Veli

Veli

During one of my trips to Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), I planned to visit Veli one of the picturesque places on the outskirts of the city- a tourist attraction having excellent facilities for boating. I sent an SMS to my wife and daughter as follows “Njan velikku pokunnu”. (I am going for Veli). In Malayalam Veli means marriage. They thought that I am going to attend some marriage. After few minutes I got frantic telephone calls but to sustain the suspense for some time, I did not attend the call. In the meantime they called many other relatives also to find out whose marriage is there at Trivandrum. Since I did not give any indication regarding attending marriage, before proceeding to Trivandrum, they got confused. Had it been within 50 Kilometers from my house, they could have guessed or narrowed down to 2-3 cases. However, since Trivandrum is more than three hundred kilometers from my house they could not make any guess. After some time I called back my wife and before she could say anything, I told her that I was enjoying boat ride at Veli and since network was not available, I could not call back and thus the faux pas was ended.

During the boat ride I had a chat with the boatman. He was an avid football fan. We discussed about great footballers of the yesteryears like Pele, Diego Maradona, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Platini, Bobby Charlton, Puskas, Eusabio Yashin and current footballers like Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo etc. We also talked about the golden era of India football having legendary players like Chuni Goswami, P K Banerjee, Thangaraj, Arumai Nayagam, Jarnail Singh, Inder Singh, Makhan Singh etc and about popular Kerala footballers like I M Vijayan, Pappachan, Joe Paul Ancheri, Xavier Pius, Mustafa, Chathunni etc. I was amazed with his soccer knowledge. Since our chat continued for long, he took two extra rounds at no extra charges. I also reproduced excerpts from my mock commentary of the 1973 Santosh Trophy final, where Kerala became national champions for the first time. We were so much impressed with each other as he was prepared to continue the talk for some more time, but since I had some prior commitments I had to say good bye to the boatman. He requested me to come again to Veli and enjoy the boat ride and the pep talk. It is one of the cheapest entertainments to chat with connoisseurs of any subject but I wonder as to how many people are availing this facility.  On many occasions during journeys by higher class in trains and by air, I found most of the people tight lipped as if a tape has been put on their lips. Further many people would like to talk to citizens of their standard only. What are the criteria of standard is best known to them only. I talk to all categories of people of all ages and I firmly believe that there is something to learn from everybody. Though I retired more than 5 years ago, I still talk to Mr. Surinder a casual helper of Central Research Laboratory Bharat Electronics Ltd Ghaziabad who is an embodiment of human virtues.  I will be visiting Pithoragarh the home town of Surinder Singh Adhikari during next summer to be with the innocent, industrious, innocuous and intelligent individuals of Kumaon region and to enjoy the enchanting enigmatic beauty of the expanse.  After the boat ride, I had lunch in a fabulous floating restaurant enjoying the scenic beauty of the lake, sea, sand, shore and my synonym, the Sun.

Fascinating story of a friendship with a fish will appear in my Facebook page sgortly.

A big salute to the unknown boatman and a great soccer fan.