The Matriarch

Ok...... Let me enlighten you on the system followed in Nair families towards Palakkad side. We follow the matriarchate system, where the society looks upon to the lady of the house and not the man. We have our last names coming from our maternal genre and do not carry on our father's name, but rather our mother's family name. It is a society where the birth of a girl child is considered a big boon or else there would be no one to carry forward the family name. The girl is still a part of her mother's house after marriage and does not go to the her husband's home. These traditions have changed a lot because of the metro lives, but whatever; The boy has little rights at his parents house after marriage. The girl still carries the torch of her parents until she passes it on to her daughter!!! Now is this not amazing??? If this system had been followed throughout India then maybe we would have had lesser murders of the female breed.

Let me leave that to you to contemplate upon......

Ok.. Why not have a debate on Matriarchal vs Patriachal society??? :)

GrandaMa

‘Grandmother’ - This word emancipates very affectionate and caring illusions in the morbid minds of people and also with a sweet uniqueness of its own.

I have read a lot in books about very caring and sweet grandmothers who hug and kiss their grandchildren and pamper them to wildest ranges of imagination. But my Grandmother was very different. She was almost 6 feet tall, had a broad body frame, more like a man, wore only white, a typical icon of a widow taking care of both the man’s and lady’s work at home. And… let me tell you, she hated cuddling and pampering children, especially if they were her own grandchildren. You wont believe this if I told you but I was actually scared of my grandmother (maybe at that age) . But now, when I look back at the garlanded photograph of hers in our home, I mull over things and realize that the fear had slowly developed into a grudging respect over the years . Even today, after 12 years past her death, I feel the same respect and idolism when I look upto her framed photograph.

Ah!! Now I remember.. I was having this gut feeling that I was fogetting something. Usually when I speak of my Grandmother, people automaticaly tend make associations with my fathers parents. But it is not so. My Grandmother is my Mother's Mother. I have never stayed even for a single day with my father's mother. Nothing personal, just....... I dont know what to say.

Maybe you may think it to be very foolish.. But I feel she is very close to Mr.God up there. So if I have to get any work done from The Almighty, I use her recommendation. Now is that bad?? I don’t think so. People do the same down here at earth . I’m just doing it at a much more higher standards.

Hmmmm… Sometimes its good to have connections at a High Levels. Big Shot Me eh?? ;)

I, Me, Myself

So where were we? Ah! yes, let me put on a little light how I came into existence into this not so wonderful world and that may also tell you why i chose this name for my blog. So here we go :)

2nd December,1982........

The night was dark and cold. There was a slight drizzle, the ones caused by retreating monsoons. In a small village hospital, a mother and her womb were struggling at the same time (eventually this happens to be my mother). Dr. Vijayan, my uncle was in consultation with the gynecologist and other doctors. This is one thing what I don’t like about doctors. When they form a group, they behave as if they are smartest creatures in the universe and the rest of the world, just dumb bees. And just to prove themselves, they put in a lot of medical jargon into their conversation. I personally feel, they do that just to avoid the outer world from recognizing their blunderous selves.

Anyway, I suppose I’m deviating a lot much. Ok, back now.... :)

After a lot of apprehension and suspense, finally at 2:17 am the first wails of a new born girl child broke the silence of the hospital cells (I call them cells because the hospital rooms are worse and smaller that prison cells). And … well there is a lot of stuff but I don’t want to go into details.

My father was in Delhi when I was born. I was brought home to my grandmother by Amma and Leela Valiyaama.

Let me give you the insight of my birth, as I put it :

“When you come into this world, you cry while the whole world rejoices. Leave the world in such a way that you rejoice and the whole world cries.”

One Year Completed....... (Continued....)

Let us proceed.....
Next day we landed in Chennai, and went straight to Hotel Ramada Raj Park. Chinni Uncle (my father's childhood friend), took us there, as chennai was pretty new to us.
The hotel was good, only the company did not allow my parents to stay with me over there. Well they could, only we had to pay Rs 500/- extra per head. And at that time my parents could not afford that. A lot had gone into my sisters's admissions and other related stuff. My father had got tranferred to Delhi, so he was getting ready for the trip. And expenses at home etc etc etc...

Well whatever, let me tell you one thing, me and my parents were very impressed. Well I dont know if you would understand why we were impressed by a normal 3 star hotel stay and the kind of treatment we were given by the company. Hmmmmm maybe I should tell you a little bit about myself and how I was brought up before we proceed......

One Year Completed..........

Hello Bloggy,

Today is the 20th of June,2005. Let me update you on what was happening this time last year....Or maybe a little further behind....

16 June,2004... Evening 6:30

Me, Amma and Papa were all set.. I was checking and double checking my joining letter, certificates and all other relavant papaers.. Amma was packing the dinner in aluminium foil.. Papa was talking to the Auto Guy and checking up the the train timings.. I was tensed,very tensed.. But guess, did not show it out. Why bother parents unnecessarily, they alraedy have so may things in mind. Papa was concerened about how the job is going to be, how about the food and all. Amma's major concern was my boarding and the safety for girls. And my major botheration was...(well I dont even know if it was botheration or excitement!!!) "Finally I am going to face the real world!!!" The real world, where nobody is going to ask you questions... You earn your own penny, spend it and save it (as you wish :) ) . Cook and eat for yourself and now i could actually get things for my parents and sis out of "My Own Money!!!". Now isn'nt that Wonderful?!. Means.......frankly i did not what I was feeling.....

The Origin.......

The idea of writing blogs was frightening for me at the very beginning. It was like publishing my personal diary in the public :). But then I started reading the blogs written by some of the people I know and I found it real interesting. I did not have to disclose my personal life in these blogs. It was just a way of pouring out your thoughts, some which you wanted the rest of the world to know, some things which you could not speak or if you spoke it would be very comfortable or convenient.

So I thought, why not… Let me give it a shot. Don’t know how long this craze would last but lets see.

The first and foremost task was to find a suitable name for my blog site. I started with “Astitva” and found it quite promising. But was stuck up with the tag line. Finally, when my sister came up with one, we found to our dismay that the name was not available by the blogger.com site.

So there began our quest for yet another nomenclature procedure, this time pausing at “Tatva”. Hmmmm…. Not bad……..But lo and behold… Sorry Not Available.

Ok lets settle down for something very normal and common. Hmmm … How about
"Nirvana” ?? Too hi-fi eh??

We were just browsing and I was drawn towards the name “Karma”. More than the name, I was drawn towards the meaning of the name . If you are still not bored, you can carry on or you can stop here without losing the essence of the rest of the contents…….

Google search revealed the following definitions for Karma :

Cause and Effect. From an absolute standpoint, karma is the circumstance of the moment. Relatively, it is the endless chain of cause and effect that defines the future events of an individual’s life.

Karma or Kamma (Pali) 'action, effect, fate'. It is the sum of a person's actions, regarded as determining that person's future states of existence. The law of Karma originated in the Vedic system of religion, otherwise known as Hinduism or Sanatan Dharma (perennial faith). As a term, it can at the latest be traced back to the early Upanishads, around 1500 BC.

These held good but the finality in choosing the name “Karma” for my blog site was this:

Karma is a programmers toolkit for scientific computing with communications support, event management, data structure manipulation, graphics display and user interface support. Karma was developed by R. Gooch. AIPS++ is using Karma for a StorageManager and for graphics. Information on Karma may be found at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/karma.

Now Howzzzat??