My Song

Past slow streams and paddy plains,
A gentle breeze, the drizzling rain;
A blue-bird tries catch-up in vain,
To a soulful beat, my rocking train

…

Back ten years, my numb mind panes;
Glimpses, memories retained:
Had no money, had no pains,
No plans beyond the morrow made;

When music was the sole refrain,
And dreams my waiting soul had gained,
To love, I was not yet ordained,
Just longings that were best contained,

The sleepy city, a narrow lane,
My good 'ol car, a bunch of friends,
Driving with the rolled down panes,
Humming a tune the radio made,

In the back seat, the guitar he played,
My fingers drummed on the wheel splayed,
On a high note, our voices strained…
I still hear the tune play in my head!

…

A thousand miles about to end,
Round the last corner, the rail-road bends,
Draws up to the station, almost spent,
In my notebook, these words I pen:

If ask I could, something of life,
That’d be to make music in the sunshine,
'Cause when night falls and slumber stays,
I hope, somewhere, my song still plays.

(originally penned in 2015. Image: a pic I’d taken at railway station, Chengannur, Kerala)

Perpetual Printer

The past few weeks have been the most hectic days of my life. Today was a breather and I got a few moments to look through my backlog of pictures from my old mobile phone. Just thought it would be great to share the following two snapshots, more than a year old now, of what I'd call a perpetual printer. Location: a road transport warehouse/ booking center in Trivandrum, Kerala.





To provoke a few thought muscles:

What could have been the inspiration for setting this up?

a. An accidental giant roll of paper.
b. Cost-saving exercise.
c. Logistical ease of buying a giant roll which could last beyond the time the printer itself depreciated below its junk value.
c. Usability. The operator is perhaps not tech savvy enough to keep loading new paper.
d. All of the above.

Any thoughts?

Jan Shatabdi Trivandrum Ernakulam - the invisible emergency hammer.

Train journeys are seldom uneventful. Yesterday, Jayadev and I went on a one-day business trip to Ernakulam (Kochi) and back to Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram). This was my first trip on the Jan Shatabdi Express (the link says how these trains came about). Though conceived as a 'cleaner', faster and slightly costlier service, it is does not even come close to what would internationally be considered fast and clean. A google search also drew out this undated document lamenting its low occupancy rate (? - our train was pretty full; the doc seems to have been written in 2003)

Anyways, this train is better than the average Indian 'train' on all counts (more on that later). Though low cost carriers like Air Deccan may soon threaten its existence - there are quite a few who'd prefer to travel well grounded :) So the good things first:

1. Pretty fast with just a few stops and pretty comfy luxury bus kinda push back seats.

2. GPS / GSM (?) based station display which shows ETA at the next stop, the time we passed last waypoint etc.

And now the bad things:

1. Whoever designed the air-conditioning system, gave no thought to the noise it made! It made a constant shrill high pitched tone almost throughout the journey! Unfortunately, no one else seemed to share my sensitivity towards this sound - they seemed happily unaware of the sound that was driving me crazy.

2. Tea / coffee / snacks. Although the entire journey hardly last a quarter of a day - it does make one hungry. I was pleasantly surprised to find Nescafe coffee vending machines and microwave ovens inside the compartments (Now that sounds like a first inside indian railways). However, I was told that these had just been there for a few weeks and might take months to get functional. I sure hope railways can make it operational asap.



3. Now for the (dangerously bad) icing on the spoilt cake ;) This is something that we Indians are pretty good at - being terribly unprepared for emergencies. The pictures are self explanatory. However, for those who cannot see the writing on the image clearly, here's the text - "HAMMER FOR BREAKING THE WINDOW GLASS DURING EMERGENCY". The only problem is - there is no hammer inside the beautifully sealed enclosure (or it is of the invisible kind). A quick glance revealed that even the next compartment had a non-existent emergency hammer.


Now, I do not know for sure how much difference that hammer might make in an emergency, but I sure do hope and pray that no-one gets into such a situation!

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.

The changing face of India

(Originally published on my w2forum journal on 17th nov 2006)


I am now at a railway station Trivandrum, Kerala, India. I flipped open my laptop and was surprised to find that the place was a WiFi hotspot and I could browse the net. Now such a thing in such a place would have been unthinkable a few years back. So I took a snap from my bluetooth enabled K700 and am posting it straight off the phone and on the railway platform! I love the changing face of India :-)