Tapi Mestri

I started day dreaming in the meeting…….

Of course, you are reading this post, because you googled for Tapi Mestri (Or thapi, or Mesthry, or Mesthree), or otherwise you happen to know me personally and don’t have anything better to look at today .

Tapi Mestri is the Telugu word (and from what I hear, also the same in Tamil and possibly Kannada) for a mason with a trowel (Tapi - Trowel, Mestri - worker). Most of you might find what you need if you are looking for ‘Muta Mestri’, one of the most vulgar Telugu movies to have been made, which is by default a ‘big hit’.

Anyway, watching a team of workers under the guidance of a tapi mestry was a sight to behold. The slow mixing of cement, sand and water in an orderly way, making a small pit in a heap of cement dust, pouring some water and then slowly adding cement and sand into the water and finally getting a slush of cement mix that would soon be used as the holding strength between bricks already being piled into a wall. I don’t remember seeing my house being built, I was too small then, I do remember when the compound wall was upgraded, when the parapet wall around the terrace was aesthetically modified with metal railing pieces serving as a design, I also remember the gate ramps being rebuilt, running from the gate on to the tar road in front of the house for beautiful kolams (or Rangoli) to be added during festival times, then finally, I remember uprooting a few trees in the front yard for building two concerete rooms for “shops”, beautiful trees were uprooted, trees that had localized names - “china Jam” - a miniature-guava bearing tree that just tasted AWESOME, a papaya tree, few marigold plants, parijatha or the night queen - whose fragrant smell filled the night air and early mornings were spent trying to sit under the tree at a spot where dew enveloped white flowers with an orange stalk would start falling off the tree by themselves - all trees uprooted to make way for “shops” to be given away for rent to small time businesses. As suggested by a “Vaastu” expert, some weight had to be added to the north west corner of the house. I had suggested in a fit of anger - burying the vastu expert who ruined my idea of a perfect home, and received horrified reactions to my momentarily angry words - that I almost immediately regretted. I was rash.

The team of Mestris made into the front yard and changes occurred, once all the plants and shrubs were cleared, it looked dry, arid and sad. I could walk out early morning and look only towards the right where there were a coconut tree, a mango tree, rose plants - white and pink, another plant that was the only one which changed colours in winter and had velvety soft leaves and some crotons. Soon the cleared area had deep holes dug in for the pillars and in less than two months there were two concrete rooms in place of a beautiful garden that once stood.

In the team of Mestris was a young kid, 12-14 year old boy, who would play with me after I returned from school. I had read about child labor and strangely I was happy he was getting some work, he looked happy, he had food when he worked and made some money for his family members, I knew he would not be able to get education and improve his status, I seriously didn’t think he had that option anyway, but I did ask him if he wanted any books and he said anything with lots of pictures. I remember giving him a few magazines. Such memories, and here I am in the middle of a meeting. Doctors are funny, they had the opportunity to read a technical document created over 6 month of requirement gathering, 6 months to gather requirements, 2 months to do the work, out of which December is full of holidays. Sigh!

Finally, what I would call Web Parts in .Net  were christened “bricks” by the lead scientist of the project. Then began my day dreaming, as they decided whether two months were too long for this work. I wanted to tell them 6 months for requirements are. But this is software engineering anyway, this is also project management. There I sat day dreaming again, when a collection of features offered by web parts were christened “bucket”.