A Tamilian's Tribute to an Apple

Share

Am terribly disappointed. For a lot of reasons. But the most, by one.

"A man's value/influence on this society is determined by the no. of heads that mourn on this death", it's said.

A legend has just passed away. Not less than a week ago. And what have done other than FB status msgs, Twitter taggings, a few +1's and by some stone agers' Orkut scraps...?

He'd never asked me to buy any of the products of his company. Neither did I care to think of it since they were more clearly overpriced.

But how could such a legend not be here from India...? There has to be an Indian connection, did I think. Not that this is the only country that can host such a genius. But yet, when we don't / cant have something, it's at least a bit soothing to celebrate it as if it were ours.

We Indians are still proud of Aryabhatta/Bhaskara for giving this world it's greatest digit ZERO and other jaw-dropping gyans. Be it Bhagavad Gita/Thirukkural. Rabindranath Tagore/M.K.Gandhi. Sachin Tendulkar/Viswanathan Anand. We're always filled with pride. But how can we forget and not celebrate someone who influenced over a million lives all over the world, in less than a common man's lifespan, in this current era...?

We could at least Indian-ise him.

Here's a tiny little tribute, with all reverence towards that great soul...

The poster below was made and wholly sponsored by the humble coolies working in the factory located at Sriperumbudhur, and was supposed to be stuck on the walls all over Chennai, mourning the death of their beloved "Esamaan", or leader. Such an affection, I tell ya...!

kaNNeer anjali

And somewhere near the heart of the city, in the inner circles, the residents of Mylapore, were hailing the same person as one among their own, a yet another Indian immigrant who made it big abroad, as one who was considered next only to the Indian poet from the town of Thanjavur with banks of the all-glorious river Kaveri like many other poets, "Naataka Nrupathi", "Saahitya Surya", "Shrungaara Shironmani" Shri. U. Ve. Vallam Seshappa Iyer, known to the Western World, simply as William Shakespeare, whose work "Romeo and Juliet" was supposedly inspired by the Indian epic characters Rama & Janaki, and Hamlet from Hemalatha, and Macbeth as an alternative of Mahabhitam. And interestingly, one of the residents, a typical previous generation mama who struggles as hard as possible, to keep himself updated with the trendz, on hearing the news, was feeling bad too that his wish of having the great man launch iPhone 7, was shattered.

And in a nearby house, where the ever-truthful "Maithreem Bhajata" song was being rendered by M.S.Subbulakshmi's divine voice was being played on iTunes on their latest MacBook Air, another person apparently in his early 80's, was narrating his 5-yr old grandson who was fiddling with his iPad, the story of a poor orthodox Iyer couple from Mannaargudi, a village near Thanjavur, who later had to move to Chennai sometime in the mid 1950's, and that the family was supported by his own grandfather whose first name was given to the couple's first born child, "Srivatsan Jabali"*. He was trying so hard to recollect their early departure from India to a far away land in search of a better life. And he let out a heavy sigh saying, "Those were half a century ago, kid. And that little baby boy with so much of Thejas** back then," pointing his index finger right above him, "later became an icon in the field of technology and innovation known to us all by a different name", just when his son who was on a call over his iPhone, holding a print-out in his other hand, cut the call and rolled it out for his dear father. The grand old man, adjusting his shell-framed spectacles almost had a teardrop seeing the picture of the great boy with their native Mylapore Kapaleeshwarar Temple as a backdrop, found some comfort through his dear son's pleasing words.

Listening to all those stories and witnessing the goose-bump evoking scene of his dad & grand-dad, the little kid was already into the thoughts of his own future, envisioning himself as a pioneer in the technology front, while Smt. Subbulakshmi's  were playing along all the way...

*Jabali was a Maharishi, a great sage, a contemporary of Sage Valmiki, in the Indian epic Ramayana.
**Divine glow

PS: Steve Jobs is really an inspiration for every one of us, and this post is no way intended to make fun of the great man, but rather is an outcome of my first learning at Image Manipulation. And these were NOT done with Photoshop, but with GIMP, on a humble-yet-awesome Ubuntu 11.04 :)

PPS: Thanks a lot to Bharadwaaj for his suggestions :)

PPPS: Inspired by krishashok, his Darth Vaadhiaar & few of his philosophies...! :)