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