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I never saw my Father's father; granpa on my father's side. I am told my mom too didn't see him...he died when my father was in his teens.
But I got very familiar with my granpa on my mom's side. He had retired from service when I was growing into my boyhood. And he died soon after my marriage (no offense meant).
His enlarged photo still adorns my mom's home at Gudur. That was taken on his retirement from his service as a revenue official during the British regime. In it he looks very official...turbanated profusely. And he had a walking stick that he carried with him on his short walks. He didn't need it at all as a support or even to scare away the Nellore dogs. He was just attached to it since it was gifted to him on his retirement.
Well, I too was gifted a shawl on my retirement but I don't know where it disappeared and I don't miss it at all. But I do have my retirement group photo, a laminated copy of which was gifted to me. I see it a dozen times daily since it stands against the wall of my wardrobe. My wife is there in it by my side. But the captivating figure in that photo is of Prof SKR who was once my student, and HoD during the recent Diamond Jubilee of IIT KGP. He is all smiles in that photo...very happy to let me go.
This granpa of mine had a charming brahminical ritual before he started eating from his dinner plate. Like most of us brahmins, he would first take a spoonful of water in his right hand and sprinkle it on his rice chanting the Gayatri mantra and praanaahuti that goes:
"Om praanaaya svaahaa, apaanaaya svaahaa, vyaanaaya svaahaa, udaanaaya svaahaa, samaanaaya svaahaa, Om brahmane svaahaa"
and then would recite aloud a shlok that my father didn't teach me. It went like:
Anyway, 'fire in the belly' is an idiom for folks who are restless by nature and can't take life easy. They are consumed by overarching ambition to achieve something or the other in their lives constantly. It may be money or power or fame or even mundane things like blogs.
My Ph D Guide, SDM, could never keep quiet when he was left alone...he would always get lost attacking in his mind some problem or the other in theoretical physics. He did this till he died at 83. He once told me that he was always scared that he would go senile and so he would keep on working till he breathed his last; which he did. He died while correcting the proofs of his book on QM.
Among politicos of recent times, Hitler had tremendous fire in his belly. His was an unsung childhood...neither he nor his dad ever even sold tea on railway platforms in Berlin or Vienna (or Surat). But he wanted to conquer the whole world or die doing it...which he did, shooting himself in his head in a wartime bunker.
And the one I know a bit during my stay in Bengal for 40 years has chulhas and burners and angeethis in her belly:
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I never saw my Father's father; granpa on my father's side. I am told my mom too didn't see him...he died when my father was in his teens.
But I got very familiar with my granpa on my mom's side. He had retired from service when I was growing into my boyhood. And he died soon after my marriage (no offense meant).
His enlarged photo still adorns my mom's home at Gudur. That was taken on his retirement from his service as a revenue official during the British regime. In it he looks very official...turbanated profusely. And he had a walking stick that he carried with him on his short walks. He didn't need it at all as a support or even to scare away the Nellore dogs. He was just attached to it since it was gifted to him on his retirement.
Well, I too was gifted a shawl on my retirement but I don't know where it disappeared and I don't miss it at all. But I do have my retirement group photo, a laminated copy of which was gifted to me. I see it a dozen times daily since it stands against the wall of my wardrobe. My wife is there in it by my side. But the captivating figure in that photo is of Prof SKR who was once my student, and HoD during the recent Diamond Jubilee of IIT KGP. He is all smiles in that photo...very happy to let me go.
This granpa of mine had a charming brahminical ritual before he started eating from his dinner plate. Like most of us brahmins, he would first take a spoonful of water in his right hand and sprinkle it on his rice chanting the Gayatri mantra and praanaahuti that goes:
"Om praanaaya svaahaa, apaanaaya svaahaa, vyaanaaya svaahaa, udaanaaya svaahaa, samaanaaya svaahaa, Om brahmane svaahaa"
and then would recite aloud a shlok that my father didn't teach me. It went like:
Aham Vaishvaanaro Bhutvaa
Praninaam Dehamaashritaha
Pranaapaana Samaayuktah
Pachaamyannam Chaturvidham
Praninaam Dehamaashritaha
Pranaapaana Samaayuktah
Pachaamyannam Chaturvidham
Much later I found it in Gita and it means, roughly:
Becoming the life-fire
in the bodies of living beings
mingling with the subtle breaths,
I digest the four kinds of food.
in the bodies of living beings
mingling with the subtle breaths,
I digest the four kinds of food.
And then I could relate it to what Father used to call: Jatharaagni, the fire in the belly of all who feel their hunger gnawing at them. Unlike these days when so much junk food is available ready-made like that bulky packet of potato chips, food was there only twice a day those days. And was eaten only when the Jatharaagni fire in the belly threatened to instantly consume everything that went in.
You may think the Lion King is the animal that always has this fire in his belly. No...not at all. The Gujerat lion (other than our campaigning one) is the laziest of all. He would eat only when inevitable. And he wouldn't take any steps to get his meal and depends on his womenfolk to provide it for him (like me). Otherwise he is quite happy to lie down under the shade of a tree, gasping in the desert heat, dozing, gathering wool, and thinking what to blog next.
The one creature in the animal kingdom that is truly consumed by the fire in its belly is our Nellore red ant. It is tiny but violently voracious. And industrious to a fault. I never saw any red ant resting. They are always on the move...always. And if you happen to drop a tiny grain of sugar by mistake on the floor, be sure that half a dozen Nellore red ants would be grabbing it in a few seconds. And they bite like serpents when they are annoyed.
There is this story that Brahma was once impressed by the fire in their bellies and asked our Nellore red ants to seek a boon. And their leader got up and said:
"Grant us the boon that death would result as soon as we sting"
"Granted!"
Then on, death surely results as soon as an ant stings even Ishani...she would kill the ant with a slap on her bitten leg.
There is a moral here...be careful how you phrase your charter of demands.
Anyway, our folks were clueless how to prevent and kill our red ants when they attacked us and our foodstuff in droves. All we could do was to drag the ant-infested cot into the Nellore sun, and they all died in minutes...ants are cool.
One of my cousins had a miracle device to thwart our ants. She told me that she writes down 'Sri Rama' a hundred times on a sheet of paper, folds it, and hides it in the attic....apparently all the resident ants crowd on to that paper like voters to their booths in Hyderabad, and Sri Raamjee would kill all of them...till gammexane powder arrived in the market.
I am told that our Nellore red ants are great scavengers next only to vultures...
But the black ants in our gardens were not supposed to enter our homes. They crawl on our trees and have as much fire in their bellies as their red cousins. But they are witless: Read Mark Twain's hilarious essay on his American ants:
My neighbor in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP in the 1960s, Dr Rajput, had this charming way of pronouncing his Etah ants:
"Our Etah aunts"
Anyway, 'fire in the belly' is an idiom for folks who are restless by nature and can't take life easy. They are consumed by overarching ambition to achieve something or the other in their lives constantly. It may be money or power or fame or even mundane things like blogs.
My Ph D Guide, SDM, could never keep quiet when he was left alone...he would always get lost attacking in his mind some problem or the other in theoretical physics. He did this till he died at 83. He once told me that he was always scared that he would go senile and so he would keep on working till he breathed his last; which he did. He died while correcting the proofs of his book on QM.
Among politicos of recent times, Hitler had tremendous fire in his belly. His was an unsung childhood...neither he nor his dad ever even sold tea on railway platforms in Berlin or Vienna (or Surat). But he wanted to conquer the whole world or die doing it...which he did, shooting himself in his head in a wartime bunker.
And the one I know a bit during my stay in Bengal for 40 years has chulhas and burners and angeethis in her belly:
On 11 December 1998, she controversially held a Samajwadi Party MP, Daroga Prasad Saroj, by the collar and dragged him out of the well of the Lok Sabha to prevent him from protesting against the Women's Reservation Bill
...I simply adore her and wish her the best of luck to consume the millennial Delhi Peahen throne tomorrow...I mean 'assume'...
...Posted by Ishani
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