obsession of our young ladies with the beauty business is going out of hands. It is totally fake.

Indian govt has to keep a vigil over the cosmetics imported into the country. Most beauty salons in India also use products that are prohibited in many foreign countries. For instance, formaldehyde used in hair straightening in India is proved toxic and directly linked to cancer. Beauty products in India also are sold/used in parlours after the expiry date.

In my experience I have seen that the girls who are engrossed with their academic or career accomplishments hardly pay attention to these trivialities. This kind of beauty business is extremely distracting. I was shocked to see a five year old girl don the lipstick recently. She was already choosy about her clothes, colours and boots. I found that to be extremely unhealthy. Boys of the same age play more and hardly give attention to physical grooming. May be the boys may ask for shoes or denim, but more than that, I have not come across Indian boys of similar age express interest in grooming the way our girls do. Where is the flaw? Does it lie in parenting or with the way our society is evolving. Are we promoting wrong values in our children unconsciously. When as women we seek equality in everything, why do we want to raise our daughters preoccupied with grooming?

To me, self confidence stems from self assurance that we are enough. We need not have to rely on a tube of concocted paste and lip filler and bleach to present to the world a version of us that we are not. A decent cleanup or maintenance keeping with times must do. Anything more than that points to a psychological disorder sorry!

Feeling beautiful inside out comes from maturity and life experiences, something that cannot be bought over for a price.

A friend of mine was recently saying that to distract her teen daughter from grooming, she was advising her to take MPC (math physics chemistry) stream in higher secondary school because, art or commerce could leave the girl with a lot of time in her hands that she may use for banal purposes. Someone with a very balanced outlook on life making this observation is like an eyeopener to the scene we have presently in India.

It is nice to wear good clothes, change your hairstyle once a while, overhaul to look different or take care to be presentable, but all this can be done with a little dignity, without us having to look like B or C grade film artiste. Why should we have to draw our strengths from creams and lotions. There has to be an element of reality in whatever we do. We cannot stay in denial forever of who we are originally. It is time to wash and cleanse off our faces to unearth the raw and natural beauty beneath our skin.

Meanwhile I am waiting for the list of multinationals waiting for their chance to enter India anytime now, if they haven’t already. They just needed this stroke to be played out. With our new Femina Miss India Universe, their prospects look brightest.

Posted in The Shayaress

Healthy in Heart & Mind…

Posted on by veeskitchen

Reposting something from Jan 2010 lol. With a little bit of edit, not much.

I am quoting Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel winning verse ‘Where the mind is without fear….’ from ‘Gitanjali’.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.
Where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth.
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by Thee
Into ever-widening thought and action.
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!

Rabindranath Tagore

Now i add one more (soon -to-be) popular verse 😀

Think the Unthinkable;
Speak the Unspeakable;
Do the Un-doable;
Dare the Undareable

See the Unseeable;
Ponder the imponderable;
Write the un-writable;
Question the unquestionable;

Dream the undreamable;
Envision the invisible;
Challenge the unchallengeable;
Change the unchangeable;

– by (whoelse but?) ME!

Posted in Political

CDS Killed In Chopper Crash

Posted on by veeskitchen

Sad day for the nation as CDS General Bipin Rawal is killed in copter crash in the Nilgiris. Conspiracy theories will play out in this high profile air accident that has taken a heavy toll of 13 Defence personnel (with one military officer fighting for his life in hospital), the top military brass of the nation. Could it have been the joint project of China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans still have not learnt their lessons, for it is not even a week since a Sinhalese man was lynched and burnt in Pakistan. This is the kind of nexus they are seeking, keeping India out of the loop. Submerged in mounting debts against China, Lanka is at the point of breakdown. India has to be wary as China has surrounded us literally: buying out wholly Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and now even the Maldives. But one great advantage with India is that, we are battle-hardened. The chinese can manipulate us and win the battles, yet we shall win the final war if it comes to that. I will not underrate India against China. Neither has China passed the acid test of democracy. Someway along history this has to happen, and when that happens, China will break up. Meanwhile, India has to launch in-depth probe into the accident. Generals can’t die this way. To me, this is war against India. India has seen far worse scenarios: having had PM assassinated when in term, PM dying in office mysteriously in foreign tour, PM hopeful assassinated, director of atomic research station killed in air crash, scientists dropping dead just like that. We have survived every time and we shall, this time as well.

Posted in Political

The Antivaxxers Theory.

Posted on by veeskitchen

I don’t know about the antivaxxer community in the US. I guess, the men and women who refuse to get vaccinated in America are more bothered about violation of their physical body, not wanting unknown foreign substance in their system. The Americans are known for upholding individual rights or freewill. What about India. There seems to be a lobby working even here who are against vaccinations. One religious group in Kerala for instance reportedly have not been administering even polio drops to their infants. It is this group that is the fastest growing population in the entire nation with highest fertility rates. Imagine the damage that is waiting to befall on us should things go wrong. We have been believing, polio has been abolished from Indian soil. The same group could be a reason for unbelievable number of Covid cases in the state (refusing vaccines) although their communist government would like to shift the blame to gulf-returnees. The fact is that, every single expatriate working in middle east has been vaccinated far earlier than resident Indians. We may be going for a booster dose shortly. Chances of NRIs bring the coronavirus from Arab countries to India must be very slim. The ruling state government of Kerala probably would not want to point fingers.

India has had an ambitious immunization drive in the last few decades. There is an interesting angle to antivaxxers case in India. Most Indian adults of voting age have been brought under the tax net by Modi govt with Aadhar and PAN linking. Or in short, a lot of regularizing or streamlining of the Indian economy has been happening ever since the BJP govt took over for the first time in 2014. This means, individual identities can not be easily forged although this is happening in sporadic cases. There have been instances of procuring Aadhar in our north east sister states by illegal insurgents. Barring these isolated cases, there is no scope for hiding in loopholes denying your existence in India anymore. Every single Indian citizen is now brought under one legal umbrella where he/she is accountable for his/her actions. Accountable to every penny. There is still however a small percentage of our population who can escape the trap by filing form 15G etc., or not filing any returns at all. There are housewives (like me even) and small-salaried who do not pay income taxes (for earning nil or minimum untaxable incomes) yet. Then there are the jobless. There are the preteens from who we have a miniscule percent of juvenile delinquents. There are private practitioners of various professions, trades and arts. There is a burgeoning lower middle-class. There is this huge chunk of blue colour population. While all these may have their Aadhar identity, they may not necessarily have a PAN. Apart from Aadhar, India allows for numerous other IDs such as the Driving Licence (DL),Voters ID, Passport etc., for identification and address verification. A second set of IDs of secondary nature are our LPG bills, Phone bills etc., that we may pay for utility.

What the Covid vaccination does is, bringing into record the entire Indian population with their legal IDs. When I first registered for my first Covishield in India, I was asked to produce my Aadhar card. For my second dose, the first used ID was rejected. I had to necessarily flash my second ID for which I used my Voter card. I have now added my passport to my Vaccine certification. So in effect, three of my IDs have been effectively linked to my covid vaccine certificate by our Modi government! Very smart! An irrefutable proof of individual IDs or Indian citizens in this case is established. Illegal residents such as Bangladeshis in India will have to work double hard to sieve through this tight closing net. Any foreign national on the run in India cannot for long disappear. A main reason for anti-vaccine community to gain grounds is supposedly this, although our leftists would like to term it all yet another case of deprivation of individual liberty.

Number of conspiracy theories are doing rounds about covid vaccine records and stats. Sometimes even the skeptical me would wonder whether plans are afoot to depopulate Planet Earth!

Normally, I am opposed to vaccines. As someone born in late 60s, the only vaccine I took was for Small Pox which is long since eradicated from Indian soil. I vaguely recall my school giving me annual Malaria shots when it poured cats and dogs for successive monsoons in the early 80s. I haven’t even taken the anti-hepatitis shots although the men in my family have. Covid vaccine is my first serious vaccine really.

It is also true that not only is it in India, but in entire world the masses will be profiled undoubtedly with the vaccine information we provide to our governments. Our age bracket, our medical history, our indisputable IDs all give our sleuths voluminous material to grade us or track us. I just cannot dismiss the book 1984 by George Orwell out of my mind. I do feel like collared sometimes, tagged, like we radio-collar the wild animals in the bush or the cattle and sheep that graze in grasslands. Someone, our big brother, is watching. However, I relax in the thought that I have nothing to hide or lose. I am transparent and I have no reason to fear my government or law and order. I am not that worried about individual freedom that I wouldn’t want to comply with safety regulations which are for my own physical wellbeing. I have to stay alive to argue about suppression of human rights! Corona has me pinned to the floor. I have no choice but to go with my govenment.

The data that we file such as our vaccination records that carry our ID information and other private details such as previous medical history also is now going global as we fly to our destinations worldwide. We sign documents online and we register in various portals as we have to take off and land in different airports. We have downloaded covid apps in practically every single country and the bluetooth surveillance tracks our every move. We need permit to enter any space. Connecting the dots, I can hazily make out a global consensus on earth’s population. Classified data! Mindblowing stats which may otherwise be impossible to collect! How many inferences to intrapolate and extra-polate with all those jumbled figures! So what are they going to with all these numbers???

Sometimes I am glad that we have someone showing resistance at all to anything and everything. This could be a very small percentage but we need this kind of naysayers for our own benefit. We don’t know what lies ahead. We are instilled with a fear our parents and grandparents never knew in their lifetimes: the fear of the unknown.

As I blog this, the latest variant Omicron is hitting headlines around the world. One more story of negativity and psychological terror. Will we ever know normal times again? When will we achieve the herd immunity.

Many in India and the US criticize anti-vaxxers but covid vaccine is not in the same class as polio drops. There is a world of difference between the two. We need extensive research on certain issues that our media would not deliberately pickup. I am sick of the Indian tv channels that have become the mouthpiece of those in power. Real debates are not happening, what must be discussed is not spoken about.

Not even national security is strong enough reason to collect individual data the way world nations have been piling on since March 2020. Meanwhile covid is still here. How many more booster shots, nobody knows. How many more forms to fill and sign in, who knows. The only thing we haven’t affixed so far in our covid certificate is our right thumb impression.

************

Why are Indian mothers worried. My friend’s healthy daughter in her twenties in India went for double shots spaced out. She was having regular periods until then right from her menarche. Ever since taking her covid shots, the girl is having irregular periods. Her second dose was months back. After 6 months lapse finally her cycle is falling back into regular pattern. First 3 months, nothing. So is there a connectivity at all with covid vaccine and fertility. Research in this area vital with figures collected for conceptions made by couples after administration of both doses of covid vaccine.

Posted in Pictures Foreign

Review: 14 Peaks (documentary)

Posted on by veeskitchen

First of all hats off to Nirmal Purja (Nims) and his Project Possible Nepali team for having scaled the 14 eight thousanders in record 6 months and 6 days. As Nims himself says, he is undoubtedly the Usain Bolt of the eight thousanders! By eight thousander, we refer here to mountain peak over 8000 meters in altitude. The said 14 peaks lie in Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet (under Chinese control). Refreshing watch for someone like me who reveres nature and wildlife. Informative and inspiring, to say the least. As an Indian citizen, as a Hindu, i am extremely proud of my Nepali brother Nims. Yes of course Nims, you are spot on! World would have celebrated with such a fanfare, had it been someone from the west who had achieved this Himalayan feat (literally). But it is okay. Take heart that, some of us like me wouldn’t in a million years believe that it was Edmund Hillary who scaled the Everest first. Thousands of brave and unsung heroes, the Nepali sherpas would have done that centuries before. Their victories were just not documented. And yes, every Sherpa goes by a name. It is insulting to refer to these tough-made men as mere Sherpas. The Gorkhas of Nepal are very respected in India. Their tribe has thinned out now, but even today, lakhs of Nepalis work in India including in my hometown Chennai making life easy for us. We wouldn’t trust any other, believe me and we would like to see the back of Bangladeshis from our soil (although I must not talk politics here). With Nepalis I have this soul connection. The sight of bindhi in Nepali women in middle east is hearty. I never miss an opportunity to chat them up. Have had the chance to chat up even a Bhutanese woman. Your world record matters that much Nims. You have not made just Nepal proud, you have made us Indians proud as well. We never see Nepalis as any different.

Coming to the picture, it is crisp and neat, but I wish it is far more elaborate with further reels from the summits of the Himalayan peaks. The film runs for under two hours. Is it possible to lengthen it by any means with some extra footage. This is one damn well made real life story. It underscores the fitness criteria and also the unmitigable human spirit that is possible to nourish and sustain that saw Nims scale the harshest peaks on earth in such a brief interval of time. Human body is capable of such an exertion. Faced with adverse economic, climatic and political conditions, the Project Possible team still weathered the storm in their own way never turning back from their goals and never stopping to believe in themselves.

I was particularly impressed by the K2 conquest. I have watched quite a few films on this one but they are all still reenactments of real life incidents or figments of someone’s imagination (like the Cliff Hanger for instance). I have also watched others like the Everest, K2 etc., but watching the drama unfold in K2 in this one was interesting. What a trendsetter and a leader all the way is our Nims! We need young men like him to lead our masses from the front!

Had it not been for the delay in acquiring the Chinese permit for scaling the last of the 14 in Tibet, Nims and his team would have made it in under 6 months. As such Nims has shattered 6 world mountaineering records on which note the film closes.

The 14 looming eight thousanders are:

From the Nepali side: The Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Kanchenjunga, Mt Everest, Lhotse and Makalu.

From the Pakistani side: The Nangaparbat, Gasherbrum 1 (G1), Gasherbrum 2 G2), K2 and Broad Peak.

From the Tibetan side: Cho Oyu, Manaslu and Shishapangma.

Savoured every single moment of watching this outstanding flick. God bless Nepal and God bless the Himalaya. And God please liberate Tibet from China!

The snowy vistas are intimidating and the avalanches are unpredictable. The drops from the chasms and clefts have our jaws dropped! The bottleneck on K2 gave me goosebumps from here! To say HACE or the High Altitude Cerebral Edema is scary is understatement of the year. Nims with his exceptionally courageous Nepali mountaineer team comprising Mingma David Sherpa and Geljian Sherpa among others took calculated risks. Bravo! Well done team! Perhaps Lord Pashupathinath wanted Nims and his Project Possible to do this for Nepal! You must let nobody steal your thunder Nims! You did right! Go on and on and leave no stone unturned in your wake, lots of love and respects and cheers & best wishes from India Project Possible guys! Sky is your limit!

Posted in Socio-Cultural

The Swamy Photo Shops (Swamy photo kadai)

Posted on by veeskitchen

This is not about photoshop but about shops that sold photos or pictures.

We Indians are way too familiar with photo shops that line our temple streets and the temple towns where framed pictures of Hindu deities of all sizes are painted-printed to be sold for a price to the devout. Practising Hindus revere two relics in the puja (home service or altar): framed pictures from the photo shops and/or ‘vigrahas’ (small stone/metal carvings/sculptures/idols). We inherit some as heirlooms passed over for generations in the family; we go for the latest prints of our deities as well to suit our home decor. There are then the laminated ones for our desktops. There are photographs from temples of the murthis as well. Photo shops cater to our devotional cravings and there are some of us who are even ‘collectors.’ I have friends who boast of collections of Tanjore paintings that have been the rage for some time. Personally for me, the Tanjore art is for aesthetics never for Puja. Nevertheless, I love to browse through these religious photo shops that have a variety to choose from: the black & whites to enameled and embossed works with silver and even gold filigrees. Gods and Goddesses at their finest! I have even feasted my eyes on rarest depictions of Raam, Lakshman, Bharatha, Hanuman in which Raam is not at all looking good! There are antique finishes in photo kadais although now I am not sure whether the faded look is manufactured digitally these days. I wonder where the sepia tinted Lakshmi and Saraswathi from my parents’ home went. The ageing of those pictures was natural lending them an ethereal look. I do now have the Raja Rajeshwari like a reigning queen in my puja, from my in-laws home that has been with the family for over a hundred years. I have not retouched it or tried to restore it. I merely changed the frame as the old teak one had given away and the picture was exposed to damages.

As a Mylaporean, I have spent hours and years walking in the four Mada streets looking at the swami photo shops. Dutifully every morning on way to school I would say a small prayer to all the deities that graced us girls from within the wall of those shops. The frames then were wood. Now what we have for frames is either metal or plastic variant that however comes with a wood finish. Except for the artistically done Tanjore painting that is hoisted over teak frames, none else merits a wood frame these days.

The city has swami photo shops in every locality but it is those in Mylapore that are always special to me. I also have the habit of getting at least a small photo or vigraha from whichever temple town I visit like for a memento. My Puja articles such as bronze/copper diyas, deepa aarthi etc., are from the temple town of Tirupathi. In my parents’ family, always the puja paathiram (articles) for the newly wed were gotten from Alarmel Mangapuram in Keezh Tirupathi even if we daughters of the family were also gifted another set in sterling silver (as ‘seer’) (that we would secure in the bank lockers to use only for our kids). Years of hoarding small framed pictures and vigrahas have added to my collection and now my puja has become a bit staggering! Not really, but I wish I could keep it modest. However, every swamy photo in my puja can tell a story. Nothing was bought over the counter like a commodity. Guruvayurappan came home for instance from Guruvayur, where in 1996 I and my husband gave ‘tulabharam’ to our son in the temple. By the way, the kadai veedhi of Guruvayur is spectacular with the perpetual air of festivity about it !!! A second time, I got a small pair of Kerala kuthuvilakku from the same Guruvayur sannadhi street.

Tirupathi sannadhi street/kadai veedhi was a craze for me when we used to go to the seven hills every year for a darshan. My Mallikarjuna is from Sri Sailam, Kanaka Durga from Vijayawada, Udipi Krishna from Udipi, Mookambika from Kollur, Sharadhamba from Sringeri, Lalithambika from Thirumeeyachur. Satya Narayana was lovingly gifted by my Chithappa (as I observe the Pournami vratham) who also with my Chithi gifted me the first ‘traditional five’ photo: Pillayar, Lakshmi, Saraswathi, Murugan and Perumal. We all start our life (thani kuduthanam) with those basic five in single frame! No business runs in India without these five who are important for success in any and everything. Another prized frame is Lalitha Parameshwari, printed from handdrawn painting by the Sringeri seer. That edition is sold off now. Our Arni Perumal (from the Shiva Vishnu temple of our family whose presiding deity is Perumal, with Shiva in a small sannadhi) is juxtaposed against Tirumala in a framed picture in my puja, due credits for which go to a cousin for his literal photoshop work. Arunachaleshwara is from Thiruvannamalai. I have Varahi from the Varahi homams I attended for years every Amavasya. I have Sarabeshwara again from my chithappa both of which I was discouraged from having. A believer in forgiving gods and never in punishing ones, I went ahead with having them and they are with me for over 15 years now. In the Padikasunathar temple near Kumbakonam, the archaka returned our mint fresh 10 rupee notes after placing them in Shiva’s feat that I framed for puja. Looks as if I am worshiping Gandhi, but then why not. Love him or hate him, he was an exceptional humanbeing. Perhaps not a cult guru but a guru nevertheless.

There is something in our family puja (in our community) that is not sold in shops, and this the shivaite sign of our family tree representing our Kula deivam. My mother used to do ours in a wood block anointing it with turmeric and vermillion but i decided to paint my in-laws’ heritage in yellow and red symbolically in a piece of wood. This is a distinct mark of our lineage and although now I am trying to wriggle out of these binding roots, I respect and revere them immensely. Our Arni ancestral home is like a repository for aged swami photos handdrawn and/or painted originally supported by teak or rosewood frames. I picture the great grandfathers and their wives and families in this house whenever I visit. The palatial home had once mounted within its high ceilinged, beamed and pillared spaces, original Ravi Vermas. Or perhaps very first copies from an era when colour photographs were still leagues away.

There are connoisseurs of God’s pictures like these. Serious collectors. Like those who go for offbeat Meenakshi Sundareshwara, Kanyakumari, Ma Durga etc . I recall Devi names among other protective avatars during my everyday puja. The deities whose names I chant aloud have surprisingly made their way to my puja. That is how Annapurna reached me from Kashi/Varnasi, and Vaishno Devi reached me from Kashmir. I have even Pashupathinath from Nepal received as gift. These last three are in my puja in middle east. I love looking at puja of friends. I love the oldest/ancient pictures and the inheritance mostly. Tanjore paintings are not really my cup of tea. They do not serve the purpose being ornamental, so far as I am concerned. But I do have two. My chithi chithappa gifted me the baby Krishna for housewarming. My friends gifted Radha Krishna for my son’s wedding. Tanjore art though brings in good vibes.

An important itinerary of my girls gang temple tour is a walk through the mada veedhis or the sannadhi streets of our temple towns, taking stock of framed pictures, antique shops, trivia shops that sold the old parama padham, pallankuzhi etc., the bronze and the copper shops, the claypot shops. I love this kind of nostalgic trips always. With friends, it is even best. It transports me back to the 80s. For Kabali temple utsavam, my grandma used to give me two rupees every year. I used to buy peacock feather from the gypsies with the money. Now i greatly regret it. How many peacocks were forcibly plucked for their feathers! But the thiruvizha kadai veedhi on utsavam days still stays fresh in my memory. The ‘theradi.’

A visit to the temple where I used to frequent every single day of my life until I married washed me over with memories of photo shops. This is still good business as I noted. I walked into one and picked up a bright print on impulse. The shopkeeper asked me if I lived nearby. I said, I did until 28 years ago. Some of my swami pictures are from this shop – the ones that my chithappa gifted. I told the man I used to stop even at this shop everyday for a quick blessing from the divine on my way to school. The owner chuckled saying it was common in those days.

I thought how many small trades India supported. How many varied occupations survived in India, the likes of which you cannot find in any other corner of the globe! How innovative! I think the charm of India is this. I just did not have the heart to move out of the small shop where there was hardly room for more than a couple to browse comfortably. I wanted every single picture of God from the shop! What a beauty is this Sri Rama Seetha Pattabhishegam. I remembered I still did not own one! The dull finish handpainted one was priced at 9k so for the moment I have postponed my swami photo shopping urge. There are many, many more like for instance the Shiva family. The romantic Muruga with Valli Deivanai with the peacock making a beautiful backdrop – a rare angle handpainted frame. Krishna grazing and playing flute. Bala. Lalitha. I loved the different depictions as well, not the conventional always.

Swami photo shop windowshopping reminded me how retail therapy alone is not solution to everything (for bored housewives especially)! At the end of the day. our heart knows what matters. We embrace peace without even knowing it. Most of us underestimate ourselves rating us as materialistic. In the swami photo shop I was thinking like, how i wished i could have one and all of the swamis and a big, big puja and nothing else in life. For a moment, that is the way I felt. My one regret in life is my apartment living where I do not have a puja room. I have to make do with a puja cabinet, that is all. It may be ok, but the swami photo shop reminded me how selfish we are to relegate a mere corner space in our home for our puja. In my parents home as well as old joint family home of in-laws, the puja was a separate room with a door and padlock.

I have decided to repeat the swami photo shop strolls in future at regular intervals. I do not mean in this context the latest showrooms catering to our spiritual needs like the one we have near Kabali temple. I am referring to single standalone swami photo shops that specialize in swami photos and framing. These are another category.

I love the kumkum, chandan shops as well. The archana thattu shops. The glass bangle shops. The flower shops. The thengai mandi. Arisi mandi. Woodpressed oil stores that are now back in business. Coffee bean grinding outlets. Now even Mylapore has deteriorated beyond recognition. Gone is the kind of temple town situated around the tank and temple that we grew up in. Yet those like the swami photo kadais survive against all odds retaining a stubborn foothold in the competitive world where to stay alive is phenomenal. The swami photo kadais are one of the last bits of connection some of us retain with the old world we have lost: that of our parents. I felt such a swell of fulfillment last evening having spent half an hour in a swami photo kadai and an hour and a half in a spiritual store, the kind of which we normally derive from a hearty darshan in temples.

Posted in Political

Billion & Counting: India’s Covid Vaccine Program.

Posted on by veeskitchen

#latepost

I am in India after over six months. I left in the third week of April from Chennai and soon on my leaving, there was a deluge of delta variant cases in the second wave that caught the locals with a shocking agility, extracting a heavy toll. The picture was gory in international media as burning pyres make for sensational stories. Nations could consign their own pressing issues to the backburners and distract their populations with dastardly views from India, where masses were swept under by covid surge owing to ‘mismanagement by government’, which wasn’t their case. True partially. We Indians got carried away that the first wave did not hurt us, we overvalued our curry immunity and underestimated the deadly virus and we paid for our mistake dearly. We hadn’t learnt our lessons from the UK or other European countries that were under brutal onslaught from the second wave. And we could have still made it, had it not been for our election campaigns that saw crowds swelling throwing caution to winds. However, that was in the past. Now here I am in my hometown after a hiatus of six months, and I see none wearing a mask! A billion vaccinations India has managed to administer, entirely locally manufactured. Covishield may be from/for Astrazeneca, but Covaxin which is DNA based, is hundred percent local Indian brand made by Bharat Biotech now winning WHO approval. It is a Himalayan feat literally and India does not stop with vaccinating her citizens. India is exporting the corona vaccine to some ninety nations, and to many of them as aid on humanitarian basis. No wonder this is not going down well with Europe or America. Airports closed down on Indians but that has not deterred my nation from going for the vaccination in a big, big way. It is as if there has never been the virus. Touchwood. Well done PM Modi ji, what a stewardship! India’s population is 1.3 billion so one can imagine the monumental success of the vaccine administration program. I am bearing testimony to how well my country is fighting the virus. Having a near normal life here, a great blessing. Meanwhile cases are soaring in the US hitting millions and taking a heavy toll. No BBC or CNN ready to do a lead story. My request to our PM is to go for booster dose next. We will have to keep ourselves abreast of every situation for next four to five years. India is chaotic, not at all organized, but through all this confusion we are still ticking! Somewhere somehow something is working and keeps us going hahaha!

Posted in Political

Farm Law Repeal: Good Governance More Important Than Big Ego, dear PM.

Posted on by veeskitchen

Extremely happy with the repeal of farm laws to the farmers’ delight, PM Modiji. I have not yet gone into details. To me, the citizens’ contentment must matter more over rules and regulations. Everything is arbitrary. Who defines what must be the thumb of the law. Who draws the lines and where. It is alright to bend a little, we are all human. It is alright to take a step back, hold up a decision, reverse gear. It does not mean you succumb, or that you stand defeated. You can revise, you can unlearn and relearn and you can totally change perspectives. We all evolve with age, and sometimes even within days. Whether this is a political gimmick or not, I welcome this change of heart in you dear Prime Minister. It is those who remain stubborn who have issues. Do what is good for the common man. My personal advice to you PM ji: like me, you have longest past over what remains of future. Be a good soul, gentle soul, kindred spirit. I would like to see you a bit loosening up. Thank you ji. We earn nothing killing hopes and destroying families. Let the common man be happy. Become a people’s man ji. Let the nation remember you the way we remember Chacha Nehru, the darling, with luv and luv only. May you never become a feared memory for generations to come. Hundred years to you! God bless!

PS: Foot in mouth moment for your cronies in social media. Always raise your voice and banner for what is right, for not what you want to be thought right.

Posted in Food For Soul

Thambadhyam

Posted on by veeskitchen

We in our family always feed the crows before touching our meals (on parents side). My aunt is a septuagenarian. And sick and ailing. She is unable to climb the staircase and go to the terrace to give food to the crows. So my cousin devised an ingenuous idea for her to give food to her crows right from their kitchen. He screwed in a iron handle to a stainless steel plate that can be hooked to the grill for hanging. Crows had a perch now on the sill and also on the very plate edge. The crows looked forward to the food everyday at exact time. The plate can be later unhooked for a rinse.

After years or decades perhaps, I went for sleepover to my aunt’s. Frail from ill health and probably terminally ill, she still never forgot the crows. Daily she would give one small meal of dal, kozhambu, rice, curd with til (ellu), veggies etc., to the crows after offering the plate to my uncle (within photo frames) It is only after giving my chithappa his food, she is able to eat even a morsel of food. This touched me totally. I know for a fact that my chithi and chithappa were such an ‘anyonya thambadhi’ – the kind we cannot see in future. I felt honestly ashamed (!) by the kind of love and respect my aunt still had for my uncle who passed away three years back.

The crow plate is easy to hang on the grill. I was blessed to offer the crows the food when I was with my aunt. One day food was not ready but it was getting late. So I just had to offer curd rice and ellu (til) salted to my chithappa and then the crows as my aunt would not miss the timing! Chithappa would be hungry!

This really brought tears to my eyes. May sound weird to many But i clicked these pictures to show how easy it is to feed the crows right from your balcony or service verandah.