The Ashy Aurum 79.

It was a strange sight- Muser & bystander going in to a huddle, as we have seen umpteen numbers of times during 50-50 or T20 matches. In the cricket field, it helped the teams to focus to win or at least to give a stiff fight. But to what purpose this Muser-Bystander huddle was being held - is an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery.

Insider information is that, such a one-to-one is held only in extreme distressed condition. The insider conveniently remained silent on who could be the stressed party? Usually the deliberations on one-to one basis come to the open, if one of them speaks out. In this case who that will be and on what it will be?

Not to intrude in to their privacy, the Onlooker, the neighbourhood spook, moved out of earshot. However he was not sure whether the 1000 ton gold lying buried could be the topic of discussion, as Muser is known to get worked up on any thing and everything.

To pass time, the Onlooker decided to participate with them in an imaginary panel discussion. He mentally paraphrased the essence of their animated discussion like this:

If you are a godman, know the rich historical fact from the past, have worriless nights to spend in dreamland, have gullible following –public or otherwise- wake up! You have a one (ton) in a bullion chance to get in to the media of a different kind -print and electronic.

Now, what all you have to do is this- stare at the lenses and mouth your words in to the mikes. To soup up the affair a bit, read out (extempore will be befitting the occasion) a prepared statement like “…the digging must be completed by such and such a day or otherwise the gold treasure will turn in to a heap of ash..” for the golden moment.

Dear godman you have packed enough ominous punch and rest assured, the rest will be taken care of by your legion of gullible followers. Some time back, somebody said that “The gullibility in the population is proportional to their predilection to the sayings of the ‘past-seers and dream merchants”.

Later this population will be joined by or headed by the semi-sane ‘…….dom’ and start digging vigorously. The purposes might be devious – the gullible population trying to bury their frustrations and the semi-sane ‘…….dom’ to bury their credibility in a deeper niche. Thus, when science mixed with ‘spirit’ is a dangerous and heady cocktail, spinning the world of the gullible out of control.

At the end of the digging, if the godman’s idea was to create a big reservoir for storing rain water- he has succeeded rather admirably in his ambition. Alternatively, if he was aiming for a cut in the treasure – he ends up with a bleeding nose and bruised reputation.

Coming to the gullible public diggers, if physical fitness was their objective, after this exercise they will walk like Tarzans. As far as the semi-sane ‘…….dom’ is concerned, if their aim was to test out gadgets and machinery's, their objectives would have been met.

The third party to the effort, the rulers – if their ruse was to divert the attention of the subjects, they succeeded the most and got enough breathing space to take the stream & steam out of detractors – Callgate, Coalgate and Tollgate, spending public money to entertain the public.

At the end, the Onlooker had a doubt whether his summary of the discussion, in absentia, was factual.  With this great agitating in his mind, he decided to wait for the official briefing from one of them.

When Muser & bystander concluded their huddle, they came out with the following joint communiqué:

“We hope not that a nuclear sadhu next comes out with a vision that “such and such a place has so many tons of buried uranium and plutonium in ready to use condition. It has to be dug out with in a specific time frame or else volcanoes will erupt, rivers will dry up and earth/sea/moon-quakes will gobble up our country…

We do hope that the gullible public and the semi-sane ‘…….dom’ remember the earlier golden ash story and do nothing about this nuclear sadhu’s latest revelations. We are not asking too much, any way all of us do remember the adage ‘once bitten twice shy’ very well.

The only saddened lot could be the financial wizards – if the earlier dream would have come true the gold could have immensely benefited the economy in near and short terms. If the second dream also had become fruitful, the nuclear & power sector might have got such a fillip – near, short, medium, long and very long terms. In a joint statement the nuclear lobby and the Power lobby might be tempted to point out to the fact that the half-life of these radio active materials out run generations. It would have been prudent to start dig…. with out ignoring the “active” revelation”

The Onlooker felt happy that his wait was worth, in tons of gold or plutonium, after hearing the furious details of the huddled conversation which matched more or less with his surmise.

The ending punch lines are :  The elated Onlooker coined a catchy slogan and said it aloud a few times , for the feel of it. The slogan ran like this - "Lure and lode sure make a hole .. jolly or holy"

Chow chow 12062103 -71-

China announced the launch of SHENZHOU -10, with a mixed crew of three. This was a technology forerunner for future Lunar Missions and the news item held me riveted to the paper.

Absorbing the essential details, I moved to the second paragraph. It was then; I heard a heavy crash of falling objects. I was sitting in the garden (or so I would like to call define our flower potted plants) and without the aid of radar or sonar, was able to pin point the epicentre of the din – our kitchen.

With trepidation, I ventured in to the war field. The kitchen floor was littered with vegetables, jars, utensils, plates and a gluey looking syrupy material.

The field commander was a sight to behold. Face covered with the same gluey syrup, seemed like a facial. To add colour to it, some bits of “sliced”   vegetables were stuck in the glue.

Suppressing my laughter, I gingerly stepped inside our home. Ours was a small flat and the size of the kitchen was a fraction of the common area, which we failed to note earlier in the blue print. A Himalayan blunder.

The kitchen was as cramped as the command module of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. To walk in and come out needed the navigating skills of those astronauts.

This did not deter my wife, from stocking the kitchen shelves and unutilized floor space with kitchen wares, gadgets and provisions rivalling a Mall.

In this constrained capsule, she moved around like a pirouetting ballerina. I never stopped wondering how my wife could do it time and again with an accuracy of a few millimetres to avoid collision.

I recall with shame the only time when I hurriedly entered the kitchen and came running out, at the sound of falling objects. It was like an asteroid shower, sans the light.

Grinding, mixing, washing and cutting vegetables, draining and sieving, frying and boiling goes on parallely.

In between the milliseconds, she would rinse a cup, dry a plate. If time permits, even make a cup of coffee or a phone call – this is multi-tasking of the highest order.

All these jugglery's must have emboldened her to cut a corner or two with her kitchen mates – provided it was nothing to do with electricity. She obeys the laws of electricity in Toto.

To her, the gadgets/machines are animate and affectionately named. Grinder is vortexer, mixie is tornado, washing machine is whirligig, ceiling fan is whirly blade and the air-conditioner is thermion .How and why ‘a mystery remains’.

I have even doubted if she actually converses with them in a special machine language?

Each kitchen mate had a weekly off and the planned menu involved no overtime for any. The only exception she applied was, on off duty day such a kitchen mate should serve in non-active capacities. Yup, she ruled the kitchen - military style.

She must have some scientific streak running in her genes; liked to challenge, particularly the laws of gravitation, in her domain.

Idly is traditionally made from a batter-mix of rice and urad dal. I am an anti-traditionalist. I take the actual batter and mix it with vegetables, noodle, vermicelli, flour or any other thing I could lay my hands on. I relish and to whoever happens to be nearby, serve it as a petite dish.

This trait of mine must have appealed to her or gave her a chance to get even with me. Secretly she had planned a new and unheard variety of sweet. She knows pretty well that I crave for sweets at around midnight when everybody is asleep.

She decided to try out a new sweet dish, may be to surprise me on my birth day. What she did not know was that our daughter had already spilled the beans to me.

Our daughter had guessed the intention and the intended guinea pig, from the unusual quantities of certain vegetables disliked by both of us.

I was unaware at that time that I would indirectly contribute to the mess in the kitchen. My wife chose the day on which the grinder enjoyed a weekly holiday and this laid the foundation for the unfolding story.

That day was the weekly off for the grinder and the mixer jar had no suitable lid .It was broken and the shop wallah told me to replace the jar itself. It was still under my active consideration.

She decided to go ahead anyway. She seated the mixer on the grinder top, at an angle, wedged it with a table spoon.

The grinder itself was not on terra firma but on top of bag of rice packed in a polythene sack. She found a one side closed cylindrical, shallow vessel to use as the lid for the jar – just for that one time.

Starting the mixer, she moved over to the gas range to turn the burner to “sim”, she was multitasking as usual; this time it was using the mixer and cooking vegetables, all in the mill-metric free space.

She then held the makeshift lid tightly for some time and turned over to the vegetables that were being fried. After checking the lid position on the jar, did some draining of boiled vegetables. Once again, conscious of the temporary lid on the jar, she spent a little time near the mixer.

Satisfied that the jar-lid combo was doing fine, she turned the burner to full and completed frying of vegetables. As she was about to switch off the burner, all hell broke loose and of course the sound effect brought me scurrying in to the house.

The surprise sweet recipe (diced chow chow, snake gourd, mint leaves, a sprinkling of flour and fried semolina) must have literally jumped the jar, dislodging the cover plate on the mixer. It must have looked a volcano spewing molten lava.

The series of vibrations, linear and lateral motions that caused the mess must have reminded her of a Tom & Jerry caper.

The grinder slid from the rice sack (holiday or no holiday) and took the mixer and the power cable along for company.

Together, gathering strength, they took a passing shot at the plastic tub holding washed kitchen utensils. Empty vessels make more noise, you know, and they just did that.

It is needless to say that the floor of the kitchen looked like a battle field. The casualty was the new never heard/never tasted variety sweet. The making of the surprise sweet turned out to be a surprise of a different kind.

I woke up with a start, when my wife nudged me with a cup of hot herbal tea. Realisation, then struck me – I had dozed off, after reading about the woman astronauts in space.

This must have launched my imagination, simultaneously, putting my wife in to a capsule like our kitchen, and narrating to myself those fictitious happenings.

When I recounted the dream, she had only this to say: “Finish your tea and then have your bath. You have started to dream in the mornings too”.

She hurried in to the house and I followed suit wondering whether my imagination will come true one day!

The Doubting Tom. -70-

When you meet somebody, you get to talk about things of interest. It might be yours or his. Many will calmly listen to your view point and will not show agreement or disagreement.

Some vehemently, counter the points made by you. The odd ones demand substantiating proof for every word you use. This is a difficult person to handle and satisfy with your arguments. He is Mr. Doubting Tom.

If you happen to stand behind him in a railway ticket booking counter, the conversation with the ticketer might go like this:

The ticket states 'I am wait-listed' and you say it will surely get confirmed. How sure you are?

The ticketer replies, “Normally, up to this number tickets get confirmed. You need not worry sir”

Mr. Tom has questions. He wants to know what will happen if I am not lucky?

Exasperated the ticketer says, “You can cancel your un-confirmed ticket, sir”

Next time, you chance upon him in an electronics goods shop- the conversation between him and the salesman will be most likely, like this:

Here the guarantee card says that the defective components will be replaced. Now my question is whether the replacement will be with a newer component or with a used component from another device?

The salesman mumbles that the replacement will be with a newer component.

Not satisfied with the answer, Mr. Tom asks, how are you so sure, you will not be personally present at that time of replacing the component in my device?

The tongue tied salesman quietly withdraws to serve another customer.

Another unplanned encounter happens in a fruit market. As usual Mr. Tom has probing questions and remembering your earlier encounters, you instantly decide to side with the vendor on whatever questions Mr. Tom might pose.

The vendor says, this basket of fruit is fresh and tastes superb. Tom jumps into the fray, asking how the vendor can certify the taste. Did he actually taste one from the basket shown to him?

Vendor’s meek reply did not satisfy him. Changing his choice Mr. Tom wanted to know the cost of another variety of fruit. Bitten shy by the earlier sting, the vendor says, “Sir this fruit is supposed to taste equally good”

Mr. Tom asked, why the vendor did not say that this basket of fruit also is from a fresh supply. The vendor cursed himself for not having added that statement to this basket of fruit also.

For an unknown reason, Mr. Tom decided to buy a different kind of fruit at the asking rate itself, without haggling. This surprised the vendor as well as you.

The anger in “you” has been waiting to vent out on Mr. Tom. The moment the cash was exchanged and the fruit basket changed hands, the volcano of anger burst out.

You stopped the vendor from pocketing the money and asked him,” How do you know that this currency notes are genuine?”

You asked Mr. Tom, “Why are buying this basket of fruit without tasting one and how do you know this is a fresh stock?”

The vendor afraid of loosing business stares at you.  Mr. Tom, taken aback by well directed questions thought he has met his match.

Mr. Doubting Tom walks away; the vendor readies himself to attend on another, yet-to-come customer. You simply go about visiting other stalls in search of the kind of fruits you came to buy.

A fleeting thought occurs and you wonder “Why did I not do it earlier at the ticket counter or in the electronics goods shop itself?”

Rat in the shoes. -67-

The Muser had two other friends (shift mates) in the Hostel. They were occupants of a room diagonally across and two such rooms away. They generally took part in extracurricular activities such as climbing, trekking and 3 show cinema stints.

Sreeni and Kumar always came together – the double antennae. They can ferret out buried information but they had no ulterior motive.

Satire and wit was their forte. This had an undesirable effect on some of the inmates. Wit & satire everybody liked but when used on someone else.

Needless to say the aggrieved person waited for his turn, in case he was not able to redirect one at them , his own brand of wit or satire then and there.

But for this minor infringement on personal sensitivity, they were gladly welcomed to be part of any group or activity. Though friendly, the hostelites did not visit the duo by going in to their rooms.

Somehow this culture had taken root and all the friendly discussions took place either in the mess hall or at the hostel entrance.

Friends gathered in a particular room if a music session (singing or listening) was on or for playing cards without stake. During festival times, the hostel wore a deserted look. The aftermath of festivals meant exchange of variety of homemade eatables.

After one such festival, Kumar came back with a pair of new shoes. It was a bit costly, on our salary (which in reality was a stipend). He displayed his shoes happily, must be due to the sheer joy of owning a pair of such shoes.

Days went by, and the hostel inmates smelled a malodour in the air. Many times in the past, such malodour had wafted through the hostel ambiance. More often, it turned out to be of chemical origin from nearby processing industries. The air clears after an hour or two.

But what perplexed the inmates, in the first floor rooms, was that the odour was persistent and gaining strength day by day. The odour cleared off in a week’s time, bringing relief to the inmates.

After ten days, that mysterious odour stared to waft again through the corridors like a “ghost who walks”. Within a week the odour was categorised as ‘mild to severe’. Finally, one of the inmates hailing from an agricultural family sniffed and identified the cause of odour – a dead rat.

This sniffing posed another puzzle instead of answering the earlier one. The questions that remained to be answered were ‘Where from the rat had come and where it breathed its last?, Why it should come here to die? Where exactly its demise had occurred? Why at a periodical interval?.

Among the hostlers, a few were inquisitive.  They took upon the task of finding the origin of odour as the sniffer’s theories had gaps in it. This inquisitive nature led me to think about the adage “Curiosity killed the Cat”.

The investigation started off by forming a search team. No corner was left out in search of the rat, in the ground floor. This was based on the assumption that the rat also could have lived in ground floor or in a hole in the ground around the perimeter of the hostel. At that time they did not suspect a dead rat in any one of the 20 odd rooms spanning across two floors.

One member of the search team, made an accidental discovery. The smell appeared to emanate from one of the rooms in the first floor. His nostrils picked up the odour as he was crossing over the corridor/aisle. He had a strong suspicion on the left hand side row of rooms.
He could not pin point the source 3 doors of the 5 rooms were ajar. He convened an emergency meeting with the search team to disclose his findings.
The team had some firebrands, who did not stand on courtesies when it came to business. The “sniffer” in tow, they knocked on all the doors and entered inside for a field study – like contestants canvassing for votes.
The first and second doors they knocked upon were clean. The team entered the third room (remember the earlier adage about cat getting killed), fought the stench and came out gasping for fresh air. They were in no condition to continue the search there after, hence abandoned it.

The real culprit for the putrid stench was the unwashed nylon socks soaked in excessive sweating of feet.
The search team was very happy on two counts - mission completed and the culprits (the satire duo) were nailed.

Next day, the Team cornered the duo (wit & satire) and sarcastically said “Having given a demonstration of what your wit & satire could do to a field rat, why not market this technique?”

The Investigation team presented them with a rat trap and a packet of rat poison. Wit and sarcasm had been paid back in their own coin.

Needless to say that Sreeni & Kumar vanished like a rat chased by a cat. The hostelites coined a new adage “curiosity killed the rat too!”

Snake on the Ladder.

This private company is nestled between national highways, railway station and lush green agricultural lands.

The entrance gate is built over a drain water canal. Encroachment of over grown weeds in the stagnated water gives the look of a medieval fort surrounded by water ways. Only a full fledged moat and draw bridge is missing; otherwise it would be a picture perfect setting.

The company MD is a naturalist – allows weeds and shrubs to grow at their own will or pace.

He has such a strong faith in nature - depends on sunlight for illumination and the depressions in the bay for ventilation.

He let nature to provide these every day and magnanimously allowed his employees to avail the same at the work place.

The cabling work for the installed machines rivals a spider’s web.

For all these miserliness, he possesses a brilliant brain – thinking ahead of others in the field, doing the impossible with unskilled employees and to capture the imagination of probable customers.

Over a period of time, he positioned himself as a designer, developer and producer of critical components for space related activities. He used to proudly say that, all the prototypes that were manufactured by him performed well.

He even started to design and develop special purpose equipments and then got them fabricated from vendors of questionable capabilities. Some miserably failed. A list of such useless items would easily fill 2 pages of an inventory book.

Being a born fighter, the failures never bothered him. He has a proud motto “Design, Build and Operate”.

This story is about one such equipment, fortunately functional but suffering unwanted handicaps. This twin tower was 6 meters tall and some of the moving parts were placed at the top. In his cost pruning exercise, he did not provide a ladder.

He will close his ears whenever such inexpensive items like a proper ladder, a plastic bucket or a torch light are mentioned. This psychology, even now remains a puzzle to Muser.

This heating & drying tower is to be used, in a first of his kind venture, to produce resin coated organic and inorganic filament bundles of various types and strengths.

The main reason for this attempt is to overcome the non-availability or market volatility for such coated products. As is his wont, the Top Man has already lined up buyers for this yet to be made product.

He has an uncanny ability in gathering needed information and technique, from internet & his extensive personal network. He requested Muser to handle the project.

At the appropriate time, he sounded the alarm on the anticipated shortage of people who took decisions. From that point on, the interested officials kept themselves abreast of even a minor advancement in the developmental project. Yet none asked for a solid proof and therefore, none was given.

He chose an opportune moment to propose the use of in-house made product in the production of pressure vessels.  This situation placed Muser in a tight corner.

Whenever highly placed officials paid a visit, The MD made it a point to introduce Muser and exaggerate the pace at which the work was being carried out. Muser was put in a Shakespearian– to say the truth  or  not.

All these added to the pressure, to come up with a good result. And the very look and layout of the equipment, meant for continuous operation was disgusting.

Determined to see through the Project, Muser began organising the required round the clock operation. The shift personnel managed to locate a dilapidated bamboo ladder left by a civil contractor. It was left behind due to the cost of transportation.

This ladder had very special qualities.  Auto-ambulation (Who ever needed it took it and left it somewhere else), Unique appearance (the missing rungs were strung with coir ropes of a blackish hue and were sticky due to semi-cured resinous mass). The same ropes were also wound on the vertical bars of ladder to increase hand “grip”.

We hit a road block right from the start of the maiden operation involving the heating tower and processing filament bundle to semi-dry state.

The operating personnel went up and down the heating tower using the shaky ladder - every five or ten minutes, to set things ready for a restart.

Finally, the plant stabilised to a normal run and a heavy down pour began – as though to cool the frayed tempers. There was no let up in the rain and also the need to continue production. By around 6 “O” clock in the evening, the rain stopped.

The change team took over and they started experiencing another set of interruptions – power failure, system malfunction and semi-dried filament bundle getting stuck in moving parts.

Finally nature relented and everything became normal and the plant was up and running. The operators dispersed for dinner to a nearby location. When the team returned to their respective operating stations, the power was out.

The work area was pitch black – no emergency light or even a torch light. The power failure lasted a good half an hour. The tower temperature plummeted to near ambient. But the filament bundle inside the tower became hard and rod like, due to the residual heat.

This filament bundle had to be gently moved down ward, manually, till the dried ends came out of the tower. One of the operators climbed the ladder, reached the top, opened the cover plate, and rotated the rollers to pay out the hardened filament bundle.

When he started coming down the rungs of the ladder and at mid-way, his hand felt something clammy and sending a chill feeling rushing through his spinal cord.

Who will not feel chills, in their spine, under this circumstance? He was actually holding a well grown snake, just below its head. The straining snake was trying to fight back and stuck out its forked tongue, which accidentally touched the wrist of the operator.

That broke his nerve. He let out an incoherent shout, started shivering head to foot and finally stood paralysed. The fear response made him to tighten his grip and sweat profusely.

The other personnel rushed near the ladder and did not comprehend the situation, though the man stuck in the ladder was gesticulating to direct their attention to the snake. After a few moments they all understood what the commotion was about.

Someone brought an empty drum and climbed on to it and emptied a can of a chlorinated solvent, available nearby. The solvent stung the stinger with such an effect, the snake simply became limp and stopped wagging its tongue.

It had an anaesthetising effect as it was directly poured over the eyes, on the head and in to the partially open mouth. The two meter long cobra’s last thought, before fainting, might have been - oh my GOD what a sting!

The rest of “Operation over kill” was neatly executed, after a snake specialist identified the snake as King Cobra. He also ventured to reason out why that snake had come this far, to die.

Due to the rains, its homestead must have been inundated. While shifting to a dry location it might have met a similarly displaced field rat and decided to finish the dinner then and there.

With the yet to be digested rat, it might have entered the factory premise and sought a warm and dry place for a night’s stay. When the operating personnel were taking their dinner, the snake climbed up the ladder and coiled itself on the vertical bar.It must have sneaked just before the power failure! The heavy meal and the warmth must have given it a false sense of security and drowsiness.

Next day, an exhibition of the dead snake was organised and among others the MD had been cordially invited to inaugurate the exhibition. Being an astute person, he understood their message.

Now, if you happen to revisit the factory, you will surely get the feeling of entering a well maintained medieval fortress – illumination, ventilation etc; etc;

Thanks to the Cobra, we have a better work environment :)

The Onion strikes back !

The bulb makes you to lachrymate, in all seasons, for various reasons. Dressing it up for cooking or bringing it up from the market – you cry.

Conditioned taste buds demand seasoning of food with onions, as otherwise the taste is ‘woody’. To satisfy these taste buds, someone has to peel, snip the tuft on top and hive off the dried roots on the rounded bottom of the onion bulb.

The onion bulb comes in many shapes and may have a single or multiple bulb lets. It is a class apart – asexual in vegetative propagation, ardhanareeswar in veggies kingdom.

That is why; it does not show a gender bias. It has to be brought to the market in well ventilated, jute suits.

If not handled carefully, onions go bad and you have a hell of a task on hand in segregating them from the ones that might go bad! At this point it is the trader who cries.

Take heart! The onion’s wrath is not selective, as neither chef nor farmer is spared. The former cries on a bumper crop or over an inundated field, at harvest time. The latter, chopping it for dressing or cooking.

The process of cutting onions for use is done with a surgeon’s precision and a knife as sharp as his scalpel. Too shallow, the malady survives and too deep the patient suffers – therefore you got to be careful with your dear onions.

After conveniently positioning it on the cutting board, the vivisection starts – parting and chopping. All the while, the onion is not taking it lying down – it rebels.

Lachrymal and nasal glands are sympathetically excited to produce tears and a running nose – as if to mark its demise.

This twin attack might remind you of a soldier facing gun shots from two different directions. They rest not before extracting their obituaries, in instalments!

Finally, it is time for you to wreak your revenge – by boiling or deep frying the chopped onions, a fitting and tearful farewell.

The ordeals undergone & obituaries to be written are electives. The first choice falls on the home maker or on the willing assistants.

In the worst case, there is no option given here, the owner of the craving taste buds gets the mantle – to peel, snip, cut and chop with or without crying & sneezing!

The onion is a contended species, willing to spare the limelight space with heavy weight s like gold and feather weights like tomato.

Media and agitated parliamentarians discuss the onion crisis – stagnation, shortage and soaring commodity prices.

Though tomato might get to share the limelight with onion – the onion has the last laugh. It is the only vegetable that is capable of making you cry while buying as well as just before use in the kitchen! Telemarketers will not help.

 If allowed to go unchecked, this crisis has the potential to vote-out an incumbent government or at least to manage and find space in election manifesto.

It does not even spare men, who work away from their houses, depending on hotel-wallahs for food. These men shed more tears for onions, than while chopping them in the kitchen.

Onion containing dishes cost more or the men are advised to bring the needed onions, by themselves – a “you -bring-I-cook” syndrome.

The pity is that nobody has come up with a dried and ready to use onion powder like the 2-minute noodles. Are our botanists, not contemplating to genetically modify the onions?

They can solve two problems:
Avoid the tearful ceremonies in the kitchens. Make the shoots to grow drooping towards the ground or parallel to the ground. This may bring down the artificial & seasonal fluctuations in onion’s price.

A Nobel thought:  Only the biologists can help to wipe off the onion tears. Genetically modify it - to yield crop in 100 days, to survive even under submerged conditions with out going bad, to make it grow in all types of soils and if possible to remove the tear causing chemical substance from the onions.

Even if this mega GE project achieves only a partial success, at least the tear part would be removed from the eyes of the users!

The onion has immortalized itself in life and death - many dishes like French fired onions, French onion soup, Indian raita, onion vada, onion dosa etc;

In addition it has a great but a simple philosophy to teach.

Keep on peeling the layered skin; you are left with nothing (regional languages have such flavoured sayings).
 
If you cause suffering to some one, you will either be boiled or fried.
 
If you let your taste buds rule, you will end up crying and sneezing.
 
Governments are elected basis onion prices. (Isn’t this true for Delhi elections?)

Tears or no tears, tear into the succulent onion – my fellow brave hearts!

Mongrel in the hall.

The students suffer, if a dry subject is handled by an unimaginative lecturer. A witty lecture will thaw out even a frozen subject.

Further complication arises, when one of the unimaginative lecturers himself had authored the prescribed text-book also.

This episode occurred decades ago .The hapless victims were Muser and a class of thirty five students. The driest & frozen subjects were handled by unimaginative lecturers.

The lecture hall had a stadium like seating arrangement ensuring the back benchers with a balcony view. Attendance was mandatory and that preempted the students from doing a vanishing act.

Forced to sit through the drone, the class endured the punishment – many enjoyed even that, counting the minutes and developing the art of doodling!

A nearby burial ground paved way to the joke - that they could experience the ‘life after death’, then & there. 

The harried class held a snap poll and voted the Physics lecturer as the “Atacama Man” They cursed him for having authored the prescribed text-book and pitied the proof reader – probably a research scholar availing the lecturer’s favors?

Force, Friction, Heat, Light, Sound, Magnetism - the indexed chapters gave them a fright. However hard they tried, they could not stay focused with the lecture or the lecturer.

That bred ennui and some of the “go-lucky” students decided to enliven the proceedings. On a particular day, they got together during break and seriously discussed the strategy. It was truly amazing to the rest of the students that these fellow students could come up with so many ideas for a single act of playing a prank.

They chose the first lecture on Sound as the D-day. They entered the hall and occupied their seats well in advance. Later it came out through the Lab Attendant that these pranksters had brought a jute bag in to the hall.

The “Atacama Man” started the lecture on sound propagation and went head long into corpuscular & wave theories. The focused wish of the students must have made him to go to the black board to elaborate on the theories, as they were waiting for such a signal to stage their act.

One of them, noiselessly, untied the jute bag and set that on the floor at a distance. Students in the nearby desks saw a dizzy puppy – a mongrel looking like a Dachshund with a Bull dog’s face lazily opening its eyes to take in the surroundings.

It might have been woozy due to a heavy breakfast (a treat) or a mild sedation in the glass of milk it slurped before being packed in the jute bag.

The sound of a dry lecture might have aided it to get proper bearings and started to slowly amble down the amphitheater.

Unaware of these happenings, the lecturer was straining himself to lead the students, who were listening and unaware of the puppy’s presence, to understand the characteristics of sound.

Getting enough of it, the puppy decided to take further matters in its hand. Playing the gallery to the hilt, the mongrel misjudged the steps, stumbled, regained balance and continued its’ journey towards the podium.

The swagger of the puppy evoked a mixed response. Some of the dogo-phobic students lifted their feet off the ground. Others reacted by tightly sealing their lips to avoid giggles/laughter from escaping. The pranksters maintained their cherubic faces in masked innocence.

It was like watching a Laurel-Hardy act, in pin drop silence. The mongrel, coolly, approached the podium and squatted right in front (at that moment the back) of the lecturer.

Gathering its vocal cords, the mongrel started to whimper, yap, whine and yelp in that order. Probably it was communicating its’ disagreement with the content of the lecture.

The mongrel’s concerto of cacophony taught the students all that the lecturer was trying to teach – pitch vibration, sympathetic vibration, frequency and modulation et al.

The lecturer was startled out of his wits (?) and rushed down from the dais. He misjudged the step, stumbled and somehow held on to his balance - to stay upright. At that very same instant, the mongrel also ambled towards the steps, as if to meet the lecturer, halfway, probably to discuss its theory on SOUND!

The whole class erupted into a thunderous roar of laughter. It took him a few seconds to understand what had happened. Livid with anger, he let loose a barrage of verbal bullets and marked the entire class as absent, threatening them with dire consequences.

Few students noticed that the lecturer also sounded like the mongrel – whimper and all.
The matter went to the Principal and he tried his best to get the names of the pranksters. None opened their mouth and all pleaded that the mongrel might have come, inside the class, on its own.

Getting nowhere, the Principal chided misbehavior and warned the mischief mongers. Mainly that sermon was delivered to placate the agitated lecturer, who happened to be an influential and senior faculty.

The Lab Attendant cashed in on the opportunity to avail small comforts at frequent intervals. The pranksters had no choice but to part with their pocket money, by rotation.

University exam time - the class held its collective breath and waited, at the office of “Atacama Man”, HOD of Physics to collect the Hall Tickets. The college had that practice of issuing the hall tickets through the offices of the most teased lecturer.

Students were milling around, mornings and evenings. “Atacama Man” ignored them and went about his works.

The meek students (read studious students) started murmuring and separated from the main body. One of them suggested that they alone could meet the lecturer and request him not to keep them on tenterhooks, at that time when the next step in a student’s life might begin.

Taking help of other lecturers of the department, they somehow managed a grudging audience, a verbal cleansing and the Hall tickets. The fate of the other students was hanging in the balance.

The principal finally intervened and called the rest of them for a few harsh words. Initially he insisted that they come with one of the parent or a guardian. Relenting later on, slapped a hefty fine for indiscipline and disbursed the Hall tickets.

Those who had undergone the agony of wait heaved a sigh of relief. Little did they know that the “Atacama Man” had the last laugh – the question paper had been set by him.

They got the shock of their life when they started reading it in the examination hall. As if to rub salt in their wounds, each question carried sub-questions covering all the chapters in the syllabus. Pranksters and topic-skippers were swept under tsunami waves of confusion and consternation.

A question mark hung over them all - “how many of us would be reappearing for that examination?” 

@ ATM

The gentleman (or) gentlemen who fashioned the ATM must have been infatuated with the weighing machine (WM). One would not have ignored the presence of WM, as a passerby or as a user – in malls, bus terminus and of course in the platforms of railway stations.

I do not remember to have seen one in Airports as I am not a frequent air traveler. May be you have seen one. ATM's are everywhere.

These two machines have something in common. Blinking lights, whirring wheels, mouths to receive and deliver.

WM remains mute throughout the transaction where as the ATM toggles between mute and un-mute state.  WM delivers a stiff card board ticket; the ATM is content to issue a printed slip.

Both have this disturbing trend .WM stuns you with your weight (which you don’t want to look at) & a prediction (which you have to take with a pinch of salt).

On your lucky day it may even shower you with coins & prediction cards till stocks last! It makes one wonder whether the machine is trying to renounce all its worldly possessions to embrace sanyas. I hear what you are thinking – why the WM has been provided with only two slots.

Being a computer age gadget, the ATM is more sophisticated – to approach one; you must have a credit/debit card as like “entry on invitation only” fashion. It demands and gets a queue system to approach and state your business like Royalty giving an audience.

No such frills are attached to the good old WM. If you feel like it, you simply stand on its foot and it delivers. The only written instruction it displays is “insert coin when the wheel stops rotating”. Simple is it not!

The colored wheel and blinking lights is the only attractive feature. So to say a common man is left to fend for himself.

All said and done, the ATM is a class apart. It is housed in air-conditioned cubicle, has 24X7 security and can transact your business in more than one language.

It could live an ascetic life or share the space with fellow ATM's if the cubicle is spacious. Unlike the WM, it is periodically fed with stacks of currency notes and disburses eligible amount or a bonanza when in a benevolent mood.

Being highly educated, the ATM follows a routine to test your maneuvering skills. Like “Pavlov’s dog", it trains you to respond to a command displayed on the screen. The blinking lights instruct you to insert your card.

You do it with a shaking finger. From the options displayed, you nervously “touch” or “enter” the required information, beginning from PIN to short of your birthday and martial status!

Now, it is for the climax, in the form of a display in the monitor. It could be the first base “your transaction is being processed” Or it could be “unable to process your transaction” Easily one could imagine the state of your mind!

If you are lucky collect your cash and the slip. If unlucky then all you can do is to collect the slip sticking out like a papyrus tongue. You hear the whirring noise, from the digestive systems, in both the cases, increasing your heart beat, while you are eagerly looking at its other mouth – the delivery counter.

At the end, the machine finally breaks its silence. Speaks, as if taking pity on you, – “Thank you for using me”, leaving you speechless.

In an angry mood, some versions of ATM's gobble up your credit/debit card just to teach you a lesson. Those who have had to obtain a duplicate/another card would give anything to forget that ordeal.

Fleeting thoughts cross your mind extolling the simplicity of the WM. It takes a coin and delivers a printed ticket or simply returns the coin. You are not a loser.

It whirs and whines and this does not upset you the least except your weight (you have lost the fight there) and a free prediction on the back of the ticket. The best deal you get out of this transaction is absolute transparency!

Pray, some bright guy comes with a friendlier ATM.

Neyveli Ramani & the Ghost.

When NN left the hostel room, Neyveli Ramani joined as the Muser’s roommate. Ramani was assigned to the electrical department and requested Muser to take him in as roommate. Though there were two rooms available, what made Mr. Ramanai to select muser’s room remained a mystery for some time.

After a week, the mystery got solved itself, when Ramani told that he came to know about muser through NN and others. Probably he thought that they had common interests-Astronomy, Astrology and other occult sciences. On hearing these things, muser felt he had been done in by NN, as none other than him knew about these diverse interests.

Neyveli Ramani was a pious man. Every day after his morning bath, he would come to the room, wrapped in a wet loin cloth. He would proceed to lit agharbathi sticks and propitiate to an array of gods & goddesses. In the evenings, he would participate in any revelry; the hostelites might come up with, provided it seemed decent.

After dinner, the roommates (Ramani & the muser) got together to discuss Astronomical (Nebulae, globular stars, optical doubles, comets and host of other celestial bodies including planets of solar system), Astronautical (Moon landings, mars missions, Pioneer & voyager missions and Skylab) events.
Then the focus would shift to the basis of Astrology and links to Planetary movements on a individual’s life (horoscopy).

Days were spent on perfecting telepathy. He told muser that this juicy tidbit was gathered from NN (again that man had done in the muser). These sessions prolonged well into wee hours after midnight, till one of them cried a halt. They would walk like zombies the next morning, yet Ramani never failed to propitiate his gods & goddesses before venturing out.

Together they reached a certain level from where they could easily identify objects, shapes, colors even menu of items for lunch or dinner, how would a particular hostel mate dress on a given day etc. This led them to keep a score book, wherein they marked their hits and misses.

Word slowly got around the campus and our friends came to test our skills. Emboldened by our 50 to 60% success rate we planned to elevate to a higher plane.

They carried on a lengthy discussion on the ability of a yogi to leave and re-enter his physical body at will. Known stories were recollected. It was concluded, that without proper guidance these serious ventures should not be under taken. Soidisant’s were not experts. Lights were switched off and we embarked on a travel to the lands of snooze.

A high pitched cry rented the air and muser was startled and frozen in his stance. Muser hurriedly switched on the lights. He saw Ramani shivering & whimpering with morbid fear.

Ramani looked very pale as if he had seen a ghost. Muser comforted him with a glass of water. When he regained his composure, muser asked him why he was so frightened?

The answer stunned Muser. Ramani saw a shadow like apparition detaching from muser’s bed and walking towards the cupboard near the bed. He got frightened at that sight and concluded that the muser had made his soul to leave his physical body on the bed.

The mere thought of Muser’s soul not able to re-enter his physical body, left him helpless. He began to think about what he could do and how he would handle such a situation made him cry in extreme fear.

It took muser some time to convince him that the apparition he saw was nothing but the physical self of his room mate, reaching the cupboard for some sweets (Nellai Avudaiappan)

Muser chided Ramani for not having gathered that vital tidbit from Nellai Avudaiappan. Ramani looked sheepish and grinned in relief.

Anna in the mess!

The Chemical Company, where Muser worked, was situated in a hilly terrain (a la Kerala). Chlor-alkali and Aluminum metal producing factories along with a hydro electric power plant were also functioning in nearby vicinity. It was a small industrial town with meager dining facilities (older version of present day Dhabas) .The exception was Velu’s hotel. The fare was tasty; the family was sympathetic to us ‘the bachelors’. For most of us it was a home away from home. One had to walk nearly 2 kilometers and trek back to dine at Velu’s. This was the only inconvenience. During summer, going for lunch was like a trip to hell.

Considering our plight, the management decided and constructed a mess hall with a furnished kitchen. This was handed over to a committee elected from among the hostel inmates. A general body meeting was called to lay down laws and bylaws. It was decided that the fare would be unlimited and on sharing basis. A hostel inmate leaving on long-off would be permitted to avail the facility as guest (separate rates are applicable) but should intimate the MMC the day before the long-off starts.

The MMC (Mess Management Committee) selected two cooks and one canteen boy and started the services on an auspicious day. 

Here a mention has to be made about our special character – Mr.Sundararajan. He was well built but with a touch of obesity. A folded kerchief, inserted between the nape of his neck and shirt collar was his “trade mark” way of dressing. Off duty hours he liked to wear a dhoti and disliked lunghi’s, preferred by the other hostelites. The difference in dressing and his conduct made the others to bond with Sundararajan, as their elder brother. Then he came to be known popularly as Anna.

He was a trencherman and did justice to the menu placed in front of him. His ravenous hunger and doing appropriate justice became a concern to the MMC. It was a case of someone eating but others paying a percentage of the bill!

Sundararajan somehow struck a sympathetic cord (his face was tailor made to evoke these emotions in anyone’s heart) with the cooks and canteen boy. Like a well oiled machine Mr.Sundararajan was enjoying the feast and began to put on additional weight. His modus operandi was to arrive late for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, so that none of us would be around.

All good things has to come to an. That day arrived for Anna, in the trio form (Muser, Avudaiappan and Ananth). The trio had just completed double shift duty and from a distance, saw the canteen boy asking something and Sundararajan gesticulating by hand signal. He had placed his thumb and index finger of the left hand, parallel to each other about 2 ½ to 3 inches apart.

After about five minutes in came a plate of oil-less plain dosas, stacked to a height of 3 inches. This was a revelation to us. Bush telegraph started to work over time and in no time all the hostel inmates came to know the cause for inflated monthly bills. What was happening was that, the cooks and canteen boy were also feeding themselves sumptuously, throughout the day.

The trio put up a placard at the entrance of the hostel block – “Sundararaja Anna in the mess; we are also in the same!”

This agitation led to another convened meeting of the MMC. It was unanimously decided to sack the cooking staff and close down the mess.  The tasty fare and the sympathetic family of Velu’s once again became the favorite eatery, for us. All in all, it resulted in a healthy turn of events, as Anna started to look like himself (before the advent of MMC), maybe owing to the walk or the limited fare at Velu’s :).

Nellai Avudaiappan

The Muser started his career in a Chemical Company and shared a hall accommodation with Md.Mehrudeen, Avudaiappan and Ananth. Actually, the shared accommodation was allotted to a shift foreman, who kept the only-room to himself allowed us to share the hall. We mentally demarcated the space equally and stowed our meager possessions, such as a suitcase and bedding.

The Company was running 3 X 8 hour shifts. This is how it worked; a person starting in 0600 to 1400 hr shift does so for six days continuously and gets off (holiday) on the seventh day of the week. This off could fall on any one of the days of the week, depending on when the shift started/ended. The coming week the employee comes in the night shift (2200 to 0600 hr) for the next six days.

This transition of shifts was eagerly awaited by all the shift goers – it gave them about 56 hrs of free time called long-off (this is different from the fielding setting in cricket).

We traveled overnight to reach our houses, so as to enjoy 30 to 40 hours of good food, not to mention the company of friends back at home.

Amongst the four of us, only Avudaiappan had to travel a little longer to reach Thirunelveli. The other three used to eagerly await his return, after the long-off. There lay the plot for this narration.

Having lost her husband, Avudaiappan’s mother showered little more affection on him-being the youngest. She used pack about 3 kg of sweets, consisting of Nellai special “halwa” and other homemade varieties. Probably Avudaiappan had told his mother about the three more eager mouths which would be watering in anticipation. She used pack the sweets in a dried palmyrah–leaf basket and send her son off.

Muser craved for sweets, like Tom Sawyer “he did not ask for more”, probably feeling shy, yet the bud-teasing taste of sweets worked stronger than his will power. Not able to keep his urge in check, at the stroke of midnight, he searched for the sweet basket, opened the lid of the basket as humanly gently possible. He took out three slabs of sweet and then proceeded to relish them one by one. His taste buds as well as heart were already soaring. When he was into the third piece, the hall light turned on suddenly. His three friends, probably woken up by the gentlest of sound made when the basket was opened, stood looking at him in wonder. Then they burst in to a hearty laugh and did not stop till their eyes started watering.

Muser stood before them, caught red handed and shamed. For days together the three friends used to gang up to tease the muser and laughed to their hearts content. They nick named the muser as “Sweet Owl” and “Night Raider”. Avudaiappan chose to call the muser as “the Sweet Rat”. Gentleman that he was, he started to bring in a special packet for muser every time he went home for long-off!

Years later, whenever the Muser visited ‘the old Company’ for material-inspection, he always met up with Avudaiappan and his wife. On one such occasion, Avudaiappan fondly recollected the Sweet Rat incident. His wife appeared perplexed (as she was not aware of this incident) when both me & Avudaiappan laughed it out.

I send, you spend !

My daughter-in-law and I exchange banter through e-mail or SMS on any given issue. Saying ‘hello’ to ‘how is work progressing’ is not simply done for the sake of it. We lace it with wit, language (foreign & Indian) and teasers. The messages, replied and re-replied, the short exchanges also continue in the same vein, until one of us run out of patience (or) time. We have even coined a word to describe this mode of communication - “cluster bombing”.

One day she dropped a bombshell, the message in my inbox was short- “Sending 100K, spend it if you can!”. It was an electrifying message. I reply her mails, within 2 to 3 minutes, but I thought she was up to some funny prank and was still making up my mind, as to 'What to reply".

Lo and behold! After 30 minutes, In came another mail, to my Inbox, exhorting me “Have any plan? Raking your brown matter? Hibernating? “

On the 33rd minute, the megaton explosive arrived- “Moola transferred to your account, lazy man go out & spend it”.

To tease & bait me she had added - java is the password, (read as alter failed word).

By the way  “Java” is our conversation code (entry code that I have to use before I am allowed to enter her apartment, more like ‘Open Sesame :) ”), which ensured that I had a steaming cup of “caufee” to enjoy.

My grey cells started to race to come up with a plan, at least to end this charade !. I was wondering why the hell she chose me to play this Tom and Jerry game. To make sure that I was not being taken for a ride, I checked the calendar – it was not 1st of April.

At this juncture, my cell phone started beeping and I instinctively knew that it was the daughter-in-law communicating by SMS -when needing quick response she always used this technique. Yup she knows how to get a reply !

Fearing cluster bombing, I responded “Finalized, do you have a hk(hand kerchief), wipe your tears, he he”. She responded “Buy 1 hk 4 me, courier it b4 u buy hee  hee”

We i.e. my wife, daughter and I assembled in our dining hall to discuss this serious issue of spending 100k.They were surprised to know that I, a shoe-string budget-er, was ready to go on a shopping spree. Hush! I had not yet told them about the “moola” (This started off as a discussion for a fictional spend).

My wife magnanimously proposed a IdeaPod costing about 50K for my exclusive use (to avoid interference with her live webcasts). Sensing the danger I vetoed it as a wasteful expenditure.

My daughter wanted to furnish our new flat with modern furniture with a guesstimate of 70k and a blackberry (or) gooseberry smart phone for her use. The size of different kinds of furniture, she had in mind is too big for the flat as well did not fit in my plan (no more mobile phones), for spending the money usefully. The wife & I voted out the proposal.

Being tight fisted, I was not willing to spend the money and at the same time wanted to put it to good use. I enthusiastically declared that it will be a good idea to buy gold ornaments for 100k.
Now it was the turn of the mother and daughter duo to draw blood. In unison they declared that enough ornaments were already with them and there was no need to invest in gold.

This statement made one man unhappy and another very happy. Are you wondering about the identity of the unhappy and happy men?
I am the unhappy man, on two counts, because such vital stock-holding had been kept a secret as the other day the duo ganged up  to urge me into buying so called fashion jewellery for the daughter! The happy man, of course, would be none other than the Finance Minister of this country, battling CAD crisis due to oil & Gold imports.

The family conference slowly denigrated in to verbal nuances, slicing of words and hot tempers. The net result – the conference collapsed and the participants walked out with out finding ways and means of spending 100k.

The conference reconvened after lunch break. Probably, the hearty & tasty meal (Madame is an excellent cook - please don’t tell her that I told so) softened our belligerence
A single point agenda was taken up and unanimously passed – “let us send back the money with out spending it”

Fearing a barrage of “cluster mails” from my daughter-in-law, I left this task to my wife and daughter. May God give them the strength to read, reply and pacify the challenger.