Being Iyer…Part 2

As I write this, I am simultaneously flipping through some pics on a Facebook page dedicated to Iyers…called Iyer Tips, personally I love this page, haha… for each and every goddamn thing written here is true to the core, ranging from Poonal to Thayir-Chaadam and what not…!! Well.. talking about Iyer bhashai, whenever I saw those lame TV serials on Sun TV, which my mom used to follow so religiously, I became confused as I was a kid then and wondered, why the hell do these people speak that kind of Tamil, with an accentuated nasalized tone?? 

Haha… boy oh boy… who knows pure tamil anyway… everything has become so adulterated nowadays,well.. growing up in Ghaziabad was quite easy, as I passed myself for a north Indian. Having been born in Ghaziabad, My elder sister, though had to undergo the numerous regimes of a typical Iyer family, like..learning Bharatnatyam by one Shantha aunty, who lived quite far from our home, another Palakkad iyer like us, living in Ghaziabad, the day Shantha aunty’s family got shifted to New Delhi, that was the happiest day for my elder sister K.V.Meenakshi, as she is called, for she no longer had to tolerate those torturing and long bharatnatyam classes.

I was named Subramaniam at birth. Subramaniam being my Paternal Grandfather’s name, and as per Iyer custom, a grandson is named after the Grandfather, so my name became K.V.Subramaniam, that is Koduvayur Venkitaraman Subramaniam, Koduvayur being the place of the family lineage, and Venkitaraman being my father’s name, but mom decided to go against the family norms for once and rechristened me as “Abhishek” . although common, but I guess it sounded easier and less scary than Subramaniam, gaawd… at that time I hated subramaniam so much , and everyone in the family used to call me as Chuppamani…!! (ughhhh)… but the irony of the situation today is –after a lot of trials and tribulations , I decided that my facebook name would be Abhishek Subramaniam Iyer, after all, I am proud of being an iyer 

My sister used to be taunted by my mother, and as our Facebook page says: She used to taunt her when she didn’t get up early –“Naalaku nee thaan innooru aathuku poyi kashta pada porai”  !! Now I realize that one can never ever forget the essence of the place from where we came from, sometimes at the local south Indian Temple during avaniattam, I used to get embarrassed, as I don’t know how to wear a veshti properly to this day, so I really avoid avaniattam at the first place, that rebellion seed had been planted inside me since childhood, I got so suffocated by all those customs, and dos and don’ts.. everytime…!! 

Well.. this is just the beginning of the story.. a lot to share.. a lot to come….!! But bye for now… as More assignments are waiting for this Iyer…!! :D

"Simran"

22^nd January,2013

1:55 am,Jawahar Bhawan ,IIT Roorkee

“Simran”

I was working tirelessly throughout another freezing night in my hostel room at Jawahar Bhawan,and still, there was truckloads of works to be done…with a table full of scattered notes, discarded library books amounting to huge fines…some biscuit wrappers, and a drawer full of empty cigarette packs,,..to keep myself awake, I decided to go to the canteen to fill my thermos flask with tea,that thermos flask has been a gift by mom who knows how fond I am of “China’s tulsi” :D I mean “Tea” , being a day scholar throughout my 5 years of B.Arch, this was my first time in hostel,,, so obviously like every Indian mom, my mom had a list of concerns about me…

Well,after “Gupta ji’s” payment.. I started my way back to hostel with my thermos and two packets of tiger biscuits, as soon as I reached my door front, I saw a female dog, with black and white patches, shivering just outside on the plinth, I opened my door, kept the flask inside, and fed her a few biscuits, and after finishing her meal..she extended her front limb to give me a handshake… and that precise moment filled me with emotion, it may be due to over 30 hours of sleeplessness , I thought…but no.. she reminded me so much of our landlord’s German Shepherd –Tiger, I had never owned a pet in my life..but  I almost had Tiger in my custody…always…she didn’t even let me park my bicycle unless I played with her for a while after returning from school, and then after she had given birth, her health deteriorated rapidly, and she was sent back to the dog home, from where she had been bought, that saddened me to a great extent at that time.

I wondered how she got the name Simran at the first place, my friend told me that she had been in Jawahar since 2 or 3 years, “The only lady in Jawahar” as I called her…!! :D

Now she has grown fond of me within these 2 months, I came back today evening after weekend at home, and as soon as she saw me, she came running and didn’t let me go without a handshake, that’s her usual routine, unless I fed her something.

But, even when I go for my classes to the department which is very next to our hostel, she is already waiting for me,hehe… she guides me all the way till I have reached the Department, and at sometimes, she is already at the department parking when I come out after our boring lectures, and now almost all my batchmates know her…!! And recently..she acquired the name of Simran Iyer too <grunt> :P

Hahahahahaha

But anyway.. sometimes hope comes in small packages, and just caring for a pet makes u realize that you have emotions deep there, masked by the external manifestations of long, tiring faces, and God has made this world so beautiful that even the minutest of living beings might be having some emotion to them. When I go home, my 4 pets are always waiting for me to feed them cheese biscuits, or peas or “Dhaniya”, and these 4 pets being my four Albino(white) rats… :D

Mom and I tried naming them in a fancy way…like Jack and jill… and all that sorts, but finally what worked for the males was “Hari Prasad and Ram Prasad” and “Silk” and “Sheila” for the females, out of the 4, Hari Prasad is my personal favorite.. and best buddy at home…!! God… I sometimes miss them the most!! Here in Roorkee….!!

I think keeping a pet and caring for it, keeps alive the humane side of it, however funny and mundane it may sound….

But still…. They Keep you Alive…!!! And Loving…!! J

Roorkee Chapters: A Rikshaw ride..

25^th November,2012

4:49 am, Jawahar Bhawan IIT Roorkee

A Rikshaw ride..

It may seem quite weird when you have an exam day after and getting weird ideas to update your blog at this wee hour, but I have to…!! As I write this, I am surrounded by numerous discarded Legislation notes, a table full of books, newspapers, biscuit packets, my thermos flask. Etc etc.

Well…to beat the cold, and just to get an outing, I decided that buying a rajai would be a nice idea to beat the cold as well as to get some refreshment, so all set, I went out of the clumsy hostel room , and walked till civil lines , where I halted at a “Khokha” , to get a Classic Regular, as I lit the smoke,  I asked the pan-waalah as from where could I get a good rajaai… and he told be … “arey bhai, yahaan civil lines mein to aapko loot lenge…aap ek kaam karo.. pul(bridge) paar karke jaao, wahaan line se rajaai waale baithe hue hain, wahaan aapko 500-600 rs mein rajaai mil jaayegi…wahaan jaakar bata dena ki Mittal paan waale ne bheja hai to 100-150 rs discount mil jaayega…”

Well.. this is India, everyone has some alleged “reference” and we take pride in referring that reference to someone, hehe…

I thanked the rajaai waala for his generosity and took a rikshaw and told him to take me to the rajaai waala…

As the rikshaw made its way through the crowd of civil lines, I observed Roorkee  around me…!! It was just like any other mediocre town in India, yet it was a great rikshaw ride, Civil lines really changes colors during evening, though its crowded, it has its own charm, the student store, the peanut seller, the lassi shop at the corner, the horrible, disproportionate statues of Azaad and Maharana Prataab, at the corner, a Gulaabjaamun vendor sells hot gulaabjaamuns, perfect to relish in this cold weather, and then the mosque, the haphazard bookshops…Not to forget, “Maateshwari Chaat bhandaar” , which tempted me to have a feast…!!

Well.. the Old Town and the New Town of Roorkee are separated by a bridge, over the ganga canal, with mediocre ghats and not to forget, the Statues of Two Lions. Well, I reached old roorkee where the Rikshawaala dropped me.. and said “Bhaisab yahaan se pata kar lo”.

So I started making enquiries for the “Rajaai”, one by one at the shops, some said-arey seedhe jaao ,dikh jaayengi,

“Aage chauraahe se left ho jaana”

“Arey bhaisaab, yahaan kahaan aa gaye, civil lines mein milegi rajaai”

“aap ek kaam karo, aage se right lo, left mein kuch nahi hai”

Well.. numerous replies later, I found the chauraaha, being my first visit to Old Roorkee, I quite liked the idea of getting lost and roaming around, because the old town of roorkee is just like any other Old Town, overweight aunties and uncles roaming and having “chaat” at the chaat corners, stuffing “golgappe” into their big mouths, ladies in glittering sarees, as if they have just attended a wedding party, numerous girls bargaining over salwar suit prices, beedi-smoking rikshawaalas, I wish I had my camera at that time, just to capture the essence of it…!!

Well.. several enquiries and several “Galis”(lanes) later, I found what I was looking for, two grey bearded men, sitting in front of a grey colored shop with Grey rajaais…!! The shop was a stark contrast to other cheerful and bright lanes of Old Roorkee, he offered me a rajaai at a price of Rs.650, and knowing that my bargaining skills are not good, I decided to finally buy that rajaai..!! That paan waala reference did not work as the rajai waala simply refused to acknowledge any Mittal and Paan bhandaar….

Well.. rajaai packed, I waited for a Rikshaw to head for my hostel, finally I hauled my rajaai in that riksha and asked the rikshaw-waala

“Bhaiyya, maachis hai?? “

“haanji yeh lo”

The rikshawaala took out his lighter and lighted my cigarette, and the journey back to Jawahar Bhawan began.

I decided to pay a visit to old roorkee again, with my camera, but only after all these exams and submissions and whatever is over…!!

Well.. time to use the rajaai now…

Morever… numerous pages of UDPFI Guidelines… notes … LPG reforms are waiting to be read at my table.. but who cares… hehe … I will study tomorrow…Because:

“The Universal Rule of Syllabus says that no matter how much leaves or gaps you get to prepare for the exam, you always study on the day before... ek din pehle jo hota hai woh 10 din mein bhi nahi ho paata !! :D :D 3:)”

Being Iyer…

16^th September,2012

For a person who is a south Indian Keralite Iyer by birth, its quite difficult to connect back to your native land ,when you have been born and brought up in North for 25 years, unaware of all the complexities what my parents might have faced, my dad migrated from Palakkad,Kerela in the year 1971 to Kanpur, and got married in 1979 to Mrs.N.V.Thailambal,(that’s my mom,of course)… and then finally,settled in Ghaziabad in 1979, Our landlady taught mom how to cook, gave her a hindi-cized name…Geeta Raman, and also happened to be her hindi teacher.

Days passed,actually got transformed and there was a certain metamorphosis from being and Iyer to a North Indian, I was born in 1987, so… I am a north Indian in that sense…!! But since childhood, there was always a feeling of a certain longevity, an eagerness to learn more about my roots, although some of the traditional Iyer customs irritated me, still I managed to pull through well.

I became irritated at the family functions where all the “Taathas, and paatis and maamas and maamis” used to gather and we had the similar set of questions repeated again and again in every gathering…

“Onakku poonal potaacho??”  “Poonal is the sacred thread which Brahmins are supposed to wear and they are also required to do a “Sandhyamantaram” or “Sandhyavandanam” every morning and evening after wearing it. I would name it as “Poonalising” ceremony..!!so finally it happened on one fine day in 2004, and I could proudly say that now I had all the qualifications of being an Iyer. Apart from the fact that I didn’t knew how to read or write Malayalam or Tamil, Interestingly, every Palakkad Iyer is well versed in Tamil and Malayalam, being located in Kerela only geographically, there is an interesting history how Iyers acquired a major portion in Palakkad and several other parts of Kerela, and gradually their Tamil got mixed with Malayalam, and so it gave birth to a new sub-dialect of Tamil, Iyer Bhashai or Iyer Tamil or Palakkad Tamil, being basic tamil with a lot of Malayalam influence.(for which I am still mocked at by some.. :D ).

When I was unaware of all this history, I was in a constant dilemma telling people about my native place, whether I should tell them Kerela, or Ghaziabad....

To be continued...

“Kanna Mama”

Nurani Village,Palakkad,Kerela…..somewhere around 1997

I was born and brought up in north…But somewhere I am emotionally connected to my origins…Nurani…Where my parents were born and lived before settling down here..Nurani is a small sleepy village…some 200 years old with Iyers constituting the majority of the population…a mix of tamil and malayalam can be found here..The village itself has an interesting history…

And Mr.N.V.Hariharan belongs to the same village…my maternal uncle, he was in his mid-40’s at that time..but never did he lack the energy…We went there almost every year for around 15-20 days during my vacations and that was the best time I had. With the charming Mangalore-tile covered houses..their  pitched roofs and kerela monsoons….The village has a “Kovil” or a temple dedicated to lord Ayappa at the centre of it…which was thronged by devotees every morning and evening….which I was reluctant to visit ,the reason being that in hardcore traditional south indian temples men are supposed to wear “Veshti –Mund” the traditional attire of Kerela and remain bare-chested….However..it was a soothing place…with a lake(kollam) behind it …where the bathing ghats were built…

“Kannan” was my uncle’s nickname since childhood which was now shortened to “Kanna Mama” and he was known in the entire village by this name…He suffered from elephantiasis…in one foot..so he never wore any shoes or chappals and roamed in the entire village like this…My vague memories of him go back to the time when I was just 7 years old.Still unmarried ,he had refused to marry despite the persuasions of family members and lived alone…and the only love which he had was for me and my elder sister…whenever we went there…He always used to come up to the railway station to get us…with other relatives being too “busy” with their material state of affairs..well..That’s another story…

Every morning I would get up and wait for him and he took me to the nearby lake..where a vendor used to sell “aapam” which is a close derivative of a dosa..served with tomato and coconut chutney on a banana leaf….i still relish the taste and feel of it!!then he took me through the entire village clutching my hand tightly and stopping here and there just to have a conversation with the other “mamas” of Nurani…..or to stop and share some “Vettalaya-pak” (Paan)  with the others…

Then we came back and I waited till the evening for my next outing with him…I saw the village through his eyes, and despite the fact that he was alone, I never saw him unhappy….and he is always a special part of my childhood memories at Nurani…

Each house in Nurani is built in the authentic Kerala style …with houses being “Long” in profile rather than being horizontal…I loved that house …it was majestic…with the 200 year old worn out tiles and then a well in the backyard…and not to forget , the never ending coconut trees at every house…Kanna mama used to draw water from the well and sometimes just threatened me for fun-“I will throw you in that well”…

And I always targeted him for my demands ranging from toys to delicacies to sweets..and he never refused me anything, and then whenever we departed from Nurani, I cried so much ….even 15-20 days can make such an impact on a child’s mind…

Well…the departure announcement was made and we went away far from the place …from our home town to our current home town..Ghaziabad…But for days to come after we came back..my mind was still somewhere in Nurani..i missed those “aapams” for breakfast and roaming around with “Kanna mama” for days to come until my school reopened …..

Roorkee Chapters: "Impressions"

Neither external manifestations of love,,,nor the external materialistic energies…but it is the passion which we extract from our own soul is what binds our mind,body and soul together…

December 2011

I began my second reading of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the story of Esther, a fine,young woman and her ascent into depression,at the same time, I was fighting an internal battle between my hopelessness and my zeal to survive in architecture, There was a time when I used to get 3 migraine attacks a week,,, and I lived on doses of combiflam and stemetil tablets, but always I convinced myself, through my poetry, through my Hope that good times are around the corner, the silver lining on the dark clouds of gloom…!!

"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."

Sure, bad times didn’t last for long, but I realized that the gap between me and Architecture was increasing, it was alarming for me, it was a career, for which I went against everyone else’s wishes..!!one has to be brutally selfish at times, but anyway,…here I am, and it’s a pleasure to begin writing again, and washing away all those negating thoughts and all the suffocating air and aura.

March arrived with a new opportunity to work, in New Delhi…there was a certain comfort factor in my new office, in fact, which I loved, but gradually, everything began deteriorating at a rapid rate, I could not wait to get out of that empty corporate life, where I had nothing but a 14” bulging screen to my eyes.

That was when I made a revelation:

I break apart from this Dual life…

A perturbation…

I am adamant to get out…

Not sure of what gets in….

This hard shell crushing beneath….

An admonition…

I am vertical…

Propped up over there….

Enchanting verses by the midnight…

A Stupid idiot box throughout the day…

An incarceration….

Chained and Blindfolded….

I would go back if I can…

An Ambition…

One erratic ladder….

I tear apart these shackles….

A  24 year old cargo boat….

An Illusion….

I want to be complete….

And this is a

Revelation.

I was adamant, stubborn, determined to explore,,,,to exploit myself, to get beyond my shackles of blank verses and seeing the world through “my” eyes,,,,,I just wanted to be me!! And there was a long way to go…there is still a long way to go…I need to explore and extract my mind inside out. But in the end, a sudden calm superimposes you after a period of strife, and that is what happened in my case, a sudden calm , a sudden swell in energy, and a promise to sustain for long, to write, to love, to eat, to run, to realize the beauty of all the mundane things in my life.

A new life has certainly begun on a good note, all I can want is to be content with the sea of knowledge. Working hard is my job and everything has been just thrown before me just like sacred flagpoles thrown pell mell after a festival. And it is upto me, how I want to “Live” J

As Shakespeare said-

“If you can look into the seeds of time,

And tell which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me”

I can only wait and watch what Roorkee has to offer me J

Roorkee Chapters...!!

17^th August,2012, 2:26am, Roorkee

Well…feeling beautiful …a peaceful night..alone in my hostel room, and just typing pieces of verse after verse of poetry and prose.I would begin this with some of my favourite lines from Sylvia Plath’s Kindness.

“And here you come,with a cup of tea,

Wreathed in steam,the blood jet is poetry,

There is no stopping it”

It is said that you make friends by your choice, or by destiny, or by circumstances…or it just happens and you don’t realize it.

While I write this, I just came back an hour ago from one of my friend’s room, where we were having a chit chat session since 11pm…!!Balu Joseph..or simply called as Balu ..happened to be the first person whom I met at the IIT campus, well..Incidentally, I met him in SPA…when we were waiting for our interview in that hot and humid cubicles called classrooms… I heard some people talking in Malayalam,

So I grew curious ..one happens to be curious when one hears their native language, just that in my case, I call myself “Customized” J

Born and brought up in Ghaziabad, parents from Kerela…actually only geographically, where our village had tamil immigrants, so our tamil is quite influenced by the Malayalam vocabulary, so..i can understand Malayalam but cant speak it..(as Balu says.. “You don’t understand..but only pretend to understand”.

This year, IIT has been quite partial to keralites ..hehe…a total of 7 keralites..if you include me…!!

The first night, I entered IIT hostel, Jawahar bhawan, I couldn’t get the hostel room keys and had to spend the night in the shabby waiting room, It was Balu who came to my aid ,and talked to the security guard, and I had to play the part time job of a translator, because Balu found it difficult to catch up with the pure hindi which that guard spoke…!!

So…a variety of languages…variety of people…!!Thank god, man invented English..which has a universal appeal…!!

Well..well…The second Mallu “Dibin Rasool” seems to be the “soft target” (as I named him) for most of our jokes…!!Shy…and if one listens to his hindi…then one cannot believe that he was a hindi Topper in school… (I hope Dibin..you don’t kill me for that one)

So..Balu is the studious one..and Dibin is the soft target.

Enter our Gold medalist,,,Mr.Nitish Chandra Sharma from Patna…!!Lethargic…!!Lazy…Sleepy…Dumbhead….but nevertheless…good at heart…!!!

We nicknamed him “Gold” ….!!

Then the third Mallu… Mr.Sangeeth Sudarshanan Pillai….!! A Devil in Disguise…Noise personified….But mind you…he has got brains….!! Added to my agony…always making fun of me being a half-mallu…!! “The Devil wears red rims” is what he remarked on me…!!

But the devil wears a “Michigan Cap” and sometimes a veshti …!! Well..Mr.Pillai?? :P:P

Mr.Debadutta Parida…!!From Orissa….well..discplined…studious….Our very own Central Library is like a “Somras” …the immortal nectar for him…he can skip dinner in the mess,,,but  a daily trip to the central Library is a must in his routine…

Mr.Manjul Pratap Singh…!! “Manju didi” My smoking partner…!!:)Turning the empty cigarette packs into ashtrays….!!His day isn’t complete without paying homage to the CBRI canteen,,,!!And a Classic regular with a tea…!! And quite fond of Sherlock Holmes series ..glued to his laptop…!!I call him the gadget freak of Jawahar Bhawan…!!As I don’t get a word when he comes to explaining complicated and fearful sounding things about laptops and phones and data cards…!!

People say that the first friends you make at a place…stay with you forever…Perhaps I am lucky to have found that comfort factor away from my home….!!in my second home..for two years…!!

I believe that there is more to come…more 1am trips to canteen,,,,forcing Dibin and Balu to come with me…!!Or cracking jokes at Nitish every possible minute…!! J

And yes… our very own CBRI smoking trips….

For they are the ones…who are with me…in this home away from home…!!

And ashtrays of time,…and memories…!!

“And here you come..with a cup of tea,,,

Wreathed in Steam,,,the blood jet is poetry..”

You hand me some friends..some  verses…!!”