Coincidence Threshold

This particular posting appeared in Dilbert blog of Scott Adams.

Coincidence Threshold
Jul 16, 2010 | General Nonsense | Permalink
You probably saw the story about the woman who won the lottery for the fourth time. Some say the odds of that are 1 out of 18 septillion. I think almost everyone who reads this blog assumes it wasn't luck, and that there was some criminal activity involved. But it made me wonder if humans have some sort of innate and similar view of where coincidence fails as an explanation. Let's test that.
Let's say a mysterious man appears at your door and tells you that you have a special power. If you write the name of a person on a piece of paper and put it in a sock overnight, that person will die. You try it once out of curiosity, picking the name of some scoundrel from the news so you won't feel bad if it works. And sure enough, that person dies of a heart attack that very night.
Your first thought might be that as a general rule, scoundrels live risky lifestyles. You might have gotten lucky on that one. So you try it again the next night with a new name, and that person is also dead by morning. You try it twenty times, never telling anyone else of your experiment, and each time it works before sunrise the next day.
You can imagine a variety of explanations for your experience. You might be crazy, or dreaming, or experiencing selective memory. Maybe the mysterious man who told you of this method is somehow watching you and putting out the hit order on the name you choose, for reasons that you can't understand. Maybe you're just good at recognizing when people's time has come. Maybe you are part of some sort of science experiment or reality show. Perhaps there are a dozen other explanations.
My question to you is this: How many times could you repeat this experiment alone, with whatever controls or privacy you could muster, before you believed your actions were causing specific people to die?

For me it would be somewhere around the fourth person.

Earlier too there were similar posts by him on Freaky happenings, one of which I have reproduced in my own posting titled 'Synchronicity".
For some months now, while returning from Cherthala by Aleppey- Chennai express, I travel past Trissur Railway station and get down only at Punkunnam for two reasons. Firstly, I don't have to negotiate the overbridge and secondly my driver can park the car nearby without paying any parking fee. When the train pulls out of Trissur station, I get up and stand by the door of the compartment so that I can quickly get down when the train halts at Punkunnam station. This has been the routine for sometime now. On 11^th August, 2010 while standing at the door of the compartment, suddenly for no reason I thought of my train journeys to Mumbai from Madras/Bangalore while on Inspection duties. As the train approached a particular station not very far from Mumbai, the passengers used to pull down the metallic shutters. The precaution was well worth as there was a virtual shower of stones thrown at the train while it approached the station.
That was nearly fifteen years ago. I do not remember the name of the station now.
While my train was passing under the Kottappuram bridge, I idly speculated that if I stood at the door, a little inside the compartment facing in the opposite direction in which the train was travelling, then the velocity of any missile thrown at me will be reduced by the speed of the train and I might escape any serious injury. On the other hand, if I stood facing in the direction of travel of the train the speed of the train would increase the effective velocity of the projectile and it may cause substantial injury. A little sheepishly I changed sides to comply with my silly reasoning. Nothing happened that day and I got down at Punkunnam station and went home.
As I said, that was on the 11^th.Aug. Two days later I saw a report in Mathrubhumi about a passenger being hit by a stone. He was travelling by Cannanore-Ernakulam express and he was hit when the train was passing under the Kottappuram Bridge almost exactly at the spot where the random thought came to me a couple of days previously. The stone hit him on the forehead and cracked his skull. He must have been facing the direction of travel of the train and the speed of the train would have given the stone added momentum.
What would be the odds? It may not be one in a septillion but certainly it must rank as a very strange coincidence. To add to the odds, the victim's father is a previous employee of Bank of Cochin/SBI whom I know personally.
The good news. The boy will survive and may soon be out of the hospital. The Railways should offer a substantial reward for information on the stone thrower. If the reward is adequate, there will be squealers. And if the guy is caught he should be charged with attempted murder. The stone could have killed the passenger.

 

The strange case of a demon without fangs.

This is in a way a sequel to my last blog post.

Why does an apparently sane, normal person, a loving husband, an affectionate father suddenly start behaving like a demon? When does the transformation takes place? What is the tipping point taking a person beyond the thin red line separating acceptable, civilized behavior from barbaric, inhuman behavior?

These were some of the thoughts which came to my mind while writing my last blog on the Kongad incident. The flames of the failed Naxalite operations of the late sixties did not die out completely. The smoldering embers blazed forth again briefly in the Emergency days in yet another botched operation in the form of an attack on Kayanna Police Station. The 'revolutionaries' succeeded in carrying away a rifle. And that was all. What followed was the infamous 'Kakkayam' camp culminating in the disappearance and presumed death of Rajan, a Calicut Regional Engg College student. The lifting of the emergency, removal of press censorship shortly thereafter and the defeat of Indira Gandhi and her Congress in the elections resulted in an explosive release of pent up emotions. Stories of all sorts of brutal deeds allegedly perpetrated by the police under the emergency powers, some of it true, some not quite true, started circulating. Unlikely victims along with quite a few genuine victims started competing for special treatment as victims of Emergency. Pictures of a few 'Demons' like Pulikkodan Narayanan, Jairam Padikkal and Karunakaran also emerged along with tragic figures like Rajan, Eachhara Warrier etc , with the active support of the propaganda machinery of the Left. Facts got submerged in an avalanche of rumors, idle speculations, and motivated falsehoods that ,one may be excused for asking like Vikramaditya did:

"Whether Truth was that which was said repeatedly,

That which was said loudly;

That which was said with authority;

Or that which was agreed upon by the majority.

There cannot be any dispute about the fact that Rajan was a victim of custodial violence. He did not deserve to die. He should not have been subjected to custodial violence even if he was involved in the attack. In fact there shouldn't be any custodial death at all due to custodial violence. One would have thought that the sensational Rajan case which resulted in the resignation of the all powerful Home Minister Karunakaran and prosecution of the Police officers would have acted as deterrence. In fact, custodial deaths in Kerala went up. The statistics from NHRC:

Year                    Number

2003                    41

2004                    49

2005                    39

2006                    NA

2007                    62

2008                    45

2009                    50

The conclusion is irresistible. Custodial violence is/was/will be an investigative method of the Kerala Police whether they are trained in Scotland Yard or FBI or in China or Russia. Even if the Kakkayam Camp was under a different officer, say K.P.S.Gill or Julio Ribeiro or M.K.Joseph, instead of Jairam Padikkal the violence which ensued would have gone on. It was not individual violence; it was institutional violence. Karunakaran is only as guilty for Rajan's death as Kodiyeri is for the Palghat custody death where the Police was investigating the murder of the sister of a senior IAS officer reporting to him. The only difference is that the emergency and press censorship prevailing at that time emboldened the Police to keep even the death of Rajan under wraps. Otherwise, it would have been yet another case of suicide in the lock-up.

A few months ago, there was an article in the Mathrubhumi weekly by the wife of Sri.B.Rajeevan a known Naxalite sympathizer. Mrs.Rajeevan recalls in the article a raid by the Police on their house in search of a wanted Naxalite. She says that the last person to leave was Jairam Padikkal who gently explained to her: 'Child you do not understand. The person who came to your house was Venu'. Not quite the demon, is it?

I had known Mr.Padikkal personally. That was almost a decade after the Rajan case. He was fighting his case in a Court in Coimbatore and Vigilance was raiding his house in Trivandrum/Ernakulum and generally making his life miserable. His wife had a small scale unit manufacturing plastic covers for protecting the latex collecting containers from rain. It was a small unit and also a sick unit of our Bank. They had frequent fund shortages for importing the raw material HDPE which was also in short supply. They had a bigger unit banking with some other Bank which was in no better shape. Mr.Padikkal used to visit the branch once in a while as he did not have any pressing responsibilities at that time. Not even once did he try to use his position to gain any undue advantage from the Bank. It was difficult to visualize him as a heartless demon that enjoyed torturing people. He had an unblemished record till the Rajan case unfolded and was sought after by the Left Government too. Perhaps it was as Martin Luther King said "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Mr.Padikkal could be faulted for remaining silent. But it would have needed extra ordinary bravery to speak out.

Strangely Sri.V.N.Rajan, Director General of Police and C.Achhutha Menon, Chief Minister at that time escaped much of the fall out. The DGP was a close relativeof Kongad Narayanan Kutti Nair who was beheaded by the Naxalites and could be expected to have no sympathy towards them. The CM could not have pleaded that he had no control over his Home Minister. The fact is, everyone knew how the Police functioned and was at a loss to suggest any viable, effective investigative method in the prevailing circumstances. So everyone played politics and allowed the system to flourish. The agenda was only 'Get Karunakaran'. So they went after Jairam Padikkal who was perceived as close to him. This was repeated later in the ISRO case when they tried to make Raman Srivastava , who was also close to Karunakaran, a scapegoat. They could not succeed. They needed a Trojan horse in the shape of Muralidharan to get the wily old fox. Still they have not caged him fully.

And all victims are not equal. The lives of the many more millions of peasants exterminated by Chairman Mao and that of the Kossacks and Kulaks starved to death by Stalin do not collectively have the same value as the millions of Jewish lives taken by Hitler. The Jews own the Media and the Communists are not very keen to publicise this particular achievement of theirs. An American Death in Iraq or Afghanistan is a tragedy; countless Iraqi and Afghani deaths are mere statistics. Naturaly Rajan's life is more valuble than Sampath's. Kodiyeri need not resign. Prosecution of the Police officers need not be pursued and no CBI enquiry is needed.

A Severed head then, A Severed hand now

Radhakrishnan was a quiet, slightly effeminate boy who was with us in the High School at Ottapalam. He was never involved in the countless fights we boys got into almost every day. I don't think any of the teachers had any occasion to reprimand him. His father was a Post & Telegraph employee who used to deliver the occasional telegrams. The postal department had not split into India Posts and BSNL in those days. He had either a squint or 'cat's eyes', I don't now remember which .He was also an amiable guy like his son. After High School I did not see much of Radhakrishnan or his father as I shifted to Govt. Victoria College, Palghat for my degree course.

That is why the news that Radhakrishnan was with the Naxalite gang which beheaded Kongad Narayanankutty Nair after an on the spot, mock trial came as such a surprise. He was one of the minor participants and was among those convicted in the subsequent trial. I don't think he actually participated in the gruesome beheading. He might have been seeing Narayanankutty Nair for the first time that night. The leader of the gang was Mundur Ravunny who was released after serving his life term and is now leading the militant organization 'Porattam'. Perhaps details of the operation were shared among the participants on a need to know basis. I would like to believe that Radhakrishnan would have been miles away had he known he was to participate in an execution or murder depending upon your political convictions.

"And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. Che Guevara".

I do not think Radhakrishnan had that kind of pure hate against anyone.

So how did he become a naxalite? He was not a great reader and I don't think he, on his own, read any of the recommended readings for a revolutionary like the books of Mao, Che or Regis Debray. Perhaps he may have been attending study classes conducted by Venu or Ravunny. There was a school teacher, Raghavan, who had intellectual pretensions (which in those days meant adherence to left leaning ideology) and who, I am told, developed too close a liaison with Radhakrishnan's family. He is not alive now. Possibly he may have influenced Radhakrishnan.

Sebastian was another guy I knew among the 'dramatis personae' of the Kongad tragedy. He surfaced in our area one day from some place in Central Travancore and latched on to Chettur Balakrishnan Nair who was distantly related to me and whom we used to call 'Kuttama". Kuttama was a totally apolitical person but had a weakness for women and wine and delusions of grandeur. Sebastian expertly stroked his ego and became an inseparable companion. I did meet him several times in the company of Kuttama. He was more of a mercenary than a revolutionary. He was one of the principal accused in the Kongad murder case and got a life term. I have no difficulty visualizing him hacking away at Narayanan kutti Nair's neck not because of any extreme revolutionary zeal but because, in my estimate, he was totally amoral. I have no idea what became of him after his jail term. Kuttama paid a great price for his association with Sebastian. Sub Inspector of Police of Ottapalam Police Station who was one of the investigating officers made his life miserable for quite some time. Perhaps fitting justice for what he did to the Namboothris of 'Swarnath Mana'

Chacko was one other guy belonging to the gang whom I may have seen. He was a brilliant student of Victoria and a couple of years my junior. In those days of shortages and general despondency, it was quite natural for any sensitive youth to be attracted by the extreme left thinking. The romantic aura surrounding the life and death of 'Che', the 'Revolution in the Revolution' of Regis Debray, the defiant poems of Chullikad, the happenings in intellectual Bengal, the disillusionment with the Communists who came to power through the ballot box and were corrupted by the system, all were powerful motivators for the youth of those times. Most sympathized with the extremist ideology, some embraced it. Chacko apparently did.

I also knew by reputation Narayanankutti Nair and his elder brother Chinnakuttan Nair. I am told they usually were among the first to visit the Mankara Police Station whenever there was a change in the incumbency of the Sub-Inspector. By all accounts, these brothers were a law unto themselves until the British Govt dispatched a platoon of policemen to arrest Chinnakuttan Nair. He was handcuffed and paraded in the streets of Palghat. That was the beginning of the end of their hold over the Region. But I still think that the fact that V.N.Rajan, son-in law of Narayanankytty Nair and an IG of Police at that time, was expected to be there may have influenced the target selection. Narayanankutty Nair was already a spent force when the Naxalites struck. What the Naxalites wanted to demonstrate was a brazen defiance of the establishment.

The discontent seems to be back. There are enough signs of a coming turbulence. I do not mean the survival struggle of the tribals in Chathisgarh or the pathetic efforts of Janu, llaha Gopalan etc and the sporadic violence the movement generates. What would pose immense danger to our way of life in Kerala in the near future is the fatal fascination of the Muslim youth for the extreme religious beliefs. Religious fanaticism is being fomented with the blessings and funding of the Saudi Arabian Wahabis, ISI and Taliban outfits.

There is an ill wind blowing across Kerala. Ominous clouds portending the coming storm have appeared in the horizon. A population pampered by a moderate, benign weather, not exposed to any serious war or natural calamities, whose perception of terrorism is an occasional visual clip in TV from Kashmir or Gaza is about to experience a severe winter of discontent. Perhaps, it is time the smug Malayalee got a real jolt.

O Tempora O Mores

There was a post in one of the Blogs I follow. This was regarding commuting between the office and residence in Gurgaon by the Blogger. Apparently, the sizzling speed of the rickshaw at 3kmph mentally transported him to some Formula 1 racing circuit. Reading the blog set off a different train of thoughts in my mind. The result is this blog.

The hand pulled rickshaws disappeared from the streets of Kerala in the fifties. Quite a few of them still survive in parts of Kolkata, thanks to the revolution brought in by the Communists and the consequent division of poverty! The 'bhadraloks' continue to patronize the quaint electric tram and the quainter hand pulled rickshaw.

The hand pulled rickshaws were not that common. In Ottapalam, there were two and in Mankara, none. One of them in Ottapalam belonged to my brother-in-law's father, a leading lawyer of that time. The rickshaws competed with a few Morris Minors, Fords, Ambassador land masters and a rare palanquin. The palanquin bearers used to chant 'hom, hom, hai, hai…hom, hom hai, hai' as they trotted on. It appeared to me then that the whole of the Hindi vocabulary was there in their chanting! Children travelled on the shoulders of retainers.

And in one of our rare visits to Calicut, the mode of transport within the town was the horse drawn Governor's cart. I believe the contraption is called 'Victoria' in Mumbai. You can still see a few of them in the stretch of road from the Gateway of India to the Radio Club. The starving horses are a sorrier sight than the derelict carts.

Cycle Rickshaws were quite common in Ernakulam in 1967-68 when I was in St.Alberts College. By the early seventies, they had disappeared from the roads of Kerala. They still survived in Madras City. MGR attained almost God like stature by providing rain coats to all the Rickshaw wallahs in Madras city. The national pastime of ushering in progress by changing the names of all the cities and roads the Britishers built was a few more years away in time. So Madras was Madras and not yet Chennai. Strangely, Baber, Akbar etc who were as much foreign conquerors as the British escaped the same treatment. Roads, Cities bearing their names remain untouched. On second thought, not so very strange as the Muslims in India are a significant vote bank. We did even name a road in New Delhi 'Olaf Palme' road as the guy had the distinction of being one of Rajiv Gandhi's crony. The Bengali babus chose Ho Chi Minh, Marx, Lenin etc and may be a Che Guerra or a Fidel Castro.

In the Cycle rickshaws in Kerala one could sit comfortably as if in a chair in a barber shop. The seating of the rickshaws in Hyderabad seems to have been designed by some Gynecologist to induce delivery for ladies in advanced stages of pregnancy. Your knees will be touching your chin and if you are one of the daddy longlegs, will even rise up over your head like two horns. Of course you can learn to sit in 'padmasana'

Those in Kanpur required delicate handling as they were potential sources of tetanus. Besides, the rickshawwallah, as is the custom in those parts of the country, would be wearing an overcoat which he put on during the Pooja and which would be taken off only on Holi. The overcoat itself was appropriated from the used apparels donated as relief supply by people from western countries, for the refugees from East Pakistan, during the Bangladesh liberation years. The stink would be over powering and remember you are sitting behind in close proximity. You would think that taking of this 'relic' on Holi would improve matters. No, Sir! "There is more stink trapped in the clothes under the coat than is spoken off by your philosophy. Horatio"

The rickshaws in Bihar were not much different, except that the passengers will be holding on to a well oiled 'lathi' or a muzzle loader. As the Bihari, off season peasant strains on the pedals, many a tortoise and snails will be overtaking the rickshaw. Anyway, what is the big hurry? The state has not changed a great deal from the days when King Janaka ruled over Mithila. Rickshaws have merely replaced chariots. Biharis obviously believe in the Zen dictum "It is when you are in the greatest hurry that you have to slow down". And slow down they did and how!

In which a senior citizen takes a ride on Time Machine

The Chennai-Alleppey express was late by half an hour. I sat on one of the stone benches in Punkunnam Railway station idly watching the flotsam and jetsam of humanity and also some of it's dregs, drifting by. Meanwhile three goods trains went past without stopping. All the wagons in the first one,except the guards cabin, were green. The second one had the usual rust brown coloured wagons. The third had blue coloured wagons. The first and the last had double engines.It appears that the Railways have introduced some colour coding system to easily distinguish the goods being carried.I counted ,without consciously counting; 48 wagons in the first train 41 in the second and 48 again in the last one excluding the guard's cabin.

The sight of the trains transported me back in time some 55 years to what at that time was a quaint little village called Mankara.Chemmuka Kalam, the house Sir C. Sankaran Nair built was the second most imposing structure in Mankara after the Nair Veedu.It stood on a seven and half acre wooded compound, the land gradually sloping towards the "Ishana kon" as recommended by Vaastu shastra. We were the owners and residents.

On the East side, a small wicket gate opened to the Railway B Class land adjoining the rail track. The 'Home' signal was just in front of the wicket gate and you could see one of the 'outer' signals far away on the north where the railway track curves near Kalikavu temple.The signal posts on the south side were not visible as the rail track curved again and was hidden by a small hillock. Beyond the rail track, farther East was paddy land and at its fringe the burial ground of the Chetturs. Sir C's ashes were protected by a cement 'samadhi' under a banyan tree while the ashes of all the other dead Chetturs cremated there merged without a trace into the soil or were washed off by the rains into the Bharathapuzha flowing past the burial ground. The 'samadhi' and the burial ground are clearly visible, sitting in the portico of Chemmuka kalam. As children we have seen many a ghosts with flaming mouths traversing the burial ground at night!Unimaginative grown up people used to say that these were people crossing over to the other side of the river and using flaming torches to find their way. Of course, we children knew better.The grown ups were not very well informed about 'odiyans' 'kolli pishachu' and other sundry shadowy figures.

The signals used to come down in those days to indicate that the line is clear. It took the railways over seventy five years to realise that the signals could come down due to mechanical failure too which could cause accidents. The signals now go up to indicate that the lines are clear.

Very few passenger trains used to run on this line. The pride of place was taken by the Madras Mangalore Mail with the red coloured mail bogey in the middle. As the train negotiates the curve near the Kalikavu temple, the red bogey gives it an uncanny resemblance to a huge millipede.The other trains were the Cochin Express and an up and down ordinary passenger between Shoranur and Olavakkode.All trains are Up trains when going towards Madras and down trains when going in the opposite direction Madras-Mangalore Mail was 1 Up and 2 Down, Cochin Express 19Up and 20 Down. All trains had besides III class a II Class and a First Class. They were operated by South Indian Railway (S.I.R) The Mail/Express trains did not stop at Mankara.Local lore says that the trains stopped at Mankara when Sir C or Captain Kalidas came a visiting, courtesy the British Government.

Captain Kalidas joined the British Army on King's Commission. Field Marshal Ayub Khan was his colleague and when he became President of Pakistan had written a rather nice letter to Capt.Kalidas. Capt. Kalidas got out of the army when Second world war broke out by pretending that he was of unsound mind. And led a miserable existence thereafter till his death.He starved but he remained proud and uncompromising and all alone.

I do not know whether any passenger trains went past in the night.'Death's brother, Sleep' was a close friend in those days. We got the most fun counting the wagons of the goods trains as they chugged past. The wagons were a medley of covered wagons, flat beds and oil tankers. The engines were British made steam engines with brass bands on the funnel. The Chittharanjan locomotive with the pointed nose made an appearance shortly thereafter. The diesel and DC electric engines came decades later.
The most wagons we counted on any single train was 80 and they were half the size of the present day wagons and empty to boot. The 48 odd wagons I saw now were double the size and fully loaded as can be made out from the lock and seal on the door. The rail track is being made to bear a punishing load.This started during Nitish Kumars time and the mindless exploitation was continued by Laloo and now Mamta.

It was on this stretch of rail track in Mankara that I found the coal piece with the dragon fly's wings embedded.I would have thrown it away had my father not happened to see it.He knew that most of the coal deposits in the world was formed in the Carboniferous period, some 286-360 million years ago, when flying insects also made their first appearance. What I had found was a fossil dating back to the Carboniferous period. I might as well have thrown it away; a cousin took it for his school exhibition and that was the last I saw of my precious fossil find.

A Stranger In His Hometown

“Naalu thara nooru nayarum, chungathachhanum, mangalam irunoorum, chembu panikkarum, thottakkara nalpathhi onpathum, nambrath nayarum, kolappulli swarupathil ninnum, cherukara nayarum, vadakara nayarum, koottala nayarum, kaippancherry nayarum, panku rayeerathhu nayarum thacholi koimayum, samudayathu ninnum, pandarathuninnum, manjatti kurikkalum, kalari panikkarum mattum ethheele, ethheele, ethheele
Aakshhepangalundo……..
Pooram kodi kayaratte”
(“നാല്  തറ  നൂറു  നായരും , ചുങ്കത് അച്ഛനും , മംഗളം ഇരുനൂറും, ചെമ്പ് പണിക്കരും, തോട്ടക്കര നാല്‍പ്പത്തി ഒന്‍പതും, നമ്പ്രത്തു നായരും, കൊളപ്പുള്ളി സ്വരൂപത്തില്‍ നിന്നും, ചെറു കര    നായരും,  വടകര നായരും , കൂട്ടാല നായരും, കൈപ്പന്ചെര്രി നായരും, പങ്കു രായ്രത്തു നായരും, തച്ചോളി കോയ്മയും, സമുദായത്തു നിന്നും പണ്ടാരത്തു  നിന്നും, മഞ്ചട്ടി കുരിക്കളും, കളരി പണിക്കരും എത്തീലെ, എത്തീലെ, എത്തീലെ?

 ആക്ഷേപങ്ങളുണ്ടോ?

 പൂരം കൊടി കയറട്ടെ. )

No. I have no objection. Let the flag be hoisted. After all I am a chamravattom-kozhippuram nair strayed into the thattakam of Chenakkathhur bhagavathi. A parvenu strayed into the company of patricians, so to say. I am here not even by invitation, like the Vadakara nair (who ever he is) or the person from thachholi koima.

One of the current ‘Chembu’ Panikker was a fellow officer in SBI who left and joined IAS in the J&K cadre. His brother C.K.K Panikker was also an IAS officer in the Kerala cadre who died while in office. The eldest one of the family retired as Principal from Calicut medical College.

A cock is sacrificed when the flag is hoisted on the midnight when Makeeryam star is in Kumbham. Pooram is on the sixth day from then. The head of the cock is for the Chembu Pannikker. So I am told.

The Bhagavathi seems to be pleased with the Panikkers, considering how they have fared in recent times. The Chembu Pannikkers are coming back to the ‘thattakam’ through a recent matrimonial alliance.

I have no idea who are the 49 from Thottakkara. Presumably they must be Nairs. Panagatt?, Kelath?, It is quite sad that we do not maintain any temple records like they do in the Church. Nambrath nayars are still there. Two of them, Madhavan and Ravi were in the same school with me. Remnants of Kolappulli swarupam is of course there scattered all over the district. Who does not know ‘Taravadi’ Unni? Kaippencherry Nair is also a familiar name. Their house was one of the many houses my family stayed on rent. Kaippancherry Unni Nair, who was the chauffer of Dr. Ramanunni Nair was a cult figure. Many a story relating to prohibition days in Ottapalam is built around him.

There is no record of how the remaining parts of the carcass of the slain cock were distributed after the head is appropriated by the Chembu Panikker.

That was then.

Then it was the Kattana Nairs.

Last year when I went for the pooram, it was a committee headed by retired postman Sankaran.

There is a need for amending the ‘Vilichhu chodippu’.
It should be “ CPM Pinarayi groupil ninnum, Achuthanandan groupil ninnum, Congress Antony groupil ninnum, Karunakaran groupil ninnum, Chandi groupil ninnum, muslim leagueil ninnum, PDP il ninnum, NSSil ninnum, SNDPyil ninnum, Poraattathhill ninnum prathinidhikal ethheele…

Let the loot begin

Also, the flag hoisting should be on the midnight of the day when the red star(Mars?) is ascendant. Then people will be justified in crying..,

AYYIYYOOO…

A Continuing Farce

When my schooling started in 1953,we used to celebrate Vana Mahotsav for a whole week. It was started by Sri. K.M.Munshi in 1950. The Netas and all and sundry were then lamenting about the vanishing forests and how it is going to affect rainfall. Global warming, ozone layer, melting ice caps etc had not yet become cult phrases. The monsoon decided the agricultural production as it still does but in those days agriculture accounted for over 70% of the GDP.

So we planted an exotic plant called gliricidia or'sheemakonna' for a whole week. It was known as 'sheemakkonna vaaram'.Besides, on roadsides pits were dug and various plants protected by bamboo meshes were planted with lot of fanfare. The bamboo meshes did not last more than a week before finding its way to someones kitchen as fuel. The roaming goats took care of the plants. Gliricidia which is an invasive shrub survived in some places, shunned even by the goats. The charade lasted a whole week and was repeated year after year. I do not think any substantial tree ever survived.The bamboo mesh in time gave place to wire meshes and even concrete meshes. The contractors prospered but not the plants and the forest cover continued to shrink.

While this was going on, the PWD was busy cutting down all the Mango trees lining the Ottapalam- Cheplaccherry road in front of the NSS High School. The trees were originally planted at the behest of Tipu Sultan. They used to give us children an abundant supply of raw mangoes and many a running battle with "Kurukkan" Bava who used to bid for the crop. We did the running and he the chasing and shouting. The big banyan tree in front of the hospital in which many a 'yakshi' resided in our imagination was also not spared and with it went a large part of our fantasies and dreams. A lesson on hypocrisy from Class I onwards.

Then came social forestry. In one of their innumerable foreign jaunts, some minister came across 'acacia'and decided that it is the ideal plant for greening the state. So 'acacia' was planted everywhere at state cost and the demon plant survived. It provided sticks for the flags and banners for innumerable rallys, marches and jathas of all parties and still survived. All the while it sucked precious ground water and thrived. Reports are coming in from Africa about vast tracts of land where all water sources have dried up because of planting of acacia. Unfortunately,the wood is not good enough to burn the minister who introduced it here or sturdy enough to hang him! It still survives, because it is useless.

After many Sugathakumariees and their "poetry on tap", now it is the turn of "AN UMBRELLA FOR EARTH". Or is it 'Haritha Keralam". If it is an umbrella, then I hope it will be something like the one "Ibrahim and Carrim Son's ltd, Calicut" used to manufacture and not the "poppy" variety. Those sturdy things, with the curved handle used to double as a walking stick and a stick to scare away the stray dogs. It had a brand name 611 or 613 or 501 or something like that. I do hope the trees now being planted are sturdy enough and have a longer life.

The day my mother was cremated at Ivor Madhom, over 150 other cremations took place. A small forest must have been burned on that day. This is happening all over the state, everyday. The Christians and the Muslims are going on scarring the face of Mother Earth and taking up space in prime areas. There should be better ways of getting rid of the rotting corpse which even your loving wife would fear to see.(Shankaracharya).Parsis had a better way,until the vultures started dropping pieces all over Mumbai. And then DDT killed off all of them. Can't we have a few crematoriums?

Meanwhile the farce will go on and on. Sugathakumariees will lament about the loss of the current generation and future generation. There will be panel discussions in TV and in Vanitha etc in which actors in their teens will reminisce about their childhood.Meanwhile, smart guys like Al Gore will become billionaires by narrating inconvenient truths.

When it becomes too inconvenient, Earth will heave a sigh, or shrug her shoulder and with it will disappear a whole vile race, much like the dinosaurs. Let the farce progress to the tragedy in the meantime.