World's Best Restaurants

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-best-restaurants-2018/index.html

Made reservations at Gaggan(Number 5) on June 22. Shall post review afterwards.

Summer trip

Leaving tomorrow to Thailand Cambodia Vietnam and Australia .back on 14 th July along with Krupa and Adi.

Labour officer gari servant maid

ముదనష్టపు దానాఁ ఎంతసేపు తింటావ్ .. తిండి మీద ఉన్న ధ్యాస పని మీద లేదు .అని నెత్తిన  ఒక మొట్టికాయ మొట్టి ఇంట్లోకి పోయింది లబోరు ఆఫీసర్ క్రుపాకర  రావు  భార్య  దయామని .. నిన్న రాత్రి  మిగిలిపోయిన నూనె  లేని ఎండిపోయిన చపాతీ ముక్కల్ని  నీళ్ళతో మింగుతూ కన్నీళ్లు కార్చింది పనిపిల్ల షాహిన్
ఫ్యాక్టరీ లో జరిగిన ప్రమాదం లో దెబ్బ తగిలి మూడు నెలల నుండి పనికి  పోటంలేదు జహీర్ . ఇల్లు గడవక చదువుకుంటున్న పిల్లను కృపాకరరావు ఇంట్లో పనికి పెట్టింది షాహిన్ వాళ్ళ అమ్మ ముంతాజ్ .
అమ్మా ఈయనకు  బాగైతే దర్గాహ్ కు వస్తామని మొక్కున్నాము . ఆదివారం పనికి రాము శనివారం రాత్త్రి పనిచేసి వెళ్తాము అన్న ముంతాజ్ తో ఊరికే సెలవలు పెడితే పని ఎవడు చేస్తాడు మీ తాత .తర్వాత వెళ్ళండి అన్నది దయామని.
అమ్మా పిల్ల వాడిని బడిలో వెయ్యాలి ఇంకో రెండు వందలు జీతం పెంచండి అన్న ముంతాజ్ తో తిండి కి గతి లేదు చదువులు కావాలి .. మేము ఇక్కడ రాసులు పోసుకొని కూర్చున్నామా అనింది దయామని.
15 రోజుల తరువాత ఇంటికెళ్తున్న షాహిన్ ను పిలిచి  మీ అయ్యగారు ఈరోజు టీవీ లో మాట్లాడుతారు . స్పెషల్ గా మీ అయ్యగారిని పిలిచారు. మీ కాలనీ లో అందరిని కూడా చూడమని అని చెప్పింది దయామని
 
ఆదివారం పొద్దున్న ఇంతకు రాని పనిపిల్లను తిట్టుకుంటూ  నిద్ర లేచింది దయామని .. పెయిన్ వున్నా ఇంజినీరు గారి ఇంటికి ఫోన్ చేస్తే అక్కడ ఇంతే.

అరగంటలో అపార్ట్మెంట్ కాంప్లెక్స్ లో ఎవరింటికి పనివాళ్ళు రాలేదని వార్త  పాకిపోయింది . పది  గంటలకు వాకిట్లో కలకలం విని బయటకు వచ్చారు కృపాకర రావు దయామని.

గుంపు గా ఉన్న ఆడవాళ్ళలో నుండి ఒక యువతి  ముందుకు  వచ్చి అయ్యా మీరు దేవుడు . మమ్మల్ని చీకటి నుండి వెలుగు లోకి నడిపించిన మహానుభావులు .. మీరు చెప్పిన దాకా మా హక్కులు మాకు తెలియలేదు ..మీ సలహా  ప్రకారం మేము సంఘం ఏర్పాటు చేసుకున్నాము
1.. వారానికి ఒక రోజు సెలవ  ఇవ్వాలి
2 . పదిహేను సంవత్సరాల పిల్లల చేత పనిచేయించటం చట్ట విరుద్ధం . అందువల్ల పిల్ల లెవరు పనికి రారు
3. మినిమం వేజ్ ప్రకారం జీతం ఇవ్వాలి
ఇట్లా మీరు చెప్పిన సలహాలు అన్నీ పాటించాలని మేము నిర్ణయించు కున్నాము
అని కృపాకర రావు కు పూలదండ వేసిన వాళ్ళను చూస్తూ నోటా మాట రాక నిలబడి పోయిన మొగుణ్ణి గిర్రున చూస్తూ ఇంట్లోకి నడిచింది

Father

జానకి టిఫిన్  నా మొహాన పడేస్తే ఆఫీస్ కు చస్తా .మూడు బస్సులు మారి పోవాలి. లేట్ అయితే నా మొగుడు చంపుతాడు.

ఆ వెధవ నిద్ర లేచాడా .... ట్యూషన్ కు తగలడమను .. పరీక్షలు  నెల లేవు .చదువు చంక నాకి పోతే అడుక్కు తినాలి .ఆ చాకలి కి గుడ్డలు వేసి చావద్దు.చొక్కాలు ఏడాది కూడా రావటం లేదు .ఇల్లు వాకిలి ఎగిరి పోయేట్టు అరుస్తున్న  సీతారాం ను ఏమన  లేక గుడ్ల నీళ్లు కుక్కు కున్నారు అమ్మ కొడుకు . చూస్తుండగానే ఈ ఈ అరుపుల తోనే ఆరేళ్ళు గడిచి పోయాయి 

ఇంజనీరింగ్ పాస్ అయి క్యాంపస్ ప్లేసెమెంట్ లో ఇన్ఫోసిస్ లో ఉద్యోగం తెచ్చుకొని బెంగుళూరు వెళ్ళిపోయిన ప్రశాంత్ సంవత్సరం తర్వాత ఇంటికి వచ్చాడు. అమ్మా నాతో నిన్ను తీసుకొని పోతాను ?ఇన్నాళ్లు ఈయన తో పడ్డ  బాధలు చాలు ..నాతో వచ్చేయ్.. 

కొడుకు మాటలకు నవ్వి జానకి మీనాన్న సంగతి నీకేమి తెలుసని ఇట్లా అంటున్నావు .నీ కు  స్కూల్ కు దూరమని అయన అయనమూడు బస్సులు మారి ఆఫీస్ కు వెళ్ళాడు .నీ కాలేజీ ఫీజు కోసంరాఁత్రి  పూట  పని చేసాడు .నలుగురిలో నీవు తక్కువగా ఫీల్ అవకూడదని రెండు చొక్కాలతో సర్దుకొని నీకు బట్టలు కొన్నాడు.ఇవ్వన్నీ కాదు ఇంకొక బిడ్డను భరించలేనని నేను ఆపరేషన్ కు  ఉంఫిట్ అని ఆరేళ్ళు భర్తగా నానుంచి దూరంగా వున్నాడు .
మీ నాన్న ఆ మండే సూర్యుడు. ఆ వేడిని నువ్వు చూస్తున్నావు. సూర్యుడు లేకుంటే ఈ భూమి మీద జీవమే లేదు . తాను కాలి  పోయి కరిగిపోయి జీవితాలు నిలబెట్టే సూరీడు మీ నాన్న. .ఇంట్లోకి వచ్చిన సీతారాం కాళ్ళ మీద పడి  న  కొడుకును వెధవా ఈ వేషాలు వద్దులే . జాబ్ చేస్తున్న పిల్లను చూస్తున్నాము ?నాలుగు రూపాయలు దాచుకో 

I am not able to post any images! anybody else have the same problem?

Bliss.....

After a few busy months of hectic travel and work, spending a relaxing evening reading some Telugu novels and listening to some old melodies...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11yh-UCeev4

And catching up on the blog posts.

Chennai - The unchanging city

What changed in Chennai in the 60 years I knew the city.
Much and not so much really.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr)-- Ha! my french showing through-  It means "The more it changes, the more it is the same (thing)."

(as Pondicherry was an ex French Territory, The Govt. of India had promised to protect the french heritage and culture. So, a study of French was compulsory in all colleges in Pondy.. I scored 111/200 in the certificate course in French run by University of Madras.)


I.The Railway Stations
1. The Central--Madras central railway station looks the same--a few cosmetic changes like chairs in the waiting hall, a new waiting hall at the side and a new A/c waiting room and dormitory hardly mark a make over. Same platforms, same stalls, same food and same dirt and same jostling crowds. Luggage on the platforms, waiting to be loaded into the parcel vans and coming in the way of passengers, puddles of water from (?fish) from some parcels, bad smells, food smells, filter coffee smells and a mix of languages make up a typical day on the platforms. Polite crowds, passengers gossiping with total strangers exchanging stories of their life and asking about the others' lives are my favorite people. It holds up the mirror of life to you and lets you get an insight into life as such.
2.Egmore - My interaction with Egmore was very little. There was a train service to Pondicherry. It used to start from Egmore at 10.00pm after all the important trains going south left. It used to reach Pondy by next morning - 6 to 8 am. When you can travel in 4 hrs (those days-now it is 2 1/2 hrs), why travel 8 to 10 hrs? The languages heard were either Tamil or Malayalam.



2. The Bus stands--
The Pallavan Express Bus stand at Parry's corner, next to the high court complex has now been shifted out and since it is nearly 15 years since I traveled by a bus, I do not know what the new one looks like. In my day, I used to take a rickshaw to the bus stand from Central. It was at the end of the block from Law college entrance on Broadway. We had to get a token at the ticket booth and when the bus comes in, you embark as per your token no. No pushing, jostling or reserving a seat by throwing a hanky through a window. All very peaceful and slow as the frequency was not great. But the roads were good and the travel was comfortable. ( Mullapudi's joke-"you know that you have entered AP from Madras when you feel the first bump.")

Next alternative, the moffusil Bus stand a few yards down the road from Broadway signals towards the flower bazaar police station- Stalls on to the road, a narrow entrance and crowded place with buses going down south standing and loaders yelling "Pondy, Pondy" or "Cuddalore, Cuddalore".
 All very hectic and buses with lots and lots of luggage on top-Keerai and miscellancy- standing waiting. I used to travel mostly by express buses as an express bus will take me by the JIPMER campus and I can get down there instead of going to Pondy bus stand. They used to go via Dindivanam(or Thindivanam)----Chennai--Chengalpattu--Mamandur-Maduranthakam-Thindivanam. I shall talk about it later. The moffusil buses used to ply the road along the coast via Marakkanam and go to Pondy directly. On return journeys, I had to go to Pondy as there may not be any vacant seats by the time the bus comes to JIPMER campus. Then the choice was any bus.


The rarely used bus stand (by me of course) was the  Basin Bridge Bus Stand at the end of Wall Tax road. all the buses going to Andhra started from there, but my choice was the train. The Karuvadu stalls (dried salted fish) from near the Padmanabha theatre to the Basin Bridge were a source of nauseating stink which improved my breath holding capacity by 3 times.

A Sunday morning walk

On Sunday, Sasi and I went for a walk at Valley School. This is a branch of the JK Foundation Rishi Valley school at Madanapalli. They have a large tract of shrub and bamboo forest land, with a brook running through it. We had an enjoyable 3 hours observing various kinds of flora and fauna. Among the finds of the day:

Birds:
Indian Gray Hornbill (a pair)
Coppersmith Barbet
White cheeked Barbet
Red whiskered Bulbul
Red vented Bulbul
White browed Bulbul
Tickell's Blue Flycatcher
Fan tailed Flycatcher
Indian Parakeet
Indian Robin (male)
White breasted Kingfisher
Greater Coucal

We also could hear several peacocks and a couple of babblers

Butterflies:

Indian Wanderer
Common Crow
Common Mormon
Common Rose
Yellow Orange Tip
Crimson Tip
Dark Blue Tiger
Bright Babul Blue
Pale Grass Blue
Common Emigrant
Plain Tiger

Other creatures (including from another Sunday at the same place):
Tortoise shell Beetle
Jewel Bug
Robber Fly
Several grasshoppers
Assassin bug
Several frogs
Stick insect
Several beetles
Ant Lion

It was an enjoyable morning.

Stick insect

Jewel bug

Tortoise shell Beetle

ICU Tales - 2
Arrogance,Domination
                                      I observed a typical Hyderabadi Muslim family which seemed to be very affluent also.There were almost ten members eight elderly  and a young  couple.Patient was an oldman in a critical condition. They occupied the entire place on the right side.They adjusted the pedestal fan into their direction and turned the wall mounted fan to provide them comfort.Their daily routine was provided by the young couple with fiawless obedience like supplying coffee tea cakes cookies all in a time fitting pattern.Allthe other attendants were awe struck and impatient also. Then the sweeper came and admonished them for the garbage they  had thrown and readjusted the fans.Sadly the patient died  and they all disappeared from the scene.I still remember their costly mobiles and it was just like watching a Hindi serial on T.V.Their behaviour was   very unbecoming and out of place.                                 

Chennaiyan

My favorite city has been (and may be will be) Madras (not Chennai) always. My association started when I visited Madras with my parents when they went there for Thyagaraja Aradhana in the month of December when I was 11 years old. Music Academy was the venue. I was left to play with kids in father's friend,Mr. VK Balasubrahmanyam , a professor in Madras Law college. They were living in Shenoy Nagar, on the outskirts!!  (Now it is such a busy center).

My next visit was a memorable one for it got me kicked out of Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada, where I was doing my PUC (class XII). I wanted to attend the convocation and receive my Visarada certificate from Dakshina Bharatha Hindi Prachar Sabha in T. Nagar. I was denied permission by our Vice Principal, as it will mean missing 3 days of college at such a crucial time (quarterly exams). I went anyway, had a jolly time, saw Cleopatra in Safire and went back to Vijayawada, only to find that I was expelled for indiscipline.It ended happily after my father came, apologized and paid a hefty readmission fee. To his great credit and to my utter astonishment, he did not scold me. He merely said " you won't fit into such colleges." I remembered this when I went to admit my son in Bangalore when I chose MSR over PES due to the strict rules of the latter and as my son was more free spirited than me.
Safire complex hosted a theatre with continuous shows--The Blue diamond. You can buy a ticket and walk in any time, stay any length of time, see the same movie again and again. But if you come out, you have to buy a new ticket. In the later visits, I used to walk in in the middle of a movie, watch till the end, wait for it to start again, see till the point where I started and then walk out. So most of the time I knew how it ended before I knew how it started.
Once I became a student of JIPMER, I was a frequent visitor as I had to pass through Madras on my way to Pondicherry.
More to come----------------

Grace & Forgiveness

Third Class in Indian railways: In those traumatic days when SRN was in the ICU, I also used to do shifts in the lounge outside. It reminded me of the times when I travelled in unreserved compartments between Chennai and Hyderabad (lack of planning being a long term vice). Strangers of all creeds and from all corners of the country, squeezed together in a small space in impromptu sleeping arrangements (mats on the floor in  between rows of plastic bucket seats), with a  daily competition for the 'cushy' berths (the spots in line with the wall-mounted fans), were yet able to spend many nights in quiet companionship and a camaraderie born of mutual sympathy. There were the 'long-termers' (such as us) and the dailies, with the former having some unwritten rights to their previously staked-out berths. The long-termers eventually got to know each other and the reasons they were there. (By the way, I took the title of this paragraph from the name of an interesting essay by MK Gandhi...just Google for it.)

The lady who said grace: One such long-termer was this middle-aged lady, who used to be next to Durga pinni and me. Her husband, a blue-collar employee of the Indian Railways, was in the ICU with a grievous injury, the details of which I forget now. Both Pinni and I were struck by her. She had a stillness about her, and had grace in her motions. Every night, and every morning, she would veil her face for a few minutes and offer a prayer. Over time, Pinni stuck up a friendly conversation with her and we found out she was a Christian, which seemed to explain her rather unique style of prayer. Her family seemed to consist of a brother and sister, who visited her at the hospital occasionally.  Days passed, faces changed, and we all remained a constant, helping each other with minor things.

The sleepless night: One night was a sleepless one, thanks to a series of alarms going off at different times of the night. My  hypothesis for this Greek chorus of alarms: people rushing to the hospital from out of town usually do so in the wee hours of the morning and have to use alarms, which on most phones seem to be by default in a 'recur daily' mode. Hence, the alarm rings  again the next night, and usually the said people are too deep in sleep to wake up to it. I had to get more than once that night and search for the offending phone in a dark room as it screamed away with impunity. That night, the ICU visitor lounge also seemed to be hosting a mosquito convention and I was definitely the popular item on the menu.

Three is company but four is a crowd: This next night, when I came to lie down in my spot, I saw that this lady had visitors-her siblings (not unusual)- who also intended to sleep there along with us that night (unusual). Pinni had gone home for the night and it was just me flying the Singampally pennant in the lounge. The place was more crowded than usual that night, and the mat that we proposed to share was just too small for 4 people (3 of them and 1 of me). Though I am not normally fussy about such details, the sleep deficit from the previous night had dried my reserve of patience. I thought it selfish of them to treat this like a hotel and have 3 people sleep when 1 or 2 could have sufficed, specially on a crowded night. I told the lady's brother that the place was too small and he should find a different part of the hall to sleep. I don't think I was impolite and but I was short with him. They didn't say a word and seemed strangely embarrassed. When I came back to the spot a few minutes later, the brother was still there, but had squeezed himself into a small space, leaving ample room for me to sleep. It was a compromise that I was OK with and the night went by peacefully.

Righteous, not righteously angry: The next morning, I was not feeling very good about my actions. While I may not have been selfish, I could have been more selfless, perhaps. The lady & siblings left, ablutions were performed and  a few hours later, pinni came back as expected. In conversation, I mentioned to her about the incident of the night, and asked her opinion: Should I apologize to the lady? Pinni said:" Well, the mat on which we are sleeping is actually hers. A few days ago, I was so struck with her piety that I requested her for her mat. I felt that God (whether Christian or otherwise) has to be with such a person and her grace can only help us". So: Even though I was the guest (on her mat), I had busily bundled out the hostess's brother from the guestroom. And the lady (and her siblings) had not once mentioned that to me. Instead, they accommodated me at the cost of their inconvenience. I thought back to a few occasions where people had wronged me: I don't think I let a moment lapse before I bubbled over with righteous anger at their offence.

Forgiveness: The next time I met her, I apologized. She immediately dismissed the matter to be nothing, and that was that. "To err is human, to forgive, divine." ,  said Alexander Pope. But I aver that the forgiveness is truly divine when it is bestowed silently upon the offender. The hospital had many lessons to offer, but this was a good one. 

My city

Would you like to describe your favorite city to the blog? We can see the city through your eyes and enjoy and may be see the same city in a different way next time? I shall start off with Madras AKA Chennai.

yesterday srn,durga,kanth svn padma manas summu came to our house.it was fun through out.every one shouting at the same time on different topics.elders nostalogy,youngerones indulging in selfies.dmr a silent spectator as usual.a typical singampalli union. very happy to see srn in his old form.

Phoenix

As Krupakar pointed out, this is indeed a Phoenix rising from its ashes. Come on guys and gals! Put your fingers to the keyboard and push or press those buttons! Let’s go. Race you to the first post!