My Dad is a Super Hero !

Generic pic to make you intrested

Every little boy at least once in his life makes this statement, ‘My Daddy is my hero’ most often after the Dad carries him around the park on his shoulders or after helping him defeat the boss in a video game. I too proudly claim my Dad is a hero. He did not play mortal combat with me, he did not dress up as The Joker so that I could pretend to beat him up in my Batman mask, hell he did not even have much of time to shoulder me round the park, as he was busy winning bread to satisfy our wolfish hunger. I consider him my greatest hero for the singular fact that he sowed the seeds of rational thinking in me. He instilled the idea of science in me. He was the one who told me that rain occurs not because God cries seeing naughty kids but due to the condensation of water vapors or thunder is not the sound of Gods battling Asuras but a simple expansion of air like in a balloon popping.  He even stopped me from wondering what twinkle twinkle little star is and it is not a diamond high up in the sky or the spirit of my dead ancestors. He told me they were giant balls of gas. And then to my horror, he told me that the sun is a star.  My jaw dropped. 

Imagine that is me,  a bit darker and a lot fatter

I was too eager to share this new found knowledge with my friends back in my convent school to sound cool. But to my dismay I was made into a fool. ‘You idiot, the sun is a sun and stars are angels in the sky’ Screamed the class leader to a chorus of laughter from his minions. The third grader in me on that day while nursing the injured ego learned never to underestimate the power of stupid people for they are always full of confidence especially in large numbers.

A bit hurt and a lot more confused, I confronted my Dad. ‘You told me sun is a star but everyone else knows that the sun is a sun and stars are angels, because of you now I am an idiot in school.’ Without taking his eyes off the newspaper he told ‘Yes you are an idiot, you should not have tried to showoff ’. Well Duh! What is the point in having something if you can’t flaunt it? Dad’s hero apparition seems to simmer down a bit and I wandered off confused. Weeks went by and the Onam vacation came up; fast forward to new dresses, the sadya, swing, the enlighted roads and the pretty floats on the road and to the final attraction for every vacation is the ritualistic single day visit to Zoo & Sea. In the morning after the usual steam cake soaked in milk, we climbed abroad Dad’s green Bajaj Chetak and sped off in the general direction of the zoo. I knew after the one way road we go around the stadium to reach the zoo, but this time we took a different turn into a more dead looking compound. It read ‘Priyadarshini Planetarium’  

Priyadarshini Planetarium, Trivandrum

Disappointed I asked ‘But we are going to the Zoo no?’ Parking the Chetak Dad replied ‘No this time. It is even better; I am going to show you the sun and stars. We are going to travel to the space and see them up close’ I was flabbergasted! This is going to be way better than taunting monkeys in a cage. The planetarium is a huge complex that housed many wonders including some fun with physics, acoustic tricks, some working models and a lot of non working employees. 

Space show - Representative image

The crown jewel of this establishment is a special space travel show in which we enter a movie theater setting and the seats recline to make us face the ceiling while they project an awesome spectacle. It begins with us seated inside a rocket which visits the moon, takes off to the different planets, zooms past a comet, almost collides with an asteroid and zips past the sun. Taking a turn we travel outside the solar system to check out the other stars and when we reach there we find that the stars are nothing but very similar to our sun. It was then I understood the purpose of our visit today to this place and why I was robbed the pleasure of making faces at the monkeys. Now I know that the sun is a star. Licking the rivulets of ice-cream from my fingers while walking toward our steed, I told my Dad, I want to be an astronaut.

Natural History Museum, Trivandrum

Later that day, we skipped the sea part too from the Zoo & Sea trip and visited the natural history museum. Another trove of treasures held at Trivandrum which houses a number of stuffed animals, a huge whale bone, a considerable collection of animal skeletons and a few fossils. But the ones I liked the mos were the creepy insects and reptiles kept in stained formalin jars. A winged lizard was one of my favorite as I could relate it to a dragon. Compared to the huge museums elsewhere, this is but a little shack, but for a little boy, that was wonderland. Crunching the popcorn and walking back to our Chetak, I told my Dad, I want to be an animal scientist.

Random exhibits from the NHM,TVM

As time flew by, I neither became an astronaut nor a zoologist, but a dentist. Still something which happened in those years stayed on with me, which helped me mold a mind that possess the ability to imagine, think, question and reason. My Dad gave me the gift of rational thinking and taught me to see the wonders nature offers us and for that, he is my biggest hero.

Now as I am a rookie dad and people ask me how I am going to mange it, I smile at them and in my mind I say ‘Just like how my Dad did it’.

Pssss... All the images are borrowed from the net, feel free to cry out loud if its yours and think that I stole from you :) 

A Visitor called Death

I fear the visitor who may come,
On this day or any other
Unwelcome he is by me or my kin,
But it is at his mercy that I live by.

Uncalled he is the, foul specter of ill,
But neither a savage as he masquerades
Nor a blissful passing the monks praise
Unknown and unseen the only thing certain is his arrival.

I have glimpsed him many a nights

Shimmering beneath the flicker of shadows
I have seen him in day light too
Dancing in the midst of a crows funeral.

He is the mirage that sent chills down my spine
Yet he is the refuge that my soul craves

He is eternal and his embrace is infinite

And in that bosom that reeks of decay
The life I had flash behind my eyes
Like an unfinished dream that drifted off in my sleep.

Psss... The pic is a stolen one :)

Holy Cows, Dirty Pigs & Cattle Class People.

What do you get when you mix a slice of beef in ground pork marinated in wine and served on lent ? Secularism. That's what you get. Again what do you get when you serve beef/pork/wine alone dressed in saffron or green salad salted with copious media? Sensationalism. 

Even before George Orwell wrote Animal Farm and Linnaeus established taxonomy we have classified animals based on religion and our convenience. We then subdivided animals in a religion to desirable and undesirable ones. Desirable mean either that you desire to eat it or you desire to worship it. I know its confusing, for example The Cow; many people desire to worship it, while The Goat who incidentally is the poor man's cow, is desired by all to be eaten. Ironic isn't it? Coming to the undesirable animals, The Pig is a legendary undesirable animal to a huge population while an even larger population hogs it (pun intended).

     

                        

 

What makes an animal desirable or not? If you ponder this question multiple theories sprouts. Firstly let's assume that with a dentition suitable for tearing flesh and grinding tubers along with a digestive system that can burn both animal and plant matter we men are made to consume every other living being on this planet. So dear veggies stand still while we eat you if the occasion demands it. With that being clear, let's consider which animal is to be eaten and which to be avoided. All animals irrespective of what your holy book says is made of the same dumb amino acids folded to form peptides which in turn forms polypeptides and themselves join to form proteins. Gel in a bit of fat and and some other stuff you get the corpse of an animal. Oh don't be that grossed out. That finger licking good snack you just had was just the corpse of a chicken. Once this corpse moves down through your mouth towards the poop tube, the reverse action occurs. That is the proteins become polypeptides to peptides and back to amino acids which get absorbed by your body to build, wait for it, yes again proteins for your body. Lets for the convenience call this the protein cycle, and btw I am not making this up; I am something like a doctor, so I know stuff. So dear reader now you know that all animals you eat or you yourself if got eaten by an animal is nothing but a source of amino acid. True, you can get that from plants, but who wants to snack on a lettuce or have aviyal as touchings with vodka? 

Pork Masala

Moving on to serious stuff, Its is widespread knowledge that Muslims avoid pork, Hindus avoid cow/beef while my Christian friends enjoy both of them. My knowledge on this topic is either from Wiki pages or from personal experience, both of which are notoriously unstable, so if you find this bullshit, make sure to plaster it to a wall which gets ample sunshine, make dung cakes and let us light it when the power goes out. Hindus according to the Wiki page 'Diet in Hinduism' is supposed to follow the Jhatka/Chatka meat which is procured from an animal that has been killed by a single strike of a sword or axe to sever the head. And in Rig Veda, the meat of cattle and horses are said to be prohibited. A deeper google search also revealed that Hindu's are supposed to avoid the meat of any animal that feeds on other animals. That sounds pretty sane as the fellow's back then must have foreseen our present excessive pesticide use and chances of biomagnification. 

Beef Fry

Then I moved on to the Wiki page 'Islamic dietary laws' and I found that forbidden are meat from animals that die of themselves, blood, the meat of swine (porcine animals, pigs), and animals dedicated to other than Allah. I know my research is shallow and anecdotal at the best, but I never came across the command in either of these religion (or at least those Wiki pages) that say you need to force others to follow your diet plan or make them change theirs let alone lynch them for such an offence.

Sepoy Mutiny

Back in the school days I remember that the Sepoy Mutiny or the First War of Independence was triggered with the introduction of a rifle that used both pig and cow fat for lubrication. That war shook the nation and bloodied the nose of the mighty East India Company. Back to the future, we find ourselves in the same predicament. The politics of the plate can have a significant out come in the coming elections, and everyone wants a piece of that pie. Poll tricks is what politicians do and power is what they crave. And to crave for more is human nature and when the craving reaches threshold, we find Orwell's pigs living among us and within us. The role of media either print, visual, social or anti-social too in fanning hatred for TRP is akin to the sewage that feeds our inner porcine. What one eats must be his and his alone choice and to be offended by a sausage or a steak is you being an insult to your own religion.

A spark is all that is necessary to begin an inferno.

Pssss... If you feel hurt by this blog, share it in FB or elsewhere to show your anger; or if you agree to the blog again share it in FB or elsewhere to show your support. Kudos and thanks for reading !

Pssss +...... I am a vociferous nationalist yet I feel that the death of Akhlaq, whether it was a planned act of malice or a crime of passion must have been avoided. The taint of his blood will dull the sheen of India how much ever we digitize or polish it.  

A Tropical Holiday at the Crocodile Lagoon !

There is a Malayalam saying that goes thus ‘Muttate mullakku manamilla’ which essentially means that you can do not recognize the value of something in proximity. The same is most evident when you pack our bags, book online, pay exuberant rates to visit that exotic place you saw on some random ’10 places to visit before you hit 40’ list.  Unless you are broke! That would be me, always.  So what does a broke dude do when suffering from wanderlust? You improvise, you adapt and you sniff out that gem of a place near you but hidden in plain view. When you are in the blessed state of Kerala there is always something just around that junction or just across that street. It is how I happened on the place ‘Muthlapozyi’

 

The Crocodile Lagoon, to be stylish is a place approximately 30Km from Trivandrum city which can be approached through the Thumba-Perumathura-Varkala costal road. If you are on public transport disembark at Perumathura junction and take a walk till you see the bridge, If you are in a car or a motorbike, drive through, do not stop and do not come back, you losers will soon spoil the serenity of the place. The best way to enjoy this location is to hop on a bicycle and peddle. Once you reach the place you will truly appreciate your effort with the beauty the Lagoon offers. 

Until a few months back the only people who frequent this region were the anglers who come to try their skill at the twin land extensions into the bay that offers them a feel of deep sea fishing and the cyclists who come to chill out in the shades after their ride through the costal sun. And yes like in every other isolated patch of land in Kerala we find the usual fauna including two legged snakes, moral police and the occasional stoner. Fast forward a few months, our dear Mr CM inaugurated the Perumathura bridge which took its sweet time getting build up and suddenly everyone wants a piece of Muthlapozyi.

Many times I had been ridiculed for riding a cycle and visiting offbeat places like this, essentially in that order, but now everyone wants to know how to go there and what other tourist attractions are nearby. Well suck it morons. 

A couple day before the inauguration, few friends and me set out for a spin to Varkala and back to Trivandrum through the costal route and was lucky to enjoy the Lagoon one last time before the hordes descended there. The bridge work was still going on and we had a tough time navigating the bicycles through the unpaved gravel and the unruly workers. We spent some time in the shades there enjoying the sea breeze that brought to us the salt and stories across far and wide. The wails of a woman who lost a kid in the sea couple days back reached us; we witnessed the toils of the fisherfolk who hauled catamaran for a night’s dinner. The laughter of a kid who got the freedom to throw a handful of sand brought us joy. We remembered the times we peddled to this very spot and enjoyed it being the only ones in the vast beach. But then all good things must come to an end and now this secluded spot of beach with its swaying pine trees will provide happiness to all those who visit it.

 If you have a day to spare at Trivandrum, I suggest you go to Varkala for an awesome brunch at a shack on the cliff, enjoy a dip in the sea, rest for a while and move on to through the back roads to find the famed Velliyachakavu toddy parlor/hotel. Enjoy the duck roast if you dare the Nagasaki of spice in your plate and do have the Pearl spot, for it’s a killer. Once stuffed, take a stroll outside and if unlucky get chased by the rabid geese that inhibits there. I am not make this up, it’s all from firsthand experience.

 

Get back on the coastal road which goes through the fishing hamlets where the aroma of dried fish and the hullabaloo of a soccer game fill the air. Do take a peep in the Angengo light house and the British fort. Navigate through the traffic that would have now clogged the road and reach the Perumathura bridge. There before you lay, the Crocodile Lagoon. Make sure to stand right in the middle of the bridge above the lake and witnesses the sun extinguish himself in the distant. Go back home happy for a day well spend.

Thanks for reading.

pss..... Most of the pics are mine but few I stole from the net so if its yours feel free to tag yourself or something :)