Family

@ Kanyakumari, India A glimpse of sunrise at the tip of the Indian subcontinent, where the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal meet the Indian Ocean. Tourists throng to this overlook, right behind the Bagvathi Amman temple at the break of dawn (and the onset of dusk). The Vivekananda memorial continues to be one of those few locations to be maintained sparking clean. Nothing much seems to have changed since my last visit to this place seven years ago. The shrouded Thiruvalluvar statue that’s to the far right talks volumes of the current political situation in the state. The ferry no longer stops at the statue. ...

I get into my house, I believe from the side entrance. Looks like there’s nobody in there. It’s mildly windy. Possibly from an open window? There’s a barely audible calming music from MS coming out from the bedroom. As I walk in, I notice TVM in the bed cocooned in a blanket, her eye’s glazed and probing deep in thought. I gently tap her and ask her if everything’s okay. She turns around and I somehow know she’s thinking of Amma. Tears well up in her eyes as she asks if we did everything we could. I’m petrified. I don’t have an answer for her and I’m left standing there for a seemingly long time… All of a sudden I notice someone trying to open the window mesh and get the keys from the inside. Atchuth? I open the main door and see Nikhil, Sharath, Aparna and a few other kids. They say they’re back from Brueggers. I come back to the bedroom to check on TVM. She’s smiling as if nothing in the past really happened. ...

VishuKani 2017. My first ever kani setup. Vishu has always been one of my favorite festivals. The simplicity and the depth of celebrations that Appa and Amma had for us, is something I’d always remember. May we all have a prosperous, enriching and mesmerizing year ahead.

It’s about 04:30Hrs and there’s not a single soul or bus in the stand. At about 05:00hrs, a tea vendor rides in on his bicycle. I check with him if there’s a direct bus to Pallavur to which he responds in affirmative stating the first one should be leaving at about 05:30hrs. He even obliges to get me on to the right bus once it comes in - Buses in Kerala are mostly marked in Malayalam and unless you know to read the language, It becomes a bit difficult in boarding the right bus. I’m amazingly pleased and gulp about three glasses of his hot masala tea.Buses start rolling into the stand one by one. It so appears that this gentleman is quite popular in the Bus stand and all the Drivers seem to know him by the name. He individually goes about handing over tea and flower garlands[For the deities in the buses] to each of the drivers. Slowly the Bus stand comes to life with newspaper vendors and the omnipresent ‘Lottery ticket wallahs’. [I’m amazed at how the Lottery fever has struck Kerala. You’d find folks selling tickets at any given point of time at any given nook and corner of the state (religious places included!). Some day I should get back and try figuring out how this whole system works!] ...

Well, today is the ninth day as an ‘Outfoscion’ and despite the initial hiccups the transition has been real smooth. It took me a couple of days to let the feeling really sink in and to get adjusted to the relaxed carefree schedule of my self imposed ‘break’ before I join TFI. The first two days were probably the most demanding in terms of getting ‘acclimatised’. I wake up at seven in the morning and I already have a feeling of not having done anything. Preparing a relaxed breakfast [ as much as I was looking forward to] for some weird reason looked quite boring.12:00 at noon, I realise there’s no company for lunch. And at about six as I sit before the lappy after a long siesta, the peace seemed to be even more troubling than the incessant honks from the traffic that my ear has got accustomed to from the past three years. But after a couple of days it was as if the sea had calmed down altogether. I could swiftly alter my body cycle to adjust to this ’new phase’ of my life and the days are no more ‘boring’. Every other day I’m reminded of some job that I’d long left unattended and to see them being closed out one by one by itself gives me some kind of an achievement…Well, Now is when I guess I best appreciate when people say It’s kinda nice to slow done every once in a while… ...

Today evening, something just drew me to the the place that changed the way the past few years have evolved. Could not keep away from that road and building that I´ve been avoiding for the past so many years. I walk up the ramp slowly to the topmost floor.The Nepali guard watches me from the corner of his eye. I enter the ward with an excuse and in moments it all gets back in flashes. The beeps and the smell get back memories of days spent here hoping against hope.The ward is just the same. The smell lingers. Just that there is someone else on the bed there. Yet another flame struggling to thrive against the odds. ...

The bus jerks along on the road as I get back home from Office. It’s only 6:30pm and I’ve still got about 20kms to traverse. That effectively translated to an hour’s time given the traffic situation at M’patnam. A colleague seated beside me is hooked to the Fountainhead in her hands and is already drooping. Damn and I’m here still awake. My gray cells surprisingly show no signs of tiredness and at the same time my mp3 player gets discharged totally.How better can things get ! ...

Ghai hamari mataa hai. Ghai shaakahaari jaanvar hai. Ghai ghaas-phoos khati hai. Ghai doodh deti hai. Ghai khali ya safed rang hoti hai… :-) I still remember that wonderful essay I’d written as a test to gain admission to Sandeepam Vidhyalaya! I was reminded of this episode today during my French class session. We were asked to write a short composition using a couple of basic sentences on some famous personality and even before I could pool in the Je’s, Il’s, fait’s, suis et al, my thoughts started drifting back to that particular day 10 years back. ...