April 2013 – Ramana's Musings

Bucket List.

After I had seen The Bucket List, I have been talking to people about it and my own bucket list which is a work in progress. Since my father died last year however, I have been able to score off a number of items on my list as I have been able to travel freely and even within Pune have enough freedom to do many things that I was not able to due to my care-giving duties.

A series of developments starting with an innocuous question from Ranjan this morning took me visiting family albums today and I went on a nostalgia trip thanks to the modern internet that has enabled my siblings and other family members to upload photographs that can be easily accessed.

The first photograph here shows me in the middle, my younger brother Arvind to my right and the youngest Barath to my left. This would have been circa 1949 just before or just as our youngest sibling Padmini was born in Madras now known as Chennai. The car at the back is a 4 Cylinder English Citroen Traction Avant. My late father and his younger brother had a particular fondness for these cars and had many, including a couple or so of the six cylinder version with steering wheel on the left side, pass through their hands in the early 1940s and 1950s before they switched over to big American cars.

I distinctly remember going to see Padmini after she was born in a nursing home in this Citroen. A fact that was driven home to me by my uncle in 1971 when I had gone to Madras to attend Padmini’s wedding and was using a friend’s car which was exactly the same model as this one on the picture. My friend, an automobile engineer had kept this old beauty in top class condition and it was a pleasure for me to drive it around with Urmeela and Ranjan who was then a tiny three month old boy. Needless to say, that the Citroen and Ranjan were the topics most discussed by me with all attending the wedding.

Fast-forward to February 2013, a lot of water has flown down the Cooum since then but the four of us met up in Madras when Barath had come down. This time, the youngest and the apple of all our eyes, Padmini was with us for a group photograph. From left Arvind, Barath, Padmini and yours truly, all four of us looking quite pleased with ourselves for the way we have turned out.

This time around the topic of conversation was the latest grand child in the family. Barath’s grandson Finlay George who was sorely missed by all of us as two sets of grandchildren were at that time in Chennai; Padmini’s two grand daughters and Arvind’s two grand sons. Earlier towards the end of last year I had gone over to Delhi to meet up with Arvind’s grand son and grand daughter who live there, and two grand sons who live in Bengaluru.

My son Ranjan and his partner Manjiri saw The Bucket List last night and this morning came and asked me what is the top most on my bucket list. I did not have to take even a second to respond. It is to go over to the UK and spend some time with Finlay George.

To score that item off my list, two other items have to be scored off before and that is the only thing that is preventing me from achieving that end. It is a matter of time, but they will be scored off and I will take off to meet up with this delightful little fellow who is the youngest Rajgopaul now. It should be a grand moment when the eldest and the youngest lay eyes on each other.

Not Quite Flexible.

Devdutt Patnaik is a much liked writer and I am a great fan of his as is most of my family.

I do not miss any of his writings if I can avoid it. This particular piece on the Indian Vs European style of management is so well written that I wish to share it with all my readers who find Indians mysterious.

I am sure that if DP sees this YouTube clip, he will have as good a laugh as I did when I saw it last week.

C’est la vie ! This is Life !

These kind of things keep happening to me all the time!

I do not know quite what prompted my friend Nandu to post this poignant picture on his Facebook page today, but this fits in quite nicely with my earlier LBC post on Out Of Sight Out Of Mind.

I only wish that I had had access to it before I published my post.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind.

I hope that you enjoy reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where eleven of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Will. The ten other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, Padmum, Paul, Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!

“Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to ‘look before we leap’ promptly warns us that ‘if we hesitate we are lost’; that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but ‘out of sight, out of mind’.”
~ Leo Rosten

Something that has always occurred to me whenever this saying was quoted to me was to ask, “What about those who are born without sight? Don’t they have minds?” In most cases, to be polite, I never did.

And I should really rest my case with that pithy observation but, it is such a corny statement that I can’t resist the temptation to add my personal experience on it.

It has been more than four years since my partner of forty plus years went out of sight. She disappeared in a haze of smoke leaving behind a small urn full of ash. You think that she is out of my mind? No way dear reader. There is not a day that something or the other does not remind me and our son of her. She is out of our sights but most certainly not out of our minds.

When she was alive, and mind you during days when making telephone calls were not as easy as it is today, I used to travel a great deal and she and our son would be out of sight for me for an average of three weeks a month. Do you think that they were ever out of my mind or I out of theirs?

Having had that little rant, that proverb has its uses and so let me conclude this post with another – “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” As if anyone in their right mind would, unless of course the baby is out of sight.

The Turkey.

Maxi, our fellow LBC blogger has an interesting post in her blog on a guy who breeds wild turkeys and nurtures them, A very moving tale and worth a read.

Interestingly enough, I had an occasion to read about the country Turkey just immediately after reading Maxi’s post and I was wondering about the synchronicity of the two events, when bang came a phone call from a friend who wanted me to tell him about the black swan story that Nassim Taleb tells.

Taleb is well known for a parable he tells of a turkey (presumably in the United States) and of a turkey farmer. From the perspective of the turkey, the farmer is an absolutely wonderful character, providing endless food, adequate shelter, and ample opportunities for socializing with its kind — until the day the farmer slaughters the turkey for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

I had just concluded telling him of the story and giving him the reference of the book when the door bell rang and I received a hamper of food from a neighbour who had slaughtered a goat in the morning for a special occasion. And I thought to myself of the great days that the goat must have had being fed nice things till that morning!

I can think of a few wonderful farmer type of fellows who had led me up the garden path and slaughtered me! I am sure that my readers can think of such characters in their lives too.

Is It Worth The Effort?

Right, there are two heroes here and I salute them.

And I wonder what happened to the moron who was texting and almost lost his life. We have similar deaths taking place in India too with texting or talking on the phone idiots walking into the flowing traffic or falling into railway tracks from platforms and so on. There are also drivers doing such suicidal things while behind the wheel and increasingly this is becoming the biggest contributor to accidents.

My question is therefore relevant don’t you think?