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Toy Train

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  Train! Train! Cigarette packets and match boxes were my Lego bricks. From childhood, I have been fascinated by trains and buses. A wooden red and yellow bus with "Kottayam" in Malayalam was my favourite toy. I would suddenly feel thirsty on entering platform no 1 of Trichur railway station. My dad knew my thirst was induced by the stock at the shop at entrance - Coke and Fanta. Dad used to oblige me. I used to make trains out of match boxes and cigarette packets. My dad was a smoker and that helped me build up my railway rolling stock faster than my friends. I used empty biscuit cartons and LG Asafoetida packs to building stations and overhead walk ways. Longer the train, tougher it was to make it travel in a straight line. Out of curiosity, I used to assemble railway system well into my high school days whenever I could gather long slender empty packs for stations. Nowadays all cigarette packets have flip open tops. Till the turn of the century, only premium brands had fli
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traveling in Kolkata tram - Dec 2021

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  "Ting ting" "Ting ting ting... Ting ting ting.. Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting... #&@.. Ting ting.." These two styles of ringing the bell by tram driver has different effects. I will come to thst later. Tram routes in Kolkata have dwindled and on the remaining three routes, the frequency is low. No longer can we ride the tram soaking in the view of Victoria Memorial, sprawling Maidan, Race Course and Chowringher- this best route is part of history. Trams no longer ply on Howrah bridge. The remaining routes are Esplanade-Shyam Bazar, Esplanade- Gariahat and Ballygunge-Tollygunge. I traveled on all the three while Geetha missed Ballygunge leg as she and relatives were in process of wearing silk saree for my nephew's marriage - that is how long it takes to drape silk saree. Since Rashbehari Avenue is full of kiosks, I could hop across and buy several bunches of safety pins at short notice. Esplanade- Shyam Bazar trip was on a single a/c coach tram. The bl
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On the road in Kolkata in Dec 2021

  On the first day of our six day Kolkata sojourn, I was happy to see "NO REFUSAL" sign on the taxi. Four days on , I realised "NO REFUSAL" applied to the customer and not the taxi driver 😢😬😢😬 Local transport is a big pain point for once in  a visitors. Autos ply only point to point with three passengers at the back and the fourth to driver's left on a extended seat. You can take shared auto  from Tollygunge metro to Joka ( just short of IIMC ) but you need to change twice. Yhe autos would not budge a metre from their route. Ola and Uber - minimum four cancellations if you are lucky. Average rate is  Rs 40 plus per km minimum. Yellow taxi guys tell you a "take it or leave it" rate, a few budging a little. Ola / Uber guys would ring and ask where you are headed. If you say you would tell him only after boarding, he would straight away cancel the trip. I found a way out of this. Two / three cancellations on Uber/Ola ( it takes less than ten minutes-
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Lunch pranks at school

  Nostalgia School day lunch intervals. Taking offence ? No way ! In Malayala medium at Chennai in class VI and VII, I was the only vegetarian.  We, classmates, used to eat lunch together. Mine was always butter milk rice with a dry pickle - a combo easy to swallow without much effort. The tiffin boxes of my friends opened to boiled eggs or pieces of meat nestled in parboiled rice doused with oil. My friends used to kneed rice-oil combo between their fingers and palm into perfect spheres with the rest of action in their mouths - thorough chewing. Pieces of egg/ meat used to go in seperately. One of those days, as I was finishing my lunch, I found a shapeless rubberish brown lump at the bottom and stopped. My friends peered into my cylindrical tiffin box with a bucket type handle ( "chottu patram" ) and felt it was a piece of mutton. Some laughed in merriment saying " Subbu ate mutton curry !" while the rest picked up a quarrel with the merry guys while I sat around
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Malgudi days- Jersey cow and local cow at home

We had a Jersey cow at our home in Venkitangu during my toddler and primary school days. We used to call it Chalakudi maadu ( she was brought from my aunt's place at Chalakudi when she was an year old ). She was a dwarf among Jerseys but the milk yield was excellent.  Though I grew up with her, she would not let me go anywhere near here. I used to feed her banana peels and jackfruit "jackets". She would pluck the eatable from from my extended hand and try to gore me in one action. She had sharp forward curled horns which could really pierce through objects. On the few occasions the upper side of her tongue rubbed against the back of my palm while she "plucked", it felt like rough sandpaper ! She was a friend only of my grandma and grandpa, that too only after a tug of war every time when led out from the cowshed.  The milk yield was good. Grandma used to sell milk, butter milk and ghee. I used to steal small quantities of butter which used to be made into a ball
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That's life

 That's life  Boarded the metro at Chatharpur, New Delhi. A young girl in a cap and a middle aged man were occupying the senior citizen's two seater. On seeing me, the girl looked at the man ( hmm... dad and daughter) and he got up. "You are getting down All India Institute of Medical Sciences ?" "Yes" I patted him on his shoulder twice. As I got up to deboard the metro, I whispered into his ears," Everything is going to alright. You are going to the best doctors" He said something which I could not catch. He kept looking at me as the doors of the metro doors. I waved at him. Brought back memories of several journeys on the same the route years ago. Like this dad and daughter combo, we were also silent looking nowhere in particular. It will take a while for me to smile.
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An unusual childhood activity

My Andhra athai's ( bua )  last son Murali fell into viraku aduppu ( firewood choola ) when he was around three years old leaving him with 50% burns.  He was two years older than me. He used to be brought often to Madras for a fortnight's confinement and treatment at children's ward in Stanley Medical College  Hospital, popularly known then as 'kanji thotti'. Superintendent there was a close family friend.   I used to be in Chennai during my long  holiday breaks at school in Kerala. If Murali was admitted during such school breaks,  I used to go and stay with him wearing hospital dress and sharing his cot.  We used to play with all the kids in the ward. Of course, we ate 'sick diet' served by hospital kitchen. I can not think of such a possibility now. This was in 1960s.
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