Redefining Horizons

    Kumaranalloor is famous for its Temple. But not many people, barring locals, would know of the Government Upper Primary school in Kumaranalloor. I went there first time in 2018. I was there once again, invited to speak, on 02 Jun, 2025, as part of the “ praveshanolsavam. ” “ Praveshanam” in Malayalam means admission, and “ Ulsavam” means festival or celebration.    Praveshanolsavam   The function was organised to give the children, starting their education journey in government-run schools, a sense of festivity. It was done to initiate children into the schooling system and coincided with the commencement of the current academic year. The authorities could have used the event to take stock of the infrastructural adequacy of government-run schools. “ Sarkar karyam mura pole ”, is what Malayalees say. It only means that things that the government does will take their course when it does. The strategic aim of the event seemed to be optics and eyeballs. ...

Our daughters call up while travelling to work in the morning and on their journey home. It is a daily ritual. In the morning, I always ask, “Child, how is the day coming up?” In the evening, I ask, “How was the day?” Between the two questions and their answers, we quickly cover the essentials. My wife gets longer talk time with the girls. At times they call at the same time. Then, my wife and I either switch phones or use the conference facility. Technology has made staying connected easy. We catch up on each other’s day through our daily calls. Sometimes, the discussion can turn serious. “Dad, is it because I was raised as an Army child or the nomadic imprint in my DNA, I feel restless staying in one place for long. I yearn to move places?” That kickstarted the day. “Child, maybe both,” I replied. “Deep within us, there must be remnant imprints of early mankind’s nomadic DNA. Although Homo Sapiens emerged 300,000 years ago as nomads in Africa it has been just about 10,000 years s...

  In the initial years of my army service, I travelled by train like all other army officers. When I travelled on duty, the regulation ‘ holdal l’ was my companion. It was a masterpiece of utility. It held my things together throughout the journey. It took on a small mattress, my military boots that could never find space elsewhere, and all the other unwieldy stuff required to be carried along. There was a way to pack it. I first spread the mattress, put a blanket and two sheets folded to size, spread the mosquito net, flipped the covers over, and tied the laces through the three eyeholes provided. Unwieldy things were then shoved into the compartments at the two ends. The holdall was now ready for the makeover.  I rolled the holdall tight, into a cylindrical entity and tied it with the attached leather belt that went through a big leather handle. It was the strongest thing in leather I have ever seen other than the saddle. My orderly was a great help. Over time I learnt to r...

  I was sitting at the back of the class and playing book cricket. Our Physics teacher was working hard on explaining the Venturi effect. “Remember! Energy is neither created nor lost. It gets converted from one state to the other,” he said. “No loss, no gain,” I found the concept interesting.    Book cricket was my fiefdom. I made rules and decided when to start and finish the match. “Time for a drink break,” I told the cricketers, closed the book pitch, and gave all my ears to the teacher. “So, when the water in a pipeline comes across a choke point, the pressure inside the tube at the choke increases, and the velocity decreases. The moment it comes out of the choke, the pressure falls dramatically, and the speed of the water increases correspondingly. People designing the layout of long-distance pipelines incorporate it to install inline flow meters. It also makes sure that pipelines do not get clogged,” he said. Intuition told me it would be a sure question in the exa...

  Child Smoker  The car was a beast from the outside but a cocoon from the inside. The unending leg space and silent air conditioning inside made it ideal for friends to travel and talk. The endless roads, devoid of traffic, encouraged the car to race with the winds. Whenever Jose, my friend, forgot to rein in the beast, Cini, his wife, lovingly reminded him of the brake pedal. Jose and I are childhood friends.   “Do you know how we first met?” Jose asked my wife as we headed for Khor Fakkan from Al Dahaid. I tried hard to recollect but failed. “Something interesting about it?” she asked. Jose had already narrated many incidents of our childhood since we arrived in Sharjah two days ago. We had been laughing at ourselves and reconnecting. There were times when we laughed till our stomachs hurt. “Like all houses in the locality, our houses were farmhouses and shared a common boundary, a high mud bund we call Kayyaala . It was one of the few kayyaalas in the local...

  Ubiquitous Affliction “Sanu ki,”  a usage in Punjabi, is both a phrase and an idiom. “Sanu” translates to “us” and “ki” means “what.” Together, it merely means “to us, what” or in other words “why bother?” Simply put it means “I don't care.” That is where it stops being a phrase. Depending upon the context, “sanu ki?” assumes many a meaning. Commencing from being a plain expression indicating disassociation, it can mean anything like irrelevance, irreverence, scorn, and at times the sublime state of acceptance of the inevitable. One needs to spend time with people who speak Punjabi to capture the essence of the “sanu ki” served. It can mean anything depending on how, when, and where it has been said and to whom it has been delivered.  The difference in tone can change the associated meaning. The versatility of this phrase or idiom is what caught my attention. In Malayalam, my mother tongue, there are different versions of ‘sanu ki?” Starting from “ namukku enth...