German Iyer releases his autobiography

Mr T.H.Iyer, a walking friend  whom I have known only for the  last four years but feels like I have known him all my life. A popular man in our walking group he is a role model  as a person who is fit as a fiddle even at 90.

In some context I had an opportunity to read Mama`s  Curriculam vitae and I was impressed with his achievements as a professional, as a social worker and for his deep involvement with many  spiritual gurus. Besides he is a multitalented man who is a  poet, writer, motivational speaker and much more.  A widely travelled man linguist Mr Iyer  spent 35 years in  Germany. I Understand it was Maha Periava of Kanchi who named him German Iyer.

Though Mr Iyer had published three books earlier ( two of them in German) he had not published his  memoirs. I planted the idea in his mind and started pushing him into action as I have been doing with many senior citizens I come across. I am glad Mr Iyer took up the challenge and his dream of publishing his autobiography has become a reality. A surprise addition in the book is a collection of Mr.Iyer`s compositions in Tamil in praise of  Lord Krishna

Mr Mama  always used to say that there are many similarities in our lives. Apart from many other things I noticed two interesting similarities from our childhood, Mama had an accident  as a young boy requiring stitches on the forehead, the mark of which is still visible and is used as an identification mark in his passport. I too had a similar accident when  I was six and use the scar as an identification mark in my passport. Another similarity is mama being dressed as a girl when he was a little boy as his mother wanted a  girl as her second child.  I too was dressed up like a girl with my long hair tied into a bun adorned with mallippoo. My parents too wanted their second child to be a girl- and it did happen. My sister Prema was born four years after I was born.

Mama`s autobiography is the sixth book published in the last eight months influenced by me and 15^th in the last  three years.  Many more are in the pipeline and I hope to achieve a target of 25 before end of next year.

I congratulate Mama for writing the book which is  not only  an interesting record  of the story of his life story for posterity but also contains valuable gems of wisdom gained over the years which the youngsters will find useful. The book printed by the talented team of Compuprint is for private circulation only.

The book was released at a small function at Gandhi Nagar Club, Chennai by  Mr R.Natarajan,  Commissioner of Police ( Retd.). The first two copies were received by Mr T.R.Gopalan and me in the presence of the author and his son Mani.

I pray god to bestow good health on mama so that he can continue to inspire his younger friends

I was detained by German Police

Some forgettable experiences from my  first trip to Europe!

 My first trip to Europe happened kind courtesy Tabler Jagdish Chandran, ( CMD of Premier Mills ,Coimbatore) who  was the second Indian after Deepak Banker to become the President of World Council of Young Men`s service clubs (WoCo), the international body to which Round Table India was affiliated. As it was Bob’s AGM at Stockholm in 1980 and RTI was pitching India as the venue for the 1983 AGM,  Bob persuaded a group of Indian Tablers to accompany him. While other Tablers could afford the trip on their own, Bob decided to partially sponsor me and Tr. Muralidharan of Coimbatore. I was to be one of the rapporteurs at the AGM, taking minutes of the proceedings. I used the opportunity to plan my first trip to Europe and USA in the summer of 1980.

 My first halt in Europe was at Amsterdam, the beautiful city of dykes and canals, a place famous for its wine and cheese boat parties. The red light district where prostitutes sit in rooms with glass windows illuminated by red lights is a ‘must see’ for visitors. I was a guest of Tabler  Rajesh Duggal of Delhi who was posted in Amsterdam at that point of time and stayed in an apartment complex at Zan Fort, a sea resort suburb overlooking the sea. It was summer and the sun was known to set only around 10 or 11 pm and rise around 4.00 am. It was a new experience for me! In the evening the beach was packed with young couples having fun, many of them spending the night in sleeping bags that they carried with them. I realized that most of them were the ‘back packing’ hippies who generally wandered arounthe world hitch-hiking and wasting their rich parents’ money on fun, liquor and sex!

 After spending five days at Amsterdam, I bought myself a two-week Euro Rail pass and travelled in comfort during nights while visiting places during the day. My first halt was at Lausanne in Switzerland, the French speaking town located on the border of France. Here I was to join my group consisting of Tr. R. Anand, the tall and lanky bachelor who was then working with the India Today group and Tr. K.K. Sood and his charming wife Kitty — both from my table. We were also joined by Bijone Ghosh, an Apexian from Ambattur, Madras.

 As I had a tough time trying to locate the address of Anand’s cousin with whom we were supposed to stay for three days, I checked my things into the station locker and went around the station asking people in English for directions to the house. None of them even bothered to respond to me and literally brushed me aside saying “No English”. I then took a taxi whose driver was equally unfriendly and after roaming around for 30 minutes, with the taxi meter shooting up I managed to locate a sales girl at a shop who could speak English. Much to my dismay and minus 40 dollars I found that the building I was looking for was just a stone’s throw away from the station.

 Anand’s cousin was a friendly girl who took us around the city and also joined us on our trip to Geneva and Interlaken, a town on top of the Alps. It was to be my first experience with snow and all of us behaved like kids throwing snow balls at each other. The train journey from Basel to Interlaken was a breathtaking experience and this is where I tasted my first Martini. All of us gulped it down like sherbet and got quite high and ended up with headaches on our return journey.

 On our way to Stockholm from Lausanne, we stopped at Venice and Vienna. The train journey from Vienna to Stockholm was unforgettable because of an incident that occurred during the journey! Throughout the journey I was pulling up Anand for being careless about his passport and

tickets. I was carrying my passport in my trouser pocket and the tickets in my T shirt pocket When the train stopped at a wayside station I decided to get down to buy something to eat. After the purchase, though there was plenty of time, I ran back to board the train for Stockholm which left the station after five minutes!

 In Europe, when you travel by train, every one or two hours you pass through a different country and at every border town, a ticket checker will inspect your ticket and passport. As the train was in motion, an Austrian TC came to our coach asking for our tickets when I discovered to my horror that the ticket that I was carrying in my T-Shirt pocket was missing. After intensive searching, I realized that it must have fallen on the platform of the station where I had got down earlier.

 I tried to convince the TC that I was a genuine passenger and showed him the receipt I got at the Amsterdam station while buying the Euro Rail Pass. The TC was adamant and said that rules are rules. He insisted that without a valid ticket, I could not travel in the train and wanted me to get off at the next station. My efforts to bribe him also did not work out. My friends also decided to get off though they all had their tickets and I could see Anand laughing at me for my carelessness.

 At the next station, we approached the station master and explained our plight. He promptly called the station master of the previous station to find out if any ticket had been found on the platform and surprisingly, he had! He confirmed that another passenger had found the ticket and had handed it over to him. He was willing to send it through the TC travelling by the next train, which was expected just after an hour. I could not believe my luck! I wondered if such a thing could ever happen in our country! I did get my ticket back and when the next train arrived, we continued our journey to Stockholm.

 My return train journey from Copenhagen to Amsterdam was a horrible experience! After a tiring day of sightseeing, I went to sleep as soon as I got into the comfortable reclining bed that the train offers. Around 2.00 am, I found myself being woken up by somebody who asked to see my passport. After inspecting the same, he growled at me in German which I could not understand. One of the ladies in the compartment who could speak both English and German told me that there was something wrong with my passport and that unless I got down with my baggage, the train would not proceed. My pleas did not have any impact on that tough looking police official, who literally dragged me out of the train. When I was out, I realized I was in some wayside station in Germany, on the border of another country. It was very cold with poor lighting and with not a soul in the station. The police official gestured me to follow him but would not help me with my baggage. The only sound there was from his shoes, as he was walking. I was frightened beyond words! I thought I was going to be punished for some crime which I might have committed unintentionally. I imagined myself inside a German prison with no one in the world knowing where I was! Faces of my wife and kids passed through my mind and I invoked the name of every God I could think of. The police officer made me walk up a flight of stairs and led me to a small police outpost. Fortunately for me there was an inspector who could speak English. He went through my passport carefully and said, “You seem to be the Director of a company but you did not know that you were passing through Germany without a valid visa?”

 I tried to explain to him that my destination was Amsterdam and that I had no plans to get down at any station in Germany. He clarified that the new Visa law with India had come into force from midnight of 26th July 1980 and at 2.30 am in the morning, I was the first traveler to be detained for not having a valid visa to pass through Germany. Unlike the police officer who forced me out of the train, the inspector was friendly and said he would try and help me. He had to wake up the Asst. Commissioner of Police to find out what can be done. As per the instructions he received, he gave me a temporary visa valid for 24 hours, on his official letterhead and that was when I heaved a sigh of relief.

 But that was not all. The train I was offloaded from was a direct train from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, reaching that city at 7.30 am, giving me sufficient time to reach Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam by road, to catch my noon KLM flight to New York. With the help of the local stationmaster, the inspector rerouted my ticket, under which I had to change trains in three different places before I reached Amsterdam at 11.00 am. What a nightmare I went through changing trains! I was lugging my huge suitcase and even the portable baggage trolley was useless as I had to carry the baggage up and down the flight of stairs since the stations and the platforms were at two different levels. At Hamburg station, though I was given clear instructions, I was misled by a fellow Indian and found myself in the wrong platform when the train was streaming into the station. How I ran up the steps with the heavy baggages in hand and reached the compartment just in time is another story by itself! As soon as I dumped my bags inside and got into the train, the doors closed behind me and the train started. I literally fell on top of my suitcase and was panting for the next ten minutes. I could clearly hear my heartbeat and was sure I wasgoing to die of a heart attack that day.

 Though the train reached Amsterdam at 11.00 am, I was able to reach the airport only by 12.00 noon, the exact time of the departure of the flight. When I saw no passengers at the counter from a distance, I was sure I had missed the flight. When I reached the counter and handed over my tickets and passport, the assistant looked at me and asked me sarcastically, “Mr. Rajan, have you come for today’s flight or tomorrow’s?”. Then she smiled and said, “You are lucky. The flight is delayed and will be leaving only at 2.00 pm”. What a relief I felt. I thanked the assistant, thanked all my Gods and proceeded to the departure lounge to catch my flight to New York.

 In the next post I will share both my shocking and pleasant experiences in USA!

 

 

My first trip abroad -Five countries in five weeks

It was in early 1976 when I was 34, that Round Table India chose me as a candidate for the Travel Grant of WoCo (World Council of Young Men’s Service — the parent body to which Round Table India was affiliated) to attend the AGM of Apex Australia (another youth organization affiliated to WoCo) in Mount Gambia, Southern Australia. It was a five week trip that covered 5 countries — Sri Lanka (Colombo), Singapore, KL in Malaysia, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth in Australia, Christchurch & Auckland in NewZealand.

The Association paid for the air fare and I was by members of the association in each country. Staying with families in every country was a memorable experience.

 I would like to share three  interesting experiences I had during this trip Melbourne was my first halt in Australia. I was hosted by Alan Harvey, President of the Mt. Eliza club near Melboune He had mentioned to his 6-year-old son that an Indian was coming home to stay with them. When I arrived at his home and was introduced to the family, his son appeared disappointed to find me suited and booted. He innocently asked, “Daddy, you told me he is an Indian, but he is not wearing any feathers”. Thanks to the Idiot Box those days which used to portray Indians as ‘Red Indians’ .

 Another memorable moment was the visit to the famous Melbourne Cricket  Club  . It was a dream come true for me since I was a keen cricket enthusiast as a student, for whom names like Melbourne or Sydney sounded mystic. I had never imagined  that one day I would be standing on the stands of the Melbourne cricket grounds, clicking away in the huge stadium (capacity — 1,20,000) with my instamatic. The cricket club also boasts of the best cricket museum in the world. The curator of the museum, an old man in his 70’s, was all enthusiasm . He presented me two mementos- a  c hipped dinner plate used by the Indian Team and a MCG tie. I was delighted beyond words.

 In Christchurch, I stayed with Alistair, a bachelor! My hope of painting the town red with a bachelor was deflated when I found that  Alistair was very busy courting his charming fiancée Pauline. They had the misfortune of tasting an Indian meal that I prepared. What else but plain rice, yoghurt, pickles (donated by my host in Colombo) and a special rasam, made with Madras curry powder (without tamarind or lime). The rasam was the limit as both felt that I could not be a human being to swallow such a pungent concoction. But even that concoction tasted like nectar to me after being on a diet of boiled vegetables & leafy sandwiches.

 In the next post I will share with you my unforgettable experiences during my first trip to Europe.

Girija Raghavan – a human dynamo!

It was Ravi Tamilvanan of Manimekalai Prasuram who introduced me to Girija Raghavan in 2013. He would refer to her as  a `one woman army. I was wondering why. I got the answer I as came  to know her closely through the several contests that Prabha Rajan Talent Foundation sponsored in association with Ladies Special magazine.   I realized  that she is really  a `human dynamo` and a  fountain head of ideas  to encourage talented women to come to lime light. The number of activities connected with empowering women she is involved in, is mind boggling. A multi talented woman she is personification of what a determined person with clear vision and focus can achieve in life- all single handedly.

It was indeed courageous of her to start a Ladies magazine , without any kind of knowledge of publishing and make it a success. The fact that the magazine is entering its 25^th year of  existence  is no mean achievement especially in a market where readership of print media is going down and advertisers are increasingly supporting social media. What impressed me most was when she continued to bring out the magazine for six months without fail  while  she was in USA spending time with her son`s family.

I have also witnessed her active involvement with Rotary  and the innovative ideas she introduced at the District level. Her  idea of recognizing and giving Shakthi awards to young and old female achievers everyday virtually for 31 days during March this year in association with the Rotary Dist 3232 was unique. I was happy to find that my  daughter Sowmya who is a big name in the world of professional story tellers  was one of them.

A workaholic, she is also an excellent communicator both in person and in public. I am an ardent admirer of this dynamic lady.

While wishing the Ladies Special magazine continued success in the  years to come I pray god to bestow  good health and long life on Girija Raghavan so that she continues to serve the society.

(The Translated version of the above Greetings in Tamil was done by my sister in law Mythili Seshadri and appears in the latest Silver Jubilee Special issue of Ladies Special magazine).