Thinking of you, dear print media, women, newspaper boys ...

Tuesday, December 3 was my first daughter's birthday, and what better occasion to reflect on women, life and how times have changed. And you know traditional media is never far away in my reminiscences.

What if my daughter had been born a hundred years ago? Well, 1913 was a good year for a girl to be born in Kottayam district, Kerala. Three women, PA Aely, VT Chachi, and KK Anna, were admitted to the Church Missionary Society College, Kottayam that year. Never mind the fact that women could get admission only after nearly a century since Benjamin Bailey founded the college in 1817.

The Malayala Manorama edition of Dec 3, 1913 has this interesting news on technology affecting life that year, titled 'Postal service through motor transport'.

The news item goes thus: Postal packages for delivery to places up to Nagercoil in the south and up to Kottayam in the north from Thiruvananthapuram will be sent via motor transport, and therefore 'mail runners' and mail overseers in these areas are being made redundant, it is learnt.

A hundred years down the line, it is the 'newspaper runners' of Kottayam district and in the rest of Kerala who may be getting that redundancy feeling. In parts of Washington DC, home delivery of newspapers ended some time in 2008, but in some parts of my village, Koovappally, including my home, doorstep delivery of newspapers ended some time in 2005.

I wonder if Washington Post's new owner Jeff Bezos will devise techniques to home deliver newspapers using drones, as he demonstrated this week delivering books. If he does, manual labour-starved Kerala and Kottayam in particular will be promising markets.

Meanwhile, a century after Aely, Chachi and Anna graced its campus, the CMS college teems with women students, presumably armed with smartphones and hardly anxious about the morning newspaper drop at home, while my own daughter is into her second month of work life with a software major in Mysore.

All good things must come to an end, and it must apply -- sadly -- to 'mail runners' and 'newspaper runners' as well. How lovely it was to catch the sight of the fleet-footed newspaper boy going about his job on misty mornings in the verdant environs of my village! If you are still blessed with that delightful sight, enjoy it to the full.

Alas, I can only reminisce the memories of newspaper boys (haven't seen any girls on the newspaper errand in my village) as gadgets grab eyeballs and drones whirr overhead.

Thankful to God that I can do these musings sitting under a nutmeg tree. These trees are known to last a few centuries, and not die out as quickly as print media or physical mail do.

Joe A Scaria
December 5, 2013

From the shambles of his office, rises global hero Chandy

From the shambles of his office,

rises global hero Chandy

Joe A Scaria

Thiruvananthapuram, June 27

When a chief minister has to drop two of his personal assistants from duty for allegedly making hundreds of telephone calls to the perpetrators of a massive scam, his gunman suspended from police service and slapped with a vigilance probe for alleged misuse of the CM’s office, and a staff member of the CM’s 24 X 7 call centre ousted after allegedly seeking sexual favours from a caller, you get a general image of the CMO.

That, indeed, has been the state of affairs of Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy’s office through all of June, but a few hours ago, Chandy rose, phoenix-like, in Manama, Bahrain to receive the United Nation’s prestigious public service award for his mass contact programme. He was chosen from among entries from 50 Asia-Pacific countries.

The allegations against his office came in torrents like the monsoon rains in Kerala, but unlike the state’s roads that are all but washed out each rainy season, Chandy has managed to stay high and dry and be the toast of Bahrain this week, where none less than the crown prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa led what would be one of many receptions in that country for the Kerala CM.

Back in Kerala, typical of the local mindset, there are already questions about the correctness of the award being given to Chandy. Some feel that the award is for a public office, and not for an individual, and that it would be wrong for the CM to take personal credit for it. Some others are critical, pointing out that the award was for his mass contact programme, though a majority of those who submitted petitions to him in the programme have still not got their plaints solved. 

What none can contest, though, is that the workaholic CM toured all 14 districts in the state, personally meeting people and receiving petitions. Kerala’s acidic satirists on television shows said the programme led to peanut salesmen being deprived of paper because all paper was routed to the CM’s office in the form of petitions. But spoof apart, Chandy received some 5.5 lakh petitions, claimed to have solved over half of them, and distributed total financial assistance of roughly Rs 23 lakh to the petitioners. 

Back in Kerala, he cannot expect to get the red-carpet treatment he got in Manama, but with the UN award in hand, it will neither be easy for the Left to sustain its demand for his resignation in the wake of allegations against his office staff.

But Chandy himself has much work awaiting him: For starters, roads from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod are battered in monsoon rains. Having delighted in the scenes of public fountains in Manama, he will come back to the realities of water spouts by the roadside in Kerala thanks to leaky pipes. In Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, there were major water pipe bursts today.

But the allegations of sleaze against his staff and the demand for his resignation? For the CM with a UN halo, dealing with that should be a breeze.

If dreams were bullet trains

A national business daily in India has a Page 1 news item today, quoting Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy, that the state is eyeing bullet trains for better connectivity.

The state's track record should put the probability of the plan in perspective: Kerala’s past plans include a container transshipment terminal at Vizhinjam (a dream that is now about 110 years old, about which generations of Kerala journalists have written), generating power from sea breeze (a plan which has gone with the wind), and Chandy’s own plan in 2004 to have a north-south express highway (a relatively new dream that is only seven years old). The state is indeed a journalists’ dream posting, where you can keep writing about any of these projects till you retire! (Of course, I'm joking, and exaggerating a bit.)

News of the bullet train plan should make for a happy weekend for Keralites, who can spend it relaxing on the beach, the backwaters or at some hill station. The federal government and prime minister Manmohan Singh must take lessons from Kerala's leaders on how to keep people in good cheer.

By the way, I'm in Chennai and there is no bullet train for me to go to Kottayam for Christmas. Worse, the Kumily border is blocked following the controversy over the Mullaperiyar dam, and protestors are also threatening to block the Coimbatore border. Sabarimala pilgrims have exhausted every berth on every train to Kerala, and at least some Kingfisher flights are scrapped. If only I could ride the futuristic train dream to reach home in time for X’mas – at bullet speed!

Wish you a happy weekend.

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Kerala's terrorists and darlings

If you have been reading of Keralites being linked to terror in October 2008 and fretting about it, let me tell you not to lose heart.

Yes, indeed, police in Kerala are saying there are enough reasons to believe that youth from Kerala have links to terror in Jammu and Kashmir. For proof, they had the bodies of a few Keralites who got killed in J&K.

October's incidents must have agonized some parents, and the society in general.

But I would reassure them that very many good things as well are happening with youth in the state.

A few young men got killed in J&K apparently playing the terror game. Let me tell you what some other young men in Kerala did in October, bringing pure delight to the state.

A group of just over a dozen engineering graduates from different engineering colleges in Kerala have spurned attractive job offers and got together to float an IT company. The team is working in the domain of artificial intelligence, and their first product targets reduction of phantom power loss, which is power that is lost when gadgets are kept in stand-by mode without completely cutting off power supply to them, as in a TV put off by remote control without putting off the switch.

With their device they hope to save precious power, thus tackle the global warming in whatever little way, and of course chase their dreams in doing these.

I could see the young men had fire in their eyes. Not the fire that their peers who went into terrorism had. But a deep desire to do something positive with their lives, even taking the risk of refusing attractive job offers to pursue the dreams of their hearts. If only the ones who took the needless risk of being cannon fodder in J&K could be similarly inclined!

Smile!

Introduction

Hello everyone

We are Joe and Lekha and this is our blog on Kerala.
I am a journalist with nearly 25 years' experience in the media.
My wife Lekha is a homemaker, a wonderful cook who has won
city-level cooking competitions on multiple occasions, and a dress maker.
We have three daughters, all school children.

This is our personal diary that we would like to share with all who are
interested in Kerala, particularly with Keralites who are presently based abroad
and are keen to follow developments in a land of which they cherish fond memories.

Being a diary, we would talk of just about everything that we feel would be of interest
to those who keep an eye on Kerala, but will particularly focus on social issues and
Kerala cuisine.

If you find that a curious combination, that is what this blog is hoped to be -- one that
discusses interesting facets of Kerala and the ubiquitous Malayali.

Welcome on board.
Thank you for your time.