Lake Avalanche, Ooty

It is a picture straight out of  a Walter Foster painting book- the mountains in the distance, grey with a hint of violet, pasted against a darkening sky....Swirls of clouds flit across the canvas, rest for a while on the mountain tops.... and then make haste. The mountains and the clouds are mirrored in the limpid waters of the lake.... the reflection so clear... that it looks like one harmonious entity... with the line of symmetry stretched across the lake edge! A gentle roll of the meadows...punctuated with a clump of trees here and a bush there....draw our eyes... all the way.. right up to the lake front. The landscape is simple, yet arresting- just how your nine year old would scrawl hills, lake and trees on her drawing pad. It is surreal. It is Lake Avalanche, 25 km from Ooty.

As the day draws to a climactic close, we huddle in the bus. We need to get to the parking lot at Lake Emerald before darkness and head out to Ooty from there. The bus lurches, rocks, sways and jolts rather dangerously...as it makes its way through the make-shift path- made worse by the afternoon rain. It slices through the thick vegetation on either side of the path. An overhanging branch forces its way through the bus window and gives a nice tonk on the head to an inattentive bus occupant. He needs that wake-up call!
It is a little like Jurassic Park- an electric fencing follows us all the way.. to keep one side of the forest and its inmates....supposedly out of bounds from us. There are warning signs as well... that the fencing is "live" and shouldn't be touched. This is India... we are sure that the electric fence is purely ornamental!! Our hope is that the animals can also read... but don't make a similar inference!

"Yes, we have animals in this area," Karim mentions rather casually. "You should remember that we are connected to Mudhumalai Forest on the other side. So, it's not uncommon to see animals. On this very stretch we've seen one Gaur (Indian Bison) which used to visit every year at a particular time. But, they are not dangerous. The black bear is dangerous- he attacks!" "Mary!" Karim shouts over the drone of the bus, "Wasn't it your relative who had a close shave with that black bear? He is lucky to be alive!"
"Mary is from a village close to Lake Emerald. A woodcutter in her village had a narrow escape the other day. He heard a roar, turned back... and saw that it was a tiger. He jumped... jumped 16 ft... right to the top of a tree! That saved him. Tigers can't climb trees. If it had been a leopard, he would have been gone... leopards are very skillful, they can scale trees, of any height. Anyway, the woodcutter was on top of the tree and the tiger at the bottom! He called from his cell... sitting there. Soon, the villagers came with their drums and the tiger ran away! That's how it is!"

Soon, we are at the parking lot. Karim wants a ride in our car to Ooty. We readily agree. It's not easy to find such an engaging conversationalist.

Karim is a manager of a property on Lake Avalanche. Earlier in the day, he took us on a tour through the property. He showed us the cow sheds, the sheep and the horses. "The sheep are native, we have only two of them now, two others died. Each one has enough wool to make two full suits! But they are not as well endowed as the European sheep.
But these horses are not from here. They are all from Rajasthan. This is "Destiny", this one is "Jhansi"...this one is so big, but he is only 6 months old! Look at this one- he's actually 7 years old, but so tiny- it's a different breed."

We went  right up to the lake front. The water extended as far as we could see, rimmed by the mountains. "The lake is fed by these two streams from the mountains. We've never seen so much water, at least, not for the last seven years! You see those cows on the other side of the lake, on those hill slopes? Can you believe that earlier, they could actually walk across, over a bridge? You don't see it, but the bridge is actually submerged in the lake. We had record rains this year."
We listened to the commentary, all wide-eyed. "If you think that this lake is beautiful, it is nothing compared to the Upper Bhavani Lake! The Lake is somewhere up there...over those mountains- 20 km from here. You need special permission to visit the lake. They found 20 carcasses there, by the temple....." Karim jolted us...and then continued...."of mountain deer. It rained so much that the deer could not get down. There was no food and the older ones perished." Karim mentioned, in a matter of fact manner.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on horse riding while the more ambitious ones amongst us topped it with adventure sports like "monkey crawling", "rock/wall climbing" and "zip-lining".

At the parking lot...... It is a tight fit, but Karim is also huddled in our car. By now, the sun is down and the sky is lit with the after-glow, streaks of orange soon fade away into the grey of the sky and the mountains. The car goes past Lake Emerald and the Emerald township.

Earlier in the day, we went past the same landscape, completely bowled over by its untouched beauty. Sweeping meadows greeted us on every side. Like a Van Gogh painting, the gentle slopes came alive in the dazzling sunshine, crisscrossed with fields- tiny squares in deep-green, light-green and some in a dull olive-green hue. We thought it was tea; we later learnt that most of them were potato, carrot and cabbage.

There's not much to see- by now, it is pitch dark. Through the trees, we catch the twinkling of distant towns on the hill slopes....
"The 'britishers' (as Karim calls them) came to Ooty in the 1840s. The first route was through Kothagiri, from Mettupalayam. There were no stone houses in those days, just the semi-circular, wooden structures of the natives- the "thodas". The British built the first stone house, which stands to this day, as part of the Arts College. Next, came the railway from Ooty to Coonoor. The tracks have a tooth in the middle. This is unique to Ooty, not even the train at Darjeeling has this feature. The roads came much later. We are wonder struck how they could construct so much, in so little time... that too, in those days! You can check the markings still left on some of the bridges- it says 1908! While we wonder about the British and their ability to construct, the British themselves wonder about the pyramids of Egypt! How could they construct so much....?." Karim drifts away and we leave him to his thoughts.

"But the Brtishers made one big mistake! In fact two- they brought the "sholas" to Ooty and the eucalyptus. These two have ruined Ooty's ecology! These were all just grasslands- they say grass can save a person from death, (we need to ask Karim how!) but the British planted these sholas. Sholas are trees which take over the entire landscape- they are completely useless, they can't even give shade! As far as the eucalyptus goes, 30% of the water table in Nilgiris is sucked by them. We are now trying to cut down both of them.. in a phased manner, to reverse the process. It is tough, but it has to be done!"

Surprisingly, on our way back from Ooty, we spotted a sign-board which said "Save wildlife and protect the sholas"!!! We need to let Karim know that there are forces which are working against him!

By now, we are close to Fern Hill Palace. "This palace is run as a hotel by the Maharaja of Mysore, just like the Lalita Mahal Palace at Mysore. The Britsh used to stay in these parts of the town. Except for the collectorate office, there was not much in Ooty proper. You saw the Ooty Lake, isn't it? It extended right up till here, in those days."

Karim has a pink face and blue eyes, dark brown hair, and walks with a swagger of Dev Anand, with a shawl casually thrown over his shoulder. He speaks to men at the stable in Tamil, switches to Hindi as he briefly talks to his family over the cell.... and maintains fluency in English, when it comes to us. It is difficult to pin him down to a particular geography. 

He is remarkably fluid on any topic. He knows the International Schools in the area, how they were built by one Thomas from Kerala in the 1970s, where the foreign students come from... right down to how many students sit in each class!!  He insists that Lovedale Lawrence is still the best international school. You don't contest someone with such breadth of information.

Another bend- Karim says he is home... and has to get down. We catch the twinkle of his eye.. as he waves his hand, thanks us briefly and melts into the darkness.

Lake Avalanche, Lake Emerald and Karim... they are all reduced to a memory... vignettes of which we pull out from time to time... to add colour to our monochrome world!






 

"Golu" and "dashavatara"

Navratri is a fascinating time. South Indian families celebrate it with "golu" (or "kolu" as some choose to correct others)- idols and dolls are brought out of the dusty attic and arranged in steps. Shiva, Vishnu and Devi occupy centre-stage and share their space graciously with the Queen's Guard- that motionless soldier at the Buckingham Palace with the enviable head of hair! Ganesha, Kartikeya, Rama with Lakshmana, Sita and Hanuman, the Statue of Liberty, the Swiss cow-bell, the Taj Mahal, the snake charmer, the "marapaachis" (wooden couple), saints like Raghavendra swami and Adi Sankara, the "chettiar couple" selling grocery items- it is a motley crowd all right, but for nine days, they fill the home with their lively presence and make the occasion so entertaining.

No "golu" is complete without the ubiquitous "dasha-avataaram set". No golu is complete without glaring errors in arranging them! Seldom do folks go in for a "good sized dashavataram set". It looks as if the ten idols are purchased small, so that all of them can completely fit in one row with enough elbow room between them. There is also the occasional hazard of an over sized "matsya" or a "kalki" kept so close to the edge of the steps... that it can tip over...leaving only nine of them standing for the rest of the days!!
Invariably, the idols are small and lack detail. Most of them, except for the notable exception of Vamana and Kalki are coloured blue for Lord Vishnu is blue-hued. Moulds used for crafting the idols seem to have become jaded with repeated use over the years. The result is that the plough that Balarama wields looks exactly the same as Parashurama's axe as does Rama's bow.
To complicate it, Varaha is a boar and Kalki is depicted as a horse. It looks as if the same mould is used to cast both the idols and they are distinguished based on just their skin-tone. Varaha is black and Kalki is white. Matsya looks like a mermaid and Kurma has a turtle for its feet. Given the size of the images, they look just the same.

Surprisingly, folks who keenly celebrate golu are at a loss to even name the avataras in order. No wonder they can't get the arrangement right! Everyone begins with earnestness- "matsya", "kurma", "varaha"- the fingers go up in quick succession. Somehow, after the 4th avatara, they suffer a sudden bout of amnesia and lose steam. They reel off the rest of the avataras that they know and find that two fingers are still unaccounted for! They need to start from the beginning.. and suddenly remember that they missed Vamana the last time. But their count gets no better and this time, three fingers still remain!! It is inexplicable. Sometimes, you feel you need to help them out by saying "you forgot to count yourself!!" but the joke doesn't cut and you run the risk of being snubbed, for being plain silly.

The upshot is.... total confusion when it comes to dashavataram arrangement. There are golus where the avatarams are broken in half and arranged in 2 rows- a total no-no and completely robs the grandeur of the set. In some places, Kalki has traded places with someone as early as Varaha. Matsya and Kurma are swapped and when it comes to the sequence of "parashurama-rama-balarama-krishna", lesser said the better. No one ever gets it right.

There is a problem with Balarama. There are many who feel that he shouldn't be there in the first place. Like Ravindra Jadeja, Balarama needs to prove that he actually belongs to the side. We hope he can vindicate his selection with a match winning performance, but it may be too late, even with Balarama's all round capabilities!
Yuvraj's fans are sure that he is a better allrounder than Jadeja. So too, in the dashavataram side, there is a strong contingent out there, which would like Balarama's place taken up by Lord Buddha. But if you place Buddha, the batting lineup needs to be changed. Buddha can bat only after Krishna whereas Balarama is a better batsman and would play before Krishna! It all becomes terribly confusing.

But "golus" in South India rarely feature Buddha. Buddha didn't accept the validity of the vedas supposedly and it was reason enough to leave him out of the side. In the South, they go with the time tested side where Balarama always plays- no questions asked.
A South Indian lady invites friends home for golu, some of whom are from North India as well. They recognise the avataras on the steps and start the enumeration drill of "matsya", "kurma"...and stumble when it comes to Balarama.
"Arey Balram!?... but Krishn and Balram grew up together at Vrindavan no!? They are brothers kyon? How can they be different avataras?"
It is a tough question. Our South Indian "golu lady" stammers and slurs.

What people conveniently forget is that there is a more obvious example of avataras appearing together- Parashurama. Parashurama spanned three avataras- he was of course the hero in his own time, but he continued to live on and later confronted Rama. Not just that- he was present in Krishna's time too and taught archery to Karna and even battled with Bhishma.
Hence, this argument is not a satisfactory one to drop Balarama.

It all boils down to contribution and what value he brings to the side. It is here that Balarama faces a challenge. Either his exploits are actually few or he did not have a good marketing wing.
There are few stories where Balarama comes across as a true match winner. He is a little like Dravid- when he gets a hundred, a Laxman or a Sachin also scores a century and Dravid's contribution is overshadowed.

Many years ago, Adarsh Chitra Katha competed with our good old Amar Chitra Katha and brought out a comic on Balarama. We were still kids and hadn't yet learnt to read and had to be satisfied looking at the illustrations. In this book, Balarama took on a powerful monkey and with his bare hands, completely beat him up. The illustrations were engaging. To our childish eyes, the monkey looked like Hanuman... (despite the anachronism) and it appeared as if Balarama could challenge even the mighty Hanuman!
It was much later that we started to read and found out that the monkey was just another nondescript asura with an ape like form and had nothing to do with Hanuman! Even that prowess could not be ascribed to Balarama.

In the interest of maintaining the sequence in "golu" correct, I propose Buddha to be added to the pantheon. His image is well known and least confusing. You wouldn't trade his place for..say Narasimha! Even a person with reasonable knowledge of chronology would place him after Krishna.
Another approach would be to truncate the number of avataras to nine- nava-avataars for nava-raatri!

May I suggest an amicable solution to this entire mess- can these idols be made with the sequence numbers written at the bottom? As simple as that! It will solve the problem for good.

Till then, I will continue to be a proof-reader and inspect every golu... till they all get it right!!
Buddham sharanam gacchaami! Peace! Peace! Peace!!










 

"Murli Manohar Ganesha!"

Chk out this year's Ganesha, handcrafted from the "self hardening clay" from Michaels Artstore. Found a picture over the net and used the idea to try out a different pose. This year, there are pictures in the newspaper about "Spiderman Ganpati", "6-pack Ganpati" etc. This is not as dramatic as some of those all right.
Did toy with the idea of "Dhoni Ganpati"....executing a "helicopter shot"! May be, a different time!

Krishna (murli manohar) and Ganesh Chaturthi are of course connected. In many parts of the country, the story of Krishna and the episode of Syamantaka Mani is retold on this day. Krishna saw the moon on the day of Ganesh Chaturthi and had to pay for it with the allegation of  having stolen the Symantaka gem. Even avataras are not spared of infamy and accusation. Of course, later, Krishna redeemed himself.
We may accidently see the moon on this day and suffer a similar fate. But listening to this story of Krishna is supposed to act as an antidote. The reader may be familiar with all this.
 

Monstrosity of microphones

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen!" Hemant began, straining every nerve and sinew,  packing in as much emotion as he could muster. It was after all, the finals of the High School Elocution Competition. He bristled with enthusiasm. "Lend me your...." and just at that opportune moment, the microphone gave way. The speakers fell silent. Hemant looked confused and glanced hither and thither on stage,  unable to decide whether to continue or stop his spiel. The audience broke into chatter.
The organisers got their act together, quickly adjusted the microphone and Hemant was given the go-ahead.
"Friends, Romans, Countrymen!" Hemant's voice boomed once more, "lend me your ears, I come to bury...." and the microphone stopped. The speakers were not silent this time- that was the only improvement. They let out a continuous, dull, monotonous drone. This time, Hemant was clearly unnerved. He twitched and fidgeted on stage.
The microphone was given a tug, the wires were pulled and the speakers moved till the acoustics sprang to life. "Friends, Romans, Countrymen!" Hemant began tentatively. Gone was the earlier ring in his voice- he fumbled over the words as a convict would at the gallows! It was as if he expected trouble at the next bend...and sure enough he invited it. Before someone could lend him a ear, the acoustics fell apart. The boys simply loved it- they broke into laughter and jeered at the speaker with their palms around their mouths..each one doing imitation cat-calls of "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" in uniquely original ways!!
Sure enough, Hemant's future was sealed. He would do other things, but would never be a speaker  again.
The only incident which would upstage the above episode was the Dance Competition at Roorkee. The bharatanaatyam dancer gracefully pirouetted on stage to the tunes of the pushpaanjali- "thath-tho-dakataam"...and just when she stuck the most statuesque pose, the microphone fell silent. The dancer froze, maintaining the posture.. for 5 seconds..for 10, for 30 seconds...for a painful minute...waiting..waiting for the music to resume. It just wouldn't! The audience sprang to life and was in splits! Eventually, the dancer gave up, resigned herself to her fate and slunk away from the stage... only for the music to suddenly resume and throw her off completely!! Microphones can make or mar your life!

"Microphone" is too scientific a word. We know it simply as "mike". Mikes are like your four-year old. Normally, they behave in predictable ways, but off and on, just when the guests are at home, they lie down on the floor, kick their hands and legs and throw a sudden tantrum. You have no choice. You have to humour them.

As we wait with bated breath for the start of a program, there is always that officious gentleman who has the onerous task of testing all the mikes. He walks over to the dais, looking all important- "hello! check"... "check"..."mike check", "mike check 1-2-3"..."check"..."check" his voice echoes across the auditorium, mixed with the sound of heavy breathing that the audio system also picks up. He signals to someone on the other side to raise the treble or lower the bass... and continues... "check"..."check".."check".
Sometimes, it looks as if the job of a mike tester is given to someone who is incapable of speaking any other word. His vocabulary is limited to "check" and "1-2-3". The repetition mildly irritates the elderly person sitting behind me, "Instead of saying 'check', 'check' all the time and boring us... can't he at least chant the Lord's name...'Krishna-Rama-Govinda'!? He will earn some punya that way. He would have got moksha by now.. I say!!"

To contest this accusation of a limited vocabulary, the mike tester sometimes picks someone on the last row and questions, "Sir...do you hear me over there? Do you hear me?" Invariably, the gentleman on the last row responds with a "yes" in a voice loud enough for the person next to him to question... "what did you say?". It confuses the mike tester and he wants the volume cranked up some more. "Sir, do you hear him now...?"  he questions..with the entire hall reverberating. This exercise has always been a futile one- each one depending on the other to be heard. It is a problem of mutual dependence... anyonya aashraya....which can never be solved, unless they distribute mikes to everyone on the last row in advance!
Sir Patel, our drill teacher at Bosco had an effective technique. "Sridhar, you monkey! Sit down! David... donkey! Neeche baith!" he shouted from the dais as he tested the mikes out. If Sridhar sat down, Sir Patel knew that the mikes worked. As simple as that.

Musicians and mikes share a love-hate relationship. The vocalist is forever dissatisfied with the acoustics- either there is a feedback from the audio system and he doesn't like to hear his own voice, or there is no feedback and hence he does not know what he is singing!!
Violinists nurse a secret grudge that the vocalist keeps his own audio levels high and thereby drowns the sounds of the violin. They hate to be short-changed this way and are animated through out the concert- with hand signals that they want the audio level of the violin raised. No amount of volume pleases the violinist. The acoustics operator is clearly irked. The audience doesn't like it either. We wish we could educate the violinist- "Dude, if you increase the volume anymore, you will need to distribute ear-plugs and headache tablets at the start of the concert!!"
To prove his point,  the operator suddenly raises the volume to the maximum... so that the audio system groans and shrieks and squeals... and brings the recital to an abrupt halt. Sanity returns.. and audio levels are restored to the original levels. The audio operator has the last laugh!

Mikes have to be adjusted to the correct height. Stage fright often strangles the upstart so that he begins his speech or song immediately without checking this vital point. It is only after the first line that he suddenly realises that the mike is too low. Evidently, the participant before him was a kid and he is a six-footer. He is distracted now and looks silly- having to bend at his knees and stick his neck out just to align his face to the mouth piece!
Or the mike is too high... and he spends the entire duration on stage on tip toes! The most complicated situation is the one where the mike has not been clamped tightly...and even as the participant is singing.. it slides down slowly... making the participant also do a similar jig.

These days, there are some select auditoriums which pride themselves as "no acoustic equipment zones". We are made to believe that music or theatre is best enjoyed this way. We are not entirely sure how effective these experiments are. The sounds are too mild for our liking. Someone in the audience always wants to cough or sneeze or clear his throat and those sounds compete with the artiste's. Also, we come out of these performances with an added complex- that perhaps, with increasing years, we are not hearing as well... or may be, we need to visit the ENT specialist to drain some ear-wax out!! We prefer our concerts with mikes.

"In those days, there were no mikes. We didn't need them", my father began his favourite topic. I knew the next few sentences which would follow verbatim. "You look at the naadaswaram. Does it need a mike? You can hear it 10 furlongs away! You should have heard SG Kittappa. What a stentorian full-throated voice he had! He could span 4 octaves and beyond- the keertana "evarani" was his favourite. Look at the singers these days...they look so puny and have no voice-power. No wonder, they need a mike... and so close to their mouths. One of these days, somebody is going to accidentally swallow it.. I say!!!" he trails away.


 

Study of elephants in water colour

Passport photographs

During one of my trips to Chennai, my father showed me a brochure. The "class of 61" at the Engineering College of Guindy, Madras (then) had had a reunion and in commemoration of that event, they had brought out this brochure. As I leafed through the book, one section caught my eye. It had the passport photographs of all the students in their final year at Guindy and right beside each photograph was another passport photograph which showed how the same student looked now... after 50 years!!
The next hour was simply unadulterated entertainment!! We scrutinised each photograph and saw how time had morphed each candidate beyond recognition! On one side was the chiseled face of a handsome young man with bright eyes, a hint of baby stubble, a healthy hairline and luscious hair- falling in waves over his forehead. Next to it was a creature which stared back at you...with a shining, bald pate, a furrowed brow, a double chin and a perpetual scowl! The two images couldn't have been farther apart... and we joked that even if they had made an error and interchanged a candidate's recent photograph with someone else's, we just wouldn't have known!!

You need 3 passport photographs for anything and everything- right from renewing your driver's license to applying for a new SIM card. That's when you rummage through all the shelves at home. Invariably, you will find exactly 2 recent passport photographs. The 3rd photograph is always a "stamp sized photograph" if at all you find one. We have no idea why we even buy these stamp sized photographs. No one ever wants them and seeing a dozen of them strewn all over... and completely useless, only increases your frustration. Sometimes, you do find a 3rd passport photograph....only it is from a different set. You cannot submit this photograph with the other two. Moreover, this photograph is from a previous avatar- when you sported frills in your hair, a ghastly moustache and long side burns.. all of which makes you look positively silly! You wonder how the world even tolerated this appearance.

"I am going to get a 100 passport photographs so that we never run out of them!" you slam the door and storm out of home. However, getting a passport photograph leaves you with a dented ego... as the years go by. You are unsure whether to smile at the camera or wear a solemn expression. Either way, you are condemned. If you smile, someone looks at the photographs and breaks into convulsive laughter. He somehow seems to confirm your own assessment that the photograph borders on the ridiculous.
If you pose with a poker face, you hear a comment a home, "You look like a robber! Couldn't you have smiled a bit at least?" One look at the photograph... and you see how accurate the analysis is! You wonder why the hairline has suddenly receded... much like sea tide.. and exposed so much of real estate! You blame it on a bad haircut, but that's seldom true. The eyes are either staring at the camera in a ghoulish fashion, or half closed... as if you are addicted to charas (dope)!
In a way, you are thankful that you got only 16 of these passport photographs (plus two dozen stamp sized of course) and not 100 as originally planned. That would have been a total disaster.. and seeing these frightful photographs at home, would have been one more reason for perpetual insomnia!!
There is one interesting point to note though- these very photographs will look "young" and "dapper", when you pose for the next set of passport photographs the following year!! You can well imagine how those turn out!

Many years ago, Don Bosco High School brought out its own annual brochure with the passport photographs of all the prize winners. An impeccable magazine normally... but that year, two egregious errors were committed. They missed PV Biju's photograph and left that spot vacant in the magazine with only his name typed at the bottom.
The second mistake was worse- instead of having Suresh's photograph, they published the brochure with Suresh's name, but with Rajeev's photograph. Rajeev donated a "full page advertisement" from his father's company all right... but he was definitely not a prize winner and should have never been on that page.

The school decided to make amends to fix this error. One fine afternoon, the class monitor went around the class  distributing two black-and-white photographs- one was PV Biju's and the other was Suresh's. The order from the Vice Principal over the public address system was simple- we had to take these photographs home... take out the brochure... and stick them to the correct spots with Fevicol!! Noble intent all right, but the execution was bound to fail.
Students used their imagination to the fullest. Even before Biju's photograph had been distributed, the students had populated the vacant spot in the brochure with their own creation- some with a caricature of a donkey (and had even labelled it as "gadha kahin ka") and still others with pictures of monkeys and human heads with all kinds of oddities!
Suresh was never a popular student. He was perceived as a nasty book worm, a teacher's pet and a general nuisance to the student society at large. It gave the students a forum to express their choice feelings for Suresh... they tore the passport photograph.. into as tiny bits as possible... and either consigned him to the waste paper basket... or flung these bits to the fan whirring at full blast in the classroom!
Boys.. will after all.. be boys!!








 

On nails!

Traditional Indian homes have a problem with nails... cutting nails. There is never a right place or time or location for this job. There are elders specially designated, whose sole vocation in life, is to police nail-cutting at home.
"Why are you cutting your nail.. of all days... on a Tuesday? Couldn't you find a better day?"
If you postponed the activity to a different day, you still invited obtuse comments. "Cutting nails.... on a Friday!? Do I need to tell you every time that it is simply not done !? It is ashaucham (unclean) I say!!"
If you got the day right, you ran out of luck with the time of the day. "Why would you cut your nails now? You had the whole day in front of you! After sunset, it is forbidden to cut nails! Don't you know that? Couldn't you find at least some time... during the day!?"
As for the location, no place was good enough. The drawing room (living room) entertained guests who could pop in at any time. Hence, that room was out of bounds for this activity. The kitchen was out.. for obvious reasons. The balcony had other issues.. you don't want to spread your arms and legs to clip your nails and invite attention from the neighbouring flats. The little foyer leading to the balcony seemed an appropriate place... but you were castigated for that too... "Never sit between two rooms to do anything! You know what happened to Hiranyakashipu.. the rakshasa don't you? He had his entrails torn out by Lord Vishnu.... by placing him in the foyer...!!"

If you got everything right and did manage to clip nails, then an errant nail strayed away from the cutting scene and got you into trouble! "Learn to keep a well spread newspaper below...so that nails don't fly away in all directions! You do know.. that Goddess Lakshmi.. never stays in the house where nails are carelessly strewn around.... don't you!!? There is even a shloka which says that if Lord Vishnu had such unclean habits... Goddess Lakshmi will divorce him too!!. Let me recall that shloka... It says......" It is prudent to slink away from the scene at these times.

We often wonder how Lord Vishnu clipped his nails... or perhaps, considering the hazards, he actually didn't! Possibly, that was the reason.. he could emerge from the pillar with... nails like a lion... to finish off Hiranyakashipu. The only other occasion where nails played a prominent role.. was the Afzal Khan-Shivaji duel... where Shivaji with his bare hands.. and tiger nails... clawed his way into Afzal Khan's stomach.

Nail cutters are docile instruments. Some of them resemble a butter knife at best... and just don't have the necessary teeth to clip nails... especially if it is a recalcitrant toe-nail. If you applied more pressure than necessary, the whole apparatus dismantled to pieces.. and the entire activity had to be abandoned! Of course, you had to wait for the all the planets to align again in terms of day, time and location... to start nail cutting all over again.. this time.. with a fresh instrument!

Sometimes, it seemed easy to pare nails of one hand with the other. The hands are after all far more dexterous than any nail cutter. The only downside to this technique was that.. after getting a few fingers right, you invariably ran into trouble with the last finger. In your impatience to peal the nail off... you often pealed it so deep that... along with the nail... it tore off a bit of skin! Ouch! For the rest of the day, you howled in pain....with the finger now wrapped with a kerchief...blotted with a dash of blood. For sure, you invited incisive comments from nail-cutting policemen at home.. which didn't exactly lift your already pained spirits!

Nail biting needs to be encouraged. It is simplest and most effective way of clipping nails. Of course, clipping toe nails wouldn't be easy... but you can always try... with the foot in your mouth!
India-Pakistan Cricket matches in the 80s created a whole generation of  nail biters! Many a Cricket fan lost his nails and sometimes even the fingers.. as he sat at the edge of his seat the entire day to watch some nail biting finishes....... only for Javed Miandad to spoil the party with a last-ball six! It was terribly agonising!
But you can always spot a nail-biter.... his nail stands out like a sore thumb! For one, the nail would be stubby and short..... the tip of the finger swollen..and completely encircling the nail..giving it the appearance of a shapeless, sunken crater. The finger exuded an odour of its own.. which made shaking hands with this species not the pleasantest of activities!
The nail biter has his own problems... having bitten the nail off... he often looks around for the most expedient method to dispose off  the sliver. He would either have to gulp it.. or spit it off surreptitiously, both equally complicated.

If nail biters are an eyesore, women with long nails pose a different problem. Regardless of how well manicured and long and shapely their nails are, a peculiar thought pattern holds us hostage. We imagine how this lady would write on the black board...and in the process, inadvertently scratch the board with her long nails....right from one end of the black board to the other.. and again from top to bottom. That singular thought is enough. It sends shivers down our spine and we are seized with a feeling of extreme disgust and revulsion.

That surely is the final nail on the coffin.... as far as this article on nails and nail biters...goes!