Physical Pain and Mental Anguish…

Even while in pain, preparing for a surgery, I lose a close friend — N S Kumar

 

When physical pain and a sense of personal loss converge, the effect can be overwhelming. And, here I am breaking my nine-day blog silence with some sad news — the person who was my friend, guide, mentor and guardian in Singapore passed away today of a sudden heart attack when he was driving back home after a dialysis. But for N S Kumar, a leading management consultant and former principal of a business school in Singapore, I may not have survived for so long in Singapore. He and his family meant everything to us.

 

When I first came to Singapore in 1991, he made me stay at his home though I had not even met him prior to that — my father just happened to know some of his close relatives in Chennai.  What is even more unforgettable is the extent to which he went to reach me. He did not know where I was put up. So he called the newspaper group that sponsored my trip, found out my accommodation particulars and gave me a buzz at the hotel I was staying in. All this painstaking effort for someone he hardly knew! But when we met the next day we hit it off and became great friends.

 

One Large Family: Then, after I came here again in February 1994 to take up a job, he and a nephew of his were my companions every evening. Everyday my dinner was at his home, then during the weekends it was fun unlimited — attending social get-togethers/Singapore Indian association celebrations, going for a swim and visiting the homes of his relatives and friends with him for more than just networking. It was like being a part of one large family.

 

They were precious moments as they were my first three months on a job in Singapore. My family joined me later in May. Our families bonded well, so we hardly missed India. His wife, a school teacher, and his two children (a daughter who is a doctor in the U.K. and a son who studied at Yale and lives in the U.S.) all had love for us, and it was reciprocal. My second daughter’s first baby photo was taken by Kumar annan at his home and that is what we still have in our living room. That will be one of the many things that will keep his memory alive in us. Coincidentally, we shared the same birth date — May 26, only he was 11 years older than me. We will all miss him forever. May his soul rest in peace.

 

This news came in even when I was going through a personal health challenge. I have been diagnosed with jaundice and a gallbladder problem that has left me with the only option of removing the organ from my system. I have to first undergo a procedure called ERCP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERCP) to remove any stones from the bile duct and then 24 hours later go for a surgery to have the gallbladder itself removed. So, it has been sleepless nights since Friday not so much because of any morbid fear of the knife but because of acute chest and abdominal pains that persist through the night — one of the symptoms of the gallbladder problem.

 

–G Joslin Vethakumar

 

Birthdays and all that!

Birthdays and other such occasions have never resonated well with me. Not that I show no emotions, it is just that they seldom get effusive. Also, I like to lie low without any razzle-dazzle. I was born in May, which meant the whole month was celebration time for me as it was summer vacation time for schools in Madras. On the flip side, though, I never had the early-schooling privilege of listening to my classmates sing "happy birthday to you."

 

The lack of that experience was perhaps why I grew up hating any spotlight on me. That was possibly why, too, I enjoyed playing chess, a game that allowed me to display a calm aggression on the board in contrast to the quiet demeanour I exhibited off it.

 

But birthdays mean the world to party animals and to those who love attention. I stay clear of these traits. So do my children, though my younger daughter is a little more outgoing than the rest of us in the family. Nonetheless, both always try and preempt me from celebrating their birthdays with guests. The few people we are close to do occasionally come over. This year, though, it was quieter than usual.

 

Well, all this beating about the bush is just to say that today was my elder daughter’s birthday … and we departed from tradition by not even cutting a cake at her request. It was the same with my wedding anniversary yesterday as well. January and February are clearly important months for us, with my second daughter’s birthday fallling on India’s Republic Day.

 

So, happy birthday Vino! Good thing this time of the year is vacation time in Australia, so she gets to be with us here in Singapore.

 

–G Joslin Vethakumar

Obama calls it height of irresponsibility…

Methinks it is height of Uncle Sam’s inanity….

 

So Barack Obama thinks it was "the height of irresponsibility" for Wall Street company executives to have dished out US$18 billion in bonuses in 2008 even as they were begging for big bucks from the U.S. Government.

 

Methinks….that it was the height of inanity for Uncle Sam to have doled out easy money to fraudulent, failed companies on the ill-founded presumption that it will put the economy back on track. But newspapers in the U.S. are already flush with reports about how the financial institutions that received the largesse are friterring it away on staff junkets, lavish parties and hefty pay packets for their surviving staff. A Citicorp executive even used the company jet for a Christmas holiday with family at a resort that charges US$10,000 per night. But then this is just the tip of the iceberg!

 

The best way out of the mess will have been to let dying companies die. The world will have been better off without them/

 

Why try to save criminals? To make them rise from the ashes and inflict more damage on the world by going back to their old ways?

 

As Mao Tse Tung will have said, "let a thousand new flowers blossom" to bring about a fresh aroma to remove the stink emanating from American companies, particularly in the finance industry, and pervading the world.

 

G Joslin Vethakumar

Grandmasters who are consistent losers must be stripped of title

Top-seeded Sasikaran at the bottom in Corus tournament

Sasikaran, India’s best chess hope after V Anand, had a disastrous showing in the just-concluded Corus tournament in the Netherlands. He was seeded number 1 at the event, but lost seven of the 13 rounds and just about saved himself the ignominy of finishing last. I cannot remember a top-seeded player putting in such a poor performance in any chess tournament.

It has happened in tennis tournaments with the number-one-ranked player occasionally getting kicked out in the first round. But that is not tantamount to finishing last. A bad day at the tennis court for the champion and a solid day for an underdog can tilt the scales.

But a champion being a consistent loser and finishing almost last in a chess tournament is something unthinkable. So, now Sasikaran has that dubious honour.

Substandard fare: I think if a player dishes out substandard fare, he must be stripped of his grandmaster title. “Once a grandmaster, always a grandmaster” is not something I agree with. If someone does not live up to his ranking, he has to be subjected to some checks and balances so that he does not continue to carry the title of grandmaster.

I am not just talking about Sasikaran, there are many grandmasters who consistently perform worse than international masters.  

This must be a point to ponder for the chess federation (FIDE)! They do have the ELO rating system under which players lose or gain points based on their performances in tournaments. But FIDE must take it one step further and have an expiry period for the grandmaster title. – losers cannot hang on to it for life! At best, they can be known as former grandmasters!

— G Joslin Vethakumar

Nagesh: End of a Glorious Chapter in the History of Tamil Cinema

When I heard about the death of Nagesh, one of Indian cinema’s geniuses, last night, I started stressing the remote control, hurriedly switching from one Indian TV channel to another to see if any of them was intelligent enough to flash the news. It ended up in disappointment as all of them, including Sun TV and Vijay TV as well as the local Tamil channels in Singapore, were merrily blasting away with their regular shows.

I then turned to the Indian news portals online. I checked out Rediff first. It is so preoccupied with hot blondes and the world’s most desirable women that it has had no space to carry a report on his death even today.

The Hindu disappointed, too, though it carried a good obit today. The New Indian Express and NDTV, however, did have a report online last night itself. None of the other Indian publications had it in their headlines. That shows how poor they are in terms of near real-time updates on the Web.

Nagesh has been one of my favourite actors since I started watching Tamil cinema. He unfailingly delivered clean, well-timed mirth and laughter — movie after movie almost until his death. I found his style strikingly original, despite he being likened to Jerry Lewis, with a spontaneity few can match.

Powerful Speaker: Almost two decades ago, I had the opportunity to meet him at the annual-day function of a social service group my mother runs. He had the small gathering at the Museum theatre in Egmore (Chennai), most of them underprivileged people, spellbound with a speech, almost extempore and laced with interesting anecdotes from his own life, on how the human spirit can hardly be overrun by adversity.Need I say then that he was much more than a film personality!  I shared the stage with him as I presented the vote of thanks.

His versatility stretched beyond acting, with some of the finest directors of his time, including Balachander and Sridhar, counting on his creative genius to make their films enduring masterpieces – Server Sundaram, Thiruvilayadal and Kadhalikka Neramillai, to name a few. Even in Avvai Shanmughi and Panchatantram, two of his recent movies (and both with arguably India’s finest actor, Kamalahasan), he came up with stellar performances. In Vasool Raja, MBBS, another Kamal smasher, Nagesh moved audiences to tears as a father who felt cheated by his quack-son. 

Therein was his rare strength – an innate, emotive ability, in one vein, to essay serious roles with ease, fervour and an intensity they warrant even as he could have moviegoers in splits with unadulterated humour.

The death of Nagesh marks the end of a glorious chapter in the history of Tamil cinema. But history will remember him as one of the stalwarts of Indian cinema.

— G Joslin Vethakumar