Being Varghese

'War geese' sounds as close to quack-quack as 'war horse' does to a brave compliment. That quackish word dear friends, is one of the many colorful ways in which the butt-end of my name gets pronounced. Achtung!: This is an egopost. Please exit now if allergic.

And I'm not alone :). Varghese/ Verghese/ Vergis/ Vargis including its close siblings Varkey/ Verkey/ and Geevarghese are very popular christian names in malluland.


Free Mallu-gyan: We Keralites have an interesting mutation in our genes that makes us migrate to the gulf ('gelf') and the US of A ('stayits'). Those who get the lazier strands (like me) end up somewhere in between (the distance from malluland being inversely proportional to the laziness of that particular gene). So, mathematically, those with the laziest variety of that gene remain in Gods own Country ('goads own cundree') where the national passion is to wake up every election term and switch the ruling govt. from the Left to Right or vice-versa and then go back to zzz.. 

Well, the point I was trying to make is that thanks to that gene, Vargheses could be found scattered across the planet. See?
Two authors have recently tried to protagonize Varghese. Sidin Vadukut through Dork and Mathew Vincent Menachery through Arrack in the Afternoon. I've read both of 'em curious to know how they twisted their Vargheses. Both are funny and don't claim to be literary masterpieces or anything. One thing they both did manage to portray was a mysterious attraction that their protagonist Vargheses had to the spirits in the bottle.


More Free Mallu-gyan:  Rotund mallus vie for the 'highest consumption of alcohol in india' spot and usually win against the state of Punjab with all those burly warriors!
(Dude: On the rocks?
Strange-Mallu: Yes, Coke please.
Dude: 'You're a mallu and you don't drink!!! Stupefying, petrifying, terrifying!')

As any normal netizen would; I typed in varghese and hit the search button. Earlier it used to tell me 'did you mean vargas' or something like that which gave it an Italian twist, but nowadays it points to a blog post by another Varghese who ("Not Italian" he says and definitely nothing to do with the Borghese family. Sigh!) places V's origins closer to 'geese', quack-quack - Turkey to be precise. It seems folks there have/ have had Geewargis as their names. Hmm... but that sounds american to me: "gee! war-geese!". Anyways; if you dig further down the roots, you'll apparently find a George down there! Excavate a bit more? you'd find Greek! - γεωργος = 'Georgos' which means earth-worker (aka- farmer). Dig any further and I suspect you'll reach the molten core.


Enlightenment! So George, Geese, Turkey, Varghese, Geewargis, Greeks, farmers and the molten core are all connected! That noted and having killed your otherwise productive time, this is Varghese signing off. Light headed.


PS: Unlike what the search engine would like you to believe, 'Mallu' NOT = sleaze. 'Mallu' = native of a land where Malayalam is the language spoken... atleast that's what it used to be when Apple was just a fruit and gay was happy!

Blast from the past

(File under: Non-tech) Last year about this time, I went back to my old high school- St. Thomas Residential. While I was walking from the junior section to the senior section, I found this drum set lying in a heap by the corner - junked.


I was shocked and excited at the same time, since I had quite a few memories associated with it and so would a few of my batch-mates from santhome. Perhaps I should have done more, but the only thing that drew upon my mind then was to take a snap. Thank God, I at least did that!

Its been a decade since we left school; we were the batch of '97 Indian School Certificate Examination students. I'd joined the school in '94, as a ninth standarder. Though I am a 'native' of Kerala, till then, I'd never spent more than a few holidays here; so it was a new beginning of sorts. With the new school came a new bunch of friends, some of whom are very much in touch to this day. One thing that bonded a few such friends was music. That bond and the timely encouragement from a few teachers and friends resulted in 'Excalibur' - the first ever school rock band from this part of the globe (and perhaps the only one which batches after us and teachers remembered, at least for a while, with - "oh, you're one of the Excalibur guys!"). The initial team: Jayadev (lead vocals), George (keyboard), Zach (rhythm, lead guitars/ drums), Danny (Lead Guitar), Vivek (guitars) and me (vocals). There were others too, who'd pitched in when some of us had to leave.

Today, while I was flipping through my old pics, I chanced upon this shot again. This junked piece of equipment, which I'm sure my friends would recognize, had once formed the center-piece of our meager ensemble. A day before our first live performance, George - our keyboardist (thanks for pointing this out) Reghu our designer geek, designed the logo - Excalibur, The mythical sword of king Arthur, on a round sheet of paper which we stuck to the bass drum. If I remember right, it was this very drum that first bore our emblem. We really could not afford to buy a new drum and so were happy and thankful to have at least the old school drum-set! Slightly off-tuned and somehow precariously functional, it served us well and gave us a quite few good times.

I also recall once while Zach (Guitarist, keyboardist and a drummer rolled into one) was at the drums, we were playing "Miss you in a heartbeat" (?) on stage for the school-day. He hit the cymbal at the end of a roll, the cymbal went crashing all the way down to the floor and the stick flying through the air. We went on as if nothing had happened and Zach cool-ly rose from his chair, retrieved the stick, pulled up the cymbals and continued drumming.

Those were the best days of my life :) and this picture brought back some memories. I've jotted 'em down and hope that others with whom I'd shared my space and time, too could re-live a few moments from their past.