She walks away...

I was checking out Mrinal's blog. He seems to me as a very talented chap: he plays drums, keyboards and the guitar. Plays for a band called Phenome. I downloaded one of the songs that he'd recorded, mixed and mastered for Chris Das. It is called 'she walks away'. What can I say. I was moved by the music: music that is simple yet touching; soft yet moving; short but sweet. Chris' vocals are rich. He has that strain in his voice that breathes life and pain into the music. A pain that most of would love to experience. More than his repertoire I was impressed by his feel. I don't want to insult Chris and Mrinal by comparing them to someone else; but I just cant stop myself from saying that 'she walks away' reminded me of Dave Matthews Band. Keep it going fellers. We need rock. I need rock! You may want to check out the band for which Chris is the lead vocal man.

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Water Melons, Mangoes, and early morning school

The heat in Indore is unbearable. You don't perspire too much here like in Chennai so the heat sticks within and your pee turns yellow and it burns! This time of the year back in Chittoor when I was in school; I used to get up early in the morning to attend school at 7:45 a.m. The little flower convent would function between 7:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. in the summers. That meant we had a 'breakfast' break during which we ate our packed breakfast (which was mostly uppuma, as mom preferred it; it was easier and faster to cook). And we had the whole afternoon to kill. We used to steal mangoes from the farms nearby. We used to jump the fence and walk in and pluck the mangoes and run away. We never got caught maybe because the watchmen were almost always old men and even when they did spot us, they only screamed 'I'll kill you! you offspring of the devil' or some thing to that effect, but they could only watch in disgust as a bunch of young thieves vanished right from under their noses. Funny thing was dad used to get baskets of mangoes from our farmer friends... but nothing like eating a stolen fruit, trust me!
The other thing I loved the most was swimming and eating water melons right after that. I learnt swimming in the irrigation wells. That again was a problem; if the farm owner caught us swimming in his well, he would either snatch our clothes away (we'd have left it on the edge of the well) or he'd simply turn the 'motor' on; we firmly believed that we'd be electrocuted if we were in the well with the motor on. Some farmers were generous, they had no hang ups with us swimming in their wells. A few years later I was swimming in the Chennai IIT's pool and I heard a couple of guys talking 'I can now swim in 9ft of water' to which the other said 'I can swim in 20ft, no shit!' And I realized what morons these city boys were. How does it matter if it is 10 or 100ft as long as you can swim?
It's been years since I had had a dip in a well or a pool. I haven't eaten any mangoes lately or water melons. Sad!

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Ganga jathara

Back in Chittoor (Andhra) when I was a kid, around this time of the year the week-long ganga jathara (festival) was celebrated. I don't know if they still do. But it was a colorful festival; the purpose of which was to please goddess ganga - the deity of water. They used to erect a statue of the goddess in a four-road intersection. The statue would be housed in thatched shelter. Before all this, they'd do a 'foundation stone' pooja (ceremony) some 10 days before the festival. One's not supposed to look back after the stone is laid; whoever is doing it has to walk home without turning around. Else he would incur the wrath of the goddess.
And the work would start. We used to stay very close to the festival area... and my younger brother and I used to watch how the shelter was built, and how the statue was erected. On the festival day, people would offer their prayer and dump the porridge (the goddess' fav food) in a huge container by the side of the road. The porridge is normally made of ragi, water and rice. They used to have 3 or 4 containers, and all of them would be filled by the end of the day. The porridge would be given to all the beggars, gypsies and to those who can't make ends meet.
The best part of the festival was that people would repay the goddess for her earlier blessings or favors by doing a 'vesham': in other words, people (men) used to 'paint' themselves as women (thus becoming 'her'), tigers... or just paint themselves in silver using aluminum paint. These people are called 'veshams' and they used to go around the town: the tiger vesham was popular as two or three 'tigers' used to get together and give dance performances, which were accompanied by the drum beat of the traditional temple drummers. Towards the evening on the last day of the festival all the veshams would congregate at the 'temple' (the shelter) to see off Gangamma (mother ganga) who would be submerged in a nearby pond.
Related links:
Puli vesham (tiger dance)
Chittoor the town
The Expanding Goddess in Tirupati: Gendered Experience of Gangamma's Jatara (PDF file) - By Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger

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Socio-psychological Survey of Indian IT Professionals

If you're an IT pro take the survey at http://www.sumankumar.com/survey

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