Warrier's Collage January 15, 2022

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On Saturday January 15, 2022 1) https://youtu.be/N3pl8uMMq1g Sabarimala Makara Vilakku 2018 https://youtu.be/CM77RWjXwIs (Door Darshan) 2) Makara Sankranti Message* भास्करस्य यथा तेजो...मकरस्थस्य वर्धते। तथैव भवतां तेजो.... वर्धतामिति कामये.. मकरसंक्रान्ति पर्वणः सर्वेभ्यः शुभाशयाः। *Received from Vishnu Kelkar 3) Are you innocent? https://youtu.be/IsIl45tWXjg (Link Courtesy : Shivaram Shetty Ex-RBI Mumbai) Good Morning Nice Day M G Warrier A Messages 1) E X Joseph Atlanta US Brilliant Khalil Gibran. Thank you the contributors. 2) K N Ganapathy Peacock dance excellent. I took a photo of a peacock from the terrace of my nephew's house in Coimbatore. They are regular visitors there. Now I find that peacocks are coming regularly in some villages in Kerala. There is a belief that if peacocks come in the villages, it is a bad omen, of ensuing drought, poverty etc. I do not believe in it. 3) Pongal Greetings to a friend* Dear Raman Kutty Our wishes to you and your family for a very happy Makara Sankaranthi. Pray Lord Almighty to bless us with a disease free period. I would like to share with you an interesting episode. Previous day of Pongal I had a phone call. Thinking that I would identify the caller from the voice he was speaking. From the voice I guessed a person and were talking, of course general issues. At one point I realized that it wasn't the person whom I thought of. That person immediately revealed identity. You too may be knowing him. It is M G Warrier who retired in 2003 from DGBA, Mumbai. An interesting person with a wide friends circle. I later told him of the mix up I made with Raman Kutty and Warrier. The reason was the voice that resembled yours! A comedy of errors! Regards ... Badrinarayanan *Message shared by S R Badrinarayanan Cheñnai. I've taken the liberty to make some minor changes 🙏-Warrier B 1) Pongal induces sleep? https://madrascourier.com/insight/why-pongal-makes-you-sleepy/ 2) S Venugopal shared this via Group mail : Life is Like That : Lock Down Jokes If a cat crosses the road, it is said to be bad omen. But most accidents take place when dogs cross the road. Irony of life : People who eat fish want even the dead fish to be fresh. When you order for food with the waiter in a 5 Star and wait for your food....you really wonder who the "waiter" is !! When you learn to walk they won't let you fall. But after you learn to walk they wait for you to fall or they will trip you! There are two kinds of agarbattis : One for the Gods 2nd for the mosquitoes. Neither God comes nor mosquitoes go away... Maximum lies are told in a court after oath (Swearing by Bhagawad-Gita, Kuran or Bible) : And maximum truth is told in a bar after 2 or 3 drinks! What an irony! C Nostalgia : M G Warrier I joined Reserve Bank of India Thiruvananthapuram this day (January 15) in 1968, with K Somarajan, P Sunny, S Krishnan, P Aravindakshan and K Radhadevi. I have already shared my memories about my experiences on the first day of my service in RBI with many of you earlier. Today, when my association with RBI Family is entering 54th year, let me share with you a 2020 interaction with my senior colleague V Babusenan (who is a regular presence in Collage) : V Babusenan's observations : Dear Warrier You say in your response that our institution has been consistently magnanimous and that it has been your experience all along-both pre and post retirement. Acknowledging that this is not the appropriate arena to discuss personal grievances of any kind, I say that my experience has been slightly different. I took voluntary retirement in1990. As my total service was 31 years as against the eligibility norm of 33 years for full pension, my basic pension was proportionately reduced. As you know, the eligibility norm was reduced to 20 years in January2013. Despite requests, the Bank is not willing to give me the benefit of full pension on the ground that the concession is not retrospective. TheGOI, based on the Pay Commission's recommendation, reduced the eligibility norm for full pension from 33 years to 20 years and made it applicable to those retiring on or after 1st January 2006. CAT, in2015, annulled this decision and made it applicable to all pensioners regardless of cut-off date. Our Bank took up the issue in late 2011 (five years after GOI) and implemented it prospectively like the latter. It made it prospective, evidently on financial consideration, although the Supreme Court decision in the Nakara case, based on which CAT modified GOI's orders, was in front of it. Those who were denied the benefit mostly were ex-service men belonging to the last grade. It is nearing five years since GOI has acted according to CAT decision but there seems to be no move in our Bank to follow suit! Our institution has been fortunate in having at its helm very eminent persons but ,pensioners as a community, owe their gratitude largely to four of them : to Malhotra who boldly introduced the pension scheme, to Venkitaramanan who augmented the pension corpus, to Bimal Jalan who revised the pension of pre 1997 retirees and to the present incumbent (though his subject of study was history). At the same time, one cannot forget the Governor who is said to have insisted that, unless the pension revision of the poor pre 1997 retirees was rolled back, he would not take charge! What would have been their plight but for the intervention of the Hon Bombay High Court! Still "Brutus is an honorable man." My response : Dear Babusenan Sir I agree with you. The difference is in our accounting systems. Mine is double-entry system and because I have worked in the "Appropriation Audit Division"(AAD) of AG's Office, I know how to transfer Debit/Credit from one account to another to ensure that my "Luck" account is always in credit. I'll revert to your observations in the mail later in this response itself. But the introduction is going to be much longer than the response ( സാനു മാഷും ലീലാവതിയുമൊക്കെ അവതാരിക എഴുതുന്ന പോലെയോ, ചില സ്വാമിമാർ, ശങ്കരാചാര്യർ ഉൾപ്പെടെ, ഗീതയ്ക്കും ഉപനിഷത്തുകൾക്കുമൊക്കെ വ്യാഖ്യാനം എഴുതുന്ന പോലെയോ ഒക്കെ).എന്നെപ്പററി പുകൾത്താൻ കിട്ടിയ അവസരം ഞാനിങ്ങെടുക്കുവാ... ഇടയ്ക്കൊരു തമാശ: 1) പഴയ ഒരു സിനിമയിൽ ബഹദൂറിൻറെ കഥാപാത്റത്തോട് ചോദിച്ചു, എപ്പോഴും സന്തോഷവാനായിക്കാണപ്പെടുന്നതിൻറെ രഹസ്യം എന്താണെന്ന്. ഉത്തരം: "അമ്മയെ വീട്ടിൽ ചങ്ങലയ്ക്കിട്ടിരിക്കയാണ്. ഒരു പെങ്ങളുണ്ടായിരുന്നത് ഒളിച്ചോടി പോയി. ഞാൻ കരഞ്ഞോണ്ടിരുന്നാൽ തനിച്ചിരുന്ന് കരയേണ്ടി വരും. അതിലും ഭേദം..." 2) ഇപ്പോൾ കോമഡി സ്ററാറിൽ ഗസ്റ്റായി വന്ന് പൊട്ടിച്ചിരിക്കുന്ന സൂര്യാ കൃഷ്ണമൂർത്തിയോട് കഴിഞ്ഞ നൂററാണ്ടിൻറെ അവസാനം ആരോ ചോദിച്ചു: "സാറിനെ ചിരിച്ചു കാണാറില്ലല്ലോ?" ഉത്തരം: "ചുററും നോക്കിയാൽ ചിരിക്കാൻ എന്തുണ്ട് ?" ഇനി ഇതിനിടെ എന്നെപ്പററി ഞാൻ മററൊരാളോട് പറഞ്ഞത് : (Like some forewords become longer than the books, or like Acharyas explain scriptures...etc. I'm using the opportunity to talk about myself. A diversion : 1) In an old Malayalam movie, the character enacted by Bahadoor was asked how he was able to remain happy always. The answer was an eye opener : "My mother is insane and kept in isolation. The only sister left home with someone. I've no support. If I keep lamenting you people also will avoid me... and I will be alone... 2) Someone asked Surya Krishnamurthy (who nowadays appears as a guest in TV comedy shows and often bursts into hearty laughter) was asked during 1990's, why he was always serious. He said : "If you look around, what's there you can be happy about?") Now, read on...My response to another senior friend last year : "My spiritual journey started around 1952 when I went to Purameri where I was admitted in Class V ( Kadathanad Raja's High School) I had several opportunities either to get lost or survive. Myself and my elder sister stayed inside the Shiva Temple where our father was "Shanti"ക്കാരൻ. Having Sanskrit as one of the languages was an advantage in listening to discourses, reciting stotras etc. From Doraiswami Shastrigal who was a scholar those days traveling and giving pravachanaas in temple premises especially during festival seasons to Chinmayananda, Sandip Chaitanya and Dr N Gopalakrishnan (who today thinks that he is an authority on Vedas and Scriptures) all through my life I have been listening to talks on Spirituality by several learned Gurus. I used to pick up Sanskrit Texts of Upanishads etc wherever I found them. In AG's Office and in RBI I had friends to discuss spirituality. CSV Warrier (brother of CSG Warrier who was with USIS, Tvm whom I think you knew ) son of Major Sankara Warrier from Haripad had good knowledge of Indian Mythology. I could understand and learn from him many things. In RBI, Mumbai, one Rajamani was my friend. Every day both of us used to spend lunch intervals in bookstalls glancing through Sanskrit books. Post-retirement, if I had stayed in Thiruvananthapuram, I would not have been writing on banking and finance. I would have been reading my collection of books and taking notes. There was no break in my pursuit of spirituality and "Bhakthi". My library and the ancestral Family Deity Bhagavathi now being looked after by a Trust are the proof. Just to clarify that there's no sudden switch over. Even my first Blog (2008) is captioned "Jyotirgamayah"" Now, the story of my "living together" relationship with "Luck" : I joined Regional Provident Fund Commissioner's Office, Thycaud, Thiruvananthapuram as Lower Division Clerk on September 6, 1963. In 1964 shifted to AG's Office. That year, I got a chance to appear for a clerical recruitment test in RBI. Was called for interview. Not selected. Uma Devi and 2 or 3 others were selected that year. I was selected in the next (1967) test with first rank in test and interview. Dr Col KS Pillai, Bank Medical Officer, refused to clear me medically and I was kept under observation for 18 months : first, shortage of one pound weight(RBI requirement for my height was 101 lb), after another 6 months Easnophil count/% exceeded Bank's norm by 2, and after 18 months the Ex-Military Officer heard some uncomfortable notice from my heart. I was sent to a Cardiologist Dr Gopi who declared me fit. Within a year it was our turn to get K S Pillai declared unfit and he was replaced. I've appeared for 13 job/selection interviews and was selected in 7. I failed in SBI Probationary Officers' test during 1960's and was not called for clerical test in Madras RBI as they were calling on the basis of marks in SSLC. Of my nearly 40 years of service, for the first 19 years my service was not pensionable. When pension was introduced in RBI, effective January 1, 1986, they(RBI) refused to add my AG's Office service (which was pensionable) saying that it was less than 5 years. But, after being rejected in alternate interviews for frivolous reasons and for not passing CAIIB Part II, I was promoted up to Grade E, posted in CAS as In-Charge (I have also officiated as RD, Nagpur for a total period of about 2 months) and in DGBA as General Manager. Luck is still with me. But, let me acknowledge that the challenges I faced in personal life were/are also depressingly severe. M G Warrier D Tribute for honestly Message as received via Group mail from V R Chittanandam Cheñnai From: Chittanandam V R Date: Thursday, January 13, 2022 This is a Tribute by Advocate N Vijayaraghavan on the death of his Advocate Clerk, Shri Jayachandran I forward this to you for two reasons. One- It is poignant. Two - It seems Jayachandran's father, Krishnan worked in Cash Department of RBI. He died and his daughter got compassionate appointment. Can any one of you identify either Krishnan or his daughter. Regards, Chittanandam On January 12, 2022 this message landed in my mobile with a tinkle. “The rain drop from the sky : If it is caught in hands, it is pure enough for drinking. If it falls in a gutter, its value drops so much that it can't be used even for washing the feet. If it falls on hot surface, it perishes. If it falls on lotus leaf, it shines like a pearl and finally, if it falls on oyster, it becomes a pearl. The drop is same, but its existence & worth depend on with whom it associates.” Always be associated with people who are good at heart. Send this to all people with beautiful heart. Today is Vivekanand's 158th birth anniversary. Within minutes of this message, the next one was - K Jayachandran, son of K Krishnan, an advocate clerk's beautiful heart stopped. And he was close to becoming a senior citizen. Not one just yet. Leaving behind his wife, young daughter (slated to be married on 07.02.2022) and a son on the verge of completing his audio visual communication course in a college and above all his 90 year old mother. Why him? And why now? We all know there is never a satisfactory answer to Why Me? There will never ever be : "Our clerk Jayachandran was a gem of a beautiful heart. He lost his father at all of 17 years. His sister, elder to him got the compassionate employment in RBI. It was a loving and beautiful family and they all supported each other continuously. And thankfully continue to. A puisne judge of Madras High Court messaged, “Your office was very lucky. To have such a lovely human being as a clerk. He was honest, sincere and dedicated and devoted. Let me tell you this, he too was lucky to have you and your colleague M B Raghavan and his father M B Gopalan as his seniors - not employers. You treated him with respect, regard and love, not the faculties advocate clerks’ are generally used to”. We don't know about that. When we heard that he was suddenly taken ill on 9th Jan 2022, after he came back from a visit to Kerala to invite his relatives and his friends, for his daughter's marriage, we were shocked. And when we immediately transferred a token sum of money to the daughter's account, her response was even more beautiful than Jayachandran's beautiful heart : “ Uncle (s), we are comfortable in life. You have supported us well. We don't need money. Could you please pray for his recovery". Lovely. Lovely. And we prayed but the maker had other ideas. We possibly never paid him adequately, in the early days, he was with us for three decades, because we ourselves were setting up our base. ( An excuse most of us advocates offered then, offer now and continue to offer). But we subsidised him by getting him to become a private investigator with several private/public sector insurance companies. We wrote a Template for his reports. We helped him get assignments. There were some beautiful hearts like S Giridharan, The Oriental Ins Co Ltd, who took a beautiful liking to him and blessed him with many an assignment. And Jayachandran did well by making more outside than inside, we confess. Jayachandran was a simpleton. Yes, I mean it. We protected him from being summoned to court as a witness to talk about his investigation reports. He was not smart enough to stand up. A couple of times, when we offered to be witnesses on his behalf, our friends in the Bar got the message and never insisted on his appearance. So Jayachandran could give his investigation reports and never troubled over it. Thanks. He had a beautiful heart. So had no cunning conduct to survive in this cut throat world. He accounted for every rupee. He never played with it. He was willing to work 24x7. He wanted to support his young family. And when his daughter completed MBA, with a little, very little support from us , we got her a deserving placement in Cholamandalam group. And he was overjoyed to see daughter turn out a smart, loving yet mature entity, that he was not. He was not immature. He was just innocent and gullible. That was some years ago from which position she has advanced in her career by her own stint of hard work and fine well for herself and the family. Trust her marriage goes through well and she had a happy and prosperous married life. ( And we are absolutely sure that she is a New Age Woman with a beautiful heart, who will hand hold her brother and ensure that her mother and grandmother also were taken care of as well as Jayachabdran did). Bless her. You know what she told her father, after a few years, into her promotion, “Appa, You have worked since you were a minor. Now we are settled. Please take rest. Don't have to run around”. Typically, Jayachandran refused. He said, “It is my office. I am not working there. I need to train some. And seniors there, are not my employers. But my associates”. We felt good and proud. We always tried to encourage the talents of our associates. We are delighted that several are well parked outside and doing well, though some, to our disappointment, may have missed out. It is a pity that most of us advocates do not care for our clerks. We assume that they can make‘money any which way. We believe the worst about their ‘ways’. Sad and shameful. There are clerks who have ‘made it bigger and better than advocates’ as my Judge friend put it. But the majority need hand holding. More so, when there is no ‘ retirement benefit’ on offer. And advocate clerks’ fund gets them a paltry Rs. 4 lakhs or thereabouts. We did our best to support our beautiful friend. And when I asked my judge friend whether we should talk about our support now with a more than decent help and continued payment of salary to his wife for at least a year, until the son gets a placement- the judge said, “ You must. Even if one more advocate office takes note, good for the clerks’ community. Don’t feel shy or reticent ”. So we affirm it. Not revelation of chivalry or generosity, least of the faculties that one can associate with a selfish advocate community. Us all. ‘That comes with the territory’ as my senior used to allude to. A beautiful heart, you had, my friend. We had a beautiful friend. And we have lost a beautiful friend. There may be never another of your genre. You have a beautiful family. Don’t worry. Give them your continued beautiful love and beatific blessings from above. Narasimhan Vijayaraghavn ( Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court) E Spirituality/Faith charan singh (@CharanSingh60) Tweeted: Unity in Diversity - 131 मनसा करि सिमरंत तुझै नर कामु क्रोधु मिटिअउ जु तिणं बाचा करि सिमरंत तुझै तिन्ह दुखु दरिद्रु मिटयउ जु खिणं भट्ट बल, १४०५, श्री गुरु ग्रंथ साहिब Those who meditate on you get rid of lust, anger, pain and poverty Bard Bal, 1405, SGGS https://twitter.com/CharanSingh60/status/1481722860603600896?s=20 F Reasonable Vs Unreasonable : Vathsala Jayaraman “I wont stop for you … I can do without anybody. I have … my own spark of divine fire. I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask? If you can't stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter.” Many people consider these words of Prof Henry Higgins, the fascinating and adorably arrogant character in Pygmalion, spoken to the flower girl, Miss Elisa Dolittle as truly reflective of the character of its author, Bernard Shaw himself. He was one writer who was as much disliked as he was adored! The hatred even assumed murderous proportions / I think, one should not be“consistently” complacent! Then you are taken for granted, very often! I think to voice our thoughts or opinions or to have our say, if it is not unreasonable. It is definitly reasonable expectation to be allowed to voice oneself. But sometimes a meek voice does not carry one further like a loud one can and would and will do. Growing in this generation many women think and act differently than their parents would. Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people... What is reasonable and what is not depends far more on what is in your mind than on the state of mind of the person whom you are observing. One is observed to be unrelenting and unreasonable by others when he is passionate about something. You feel better when you know there are a few noisier unreasonable men there. Every judgement that we make is based on our own perception of others. When we call someone unreasonable, it is only on the basis of what we consider as reasonable or unreasonable. The same person might appear very reasonable in the eyes of someone more demanding than him! But you must agree that things do not happen on their own. Someone has to take the initiative. It is possibly to hide the feeling of guilt that we are not able to take that initiative while someone else is willing to take it, that we call him unreasonable! A couple who find each other unreasonable can make an extremely interesting pair! Counter accusations impart a lot of thrill to a married life. It would be pretty dull if a couple agrees with each other all the time and thus leaving no scope for any argument whatsoever. Be a Roman in Rome and 'oorodu otththu vaazh', these are heard when some act unreasonably. If you are reasonable you are taken for a ride by the unreasonable people. Explaining any situation to them is a bonk. It is better to keep away from them--which will be reasonable? Is it so? If some improvements are made by their 'unreasonable' acts--then their acts can be labelled as 'reasonable', right? Recently we had encountered a problem with our new washing machine. No amount of pleadings could budge the people to come and replace the very new machine. Finally I had to literally spit out fire and threaten to go to consumer court and also speak to their MD. And lo, the replacement was done immediately. Kutta kutta kuniyaravan muttaal. Kuniya kuniya kuttubavan athai vida periya muttaal" ( it is utter foolishness to go on bending when you are hit on your head. More foolish is the man who goes on hitting when the other party continues to bend") The above saying is literally true. In the story of the Vijaynagar empire also, the founders of the dyanasty Hakka & Bukka saw a dog chasing a cat, when the cat ran on the now Hampi ruins, it turned back and stared at the dog. And the dog meekly ran back. This incident gave the Guru Vidyaranya insight to name the capital as Vijaynagar - Land of Victory. And the rest is History !!! When people fight back, then only, they get what they want. Every one has some fighting spirit in him. In some people it becomes a dominating character due to various reasons and in some, it dies a natural death due to an entirely different set of reasons. Genes too play an important role in this! Sometimes parents encourage children to fight until they succeed. Present day children consider mother as very unreasonable as she insists the children to study, to do home work or practice music lessons. Normally fathers never intervene. One of my close friends was a quiet & highly reasonable person. This good quality of hers made her face so many unpleasant events in her married life. Her co-sisters were of bold & demanding typ- very unreasonable all the time . My friend was taken for granted even by the youngest member of the family ( kutties) . Whereas her co-sisters got things done in their favour through their unreasonable acts ! World is like that ! "Nothing can equal the feeling of power that you get when you are unreasonable and still have your demands met!. Someone who can wait calmly for the parking space while the guy before us chats incessantly on his hand phone trying to slowly reverse his car with one hand. Someone, who can sit patiently in the bank waiting for his turn, while others barge in to see the Manager. Last time I barged in too, got the work done. And if you think that I was praised for having got our work done, you are wrong.“Just because others are acting without manners it doesn't mean we behave like that too"- was all I got to hear. So if you ask me, it is quite tough living with a very reasonable person. But then we have got to admit that it works to our advantage too sometimes. So the ideal combination would be reasonable to wife and unreasonable with others. An unreasonable woman married to a reasonable man is a divine match. It is what people usually describe as a marriage settled in heaven. An unreasonable wife restrained by a calm reasonable husband would never exceed her limits. An unreasonable man married to a reasonable woman would only end in a fiasco. Mr.Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister for Technology Mission, when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, was once asked, "How the Indians are taking the lead in this world on technology?". He replied, "It is because they have learned to live in a difficult environment both in India and overseas and adapt quickly to the new requirements. They are very patient and silently change themselves to the new environment. In technology, anyone who needs to succeed should have this trait and hence the Indians are the leaders in this market." On the other hand, it is this patience that had taken the politicians to get away with dictating what they intend to do. Corruption is rampant because of this patient attitude of citizens. This brings to mind that quixotic genius, the late Steve Jobs. I read his official biography by Walter Isaacson. Two things from that book got imprinted in my mind : 1. Steve Job's guiding motto, a slogan he chanced upon on the back cover of an old manual called “The Whole Earth Catalogue”during his impressionable years :“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish". And Staying Foolish became his Mantra throughout his life. Because he firmly believed that“People who are foolish enough to think they can change the world most often do !”So it's reasonable to respect unreasonable people ! Vathsala Jayaraman G Collage in States & Union Territories Lakshadweep