Rain, My Best Friend

While writing this post, rain is blasting outside my balcony. Its been quite long time, might be 3 months, since it had rained. And don’t know how much I had longed for one. Because, from the time I remember, rain has been my best friend, my first lover for sure.

In my parents’ house I had the room, which opens the window to the open terrace, and I used to watch the rain through the window, don’t know how long. The rain drop tripping over my face, sometimes rough, sometimes smooth. I always loved the feeling.

I don’t know how many people will be out there like me, who loved rain like this. May be since I am born and living in Kerala, where the monsoon starts. I remember one good friend of mine giving me a present, “Kerala, where the rain was born”. My friend knows me very much, that I love the rain.

I had a concept home, where I will have a balcony, cozy or big, but I want to spent my retirement in that home, having a coffee along a good book and the rain drops still dripping over my face.

Rain, my dear friend, I love you very much. Keep visiting me!

Jai Ram… Jai Raj!!!

Sounds different??? Don’t be confused. These were the two slogans heard loudly from two different parts of our great country, while it was celebrating its glorious 60th Republic Day. Two organizations, with some strange and barbarian motives, came down to the road to attack people in pure daylight.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) : An utterly uncivilized savage organization, which took up its motives from its parent organization Shiv sena, is now making great Mumbai a hell to live on. While Shiv sena aimed to throw out petty south Indians out of Mumbai, MNS changed their target from south Indians to north Indians. Shiv sena, which started around at 60’s, was the outcome of a set of people, in fact marathis, who were frustrated by seeing the business successes South Indians were making at Mumbai that time. Major percent of hotels and other industry were owned by South Indians, whom they referred as Madrasis, irrespective of whether they came from Madras or not. I donno about the success factor of that organization. But I can’t resist laughing when I saw Shiv sena units were being formed at different parts of Trivandrum and other parts of Kerala. An organization which was formed to eradicate entire South Indians from Mumbai, is starting their branches at Trivandrum, which in fact is the southern most city of India 😛 .

MNS, founded by Raj Thackeray, who in turn is the nephew of the great Bal Thackeray who found the stupid Shiv Sena. To make his party slightly different, he changed its motto to eradicate North Indians instead of South Indians. What a crap!!! If South Indians were targeted for being successful in businesses, these poor North Indians were targeted for being able to get into government jobs at Maharashtra. According to them, Maharashtrian Govt. jobs are only for Marathis. That was the point which made Raj Thackeray and his tadpoles to remain utter silent during the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. During the entire attack and even after two months of attack, these idiotic sons remained silent. Everybody were asking questions where had they gone? Some were asking like “if the NSG commandos tell that we are from North India and Marathi’s dont want us to go there and fight, then what would have happened?” Didn’t that question make sense? Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who died at Taj fighting terrorists was not a Marathi. He was a petty mallu and why should have he go and die at a place which is forbidden for non-marathis. The answer is pretty simple. They saw the attack not happening at Mumbai, they saw it happening at India.

So after two long months’ gap, these tadpoles had finally woken up from their sleep and deep silence and started their work again and that too when this great country was celebrating its Republic Day. They went on the rampage disrupting Republic Day celebrations at a school in Nashik. The workers assaulted parents and beat up participants. They didn’t even spare posters of the martyrs of 26/11. Over 100 MNS workers charged into the school, tried to burn the makeshift tent and destroyed property. People at the programme had to run for cover and hide in room. What’s going on? Aren’t we living in India, the largest democracy in the world. If only marathi’s want to live in Maharashtra, Kannadiga in Karnataka, Tamilians in Tamil Nadu, then why should we tell that we are one nation under the tri color flag. More than that I won’t be surprised at all, if MNS starts its own branch somewhere at Bihar or UP.

Sri Rama Sena : Another barbarous organization, which I should tell, worse than MNS, were the second organization to make the Republic Day more colorful. I was not aware about this organization till day before yesterday. But on googling I came to know that this organization, found by Pramod Mutthalik, wants to make this country Rama Rajya. Now Rama Rajya is nothing but country which will run just like how it would have been if it was ruled by the great Rama, one of the avatar of god Vishnu. Actually the entire organizations like RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal all used Rama for propagate and justify their violence. So how will finally rama rajya look like. It won’t be having pubs??? Or only gents will be allowed to go to pubs? Did rama told somewhere that women should be pressed under the foot of men. They shouldn’t be equal or above men? These activists were attacking women at one pub in Mangalore, in Karnataka. Videos were showing how hardly and unsympathetically they were beating women. Was that what Rama did in his days?

OK, leave whatever Rama did and whatever Rama thought. In this 20th century who wants to live in a society which will be of milleniums older? If they wants to bring Rama Rajya, who knows tomorrow they will attack all buses and cars, saying that these were not there at Rama’s time and everyone should either use horses or chariots. And one more thing, please don’t think that the act you did is worth appreciable. It’s not a credit for any men to beat women like beating dogs. And more than that please don’t make us, Hindus, feel shame by doing all these.

I am not going to blame only MNS. There are similar organizations here at Karnataka also called Kannada Rakshana Vedike. Same thing. Same motto. One flag with yellow and red colors on that. You can really see this flag each and every corner of Bangalore, in fact at whole Kanataka. Eventually, putting this flag in your building will save your building from stones or fire, if some outrages or riots gets start. When there was Kaveri water issue was going on between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, each and every IT company in Bangalore hosted this flag to save their building from these stupids. Believe me, its only after coming to Bangalore I realised that there are flags for each states. There is no such thing in Kerala. I am not saying they are united, but still I think we don’t bother what other state’s people are doing there. There are tamil, hindi, english and telugu dubbed films running in Kerala theatres. This is not because Malayalam don’t have cinemas, but we mallus have a habit to accept any culture or language. In fact I consider Malayalam films better than any South Indian films. For proof, just cout the number of awards malayalam film industry gets each year.

But here that’s not the case. In Bangalore, they hadn’t started any agitation to throw away other state’s people as of now. Then also if they plan that also, I don’t think that will work out. Because majority of population in Bangalore is other state people. If all of them are thrown out, Bangalore will become just another Karnataka town. Same is the case in Mumbai. When will they understand that Mumbai is like what it is now, only because people are coming there from other states. If non-marathi’s are thrown out of Mumbai, it will eventually become city of slums.

So please at least now realize the fact that, we all are Indians and we should stand like that. Otherwise believe me, our neighbors would need no time to make our country “Islamic Republic of Pakistan”. Please, Stand United for our India. Jai Hind.

A Perfect Climax

In Kerala, there is an old saying that “if you are waking up from the bed in left direction, your entire day will be bad”. I don’t know about the credibility of this saying. But I think that day, me and LS should have waken up in left direction for sure. It was such a bad day for both of us.

We were enjoying our vacation at our hometown Trivandrum on the Christmas week. I often feels that staying with our parents gives us a sense of security and a joy. But that day was in fact very very bad. Till afternoon, it was not that bad, but not good also. LS got hurt herself a couple of times, I got some scolding from mom for being lazy and all. But the big climax was still to come as we decided to go out for buying some stuff for LS.

We went in my car and got a fantastic parking space at Attukal Shopping Complex, between a Hyundai Verna and Toyota Corolla. Between that two gigantic cars, my Estilo seems to be too small. Then also I was happy for getting such comfortable parking space, that too inside Fort, which is in fact one of the most busiest place at Trivandrum.

This time being Sabarimala season, there was indeed more crowd inside Fort. All those “ayyappans” from Tamil Nadu will come to fort to see the great “Padmanabha Swamy Temple “. We bought one Kerala sari for one of LS’s friend and was looking for some sandals for LS. But was not able to find any good one. Thinking to buy the same from somewhere else, we came back for taking our car back. Instead of Verna and Corolla, there was two Alto’s on both sides. Then also carefully I took reverse. Seeing my difficultly, LS told that she will go out and help me out. But I asked her to stay inside only as I was considering myself, an “expert” in driving and the nearby ones were only altos. :p  “TAK“!!! We heard one sound from back and I realized the great truth that I am still a novice in driving who don’t even know to take reverse. I should have accepted the help from LS.  I wonder why men always feels humiliated when they are offered help.

But anyway, this was not new for my Estilo. Dad’s great hobby was to create a scratch on each corner of both bumpers or on door or anywhere in the car’s body. But my dad will keep it perfectly in new shape by repainting or touching the scratched parts. For my bad luck, the back bumper was retouched on last week only. But still when I checked, it was a minor scratch only, still visible 😦 .

Anyway, we returned and on our way back, bought a pair of sandals also. We went to her house directly where they treated us with hot and sweet “payasam“. We bought one bottle full of “payasam” to my home also, so that we can end the worst day in good shape with some sweet. I went down to see that my mom was watching some stupid serial and told her that we had bought sweet for her and show her “payasam“. Ouch!!! It was a heart breaking scene of the bottle slipping from my hand and  breaking into pieces. Ohh God!!! This bad day is becoming a long day. I cleaned up the place, put all those broken glass pieces into one cover and kept it aside so that I can throw it away to some dump yard later. Just like a background music, my Mom’s scolding continued.

There was still some more hours to go before I sleep and I was wondering what will happen more this day, to become a perfect climax for probably, one of the worst day in my life. The climax was about to start only. 9:30 PM : Power went off making the whole place pitch dark, and yeah, still there are power cuts in Kerala for half an hour every night. I thought this to be the best time to throw the broken glass pieces to the nearby empty plot, so that nobody sees me. I took the cover and went outside and successfully disposed the broken glass pieces which were a part of my day. Nobody is as punctual as KSEB people and hence the power came back exactly at 10 PM.

After lunch, we were about to sleep and then only LS realized that she wants to try her sandals again. She checked the entire room and in fact the entire house and our car for the sandals, and came back to me asking “where are my sandals” 😡 We were wondering whether we had left the sandals at her home. “BANG!!!” A flash of lightning strikes me and I was wondering why this day is still running. I felt the soil below my leg being washed away, when I found the cover in which I put all those broken glass pieces, remaining intact where I had kept it. With cursing I realized that the cover I thrown away to the dump yard contains the new pair of sandals we just bought for LS 😦 . Enough is enough. I just wanted to remove 26th December 2008 from my calendar.

The perfect day thus came to a perfect end when I jumped over the wall to the empty plot, which is being used by our neighborhood as a dump yard, at late night.  After returning from the dump yard, I did not want to spend even a single second more on that day awaken. Hoping to forget all those mishaps and hoping for a better tomorrow, I went to bed. Good Night!!!

Twenty 20!!! Ultimate Entertainment!!!

Oh Man!!! This is the ultimate film I had ever seen. I am not telling that the story is awesome, the cinematography is too good and all. But the effort taken by the director Joshiy and Producer cum Actor Dileep is worth appreciable. Assembling all the actors of current Malayalam film industry under one roof was a quite difficult job. And more than that making a story which can include all these actors, which counts nearly to 70, is quite a hectic task. The writers Uday Krishnan and Sibi K. Thomas had written the story in an awesome way. All the top actors, Mohanlal, Mammootty, Jayaram, Suresh Gopi and all should be given a fair importance in role wise which in fact the writers had done very well.

The song featuring Nayan Tara, was in fact a brilliant idea. It featured a dance bar sort of thing and the director was able to plug in a lot of stars like pritviraj, jayasoorya, kunchako boban, nayans and all… To be frank, there is nothing much great about the story, except that it packed up all those 70+ stars. But trust me, no one will fell like we lost the money. I saw the film at my hometown Trivandrum, but I felt that even if I had watched the film at some multiplex here at Bangalore, it wouldn’t have been a waste of money. Its such a great entertaining 3.15 hours.

I don’t know about how others feel, but being a big Mohanlal fan, I believe that Mohanlal is the real star in this film. Even though the producers had tried to make them equal, we can clearly see Mohanlal standing a inch ahead of Mammootty. And among all these stars Suresh Gopi was there from the starting to end of the film, that too again in a commissioner role, proving that there is nobody still in the industry to over throw him from that role.

Once again hats off to Dileep and Joshiy, and above all to the unity of the film stars of Malayalam. You guys really made us proud. Nobody here at Bangalore usually discussed about any Malayalam films, but after this twenty 20 release, believe me even my North Indian colleagues are asking about this film. This is in fact a big achievement and in short it became one more reason for me to say proudly that “yes, am a mallu” 🙂