Each Second Counts

I am sure most of you have seen Slumdog Millionaire. Do you remember the slum shown at the beginning of the film beside the airport runway? I have been there and it was while there I tasted the most delicious Bengali food garnished with love made by a strong woman who fought all odds to raise her kids after her husband left her years ago. Her son is my friend and we were out celebrating at a restaurant in Muscat yesterday night. I ordered lobster and he was relishing a falooda, we were having a very good time until he had a seizure . He began rolling and thrashing about on the restaurant floor and all hell broke loose, men started shouting and the women screamed. I sat there unable to understand anything and was still munching on my lobster for about 30 seconds.

It is not easy when someone close to you looks like they are going to die. Believe me, it takes time to register. Then I revved up... tables were moved and space was made for him to thrash about freely, a spirited (what is it that you want to say here) and kind Omani gentleman poured iced water on his head while others rubbed his hands and feet, loosened his clothing etc.
Although I had long ago learned in my Red Cross volunteer first-aid course that there is no risk of him swallowing his toungue and there is no point in making him hold something made of steel, as it is traditionally believed is the way to minimise control during an epileptic attack.

I still gave him a fork and spoon to hold. It was a blur after that, paramedics, the ambulance ride to the emergency care, filling out forms, doctors, reports etc...

This incident left me thinking about how many of us know what to do in case of an emergency. It is probably more important to know what not to do than what to do. We always complain about the inaction of a crowd when they see some one in need, and now I am thinking how many in a crowd know what is the right thing to do. I urge all of you to get yourself acquainted with necessary first aid and other resuscitation procedures applicable to commonly occuring emergencies such as burning, drowning, heart attack, electricution etc.

At least show the presence of mind to call 999 because really, each second counts

Thing's Missing :- Rain

A series of photos taken at my home after a bout of rain

I'm dizzy from the shopping malls

I searched for joy, but I bought it all

It doesn't help the hunger pains

and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate

Something's missing

And I don't know how to fix it

something's missingAnd I don't know what it is

At all

When autumn comes, it doesnt ask.

It just walks in, where it left you last.

And you never know, when it starts

Until there's fog inside the glass around your summer heart:

How come everything I think I need,

always comes with batteries

What do you think it means


Pics by me & Lyrics by John mayor

The smell of gunpowder and marksmanship

To me, the sharp, sweet smell (atleast to me.. it is )of burnt gunpowder you experience when you open the bolt of a rifle to eject a spent shell is heaven. I just love it, I have spent a small fortune on bullets just to enjoy that smell. In fact I have spent enough time on a shooting range nosing around, to be able to recognise the smell given off by different breed of catridges. Ok, enough about the smell.

This post is actually about my love for marksmanship. It's about hitting a dot dead centre a.k.a the bull's eye from a distance and being able to do it again and again all the while knowing that the probabality of hitting the bulls eye is more near to zero than one i.e. if everything goes the way things ought to go.

Speaking in scientific terms, you should be able to reproduce the outcome of an experiment if you are able to do it in identical controlled conditions. In a target shooters case the controlled conditions include but are not limited to 1) Three Part Breathing 2) Attentional control 3) Maintaining body posture aligned to the target and the the sighting scope etc.Hitting the bulls eye is the result of perfect execution of a series of actions like any stage art you can think of.

I still remember the first time I squeezed the trigger (they pull the trigger only in the movies), it was almost as good as any first kiss. ;). I long for the company of my fellow riflemen and their tall stories about their junglee exploits and about guns passed on from generation to generation ... in that other life of mine.

Borders Abroad

Growing up in Kottayam, a small town down south of India, I was kilometers away from the nearest border post with Pakistan but was never too far from the emotional shelling that happened every morning when news was discussed at the breakfast table and at playgrounds. We celebrated war movies, cried together when we lost a cricket match and silently swore to kill them all when ever a jawan came home from kashmir in a coffin. For me, patriotism went hand in hand with an underlying hatred for Pakistan and Pakistanis. I know hate is a harsh word but I would never have shared a meal with a Pakistani during my growing up years. To me ,Pakistan was in another planet .
Years later, living in another city, I now know that there is a Punjab in Pakistan along with Sindh and Balochistan. Now that I have friends from the other side, I have no qualms about sharing a meal with Most of the time, I mean it when I say "Bhai Jaan". Lahore is now just another city I can look up friends in, if I ever went there. I don't really mind when they call me "Hindi" behind my back because I identify more "Hindi " than being called a "Malabari".
The way I look at things now, there isn't much difference between us and them, if we forget what we assume and what we were told about each other. They like SRK and we like Junoon, they are mad about cricket as we are, and we always cheer for their team unless, of course, they are playing us, don't we ?
Of course, there is that invisible thin line that separates us in all ascpects of life out here ( we seldom watch cricket together, we don't talk about the wars and we never share accommodation). As the saying goes, good fences make good neighbours.

The General of J Block

Hans is my colleague and he is from germany. Every morning he walks past my office to his,after punching in. We wave to each other and say our greetings. This morning how ever it occured to me to wish to him in german and the words just came out of my mouth astonishing myself "Guten Morgen,Wie geht's?" ( good morning , How are you ?). I wondered to myself how the hell did i just manage that ?. I felt like a cold wave of air hitting my face. All of it came back to me in a jiffy and i was back in that hospital room again. Let me tell you how i ended up there back in December 2006. Every year on the 24th of december the boarding school i went to hosts a reunion for all its ex-students. As usual i had showed up late, managed to avoid all my teachers and got away with my buddies to the nearest toddy shop. Several Hours later i was on my way back home in my car alone and was perspiring inspite of the air conditioning, when i reached home i could barely manage to undress myself and get to bed.

My memories of the next 48 hours in some what blurred. I vaguely remember the endless vomiting and the rough ride in the dead of the night in an auto to the hospital . Of Being admitted to the understaffed casuality ward on xmas eve. Some nursing student finally learning to use the needle after several horrible trials on me . By that time i was vomiting blue and green and it was bile or gall secreted by hepatocytes from the liver. I was quickly diagonized with acute and potentially chronic hepatitis B . I slipped in and out for about two days amidst a lot of tubes and machinery.

Two days later i stabilized and was moved to a room on another block. Block J to be exact. I spent my time texting people , reading books , smiling at my visitors , flirting with the nursing students , complaining about the food and bugging the doctors. Then there was sister agnes. Sister Agnes was very old , frail , skinny but shar and shrewd like a hawk. She would come in early mornings to make sure i had been given my morning injection, she made sure my bed was made properly ( the students did that ),that i was fed nothing which had salt in it and a thousand other mundane things. In short sister agnes was in charge....she was the General of J Block. During the course of days i noticed her always muttering to herself under her breath in between shouting at the staff under her. I could barely make out what she said but it was sure in a language i never heard before and one day i mustered up all my courage and asked her about it.

It turned out that sister agnes had spent all her working life as a nurse in berlin right after her ordination as a nun till nearing retirement. Here was a woman who had seen the berlin wall going up and coming down. I was a good listener and she was a fabulous story teller and we hit it right off from there. I was awed by her stories from another world and i horrified her with mine.By the time i was up for discharge after almost a month we had become best friends and she had taught me basic german phrases , words and numbering.

Looking back i regret that i didnt gift her anything on the day we said our "Auf Wiedersehen" (good byes ) . She was such a relief to me. I dont know if she remembers me still but i sure am going to remember her every time i hear something in german or see some one from germany or read " made in germany ".

Star Singh

Hi all ,

I want to tell you all about star singh today. Star singh, ofcourse is not his name and i am using a pseudo name coz afterall this is an anon blog. I see him everyday. He works as a labourer where i work .Everyday i see him exactly at 05.30 am all dressed and good to go waiting for his transport to pick him up, i might as well set my watch on him. I can see him working all day, from my window at my office. He talks very little, works as hard and as sincerely as anybody else on the shopfloor. Star singh's two sons are in the indian navy and are well settled and he married off his only daughter ages ago. I wondered why he is staying on in oman for and i assumed that he is the kind of man who likes to hardwork till the day he dies.

One of those sleepless nights i wass tossing around in bed and my mind craved for a cigarette. I was out smoking in the parking lot when i got sight of star singh walking in through the camp gates lugging a huge sack on his back. What is starsingh doing with a large sack on his back in the dead of the night ?. I asked the same question to another guy at the office. Oh boy ! if i say i was shocked it would be an understatement. The crazy truth is that star singh is a sucker for bar girls. He visits them as often as he can. what ever salary he earns he spends on them and he stopped sending money home long ago. He has borrowed heavily from his provident fund. He collects empty cans all night. Yes thats right, after doing 10 hour duty star singh picks up empty coke cans all night and sells those to scrap buyers to pay off his debt.

ONAM : GULF EDITION

This weekend i had a chance to literally taste the gulf onam . for those who dont know what onam is ...It is the single most important important festival celebrated by all malayalis aka malabaris irrespective of religion and geographical location ( the word goes that neil arm strong met a malayali on the moon selling tea....meaning malabaris will migrate anywhere and do anything to survive )The actual onam is ten days with the most important day being the " thiruvonam "which marks the begining of the harvest. Please visit this page to read more about onam and how it is celibrated traditionally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onam

My muscat onam was actually celebrated over three days commencing with a party i threw at our office for all those who were not fasting. It actually helped that a traditional onam meal with 26 dishes and 3 payasams /puddings can be bought from ruwi malabari hotels for r.o 3 /- complete with the plantain leaf . The actual tiruvonam i spent with my relatives in alkhuwair (bcoz the rest of my family is in kerala enjoying onam ... i cudnt get away due to technical reasons) doing floral arragements enjoying the singing and besides stuffing myself. The day after that we had a celebration at the company staff quarters with more meals and what not . so this onam was thrice onamatic. The photo at the begining of the post is slightly out of focus and not sharp thats what happens when you try to eat and click at the same time .