I am getting old....

Life is long. Hopefully...

Sometimes minutes feel like months and months feel like minutes...

When you feel minutes are like months then you are living your life.....

When you feel months are like minutes then you are living some life.....

It is time to accept I am getting old.

Officially I turn 26 today . Now birthday is a nice time to give all the offers . Along with all the official wishes and umpteen wishes from the 500+ friends in Orkut , I got an offer from my share broker and umpteen other sites .If you want to test , search in Orkut and have a Dekho.

Shhh... Iam a Cancerian and turn 26 only in June sometime , you are not supposed to share the secret with anyone.Since I was a pest who made a lot of noise and threw tantrums in chilhood , both my parents didnt want to leave me alone at home when they went to work in their file filled Kerala Govt. offices. I was enrolled early in KG so that I will write crap like this as soon as possible . I was among the youngest in my school, college and B school.Looking back on the day of the official birthday ....

These will be the typical musings that I mused about on all birthdays and since this is the day in which I am technically completing quarter century along with all you miserable and nice people in this world, think I need to make the musings special.

1. I need to intensify my efforts in growing a moustache. Tired fo people calling me "Mone.."(Child) in Kerala.It is time to convince them that I have completed quarter century in this big bad world.
   
2. I need to intensify my efforts in growing a moustache.Tired of all those people who are giving me that look like "Yeh Bacha Yahan Kya Kar Raha Hein" in official meetings.It is time to convince them that in our field bright ideas come from young minds.
3. I need to intensify my efforts in planning my finances. Money suddenly doesn't seem to be as important a motivating force as I thought in childhood. There are so many other things is life that matter more than money which make minutes feel like months.But others do not seem to understand and ask me why my bank balance is always zero.
   
4. I was not a kiddish kid and got bored of lego blocks , snake and ladder and bicycle very easily.I was not a typical teenager and didn't care much about what other teenagers cared. The trait of getting bored soon is following me throughout my life.
5. As a part of becoming really serious about life ,I have started becoming more serious and is analysing the marketing of Malayala Manorama instead of writing about intersting things like this that would have been more popular among non serious people like me who read this blog which has a name Nariyal Chutney of all the names in the world.
   
6. Last time I was in Kerala my uncle who was educated in Bangalore asked me to take less beer and he didnt believe that I am a Vodka fan. Signs of a prosperity too early in life :(.
   
7. At this stage of bachelor life and the moment in which I am completing quarter century, I think it is difficult to settle down with a single girl . Very Bad that my parents do not seem to understand and I have to fake the feeling of being the stupidest guy in earth to my prospective fathers-in-law !
8. As a special offer to all the girls on my birthday I decided that I will be neutral towards the first good looking girl who is hot and smiles at me. The first girl who smiled at me got back a neutral look and I got back a look like "what an ass?"!!
9. not worth mentioning in a public blog....
10. Everything else is censored.

Every birthday is a mute witness that testifies with time that somebody is getting old but ....

My bones are getting old by one more year and distance to death has reduced by one more year .

But Stilll....I dont want to get oldddddddd.....

Funny Media Matters in Kerala and Mallu Mallu Pyar of Manorama

Everybody knows that Kerala is 100% literate and it in turn means that most people can read . Kerala has the largest no of periodicals , magazines and newspapers in India and this keeps on increasing every year. One of the things that I enjoy is the media wars between the two leading newspapers in Kerala . Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi . You can see it from villages in Kerala to the brand equity pages of Economic Times with claims on who is delivering to and growing in Kerala.


Often I wonder what is the basic premise based on which somebody selects a paper or a magazine to read.The challenge of any media is engaging the mind of the user and making him an addict with whatever they give so that they wont defect to the opposing camp and Malayala Manorama has championed this by using the Mallu Mallu Pyar concept by glorifying and finding a Mallu link in anything that occurs in the world.They have even managed to popularise a Mallu link with Boris Becker.

Malayala Manorama has constantly positioned themselves as the "Largest read regional daily in India' which in fact gives an implication that if you are reading Malayala Manorama then you are reading something that the majority is reading , something that appeals to the emotional alter ego of people.They are silently asking us to be a part of majority through the marketing communication and is again evoking the Mallu Mallu Pyar Glorification by the recent TV advertisement of Largest read regional daily in India being in Malayalam.It does evoke some unwanted Mallu pride at least in the minds of some people I knew.Jack Trout would have been happy to give the example of Manorama in his popular positioning concept.Very few people change the paper they are addicted to and that's why I find the Positioning of Malayala Manorama very attractive from a marketing point of view.It will be very hard for Mathrubhumi or anyone to displace Manorama from this positioning unless they find something which is very innovative.

There is a funny element to this. Most people in Kerala do believe what they read in paper and they do believe that papers are giving them a true picture.But in Kerala the funny picture is that every element in society has a biased approach and filters out news in a funny way for the same incident. Sample these .

The news from Deshabhimani the mouth organ of communist party says that Priests attacked Police and see the photo below.


The news from Malayala Manorama says that Police attacked the priests and see the photo below.

Pictures : Courtesy Jo


This single news article would have tilted the opinions of many people on what actually happened and that is the power of media.

Now sample these.I was once standing at the office of Vice Chancellor of Cochin University and few student communist leaders barged in.Apparently they were cross with a Professor and crashed a huge trophy into his bald head. Poor guy was taken to the hospital immediately by the staff while the student comrades just walked away unharmed.Nest day there was an article in Deshabhimani about how certian student leaders were peacefully chatting with a professor , how a trophy fell on his head and how the student leaders immediatley rushed his to the hospital.Personalised news where the trophy became the culprit and the actual culprit became the savior. That is the extent of customisation in Kerala Media and no longer media bats on actually what happened.


Just wondering what stand will media take if anything like Jessica Lal/ Priyadarshini Mattoo/Nitish Katara/Alister Pereira happen in Kerala .

There is an interesting twist to the media coverage that came after the launch of news channels where the distinct line between entertainment and news is being forgotten and when everything is being telecaseted live.Hopefully , at least some people after reading this wont take everything that they read in whatever paper you read for the face value.

Inspired by :
Manorama just claimed 8th rank among global news portals.

Perfect Strangers

Blogs symbolise a network of perfect strangers very well connected in the virtual world but disconnected in the real world .It is amazing when strangers become friends through blogs, but it is sad when friends become strangers through blogs.Both have happened to me since I started blogging way back in 2003.Was surprised when people who mailed me that blogging is all about honesty and openness became elusive and closed and people who were closed and elusive in real life threw their life wide open in their blogs.Got an interesting comment for one of my eariler posts and I met someone this weekend in Mumbai.

We went for the movie Perfect Strangers ( The movie was about people who meet over the internet but is plain trash other than Halle Berry) and spend one evening talking about Life , Families , Kerala , Relationships , Marriage, Work and what your blog tells about you.Thought it was going to be pretty boring like this but turned out to be more interesting .

Blogging started more as an emotional catharisis and an escape from all those nicetites in professional life which was plain boring. Just realised this weekend that when strangers become friends through blogs and talk as if they know you for ages it is simply worth blogging.

Way of the Cross

Easter was very good . At least the chicken , duck and mutton{cooked , grilled and roasted} were awesome. My mother gets very little opportunities to test her culinary skills these days as both of us are away from home and she made sure that both of us ate all the stuff that she had experimented with in last two three months . There is some marketing trick involved in naming things like 'Chicken Chettinad' , 'Kadai Chicken' , 'Chicken 65' , 'Malabar Duck Roast' and 'Lamb Softie' and whoever invented the trick is responsible for people like me becoming overweight sometime in future.

I hated lent for a long time in childhood because it meant eating only veg and going to church more often. Never got the logic of people taking lent for 40 days and we used to follow it religiously like all mallu Christian families.It seemed as complex as the logic of the equation Z=Z+1 that I learnt in the computer language called BASIC and didnt make sense to me for first two months on how 1 can be equal to 2. Silly Me Z was a variable! Every night has a dawn and I liked the easter day which culminated the end and which started with a nice mass in Church and Appam + Chicken for breakfast .

As always I was the last person to enter the flight.One good thing was that they announced my name repeatedly in Mumbai airport as a result of which I happened to meet one of my engineering pals in the same flight who was returning from Pune. Since Air deccan didnt cancel the flight in mid air I reached Kochi at around 10:30 . Midnight is anyway not a perfect time to reach your sweet home , but our dog didnt think so and he expressed his solid love and affection to me by putting paw marks all over my T shirt and licking my face and hand.I was looking forward to Holy Thursday , Good Friday and Easter and then returning back to Mumbai on Monday morning.

The trip was another way of experiencing way of the cross.

Arundathi Roy writes in God of Small Things about an experience of some guy who returned back to Kerala.

"Some days he walked along the banks of the river that smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans. Most of the fish had died. The ones that survived suffered from fin-rot and had broken out in boils. Other days he walked down the road. Past the new, freshly baked, iced, Gulf-money houses built by nurses, masons, wire-benders and bank clerks, who worked hard and unhappily in faraway places. Past the resentful older houses tinged green with envy, cowering in their private driveways among their private rubber trees. Each a tottering fiefdom with an epic of its own."

Every year these lines come to my mind when I go for the 'Way of the Cross'.Every year way of the cross proceeds past the new, freshly baked, iced, Gulf-money and US Dollar houses built by nurses, masons, wire-benders, software engineers and bank clerks who works hard and unhappily in faraway places.Pleaces as far as Arizona and Amman.I walk along with their happy parents who are happy about the money that is being send home .In a normal 'Way of the Cross' nuns pray from a jeep with the loud speaker.

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women,and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

People like me are supposed to reply

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners(special stress on this as Holy Mary is supposed to process a lengthy application for huge sinners and frauds like me) now, and at the hour of death. Amen.

I was thinking about Arundathi Roy and her book and suddenly heard two aunties behind me discussing.

Auntie 1: Hail Mary, Full of Grace............In between to Auntie 2:Did you see that fatso? He is married to Susanna's cousins daughter. He is a drunkard and beats her everyday......... of thy womb, Jesus
Auntie 2: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners(staring strongly at fatso ).. ........In between to Auntie 1: I see , no wonder Susanna is so sad............ now, and at the hour of death. Amen.
Auntie 2: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.. ........In between to Auntie 1: See Avarachan , He is displaying his gold chain. Lot of money with him these days since his son is in US............ now, and at the hour of death. Amen.
Auntie 2: Holy Mary, Mother of God,..........In between to Auntie 1:But still he is so stingy.His dhoti looks so old...of thy womb, Jesus

It went on and on and the two scheming ladies bitched about everyone. Pretty entertaining to hear but I sympathised with Christ who died for sinners like them and me.

After sometime the 'Way of the Cross' reached the church and our Parish Priest introduced the priest who was supposed to make the speech." Fr. XX is a scholarwho completed his postgraduation in US and higher studies in Rome. He is one of the noted critics of Malayalam literature. We are fortunate to have him make his speech for us today."

Glacing at the priest , I could understand that he was going to kill us with a long boring speech on why youngsters like me should learn from the crucification of the Christ but contrary to my expectations , the speech started

"Brothers and Sisters.Every year Good friday.....................................
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The deforestration has contributed to the increase of temperature in the atmosphere. When are the icebergs in Antartica going to melt?.People should try to plant more trees and do less sins. .................................................................
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Global Warming is a menacing issue these days.People should concentrate more on convincing the government about the role India should play in Global Warming and Kyoto Protocol
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In case any of you are interested in my speech . Please buy my recent book. It is on Global Warming , Deforestration etc....

It was so embarassing and I think this was the actual Way of the Cross ladies bitching about people and a priest trying to promote his book :(.