Maiden pilgrimage to Sabarimala

I feel all new. A Malikappuram. Just returned from Sabarimala with Manu, my son.I did not even have to stand in any queue! Surprising in this season. Never expected such a lovely darshan, not once but twice, once thanks to my friend, Mohanan Pillai, of The New Indian Express, who is posted there. The policemen were very courteous and helpful. The fact that the descent was 'kadhinam  entayyappa' does not stand in the feeling of achievement and fulfilment. I never ever thought that a woman of my mass would make it there! A quick decision without much discussion to make the pilgrimage to Sabarimala made it possible. The fact that I was the only devotee in salwar does surprise, because as you age, this is the best attire for travel and such a pilgrimage. And the joke is that I wear it only when I travel and not otherwise! I believe I made it because I did not wear a sari.
The climb, darshan and descent is inspiring, educative and an eye-opener in so many ways. It just breaks your ego, teaches you to stretch  yourself  to the fullest possible and makes you understand that anything is possible if there is a will and when faced with no alternatives, you really can do it! This new learning, applied in life, can help you much, I think.
While making a maiden pilgrimage, it is strange that veterans don't tell you much! People feel that everything 'is understood'. It's not.
 I would include these among the tips for kanni Ayyappans: Climb slowly as the hoardings say. You conserve energy that way. Breathing in and out regularly helps, which I learnt only at the fag end! Use the oxygen parlours if you are so out of breath that you feel your heart will strike work. ( I did not)  Resting for some time is okay, never mind if people file past you like P T Usha.Slow and steady does win the race, as I learnt quite late.  There is no need to feel that you have to keep up with people you started out with. Circumstances, body build and weight are different. Well, next time!

Limericks

Limericks are meant to be funny, they are five lines long, they say.

Serious matter
Nobody takes you seriously?
Ha..Pop in some sleeping pills.
When rigor mortis sets in..
They'll at last take you seriously...
But you won't see it, silly!

Tira review

Tira, Vineeth Sreenivasan's latest movie, IS different. Malarvadi Arts Club was a sort of internsgip film and Thattathin Marayathu a surefire hit subject, romance and young love. But Tira goes off at a tanget, subjectwise. He heads straight to untrodden paths in Malayalam cinema, with a pace so fast that at the end of the cinema, you are sapped and are back to reality.
The story is topical, of the seamy side of cities and ugly exploitation, complete with the political - business nexus. More on the story will be unfair to both the makers and future viewers of the movie. Central to the story is Shobhana, and WHAAAT a comeback! Easily her best performance to date. Yes, Nagavally pales before the deglamorised Dr Rohini. She is a sort of female desi James Bond  and Vineeth takes a leaf out of Bond in the last scene too. It's the first of a trilogy, he says. Dhyan, Sreenivasan's other son, is that new kid on the block, who will give his compatriots good competition. Most of the others are new faces who do very well indeed. Street scenes, chases, are all very realistic. Jomon's camera works as in western movies. Costumes get an A rating. Shobhana wears just one sari throughout the movie, merely because it's one day and a hectic one at that! In the last scene, it's a different sari. Costumes are apt and good.
 Background score is fine, but that cannot be said of the songs. They are the same dragging 'new gen' tunes that you hear again and again, without any individuality. Subtitles are a distraction. That they are used at the very beginning in good measure irritates, to put it mildly. You come to see a Malayalam movie and you are dished out conversations in subtitles for a few minutes long. No, one does not expect it. But the rest of the movie is so good that you forgive this lapse. There are loose ends. And the investigative work is all old hat in English, but new in Malayalam. Direction, acting and camera take equally high honours. Congrats, Vineeth! And Sreenivasan, one proud moment for a father indeed! I liked it, despite the few flaws. That's why I took pains to write this!!!

Annayum Rasoolum movie review

Realistic, yes, Annayum Rasoolum is very realistic and the essence of the Fort Kochi and Mattancherry culture that spells love, spontaneity, sharing etc is portrayed well.Is it a period film? I don't think so, but the love is period and the romance is certainly very sweetly picturised. Fahad Faasil gets 85 marks for portraying the role of Rasool. He has proved that he can don the garb of an urban playboy and a streetsmart guy with the same verve. The actor with the most promise in the years to come, that is Fahad Faasil. Andrea, who plays the female lead has been successful in conveying that mystery which shrouds her very existence, but it becomes annoying after some time. The film? Rajeev Ravi's maiden directorial creation is very realistic, but should have been trimmed better and the story takes too many twists. The songs are used to great advantage and tugs at the heart strings. Casting is excellent and all the characters fit their roles to a T, but there are too many characters, even though there are no loose ends and all of them have their own little places.

G R Iranna's show at Kashi Art Gallery, Fort Kochi

Edgar Pinto's Kashi Art Gallery opened its new show, works by G R.Iranna this evening.Had a nice time. Both the samosas and the works get high marks. Quaint Kashi's roughly 'inverted L' shaped space had an all new look with Iranna's paintings and installations, a dozen in all. Iranna: Hm..what nationality? Kannadiga and cute, with all 22 years of his life in Delhi. Capital exposure must have helped in getting all those kudos listed in his simple but elegant brochure. The names of most prominent galleries find place in the list. There is one huge horizontal work, young monks in ochre robes,huddled together, with sparks of enlightenment or wonderment here and there, as I see it. The monks keep occupying space in another work, but are at different levels in a maze of wooden construction. The monks continue to make their presence, sitting, again huddled together and in another, a lone monk lies on a drawing of a bench! The trees again, with roots exposed, are in the same ochre colour, another extension of spirituality. Trees that appear from the top and bottom confuse the viewer, maybe yet another extension of the confusion in a human mind, or a monks?! It's disturbing and when you keep looking at these, you feel as if you are getting into the skin of those characters. The installations are what you can talk about. The mediyadi of monks down south hang one above the other, linked by long electrical wires, plenty of them, again red, ochre if you wish. Another pair lies closer to each other, but nails bind them, a symbolic reminder of the spartan life of a monk and also the hurt that gos along with it. The bhiksha vessdel of the monk, strung together to make a long centepede-like vessel has on one side the root system of a bush-like tree and on the other side a fresh green plant. Hope it stays that way throughout the show. The icing is the pendulum plant, a charcoal painted dead plant that hangs (thereby hangs a tale?) upside down by the white wall and when switched on, swings like a pendumum, the charcoal making a design on the wall. This sure gets credit in the ideas department. Tanya Abraham curated this very different show. I really enjoyed it. Lots of friends, aquaintances, artists and people you knew but really didm't know were there. Happy evening..By the way, I loved writing this.... Prema Manmadhan

G R Iranna's show at Kashi Art Gallery, Fort Kochi

Edgar Pinto's Kashi Art Gallery opened its new show, works by G R.Iranna this evening.Had a nice time. Both the samosas and the works get high marks. Quaint Kashi's roughly 'inverted L' shaped space had an all new look with Iranna's paintings and installations, a dozen in all. Iranna: Hm..what nationality? Kannadiga and cute, with all 22 years of his life in Delhi. Capital exposure must have helped in getting all those kudos listed in his simple but elegant brochure. The names of most prominent galleries find place in the list. There is one huge horizontal work, young monks in ochre robes,huddled together, with sparks of enlightenment or wonderment here and there, as I see it. The monks keep occupying space in another work, but are at different levels in a maze of wooden construction. The monks continue to make their presence, sitting, again huddled together and in another, a lone monk lies on a drawing of a bench! The trees again, with roots exposed, are in the same ochre colour, another extension of spirituality. Trees that appear from the top and bottom confuse the viewer, maybe yet another extension of the confusion in a human mind, or a monks?! It's disturbing and when you keep looking at these, you feel as if you are getting into the skin of those characters. The installations are what you can talk about. The mediyadi of monks down south hang one above the other, linked by long electrical wires, plenty of them, again red, ochre if you wish. Another pair lies closer to each other, but nails bind them, a symbolic reminder of the spartan life of a monk and also the hurt that gos along with it. The bhiksha vessdel of the monk, strung together to make a long centepede-like vessel has on one side the root system of a bush-like tree and on the other side a fresh green plant. Hope it stays that way throughout the show. The icing is the pendulum plant, a charcoal painted dead plant that hangs (thereby hangs a tale?) upside down by the white wall and when switched on, swings like a pendumum, the charcoal making a design on the wall. This sure gets credit in the ideas department. Tanya Abraham curated this very different show. I really enjoyed it. Lots of friends, aquaintances, artists and people you knew but really didm't know were there. Happy evening..By the way, I loved writing this.... Prema Manmadhan

Leprosy sanatorium, Nooranad

“Unnunni?” I call out. “P C Unnunni,” the handsome 102 year old corrects me, sitting up in bed. Handsome, because a centenarian cannot possibly be this good looking or optimistic even in the best of circumstances. And this is the Kerala Government Leprosy Sanatorium at Nooranad, Alappuzha District, Kerala, where Unnunni, the oldest inmate, was brought by his father, when he was a strapping young man. He has been here ever since. He cannot walk as well as he did a year ago, but his memory is enviably sharp. He rattles off, with a toothless smile, a long list of the superintendants of the sanatorium, most of whom he remembers with affection. Unnunni came here not long after the sanatorium was set up in 1934 when it was Travancore, before the State of Kerala came into being. Today, thanks to the National Leprosy Eradication programme, there are no leprosy patients as such in the sanatorium, but the 236 inmates have nowhere to go, so they live here, often healthy, sometimes with other ailments and mainly with the damage done by leprosy before their nomenclature changed to ‘cured leprosy patients’. Unnunni is the best representative of this tribe of children of a lesser God. He loves to lie in bed, amidst his wardmates. By his bedside is a Boost bottle. He was the ‘injector’ (sic) at the sanatorium for decades. “He was taught to give injections to the patients at a time when it was difficult to get employees. Now there are many patient-employees,” says Dr J Shirley, Superintendant of the sanatorium. “The disease must have been in its early stages, for he has no physical handicap,” says Ismail Kunju, convenor of the Patients Welfare Committee, (Number A350, he elaborates) who came here as an eight year old, when he was sent out of class for being afflicted with leprosy. His fingers are clawed and he has a leg amputated, but he walks fast, with his Jaipur foot, a certain fire raging in his 60-year old frame, almost strident, in his quest for a better life for the cured leprosy patients. “There was a time when we were 1,500 and the place was brimming with life. They used to say it was Kochu Keralam’ (Small Kerala),” reminisces Ismail, with a sense of déjà vu that seemed eerie. Ismail, along with Gowri Antharjanam, 74, in the female ward, have been conferred the tag of actors too. In Aswamedham, (a 1967 Malayalam movie on the social problems of leprosy patients), Ismail and Gowri played bit roles, as the movie was shot in the sanatorium. This gated community also had its high moments when Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi visited it, the inmates say with pride. Of the 96 women in the sanatorium, Panchali Amma is the oldest. “92, yes, 92,” reiterates the fair aristocratic lady, as she ate rice gruel and pappad. In her spotlessly clean white blouse and dhoti, Panchali Amma seemed almost out of place. Her husband brought her here ‘years and years ago’ and he too stayed on, ‘unable to get out of the sanatorium for fear of the stigma’, till he died, she says. “With the wonder multi-drug therapy that began showing results in the late eighties, there was no need to admit patients in the sanatorium. New cases became out patients and within six months, they can be cured, if they take their medicines regularly,” Dr Shirley says. Even so, cases that test positive are few and far between, usually relapses. The 138-acre facility has 236 inmates only. So, most of the 45 male wards and 15 female wards are shut down today. The Patients Cooperative Society, which farmed on the campus, is less active now, for there are fewer able-bodied inmates. There are small patches of tapioca and banana plants, but much of the sanatorium area lies wild. But the place bustles with khadi clad men when elections are announced with promises galore, says Ismail with a snigger. After all, 236 votes can make a difference to a politician’s future. But every year, the number of inmates comes down. Reason: Deaths. The downward trend threatens to snowball into a zero soon. The focus has shifted fully to rehabilitation from cure and that needs no hospitalisation or isolation. No one harbours the leprosy bacilli per se in the sanatorium, yet living with the damage done by the disease is heart breaking, with sores that refuse to heal and stumps for limbs. Hope is dawning, though, in the latest developments in clinical trials at the Department of Virology, Kings Institute of Preventive Medicine, Chennai. Called amnion therapy, amnion tissue, from placenta, rich in stem cells, was preserved and bound on old wounds of leprosy patients. The results have been encouraging. But it will be too late for Unnunni, Ismail, Panchali Amma, Gowri Antharjanam and friends to reboot and get on with life. This was written nearly a year ago. I wonder if Unnunni is alive, and Panchali amma..... Prema Manmadhan