The easy guide book for a mallu to become a dude!!

Several eons ago, fashionable people imitating Elvis Presley roamed the streets in a land called Kerala…Polka dotted shirts with designs that appeared like carbon covalent bonds and side burns that would have rendered contemporary shavers useless were sported generously by our older generation…. Though with a slight difference coz the malayalee Elvis was shorter and he was not Caucasian…That made Babumon rather an overweight Boney M with a moustache…

Circa 21^st century….

The mallu aspiration that once made Babumon a Boney M and that made Mariamma chedathy a Marilyn Monroe is making a comeback…This time with a renewed vigor among the malayalee youth aiming to be the uber-alpha-metrosexual dude …Considering the entrepreneurs malayalees are, institutes have sprouted wide across the state which point to be noted, claim to be better than IIM’s….These institutes boasting a faculty having a dudeness oomph unheard of have instructional course designed for all categories of mallus…Pure 24 carat mallus to NRK’s to NRI’s….The institutes guarantee on successful completion of the course, the dude(previously mallu) can be proved mallu only if he is made to come near a plate of beef fry.

Hear what Eddie (previously Idiculla Thomas) who passed out in 2003 has to say…

“The Dude Institute has changed my life….There used to be a time in my life when I was so desperate to be a dude that it almost drove me to the verge of suicide... I am thankful to institute principal for giving me confidence to live again.”

Clara, a recent graduate gets emotional when asked...

“No….please don’t ask me about it…being a dudette was all I wanted to be…My ammachi is so proud of me now!!.” She replied wiping tears of her cheeks.

After a lot of deliberations the course director and renowned dude Tommy gave a brief insight about the high profile program…

Each participant on submitting the entire fees has to submit his/her passports and all kinds of identity information. The in-house agents would provide the candidate a complete new identity. Taking a stroll down the institute Tommy introduced us to some of his students…Chacko from Cheruplassery was now Chuck from Charlotte Town, Ousepachan from Idukki was now Bob from Idaho and it was not surprising to meet a Tracy from Panama city who apparently once was Thressiakutty from Pathamanathitta!

The resident English language instructor mentioned to us that trainees are punished severely for using malayalam phrases like… ente eeshoyeee...ente Velankanni maathaavei...bhagavathi...ente ammo…

While they are encouraged to use english exclamations like oops, ouch and schmuck liberally.

Another situation which dude has to be careful is when a dude meets another dude. This is especially important when you are meeting the other dude after a long time…Such dude-dude situations have to be handled with care. Sthalee ithu aaru...Machu kore naalu aayallo...aliyaa nee evide aayirunnu…are replaced with...yoo man…wassup….Such a pleasure to meet you…howdy man….

Besides the language a dude has to be surrounded by entirely new set of gadgets and stationeries and use new naming conventions…Trainess are encouraged to use the new names like...

• Tuvaalaa >> tissues
• Pants >> trousers
• Kaapi >>> Cappuccino
• Dosa >>> crepe
• Puthappu >>> bedcover

The dude will not henceforth use the following products…

• Lifebuoy soap
• Godrej shaving box
• Ummukiri
• Blade

The dude is strictly restricted from having a mustache or a beard….Unless if it is of specific nature like a goatee….. The dude cannot have a hairstyle which has got a parting line… The dude cannot wear rubber chappals…The dude has to burn away all his lungis in a ritual which is done on the third month of the course…..A dude will have to make some major dietary changes…

The dude’s favorite dishes now include…Salad’s, low fat milk, the mandatory burger and pizza…

And the dude has definitely not heard any of these…

• Cabbage thoran
• Pulisseri
• Parippu vada

The dude has to be extremely careful while mentioning his/her favorite books…The dude books are usually…

• Ayn Rand
• Dostoevsky

And a Dude definitely does not read..

• Balarama
• Malayala Manorama

By the sixth month the mallu has already transformed into a 80% dude. The remaining 20% is all about practice…The way you walk, the way you talk…

Put both your hands inside the jeans pocket while you walk..

Wear over-sized T shirts preferably with a picture of a black rap singer.

While walking, do it like you have a painful sore on one feet which moves to the other feet after a step.

If you follow the above methods you can reinvent yourself as a cool dude ….Our research have shown that we can transform themselves into highly sophisticated human dudes following the above procedure… On successful completion of the course, the dude would be given the honorary dude certification by the chairman of the dude board himself…The prestigious Salim Kumar dude scholarship would be awarded to the most outstanding dude of the batch in a glittering ceremony at the dude university..

If you find the dude course useful, kindly sponsor a desperate mallu so that he could become a dude as well…

Happy weekend to all dudes and dudette’s!! J

To a new beginning.....

When I started blogging, I was fascinated by the space and its ability to reach out to people around the world...Its ability to find people who shared similar thoughts...Infact I loved the media so much that I really did not imagine that I would hit a road block in blogging someday… Unlike many who had stopped blogging as a conscious decision the reasons why this space hit a halt was a landslide of several reasons… There has been drastic changes in my life since the last time I blogged…The times I have blogged from 2006 till 2010 were times when I had probably the peak happiness in my life…I was someone who hadn’t really anything much to worry about and most days were generally joy filled…well ofcoz there was periodic disappointments of reasons subtle to not so subtle…ofcoz there was the joy of meeting new people to the heartbreak of knowing that a crush was already seeing someone…there was the adventure of cooking dinners, of seeing new places, of laughing over a beer, playing Jenga with friends to tragic failures in learning new languages, unfortunate or delightful stories from friends and likewise… And all these incidents were fodder for me to keep blogging… Then 2010 happened!!

Although I had stopped blogging sometime in beginning of 2010 it was due to sheer laziness and the fact that I was getting quite busy at work around then…In the summer of 2010 while I was enjoying a vacation with my close friends from Hamburg at an island in the north sea (Rugen), I received the call from my cousin who delivered a news I feared the most… And then from that day nothing has been same for me… I hurried back home in India to meet my family … I don’t remember a journey as excruciating painful as my flight from Hamburg to Trivandrum and I was probably too over struck by shock that I can barely express it in words… My dad’s demise in a car accident on May 21^st was like a big arresting stop in my journey of life… I don’t think I have to tell how I felt during that day and the following weeks as I believe it not something you can really explain…you just have to go through it…I was lucky that I had really good friends in Hamburg who gave me the strength in the hour of need and to my beloved relatives back home who played a huge part in my personal recovery…After 3 and half weeks I returned to Hamburg…I wanted to be alone…

I am usually a person who keeps all my emotions with myself and rarely share it with anyone unless am absolutely comfortable with that person… The physical and emotional toll of the few weeks made me really sick and I was bed ridden in Hamburg for a few days..The following weeks I was going through periodic depression and an urgency to withdraw from all sorts of social contact with people I knew… I had become some kind of a social loner and it was necessary for me…Atleast that’s what I felt around then…My behavior was ofcoz weird to my close friends and family as I can presume...But the period also taught me how to fight and be strong…. This was probably the lowest ebb in my life and I needed self conviction to fight it…The period also helped me to know the people who really mattered to me…

My friends out there who made sure that I did not sulk and stay at home all the time…friends who took care of me when I was sick…family who used to call me to check on me….My biggest reassurance or tonic for my recovery was how my mom and brother were doing…It was a huge relief for me when I saw them pulling the strings back…Infact I think that’s the most beautiful aspect of a relationship in a family….The relief you get from your loved ones recovering helps you the same…Infact when all do it for each other…the collective recovery is faster… I have to particularly mention two of my friends in Hamburg S&J who took me as part of their family and made me feel like I was not alone… And new friendships came from unexpected quarters when a spanish neighbor of mine became a very close friend to whom I could express my fears, disappointments…etc… It was a liberating feeling for me who usually tries to keep a cocoon around myself from expressing to friends what I truly felt …

Although people say time heals things… and my general optimistic nature should have helped me, I was going through something that needed something beyond that…and am thankful to all the people around me for giving the much needed relief…I need to mention a lot of my blog friends/readers who checked on me and encouraged me to get back to blogging…I don’t have to mention names here as I know they themselves know it…I have shifted from Hamburg to Mysore last December..am back at my old workplace and have settled here…I miss my friends in Hamburg a lot as I realize that they can never be replaced…Getting used to rigours of work life in India is a bit intimidating after the relatively balanced style in Germany and the difficulty for someone to get used to the ‘indian way’ of life was not exactly smooth after such a long gap. (The difficulty often misconstrued as arrogance from a foreign-returned in our parlance is quite natural and I really have to walk a tight rope to make sure people don’t think otherwise )… After a few months now in Mysore, I am much more comfortable than when I had landed in town… Even though the residual romantic love for Hamburg still remains, I am counting on starting a new life in India with new friends and happier times…I have promises to keep…And I believe the first thing I need to do was get back to blogging which is one of my first loves besides Frasier and pencil sketching ofcoz..:)

I would like to express my sincere apologies to all friends and family with whom I have not been my usual self…. I have not replied emails from many of my friends and family during this past year due to my indifferent nature … I hope you can understand and forgive me for the same.

I would like to stop for the time being with a favourite quote from Emily Dickenson...

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all."