What are 10 interesting facts about you?
07.06.2025 06:26
2)Food habits: I am a vegetarian. Initially by compulsion because my mom would not cook anything else and my grand-mom had planted in my mind, a revulsion for meat and fish right during my childhood. I later began eating eggs till my forties and later gave up for health reasons. I found that my system could not digest them. I now consume eggs only as an ingredient in cakes and pastries, but not directly. I am now a vegetarian by conviction. I was curious about veganism but then when someone told me I will have to give up milk and all its products like cheese, curd butter, ghee I gave up the idea. The palate proved stronger than principles and theories.
4)Language: I speak as my native tongue, the dialect of Tamil that is common among the Tamilians living in Kerala, most of whom are called the Paalakkaad Iyers. I grew up in Mumbai, with no further exposure to this language, except at home. In Mumbai, I picked up the Mumbai dialect of Hindi, Gujarati and a bit of Marathi (I have now forgotten them). Later in North India I polished up my Hindi. After settling in Karnataka, I picked up Kannada and can manage day to day life but cannot claim to know the language well. I can read and write Kannada slowly but I can type fast in it and in other Indian regional languages on a Qwerty keyboard using a software tool that uses phonetic transliteration. I tried mastering the Indic keyboard but found it too strenuous and gave it up after picking it up and being able to type at a fraction of the speed that I can type using Phonetic transliteration.
I am a theist, without being hidebound about religion. I now identify myself simply as a Modern Reformed Hindu, heavily influenced by Western Education and observe all the good practices and selectively practise whatever I can relate to in the religion. I simply ignore what to my mind is not rational and do not engage in discussions with overly religious and zealous Hindus who swear by every line in the scriptures. I pay lip service to some Hindu rituals and customs, just to keep my wife and others happy. I know this is hypocrisy, but I believe this is harmless hypocrisy.
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Warning : Long answer. About 1860 words. May take 10 minutes to read.
7)Places and education: In India, I have lived in North India, South India and West India. I was born in a village in Paalakkaad District, in the state of Kerala , in South India but my father migrated to Bombay for taking up a job, and I moved to Bombay as an infant, and spent my entire childhood and boyhood at King’s Circle, Matunga, Bombay City. (Gujarat and Maharashtra came into existence later and Bombay become Mumbai even later) At the age of 18, I moved to BITS - Pilani for my engineering education, in the Western State of Rajasthan where I spent 5 years. For the next two years I was in Roorkee, in Uttar Pradesh (Uttarakhand had not been created) doing my Master’s in Structural engineering. My first job posting was in Bihar, at Bokaro City at the steel plant (Jharkhand did not exist then). I later moved to Bangalore City in Karnataka, settled down there and built a house. I faced transfers for short periods to Quilon in Kerala, and Hazira in Gujarat but still considered myself a Bangalore based citizen and faced separation from the family during the periods of transfer and finally ended up back in Bangalore. On official tours I have been all around the country for periods as long as a month at a stretch, except for Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal and the North Eastern states.
8)Places abroad: I have lived in the following countries: USA (9 trips for a total period of three and half years so far and still counting), South Korea ( 3 month job posting), Finland (A week, for a business meeting for kicking off a new project), Singapore as a tourist. Of course I have transited through airports around the world but that should not count.
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3)Religion and upbringing: I was born and I grew up as an Indian Hindu, more specifically as a Hindu Brahmin, even more specifically a South Indian Hindu Brahmin Iyer, even more specifically a South Indian Hindu Brahmin Vadama Iyer. My grandmother can extend that chain. I have lost track of the details of the complicated Indian Caste system. Today I identify myself simply as a Cosmopolitan Indian and my lifestyle bears no resemblance to the habits and practices of some of my caste conscious orthodox friends and relatives and I mix freely with people of all nationalities, races, castes, sub castes, religions and have no inhibitions eating and drinking and socialising with them as long as the food is vegetarian and the drink is non-alcoholic.
10)Movies: I was a crazy movie buff and still am! In my opinion, it is a comprehensive art form and the most innovative form of entertainment. It combines so many great arts and presents a grand feast of entertainment. Beginning with a great story with fabulous dialogue, authored by skilled writers, it offers you dance, music, acting, directing, technical skills like photography, sound recording, merging along with the arts, and business skills like picking the right story and the right actors to play the parts, the hassles of production and distribution. I understand perfectly why it is such a sought after industry. I am proud of our industry for having such a huge market. We may lack the technical skills of Hollywood but our movies are as watchable and enjoyable as those produced in Hollywood. I have often been asked which is or are my favourite movie/movies but I cannot answer it. There are too many to choose from. One great thing about the movies is that it enabled me to stay in touch with other languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada etc where I don’t read but I can watch and enjoy the movies in these languages. I consider myself a privileged movie goer in India. North Indians see mostly Hindi movies only. Similarly Tamilians, Andhraites, Kannadigas mostly see movies in their own languages. A few watch Hindi movies too and even fewer, who have had an English Education watch English movies. I watch in ALL these languages because I can!
6)Vehicles: I used to love two-wheelers. In my childhood in the fifties, I saved up coins to pay for a cycle on hire and ride it around the streets in Mumbai, just for sheer joy. When I started my career, and had a salary of my own, my first major purchase was a Yezdi Motorcycle and my wife and I used to zoom around Bangalore city. Traffic was just 10 percent of what it is today. For years I had it and then progressed to owning an Enfield Bullet, the most prestigious two wheeler any Indian could own those days. I gave up only when my family grew and I bought my first car at the age of 40 (A new Premier Padmini). I later owned an electric car (Reva) for 6 years. Today I drive a compact hatchback (Santro automatic)
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5)My “morals”: I grew up as and still am a strict teetotaller, and a 100 percent non- smoker. I don’t preach to the smokers and drinkers and I live and let live. Likewise I was strictly a virgin boy till my marriage at 26, and now for the past 41 years I have been a 100 percent chaste hubby to my wife. I have now reached an age where I can’t even be tempted to stray. When some of my good friends (with a roving eye and a few with a roving penis) ask what I do to enjoy life, I have always had a ready answer suitable for the occasion. These days, I tell them just one word “Quora”. When asked if I was never attracted to beautiful women, I tell them I am always attracted to them but I know my limit. Like beautiful flowers in a garden, I see and admire but do not pluck. I admire all women (the bold, the beautiful, the intelligent and the virtuous) even when the wife is around and never felt guilty about it. During the Miss Universe and Miss World contests, in the nineties, when Indian beauties went on a winning spree (Remember Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra, Yukta Mookhey, Lara Datta ?) I used to sit glued to the TV from start to finish, and play judge myself much to my wife’s amusement and my teenaged daughter’s embarrassment) I love women with beautiful singing voices and my three favourite voices are MS Subbalaxmi, Lata Mangeshkar and nowadays Shreya Goshal. By sexual orientation, I am “straight. I experience no revulsion to homosexuality in others and condemn society’s prejudices and the laws that criminalise their activities.
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9)Books: I used to be a voracious reader. I still am but I now read on the screen rather than a printed page. I started with Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Tales from the Panchatantra, Hindu Mythological stories, Chandamama Magazine. The two books that I have read the maximum number of times and sometimes still do, are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Among the Indian authors, I have read probably every single novel that RK Narayan has written. I grew up as a schoolboy, reading Enid Blyton’s books. (I have read all that were published till I reached the age 15 and I then outgrew her books) . I then progressed to reading Agatha Christie (I think I have read all of her crime thrillers) and the Sherlock Holmes series. I then progressed to Perry Mason novels, James Hadley Chase, Irwing Wallace, Arthur Hailey, Harrold Robbins. I read the old classics like Dickens’ literature, Shakespeares’ plays, plays by George Bernard Shaw, modern classics like The Grapes of Wrath, and also devoured all the popular comics of those days, notably Superman, Batman, Archie, Cowboy westerns, (Gregory Peck was a favourite), Classics Illustrated, Tarzan etc. In Hindi, I did not read beyond the prescribed texts but later, developed a taste for Premchand (I have read his most popular novels, like Godaan, Gaban and a few more) and all his short stories. I also read the popular pulp literature from authors like Gulshan Nanda and Khushwaha Kaant. (These helped me improve my spoken Hindi) I read many plays by Mohan Rakesh and also read Hindi magazines like Dharmayug, Saaptaahik Hindusthan, Sarita, Madhuri(film magazine) and occasionally a few more. Those days it was possible. There were no distractions from TV and the Internet and reading was a popular hobby particularly during the rainy seasons when outdoor activities were not practical.
I had mentioned these 10 interesting facts in an old answer, and I am reproducing them here.
I could go on. But the question asks only for 10 and I will stop here
1)Height: When I was growing taller during my boyhood, I felt thrilled. I thought I would reach my dream height of 6 feet. I fell a whole head short. I ended up a mere 164 cm tall, that’s just 5 feet 4 and half inches. That’s one of my disappointments in life. I blamed my mother and my father for it one day. They neatly passed the buck to my grandparents, who were not around anymore to pass the buck further.