Meeting the Lawyer

I had a chance to meet with Venky and family during my last visit to India, it was a memorable one as we were catching up after a long time and was more eager to meet his son whom we have not met before. After having a chit chat in his office (an immaculate and neat office lined with all the law books of the land.) I was gazing up at the floor to roof book shelf with all the books with different colors and shapes, some were looking so big as if it was meant for Venky only to read. While I and Grizly remembered the good old days in MCC, Sheela and Samson were amused by the long fish in the aquarium at the reception and were spending quite a while there. We patiently waited for him to finish his official work (he was getting repeated calls from one of his customers but Venky displayed a lot of professionalism in answering to all the questions his customer had which showed that he has mellowed down a lot.)

Then we proceeded to his Flat to meet his wife Subatra and kids Reva & Magant. We spent quite a while chatting with him and decided to visit the New City Center in Chennai. I am sure this is a great place as I could see that you get most of the branded stuff. Compared to a place like Dubai the price seems to be just double. We roamed around the mall for a while. Kids had a good time checking out the toys and dolls. It was close to 11 PM and we were quickly bundled out of the mall as they were closing down. Then we proceeded to Savera Hotel for dinner and had sumptuous meal. The kids were amused by a magician who kept the spell on them for a long time. Reva, Magant, Sheela and Samson in short had a memorable evening and the kids just enjoyed themselves and the adults too!.

………………AMOS

Flooding in Saskatoon!

Howdy all, Greetings from Toon Town!

As per Usha’s request I thought I would do a small write up on my basement flooding.
It happened after one day of incessant raining. That was all it took. We had water in the basement and the whole floor was out of commission: walls seeping with water, carpets drenched and a stink up from the drain-flow sewage.

I don’t have as dramatic a story as Usha does. But after two months of work rebuilding about two feet of our walls, laying carpets, painting walls and doors, our basement is back to normal just in time for visitors. Some of you may know this visitor. Arul’s brother who is also known as Arul to his friends is coming with his family for a one week stay and all we have to do now is dust, vacuum the carpet, rearrange furniture and restore paintings to their rightful places on the walls, etc, etc. This is all easier said than done considering I have only two more days and we are all at work full time. Good luck to me!

on the web

Some investigative journalism from Murali and me yesterday bore results! Murali located Shanker Balan's blog and I sent him a mail today to confirm if it was really him. Well, it was! And Shanker has promised that "I will visit the class blog and keep in touch". You may read more about his whereabouts in his blog.

Some updates received from Mickey today:

Rekha Nambiar's mother has said that Vinothini was in Chennai 2 months ago on a 4-day trip. She had made a presentation and is to submit papers to the Eng Dept on pursuing a PhD. Vinodini is currently in Washington DC.
Correction in yesterday's post: HoD (Eng) is now Prof. Rajagopal.

"Ms. Ajie George, M.A." is currently listed (website) in the faculty of English at Stella Maris. She had not completed her MPhil, and seems to be the only soul in the dept with just an M.A. tagged to her name (she had passed the UGC exam even before she joined for Mphil).

Website of MCC: http://www.mcc.edu.in/

Half the links don't work as usual!! [says Murali].

The Principal of MCC is Prof (Dr.) V.J. Philip of the Chemistry department.

Loyola and MCC often ranks among the best colleges in Chennai in India Today's annual surveys... RMG

Blackout!!

Last friday ,(lucky it was not friday 13..!!)
we left our home with looks of rain approaching to do grocery shopping. When we reached the store ,it was with lots of thunder, lightening and sudden downpour... got wet getting in .. inside the store could hear thunder .. on their display tv saw the storm was passing over where we were..
On the drive back home in front of us almost all traffic lights stopped working.. had a big tree fall right across the road.. managed to escape all this reached home to see there was tree across our neighbours drive way.. it was still drizzling.
No power!!!!! we had used our garage door opener to lock the home.. so stuck outside..!went around tried all our doors.. OF course I had decided to lock it tight..!After 20 -30 mins of this and groaning.. i decided to go to the back and try windows.. then got Hubby to help in breaking IN OUR OWN HOME!!!!! and got the middle child over his shoulder and into the home..she opened the door from inside.!
Then had to clean up all the slush we managed to get in..the rain which managed to come inside a bedroom window..put the grocery stuff in powerless fridge/freezer and give instuctions NO OPENING!!!!!! then worry of food spoiling, basement flooding..
Thomas had got one of those winding torches..(wish he had decided to get generator too) we opened those up.. went to basement to see water was almost to the top of the sump pump.. since it was our first power cut after putting a sump pump.. started trying to empty it.. from the corner where those fellows decided to put it in.. in the heater room.. (the dingy,darkest,smallest part of any home).
they had a small opening in the tank and cement on top of the cover.. we could not open it!
so used the small opening put the small tumbler empied buckets of cold water.. back killing hands scratched and bleeding told Bijoy to try again..to get it open ..then we used screw drivers wet the cement areas dug the cover open..
then B did by himself emptying buckets.. from 10-12.30.. told him to leave and sleep..I dozed for a while.. he woke me up to ask me to help.. then i took over completely till 4.30 emptying every 15 mins .. each emptying took 10 mins.. of hard work.. doing this work made me realise .. how others do night duty.. 1 day i could not sit up..with out feeling selfpity/pain..?
Then was thinking of all those Electric co. fellows who had to try and get our powers back going..
4.30 could not do much more went upstairs to wake Hubby up.. he was out.. thought ok.. will do myself .. but i slept off till 5.20 woke up with a start and thinking of got to do extra mopping in that place.. went there to find water was full but.. not over flowing..
managed to get 2 buckets of water out and power came on>>>>>Hipeeeeeeee..!
Got kids to come back upstairs to sleep.. (they were scared to sleep alone..so they camped in basement..) it was 6 finally when i managed to hit bed.. 8 my youngest woke up poor thing came went back ..2/3 times then said mummy i am hungry..
Morning news saw the destruction the storm/tornado left in its wake.. roofless homes.. floods.. one gets humbled seeing all that and how much God has blessed us and how lucky we were.
Now its wednesday aches and pains there.. cough has come back.. Not much more.. Thank God for everyones prayers.
This is just an adventure /experience we guys have here.. our neighbours have had flooding previous years..some of them had generators going..
Maha /Arul sir maybe you can write about your basement flooding.

take care
ust

Some prosperous MCCians

Miller in Dubai.
Prem, Venky and Arul sir, Dec 06.
Prof. Annie with daughter.
Usha and husband, with a fish that made their tummies prosperous for a day.
Rosh and daughter, waiting for masala dosas at a hotel.

p.s. The rest of you, pl. email your pics to my gmail or post them straight.

A chitchat in office

Though we work in the same building, Murali and I bump into each other very rarely, ensconced as he is in his sacred cabin in the hallowed chambers of power. Even when we do, it is just a hurried "hallo" and "see u later". So today I decided that I will make an effort, being a lean week at work, to catch up on all the news/gossip within the organisation and outside, from our MCC lives.
So I sneaked out of my dept. and had an over-one hour conversation with him in his cabin. We discussed the blog - he said he will join slowly -, our colleagues, our common friends etc. Murali is now the acting Reader's Editor, since his boss has gone on vacation.
He had a little information on some of our long-lost classmates. Shankar Balan, who has been job-hopping, is presently with a clothing chain in Bangalore. He had earlier worked with Color Plus, Hidesign, Indian Terrain and the Taj group. No idea if he found a soulmate. I had seen him ages ago, in 2000 I think, near the Gurjari showroom on Khader Nawaz Khan road. We spoke for a wee while since he was with his friends.
Shobha Paul is reportedly in Australia running a business with her husband or running her dad's seafood business with its base at Cochin. Her college twin Vinodini, according to their pal Rekha Nambiar whom Murali met in Ooty sometime back, is coming back from the US to do her PhD. M couldnt get any more info out of her, so we dunno what her marital status is. Vinodini used to call up me and Usha for a long while in the late 90s. It got a bit wierd and the less said about it, the better....
Neither of us knew anything about the whereabouts of Pichandi, Thimmarayan or Indraneel Ghosh. I had managed to e-locate Grace Stanley and exchange emails for a short while in the late 90s when she was staying in a university campus in some US state, I dont remember which. She had married one Mr. Kumaran.
I wonder what Kavita Israel is doing now, maybe Glady would know. As for Bharati, I had once (in 2003) met her at a hospital along with her husband after she returned from the Gulf - they had no children then. She looked the same.
Usha Nair is believed to be with her husband and kid(s?) in the Gulf. I think she did write a couple of mails to me in an earlier email activity among MCCians.
(My memory is getting poorer of late though I have pockets of good memory in my weary brain - which was what had helped me compile that earlier database, including names of spouses and offsprings.)
And didnt we have a classmate called Salim, who distributed laddus when Pakistan beat India at a match? I hope he has mellowed down.
Aji George, the JNU beauty who joined us for MPhil, has worked at the Eng. depts of Stella Maris and MCC. Prof. Manohar Samuel, who is an examiner for the BC-IELTS tests and a colleague of Murali's mom in that, said Aji is not teaching at Stella anymore. I last saw her at the railway station on a Diwali eve some 3 years back, with her hubby and grown-up boys. And I last glimpsed Princy sometine in 2003 standing at a bus stop in Mugappair.
And where are you, Persis Khambatta? Would Prem know? I always remember her when I pass Balfour Road...
Have I left any in this and the last classmates' review? For more updates, watch out this space....
And Rajeev, have you completed your PhD from the Singapore unvty?
For once, Murali forgot to mention applying for our Mphil certificates from the Madras University. The convocation remains one of our pending projects.
Murali promised me as a parting shot that he will take me along when he goes visiting Bhatt sir and family in Selaiyur, where they have constructed a magnificent house, very tastefully done. He said Prof. Rajgopal also had built an excellent house somewhere there.
And guess who is the Eng. HOD? Prof. Victor Fredrick.

p.s. That's during a Deepwoods cultural in college.

The day after

Onam this year turned out to be a occasion for celebration in its traditional spirit - an Onam sadya (feast) served on plantain leaves and traditional attire. (Only, this year I had trouble getting into my once-a-year Onam outfit - I AM GETTING TOO FAT)

If I look a bit dazed and sweaty in the pic, it is because I was giving instructions to the photographer, and it was very sultry... RMG

Know your objective

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director, "what is the criterion that defines a patient to be Institutionalized?

" "Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub,
we offer a Teaspoon, a teacup, and a bucket to the patient and ask the patient to empty the bathtub."

1. Would you use the spoon?
2. Would you use the teacup?
3. Would you use the bucket?

Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would choose the bucket as it is larger than the spoon.

"No," answered the Director. "A normal person would pull the drain plug."

He flunked..... .....There is a difference between an objective and actions! Unless you understand your objective, you will be wasting your time in your actions.

Always know your objective first.

My Memoirs

The life in MCC was one of my best experience that I had and will cherish it forever. Going back those memory lanes is a fabulos experience and it was wonderful that I could do it with Maha and Arul when they visited San Diego. I wish they could stay longer. I especially enjoyed my shopping spree with Maha in a nearby Mall. Trying out clothes, getting a free foot massage at brookstone, trying makeups at Victoria secret, Chowing on mexican food. Just the two of us like wild teenagers having some carefree time.... I truly enjoyed their visit with US. Kirthi took a special fondness for Arul and he still talks about him and feels he like he didnot ask more to say pry enough about how I was as a college student. He would love to dig some dirt on me and use it against me, but Arul and Maha were very supportive . Thanks both of you:) Kirthi was also very fond of Magil - Maha's son. That is all for now. This is my very first blogging and it feels GOOD:)

Gracias,
Sunita

The trigger

Until recently all of us were immersed in our own worlds, with an occasional mail or two to a friend or the other. This has had me exchanging emails for a brief while with Grace Stanley (some 8 years back, I think), Sunita, Usha Nair, Maha and Miller. Usha has been a regular fixture in my email life. :)
What triggered the blog activity was a mail from dear old Venky boy:
Hope all of you are doing the very best in life. Suddenly I thought of all of you. Nice to think of those early days of life. Things are changing but one thing I found which did not change is the level of friendship. Good and happy MCC. Three cheers to the college. ... bye Venky and Prem
(Venky feels incomplete without mentioning Prem's name).
This caused a flurry of email activity criss-crossing the continents of Asia and North America. One which I liked particularly was the missive from Mrs. Kumaran.
Hi Venki, How very nice of you to think of us! Three cheers indeed - to MCC, to us, to our successes in life, to our future and our loved ones.
And I, hoping to gain a few extra readers, gave my blog URL in a mass mail. That had Usha Sarah, a faithful reader of my daily crap, suggest that we start a blog and Amos said "Amen, so be it".

p.s. I am blogging this in a work break. I know it is lacking in something, but I hope it will give you something to read today when u drop in.
Love, Rosh

From Venky the wise

I think as a person grows older or think that he is getting older, the older moments catches them and it gets priority. For a few, the memories are good; for some they are unfortunate . I feel that we are all fortunate to carry a good nostalgia.
I feel that all of us by this time should possess some sort of a talent within ourselves. Some one within us can identify that and promote that talent of an individual or maybe the combined talent.
As of now, I feel that Roshin can lead the show. She may request each one of us to give an article to her regarding anything as per their situation in the country they are living and she can collect all of them and redesign or do whatever she feels good, so that all this talents coupled with the literary nostalgic talents will add value and in the future something else also can be thought of.

Gutter friends: by UST

As Rosh mentioned , I got married in Feb 1995, to Flying Officer (Bijoy) Thomas Varghese, who was on short-term commision in IAF. He left IAF, did some computer course and after a year of stay at Mds he got a job in USA... he came to california, and from there on a project to Detriot.
Sharon who was 3 and 1/2 yrs and I joined him 6 mths later. During our stay in mds got to catch with Rosh, Annie, Griz, Miller and their fly... got to attend 2 weddings (Annie's and Rosh).
Thanks venki for legal advice/murali's help i seeked while we had to get passports, some paper work... we moved to an apt when Bijoy got job at Ford (not direct employee) and from there to a house..!
1 year later visited India for my brother's and brother-in- laws wedding ... met with few of you then. I think that was the year Miller lost his mum... went there.
Shereen (5 yrs old) was born later and then Noel (3 yrs old)... came last to mds almost 3 yrs back.. then spoke with and met with rosh and fly, Annie, griz... spoke with venki, miller (murali's mum i think told me he was abroad)...
On coming back, Bijoy got direct employment with Ford . Right now we hope to move into another home, which is being built. Hopefully GOD willing, everything will go ok and we may try to visit Mds in Dec... or next summer july time.
Sharon is going to grade 6 from sept when school year starts, Shereen will join Kindergarten this year. Noel says he wants to go to school. Kids here start school at age 5 - straight kindergarten.. others who need kids away 'cos of their job or hectic life send them to play school,p re school, baby sitting... Am at home, so kids stay at home with me to keep me company ...
That's the long and short of my years after leaving college... and what rosh could not tell in her summary... hope to hear all the rest of your stories whenever you guys get time.
Friends like Rosh, miller, murali, rajeev, annie - now maha, suni,venki, gladi - have all kept in touch and chatted with me, mailed me on and off... I appreciate it and hope that all of you will be able to keep this up also. God bless.
Usha, bijoy, sharon, shereen and noel.

Our fortunes since '93

Prof. Vishnu Bhatt once said that most of the students who passed out of MCC did well in their careers. At that time, we however had our apprehensions about how life would treat us. But I guess it has treated us all quite fairly. A brief roundup - if there are any factual errors, pl. let me know:
Amos Miller found the love of his life while in his second year of MA. He and Grizilda had done their BA English together but it was only after she went away for a year to do her B.Ed that Miller realised her worth :0 When she came back to do her MA the next year, Miller proposed and Griz disposed. All was well since they belonged to the same community, so they happily deserted us in the gutters and found their own gutter havens for chitchat. We always wondered what they talked about. And Griz confided to us once that they talked about us! Can we call that romantic?
Anyway Miller found a job with PN Writer & Co. after his Mphil course, while Griz took up the teaching profession and they got married. They have a girl and a boy, Sheela and Samson, and they live happily ever after.
(Well, Miller now works in the UAE and his family joined him there recently.)
Sunita Gopalakrishnan became Sunita Jaykumar in 1993, when her parents decided that it was high time she tied the knot and made her stars happy. She now lives in the US with her engineer husband and 11-year-old son Kartick. She works as an HR manager with Nokia?
Usha Sarah patriotically married an IAF officer named Thomas Verghese in 1995, while she was teaching in a private college. Luckily for her, he was transferred from terrorist-infected Kashmir to Gwalior. They migrated to the US with their daughter Sharon (now 11 yrs) in 1999. Their 2nd daughter Sherin,5, and son Noel, 3, are natural-born US citizens. Usha is a stay-at-home mom while her hubby works with the Ford in Michigan.
Mahalakshmi and Prof. Arul had a whirlwind romance while we were doing our II MA, beginning with our Kodai trip. She became the Goddess Lakshmi of his life and helped achieve his ambition of studying/working in the Americas. Maha now works as a librarian at the Saskatoon Public Library in Canada. The Kumarans have a 5-yr-old son named James, also known as Magizhnan. Please read her blog and send her your comments.
Gladson has been a sports reporter for long, and went to the UK on a fellowship in the late 90s. He joined the Hindu as a sports reporter, and I used to see him occasionally then. He then found a job with the Time of India in Hyderabad, his hometown, to join his child and wife Vijaya Mary, who heads the Metro Plus desk there.
Murali is a big man in The Hindu, rising steadily up the career ladder to become an Assistant Editor. He has written some good articles, and went to the UK on a British Council-Chevening fellowship. He is yet to find the love of his life, and lives with his mother. His father passed away some time back.
Rajeevnath has been working as a teacher in Bangkok since 1995. He had earlier worked with the Indian Express. Some of us had attended his marriage a few years back in Chennai.
Prem and Venky are still inseparable like Laurel and Hardy. Prem works as a criminal lawyer in Nagercoil and his wife Babita is also a lawyer. They have two sons.
Venky practises as a lawyer in Chennai, and lives with his wife Subadra and daughter Reva (the electric car was named after her!) and son Magant.
Annie works as a lecturer in Guru Nanak college while her husband Sajan runs a business in plastics. She got married in 1999 and has a 4-year-old daughter called Riya.
Roshin works in the editorial department of Frontline. She married Vinod in 1999 and has a son named Ashwin and a daughter named Miriam alias Kripa aged 3 1/2 and 2 respectively.
This is a brief profile of the active blog/class mates. Will try to come up with a database of the rest, who have been living incommunicado.... Compiled by Rosh.

My Family

Dear All

Sam and Sheela enjoy Pizzas and a light moment with their favorite Teddy while Grizly still gives that look that knocked me down in MCC long back.......

.........Amos

What we did this weekend

I went to Dakshinachitra, a crafts village near Muttukadu near Mahabs with my family.














Usha went to her church in Detroit and cheered her kids as they sang and won prizes.

What did you all do? Send in pix if u have any.

Miller's words of wisdom: Choices in Life

EVERY moment in life, we are faced with a choice.
Which should command our preference--the demands of our job or the duties to our family?
If there is a board meeting today at the same hours that our son graduates from school, where should we go -- to the boardroom or to the graduation ceremony?
If we have to make a very important presentation tomorrow, so as to advance our career, but our wife says she has to see the doctor on a suspicion of cancer, which appointment should we keep?
These are the daily battles of conscience we have to wage, trying to keep a balance between our responsibility to earn a living and our opportunity to live a life.
And our choices invariably reveal who we really are.
Our preferences indicate our true character.
Our priorities are the best indicators of our real identity.
What profits success?
I know that many of you out there would go for career on the pretension that after all, you are doing all these for the family.
Many of you, dear readers, would rather become outstanding employees, model personnel instead of being doting fathers or loving husbands.
Many of you would opt to perform exceedingly well in the office even if you work 12 to 16 hours a day, going home only to change clothes or catch a few hours of sleep.
But what for? At the end of the day, what have you accomplished?
What profits a highly successful professional or wealthy businessman if ultimately, he loses his family, wrecks his marriage or dishonors the name he will leave to his children?
What has a rich man accomplished if he has built a fortune and founded conglomerates of highly profitable companies and yet drives his own wife to vices or infidelity, his children to drugs and delinquency and himself to spiritual decay and total burnout?
What matters most?
Look around you. The evidence is overwhelming and irreversible.
Families are shattered.
Marriages are broken.
Lives are reduced to utter emptiness.
Even as man advances in wealth and success, he deteriorates on the basic standards of joy, peace and serenity. As we all compete and struggle for power and possessions, we often neglect what really matters most. In our insatiable mania for supremacy over the rest, we often forget the most important things in life.
I will respect your choice. But as for me, my priorities are clear. Between career and family, I will always go for family.
I can forego that board meeting and earn the ire of my boss or make a bad impression on my peers. But I shall not inflict a lifetime trauma on my son by sending him alone to graduate without his dad. I can forget that business presentation and
lose a valued client or waste a career promotion, but I cannot leave my wife alone in her moments of anxiety.
Meaningless?
Why should a well-known public figure commit suicide given all his fame and fortune? Can his wealth and wisdom compensate for ruptures in his relationships?

Why should a wife of a famous politician commit adultery with the family driver? Is it lust or vain fixation for the pleasures of the flesh? Or is it the pain of being neglected and ignored by the husband she used to adore?
Why should a son cut his wrist or a daughter drink poison despite all the luxuries and pleasures they are showered with?
Can money replace love?
Can pleasure take the place of affections?
In this age of top line technology and convenience gadgets, why are humans talking to computers rather than with each other? Why are we retrenching people and replacing them with robots and machines?

Why have we lost the simple joys of nurturing relationships with bank tellers because we have replaced them with ATMs?
Why, with all our cells, e-mails, Internets, websites or the endemic texting, are we no longer communicating?
Why are family members no longer talking to each other?
The ultimate hell?
To succeed in career and fail in the family is, to me, the ultimate hell.
John Grisham, that famous author of legal fictions wrote "The Testament," which tells of a highly successful industrialist who made billions of dollars but lost his family.
In the first 10 pages of the novel, he jumped to his death from his multi-story building in front of his self-centered children. By his will, he disinherited all of them and bequeathed his entire estate to an illegitimate daughter who refused to accept it.
That is the ultimate irony; those who lusted for money lost it.
Those who were given all the money refused it.
In all his dozen masterpieces, Grisham tells us about the importance of family. "A Time to Kill" tells of a father who went to jail for killing his daughter's rapists.
Indeed, we who are simple folks should learn from the mistakes of others. We should straighten our lives and put our priorities in order.
I don't know about you.
But as for me and my house, our credo is: There is no success in a career that can make up for a failure in the family.

This came as a mass mail, and I thought, why not put it here? Quite unlike the usual spam mails - Ed.

Two record-holders meet

Sunita and Mahalakshmi had a reunion in San Diego, US, some time back. Sunita had championed the Madras meet but reliable reports told me that she was On The Missing List once she landed in India.
Sunita holds the record of being the first in our MA class to get married, while Maha holds the record of the first MA student to marry a prof from the same department. :)

A mini-Reunion

A few pictures from the reunion in December 2006 at Tambaram's poshest hotel! The classmates who made it to the dinner party were Maha (and her husband Prof. Arul Kumaran), Miller and Grizilda, and Annie - and their children - and Prem and Venky who didnt bring their families.
A pensive poet-turned-advocate, Venky, eyes his food. Grizilda seems to be saying that it can't make him anymore fatter.
Catching up on the news... Prem and Annie.
Mrs. Beautiful Smile. The changes from the old times are a Canadian accent and straightened hair.

Nostalgia

Welcome to the blog world of The Class of 1991-93 at Madras Christian College, Tambaram. We were a fun-loving batch who found as much pleasure in yakking in the gutters as in attending our classes in Selaiyur Hall.
When I say gutters, they mean rainwater drains, not the yukky gutters. There were no sewage flowing, but only dried leaves and twigs and occasionally some creepy-crawlies.
As for classes in Selaiyur Hall, it wasnt all that easy concentrating in the 3-walled classrooms - and just 2 pillars where the fourth wall was to be - with hall guys passing by and the aroma of food cooking in the mess kitchen. But we survived, and came out in passable, not flying, colours. Anyway, life has treated us all kindly and I believe we are all doing well in our vocations.
Long live MCC.