Hello friends!

It''s nice to be with you all once again.

I attach great importance to the friendships I built up forty years ago or even earlier than many of the recent ones.

There are several reasons for that.

One, basically, I'm not much of an extrovert although I was in the marketing for almost 30years! It was indeed difficult for me to create newer friendships at my age. Two, the friends I have for the last forty years, were with me throughout in all happiness, trials and tribulations of me and my family. We maintained contacts all these years without a break. We visited each other whenever possible, attended family gatherings like weddings, consoled each other in breavements. We are concerned about each other when one of us or any member of our own families falls sick. We become tense and anxious even when one of us doesn't keep good health. We make frantic calls till we're certain the other guy recuperates. Three, our children understand this bond between us and encourage us. Anup, Danny, Devadas, Dinesh, Indrasenan, Kalyan and Ramu and this humble self form a terrific team! Almost all of us have high BP; I bounced back from a serious MI (heart attack), Dev just manged to escape by undergoing angioplasty avoiding hospitilisation. Danny was lucky to limp back minus one kidney when it was discovered he had developed malignancy. (Many still don't know about it even now!) Anup had been in and out of Hospitals quite frequently because of his high blood sugar. Dinesh had problem with cholesterol control and Kalyan and Ramu takes the BP contro tablets. The most remarkable feature is none of us is overly tensed about our own health problems. We relax our controls whenever we meet and take a peg or two more than the usual and recall the really wild days we spent in that sleepy town, Salem when we were in the prime of our youth!

There is something that's very unique about Danny. When he joins a group his energy percolates into others. His rich baritone voice infuses a certain liveliness into the most docile of human beings and his love of life will enthuse even the dejected and disappointed. He practises yoga after his surgery and is a great advocate of it now. He brought back another friend of ours from the brink when he was diagnosed with mallignancy. He found time to spend with our friend, taught him some yoga which he practises even now and our friend is a much healthier person now considering he is 79!

Anup was the baby of our group and I think we pampered him! He's a happy go lucky sort with full of wit and humour and even now I think, he is a 'problem child' for Asha (his lovely wife) and his children! Danny and I were reckless and wilder than any other member of our group. But Dev and Dinesh exerted a sobering influence on the gang so, we didn't plunge headlong into any danger. Dev had a nasty habit of lighting a cigarette every nowand then. He was just short of being a chain smoker! Dinesh left the gang for Madras to look after his dad who was ill. So he missed some fun. Indru the short, stocky and a totally bald (even then) was the financiar for all of us. It was because all will have empty purses towards the end of the month and wait eagerly for the monthly remittances.

All of us had a mtorbike/scooter and we used to thunder down the streets of Salem much to the dislike of the pedestrians and envy of the other less fortunate young men.

But, one by one the members of the gang left Salem ultimately I was the lone person there. Anup left for Kerala when he joined a multinational, Dev was elevated and left for Bombay, Danny left for Madras and Indru for coimbatore. Kalyan and Ramu too prefered Madras towards the end of 70s and beginning of 80s.

Then in the 90s and 2000s, we once again started meeting each often and the ties were renewed. The renewal came like a bang because we felt we needed the companion ship we missed so long. Then came the marriages of our children and these truly were occasions for our reunion and great fun.

When my daughter and her family came down to Chennai for a 2 year stint, we seized this opportunity for more frequent meetings which we continue.

It's great to have friends in whom you can confide, share your happiness, seek advice other than your own family members. We will continue this bond of friendship in the years to come.

Bye

Murali

My First post!

Boy!Am I excited!! I'm indebted to my two lovely nieces Lakshmi and Parvathi (Paru to me) and my daughter nisha for creating this blog. It needed a lot of effort from their part to drill into my thick skull to make me understand the rudiments of blog creations.
I must admit I'm a late comer to blogs. I am 67 years old and I belong to that era (which of course seems to be eons away) when no one has heard about computers. I declined all offers to learn the basics thinking I may not need it. It was when Nisha went to UK after her marriage that I felt the need for it. I learnt how to send e-mails and receive them. I could type,save cut and paste! All these apparently, just kidstuff for today's techies and why, even for the school kids. But there still a great deal has to be learnt, as I understand, to be a computer literate! I don't know if I would learn some of it before my time is up, nevertheless, I made a beginning today. My son Arun (fondly called Tinku by all of us except his wife the lovely Amritha ), who is in Doha working for an international consultancy firm KPMG as a chartered accountant, has not written a letter to us eversince he left our shores. It's mostly chat or mail. My daughter Nisha, again a charterd accountant who was in UK working for an asset management co as their financial controller and her techi husband Vinod (Vinod was born and brought up in London) are at the moment in Chennai as Vinod has a 2 yr assignment in here. But once they leave for UK by middle of 2010 I need to be more active on the computer.
My wife Suma is a very bright girl o( 58 yrs old) who enjoys sudoku and solving mathematical puzzles. She is definitely not dull headed like me because I never could solve sudoku by filling in at least one number. She does it with great ease even when I'm a bit annoyed searching for my favourite Hindu paper. I enjoy doing simple crosswords ( more complex ones are not my cup of tea!) that appear in the metroplus edition. Suma is far more intelligent and practcal than me> I used to wonder where I'd be without her!
My daughter-in law Amritha is a very vibrant girl with full of life and zest. There is never a dull moment when she is around. When we are in Chennai (We shuttle between Palakkad in Kerala and Chennai as Nisha and family are here) we miss her badly.
Vinod is not just our son-in-law; he is eager to extent any help when we need it. He is another son to us just like Amritha is another daughter.
Our house hold story is not complete without our two cute grandchildren-again, Amritha (6) and Krishna (3). Morethan Nisha and Vinod, it is these two cuties that prompts us to make more frequent visits to this awfully hot place. their smartness and intelligence never cease to amaze me. Paru and Lakshmi have the same opinion!
You must be wondering what I was doing for a living. After my graduation from Maharaja's College Ernakulam, I joined a multinational pharma co and sold their medicines for two decades. After that I shifted to training imparting communication and language skills. Meanwhile I had a heart attack which compelled me to put an end to my travelling career. I continued with my training classes in Palakkad which went on till 2006. My 6 month long absences almost every year when we go to London was too much for the students and they said goodbye to me.
Suma is old student of the Victoria College of Palakkad. she got her BA degree in Economics. I persuaded her to do her post graduation 5 yrs after she gave birth to Nisha,but she soon became pregnant and that was the end of our ambition to get her a post graduation degree!
This is all about us. I confess this is a bit too long. I promise to keep it short and sweet next time onwards. Once again my sincere thanks to my beautiful nieces Lakshmi and Paru (they're software engineers lakshmi is with L&T and Paru is with Infosis) who really made this dream of mine possible.
bye
Will be with you soon