Siruvayadhu Sindhanaigal: Childhood Thoughts

Today I read the story "Muyal" by Badri Seshadri. It is not necessary that stories written in first person are always autobiographical, meaning they are true stories experieced by the author. But somehow, this story seems like an event happened in Badri's life. This story brought back memories of an event that took place in my life, when I was in class 4.

The dog was simply called as "vellai" meaning white. Having a pet dog was out of question in my home, so I had to be content with the fact that I can pet the dogs that grew in other people's home in the neighbourhood. Vellai grew up in the house of "Kayirkaara amma", who lived opposite to our home, separated by the main road on which the No.1 and 2 buses of vellore ply, apart from the moffusil buses. The entire family of kayirkara amma was involved in making ropes using coir. Many times i have been part of the kayir making exercise, by rotating the machine. Slowly I became very close to vellai and so did vellai to me. Then one day suddenly, the town panchayat officials decided to catch the stray dogs. If you had seen them catch dogs you would really feel very bad. I didn't know what to do and I still remember going to one of the person who seemed to be in charge almost in tears to let vellai off. I was very selfish to just ask for pardoning of vellai. Then he said that vellai doesn't have a license and he can't do anything. I asked how am i to get a license for vellai, he said that if I pay him some amount, he can give me the license that he has in his pocket. Kayirakara family wasn't the kind of family that had a pet dog with lots of care for the dog. The dog happened to grow in their home.

I went back to my home and asked amma to give me some money and let vellai get his license. Amma did give the money to me, knowing that I really liked the dog. I ran to that person and got that small tin sheet, with a number written in yellow background. Vellai, obviously not aware of all these things, was just loitering in front of their house inspite of me putting him inside so that he can evade the dog catchers. I tied it on his neck and sort of hid him in the house even though he had the license. He was saved that day, but the other dogs that were caught on that day came in my dreams for some days to come.

The year after, after I came back from a visit to Madras to my Uncle's place, I couldn't see vellai and the face of kayirkara amma was sunken. She told me that vellai was hit by the No. 1 bus that used to ply between Katpadi and Bagayam. All of a sudden a deep sense of sadness hit me. The bus that hit vellai while I was away in chennai was "Sri Krishna Bus Service".

I have had attachments to many other dogs subsequently, but never with the same amount of intensity as was with Vellai.

May be that explains why I cried uncontrollably while watching My Dog Skip.

Vadai and Doughnut

In today's episode of Engines of our ingenuity Prof. John Lienhard traces the history of Doughnut. While capturing its history, he mentions our Vadai as one of the fore runners of the modern day doughnut. It had never occured to me why there is a hole in the middle of vadai or for that matter in doughnut, but today I got a reasonable answer when he explained the origin of doughnut.

A problem with those otherwise delicious cakes was that their centers were seldom fully cooked. In 1847, Gregory punched out the center of a cake. Now all the dough lay near the cooked surface, and he got a far more uniformly cooked doughnut.

That makes lot of sense. There is also mention of poori in the episode. You can hear it here .

Thevan Kathaigal

Today I was reminded of the novels by Devan. I have read four of his

1. CID Chandru (part 1 and 2)
2. Kalyani
3. Komathiyin Kathalan
4. Thuppariyum Sambhu

I found a website that has a listing of all major works of 20th Century Tamil Authors and Their Works . Back home in Vellore we have copies of Mister Vedantham, CID Chandru and Komathiyin Kathalan. Next time when I go home I should bring back Mister Vendatham.

Thevan died very young.

I wish somebody could digitize all the literary works in Tamil. May be Badri Seshadri might be able to find somebody.

Sachin Tendulkar's humble admission

One thing that I have always admired about Sachin Tendulakar, apart from his cricket, his mature handling of his career and stardom. I grew up watching him grow. The first time I heard his name was when he hit a century on his debut in Ranji Trophy. Those were the days I followed, along with my brother, every cricket match irrespective of who played, national or international.

Yesterday after scoring the 35th century, he had this to say

"Heroes will always be heroes. Mr. Gavaskar was my hero, and he will always be my hero. Message to him is thanks for all the support he has given me. He himself has set such a benchmark that only a disciplined lifestyle can help cross it."

Check the article here.

There is an old interview of Rahul Dravid in cricinfo that is moving tribute to Sachin.

There is no stopping you Sachin. Go for 50/50.

Entrance into big city by a boy living in small town

I grew up in Vellore which is a small town. The only experience of a big city used to happen whenever we visited Madras. I had this habit of checking the milestones along the way and never slept during the entire course of approximately two and half hours of journey. After putting all of us in the bus Appa used to go out to get some fruits and the driver will be making sounds "drrr drrr drrr" with his engine and I remember how restless I used to be for the bus might leave without appa. The very same thing is experienced by my nephew Ajju. The stop along Sunguvarchathiram during these journeys were the only time we ever got drink 'cool drinks' as the regular soft drink was called by us. Amma used to call it crush.

Over the past 25 years I have seen so many things changing on this road between Vellore and Madras. One thing that has not changed, atleast to me, is the sudden entry of the bus/car into the Kathipara junction from the narrow lanes of St. Thomas Mount. In spite of Madras starting before in Porur/Poonthamalee, for me the bigness of the city and its feel always happened when the vehicle entered the Kathipara junction with that famous statue of Nehru (the opening of which was MGR's last public function). With all those huge bill boards it typified the city feel for me. The SPIC building that looked so big when I was a kid, doesn't look that big anymore to me. Then probably it was one of the few tall building in Madras.

Recently when I entered San Francisco from the south side (from San Jose) I was reminded of all these things and the milestones that I used to watch so religiously. I thought I should have a picture of this signboard and hence here it is.