Never a dull moment

  Nostalgia - Is this kid anaemic ?  I was a special grandson for my maternal grandparents. Hence my health was of prime concern for them. I was the last of ten maternal cousins. So what made me and hence my health special ? Read on. At various points of time, my grandma ( maternal ) grandma had taken care of my maternal cousins in varying stretches of time. Since my mom was just a few elders elder to them, the cousins were not alone with my grandma. Grandpa was stone deaf and was a silent spectator. And parents of my maternal cousins lived  very close by and hence help was on hand. My sister and I were by far the youngest grand kids of maternal grandparents. I was left in their care at my dad's native village in Kerala till class five while my parents were at Madras with my sister. This may have made them more concerned about my health with age no more on their side- they were in late mid sixties. Transplanting themselves to new surroundings at that age  should have...

  Forty five years ago - Nostalgia NCC camp Foggy morning walk image this morning made me recall an event forty five years ago - our NCC Air Wing 10 day camp held in 1974-75 second term break at Air Force station Tambaram We were twenty four cadets from our school occupying three tents Night dew used to render our beds damp and mist of us used to be up by 3 am and used to chat. The night sentry cadets used to knock on the tent pegs and asked us to keep quiet. Our school was lucky. We were not assigned night sentry assignment in the camp. We dug small moats running around our tents - to prevent snakes from entering the tents. There was hip high grass where we pitched our tents - we cut them and levelled the ground. We had carried all our stuff in the longish black camp bags which were like giant versions of mridangam cover which we laid out neatly before we went for morning march. There were prizes for well laid out tents. Our neigbour Wessley school bagged the prize. On the first e...

I was taught cycling by my friend Padassery Raghu during summer vacation in 1971 at Venkitangu. We hired a cycle regularly from the village market. I mastered couple of technical "cycle" skills before I mastered pedaling steadily. The first skill was cajoling the chain back into the sockets and the second one was "aligning" the handle bar for riding on a straight line. I learnt cycling on kucha paths. I fought with sand mounds and trees by banging the cycle ag ainst them. By the time my sister and her friends learnt cycling a couple of years later, the venue shifted to the precint of village temple. On return to Madras, I taught couple of friends cycling in the vast compound of Fatima Mata Church next to Corley School. We hired cycles from shops on Velachery Road, East Tambaram opposite Madras Christian College main gate. As years progressed, we used pedal to Camp Road, Chitlappakkam, Gowrivakkam and Irumbaliyur. Tambaram was the terminus of suburb...

Time does not stand still. People do not live for ever. But time stands still and people live for ever in our sweet memories. I walked up to this building this morning three years ago and stood watching it for a few minutes ruminating. My mind went back to April 1982 – to my impromptu first ever visit to Bombay – and this was the place I went looking for after alighting at Dadar railway station. I know the address of a flat in this building by heart from the time I could pen postal letters in English. 5, BSES quarters ( opp BSES House ) Prabhat Colony, Santa Cruz East Mumbai -400055 While in college I used to write letters regularly to some families. And some of the letters went to the above address for the reading pleasure of Dorai anna and family ( though he was only a few years younger to my dad, we addressed him as elder brother- he was our neighbour from our village in Kerala ) Till I completed my engineering degree in 1982, our holiday travel w...

Is this the right bus stop? Yes. Going by your dress, it is ! My tayiji ( periamma) always wore nine yard pudavai ( long saree ) in conventional style. Tayiji's home was in Chalakudi, about 32 km from Trichur. Our village Venkitangu was on Trichur- Guruvayoor route, around 20 km from Trichur. They would change buses at Trichur on their way to Venkitangu. Though she and my cousins used to board bus to Trichur on the way back from the 'short cut bus stop', they were not confident of locating the 'short cut bus stop' while traveling into Venkitangu. They would alight at a junction further away and walk back. On one of their trips to Venkitangu, after their bus had traversed considerable distance, the bus conductor blew the whistle. After the bus stopped, he called out to my tayiji and asked her to alight. My cousin also got up but both were perplexed as the place looked unfamiliar. The conductor asked, " You bought tickets to Venkitangu, rig...