memory flashbacks keep popping up and I always feel I should immediately write them up, but never end up doing so, which is why the scrambled thoughts and lines in this transcript....
over the span of 30 years plus there have been many many fun times and even more fun times and yet more....thought i`d set up a framework and introduce all the young guns so that everyone who reads the blog will have a mental picture of the dudes who hung out with stephan in the vettucks standing committie (VSC) watching the world go by.....
stephen was an integral part of most of them starting with our VSC and fore-shore road stints.... to recollect some of those early day memories of VSC..... the bonding and camaraderie facilitated by the special mind-expanding process experimentation, combined with helping the cows (by not letting them eat too much fodder as it was better for the non-veggies & veggies alike) as the raw materials were then dried and burnt/ smoked to keep the mosquitoes away in the land termed as "queen of the arabian sea". ....
this was indeed a daily ritual and of course, stephen was part and parcel of the process, essentially accompanied by the ever green and young ashley koshie... and our honorable and the only trustworthy soul - the kuriyappy korah with his rajdooth bike and tennis racket... and the strappingly handsome jackie shroff lookalike - laiju the george who did treat us all in yuvarani for the sale of his bajaj vespa (?) scooter booking that came up and we had a guy on the nbext table fall off his chair when he got his bill :) remember....!
plus the role model executive type businessman koshy alex sporting his moustache and the engineering aspirant john k punnosse and the senior gee varghese .... and the young manoj and his then time partner alan...and the man with the bike painted two colours - one side in full red and the other side full blue,... did confuse the cops a boit and witnesses every time he had an accident - the young anil thomas who mused to come in from home wearing proper shirt and trousers and then get off in pallimulkku and go to xavier chettans tailoring shop and get changed into torn, scruffy jeans and a freaky t-shirt to then head out to thevara college as the yound cool dude :) ofcourse anil thomas had to repeat the process on his way back home and do the reverse for his folks :.....
.....and the first man in town to wear a wrangler jeans... thereby knighted "wangler" which has over the years progressed to be millenium compliant - to be the one & only "wangu" the brave and quiet arun kumar...
and how could we forget our strapping french triathlon winner with the one & amd only raleigh cycle - the young kin from rowdy ammacchi1s clan - the SKC as shamil calls him .... susheel kandathil cherian or the popular susheel kodaikanal cherian.... and our very own strapping - should have been a movie star, but didn`t go that route - pavan kariappa who had a wife from our clan them days figuratively....
biju the vijayan - remember all the days of changing tyres in front of pavan`s house .... and the days of dashing from the rear gate to the front inside st theresas while blaring the musical horn.... gosh, biju had the nerve and the ideas, a quiet and demure young brain with creativity flowing when it came to the girls :)
ooops... that made me recollect the young fashionable teenager with a gold streak on one side and a silver streak on the other in his hair and a jeans and a t-short with some bans name on it and a sneakers that would be changed more times than his underwear would ever get changed - the disco-dancer and prize winner for best dancing couple in navy ball with pammy of panampilly nagar fame, the one and only man who had his butt pinched with the rubies of this world in both coffee shop, the one and only young man who was a asst manager with the likes of ashley koshie and nandu in the wilderness of the ranges in tea estates..... i reckon you must have all guessed by now that this was our very own - Kat.. the Kat Sathyan as he was and still know as...
remembering Sathyan also brings to memory young gopal... mainly as both of them would slink away to gokul the nearby restaurant to have a masala dosa without any of us knowing.... and then we had the young gokuldas and haridas and krishnadas... oops, I meant KD as most would not know him as krishnadas :) a music bank and an expert on songs, KD was a quiet one as gokul did make up for that with his M50 motorbike like young gun shamil habib and his band of youngsters with the likes of paul - i`m paul from the UK... good bloke, i wonder where he is... and ofcourse shamils band wagon with bijo and a few others....
we did have our very own georgie who is now the hotshot commander in the naval archives and the strapping malayalee speaking sardar - our very own bunty sethi who is also a commander of a frigate i beleive... and our back up dudes from the indian navy - the j. s. gill and rajender. unfortunately i believe rajender is no more... may his soul rest in peace... but the two were famous for their escapades of flying low over st theresas college hostel and dropping chocolates and taking pics.... hmmm... gill is now flying air india so you may run into him some time...
we did also have our true patriot who then used to be the etb clan - suresh and and and.....
and we do have our very own steve eapen....... i remember steve when he got the dudes t-shirts with their names printed on it... grey with navy blue shoulder pads leading all the way to a 3/4 sleeve... quite kool t-shirts though... laiju the george used to flaunt it often :) ofcourse steve is now a hot shot in the USA along with our very own sam who used to play the stairway to heaven song brilliantly in our little sessions that used to take place when ashley`s folks weren`t there or in john k punnose`s house in the refinery area of sorts; and then we had our young descendent of the naturam godse ... the one only essence man, the aditya the deo; ofcourse he was the closest I`d say, with stephen in all these years... a very quiet young man for those of whom don`t know him well :), Aditya is a smart professional and always used to be the nice, gentlemanly sort and still is.... should not stop without mentioning our popular viju who is now after years of experimentation, living in good ol`e abu dhabi...
this will turn out to be a looong one if I start to name every one out there i guess.... so shall simply sign off on that with just a mention of ali our very own cigarette supply box shop (petti-kada) at jos junction and the numerous times we`d hit ICH with the urge to have the coffee (coffee out there was superb) not to mention their beetroot filled MD and MC and TO.... simply masala dosa, mutton cutlet & tomato omlette.... three cheers to ICH, the food still tastes the same....
and then, there was a time we had a penchant for music ... well, we still do... and stephen and I decided to pay some music and teamed up with a few dudes from kottayam... ajit daniel chacko the band leader then was a nice maloo bloke who was born and brought up in jamshadpur and had shifted to do his degree in cms college in kottayam. go introduced to him via mutual acquaintances and we joined up in the band,,,, gosh its so far ago that I don`t even remember the band’s name, but we were good :)
our opening song was "we are an american band" by grand funk....... cool number. Stephen and I used to head across most weekends - managed to reach there some how, by train or bike or .... one specific time we took wavvan`s (may god rest his soul as he is no more too) M50 and did that stint to kottayam... that was one helluva ride... imagine riding from ernakulam to kottyam... it took forever and we had to start playing at 7 pm and did reach by 8 ofcourse... well, stephen used to play the electric rhythm guitar and I, the drums...
we used to do a few rock and rock&roll numbers and some pop and it was fun. Infact stephen used to sing a few ones too, not many but a few like j j cale etc. hey that was really kool. we even played for the arts club festival and opened the CMS college arts club festival with a concert .... was fun to play in these small bands though and we did have a swanky time...
I don`t know of anyone in VSC who`d remember the times stephen and I used to go across to play in kottayam... good times, great times, terrific times...
will be back with some more memories soon... got to run now....
await "yet a few memories ... stage-2...."
coming soon....
Stephen used to talk about this band he played in. He said the name of the band was Rubber Band!! Is this the same one Amal?
ReplyDeletei vas reading d comments. may b i vil write something later.
ReplyDeleteSunil, thats quite a philosophical and thought provoking statement.... especially the last bit ... "may b i vill write something later."....
ReplyDeleteguruji, when would that "when" be??????
Now which Sunil is this.....the magnificance of his words are thought provoking
ReplyDeletenope shyla. this band was called some thing else... stephen was refering to a band that we wanted toi start and call "rubber", so it would rhyme well - "rubber band" as in the kool and funky name :)
ReplyDeletekool bananas!
Gosh! I just realized that we missed out mentioning one of the core members of VSC and CLEF - some one who`s of historical importance - some one who`s links shaped the future of Indian history.... some one who`s links were part of two great treasties between the countries and made India proud... gosh, how could we forget our very own, our one & only KGB - Komitet Gosudarstvennoj Bezopasnosti or in Ernaks as popularl referred to as the one & only - SUNIL KURIEN.
ReplyDeleteThe head honcho of the leading travel agency in Inbdia and the master of the flying airline world in south india, the one & only Sunil The Kurien!!!!!
KGB Sunil was and still is a popular hit with the ladies and was always the steady rock hard silent achiever and romantic who was quiet, yet famous among the flying circler... you wanna know anything about the airline field or get a ticket organized or do a CK... I mean "choutti kettal" into a fully booked flight, well, there is always the KGB option, open to a select few of the VSC... needless to say there are cases where people have taken the 3rd class coach trains too, but never the less, KGB was a connected man.. and still is!
Our sincere apologies for missing your name out in the first Stage-1 mate! Apologies again!!!!!
Guys
ReplyDeleteJust want to share a few memories I have of Steve, seeing the navy ball snap, the one at BTH coffee shop and the one of me from Ashley's wicked collection.
I remember Steve, Ashley and I climbed over the wall of the church next to the Naval Club in full borrowed attire as above and pretended to have gone behind for a leak and got away with not paying the forty rupees entrance tickets. I think the rest of the guys pretended to part of the band playing there and went in along with the band as the sound engineers etc.
I think we were partly responsible for BTH Swami shutting the coffee shop as thats where we hung around all day, in lieu of college, along with a few other regulars. He was okay with the yezdis, the yam 350s and few other bikes roaring in all day, as if it was our own club house, he tolerated the whiff of the smokes outside the coffee shop and the equipment hidden over the roof of the passage way but guess he couldn't take it when the coffee itself was spiked and decided to shut it down to get rid of us all.
Remember a trip to Kodi with Steve and few others in, I guess in '85. What amazed me was Steve's determination at the end of the week long trip to walk it from Kodi to Munnar, think it is about 90 kms. We thought he was crazy but he was sure he wanted to do it and Zack decided to join him and they made it to Munnar okay and was picked up by some tea planters and put up in the Munnar Club for the night too.
Lat time I met him was at London 3 years back. Got a call from him out of the blue, after several years saying he was in town, so I asked him to come home and we went down memory lane over a couple of drinks from Vettukattil, Clef's club house( courtesy Charms), the rallying days( his days as an outstanding navigator with OG and many others, the rest of us who couldn't drive or navigate got to be Marshalls), the dubai days etc. Next day, Shyla and Savitha joined us for dinner.
I remember mentioning sometime during these two meetings that I was planning to take up Golf and the next thing I knew was receiving a gift from a Pro at a Golf club near home for a few lessons. Guess, if I ever play a decent round, its thanks to Steve. He went to every F1 event around the world and I mentioned that I must go to at least the Silverstone one and I received an email from him a few months later reminding me that tickets have gone on sale online.
My memory of him is as an absolutely decent, focussed, seriously intelligent and gifted young man who pushed the boundaries of his abilities and enjoyed life to the full.
I will like many of his friends around the world miss him.
Steve, thought we could meet him when we went for 'Amals' VSC meet at Dubai. If we did, I would have been seeing him after 22 years. His photographs in these posts are astonishingly close to what I knew he looked like, he hasn’t aged beyond, like some of us.
ReplyDeleteHe was always part of the circus at the party's at Yuvaraj where Cochin bakeries hair got pulled out, Biju sister’s bachelor’s party when we jumped into the fountain at BTH corner and didn't know how to climb out.
You can do Magic was one of favorites which we tripped on at Gopal Sheshans sessions. His thoughts on life and abundance were part of the writer’s guild days when Peter Gantzer and Nandu got us together at YMCA, to think in upper-cut Queens English.
ICH or BTH was were all schemes and trips were mapped on the spurt, remember one such day when Ashley mentions about some Uncle of his who got a FORIGN COMPUTERISED wheel balancing machine in Kottayam, next thing we realize is we are on a train, cos Steven wanted to see the contraption – destinations and purpose never mattered cos we knew how to fool the navy-ball’s (T T E) and time was always on our side.
During the rains and when I.C.H. got full with people who actually came to feed, we stood by this large glass window of a shop called VETUKATIL, one such evening I met Steven, He wore the right kind of attire for Satyan as he was the only one who knew and understood branding those days, and we all shared similar attitude, we miss you dude.
Susheel
Unfortunately when the VSC/ CLEF meet in Dubai (btw, it was just a VSC meet organized by a few of the Dubai-ite members - Shamil, Kat Sathyan, Laiju, Stephen & I) was scheduled, Stephen who was working with Nakheel at that time, had to rush away to Malaysia (KL) for some important meetings which is why all of us missed him at that event!
ReplyDeleteStephen uised to be very mechanically oruiented... i.e.. he always used to like tinkering around with contraptions :) I remember he used to be the navigator with Ojansky and they`ve apparently won a few rallies.... yes, there was "magic" in the air then :)
What I don't understand is Amal using Kat as his name. That name is trademarked and copyrighted by none other than the Koolest Kat Shri Satyanarayanan G.
ReplyDeleteAmal please change it ASAP to Hothead Poocha or Tut Ankh A Moon.
Eda Ashley you had to scratch - nice one in any case.
ReplyDelete