Never a dull moment

 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...

  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...