A boy and his hair are not easily parted

What is it about haircuts that make young boys cringe? Is it the clickety-clack of the scissors or the lighting or the smell of cigarettes or the chairs?

I for one, remember this being a traumatic exercise as a a kid. Our father was one of those who had to have the shears out on the dot every month. All excuses - have a cold, have a fever etc - were to no avail. The lead up to the event had an almost-funereal air to it. It meant a ride in the good old Premier Padmini to the salon as soon as the sun was out, in order to beat the queue at the destination. In silence. This was one of those places on Lloyds Road ably manned by a crew of 3. I remember vaguely, admittedly, the scent of talcum powder, the sound of the hair blower, the old weathered fans and the rustling of old magazines and newspapers. Much like a visit to the dentist, one had to wait for their turn at the 'chair', while watching other victims go through the routine.

The walls had photographs of famous personalities posing with the chief barber. Thengai Srinivasan's photograph comes to mind. The other memory is one of a corner area in the barber shop which used to have a bed sheet draped over a make-shift curtain rod, serving as a curtain. Took me a visit or two to figure out that this mysterious corner was where they stored all the brooms, cleaning materials etc. Not where they put little boys refusing to get their hair cut.

When it used to be yours truly's turn, Appa's instructions to the head-barber were the same every time. 'Off with the hair!' Summer-cut style was in vogue year-round for the male of the species in our household. While the first few cuts with the scissors were akin to Gavaskar, the skillful artisan, negotiating an opening spell at a Lords test during a wet English summer, the rest of the strokes were brutal, if one were to ask a teary-eyed five year old for a post-innings report. Samson of why-did-you-do-this-to-me-O-Delilah fame would have empathized surely!

A silent prayer of 'please God don't make me go back there ever again' was not an atypical neurological response.

Fast forward, thirty five or so summers and things seem to have changed, but not by much, in nature's scheme of things. Accounting for evolution as an explanation for the evermore-confident five year old these days, the general inputs and outputs of the hair cut process remain the same. When it is time for Aneesh's hair cut, its coaxing and cajoling by the chaperon during the ride that saves the day, while the five year old in this case, rides kicking and screaming in the back seat of the automobile.

There is a look of Generation Z defiance as he takes the last few steps into the barber shop.

When it is time to get him to sit in the hot seat, bull-fighting seems like a stroll in the park. The peice-de-resistance is when the locks over the forehead go. Much like an Ali vs Frazier rope-a-dope affair, it is Aneesh vs the barber as the poor barber is forced to make those quick adjustments as he gets his feedback at the speed of light. Or whatever light that there is in the dimly-lit salon. Each round usually tends to end in a guffaw as if the barber is expending all the tension building up in his muscles during the fight. And when it is time to call the fight, the usual response from Aneesh tends to be a primal scream, followed by, 'I'm not leaving until you put the hair back !'

An expert opinion of 'it will grow back as soon as you wash your hair' from the accompanying parent usually does the trick as one tries to get the minor away from the scene of the crime and head back home.
Once at home and after a shower, the mirror is the next port of call as Aneesh starts his analysis of how much the hair has grown back.

Once he realizes quickly that society has lied to him about the mechanics and typical growth rate of human hair, his response is 'I'm never going back there again!'

-- Srivatsan Krishnan 

Road Trip

We took an impromptu trip to Melukote yesterday.

Melukote is about 3.5 hours away, near Mandya, not far from Mysore. The roads were pretty good as one got into the interiors, better than what Yours Truly is used to in Bangalore or Madras. The weather was really awesome, about the right temperature with the sun as if jousting with the clouds for viewing the sights below. 

It was a perfect day for someone to catch a few new sights for sure!!

Got to see some real villages, not the 'halli' type one sees around Bangalore these days. As the car motored its way up and down the winding hilly roads with quite a bit of green all around, Ananya had her usual quota of questions. This time the one question that stayed in my mind was,

'Appa are the Buffaloes that we saw really small elephants without trunks?'

The drive reminded one about some of the sights we saw last summer in Kerala and less touristy to boot! Glad to see that these places seem to have access to a school, even the little hamlets along the road. Not much traffic other than a few motor bikes and buses chugging along with the odd bullock cart thrown in.

We finally reached Melukote, a town steeped in traditions and culture based on history and mythology.  We parked the car at the bottom of the steps leading up to the hilltop temple.  Off we went climbing and once we reached the top, the views from the Narasimhar temple on the hill were awesome.

One never ceases to wonder about what kind of vision and people it took to build such magnificent edifices up so high in those days! Aneesh had his thought-for-the-day while we were up here.This time it was

 'Appa, how did the goats get up the hill into the temple?'

On the way back, we saw the temple Pushkarini - Kalyani - which was a very pretty sight. The pond was in the middle of a quadrangle, the sides of which were corridors with very artistically crafted pillars. Mandapams.  Not so welcoming amongst all of the old world charm around was the sight of a few tourist buses serving food to people, which explained the heaps of garbage one got to see.

We then reached the main 'attraction' in Melukote, the Vishnu temple, which seems to have quite a bit of history and mythology associated with it.

As we entered the temple, we were greeted with music.  It reminded one of a typical South Indian wedding. Turned out to be a birthday! Folks were celebrating Sri Ramanujar's Birthday. The temple itself, if one took the time to look around, was filled with figurines and artifacts with workmanship that were clearly indicative of the passion and the attention to detail paid by those many, many anonymous artisans.

There were a few pillars the visuals of which linger on in one's mind. They seemed to have what looked like balconies made of fine string around them! If one could close their eyes for a second, imagine a base of Vanaras holding up the pillar, a 2nd layer with the afore-mentioned balconies, a 3rd layer of more human-like figures and a 4th layer of Lord Vishnu. Throw in a few artistic, imaginative flowery designs that boggled the mind. You get the idea! Quite incredible considering this was the type of view available to anyone interested, in any number of permutations and combinations, from all 4 sides of these pillars! Of course, there were many that seemed to have felt the effects of father time or the brutal hands of people who shouldn't have had any business being there to begin with.

Then it was decision time being around 1.30 pm and all... To eat or not to eat. To not, was the final decision.

Our 'Sarathy' then suggested that SravanaBelagola was only 30 kms away and was worth a visit. The verdict was reached pretty quickly and off we left on a jaunt to see one of the largest statues carved out of a single piece of rock. The roads this time seemed even more remote with nary a sight of other visitors or other travelers. The greenery was a sight to behold, especially for someone coming from the concrete jungles of Bangalore. Imagine a bit of the English country side with coconut palms thrown in and there you have it! After all we were near lands watered by the Cauvery.

As we neared the town, we could see the head of the statue of Gomateswara from afar, as though lording over all the nearby hills and villages. Once inside the town, we saw a magnificent temple pond in the middle of the town. Soon off we were climbing up the steps. About 600 of them this time as Ananya announced at the end of the climb.  Once on top we were, yet again, greeted by fantastic views!

The entrance to what seemed like a small fort on top, had shrines to the Jain Thirthankaras. In line with the fact that Hindu kings seemed to have had quite an influence on this place, there were also many Hindu gods and goddesses. We also saw quite a few inscriptions some of which appeared to be in Tamil.

The ambience reminded me about the Jain temples of Girnar in Gujarat although I remember those as being more elaborate and on a larger scale. And that one had many, many more steps to climb too!

But the main agenda item was Gomateshwara. One could see his head jutting above the walls. A phenomenal piece of work!  Soon it was time to clamber down the steps and bid adieu to a place that was in the vicinity of what is said to have been Chandragupta Maurya's final resting place.

Our first visual of Bahubali was greeted by a plaintive sounding Aneesh asking the question 'Amma why is this Omachi shame shame?'. I don’t recall any of us answering his question. Kids have a way of not mincing words for sure.

While we may have had more questions than answers, overall a mighty fine way to spend an early summer's day.

'Close(d)' Encounters of the Worst Kind

Most of us have our horror stories when it comes to service-related complaints. Here's one of ours.

It was December 2011, a couple of weeks before our vacation.

The handle of our refrigerator was starting to come off.
In spite of all the horror stories and cries of 'Don't bother it can't be done!' we had heard from other friends about the quality of service, optimism was in the air as we searched for the refrigerator company's service desk number and found it.

We made the call.

The call was answered by a young voice that seemed to have answers to questions that we weren't even asking! After a slew of questions, we were told that someone would get back to us by the end of the day. End of the day did come as it does every day, but not a peep from the company as promised by our friendly service desk agent!

Next morning came the to-be-expected phone call. Not from the company, but from us.
Again, after the same rigmarole of several questions - one would have thought that this was the first time they had heard from us - came the now-standard-for-us,
'We'll have someone call you by 5 pm today'.
In spite of our plaintive cries of 'But you said the same yesterday!' the response was an automaton-like 'We'll have someone get back to you Saar!'

Third day in a row the next day, the response looked even more promising.

'We'll have someone come home this evening by 5 pm Saar! Don't worry! Our database says that the part has been ordered and will be delivered today by 12 pm.' 

We were pretty sure that technology was going to do the trick, third time around!

5 pm came and went with no sighting of neither aforementioned handle nor service engineer.
I was singing 'eppo varuvaro' in the shower.

This went on and one for several weeks interspersed with many an  increasingly desperate, 'I need to talk to your supervisor!'. Where was Krishna Paramatha when you needed him! I guess the high point of this saga was when the service desk agent gave us the name of the vendor that they had placed the order for the handle with and asked us to follow up ourselves!

Other highs included 'Saar, our vendor sold his business, we need to reorder with the new vendor' and 'Saar, we got the part but it turned out to be defective'. The straw that broke this camel's back was when the handle actually showed up, with a service engineer in tow, but turned out to be the wrong part! Guess someone else, someplace else must be blogging about their experience about a broken handle as we speak!

9 weeks later, we still have a handle that looks like Rajnikanth hanging off a cliff with his little pinkie, gravity-defying and clinging on for dear life. With a look that reeks of 'Hah! I told you so!'

Que Sera Sera!
I'm guessing that the company's service desk has marked our case as 'Closed'.

Childhood Ditties

No, this one is not about famous nursery rhymes!

I woke up this morning to the strains of a small voice singing "Copy cat, kill the rat, Sunday morning eat the rat". You know the one I'm referring to...the singsong, lilting one...

This 'innocuous' little song truly falls under the category of something that is not part of the curriculum in school or at home. I haven't been able to Google up a good explanation, yet, for the origin of this song. What makes it particularly interesting is the fact that while children learn quite a bit by imitating others, this one seems to be an Ode dead against this method of learning. Famous figures like Steve Jobs and Picasso have had many good things to say about the act of copying someone or something. After all, aren't most innovations mostly incremental? Go figure!

Another one that comes to mind is 'up the pole, down the pole, monkey choose the blackboard what color do you choose...’ as a means of making a choice. The phrase 'up the pole’, among other things, loosely translates to something along the lines of 'being in a difficult situation'. Guess the monkey bit refers to do with the young, restless mind(s) using this as an instrument for decision making. Decision making even for young uncluttered minds can definitely be a difficult proposition. How appropriate!

In any event, some of these really hit the nail on the head, while some appear to be more contradictory than they were probably meant to be by the original inventors and protagonists. Others fall into the category of 'does it really matter what it really means... Just go with it'. Never ceases to amaze me as to how many of these things live on from generation to generation through the power of word-of-mouth.
And with a little help of course these days, from my friend the digital medium...

Sadly, there are those that have gone the way of the Dodo such as 'Nila nila odi va' best visualized in the context of a 4 year old being treated to 'Nila Saapadu...' (Nila Tamil for moon, Odi Va come hither, Saapadu - mammum or food)

Curious to know if you remember any others...

How often have we seen this in the workplace or at home

I attended a course called Honest Conversations last year where the topic was primarily about what we say/don't say and what is really said is actually very different. 

This is me trying to imagine how the recipients of an email at work

could/would have interpreted it in their heads! 

Here is the situation. 

Boss-bee sends out an email note to 3 worker-bees asking for something. 

For the third time! Will the individual get what they are asking for?

Here's a list of potential responses that could be buzzing around inside the heads of the worker-bees...

A. Get it yourself - aka delegating upward.

B. I thought the others on the email were going to do it - be specific with your request.

C. I have no idea what this email is about - he's wasting my time and he should know.

D. I need to make him beg - not a priority for me. And he should know.

E. Long emails - matter of time before he exceeds his email quota and won't be able to send such long emails.

F. I want more communication from the boss - when was the last time he spoke to me without asking for something.

G. All of the above 

A little bird tells me that all of this could apply at home as well. 

Just ask people in households with 2 or more residents!

10 Reasons to Blog

Here's my list. If any of this resonates with the reader its pure coincidence and not intentional :)

0. I was trying to find something to do during down-time between games on TV.

1. Sudden Eureka moment when I was in the shower.

2. They've made it so easy, its almost a crime not to.

3. I'm playing catch up. Still don't have a Facebook account or Twitter or Google+ account yet.

4. Its the one thing that my wife doesn't do (at least not yet) and I can (at least pretend to).

5. Gives me something  to talk about during the next Madras Kutchery season at the Music Academy Cafeteria.

6. Some day this may actually count as a skill on my CV.

7. I would like to show up more often on Google searches.

8. Makes me feel like I'm doing something important at home. Beats surfing-the-web or watching TV,
when it comes to convincing myself that I've done something useful.

9. A new 'Get-out-of-jail' card if I may. If I can actually write 10 sentences together, I may be able to convince my wife to help the kids with the homework or take them out for haircuts when its really my turn to do so.

10a. Clears my conscience that my last cogent sentence was composed many, many moons ago.

10b. I wouldn't, if I could write a real book.

10c. Part of New Year resolutions list. This one is off mine :)

I sure hope this is my first&last/only 'top 10' list of any kind. As you may have observed, I definitely can't limit myself to 10. May have to make these 'top 10+ '!

A Game of Book Cricket

This occurs in the year 2011.

Aneesh came up to me in the afternoon and said, "Appa, can we play something?"

I was in the middle of reading a book. Suddenly it occurred to me that here was
a chance to share with him a simple game I had played during the monsoon season growing up in Madras.
A game of Book Cricket.

For someone like Aneesh just getting into cricket, here, I felt, was another means to enhance the enjoyment from the game.
For someone like Aneesh just beginning to read numbers, here was another learning tool.

I brought out my time machine. My new toy for the Holiday season. 

Einstein's theory that nothing travels faster than light had been proven to be wrong and time machines were the latest rage. So, I set the dial and we transported ourselves back to 1978.

I told him to go and get his book and he did so.
"Please open your book and keep the page open", I said.

He did and looked up with a look that indicated him asking me if he had gotten that instruction correct. Curious, how he seeks approval for almost everything. Non-verbally almost always. 
What is unwritten or unstated can almost always been disputed successfully during future disputes. Especially by a 4-year old. Or a WS executive feigning ignorance.

"Good! Now here are the rules", I said.

"Look at the page number on the bottom of the left hand page. If the ones place has 4, it means 4 runs to the batsman. If its 2 it means a 2, 0 means out, 8 means 1, 1 means 1..", and we spent
the next 15 minutes getting tutored on the rules of this fine game.

He was just getting started with names of cricketers. So we got started putting together
teams. India and Australia were playing a series and he knew names like 'Doni' as he called MS,
Rahul, Sachin and a couple of Australian players. To make things more real world, we added names
such as Anirudh, Ankur and a few of his other playmates from Jasmine and school.

And so, the games began. It was an hour of good clean fun. Whenever one of the sides disputed a
decision, the DRS was brought up as a means for problem resolution. The resolution process went something like this:
Was the page worn out from being dog-eared too often

Was the page worn out due to overuse, was the book shut too hard before the next ball was 'delivered'..
etc...

Appa was the 3rd umpire of course! Rank has its privileges.

The difficult one to resolve was when a '0' - out per the rules of the game - was quickly changed into an '8' by a very adroit flick of the offending page by 4 year old fingers, followed by a solemn statement of 'Not out'. Would have made someone like a WG, known for calmly putting back on bails after being bowled and continuing to bat, a very proud Doc!

Fascinating to see how kids learn to resolve issues amongst themselves, address issues with rules that don't make sense or are not favorable to stakeholders in a civilized manner.
Resorting to fisticuffs works too, as most adults will admit to!

And then came the familiar refrain.
"Appa, Im hungry".
That brought in the realization that we had to get back to reality in 2011.
So I set the dial and we transported ourselves back to 2011 just in time for some freshly made Dosais..