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Walking down the memory lane- my village

 It has been a long desire to spent time in my village in Kerala which we left in 1990 Though we had been there for a few hours each on three or four occasions since. The visit was restricted to a family of our ilk where the guardian angel was an old aunty. She passed away in 2016. Since our visits were during the day, the temple next door used to be shut I was keen that I would visit our village during monsoon. The monsoon gives a different mood. Should I walk down the memory lane at all? Did I have the emotional tenacity to visit the village which was like a huge stage where all the main actors close to me have left. A part of the set has since been dismantled but some significant memory markers were still there. Where would I stay ? This question had a simple answer. I will stay with Vishnu. Cricket crazy summer holidays of 1978 was the only time I had interacted with Vishnu. He was my friend's friend. Social media ensured that he became a dear friend. He was a professor of chem...
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School days - walking down the memory lane

  Our school requested us, old boys, for articles for school magazine. Only after penning my piece, I was told they need a 300 words one against my 1000 words piece. Why waste it when I can use it to make my friends suffer ! Here is the long piece. Walking down the memory lane Having spent six years from 1970 to 1976 across three sections, where do I start my memoirs ? After some thought, I have chosen our days in class XI as focal point. I had taken my own sweet time to switch to long trousers. I wore shorts till class X. So when I turned up after summer holidays in full length trousers in XI E, some friends made some appreciating noises to the effect that I was finally growing up ! Class seating was in strict alphabetic order and found myself sandwiched between Sasikumar and Suresh Thomas. The seating was a single seater row, two three seater row and a single seater row adjoining the windows. As befitting my name, I was towards to fag end of the class. There was a choice to ma...
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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 that 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 touristy visitors like us. 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. The autos would not budge even a foot 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...
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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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