She is one cult

There's a wonderful Bosnian writer called Alexander Hayman has said 'Home is where people notice when you're not there'

Pulikurichi, a beautiful village in Tamilnadu with the population of around 300 with the literacy rate of 10%. Primary occupation was farming and secondary occupation was conducting 'kangroo courts'. She was the 6th child in her family. Her father was a teacher. It was a massive thing being a teacher in 1954. It was hardly 7 years of India's independence. When she was born, her father promised himself that to make her a first graduate in that village. All her siblings were not interested in studies and they loved taking care of the farmlands, cattles and home.

Contradictorily, she never interested in taking care of cattles, working in farmlands and handling household activities. She was an exceptional child in her entire family and a pampered one. She was one of the first women from her village commutating to the nearby village(slightly bigger than Pulikurchi) for her schooling. Fermented rice was the staple food in that village. It will be available in all the houses at point in time. You can enter any home and you can have. You can say this is the village belong to a single family bloodline. Marriage will be done within the family(not brother sister but with the cousins). She is an exception here too who got married to a guy outside her village.( This episode will be narrated in the later stage)

In villages, people wake up early around 4 am, brush their teeth , pack the fermented rice in the aluminum vessels and go straight to their fields and start their daily work. They return around 5 in the evening. Mostly they take bath in the evening either in the field or in the home built well. This is their routine. She was the one who changed the entire routine among the women in that village. She always takes bath twice in a day. One in the morning and in the evening. She is the only one washes her face with soap first thing in the morning when she woke up and last thing before she sleep. 

One of her elder sister's daughter told me that she was a cult in those days. She used only pears soap to wash her face. That particular soap is not available in her village. In order to buy that soap, one need to go to madurai(which was around 60 kms away from pulikurichi) No direct bus from that village. You need to walk 2-3 kms from pulikurchi to thiruchuli. Take a bus from Thiruchuli to aruppukottai (20 mins travel) and then Aruppukottai to madurai(1hr travel). Once a month her elder brother goes to madurai and buy that pears soap exclusively for her. There were times when the soap is over she wouldn't even wash her face. She became a cult for all the girls and women in the village on how to carry yourself, how to persuade your dreams and how to be aspirational.

To be continued....

Thoughts With No Meaning

Dan Brown in his book 'Origin' he mentioned 2 unsolved mysteries of mankind are what is the origin? And what is the destiny? I'm just in the midway. Hopefully i get the answer from him once I finish reading his book.

Like everyone i have lot of thoughts going on in my head at any point in time. Usually 90% will thoughts will evaporate like a camphor without any trace. But for the last 3-4 days like hailstones random thoughts hit my head with various emotions. Earlier whenever I try to focus on my thoughts sometimes i get clarity, sometime i get a gist of them and many a times my inner self says not worth thinking about so I just move on. This time I don't know understand these thoughts. The reason I'm writing this blog is i hope i get some clarity on the thoughts. 

4 days back we lost a good friend in my childhood gang. When I heard the news, 1st thing happened to me was, i went blank. No emotions(no remorse, no sympathy, no empathy, no sadness). Nothing at all. I don't know how to react. It never happened with me. I was the one who cried when emma stone died in the climax of amazing spiderman(now i ask myself really d******d?) I was the one who laugh when someone laughs without knowing the reason why the laugh is for. I was the one who expressed contempt when someone ask about the caste or religion. But in this situation i felt nothing. Then i started thinking that may be i was not that as close to him as i was with my other friends. 

This thought made me question again then why did you go blank? 2 yrs back when my college roomie committed suicide in his apartment, all i filled me with was anger no sympathy or no empathy. How dare he took his life leaving his parents and siblings? That too during covid time, parents could not even see his face one last time. He died as a loner in some unknown place in England. I did not experience such alternate emotion here. May be I'm neither of the sides. I went blank because I was not close to him but he was close to the people I was close to. I went blank because I empathise with my friends. Or maybe as a third person i empathise with his family members for their loss.  I'm afraid that i become a monk or something. I leave these thoughts to time. Let it decide.

I love taking advice but not giving one. I know 99% of my closed ones going to read this blog. I won't say these are not advices but my humble requests.

1) Priorities. Priorities. Priorities

2) When you feel low or under depression, you better call me or anyone whom you are comfortable with. I been in that situation, i sought help. I sought help of my parents, mentor and my friends. Nothing to be ashamed of. An introverted guy opened his mouth and told people how he was feeling. You are better than me.

3) Don't take anything for granted. Be humble and grateful. When you think about the gap between the origin and the destiny. It's tiny. It will disappear in a blink of an eye. If you love someone give more love without any expectations. If you don't like someone, leave it. 

A normal day in Summer 2002

It's 2002, i don't know why, there is no specific reason I'm fond of Summer season. Maybe because of the summer holidays i get or that's the only time I play chess with my dad or mom prepares a variety of eatables that i can eat for the whole summer or playing with my friends from dawn till dusk without experiencing tiredness. Even now, not having all the above luxury , beautiful summer brings me a sense of freedom, calmness and the feeling that I'm alive.

In those beautiful days, during summer holidays you sleep late(12am) and wake up early(6am) with the same energy as Goku has in dragon ball z. But now, out of 8hrs sleep if you lose 30 mins, you are done for the day. Your mind and body go crazy. This is the only time mom encourages you to have more sleep so that you won't be a hindrance in her morning routine. When you wake up and come out of the bedroom , first thing  you will be seeing is your dad reading newspaper in the hall. With one eye closed, you just go and sit near him. Suddenly you bring all your energy in opening the another eye to search for the remote. That's the point your dad hand over you the two sheets of newspaper to read. That's how I started the habit of reading. Reading starts in the sports page and ends in the same page.

In schools, your class teacher rarely bothers you, if you submit your assignments regularly on time. Like that, your parents never bother you if you have your breakfast, lunch and dinner on time. If you try to skip any of these or not having them on time then you are done. If anything goes wrong , mom will correlate the incident with the skipped meals incident. Eg., Mistakenly if I drop my mobile phone, mom will say "See you don't even has the strength to hold your mobilephone". So, never ever skip or avoid your meal.

At 9.00am, you hear your friends calling your name. All ready with the bats, stumps and cricket balls. Everyone have their own bicycle. My bicycle name is "Ambush". Dark brown color, sport model. Minimum 3 and maxmimum 4 can sit. I got this as a result of losing an another bicycle. Match at 9.30, against our school senior batch, we are short of 3 players. This is a weekly routine. Our team always short of players. But somehow we arrange 3 more players by 10am. Match starts , mostly we win sometimes senior wins. 

Those were the days showered in sun rays with the temperature of 33℃. Those we the days, fetch and drink water from any source nothing happens, fall anywhere nothing happen, eat anything nothing happens, bath anywhere nothing happens, speak anything nothing happens. Basically nothing happens. You just have sit in the flow, you will be carried like a leaf fallen into the river.

TO BE CONTINUED...