*From To Sathish* - Thread 3 - Page 57

What an astonishing thing a book is...one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." Carl Sagan

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." W.B. Yeats

"I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don't want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic." Charles de Lint

"When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay." Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker


"No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith." R.A. Salvatore, Streams of Silver

"The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think." Harper Lee

"Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are." Mason Cooley

"When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it." Julian Barnes

"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." Madeleine L'Engle

Long ago
Before books,music and movies my solitude was filled with sitting outside the door to our courtyard and watching life,lives and all kinds of vehicles pass by.The courtyard inside which i lived connected two small lanes in a small lower middle class area called Dodda mavalli.

MTR or Mavalli tiffin room was one of the few famous landmarks apart from lal bagh and Minerva circle and a mention of anyone of these names would bring you very close to the gully i lived in.

The street i lived in was called Moodalappa lane or street and if you type this in google,you will get a birds eye view of the area i was born in and lived for a few years before i came to madras or chennai.

Usually i spent time watching with great interest as sometimes my mother or other mothers worked hard at pumping water and water that came only for a couple of hours,once in the early hours of the morning and at a time when even the local rooster would be in bed and the other was in the evening between four and six.

water,pump,people,frustration,lower middle class mentality makes for a very volatile combination and a free flow of language which would make the devil blush and run for cover.Even though i was tiny as was my brain,my kutty intelligence kind of grasped a little bit of what the yelling and screams were about and it is somewhat like what arnab goswami does during prime time on TIMES NOW channel.

If a passerby sat and listened for a few minutes,he would learn everything about everyone and that includes who is sleeping with who,how much money somebody cheated and all that you see in todays megaserials.

sometimes plastic buckets would be smashed on each others faces and backs and well all women wrestling shows would take place.

Some of these ugly traits took hold of me and found a eager home to settle in and they came in handy in many a tough situation.Although blessed with an average and decent mind i realised that i over reacted and was hyper sensitive to even the slightest snide or joke and it resulted in some colorful words flowing out of my mouth or the persons head being smashed with whatever i could lay my hands on.

I think all the exposure to those water fights and to a greater degree things that i imbibed from my late father who was a notorious man in our area resulted in a lot of situations that i am very sad and embarrassed about when i look back on them now.

None escaped my filthy mouth and rage and that includes my family of aunts,sisters and my late grandmom.But always,always it came about if i was provoked intentionally or unintentionally.

There is a lot i cannot say or describe right now but those beginning years were pretty tough and shameful.

My school teachers,some of them who did not realise that were kind of reminded over the years and being expelled three times starting from my 3rd std were evidence enough that satish belonged in the last row and it was better to ignore him and a few others who sat with him.

The remarkable point was that i was bloody good in studies and in sports and yet i was never ever included in most of the schools social activities for there was fear that fights and violence would always make their appearances.

I guess a few of you who read this might sit back and wonder ' no,not our satish.really.' but it is all true and trust me that even today,among my closest friends there prevails a certain uneasiness when i am around for there is fear of how i might just react.


More,soon

1) The poor..work & work.

2) The rich exploit the poor.

3) The soldier, protects both.

4) The taxpayer, pays for all three.

5) The wanderer, rests for all four.

6) The drunk, drinks for all five.

7) The banker, robs all six.

8) The lawyer, misleads all seven.

9) The doctor, kills all eight.

10) The undertaker, buries all nine.

11) The politician live happily on account of all ten.

One day Krishna rushed quickly into the garden very
alarmed.

He went to the bamboo plant and the bamboo plant asked,
"Krishna, whats wrong?"

Krishna said "I have something to ask you, but it is very
difficult".

The bamboo said "Tell me: if I can, I will give it to you".

So Krishna said "I need your life. I need to cut you".

The bamboo thought for a while and then said "You dont
have any other choice. You don't have any other way ?"

Krishna said, "No, no other way".

And it said "OK" and gave himself up.

So Krishna cut the bamboo n made holes in it, and each
time, he carved the holes, the bamboo was crying in pain ...

Krishna made a beautiful flute out of it n this flute was with
him all the time.

24 hours a day, it was with Krishna. Even the Gopis were
jealous of the flute.

They said, "Look, Krishna is our Lord, but yet we get to
spend only some time with him.

He wakes up with you, He sleeps with you, all the time you
are with him".

Gopis asked the bamboo, "Tell us your secret. What secret
do you have, that the Lord treasures you so much ?"

And the bamboo said "The secret is that, i gave myself up,
and he did whatever was right for me, in the process i had
to undergo a lot of pain.

A drunk man was staggering home with a bottle of booze in his back pocket when he slipped and fell heavily. Struggling to his feet, he felt something wet running down his leg.

"Please God," he thought. "Let it be blood!"

Confucius Say: It's OK to let a fool kiss you; but don't let a kiss fool you.

Confucius Say: It is better to lose a lover than love a loser.

Confucius Say: A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Confucius Say: It is much better to want the mate you do not have than to have the mate you do not want.

Confucius Say: A joke is like sex. Neither is any good if you don't get it.

An elderly couple had just learned how to send text messages on their cell phones.

The wife was a romantic type and the husband was more of a no-nonsense guy.

One afternoon the wife went out to meet a friend for coffee.

She decided to send her husband a romantic text message and she wrote:

"If you are sleeping, send me your dreams.
If you are laughing, send me your smile.
If you are eating, send me a bite.
If you are drinking, send me a sip.
If you are crying, send me your tears.
I love you."

The husband texted back to her: "I'm on the toilet. Please advise."

Power Gym summer blues


Yes,the gym where i work out is called the power gym and it is on the main road of Besantnagar.next to Icici bank.Some of you would have seen the gym in the pics i have posted over the years,especially when i was trying to bulk up for the film Valiyavan.Sadly like the name the film itself did not have too much Valimai and like The hero Jais voice squeaked its way to a huge flop or the term used in the medical field " dead on arrival"

But unlike the film's fate i fared better at the gym and in october 2014 under my coach Gopi's strict and harsh supervision put on muscle on my shoulders and arms in a matter of weeks and that which has stayed put and refuses to go away as do the two love handles that i picked up with the bulking regime and diet.


August 17,1997 was the day power gym was opened to the public and would you believe it that along with the popular chennai cricket player Robin singh,i cut the ribbon of the entrance of the gym.Well since i had nearly 25 to 30 ads under my belt by that time i too was popular in a smallish way and the gym owners Lal,Guru,Sajeevan and Real estate Ramesh were big fans of.actually i have no clue as to that they found good enough to be fans of.Anyway let sleeping dogs lie or like my grandmom used to say in a more colorful language " if you shove a stick up the arse of a sleeping dog,it will surely bite you."

Crap,forget shoving a stick,even waking me was enough reason for me to bite people and send them to the doctors for injections around their navels.

Well me and Robin singh sat next to each other on chairs in the platform while things were readied and the only thing to ready was to tape a glittering ribbon on two corners of the entrance and the dim minded organisers ran pillar to post before they got that done.

Robin singh looked at me and i looked at him and we both had the same mind voice.

Robin singh must have thought " bas***ds,i have played with the indian team in the world cup and here i am sitting on the platform next to some sad sack.I hope they give me what ever that is they are giving me and so i can go home soon.'

Satish thought " poor guy,i can imagine what he must be going through.But keep your mouth shut and act like you are mentally retarded for if he makes polite conversation and asks who you are and what you do,what will your answer be.'

I think they gave Robin singh something,cash or gift for cutting the ribbon,while i didnt even get a cool drink.And the worse part of it was they ambushed me to become the first member and emptied my wallet which was as it is empty.So my number to this date is still 00001.


The gym is still standing and doing okay in its 19th year although it got married and divorced a few times.

Oh,i have seen many people,many characters who have come and gone and i am the oldest surviving member of the gym and i preen and raise my head in pride when i am addressed by terms such as senior and perusu.

One thing i have not found funny at all is that at some point people in the tv industry decided to name me as Gym satish.Since i was less bulky and more lean those days,funny people who thought that they were funny asked me why i was called gym satish and whether i ran a gym. I used to smile though i wanted to punch the questioners gob and break it.

Sometimes when i was changing clothes to get ready for the next scene some of the questioners would go " sir,thooni irukkum podhu theriyala,but nalla shapela irukeenga.'

Thala vidhdi.Ellam fat.


The heat and humidity has become unbearable this year and i think the coming months are going to be bad.

Summer and gym workouts dont go hand in hand for many of the cretins and Zero watt Bulb brains who flock to the gym are not aware of the most important thing in a humans life and that is deodorant.

Since i hit the gym by 5.30 am and that is when i opens i largely escape the wrath of armpits and the brunt of smells but summer is one period that no one can escape from.

Unlike popular opinions about me in reality i am a mild mannered coward but sometimes when it gets too much to bear i scream out in a general way ' deodorant,perfume itha pathi yarukkum theriyaliya.Gabbar singhs.'

Well my screams and pleas are heard and followed by very few and yet there is one woman who turns a deaf ear to my lamentations.

The gym is on the third floor and we can smell her even before she starts to climb the stairs.But thankfully she sticks one corner of the gym while the rest of us are hanging on to dear life near the windows braving the sun which is baking us red.

There have been times when i have felt like jumping out of the window in the gym when she comes pointedly towards me and when that fails i fall to the ground and start doing ab crunches and i flee to the other corner after the woman has passed me by.

The time between day and night is called twilight and like that period my life too is in the twilight zone,neither young nor old and i dream of youth and well fair sex.

The AXE deo sprays came up with some real cool,hot and horny ad campaigns and like many i too thought that if i use AXE deo spray,women would flock after me or at least one or two would show interest.

I am sad to say leave alone young women not even old women took notice of the spray that wafted from my armpits.I asked the shop guy what the heck and he said he too had suffered the same fate and now i am wiser to all these ad campaigns.

open a bottle of sprite,limca,pepsi or coke and the whole world takes on a different hue and visuals say the ads and they were right for all the burps after the coke and pepsi does make everyone flee from you and leave you to your desolate self.

Open the supplementary pages of the newspaper and they are filled with these ad campaigns.

' SHOP LIKE A MAN' boldly says a popular brand of clothing and i wonder like me what all the men reading it react to such statements.

I think okay and look at the line of clothing which the male models are flaunting and some of them look like females,chee enna kodumai saravana.

Green pants with red tees and yellow shoes to boot and hair sticking out like the one on the back of my street dog when it is fighting over a five day old bone.How am i supposed to dress like that and feel like a man.
come on now,surely you are joking and i tell myself ' pongoda pokkathavangala,all these clothes and color combinations have already been done and dusted by namma RAMARAJAN who wore this and sang boldly " sorgame endralum,athu namooru pola varuma."