What is a Blouse Piece

In India, a blouse is a cloth thats worn inside a saree. It is supposed to cover the chest and some part of the shoulders and arms ( apparently the only way fashion designers can introduce any sort of fashion in this thing called saree is by setting arbitrarily varying lengths for the blouse in the arm region and introduce doors, windows plus some peep holes on the back and arms - thankfully!!). Of late northern influences in design elements have been found ( gagro choli) with their array of beads, sea shells ( yes the same pallanguzhi sozhi), mirrors and an entire range of amateur scout knots....Its a very important accesorry and fashion statement and chief ministers have election manifestos covering them. Stupid Serials are sold with TRA ratings going up with people speculating on the blouses worn by the comperers....

A blouse piece is a raw piece of cloth that is unstitched. Women take this piece of cloth and stich it to their respective sizes.

Buying a matching blouse piece?

Its eve's curse on man - final stone to break your back - after going through the naraga vedhanai of assiting your better half in buying a saree - if you have the misfortune of ending up on the southern Side of Panagal Park/Usman Road/Durai Sami road Junction - to the uninitated it will quite a site - do not be misled - its not the chief minister distributing flood relief - but people actually queing up to get inside saree and GOLD shops. GOlD man - the metal - get inside thanga malaigai after doing all possible asanas in finding a parking space, having to control your better half from zeroing on like a bee to a flowerbed - to get the attention of the sales guy - who looks and feels like he is the guy distributing puliyodarai prasadam at kabali koil - and you with utmost devotion seek his benevolent help in find the most audacious looking ornament ( god knows how one kammal or changili SUITS you better) - you have done all that and almost killed the sare shop attendant ( he would give good competition to paramatma ( aka NTR) in the vastra haranam scene - by being able to supply an endless stream of Ramar kalar, Kaapi kalar - mayil kalar -double border, single border - same border, attached border - and if by any further misfortune its not an attached border - you now have to go through this entire order ( like getting caught near the top in a snakes mouth in paramapadam - go down to the blouse shop).

Here the guy throws another deluge of cloth ( similar to the more color button on your paintshop pallette) - the worst thing is that no matter how many permutation combinations you work on - chances are that the first three shops will not have th exact same shade ( yet its no longer color -its shade - means you need to analyse the cloth under shop light and then go out into sun light). Finally if you are lucky and god thinks you have sufferred enough for the day, you better half sulks herself into settling with something that is somewhat matching -man you have lived to fight another day...

So What IS the deal with the Blouse piece?

Now in India we have something called "Ladies Sentiments" ( All plural even if it just refers to 1 lady and 1 sentiment). When women in India visit houses of other women, a blouse piece is given as a gift to the guest before she leaves. I have no idea why of all things it was decided that a blouse piece would be gifted to visiting guests. Lets say, there is a lady who is a complete stranger to the whole "Ladies Sentiments" thing and she visits someone's house in south India. How would she feel when the host gifts her and she opens the gift and find that its a blouse piece. What would she think? "Why this gift? Is there something wrong with the blouse I am wearing? Was it so bad that the host shuddered on looking my blouse and decided to jump out of the window buy a blouse piece and come and gift it to me?. Is the host being judgemental on me?"

What happens to these blouse pieces after they are gifted?

Now many caterpillars become butterflies, many boys become men. But the mutation of the blouse piece into an actual blouse is not that straightforward. The probability of a blouse piece becoming a blouse is 0.2. Thats right!! 2 out of every 10 blousepieces make it to the blouse level.
Think about Euros, Dollars, Rupees, Yen. Think about the CNBC advertisements where they show currency getting fastly printed and counted, people exchanging money rapidly in world business centers. You may not have heard of a currency called the blouse piece. This is the curency of south India. Statistics reveal that every minute of the day, 10 blouse pieces change hands. Women all over the world are travelling and exchanging blouse pieces rapidly.

When a blouse piece is receved as a gift, a lady decides what she has to do with it? If its of a color and material that she lacks at that moment, she will convert the blouse piece to an actual blouse (provided there are no further hitches in going and stitching it with a tailor).

But this conversion is very rare considering that fact that she has around 500 blouse pieces stocked in her cup board. This is the reason why the blouse piece remains a blouse piece for a long time. The life cycle of many blouse pieces are codemned. They stagnate as gift items for over 5 to 6 years until they are gifted to poor people or domestic maids. There again their chances of continuing as gifts are still bright.

This very moment thousands and thousands of blouse pieces are gifted and regifted. When time comes to a standstill and the yellow sun becomes a red dwarf star ( I think there is no supernova in this solar system and I debated for 5 seconds on whether our sun will becomes red dwarf or white dwarf), when all human beings have become extinct like dinosaurs and a new species begins to inhabit the earth. They will find thousands and thousands of unstitched blouse pieces lying around in the southern parts of the Indian subcontinent. Imagine what would they make of it.

If we judged dinosours based on fossils we found, what sort of judgement would they pass on human beings?

Nadar Kadai - Local Grocer Shop

In these days of Hyper-Super Malls and Supermarkets, overwhelmed at the sheer size and varieties, a feeling of Nostalgia triggered this post.

Those were the days, the nadar kadai had a special location requirement - like Muchandhi pillayar, the Indian God of Prosperity whos mini-sized temple are found almost always at a 3 road junction - The nadar kadai's had to be at a road junction - almost every locality, every little Borough and Lane and Pin-code in Chennai had a Nadar Kadai - they typically are general provisions merchant. Almost always run by a Nadar who are a enterprising group of people typically from the state of Thirunelveli in Southern Tamilnadu and they formed an important role in Effective Management Practices well before Business Schools started teaching the MBA, continue reading to know know how and please pay special attention to the letters marked in ALL CAPITAL letters.

Those were the days when The typical Nadar kadai will be dark, cramped, and smelly. It will be painted a drab Govinda (yellow) color - remanents of a badly done paint job from the previous century - flakes of this paint will always be peeling off - lit by a single fly specked 40 watts electric Bulb - carry rickety old name boards ( made out of flattened recycled Edible Oil Tin Cans.. I think) invariably named as Murugan Stores, Amman Stores, Jyothi Stores, some Lakshmi Stores etc.

PERSONNEL

It will have, in its employ, three muscular young men, collectively called "Payya", wearing a very checked lungi and yellowish (bordering on brown) arms banian (soaked in sweat). It will almost always have a few gunny sacks in the entrance, each filled rice, tamarind and kal Uppu (rock Salt).

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Also vying for space with these would be the stacks of crates for empty cool drink bottles. Oils were stacked on aluminium trays (so that when the oil cans leak they can be collected back, and probably poured back into the cans).

Inside, shelves are crammed with glass jars neatly stacked with all kinds of biscuits and 'cakes'. 'Cooling drinks' bottles, notebooks, pens, pencils, bangles, 'sticker pottus' and other merchandise.

A few paper mache stacks of eggs give company to covers of Plastic toys in striking pink, Yellow, Red and Green. Across the length and breadth of the shop, run grimy ropes from which hang ream after ream of sachets.

Sachets of chips, kodal ( the yellowish fries which you wear like rings on your fingers), Sunsilk and Velvette shampoos, touching touching ( lime pickles), Sugary candies, Chewing gum plus smaller packets of Cashewnut, Cardomom etc - so that a important guest can be hurriedly served payasam or kesari with garnishings.. Of late, this cramped interior also boasts individual refrigerators for Pepsi and Coke.

CONSUMER CREDIT

The Nadar has two kinds of customers - the regulars and the yet-to-be-converted. The regulars are identified by means of their bible they carry - the Account book. This tiny pink book bound with a dark blue binding - lists the purchases the customer has made, the amount he or she owes the store and her ledger number. A rudimentary system of credit, the account book allows a regular customer to buy now, pay later. Note the ever present ball point pen in its holder ( stuck behind the ear)

ORDER PROCESSING

The process of trade begins - our shoppers has his list ready and nadar in a voice that has been tempered by years of shouting to subordinates calls to his payyas - and as if by magic, hands retrive the various items from the dark corners, measure it on the tharasu ( weighing scale), and parcel it up in old newspapers (RECYCLING)- and out materialises the stuff neatly arranged in card board boxes. Nadar, does his calculations on a small piece of paper he has similar sized one side paper spiked on a sharpened gunny needle (FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT) - Once this is done,the amounts are posted into the account book is handed over, the owner makes her strange notations, throws in a few free bees (CUSTOMER ROYALTY PROGRAM) and off the shopper goes.

Its amazing that the above is applicable to all nadar shops - like they are an unofficial chain of retail shops following similar EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT PRACTISE

Kamarkat

I am a sucker for sweets. We always used to salivate at the thought of Dad coming back Home - with his goodie bag - especially the Swiss chocolates - the big bars with lots of nuts inside.....having grown up on Nutrine -the dark green toffee and then the Maha Lacto ( yellow wrapper) you could just not stop with one - the Swiss ones were like water to a desert rat.

Well now there are always the dairy milk fruit & nut, toblerone bars and ferro rocher......If you are already salivating - wait this blog is not about these but on its poorer desi cousin - caramellised jaggery and sugar and just a hint of coconut - Friends, South Indians and Country people, lend me your senses.

The Kamarkat (ka-mar-cut and NOT to be pronounced like meer-kat), to my mind, cannot be defined for someone who has not tried it. This along with elantha vadai,then ( honey) mittai, javvu mittai, Kodal ( precursor to your fry's) and everlasting raw manga uppu molaga podi....... Was the menu of many a school gateside takeaway those days. But this is for my fellow kamarkat lovers...

The professional ones that we got at the school shop were dark brown, wrapped in a transparent plastic paper so you could pick and choose the darkest,vilest brown turning to black. You could tell these were the tastiest and would last longest. And those were the days when you could produce a princely rupee and walk away with enough kamarkat to feed a kingdom.

I remember we had to time the purchase well. Because, the kamarkat would last a really long while and you simply could not get caught with a sweet in your mouth in class. So preparations would be to finish lunch in a jiffy, skip over to the shop shop and buy an armfull of kamarkat and run before the watchman/teacher caught you 'what-are-you-going-to-do-with-so-many-sweets-that-can-spoil-your-teeth- and- give-you-four-kinds-of-stomach-worms?!'. You don't want to be answering those kind of questions, do you?

Anyways, this is not so much about them, as it is about sinking your teeth into that gooey 'goli', and letting the slow effusion of sweet-yet-a-little-bitter jaggery take over. It kind of lets the juice out - gives you a high immediately - like as though u r on dope, sorry for the bad example, there is no perfect-er metaphor: it's like the kamarkat knows exactly when to release the juices, just like the stent lets out the drug to keep your artery unblocked!

The best treat was to be able to suck on it forever and a little more and then push around a few slivers of coconut in your mouth,when forever ended and so did the kamarkat. Ah! The pleasure of that!

But then, the kamarkat died. After a while, they simply stopped making it anymore. Which is when you tried to make do with the 'poornam' used to make the sweet kozhukattai, but no siree, we're just not there at all!

It's not as rock solid as the 'pro' ones we could buy off the push carts, 'Naadar kadais' or oddly, convent school TUCK shops.....but surprise surprise have found a variant of this in singapore - but the taste borders on kamarkat and alwa.....

Need to go to vyasarpadi to replenish the stock next time I am in india.....

Those were the Days

This is dedicated to the wonderful kids who were born in India and survived
First, we survived being born to mothers, some, whose husbands smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate whatever food was the put on table, and didn't get tested for diabetes. They were mothers who did not check their blood pressure every few minutes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs and bassinets were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. We were put in prams and sent out with ayahs to meet other children with ayahs, whilst our parents were busy. We cried, were picked up and cuddled by the ayahs/akkas/auto vallah/petty shopkeeper and were quiet again.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking or going out on our own. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags. We sat on each other's laps for God's sake.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We would share a dosa, dip a chapatti into someone else's plate of curry without batting an eyelid. We ate jam sandwiches or pickle on bread and butter, raw mangoes with salt that set our teeth on edge, and drank orange squash with sugar and water in it. We ate at roadside stalls, drank water from tender coconuts, ate everything that was bad for us from mairu mittai to Bhel Puri to bhajias and samosas, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! There was never a child - not one single child - who was obese! We would leave home in the morning and play all day during the holidays, we were never ever bored, and we were allowed freedom all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on, or when our parents told us to do so. No one was able to reach us all day by mobile phone or phone. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours making paper kites, building things out of scraps with old pram wheels or cycle rims, inventing our own games, playing traditional games called hide and ride old cycles and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem by digging our heals into the road ( hurt and cut like hell). We swam with an inflated tube which we got from somebody who was replacing their car tyres. We ran barefoot without thinking about it, if we got cut we used iodine on it which made us jump. We did not wash our hands ten times a day. And we were OK.

Our parents trusted us to go on picnics with everyone and anyone, a friend of a friend would be OK and we survived. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no I-Pods, no internet or internet chat rooms, no TV, full stop.
We did not have parents who said things like "What would you like for breakfast/lunch/dinner?" We ate what was put in front of us and best of all , there was never any leftovers.

We polished the lot. WE HAD FRIENDS, great friends, whose parents we called Uncle and Aunty, and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees numerous times, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no compensation claims from these accidents. We ate fruit lying on the ground that we shook down from the tree above. And we never washed fruit. We had a bath using a bucket and mug and used Lifebuoy soap. We did not know what conditioners meant. If we did have the odd stomach ache, the gripe water was handy solution.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode cycles everywhere and someone sat on the carrier or across the bar to school or the pictures not cinema, or you walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Not everyone made it into the teams we wanted to. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation of ours has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! Those were the days!! - VJ