We had bought a new Honda Civic on the 18th March 2010, and wanted to have the pleasure of some real long distance travel. We had never had a new car in a long time and I remember having made about one or two visits to Mysore in my old Maruti Van. Now, here was a car that must make driving a pleasure and what with all the road blocks in the city(Bangalore), I had desisted form using the car in the city especially for short rides. Thus it sort of became an imperative that we seize every opportunity to do some long distance travel to justify the buying and possession of an expensive car- by our standards- I mean the standards of salary earners like me.
In fact we want to and do keep inventing reasons to do such travel. We drove to Mysore on the morn of 25th May reaching Mysore by about 1100 hrs. That driving was a pleasure. Notable in this visit of Mysore, was the visit to the Mysore palace, esp., the Jaganmohan Art Gallery where I found, the existence of a game of dice that goes by the name of Pachis . What was interesting in this was each of the squares had a picture associating one with a particular life and the progression through the board was to be treated as an enactment of the Hindu belief in rebirth and succession of lifetimes! Generally, this sort of a Karma and Rebirth inspired board game that is well known to native Hindus is what is called Snakes and Ladders in the west which goes by the name paramapada sopaana patam(psp). I had seen for the first time the game of Pachis being made a lifetimes-progression game. As a natural enthusiast of the Theory of Karma and Rebirth, which I find as one of the most satisfactory explanations of the inequities and indeterminacies in human life, I took an instant liking to it and wanted to sit and duplicate the same!
The striking commonality between psp and pachis is that both are games of chance. The artists’ equating the birth of a person in a particular socio-cultural milieu, to “chance” speaks volumes about the people’s belief in Karma staying close to atheism!
It doesn’t take much imagination to see that taking chance and randomness as the reason for the occurrence in a peculiar combination of events, circumstances, or connections is atheistic and incidentally the scientifically accepted view.
The one other thing that impressed me in the gallery was Raja Ravi Varma’s art. I was particularly impressed by Raja Harischandra selling his wife and son on the streets of Varanasi, Damayanti looking expectantly at the Swan flying away to Nala, and a Brahmin woman giving alms, on the footsteps of a temple. Raja Harishchandra brought tears into my eyes. In general all the art on the Palace walls took me out of this world into the world of the spectators in those works, and I felt like R.K. Lakshman’s Common Man taking part in the happenings.
The return journey to Bangalore was quite uneventful except for the delay caused by an accident en route between a truck and a car, an i10 to be precise. Of course this prompted my wife to command my son to move away from the wheel and ask me to take the driver’s position istead.
We landed in Bangalore by about 1715 hrs and after taking a break of about 45 minutes we started off again to Tiruvannamalai. The journey to get out of Bangalore city took up to 2030 hrs, a clear two and a half hours! That is how the city traffic is worsening! The travel after that was uneventful except for a goof-up by me in taking the appropriate left turn to hit the road to Chennai. We reached Tiruvannamalai by 0130 hrs early in the morning. We had reserved accommodation in Hotel Arpana, hence we could hit the sack by about 0200hrs. Since I had planned the circumambulation of the Annamalai Mountain believed to the abode of several Siddhas, I got up urgently by 0400 hrs and after due preparation went to the Ishanya Linga temple to begin my girivalam. To begin with this was a pleasant experience. But as the Sun rose higher on the horizon, I started feeling the heat on my feet. By the time I reached a point just 100m from the IL point whence I had begun, I was exhausted – surprisingly the distance is just 14 KM, not a very great distance to reckon, but I was almost fainting from the Sun beating hard. With some fervent prayers to Lord Shiva and with a last dash to the IL point, I somehow completed the girivalam. The only happy thing was that I had kept up the chanting of the mR^ityu~njaya mantra straddled by the pa~nchaakSharI mantra. This really kept up my spirits. We were there on the morn of a Full Moon, instead of being there for the night! I learnt the hard way that the right time to be there is on the night of a Full Moon Day!
The return journey I must say was uneventful in that my speed up to the point of reaching the NH 7 was around 70-80 Kmph, and on the highway I would frequently touch 135-140Kmph. Only on the well maintained toll based Highways of India can one find sufficient space to touch such speeds? This was a thrilling experience for me.
I wasn’t feeling tired at all even after reaching home at about 2330 hrs on 27/5/10. I couldn’t go the Veda Class the following morning. I resumed it only from the 29th Morn.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
MLM AND MORALITY.. ..
(Continued from the last Blog)
In this blog I would like dwell on why an ‘employee’ would be bogged down by morality concerns. A person whether he is a professional or otherwise receives a salary in return for services rendered. His life depends on the payment received. So, he tries to distinguish himself by remaining loyal to the employer and the duties enjoined for his job. Thus he is used to a situation where he is close to the “product” and the quality of his produce will eventually be of utmost importance. This habit rubs on to all the decisions he makes even as he rises higher on the rungs of management. Thus he is concerned more about the way the product is made and placed in the market. For the business owner the return on investment is of the highest importance, he is not likely to be tied to the product. If a product doesn’t deliver his ROI he will simply replace it with another!
The case of a business owner being in love with his product is only a possibility with may be the first generation entrepreneurs like Thomas Alva Edison or Graham Bell. As the inventors of the idea they were close to the product. They identify their company with the product rather than the earnings it generates, perhaps. It may not be so for the inheritors of Edison’s legacy, unless by some quirk of fate they were also inventors!
What is true of inventors is also true of “employees”. Even if circumstances goad them toward entrepreneurship, it will be quite a time, may be up to the next generation, that their interests cease to be the product or service that they started offering to the market. At the same time many may be egged on to metamorphose into entrepreneurs by their economic conditions which force them to change their line of thinking. To such people the prospect of losing touch with the product or the product itself becoming secondary or the product just being a notional presence in the background is not at all a comfortable situation.
One who had always been an entrepreneur for greater part of his life would think and act differently. For such a person to shift from one product to the other is just a child’s play. It is the norm rather than an exception that businessmen have their fingers in several pies. It is like the monarchs of the bygone era where the advice is to keep expanding their territory by conquests and marital alliances. Here entrepreneurs enter into all sorts of business deals that could even get murkier, as the drive to ensure a steady flow of money into coffers gets the better of the discretion of the entrepreneur.
An employee turned entrepreneur would be paralyzed by such movements, should they only occur too fast. He may be having a product or service to show as the main thing, but might be making most of his money by cross investments and sometimes by landing some not so honorable deals on the fly. This is difficult for a employee for he doesn’t move in such circles. His morality concerns keep plaguing him. I had fallen out of every MLM opportunity to the extent of even dreading them, even though like other entrepreneurial entrants into such things this was supposed to be a revenue generation idea to later get into something respectable, or honorable. The question is for one who had such beginnings is it ever going to be possible to shift into honorable money making. If there is a trouble free and effortless way of raking in money why wouldn’t one do it? Take a look at the number of Internet outfits, that keep marketing this or that most of them just throwing in vacuum we would know how many charlatans hope to make it big in this illusion called a dotcom company. After the dotcom bust of the 1994-2000, honest people have been wary of even taking a second look at them. Yet they keep popping up like termites the entire world over. Email frauds, lotto company’s giving away Lottery wins in charity, what have you?
In this blog I would like dwell on why an ‘employee’ would be bogged down by morality concerns. A person whether he is a professional or otherwise receives a salary in return for services rendered. His life depends on the payment received. So, he tries to distinguish himself by remaining loyal to the employer and the duties enjoined for his job. Thus he is used to a situation where he is close to the “product” and the quality of his produce will eventually be of utmost importance. This habit rubs on to all the decisions he makes even as he rises higher on the rungs of management. Thus he is concerned more about the way the product is made and placed in the market. For the business owner the return on investment is of the highest importance, he is not likely to be tied to the product. If a product doesn’t deliver his ROI he will simply replace it with another!
The case of a business owner being in love with his product is only a possibility with may be the first generation entrepreneurs like Thomas Alva Edison or Graham Bell. As the inventors of the idea they were close to the product. They identify their company with the product rather than the earnings it generates, perhaps. It may not be so for the inheritors of Edison’s legacy, unless by some quirk of fate they were also inventors!
What is true of inventors is also true of “employees”. Even if circumstances goad them toward entrepreneurship, it will be quite a time, may be up to the next generation, that their interests cease to be the product or service that they started offering to the market. At the same time many may be egged on to metamorphose into entrepreneurs by their economic conditions which force them to change their line of thinking. To such people the prospect of losing touch with the product or the product itself becoming secondary or the product just being a notional presence in the background is not at all a comfortable situation.
One who had always been an entrepreneur for greater part of his life would think and act differently. For such a person to shift from one product to the other is just a child’s play. It is the norm rather than an exception that businessmen have their fingers in several pies. It is like the monarchs of the bygone era where the advice is to keep expanding their territory by conquests and marital alliances. Here entrepreneurs enter into all sorts of business deals that could even get murkier, as the drive to ensure a steady flow of money into coffers gets the better of the discretion of the entrepreneur.
An employee turned entrepreneur would be paralyzed by such movements, should they only occur too fast. He may be having a product or service to show as the main thing, but might be making most of his money by cross investments and sometimes by landing some not so honorable deals on the fly. This is difficult for a employee for he doesn’t move in such circles. His morality concerns keep plaguing him. I had fallen out of every MLM opportunity to the extent of even dreading them, even though like other entrepreneurial entrants into such things this was supposed to be a revenue generation idea to later get into something respectable, or honorable. The question is for one who had such beginnings is it ever going to be possible to shift into honorable money making. If there is a trouble free and effortless way of raking in money why wouldn’t one do it? Take a look at the number of Internet outfits, that keep marketing this or that most of them just throwing in vacuum we would know how many charlatans hope to make it big in this illusion called a dotcom company. After the dotcom bust of the 1994-2000, honest people have been wary of even taking a second look at them. Yet they keep popping up like termites the entire world over. Email frauds, lotto company’s giving away Lottery wins in charity, what have you?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
ON MULTI LEVEL MARKETING (MLM) & MORALITY
There have been a few instances when I had considered joining MLM groups for generating additional income instead of the usual moonlighting ideas that I had been practicing. The main attraction was of course that unlike in moonlighting jobs you needn’t be constrained by a fixed timing and place.
More often than not in MLM opportunities, what is being marketed, what is our gift to the customer is never clear. One is rather encouraged to skirt the issue. There are MLMs for physical products like in the case of Amway, and virtual products of some Marketing Techniques’ e-books and the like. Here the protagonist tries hard at diverting the listener’s attention from the product per se often using long winding arguments to say how an interest in the product will take your concentration away from the main goal of that kind of marketing viz., generation of residual income. Attend parties or group presentations or sit with individuals to listen to their apparent dreams of making it big in this bad dog-eat-dog world, you will still come up with the same nagging doubt in your mind. Do they really believe what they are preaching? Are the promised earnings trickling into their accounts, and really has the trickle ever grown into a flood?
I am yet to see one who has become a billionaire, why a millionaire by being in such an MLM arrangement. Claims galore are made. Some firms announce incentives, even lower down the line, may be to keep the people motivated.
One of the main and persistent advices in MLM is not to get wrapped up with the product as a user and miss out totally on the business opportunity. Excellent pictures are drawn about how one’s income would grow. There are several ingenuously designed schemes of payouts, each one trying to beat the other. Are these conceived by actuaries? We see pretty soon the product (real or virtual) vanishes into the background, soon to be forgotten. You find that you are only left grappling with and chasing this dream of getting greater and greater payouts, getting appreciation medallions like Silver, Gold, Platinum or whatever, and gnawing doubts whether this ever happens.- more so, if the whole thing is happening in virtual space, with websites displaying photographs of successful executives in the network.
Recently, setting aside my doubts about MLM in general and resolving to vociferously deny any interest in MLM concepts, I happened to attend a friend’s presentations. I was lured in by another friend of mine, with the bait of my chief interest being part of this MLM exercise. The whole idea unfolding before me was like the way Allu Ramalingiah trying to convince the hero of the movie Shankarabharanam to accept an invitation to be felicitated. Concepts and ideas dear and appealing to me and those about this MLM concept were skillfully interwoven camouflaging the true intent of the whole exercise. My protestations of not wanting to be part of the MLM saga and wanting to be able to do something more than mere selling were drowned in the repeated brainwashing against being the lower-end user. The product-focus was either lost or was getting lost frequently. There was always this plan of a paid service portal that was being projected as the real idea for which all this income generation was being thought about. Thus the two presenters were vying with each other in skirting the issue of where the concentration must be: in the MLM part of the project or to a part of the project where this MLM opportunity would be the side attraction. That part of the project where the virtual product of this MLM would facilitate people like me indulging and earning through engaging in my area of interest.
In order to force a logical end to the two hour long presentation I had to say I will scout for suitable candidates to be enrolled. I had already been tricked into “buying” the product that apparently had a use which I could put it to. When you make a risky buy won’t you be looking for the worst case loss? That was what I was doing. Well there are no gains without taking risks either calculated or bearable. In the event of everything evaporating, even if you are left with something to do on hands you could somehow satisfy yourself that you have a product to use.
Now, let’s delve into why MLM selling is so painful for the employee-turned business aspirants. As the logic of MLM was unfolding, it was plain that the difference between the employees/self-employed and the business class is the difference in perception. The business class never gets interested in the product, its usefulness or its technicalities. They look at ROI. For all the other services they “employ” people and reap benefits of the full contribution of the employees. That is fine. At least when there is a hardcore product and the businessman is exploiting the OPB, OPM, OPE etc.,[Other People’s Brain-Money and Efforts ] he is paying them, and there is someone who is dedicated to really making the product see the light of the day. Thus in the end the customer is not cheated out of anything assuming the company in question has that minimum scruples to see that the product is of the requisite standard. But in MLM the product is soon going to lose focus. None in the network is going to be bothered about the product per se. It will be virtual sales of a virtual product to real people paying real money (sometimes earned by the sweat of the brow) the people up the line getting benefits of the labors of others. After sometime people higher up theoretically must be getting the money they are sweating for.
Where is the hitch? This apparent process of the growing branches of the tree will terminate at some point of time. The last leaves are the losers of the total value. It is to them especially it makes sense, to be left at least with a usable product. That is the least moral obligation for anyone who claims to be an honest businessman. Or is an honest businessman a contradiction in terms or a chimera? More on this in my next post.
More often than not in MLM opportunities, what is being marketed, what is our gift to the customer is never clear. One is rather encouraged to skirt the issue. There are MLMs for physical products like in the case of Amway, and virtual products of some Marketing Techniques’ e-books and the like. Here the protagonist tries hard at diverting the listener’s attention from the product per se often using long winding arguments to say how an interest in the product will take your concentration away from the main goal of that kind of marketing viz., generation of residual income. Attend parties or group presentations or sit with individuals to listen to their apparent dreams of making it big in this bad dog-eat-dog world, you will still come up with the same nagging doubt in your mind. Do they really believe what they are preaching? Are the promised earnings trickling into their accounts, and really has the trickle ever grown into a flood?
I am yet to see one who has become a billionaire, why a millionaire by being in such an MLM arrangement. Claims galore are made. Some firms announce incentives, even lower down the line, may be to keep the people motivated.
One of the main and persistent advices in MLM is not to get wrapped up with the product as a user and miss out totally on the business opportunity. Excellent pictures are drawn about how one’s income would grow. There are several ingenuously designed schemes of payouts, each one trying to beat the other. Are these conceived by actuaries? We see pretty soon the product (real or virtual) vanishes into the background, soon to be forgotten. You find that you are only left grappling with and chasing this dream of getting greater and greater payouts, getting appreciation medallions like Silver, Gold, Platinum or whatever, and gnawing doubts whether this ever happens.- more so, if the whole thing is happening in virtual space, with websites displaying photographs of successful executives in the network.
Recently, setting aside my doubts about MLM in general and resolving to vociferously deny any interest in MLM concepts, I happened to attend a friend’s presentations. I was lured in by another friend of mine, with the bait of my chief interest being part of this MLM exercise. The whole idea unfolding before me was like the way Allu Ramalingiah trying to convince the hero of the movie Shankarabharanam to accept an invitation to be felicitated. Concepts and ideas dear and appealing to me and those about this MLM concept were skillfully interwoven camouflaging the true intent of the whole exercise. My protestations of not wanting to be part of the MLM saga and wanting to be able to do something more than mere selling were drowned in the repeated brainwashing against being the lower-end user. The product-focus was either lost or was getting lost frequently. There was always this plan of a paid service portal that was being projected as the real idea for which all this income generation was being thought about. Thus the two presenters were vying with each other in skirting the issue of where the concentration must be: in the MLM part of the project or to a part of the project where this MLM opportunity would be the side attraction. That part of the project where the virtual product of this MLM would facilitate people like me indulging and earning through engaging in my area of interest.
In order to force a logical end to the two hour long presentation I had to say I will scout for suitable candidates to be enrolled. I had already been tricked into “buying” the product that apparently had a use which I could put it to. When you make a risky buy won’t you be looking for the worst case loss? That was what I was doing. Well there are no gains without taking risks either calculated or bearable. In the event of everything evaporating, even if you are left with something to do on hands you could somehow satisfy yourself that you have a product to use.
Now, let’s delve into why MLM selling is so painful for the employee-turned business aspirants. As the logic of MLM was unfolding, it was plain that the difference between the employees/self-employed and the business class is the difference in perception. The business class never gets interested in the product, its usefulness or its technicalities. They look at ROI. For all the other services they “employ” people and reap benefits of the full contribution of the employees. That is fine. At least when there is a hardcore product and the businessman is exploiting the OPB, OPM, OPE etc.,[Other People’s Brain-Money and Efforts ] he is paying them, and there is someone who is dedicated to really making the product see the light of the day. Thus in the end the customer is not cheated out of anything assuming the company in question has that minimum scruples to see that the product is of the requisite standard. But in MLM the product is soon going to lose focus. None in the network is going to be bothered about the product per se. It will be virtual sales of a virtual product to real people paying real money (sometimes earned by the sweat of the brow) the people up the line getting benefits of the labors of others. After sometime people higher up theoretically must be getting the money they are sweating for.
Where is the hitch? This apparent process of the growing branches of the tree will terminate at some point of time. The last leaves are the losers of the total value. It is to them especially it makes sense, to be left at least with a usable product. That is the least moral obligation for anyone who claims to be an honest businessman. Or is an honest businessman a contradiction in terms or a chimera? More on this in my next post.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
A friend has my Sanskrit Blog read out..
It was a very interesting happening yesterday[13.04.2010] when my friend and colleague walked in to my cabin and had a chat with me expressly for arranging a talk by me on the coming Shankara Jayanthi[18th May 2010]. I happened to introduce my Sanskrit Blog to him. I discussed the structure, motive and the format of the Blog, and some other subjects of mutual interest to us.
Then I just read aloud for him my last Blog on summarizing the book, Megabrain. Apparently he had not read the English version though it was in our library for more than a decade now. He was thrilled about the revelations in the book. He did have his own doubts about the claims. Skepticism is the hallmark of a good Scientific Temper ain't it? But what gave me a pleasant surprise was as I read aloud the Sanskrit Blog he was able to get the meaning, without my having to translate, again confirming my hunch on the understandability of Sanskrit for an Indian even without formal training, if only he were just taught how to properly read! Earlier another colleague whom I had requested to visit the Blog had done that but had opined that the language used was rather "high" and "beyond comprehension". The difference between comprehension and beyond is a mere "right reading"? It might help me to check on this by trying a read aloud of this to the other colleague. That will serve to confirm my hunch.And give me a strategy for Sanskrit teaching.
Then I just read aloud for him my last Blog on summarizing the book, Megabrain. Apparently he had not read the English version though it was in our library for more than a decade now. He was thrilled about the revelations in the book. He did have his own doubts about the claims. Skepticism is the hallmark of a good Scientific Temper ain't it? But what gave me a pleasant surprise was as I read aloud the Sanskrit Blog he was able to get the meaning, without my having to translate, again confirming my hunch on the understandability of Sanskrit for an Indian even without formal training, if only he were just taught how to properly read! Earlier another colleague whom I had requested to visit the Blog had done that but had opined that the language used was rather "high" and "beyond comprehension". The difference between comprehension and beyond is a mere "right reading"? It might help me to check on this by trying a read aloud of this to the other colleague. That will serve to confirm my hunch.And give me a strategy for Sanskrit teaching.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Ha! I found a way!
All along I was searching for an editor to post in Sanskrit, so that I could start a Sanskrit Blog. Today I found a way. What an exhilarating moment this is to me only one who could get into my shoes can really feel. What all have I not done, to see this moment. I posted a query in blogger.com asking for suggestions. I opened an account in Wordpress thinking there is a direct phonetic Sanskrit editor available online there. I was unsuccessful. Today I just tried to use Barahapad to input phonetic Sanskrit and copy pasted it onto the Blogspot Screen and Hurrah! I got my Sanskrit post right. This means that I could straight away start a Sanskrit Blog, right here!Earlier I had tried to use the Hindi editor available on Blogspot to write something in Sanskrit and I wasn't at all happy about the output!
I must celebrate this day.
I must celebrate this day.
देवीस्तुतिः
सिन्धूरारुणविग्रहां त्रिनयनां माणिक्यमौलिस्फुर-
त्तारानायकशेखरां स्मितमुखीमापीनवक्षोरुहाम् ।
पाणिभ्यामलिपूर्णरत्नचषकं रक्तोत्पलं बिभ्रतीं,
सौम्यां रत्नघटस्थरक्तचरणां ध्यायेत्परामम्बिकाम् ॥
अरुणाकरुणातङ्गिताक्षीं ध्रृतपाशाङ्कुश पुष्पबाणचापाम्।
अणिमादिभिरावृतां, मयूखैरहमित्येव विभावये भवानीम् ॥
ध्यायेत्पद्मासनस्थां विकसितवदनां पद्मपत्रायताक्षीं,
हेमाभां पीतवस्त्रां करकलित-लसद्धेमपद्मां-वराङ्गीम्।
सर्वालङ्कारयुक्तां सततमभयदां भक्तनम्रां भवानीम्
श्रीविद्यां शान्तमूर्तिं सकलसुरनुतां सर्वसम्पत्प्रदात्रीम्॥
सकुङ्कुमविलेपनामलकचुम्बिकस्तूरिकां
समन्दहसितेक्षणां सशरचापपाशाङ्कुशाम् ।
अशेषजनमोहिनीमरुणमाल्यभूषाम्बरां,
जपाकुसुमभासुरां जपविधौ स्मरेदम्बिकाम् ॥
त्तारानायकशेखरां स्मितमुखीमापीनवक्षोरुहाम् ।
पाणिभ्यामलिपूर्णरत्नचषकं रक्तोत्पलं बिभ्रतीं,
सौम्यां रत्नघटस्थरक्तचरणां ध्यायेत्परामम्बिकाम् ॥
अरुणाकरुणातङ्गिताक्षीं ध्रृतपाशाङ्कुश पुष्पबाणचापाम्।
अणिमादिभिरावृतां, मयूखैरहमित्येव विभावये भवानीम् ॥
ध्यायेत्पद्मासनस्थां विकसितवदनां पद्मपत्रायताक्षीं,
हेमाभां पीतवस्त्रां करकलित-लसद्धेमपद्मां-वराङ्गीम्।
सर्वालङ्कारयुक्तां सततमभयदां भक्तनम्रां भवानीम्
श्रीविद्यां शान्तमूर्तिं सकलसुरनुतां सर्वसम्पत्प्रदात्रीम्॥
सकुङ्कुमविलेपनामलकचुम्बिकस्तूरिकां
समन्दहसितेक्षणां सशरचापपाशाङ्कुशाम् ।
अशेषजनमोहिनीमरुणमाल्यभूषाम्बरां,
जपाकुसुमभासुरां जपविधौ स्मरेदम्बिकाम् ॥
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
LIFE WITH MOM # 2
In the last post I stopped at lamenting on the status of today’s aged. In my Mom I see a person from the old world who, as I have already written, is one of those who cared for their in-laws, in that, they respected them, accepted living with their idiosyncrasies. In turn when it was time for them to live their own old age all they’ve got is a world where they are not welcome as live-in aged family members! Daughter’s-in-law find very ingenious methods to avoid living with their MILs of which, one is: throwing away money if necessary so that the old find ways and means of living by themselves, the other of course is to get them into some old age home. In the process they (DILs and the nincompoop sons) forget the fact that what the old fellows need is not perhaps money, or even the security of company, but the coziness of a home which they can call their own.
Let’s take a hard look at how good my mom’s own acceptance of her in-laws was. In the very beginning of my father’s family- that is my grandfather, grandmother and uncles when they moved to Hyderabad from their ancestral home in Kerala - lived as a huge joint family. Even the married couples like my father and mother initially, and my eldest uncle and his wife (my aunt) and my aunt (father’s sister) and her husband (my uncle) who had got married in a mutual exchange agreement, apparently to save marriage expenses as well as “groom finding” expenses and efforts that are the wont of Indian society, lived under one roof as a joint family. We had no business interests or great property that we could call our own, which would have made joint family living a natural choice. Perhaps for this reason, slowly and within a period of three to four years at best, the family split into nuclear families, the parting couples citing various reasons for living away from the main family. Later couples in the old family home found newer and newer excuses to split. My grandfather and grandmother were forced to increasingly gravitate towards living with the yet-unmarried sons.
My grandfather and grand mother had four sons-my father being the eldest- and three daughters. Two of the daughters had been married long before my grandfather’s family had left Varkala, the ancestral village. My mom moved out first to take care of our education in an English medium school. So, that was her ruse, for my grandfather had earlier put me in a Telugu medium government school as was his belief and affordability. She opted to stay away in a rather small dwelling receiving regular payouts from my father, employed away from city in a way-side railway station, where a decent education for me would not have been possible. After this gingerly experiment of living separately, there was one more coming together of all the original family members, in another large family home-a rented accommodation about four kilometers from the first joint family dwelling- also a rented accommodation referred to as John Buneen (Bunyan?) House- a chawl like place in Old Nallakunta. The next to move out to Kozhikode [Calicut in those days], after about a year of marriage, was my eldest uncle. At that time we were in another house belonging to one Sh.N.S.Natarajan. I still remember the day my uncle was seen off from Hyderabad R.S. On that day, my mother had got hurt by slipping on mossy floor near the well in the yard. With just the first aid given in grandma’s remedies’ style- bandage tied around the head with just some turmeric powder stuffed into the wound - my mom had joined the rest of the members of the family, to see my uncle and aunt chug off with their eight-month old son Sekhar, whose legs hadn’t developed the strength to let him get up and stand. He used to drag himself all over the house, yet he was a cheerful child. I remember my school friend appreciating the child’s cheerfulness.
To cut a long story short, my grandfather oversaw the splitting of the family couple by couple until they found themselves staying with my last unmarried uncle at BHEL Township in RC Puram. By this time Grandpa and Grandma had been staying in turn with the different nuclear families off and on. They would move in with my uncle’s family at Chikkadapalli, or stay with us at New Nallakunta. Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa would stay separately with different families. I do not remember what went in my grandma and grandpa’s minds as they moved from place to place. May be they enjoyed the frequent change as a welcome condition, that also helped beat boredom of being with one family and one set of problems for long, or whether they secretly, cursed their fate. Now, that was something they might not have wished for, nor even dreamed of. Well, then they had to make that compromise. By the early seventies there was no joint family. All of us- the four brothers and three-sisters family of my grandfather were nuclear families now, with some of those families electing to even move to other cities so that even by some quirk of fate a return to joint family living should become a possibility. But all of the sons respected their parents and the DILs were not averse to having the parents-in-law even it was for small periods of time like three months or six months at a stretch.
Time has rolled by and my Mom and Dad had become old, and we had grown up found jobs and married. The DILs came. I was already working in Bangalore away from our Hyderabad home. So our life started straight away as a nuclear family. My brother had also married and set up home in Pune. My parents tried living with us for short periods of time. Cultural differences between the father’s generation and his sons’ and DILs created quite a few misunderstandings and frequently my parents retreated to their abode, perhaps a trifle dissatisfied even though they were not complaining. Their disagreements with our living styles were the chief reason for their often opting to stay by themselves in the paternal home in Hyderabad.
“We will continue to stay as man and wife, alone. When we age sufficiently and are unable to take care of ourselves please take us to your places and give us our much needed and well-deserved rest form the cares of life.”, my father told finally after finding the old style living of parent and sons’ families together has to be but a distant dream. He cannot recreate the old world joint-family system once again. He had always fervently hoped for it perhaps even in his day, but has seen it cracking. In the present age instead of cracks appearing there were homes formed away right at the beginning.
Let’s take a hard look at how good my mom’s own acceptance of her in-laws was. In the very beginning of my father’s family- that is my grandfather, grandmother and uncles when they moved to Hyderabad from their ancestral home in Kerala - lived as a huge joint family. Even the married couples like my father and mother initially, and my eldest uncle and his wife (my aunt) and my aunt (father’s sister) and her husband (my uncle) who had got married in a mutual exchange agreement, apparently to save marriage expenses as well as “groom finding” expenses and efforts that are the wont of Indian society, lived under one roof as a joint family. We had no business interests or great property that we could call our own, which would have made joint family living a natural choice. Perhaps for this reason, slowly and within a period of three to four years at best, the family split into nuclear families, the parting couples citing various reasons for living away from the main family. Later couples in the old family home found newer and newer excuses to split. My grandfather and grandmother were forced to increasingly gravitate towards living with the yet-unmarried sons.
My grandfather and grand mother had four sons-my father being the eldest- and three daughters. Two of the daughters had been married long before my grandfather’s family had left Varkala, the ancestral village. My mom moved out first to take care of our education in an English medium school. So, that was her ruse, for my grandfather had earlier put me in a Telugu medium government school as was his belief and affordability. She opted to stay away in a rather small dwelling receiving regular payouts from my father, employed away from city in a way-side railway station, where a decent education for me would not have been possible. After this gingerly experiment of living separately, there was one more coming together of all the original family members, in another large family home-a rented accommodation about four kilometers from the first joint family dwelling- also a rented accommodation referred to as John Buneen (Bunyan?) House- a chawl like place in Old Nallakunta. The next to move out to Kozhikode [Calicut in those days], after about a year of marriage, was my eldest uncle. At that time we were in another house belonging to one Sh.N.S.Natarajan. I still remember the day my uncle was seen off from Hyderabad R.S. On that day, my mother had got hurt by slipping on mossy floor near the well in the yard. With just the first aid given in grandma’s remedies’ style- bandage tied around the head with just some turmeric powder stuffed into the wound - my mom had joined the rest of the members of the family, to see my uncle and aunt chug off with their eight-month old son Sekhar, whose legs hadn’t developed the strength to let him get up and stand. He used to drag himself all over the house, yet he was a cheerful child. I remember my school friend appreciating the child’s cheerfulness.
To cut a long story short, my grandfather oversaw the splitting of the family couple by couple until they found themselves staying with my last unmarried uncle at BHEL Township in RC Puram. By this time Grandpa and Grandma had been staying in turn with the different nuclear families off and on. They would move in with my uncle’s family at Chikkadapalli, or stay with us at New Nallakunta. Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa would stay separately with different families. I do not remember what went in my grandma and grandpa’s minds as they moved from place to place. May be they enjoyed the frequent change as a welcome condition, that also helped beat boredom of being with one family and one set of problems for long, or whether they secretly, cursed their fate. Now, that was something they might not have wished for, nor even dreamed of. Well, then they had to make that compromise. By the early seventies there was no joint family. All of us- the four brothers and three-sisters family of my grandfather were nuclear families now, with some of those families electing to even move to other cities so that even by some quirk of fate a return to joint family living should become a possibility. But all of the sons respected their parents and the DILs were not averse to having the parents-in-law even it was for small periods of time like three months or six months at a stretch.
Time has rolled by and my Mom and Dad had become old, and we had grown up found jobs and married. The DILs came. I was already working in Bangalore away from our Hyderabad home. So our life started straight away as a nuclear family. My brother had also married and set up home in Pune. My parents tried living with us for short periods of time. Cultural differences between the father’s generation and his sons’ and DILs created quite a few misunderstandings and frequently my parents retreated to their abode, perhaps a trifle dissatisfied even though they were not complaining. Their disagreements with our living styles were the chief reason for their often opting to stay by themselves in the paternal home in Hyderabad.
“We will continue to stay as man and wife, alone. When we age sufficiently and are unable to take care of ourselves please take us to your places and give us our much needed and well-deserved rest form the cares of life.”, my father told finally after finding the old style living of parent and sons’ families together has to be but a distant dream. He cannot recreate the old world joint-family system once again. He had always fervently hoped for it perhaps even in his day, but has seen it cracking. In the present age instead of cracks appearing there were homes formed away right at the beginning.
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