How Somu found me

 

Hair raising thrill is obvious when something sweet by chance happens. It happened to me nearly two months ago.  Cutting down our evening walk at the nearby ground we had parked our car on Devaparthiva Road where we lived for decades as the road perpendicular to it was under repair.  We had to visit a shop close by on that road.  We had got down from the car.  On seeing us, our friend stopped his scooter with a pillion rider.  The pillion rider [he was to soon reveal that he was the rider's elder brother] dismounting the scooter asked for the house of  one Subba Rao.   "Subba Rao!" ....my late grandfather.  I was happy someone known for  years to our family was in search of the house which was no longer with us. Ownership and house had since been changed and we had moved to another ancestral house.   I told him "I am Subba Rao's grandson".  To make him believe his ears I repeated!    His face lit up in utter happiness.  When he told me that long ago he was coming to our house for weekly evening meal, I immediately recognized him as 'Somu' as he was called by us then.  He must have been around 20 by the year 1962 when he was coming.   In the dining hall, after my grandfather returned from his office, dinner plates used to be arranged for the eight of us in the family plus one Butea leaf plate for Somu near the door.   I insisted to sit next to him [his left] for the meal and I have very vivid memory of this as a four year old.  He remembered my name too as clearly as me.  It was a most joyful moment for him meeting me and that too in that fashion.  Somu must be around 80 now.  He also recalled the other relatives' houses he went for the meal on other days of the week and mentioned he was trying to meet their families also.  Those were economically difficult years for his family, living in nearby towns where there were no colleges and they used to be sent to Mysore for studying further so that they can get a job later.  Mysore was and is a popular hub for higher education. 

The system of offering meals esp. to poor brahmin boys studying in college [and living in a hostel] was known as "vaaraanna". Such boys used to eat in different houses on prior arrangement on set days of the week on rotation.  This helped them save some expenses.  It was a tradition followed by many brahmin families as helping others in whatever way possible, considering it as God's service.  

All the years, Somu's memory has a very deep impression in my mind and I often wondered about who he was and where he was.   In the meantime, my wife's friend and our distant relative had hinted about this Somu a couple of years earlier.  He must have inquired his interest on meeting us.  Recently on our second meeting at Somu's brother's family function, last month he mentioned he had retired as head master of a school in the town of Hassan. He was yet again fondly recalling the famililes that served him food in those years, that helped him build a career in life.  He even joyfully introduced me to all his family members. 

My wonderment ended about this Somu whose physical appearance was blank but he used to come white dhoti and shirt with a small towel on his left shoulder.  Somu's dream of meeting the family also ended with that accidental meeting.  Joyful moments.

We unique foursome

Srinivas Rao, Mukunda, Ramesh and yours truly, were in the same department at the workplace.  What was unique with us in the mid 1980s was that we were in our 50s, 40s, 30s and 20s in that order.  Unfortunately, the first three have passed on, also in that order, making me the lone survivor now! 

We used to join together twice every day to go to the canteen for coffee breaks.  These were most refreshing fun filled breaks.  Jokes were told, esp by the first two, Rao and Mukunda who were excellent in telling jokes while Ramesh and I enjoyed laughing.  Rao laughed as he told, simultaneously.  Funnily, he often laughed before he uttered!   All of us had a good sense of humour and this is what had brought us together, actually back in 1983 itself.  In fact, it was Rao who bonded the group in a way, when India won the Cricket World Cup that year.  He hosted a party in the famous Mylari Hotel to celebrate India's maiden win.  This hotel is/was renown for tasty and unique Masala Dosays plus Idli, which we washed down our gullets with excellent coffee.   These were the only two items this hotel prepared on its menu and only up to noon.  No evening opening.  From that time onwards, we decided to go every month, each month hosted by one of us on rotation basis.  Rotation was by draw of chits.  (I have blogged separately on this hotel trips).  We foursome did other things to eat out as well till about the year 2007. 

Once on a working day, we went to a place called K.R.Nagar an hour's drive by bus just to eat Masala Dosay at the famous Sri Hotel in that small town, all of us applying one day leave, en masse!  We would gather at the agreed time at the bus stand and travel.  Then after that hotel breakfast, we traveled to the nearby Chunchunkatte where river Kaveri forcefully flows amidst rocky terrain.  A popular picnic spot.  There we spent till lunch time, relaxing near the flowing water.  We went to the temple close by and the priest there specially arranged for us sumptuous and tasty lunch in the form of Puliogrey, which we remembered for several years. We profusely thanked as we rewarded the priest with some money for taking care of our hunger. This arrangement was unexpected but most welcome.  Then relaxing on the temple platform relishing the taste of Puliogrey for sometime we travelled home. 

Another time, we applied en masse half a day leave for the forenoon session. The programme was to see a morning show movie at Olympia talkies, have lunch at the hotel opposite there (well known in those days for good lunch) and go to office to attend the afternoon session.

Another working day, we travelled by bus to a place, an hour's drive, called Melukote.  There is the beautiful temple of Sri Cheluvarayaswamy on top of a small hillock reached there by a flight of steep stone steps, below it is a Kalyani (pond).  What we remembered more than the trip was the argument Mukunda picked up in the bus with a fellow villager-passenger about the price of butter back in "those days"....and the quality of it.  It was a serious fight, but it was a draw.  For this trip, we had one extra member in the form of Suresh. 

By 2006, Mukunda had retired and had shifted to Bengaluru, three hours away.  Srinivas Rao had retired before him.  Ramesh was in his hometown there and was on leave.  This time the programme was to meet there just to eat Dosay at the highly renown Vidyarthi Bhavan in Gandhi Bazar and have lunch in another hotel.  From here, Rao and I traveled by train and gathered at the hotel at the set time.  We enjoyed eating, went to nearby Lalbag gardens and relaxed there for a while and we dispersed to our places, Rao and I returning by train in the evening.  Yet again it was a working day.  

Scene at Vidyarthi Bhavan, starting to devour. 
Similar was the scene at Mylari Hotel.  I had this new digital 
camera in 2006.  Hence this memory.

Aside from this group outings, there used to be other random little eatings.  Thanks to one other colleague gastronomer Nagaraja.  He enjoyed hosting breakfast in the form of Masala Dosay from, yes 'from', one Prasad Lunch Home (now closed).  He would come half an hour early, packing Dosays to 4 other colleagues who were in the same room. He would take us to another hotel called Anand Vihar near Zoo and get us Bonda-Sambar which he was fond of.  A few times, we went out for lunch in a hotel during lunch hour. 

There was a good camaraderie among the colleagues, what with a strict workaholic boss and heavy work. Often many went to others' desks for short chit chats which the boss didn't mind as long as work was done.

Good memories with colleagues and the good times at the workplace we cherish for a long time. 

  

At the Smithsonian where I saw Concorde

When  I first made a model of an Air France Concorde jet way back in 1977, I had never even imagined that I would see it one day.  Unexpectedly, a visit to the United States in August 2022 turned this into a reality when I visited Washington DC where my long time friend Srinivas took us to the Smithsonian Institute of Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center. Here I was most delighted to see this huge and beautiful jet from very close range, the very one that had its last flight before being withdrawn from service on 23 Nov 2003.  More details on the unique supersonic jet and of the museum are available on the web. It produced a sonic boom, so it flew at a height of 60,000 feet only transoceanic. 

Entrance

It is a huge museum where they have kept old aircrafts like toys in a showcase, under a huge curved roof and very vast area.  What a delight!  There were also many rare little aircrafts hung from the roof. 

There it is, the Air France Concorde.  Look at it! 

Its unique nozzle and cockpit, seen from above

Wheels

Nearly under it, next to the huge wheels

A video of its full view.

Here was also the Space Shuttle Discovery, that had spent 365 hours in space on its several visits. Standing under its huge barrel like exhaust outlets was a thrill.  

Front portion view

Rear portion view

                                                                           Nozzle view

Above is the model I made from balsa wood, keeping a picture of it from a magazine as the basis, in 1977.  I have a separate post on its making here: [Click]

State of Virginia is very close to Washington DC and this is located in this state.  This is one place one will remember for a long time, if visited. I will, thanks to my dear friend Srinivas.  It's only here we get to see such things under one roof.

 ~~~~~~~~~~ 

Rats and rat trapping circus

Rats and bandicoots are havoc-making pests nearly everywhere and our garden area is no exception.  Trapping them to reduce their numbers and troubles they cause is a perpetual circus.  

A box rat trap had been set with a 'vade' piece as bait food and kept in a certain spot in the garden overnight.  

Morning...  nothing had been trapped. It was the wrong place for that occasion though they frequent that area. I noticed a burrow opening that was not disturbed [I had kept some dry leaves there] the previous evening, now open and disturbed, thus indicating the burrow resident's presence and fresh movement.  The location of this opening was at the corner of the compost pit where we dump kitchen scrapings and other small organic matter.   I now kept the trap near this opening of the burrow... [Picture].......

........and walked a few feet away to check something in the garden.  Lo and behold! "Bonk"! 
The aroma of the 'vade' bait had drawn the burrow resident and into the trap, within literally two minutes!  Immediately, I decided to give this trapped rat a beautiful ride, fully free, on my scooter to be released safely a mile away.  Sometimes some rats are lucky to get free bicycle rides.  This one was getting a scooter as I had just then returned from my bicycle ride. 

This is another hole nearby that will have a link to the one in the pit.

They dig up holes like these in search of earthworms, often damaging plant roots. 

 

[Video, 22 seconds] Quite a grown up rat that was!

When I opened the spring lid, it saw a lovely drain in front of it and happily jumped out in joy of the trap to its new environs where it is sure to find new friends.  

Due to this pest's proliferation, such releases have become fairly regular.  I release them at different places away from homes. 

Some record this.... trap-set, trapped, released a mile away  within ten minutes! 
:) :)

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Social media had given me some simple fun ideas of trapping mice. I did try a couple of them. One is the bottle trap.  It worked very well for small mice [bottle mouth was small].  It trapped 5-6 successfully.  One of them I took it to K.R.Nagar, 40 km away and released it at the cricket ground... ... I had gone to play our club cricket match that morning!  And my team mates were curiously looking at this contraption and the rodent in it!

I tried another with a bottle with a slightly wider mouth for fatter mice.  It worked, but since one mouse started to bite the bottle trying to escape, I discarded it. 

My friend's large garden has the problem of much larger and more ferocious bandicoots.  Since he is a fabricator himself, he made a strong cage-trap for these pests.  I had borrowed this once as one bandicoot had proliferated its generation.  I caught the big one - almost the size of a medium size cat!!  It roared like a tiger when I took it out to the far away park to release it. Here's that cage:

This is a juvenile bandicoot fearlessly feeding on rice grains we had put for the spotted dove. These are nocturnal but see their daring in daylight! 

They sometimes enter indoors [mainly in search of food] and it is another thrilling game.... they scamper like lightning.  Armed with a stiff broom and some reflexes I have knocked a few down unconscious after locking the doors and then threw them away from the house. 

A rat had entered the worship room a few years ago. Later it was successfully knocked out. 

Spotted owlets are natural predators but their number seems to have dwindled. Same are here in the south also.  This is a picture I took in Chandigarh. 

This is in the dark, perching on our house.

- - - - - - - - - - - - 

Shankar, a tribute

There came a phone call on the evening of 18th December, 2017.  Unfamiliar voice, "This is Kiran....".  A simple clue pointed he was a childhood friend.  We had met each other occasionally but not in regular contact and never before on phone.  He goes on to tell "someone with me wants to talk to you .... [gives the phone to him] ... Hello Dinu, this is Shankara.  Remember me? ..............[some pleasantries]...  I have come to Mysore for a few days [from America].  I am right now with JS Kiran..... where and when shall we meet?".  His voice, instantly recognizable, was just the same it was, when I had last met him, thirty plus years ago.  What a delightful surprise! He had suddenly wanted to meet me, on this visit!  Kiran had located my telephone number through some of his known sources.  They were classmates in Engineering and one year junior to me in school. 

Shankar and I were great street mates who had enjoyed playing cricket, hide and seek, chess, carrom, marbles, etc. along with other street boys at Devaparthiva Road where just 50 metres separated our houses.

Not surprisingly, it was just a smile and handshake when Shankar arrived, at my residence now at Vani Vilas Road the following evening.  Shankar has never been one to show too much emotion or was too outwardly expressive.  Only, some words in his speech had 'Americanized' after living there for 25 years plus.  He was the same, simple chap. From a young age itself, his maturity had been beyond his age and his level-headedness was a trait.  He was well behaved and decent in every manner.

Very joyfully, we reminisced the fondest and most enjoyable memories of those beautiful days for close to 90 minutes. He briefed me about how he had switched over to a job that was non-engineering/technical and how he was stressed about it and how he kept his fitness routine. 

  My late aunt had introduced me to play on paper, 'word building game' and sometime during my middle school days, some friend had 'Lexicon', a word game played with cards.   I had then not known about Scrabble, but it was Shankar who introduced me to it with the Set he used to bring here and play.  I reminded him of how we spent hours and hours playing this beautiful game, laughing and laughing so much [what we now term as ROFLOL] esp. whenever we made funny sounding non existent words.  This greatly irritated my grandmother who used to come shouting at us to stop laughing!

Later I made a Scrabble set from cardboard, myself.  [click to read that separate blogpost]

It was also from him I came to know about live radio cricket commentary from BBC in 1973. It was he who showed me that it was aired on the 31-metre band.  He had taken me to his grandmother's house opposite Manuvana Park to show where he had tuned in to that station.  It started off my great fancy for cricket commentary, particularly from BBC and later from Radio Australia for a number of years.

Shankar had known about radio stations from his father, G.Sachidananda [Sachi, popular name in the street].  He was a Hindi Professor at Maharaja's College, jolly chap, fun loving, loved to humourously tease people who passed by his house, in some particularity, womenfolk. He and all his children were intellectually brilliant. Sachi's father was Gundavadhani, a great Sanskrit scholar.  

Shankar had showed me the news magazine from Deutsche Welle [Voice of Germany, Cologne] that his father used to get.  From it, later, took me to the great hobbies of DX-ing/Shortwave Listening and Penfriendship. Details in another post.

In 11th I had failed.  And Shankar became my classmate for 12th [2nd PUC] and we often went to college together.  It was due to Shankar's simple teaching and clearing the doubts that rescued me get through a couple of troublesome subjects.  He made them look so simple, so easy!  So brainy he was.  He never seemed to study long hours. He was gifted in grasping the gist very quickly and was able to put it in simple and effective words and sentences.  He was never known for mugging up the lines, he never needed to, because his memory was very sharp.  It was not a wonder at all that all his school education was done on scholarship [the education dept. paid for meritorious students].  It was a great thing back then, much to some awe and envy of fellow mates.  Not surprisingly, his engineering, also with distinction found him a good job in Bengaluru where he moved and married silently and had moved to America!  That's when we had lost touch.

In the mid 70s I had introduced him to the 'katte', where a group of mostly mischievous friends in late teens, 'wasting time' at a particular spot in the neighbourhood and also played tennis ball cricket.  We were the silent ones, along with 2 others. He continued to go there even after I migrated to another group because of my joining a regular cricket club.  In later years, rarely, I used to see Shankar walking by when he visited home [from America] without stopping at our house.
It was a mystery and will remain so, permanently, because Shankar is no more.

Last April, news about his demise shocked me, as it did to everyone. He had suddenly died, found fallen from the bed at night.  It was not even 4 months since he visited.  And met so many old friends, including me.  As my mother was at home too when Shankar came, his childhood recollection about a couple of incidents with his little brother and grandmother had joyed her.

It makes me think what had driven him to meet so many of his old contacts this time.  Did something in him 'knew' it would be the last time?

When he went back to America, he wrote:

Dinu,
Attached is the picture we took yesterday.  Once again, it was great to meet you after a long time and to have the conversation with you and your mother.      Regards      S. Shankar 

This is the picture from his phone [taken by my w], as it is:

Though he said he had a happy family with grown up children, was it job stress that took its toll?  We may never know.
May his soul rest in peace.  

Pears Soap and Cyclopaedia

[To enlarge, click on the pictures, all in the post]

Many of us were fond of this transparent [actually translucent], oval shaped, darkish amber coloured, delightfully fragrant and mild bath soap. It was one of the very few soap brands, even doctors and paediatricians were safely recommending to patients esp. with sensitive skin.  Long lasting and hard, the fragrance filled the home when someone came out after a 'Pears bath'. How we enjoyed looking through the 'transparent' soap when it got thin!  How automatically we put it close to the nostrils to take in the smell when a new bar was opened for use!  'Pears soap' was not missed when the monthly list of 'essential items' to be bought was prepared.

Pears Soap is the world's oldest registered brand. Who made this beautiful soap? Andrew Pears. He had trained as a barber and had stepped into manufacturing cosmetics in 1781. Andrew was observing that people who used general cosmetic products were coming up with problems that resulted from the content of Arsenic and Lead in them.  So after experimentation he came up with a soap formula in 1789 with just a few ingredients like glycerin and natural oils that was gentle on the skin.  The first "Pears Transparent Soap" was marketed in 1807.  The virtues of the soap gained people's acceptance because it lived up to its claim as "pure soap".  'Pears' became a household name in the following decades for its pure quality and also due to vigourous marketing and advertising.  "Good morning, have you used Pears soap?" was one of several popular advertisement slogans used by Andrew Pears.

This Wiki link has plenty of information on Pears [Click]

~~~

A thumbnail sketch of Pears.

1781 - Andrew Pears, a Cornish barber sets up business;

1789 - soap first produced and sold by Andrew Pears at a factory just off Oxford Street in London, England, the world's first transparent soap;

1835 - grandson Francis Pears joined the business to form A. & F. Pears;

1838 - Andrew Pears retired;

Francis' son-in-law Thomas J. Barratt, [often considered as Father of modern advertising] joins the company; under the stewardship of Barratt, A. & F. Pears initiated a number of innovations in sales and marketing. According to Unilever records, Pears Soap was the world's first registered brand and is therefore the world's oldest continuously existing brand.

1862 - production of the soap moved to Isleworth;

1865 - Francis' son, Andrew, joined A. & F. Pears Ltd. as joint proprietor and ran the factory; Thomas J Barratt ran the head office in London.

1910s - A. &  F. Pears Ltd. became part of Lever Brothers and production moved to Port Sunlight, Cheshire, England;

2011 - Pears soap is now made in India by Hindustan Lever, a company in which Unilever controls a fifty-two percent stake.

~~~

Pears also started to publish a Cyclopaedia.  The first Pears' Shilling Cyclopaedia was published in 1897, it aimed to offer a taxonomy 'not of all knowledge, but of necessary knowledge'.  The edition from the following year, 1898, which seems to be the first the British Library has in its catalogue, is split into nine distinct sections: English Dictionary, General Knowledge, Dictionary of Synonyms, Desk Information (how to mix paint, postage rates, how to remove stains from books, the order of precedence of the Royal family, etc), Gazetteer of the World, Atlas of the World, Dictionary of Cookery, Language of Flowers and Medical Dictionary. Here, then, is a compact reference library in a single volume.
And this, the 1898 edition, my great grandfather, had purchased as early as 14.1.1899 for One Rupee.  Here is his account book entry:

Here are some images from this edition, which survived a bad termite attack on the bookshelf.  The paper has become very brittle.  I made some external repairs.

On the right is the 40th edition,  July 1931. Actually, it was published as and when they found demand for it, sometimes more than once a year. 

The first three pages.

The 'English Dictionary' section.

Termites can destroy libraries.

A page from the section 'Language of Flowers'.

There are several entries in my great grandfather's account books having purchased "Soap".  But he does not mention any name, like he mentions "Kesharanjan Oil" or "Eno's Fruit Salt".  So the brand he was bringing home remains a mystery.  It could be Pears, though there were brands like 'Vinolia' also at that time. That soap was also from England. 

My great grandfather's home library had two later editions of Pears Cyclopadeias, both printed in 1931, one in March and the other, July. One had survived with its jacket in tact.  [See picture] But his account book does not have any entry for having purchased these during 1931 or 32. It is also not known where they were sold.

Soap makers by appointment to Their Majesties The King and Queen [King George V / Queen Mary] and to Their Late Majesties Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.

The morning bath is baby's joy. With Pears he wants no other joy.

Pears' Soap is transparent because it is PURE! "It wears, but does not waste" ~ an ad of Pears, 1789.

It did not waste in my time also. When it became nearly paper thin, just before it could have snapped, it was stuck in the concave surface of the new cake.

The painting: St. Paul's from Blackfrairs Bridge, 1840, in possession of A & F Pears. 

3 million copies printed. July 1931.

"Bubbles" the painting [1886] by Sir John Everett Millais was purchased by Thomas Barratt in 1890, a famous advertisement for Pears soap.  See the soap near the shoe of the girl. In the 1931 edition.

Read the first two paras of the above. Interesting.

Section separators with interesting messages.

From the Atlas section.

Pages.

Section of Dictionary of Photography. Most of the jargon in it for the present 'digital' generation will be like Greek or Japanese!

In 2017, came the 125th edition by which time demand had gone down drastically and the publishers decided that the 126th would signal the final edition which was released this year, 2018. 

Pears' Cyclopaedia, 1897 - 2018. 

One tin box which my late aunt was fondly keeping is treasured.  

"The original glycerine beauty soap". 

This is a plastic freebie, a soap box Pears offered post 1995, along with a pack of three. 

The beautiful texture of Pears' soap, not too hard on the knife as to break nor too soft to stick to it was found by soap carving artists highly suitable for their crafts.  Around the year 1970, I remember having visited with my late aunt to the house of such an artist in Chamarajapuram's Balakrishna Road.   The best among his many displayed works I vividly remember was Krishna-Arjuna's chariot, a very complicated work of his, entirely from Pears soap, including the thin reins. It was somewhat like this wooden sample:

Millions of patrons found it hard to accept when Pears altered the original formula.  We were no exception and thereafter our Pears' priority dropped low. We are left to imagine and resort to olfactory memory to recall that 'heavenly fragrance'.

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