GANJA TURTLE - THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LEGEND

Let me put an end to all this speculation about my blog name. Obviously am not going to explain this without a fair bit of story telling, so sit a while, have a drink, put on some Floyd and read this...

At school in Madurai, when we weren’t forming gangs to beat up classmates, when we weren’t following pretty girls home, when we weren’t hiding from people who wanted to beat us up, when we weren’t hanging from the footboards of town buses, when we weren’t stealing love letters from classmates' bags, when we weren’t (no, that’s not true, make that "when I wasn’t") trying to somehow crack integration/differentiation fundas and barely pass in HSC math, when we weren’t sharing beer bottles & mutton balls in dark underground bars, when we weren’t bullying weak lady teachers, when we weren’t writing English exams with letter writing sections addressed to Chelsea Clinton, when we weren’t sharing bowls of thickened goats blood after basketball practice & gym, we also QUIZZED.

In high school, along with Pervert by Social Compulsion (PSC) and another guy called Roshan, I was part of the local school quiz team & our ultimate goal was the MADURA COATS INVITATION TROPHY - not without reason - this was hosted by a local school called Vikaasa - the school with the prettiest babes in town. Besides that, this was the only trophy where they had an awesome cash prize of Rs.500 each! So me & Roshan (PSC wasn’t yet part of our quizzing gang) prepared like mad - memorizing capitals, currencies, sobriquets, books and authors, species, animals, historical dates, presidents...we coaxed our parents and teachers to let us prepare during weekends & PT period; Google was non-existent then, so we had to rely on print and print only - I started off from the end of the McMillan encyclopedia and Roshan started working from the front...thus did I learn the meaning of zymurgy and realize that Zenia is a flower (which I proudly recognized years later in the hilly slopes off Peermed). The big day came...and there we were against the strength of the Kendriya Vidyalayas and Bhavans of the world, along with a whole lot of very smart looking students as audience.

Although slightly shaky against these bastions of propriety, we cracked the prelims &  semis and moved on to the finals...against smart tie-laden personalities with funny English accents, we seemed totally outdated...but somehow after connecting Singapore to a stinking flower and pointing out the old name of Tokyo was Edo and explaining why women tennis players skirts were called Jesus Wept, we won! And how! My mom and Dad took that Rs.500 note from my hands and have kept it somewhere safe, till today - first earnings senti.

When we came back, we were local heroes...the Principal- a very distinguished man called Nandakumar (who was used to calling me into his room usually for perusing aloud whether I should be suspended or dismissed from school) this time actually praised us in the school assembly. It almost erased the blot I had earlier earned when he shouted at the same assembly in front of LKG-UKG, 1st to 12th STD students "GJ & RAJKUMAR, GROWN LIKE MULES AND YOU CANT EVEN KEEP QUIET DURING THE FLAG SONG - and boomed at me separately "WITH YOUR FATHER IN THE NAVY, THIS WAS THE LAST THING I EXPECTED!"

Sometime during the MC invitation quiz, we realized that both of us were pretty bad at Indian Music-both filmi & classical (I had brushed up-or so I thought-on Western Music by buying a whole lot of Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson tapes)...and during our various interactions with PSC, he seemed to know a bit of Indian Classical/Hindi Music. So he became part of the quizzing gang. And from thereon, there was no looking back - right from the Vikaasa Youth Festival to LOSA (Old students association) culfests, we were local studboys.

One of my favourite showdown moments was - LOSA 94 or 95, I think - As usual it was, Us vs Vikaasa-final round...Vikaasa team consisting of Mr.American accent + PY fair babe with Sanskrit sounding name + geek looking Northie - all with mini clouds of perfumes floating around their heads...us - slightly sweaty students of varying heights in tight bluechecked uniforms...a lil background check on the quizmaster had revealed the fact that he loved a particular type of round as the final round - asks you to choose a topic and then he asks for "ANY TEN" somethings related to that...so we thought that if we said American politics the only choice this guy would have would be to ask us for names of 10 American presidents - so Yours Truly had memorized the names of American Presidents - from George Washington to about Chester Arthur...so the moment came and he asked us exactly what we wanted him to ask and  phat phat phat - I shot out the names of the 1st ten and asked him if he wanted ten more...I know, a bit of arrogance...but hey, those were the days when I was made of light - if you cut me I would shine! (Na, not mine, Billy Collins' line).

Next was Vikaasa & we all know what Amaerican-accented perfume cloud floating Indian boy will choose as his topic - Wastarn Meesic! Having apparently waded through the kilos of MJ/ Aerosmith/ Beatles musikassettes at home to reach this quiz, what else would he ask? And what was he waiting for? TEN GRAMMY WINNERS?-he could reel that out in 5 secs...TEN OST ARTISTES? 7 secs...TEN AFRO-AMERICAN ARTISTES? TEN BOY BANDS? You could see that puppy like eagerness in his face..."Give me my juicy question! Give me!" his face said...and that’s when the clouds parted and a light from heaven seemed to shine down on the quizmaster and suddenly he looked even more wise, revere-able and Moses-like...like the Matrix, where everything happens in slow-mo time-slices, the quizmaster turned around in a measured masterly movement and faced the Vikaasa team – giving them the grimmest look he could muster, he said "GIVE ME THE NAMES OF 10 WESTERN CLASSICAL COMPOSERS"

The uniform next expression on the Vikaasa teams faces, in all its yummy memory can be expressed exactly in the Tamil phrase- The "Inji Thinna Korangu" look. Translation being: The look of a monkey that wanted something sugary to eat, found something and biting it, realizes that it is ginger...time stood still as they looked at each other, at us and then at the audience...

And slowly they started off “Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi.... er.... Tchaikovsy.... Andrew Lloyd Webber...Phillips?…and faltered off! And that’s when the audience got to its feet and roared their throats off (we were on home ground)! We had won again!

After schooldays, we parted – me, due to er…familial compulsions, went on to do my B.Com at a local college, PSC went to do his integrated MCA at Madurai Univ, Roshan went on to Anna Univ for his Engg...after joining college, I was looking around for a quizzing partner when I chanced upon a fat, seemingly slightly intelligent "Arunthur Dent" (he was in the top 5 in his class)...those days he used to swing to "Backstreets Back, AWRIGHT" and his home was the local lunch get-together place for us all, conveniently located next to Bhaikadai, local sherbet + vada +cigarette shop, which again was conveniently located next to Lady Doak College – our sistah institution...he wasn’t yet the heavy metal loving slim boy karate kid nerd that he now makes himself out to be;-)

With a fair application of thought, we concluded that since technically American College came under the Madurai University jurisdiction, we could join up with PSC and technically call ourselves the Univ team...This was one of the best times of my culfest life - FESTEMBER @ REC Trichy, Cascall, Harmony, PECOFES, JIPMER, IIT-M,Fisheries Institute, Kovilpatti - we went everywhere where there was even a remote possibility of a quiz being organized- in T-shirts, dirty jeans and Hawaii slippers (Arunther Dent was the decent exception). Along with this, me and PSC also got into crosswords/ JAM/ Dumb Charades/Creative Writing...our culfest to culfest existence was what made life in Madurai barely tolerable during those years...each fest had its share of local heroes and invariably we would turn out to be the wild card entry from “Madurai-Jeez, wheres that??!!?” that walked away with the prizes! (ok…maybe only some of them ;-)

Sometimes in the middle of all this we started attending open quizzes...like the Landmark quiz (we never even got into the finals), the Odyssey quiz and the LIMCA quiz-in this, we got short-listed and got to travel to Chennai for the finals-staying at a 3 star hotel for the 1st time in our lives was awesome-Arunthur Dent was jumping up and down when he saw the two TVs in the room and was so excited that he applied moisturizer to his head thinking it was shampoo. It took us approx. 2 hours to convince him that NO, HE WOULD NOT LOSE ALL HIS HAIR AND WOULD HE PLEASE CHANGE FROM A SHORT WRAPAROUND TOWEL AROUND HIS BODY INSTEAD OF POPPING OUT OF THE BATHROOM AND ASKING WEIRD QNS AFTER DOING WEIRD THINGS! (Maybe slightly exaggerated! ;-)

We managed to beat teams from Bangalore and Chennai to reach the finals and were up against the quiz-lords of the metros - IIT/IIM/MCC/BISHOP COTTON/ LOYOLA...one team (IIT?) broke away right from the beginning and raced ahead...us and Loyola, I think, were tightly tied for the 2nd place- and there was no 3rd prize...after 3 rounds of tiebreakers, we were still tied and tension ran taut in the room -it was then that a question involving Io & Ganymede happened – and try as we might, we couldn’t narrow down - all of us had totally different answers, so we decided to wild guess and alas, we went wrong! To this day, Arunther claims that he had said Jupiter, but we tend not to believe him – he’s like that only.  And thus ended yet another long tension fraught adventure. But this time in failure.

And finally......yeah…finally, coming to the point, the fallout of these open quizzes was that you needed to have a different sounding team name...like say "I, Iyer, Iyengar" or "Morons of the Nth order"...After several rounds of brainstorming, we could think of only one group of weird creatures similar to us  - the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"...while we could claim to be "TEENAGE" (without doubt) "MUTANT"(something that both our parents and the Bhaikadai gang would swear over to), "TURTLES" (it was doubted several times over whether we belonged to the human species - with a name like PSC, you can understand right?),  "NINJA" was a thing that stuck like a fish bone in the throat...try as we might, we just could not find any connection between us and NINJAs (despite…ahem...my Karate brown belt!) and unfortunately all of us were quizzers in the purist traditions - unless we found a decent connect with NINJA, we wouldn’t touch the name with a quiz-pole.

Which is when I got to thinking about typical personal characteristics of each of us - not finding anything noteworthy, my lightning fast mind moved on to college/city references... During the 60s/70s, The American College was reputed to be a hotbed of rebellion-wild western music echoing Morrison and Hendrix, anti-war movements, strong causes, passionate arguments that divided the entire college on philosophical lines - these were the stories that were passed on to us about our now watered down alma-mater...and the fuel behind these fires was allegedly blessed Ganja - legend has it that the hostel students of Dudley Hall lovingly cultivated ganja plants in their gardens and actually cured and smoked them-a lovely self sustaining model of economic viability!

This really struck a chord or rather several wild riffs in us - that otherwise unkempt, wild eyed, acid rock loving, dirty hostel students could so dedicatedly bring themselves to do something as neat& basic as ganja cultivation - ensuring that wee green saplings got adequate sunshine, water, making sure no weeds grew nearby...it really seemed so delightfully incongruous! Esp. given that people like me/ PSC etc (sons of respectable university professors) now had turned wild and wanton somewhere in our quest for truth, justice, beauty and beer...

And Voila – the TEENAGE MUTANT GANJA TURTLES were born!

2 wild quizyears later, after Arunther Dent left for his MCA, TMGT became Perverts By Social Compulsions (a name coined by PSC obviously)...but since “TMGT" was a personal brainchild, I still love that name...I can’t call myself teenage anymore (especially when the kids are calling me “Uncle”) and neither am I still a mutant species - these days am as propah as a starched shirt, dimple-tied, power-pointed, mobile wielding corporate specimen can get- a shadow of my college self - as irritatingly human as one can get.

But yes, deep inside, the GANJA TURTLE lurks!

AMEN!

UPDATE ON GMAT PREP

UPDATE ON GMAT PREP
Down with a throat infection so am downing some antibiotics everyday and falling asleep as soon as I start to prepare everyday. Somewhere deep inside, I appreciate myself for making a noble albeit useless gesture. The show must go on... even if I do fall asleep, let it not be said that I didn’t try!

WHERE AM I?
After my last KAP test (where I scored 540), I had to attend a couple of interviews at B’lore, which meant almost no prep happened for the last 1 week. Now am back clocking approx. 40 problems a day - on various subjects from Reading Comprehension to Math to Data Sufficiency. But somewhere there’s this feeling of unease - that am not focusing on where am going wrong...let me try and summarize again:

WHAT AM I DOING RIGHT?
1. Getting English-SC/ARC/CR mostly right.
2. Finishing well within time in the above sections
3. Doing well in the AWA section

WHAT I CAN DO BETTER?
1. Take more time on each SC/RC/CR problem and double check answers.
2. Create and follow structure/process for dealing with Eng section

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?
1. Not finding where am going wrong on the "Two planes/trains/ people approaching each other" problems (sorry, but to admit that am weak at time/rate/speed problems would be too much - i get some of them right ;-)
2. Quite unsure of number properties problem
3. Unable to time and finish problems-esp Math
4. Getting distracted with SMS etc during practice sessions
5. Starting practice too late after office and sleeping off in between problems (ahem it happens, re ;-)

WHAT AM I NOT DOING AT ALL?
1. Managing practice sessions within time limits - only Maths.
2. Taking stamina sessions - cracking 80 odd problems in one go
3. Checking GMAT forums for tougher problems
4. Not reviewing wrong problems seriously
5. Not identifying weak areas and working on them.

Have about 7 weeks to go before GMAT; this weekend will sit and work out a solid schedule for at least 2 hours prep and 1hour review everyday.

• Need to crack this SOB!


• Must crack 720+!


• Must go to Tuck!

20 YEARS OF BARKS AND BITES!

Although it is not World Animals Day, I wish to commemorate this otherwise boring day to the various animals that I have shared my life, love, bites, balloons and brother with...we moved into the University quarters in December 1985 and the 20th anniversary of this occasion deserves a commemorative post – here’s to all the other species who shared L4 staff quarters with us!

DAAG #1 - Lucky
We called him Lucky because our auto almost ran over him in Madurai but didn’t. Dad immediately picked him up and we took him home. My brother and Lucky grew up together-it was damn cute to see both of them-running around, curled up in bed, sharing biscuits. Although only a mongrel, Lucky grew up to be a partner in entertainment - some games that us evil boys played were to pin a hairpin on the tail and watch him go round and round.... another was to put a rubber band around his ears and confuse him- that an evil spirit was holding back his years.... Lucky was quite tolerant of all this and never bit any of us...The University quarters was ideal for him - long winding paths with trees, peacocks and every other thingamajig - it was a miracle that Lucky didnt get bitten by a scorpion or a snake during those early years - given that the area was called Nagamalai - every other stone concealed a scorpion and there were hajaar snakes all around. All of us shared and survived brawls, beatings and bones. Lucky grew old and died and is now buried under the biggest of the 5 mango trees around our house. A lot more interesting thigs happened but somehow my memory clouds over -a discussion with bro and mum should set things right.

DAAG#2 - Brownie
Not very imaginatively named but then that was Brownie for you- she had such a sleek brown coat that we couldnt have named her anything else...Brownie was another paavam mongrel brought in by my paavam younger brother. Brownie was a she and was a very loving she....Dad had this thing about discipline - every puppy that entered L4 Staff quarters was taught the importance of discipline from a very early age. And how - beatings without mercy until a tired, exhausted all pissed out Brownie finally extended a paw to SHAKE HANDS. But despite all this, Brownie was a free spirit - every now and then, she would slip her collar and roam around the quarters with us boys chasing us down on cycles and Dad on his Chetak, finally cornering her around some thorny bush...after various curses and screams, Brownie would get thoroughly beaten up and spoken to about the value of DISCIPLINE. Often at night, some of Brownie's suitors would vist her and we would spot them kissing her through the wire fence - Dad took this as seriously as he would someone trying to make out with his daughter and would carefully aim and shoot at the Roadside Romeo Gang with his airgun...not that it hurt them too much-what can 5mm soft lead pellets do against raging hormones...not that it kept them away...one of Brownies dalliances resulted in 4 pups...each one totally different!
Thus were Michael Jackson & Doberman born. It was a bit too difficult to keep up wth 3 dogs esp for a working woman like mom, considering that Dad was going to be on ship 8-9 months of the year. So after about 3 months, Dad as usual took the tough decision (and absolved us of guilt and further caretaking responsibility) of leaving Brownie so that we could take proper care of the pups. I still remember the day we went to leave Brownie about 12 km away from home...she totally trusted us and I was holding her in the backseat of the scooter. Finally we dropped her off and Dad accelerated away...man, did she run....like some greyhound or stallion with ears straightened out, she ran full speed behind us for about 3 kms and finally dropped off...then in the distance, she slowed down ...my eyes were flowing, so everything still seems blurred. Even now.

DAAGS#3/4 - Michael Jackson/ Doberman:
Michael Jackson - Named because he was black and white and also because I thought naming him Michael Jackson was one way to get the better of a singer I never could understand in those days.
Doberman - because if we couldnt buy a pedigree dog, atleast we could name a mongrel that.
Grew up under the same disciplinary clouds and learnt to shake hands at the tender age of 3 months. Although mostly embarrassing, being the only owner of scooter+sidecar had its rare plus points - unlimited no of dogs/ kids/ general mish mash could be bundled together into one shakily cohesive riding mass and put into loud motion. Michael Jackson and Doberman loved fitting into the sidecar and during vacations 3 shouting boys, 1 screaming girl and 2 funny looking dogs could be seen screeching up and down the quiet roads of the University campus.
Dad being very fond of seafood bought lots of crabs and prawns and insisted that MJ & Doberman be fed the vitalizing leftovers - unfortunately MJ developed some infection after eating crab shells and died soon after- he was around 4 years.
Doberman barked on for another year until Dad returned from ship and decided that me and bro should start contributing to the family by starting a rabbit business - and although we strongly insisted that Doberman was gentle enough, Dad somehow felt that she would be a danger to the rabbits - She was Dad's favourite and he still did that- a tough man, my Dad. Amidst many protests and cries, Doberman was taken to be abandoned under the pretext that she was big enough to manage for herself. This time around, I remember refusing to  go along and do the abandon act.

SQUIRREL#1-ANIL KAPOOR
Sometime while we were chasing around Doberman & MJ, some squirrels decided to make their home in various lofts in our rooms - given that we lived (and still do) at the base of a hill, there were many trees all around the house - so squirrels had free access to various rooms. It was thus that we found lots and lots of squirrel nests every time we climbed into the lofts/ upper shelves. One nice summer afternoon we heard a thump and lots of squeals - rushing into the hall, we found a fallen squirrel nest. Put together with bits of cloth, coconut fibre and bits of sofa sponge, it seemed like the softest bed in the world. Inside were 3 pink baby squirrels-their eyes weren’t even open yet and they looked miserably unhealthy. Mom, in her usual hustle bustle manner, quickly arranged a shoebox with holes (my mom firmly believes that all living things require a "well ventilated room" to live in). Initially they refused to do anything except squeal a lot...we realized that two of the squirrels were male and one was female...It became quite embarrassing when the female of the species in her hungry quest chanced upon the male organ and started sucking it...ugh, we thought and tried to keep them away from each other - but no one could put up with their high pitched squealing when separated, so we had to ...er...unite them again...as was expected, the boy didn’t survive the onslaught of Evil Eve and died shortly. A week later despite a different diet of milk etc, the female also died - we gave them proper Christian burials with plastic shrouds, deep graves and sufficient mumbo jumbo prayers...am sure there’s a moral in there somewhere ;-) By this time, we had found out that we could feed them by wetting the edge of a wispy cotton saree in milk. Later we graduated to filling up ink feeders with milk. However with two down and one to go, we decided to name the survivor - and we named him Anil Kapur (Anil is the Tamil word for squirrel). Anil Kapur became a stud in the house!  Despite various innovative feeding technologies and wildcats around the house, he survived and graduated to idlies, cream cakes and almonds. Imagine a squirrel walking around on tiptoes- for the 1st 4 months, thats how Anil Kapur walked around...on his tiny tiptoes. A severely friendly character, he was extremely portable - fitting into caps, pockets and cloth bags...for quite some time, he was the resident alarm clock - mum, when she wanted us up at 7am, unleashed him and he gradually explored our ears, nibbled at our necks, ran across our backs until we woke up...sometimes when there was a loud noise, he rushed into our palms and cradled their - small heart beating very fast and later slowly peeked out to check if the world was safer yet. Anil Kapur gradually grew up into a full fledged hero and started exploring the wilds behind our house- he occasionally came back for idlis and chocolate, but was last seen flirting with a demure female squirrel in the green dales at the edge of our universe.

FURTHER UPDATES OVER THE WEEKEND ON...
RABBIT#1-JACKISTAN
RABBIT#2/3/4-INKY/ PINKY/ PONKY
RABBITS# 4/5/6/7/8
MYNAH#1
CURRENT DAWG #5- BLACKIE ALIAS RAMASAMY

TRIPPING - KERALA STYLE!

Lazy as usual…so posting something I wrote about a year back after going to the Pooram (temple festival) at the Tripunithra temple. Unwillingly dragged off by an over-enthued roomie, I later ended up spending the entire night there and returned back to my flat at 4am…mind still resounding from the sounds and the furies whipped up as the night unfolded. Originally had named this in a minimalist fashion “Old man to young boy”, but later my ego took over for want of a creative, “funny” title. As is apparent, I am not as funny as I think am.

I didn’t want to make it mushy-mushy at the end…but sometimes you don’t make the end, it makes you ;-)


HOW TO TRIP AT THE TRIPUNITHRA TEMPLE FESTIVAL(

Walk slowly in, past a half-demolished arch
that once was heaven's gate,
taking in deep whiffs of elephant dung,
lime-soda and the masses.
This evening and the lighted night to come
must be done slowly,
imbibed in, like a rare wine,
salvaged from a shipwreck in the Atlantic,
to be seen, stirred, smelled,
Let it seep slowly through all the senses,
into every dark corner of your mind.

Walk slowly in, dont miss a thing,
it is essential that you do not
miss even the small sleeping figures
of resting elephant-men,
lying beneath the grey mountainous figures
of fifteen majestic pachyderms,
this is their day out, decorated as they are
with chrome & gold,
coloured plastic paper and small umbrellas,
its all about symbolism.
Maybe the seven on each side are jealous,
to only stand and wait,
beside the alpha-animal, the 8th elephant,
the bearer of a Golden god,
and so deserves a bigger umbrella, more colourful paper
and generally better things in life.

If you had come there earlier, perhaps
you would not have missed
these gentle giants extending a foot,
for their mahouts to hold their trunk
and jump on for the ride of the evening.
not very unlike a dog offering a handshake,
friendly, final acceptance.
If you had come earlier,
you would not have missed this.

But you still have time
to see, feel and maybe get dripped upon,
with hot oil by the many six-footed candelabra
that wiry old men carry with Christ's ease
and light the temple's world,
burning torches towering high,
but not so high as any of the 15 elephants.
This being the era of affectations,
of artificial light, sound and thunder
you think that the strobes and speakers would
somehow overshadow these antiquated bearers,
not so, not so,
these men seem to stand out, seem to burn
with the vigour of a lamp in its last minutes.
But do not get mesmerized,
by the burning of the candles,
or the bearing of the bearers,
this is the side show.

That was a sideshow,
but the Carnatic concert in a dark long hall
with a holy-ash smeared singer,
a man with an upturned pot, a Ghatam,
and a small mridangam player,
is most definitely not a sideshow.
Since you are late, you will miss
the frenzied competition between
the Ghatam and the mridangam,
these men do it with utter ease,
as if to play were to breathe,
reflexes born of a million hours' practice,
But you are late and have missed this,
so try to elbow your way into the front
and get a glimpse of the ecstatic singer,
as he launches into the final stage
of a performance closer to his heart
than all than those done in the big cities,
for this is his temple, his town,his own.
Listen carefully for you might miss
the lowermost note of the sonograph
that his voice flows down to,
before reaching a crashing crescendo,
as he smiles at his brothers-in-arms,
some understanding, some heavenly concord,
some magic seems to bind them
in a way you simply would not understand
unless you have seen them caught,
immersed & finally engulfed,
in the rhythm of one equal music.
John Donne's words, not mine.

But you cannot risk missing
what the French would call
the tour-de-force, a beginning
of the end of all ends,
the panchavadyam,
music of three drums,
clashing cymbals,
and shining horns,
music that whirls your mind
into thoughtless throbbing,
music that seems to resonate
from times older than mankind itself,
music that seems to evolve
from the centre of your gut,
and slowly flows through
the corridors of the temple,
music that seems to make
the warm yellow lamps flicker and
frenzied sweat from ebony skin glitter.

You cannot risk missing this,
so go in advance, well in advance
so that you can stand before the God,
well before the God's bearer,
the gold & grey mammoths,
and the dripping oil of the warriors of light.
Stand well in advance and safely bask
in the noisy glory
that temples and men's belief can evoke.

As you stand so,
doubtless you will be distracted,
being the hot-blooded young man you are,
I know you will be...
by the whitesaree clad,genteel girls
sometimes looking back at you,
with such boldness,
as even your girl back home wouldnt.
At your age, boy, it would seem
that a challenge has been thrown,
perhaps a call for a duel,
and an invitation to meet your destiny,
If you feel so, if your head reels,
and your skin flushes, rest easy, boy.
Rest easy for it is not you or them,
it is the crackling hypnotic air,
the air that lilts
with the blowing of the ancient horns,
the air that pulses
with the beat of the drums,
the air that sparkles
with the fire of the torches,
the air that resounds
of bygone aeons,
with only this day and time left,
to deliver us ,if only briefly,
back to our confused, entangled roots.

But if you must be distracted by the women,
be distracted in their entirety,
by their gold entwined sarees,
by their sandal dotted foreheads,
by their lush black hair,
by their small bare feet,
Be distracted by the ones who look back at you,
and the ones who coyly turn away.

Be distracted by the royals,
who shun the common & bare ground,
and stand and sway a floor above,
watching the rest of humanity,
15 elephants and one golden god,
from lofty imperial heights.

Be distracted as I was every year,
by a serene, smiling princess,
some vestige of nobility,
a reminder of the royal past,
caught, framed and enshrined,
in my mind,
at this meeting,
this meeting of all the ancient arts,
this meeting - the Pooram.

Be distracted as I was,
for all the 3 years that we were there,
and looked at each other,
swaying gently to the hypnotic waves,
that the panchavadyam washes you with,
as we looked and looked,
not a word spoken, the glance unbroken.
Be distracted and give yourself wholly
to the girl you are distracted by,
your eyes, ears, skin, everything
tingling with a heightened madness,
that you can experience only in the magic
that is the temple festival of Tripunithra.