Tag: memories

  • Kochi Chronicles – Part 2

    ….continued from Part 1

    Much as Willingdon Island has remained unchanged, Cochin itself has a completely different story to tell. As I’ve mentioned before, each time I visit, I am presented with a new landmark and a demise of an older one which belonged to an earlier era.

    For lunch, we decided to go to a trusted old timer – Tandoor. At Chillies (1st Floor) they serve an excellent Andhra meal. It’d been a while since I tried the Chicken Biriyani, so I chose to have that while D and the other M hogged the meals. No meal in Tandoor is complete without their special Kadai Chicken, so we shared a half plate. Amazing as it has always been.

    Chillies hasn’t changed a bit though Tandoor downstairs keeps changing the decor. A dimly lit ambiance that somehow manages to freeze time. Helped by the huge photos from a long gone era. (the owner is related to the Travancore Sisters, so you can find many like these featuring them and MGR/Sivaji Ganesan)

    The plan for the afternoon was ‘Beautiful‘. A movie we missed in Bangalore. We watched it at Padma, one of the several ‘feminine’ theaters Cochin is famous for. Most of them have survived, though the multiplexes have begun their march. Beautiful lived up to its name, and I loved the way they have quietly, but wonderfully shot the city and Fort Kochi in the movie. The day before, the other M had asked us to note a house in Fort Kochi – the one that had been featured in the movie.

    In the evening, I met a friend whom I knew from Bangalore. K suggested the Cocoa Tree on MG Road, a place that has consistently ticked me off whenever I have visited, but is still a fave hangout for many in Cochin. She had moved to Cochin only a while back and I quizzed her on her first impressions. A city in transition, we both agreed, and something that reminded her of Bangalore a couple of decades ago.

    To me it was still a small ‘town’, where most people still knew most other people. I probably bored her, talking of old landmarks and routes to school, and how the skyline has changed since then. I told her that I’d never felt a Cochin culture, something I could sense strongly in Trivandrum, Kozhikode, Trichur etc. Cochin has always been Kerala’s big city, changing too fast to have crafted an identity beyond that. She showed me the photo of her house with an awesome balcony view. Once again, I began thinking of where my final home would be. Oh yes, it would be fun to walk the roads as an old man – to walk past the Public Library, where I have spent so many hours, the CISF grounds whose pitch has seen many of my ‘spin experiments’, the school and its surrounding areas which has seen me transition from walking to cycles to a motor vehicle, Foreshore Road, where a dimly lit university computer room hosted my first forays into the internet, and so many many others. But would they be the same? A thought that crossed my mind when I walked back home, seeing familiar faces that had grown older, same people, doing the same things, even as time passed by. A mirror of a different sort.

    Dinner was at Kahawa, the owners were the other M’s friends. A coffee shop+ with a distinct character. Hand painted wall art, a book lending mechanism ( a tie up with another of their friends) and reasonably decent food. They also have a section upstairs which is opened on days that Manchester United has a match on. Also available are group discounts and discounts for the Mayor on Foursquare. 🙂

     

        

    We tried the Mango Italian Soda, which could have done a better job with the fizz. The Choco Chiller was significantly better and so was the Mint Hot Chocolate.

     

    In the main course, K had recommended the mashed potato and Meat Sauce, but the Roast Pork was too tempting. But sadly, it just about passed muster, as did the Chicken a la Kiev. The best dish was the Grilled Fish with Mornay Sauce. Once again D was the one who got lucky! There were a few options for dessert, but nothing that we really fancied.

    Before we left for the airport, we stopped at Malabar Chips – banana chips for Bangalore. Familiar faces, though they didn’t recognise me. Except for one person. 🙂 I wondered if this was the idea of home – a place that you can come back to after several years and still be  recognised, a place that thus gives you a sense of belonging.

    As we passed the North Bridge, we saw the first signs of the Kochi Metro construction. There was a line that stayed with me long after ‘Beautiful’ – “Maturity is the loss of innocence” It probably is true of cities too, and I wondered if it was only incidental that there were huge hoardings of a TOI launch on Feb 1st.

    We detoured through the University, and though the place shows small signs of transformation every time I visit, there are parts of it that refuse to change. Islands in time. Places where I could stand and travel back in time, because the settings were the same, all I had to do was remember. But I had a flight to catch, and a journey to end.

    until next time, timed travel

  • Timestamps

    Thanks to the weird processes of online tax filing, I had to go to a real post office sometime back, and realised that I hadn’t visited one in at least 8 years! That’s the time we have been in Bangalore. I clearly remember frequenting the one near home in Cochin, and the one in Goa, housed within the GIM building. But 8 years is a long time. The Rs.5/ Rajiv Gandhi stamp was something I’d never seen before and told me how out of touch I was.

    Like many others, I too used to list ‘collecting stamps’ as a hobby. I remember the last time I was in Cochin, I fished out the briefcase that has been the caretaker of my stamp collection for many many years now. The collection had a much humbler residence in its early days, when I was in school. I only realised later that Dad had an interest too and can now imagine how horrified he must have been when he found that foreign stamps could be bought from stationery stores. Fake stuff, but good enough for ‘exchanges’ at school.

    The circular Singapore one, triangles, ‘diamonds’, Malaysian butterflies. There was even a ‘3D’ one, from Bhutan apparently! The circle, a few triangles and the butterflies were original, I think. 🙂 Later, a grand uncle, who could actually lay claim to serious philately gave me his entire collection which included a lot of first day covers and half/1 anna (currency not hazare) envelopes. Priceless stuff!

    That’s around the time when dad gave me the briefcase, though I can’t remember why. It used to be the one he carried to office, and was special because it had a number lock! Yes, it was fancy then. Along with albums, the entire collection had a new home. After a few years, it was ignored, thanks to the many other interests that made their way into life. Many years later, I chanced upon the briefcase, and realised I had forgotten the code! I somehow remembered it, but became paranoid about it and gave the briefcase a makeover, one that can now be described as a Ghajini theme. All over its wonderful brown exterior, the number now exists – in various sizes and colours, courtesy the magic of permanent markers!

    And that’s how I found it in the room, coated with a layer of dust, and safe behind a bookshelf, housing those tiny pieces of paper that allowed messages to travel over distances. Mobiles, email, social networks and evolution of self and others, all have contributed to the demise of a snail mail culture that included among other things, pen friends and chain mails, a glimpse of the person through his/her handwriting and the sheer joy of a mail waiting for you when you reach home.

    And with that, perhaps a related hobby is also forced to breathe its last. This generation will probably be among the last to know of post offices and a hobby called philately. I wonder what the legacy of the stamp collection is. Maybe the briefcase is just like the other baggage that I own, a friend who reminds me of an earlier era, whose story and context end with me.

    until next time, a briefcase history

  • Memories Unlimited

    I was thinking about memories one day, and suddenly decided to figure out my earliest memory. I was dismayed to find that the earliest one I could remember was 1st Standard, the colour of the round badge I wore on my tie and the bus I went to school in.

    I looked at old photographs of mine, and tried to figure out if I could remember what was happening while the picture was being taken. I saw the badge and the uniform, and wondered if my mind was playing a trick on me by ‘creating’ a memory from the raw material available. ( since I must have seen this photo earlier many times) As the photos became more recent, I could remember more and more, and recent photos, especially the travel ones, still seem fresh. But for how long? I began to wonder if all those vacation photos and the lifestreaming is a wasted effort. Thankfully, I document a lot of things, creating as many memory aids as possible. Videos help too, and yet…

    A relative is traveling to the Czech Republic. A couple of decades ago, the currency and capital would’ve been ‘delivered’ (in my mind) without prompting, or being asked for. Now I probably have to google for that data. But I remember the prayers I used to say daily then, and from the order in which I can chant them, I can even remember the way the deity pictures were hung in the room, though I haven’t said those prayers regularly in years. Ditto for certain Carnatic music kirtanams.  Practice may or may not make perfect, but it certainly fixes it to memory, along with a ton of associated memories from another age. 🙂

    I wanted to augment this post with something Anu had shared a while ago on Twitter – a post titled ‘The unaugmented mind‘, which is on the same topic. The irony was that I remembered that she had shared it, but had no idea on the source itself. Thanks to my own twitter backup and a third party search tool, that was remedied soon. When she shared this, I remarked that I remember weird things I mostly found unnecessary and said I wished we could choose the things we wanted to store in our memory, like virtual world filing systems. Sometime soon, I hope, but I doubt whether even the perfect documentation would capture the way we felt then, because we will have changed. But maybe the augmented human will change that too.

    until next time, what’s your earliest memory? 🙂

  • False Memories

    I read this interesting post titled ‘Time traveler‘, thanks to a Reader share. (Mo?) Its about memories not being the same for two people, even if they’re part of the same events in life. So, who’s to say which memory/recollection is real and which is not? “The past is just a reconstruction of our minds, then.”

    I came across a similar thought in ‘Lunatic in My Head’, where a twenty-something guy plays slides from two decades back. Though he’s present in the slides, he has no memories of them, and he felt that it was unfair that his parents should possess those memories, but he doesn’t, even though he was present in the slides. He is forced to rely on his parents’ recollections, but sometimes rebels by creating stories and arguing with them.

    Maybe these reconstructions of the mind are based on an identity we have created for ourselves at that particular point in time – in the present. So all events, people, concepts, understandings are seen through that prism? And as time moves on, the prisms change too, like some sort of kaleidoscope, where every memory gets rearranged in context, based on our changing perceptions, notions and views.

    And not all the photos and posts and tweets and videos can ever be free of a prism, some prism. Maybe we change our own memories too.

    until next time, prism break.

  • Oh, numb!

    While I was handling the high frequency burping that signifies the completion of the meal above, my phone rang. It was an ex-colleague, but more importantly, dear friend and a fellow mallu. I picked it up, expecting a loud ‘Happy Onam’ from the other end. She was working, and wanted a person’s number. I wished her a happy onam, and without missing a breath, got a “Oh, I forgot” response.

    That perhaps typifies this generation of living-outside-Kerala Malayalis. That’s a generalisation, of course, and a huge one at that, because thankfully, I know many of my fellow Keralites who religiously go home every Onam, come what may, and have a blast. But as every Onam passes, I can feel it slipping away.

    Ten days of holidays – a cousin reunion, the hustle and bustle of a sadya preparation, to a day taken off from college to visit a relative’s house for the sadya, to figuring out which new movies are being shown on the telly for Onam and scanning the papers for a restaurant that serves a good sadya, obviously it wasn’t just me who grew up.

    I suspect that it might not get any better, and as a statement in Malayala Manorama went,  I might even get used ‘eating a sadya in the mind’. This generation still has its (mostly office) pookkalams and the sadya. For those that come later, the sadya will perhaps just be a meal by itself.

    until then, happy onam 🙂

    PS: The legend, the Ram Gopal Varma version, and the tag.