Ramana's Musings

When we were children, we came back from school quite tired as, after regular classes, we had games and sports to spend some energy on in the school premises itself.

After reaching home, and being fortified with something to eat and drink, we went out again to play with some neighbourhood children either on the streets or in someone’s compound or may even be at a local municipal play ground. I see children doing this even now as I live in a neighbourhood with one residential school and three major day schools and many play schools for tots. In the local jogger’s park that I frequent, many young children come to play with their siblings and some do come with one of their parents, mostly the mothers. Youngsters simply found ways of entertaining themselves and grew up to be solid citizens.

The one thing that I do not see happening here, nor did I see this when I was growing up or when my son and his generation of children in the family were growing up is the big deal being made of parenting and parents not spending enough time with their children playing. In fact, I do not remember my father ever playing anything with me. Apart from teaching my son to swim and ride the bicycle, I did not spend much time with him playing. I think that my generation of Indians and the followings ones have grown up to be quite healthy individuals and without major hangups about relationships except in the occasional case of broken homes.

It therefore comes as a surprise to me that attempts are being made, perhaps deliberately by some strange academics(?) to make young parents feel guilty about the normal process of parenting, with all its ups and downs and frustrations. While many other things have been floating around and I have been bemusedly reading about them, this latest one has just given me the opportunity to throw open the topic to my readers to see if my thoughts are because of my nationality or whether it is a universal phenomenon.

IT’S FREE and you get to feed another hungry animal
RSPCA – Please do it – its free!

Hi, all you animal lovers!

This is pretty simple… Please ask ten friends to each ask a further ten today!

The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily so they can meet their quota of getting FREE FOOD donated every day to abused and neglected animals. It takes less than a minute (about 15 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box ‘fund food for animals for free’. This doesn’t cost you a thing.

Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Here’s the web site! Please pass it along to people you know.

AGAIN, PLEASE TELL 10 FRIENDS!

Tags: Animal Rescue Site, RSPCA, Support for animal care

If there is one single individual who can be given credit for setting India free from the clutches of claustrophobic socialism, that is P V Narasimha Rao, who was Prime Minister of India between 1991 and 1996. The beginning of the turn around of the Indian economy was his tenure when he brought in a technocrat, our present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as our Finance Manager and let him loose.

Unfortunately, Indian politics being what it is, very few great leaders get the recognition that they deserve in the Center, if they are not from the Nehru/Gandhi family. So, it was with much joy that I read this article in the Business World by another admirer.

I take this opportunity to express my own admiration for the man and for what he achieved in that one stint as our Prime Minister. He brought India’s dynamism out from under the wraps that the Socialists had so effectively hidden for over four decades, which can only be called our lost decades.

As if I do not have enough to muse about, this news item in the Independent, got me into a very reflective mood. Without any disrespect to Dr. Hegarty, and strictly talking about my own life, I think that I should share my thoughts with my readers. I am sure that I shall get a lot of wisdom at the end of it all.

What really intrigued me about it is the use of the phrase, “mid life crisis”. I am unable to figure out if I am in the midst of a mid life crisis or a late life crisis or whatever.

For love or money, I am unable to find the answer to those questions as I am first of all unable to figure out quite what crisis that I am going through. Is it the tendency to fall asleep in the afternoons? I always thought that I deserved that piece of indulgence after so many decades of denying myself that during my corporate days. Is it the aching muscles? I thought, and my GP confirms that it is because I spend so much time blogging. Is it the falling libido? I do not know as, since my widower existence began, I have just been too busy living.

The funny part of all this musing is that all three symptoms existed for me in my early twenties when life was filled with partying all the time. Would it mean that I passed through my menopause during my twenties? Early life crisis?

I am confused. I am looking for enlightenment.

This music never fails to bring tears to my eyes as I associate with many sacrifices made by many people all over the world throughout our history.

I thank my friend Anil, a man who should know why this brings tears to my eyes as I am sure it does to him, for sending me this link.

Please turn on the speakers and listen and watch two miracles happen.

My earliest recollection of anything to do with post is the longing for letters from my mother when I was eight years old. My parents and my siblings were then in Bombay and I had been left with my paternal uncle at Madras as an experiment to see if I would be compatible with my childless uncle and aunt for them to consider adopting me. This was quite a normal practice in India those days, and in some places, still prevails. That experiment failed but this post is not about that.

I went to school in the same school where my aunt was a teacher and generally had a very pleasant time during that one academic year that I was with them. My mother would religiously write post cards addressed to me and I was the only one in my class receiving mail from anywhere and was quite a hero for that.

By the end of that period, my family moved to Madras and my parents took me into their home, and the letters stopped.

Subsequently, whenever we went to our village for holidays, we would see postmen delivering mail to our relatives in the village. They were called runners and would cover many villages in a day by running between them with a cloth bag slung over their shoulders and a spear in their hand. For those interested, some details of these runners can be had from this fascinating site.

That spear totting postman was replaced by this man who was captured carrying mail from the railway station to the local post office some years ago.

Nowadays, that postman has been replaced by vans like this:

Now, city dwellers hardly use the Postal services, as Courier organizations have captured the imagination of the urban public. It is however a vital service for the majority of Indians who live in small towns and villages and depend on the post for their communications and more importantly for those all important money orders that are sent by members of the family working in far away cities or even overseas like the Middle East.

After the first introduction to the post via post cards from my mother, I got hooked to the post again, but more glamourously this time. My elder cousin was a librarian at the United States Information Service library in Madras, and got me involved in a Pen Pal programme. I exchanged many letters with three boys of my age from the USA, and over the years, as all of us grew up and found more interesting things to do, we stopped corresponding. A few years ago, with exposure to Google and Face Book, I tried to find them with no success.

That interlude also exposed me to the unique specimen, the stamp collector. Some of my friends were stamp collectors, and I was quite popular as I could give them American stamps! The only things that I collected were, punishments and injuries and scars from sports and games.

The next stage in my exposure to the post was growing up further and exchanging mushy love letters, about which I do not wish to elaborate here.

Then came my working life when the Indian Post took a very important role in my activities. As a traveling salesman, and living away from my family, I had to depend on letters and money orders and had an Identity Card issued by the Postal Department to enable me to collect letters and money orders addressed to me Care Of Post Master in many towns. I also had to write daily reports and mail them and had to use a combination of the Indian Postal Service and the Railway Mail Service. Writing and receiving love letters continued during this period as well and for some time into my married life when, immediately after marriage, I was sent on an all India traveling assignment by my then employers and I had to leave my new bride at her maternal home for the duration.

At the end of that assignment, I got promoted into the management side and was at the receiving end of daily reports and orders from customers as well as writing a large number of letters and reports to customers and the head office. All these were through the Indian Posts and that practice continued well into my working life till faxes and telexes took over and eventually the mobile telephones and computers with emails.

For the past twenty years, I have stayed put in one place and have established a good rapport with the post office that is responsible for our area and its employees, particularly the two postmen who deliver mail to us. Their service is excellent and I have had occasions to take up their cause with truant despatch departments of magazines who tend to blame them for internal dislocations, resulting in my not receiving subscribed for magazines.

It is however sad that such a vital service oriented department, by and large very humane and efficient, finds its importance gradually eroding due to other faster means of communications. Courier companies have taken away a large chunk of their business and despite coming out with innovative new products, the department is unable to compete with the more efficient couriers who offer both collection and delivery services.

Sadly, I have met young people who have no idea of what role the Indian Post has played in the history of their country and find it quaint that we depended so much on snail mail and money orders. This is an attempt at informing them what an important part of life was the Indian Postal system for people of my and older generations.

Tags: Mail, Money Orders, Pen Pals, Post

When I wrote my post on The Butterfly I did not mention why the butterflies come into our garden. My friend and regular commentator Sandeep reminded me to make amends with his comment: “A similar looking butterfly seems to have made our garden its home. It seems to be partial to the jasmine flower, for some reason.” I shall post photographs of Sandeep’s garden soon.

We too have a few jasmine bushes which have been allowed to grow as hedges along the fence that borders our compound. The butterflies must be coming for these.  The photograph above is a close up and here are two other photographs:

Both the photographs were taken early in the morning, from the veranda where we sit to have our tea, read the newspapers etc. The top photograph shows the plants covering the North West corner of our compound and the lower one shows the jasmine flowers that have fallen on the paved ground. We have paved the garden rather than have a lawn as we keep moving potted plants around. The gaps between the stone slabs had thick grass growing which we have mowed down for the monsoon. Fresh grass will now sprout and cover the gaps with thick green colour soon.

The jasmine flower is blessed with a heady scent. When the breeze is from the right direction, the veranda and part of the living room immediately behind it get the scent and it is unbelievably enticing.

The jasmine flower is used to make garlands and the garlands are worn by many Indian women in their hair as an aid to beauty and for the perfume.

In the good old days (ahem!) we had an institution called the mujhra to which men of refinement would go in the evenings for some entertainment – the Indian equivalent of a night club! They would inevitably be welcomed inside by the Madam, with a garland tied around their wrists from long strands of jasmine stringed together.
The men would lounge around on thick mattresses on the floor, spread around the periphery of a hall and the dancers would dance in the center. The men would keep smelling the jasmine tied around their wrists in the belief that it enhanced their perception! Here is a very popular mujra scene from a famous Hindi film. You can see some of the patrons with the jasmine flowers on their wrists.

Tags: Butterflies, Gardens, Garlands, Jasmine, Mujra

As my regular readers know, I am a regular feature in our locality’s park popularly called the Kalyani Nagar Joggers’ Park, though it has been officially named after a politician. The latter name is not known to even the employees who maintain the garden.

I have recently acquired a camera and after much reading of the instruction manual, I used it to take some photographs of the park and to learn how to upload them onto my blog posts. This is the first attempt at that. The photographs were all taken sitting down on a bench on one side of the track.

The last photograph is of a Frangipani tree in bloom in the garden.

There are many more views of the park and I shall take more photographs and post later.

Tags: Frangipani, Joggers' Park, Photographs

I am not a great celebrator of anniversaries. I have no problem with others celebrating or mourning anniversaries, but it is just not my cup of tea.

When my late wife Urmeela was alive too, we did not celebrate what to most long married couples is important, the wedding anniversary. It is not that it is not important. Somehow, the two of us just were not that mushy, if that is the word for it, to celebrate. Both strongly believed that since we were celebrating our life together constantly, a special day to do so would be superfluous.

Now, I am at a different stage of anniversary. The death anniversary of my late wife. It came and went. I was aware of it, I thought about that fateful day last year when she passed away. But I did not do what I see many people do in our local newspapers – take out anniversary advertisements in the Obit columns. It was my private grief and remembrance and I did not see any need to announce it to the world, particularly when I did not put in an obit announcement when she passed away last year.

The only anniversary that mattered to her and still does to me is our son’s birthday. That too passed off just a few days ago, and I celebrated it just as I would have had his mother been around to. It was a quiet family and close friends affair and the birthday boy and all the others who were present, enjoyed the meal and the get together.

I do not celebrate my birthday, but many family members and friends call to greet me and wish me on that day. It sure feels good that so many people remember. Now, with Facebook making it known to the whole world, this year even people who do not normally greet me, sent greetings.

I hope that you enjoyed reading another post of the Friday Loose Bloggers’ Consortium when eleven of us post on the same topic chosen by one of us. Today’s topic has been chosen by Conrad.

Please do visit Ashok, Conrad, Grannymar, Magpie11, Maria, Gaelikaa, Helen, Judy, Anu and Ginger to see ten other views on the same topic. Some of these bloggers may be preoccupied with vacations, examinations, family problems and/or romance, so be a little indulgent in case they do not post or post late.

More From rummuser

• Freedom Vs Independence.
• Letters.
• I Just Hate It When …”

I am safely well past the mid way mark in my life and so can write this post with aplomb. Lady readers of my blog, I hope will be amused and are most welcome to leave any comments that they may believe to be appropriate.

My friend Sandeep and blog-friend Looney both came to mind when I saw this gem in our local newspaper. Since it was not possible to get a link to it, I have scanned it and am reproducing it here and hope that my readers will be able to read it without much trouble. If you want to see an enlarged version, please click on the image.

Another friend, Mayo, used to be a runner till he hurt his knees a while ago and is now confined to bicycling for his exercise.

My question to the three friends, and any others who run or climb mountains, why do you do it?

More From rummuser

• THANK STEREOTYPING IT’S FRIDAY!
• Why Do Men Wear Earrings?
• Ranjan’s Rakhi Sister Zainab.