cleanin up

Blogs are like shelves. Clothes shelves to be precise. If you do not promise to yourself to check on it everyday, you are bound to get avalanched in a huge ball of mess every time you open it. So then, the next best thing to do, if you can’t devote time for it everyday would be to simply shut it close. And walk past it, around it, away from it or if you are the type with a heightened level consciousness and all, then kill the thought the moment it arises in your head. I did all of the above. Only, my blog was more accommodating than my shelf. Unlike my shelf, comments did not pile up to fill and overflow from my comments box. Guess that further motivated the two-toed sloth inside me to make it look like a ‘crawl to the end of the world’ every time I decided to take action. And just when the two-toed one thought she could silently slip out of blogdom, came a call from a ‘lionocerous elestrich’. Yea, my dad has the memory of an elephant, is as swift as an ostrich in chasing away and trampling problems, had only a single point of focus in front of his eyes on his nose and can growl like a lion!

And growl he did, when he opened my blog yesterday and saw an unappetizing crow still feeding on the ‘kozhukottai’ I placed two months back.

 

“ke ke ke”, was the only reaction I gave him.

 

He didn’t force me to write of course. But then before he kept the phone down, he made it quite clear that he missed reading my blog. (Now I really know why they say that nobody will ever love you like your parents.) And I’ve realized that truth even before my marriage.

So this is me shouting out a ‘YAY’. For having learnt a lesson in life. For having decided to write again. And also for finally deciding to clean up my shelf.

Although, the ‘yay’ for the last one has met with an untimely death I fear, somewhere in between my lungs and the solar plexus.

 

Kaakkaikku kozhukkattai mel aasai

Festive season for me is a time to go to the local market, watch all of the interesting activities there and then get really high on yummy home-cooked food. So there i was, plonked on the bed like a flimsy bag of stuffed corn, heavy on an assortment of delicacies from an original ‘Iyer veedu’, and on the verge of falling into a deep and relaxed siesta on Ganesh chathurthi day. Inside my tummy, kozhukkattais rolled and spicy ‘rasam’ burps made their way up every now and then. Looking out through the balcony door, watching the clouds drift againt the blue sky, I was a peaceful picture of contentment. That’s when this guy landed on the balcony and cawed for a piece of that peace.  So I broke a piece of ‘kozhukottai’ and placed it on the parapet for him to feast on, while I secretly filmed him on my camera….

And that’s another picture of contentment!

Philosophy in my cold-tablet induced sleep

Ask me who are the fools??? And I’ll tell you- ‘Us’.

‘We’, who believe in the impossibility of things with more conviction than in the possibility of random events of the universe taking shape, and piecing together all on it’s own to make happen what we set out to do when we proceed to follow the song of our souls with a wee bit more of faith and courage.

When the sun drowned in a golden lake

And if it weren’t for those two coconut heads who bounced about and craned their necks in to come into the picture, I would’ve tried churning a real tear-jerking tragedy out of this…

 

At the dawn of August month, every year…

I wake up at dawn on the first day of August month every year with a hundred voices in my head. Voices that question me and judge me, throw ideas and force me out from my bed…. Voices that break my heart with memories of the past… Voices that remind me of the small yet significant details about my life… Voices that go off loud like noisy alarm clocks… A hundred alarm clocks in my head that serve as reminders of the several birthdays of some of the closest friends I have on this planet….

August is a month full of birthdays… of few of my ‘bestestest’ friends… yes, including the very first one I had, whose hand I selfishly clasped without letting it go for a single second for fear of losing her…  The one with whom I grew up playing hopscotch… The one with whom I got drenched in the monsoons..  The one with whom i shared my first secret… The first gossip… and the first love story… The one with whom I bunked classes… The one with whom I laughed out so hard i cried… The one with whom i learnt to share.. and care… To love and be loved… And with all of whom today, I discuss marriage and babies!!!

Its strange that even at a time when I knew nothing of star signs and birthdays, I was drawn to or drawn by August babies… Its weird, but true…. I was born to an August baby.. My dad celebrates his birthday today… And would you even believe me if i told you that the count stands at 7? And every year, i have upon my slender shoulders, the task of coming up with 7 brighter gift ideas than the previous ones and then putting in more working hours for realizing them…. Sigh!!! And yet, there is a part of me that also marvels at the workings of the universe…. How this seemingly insignificant coincidence suggests that some things are  just meant to be, and work only in a way… like how they were designed to work…

So here I am once again, weepy eyed and with a heavy heart (good heavy), counting my own age with the many wonderful friends i have in my life and looking through the lovely pictures of the past…  exactly like how I’ve been doing it…. on the very first day of August month, every year!!!

‘Whatever’ art for the whatever soul

Caption courtesy the ‘chicken soup’ series of books.

This is not really a post, but more of a clarification to Miss Damsel’s question, “Whats that thingy up on the header?”

well my dear Damsel, that is Thoughton’s work of wonder! Its what happens when kids from small towns go to the big cities, get screwed up in their heads and then return to the peaceful setting of their homes for vacations, only to get riddled with excess freetime…

I’d been bored of my header image and wanting to get a new one for sometime now. It was Thoughton who stopped me midway and suggested that instead of just lifting images from elsewhere, I do something really whacky, like create an original work of er… art?, even if it turns out to be ‘toh-tah-lee’ un-inspiring! So my afternoon was spent on making this squiggly tree and terrorising it with a bunch of wandering stray clouds… And we had awesome fun doing it..

And thats not all… We’ve also decided that from here on, we’d come up with such original pieces of “whatever art for the whatever soul” regularly for our header image, every month!! :)

“Njyangale manasu alinjyu anugrahikkanam” (please melt your hearts and bless us!!!)

Hey…who stuck that sticky note up my back????

There is a sense of calm, not a peaceful one, but a sort of calm with a heavier, more condensed emotion underneath. Like the excess cheese that oozes out from a seemingly harmless ‘thin crust pizza’. Heavy and sticky, you know all that cheese is going to just settle at the bottom of your tummy and lie in there, uncomfortably sticking to all of your innards, all through the night.

I’ve always loved the monsoons. That overly loud display of awesome power had me tingling with excitement ever since I was a little girl. But this time around, I sense a difference, a sort of gloomy silence, which makes me want to walk right upon that cloud and burst it out aloud. My neighbor’s kid can sulk better. Yes, that’s exactly what it is this time around. Its not raining, nature’s just sulking, all day long and all night long…. And it’s no fun at all…!!!

Thoughton: Amma is right. You’ve become a Tamizhathi!

Me: What? Now why would you say that?

Thoughton: Yea, look at you, all of Chennai is talking about you enjoying the monsoons in here and you are craving a hot scorch of your bum in the sun!!!

Me: No, I’m not. Im just saying this time around, there is something amiss. I want some action, some real drama. That’s what I had hoped to see… but this is like a bunch of amateurs totally screwing up the show. I wanna fling my 100rupee Pondi bazaar sandals at them…

Thoughton: Yea, but it’s been just two days. Maybe it’ll improve.. Let’s just not get all whiny already.

Me: who is whining? I aint whining

Thoughton: yes you are

Me: am not…

Thoughton.. Yea right! Btw, what’s that thing? I’ve been noticing it for sometime now..

Me: What thing?

Thoughton: That thing sticking up from your back?

Me: God, what’s sticking up from my back?

Thoughton: Hahaha, I think somebody done a sticky note on you!!!

Me: A sticky note? Why would anybody wanna stick up a sticky note on me? I got no enemies?

Thoughton: (rrrippp) Well lady, looks like you just have a secret loather!!

Me: what’s written on it?

Thoughton: It says.. “The girl with the head up in the clouds, YOU’VE BEEN TAGGED!

Me: Why that prick Karsub!!

Thoughton: Don’t you dare utter a word of disgrace against that nice ol boy young lady…

Me: (pooh) But I won’t do it!!!

Thoughton: You shall NOT ignore Karsub’s tag

Me: But he stuck it up behind my….

Thoughton: Stop complaining and start writing right NOW before I start pinching your brains…

Me: ………

(Fake smile) Ah so ladies and gentlemen, the thing with sticky notes as you already know is that you can’t really get it off you. When you manage to take it off your back, it gets stuck onto your fingers. And then you use your left hand to rip it off from the right. And then you gotta roll it around, all the while squishing it and then kill it before you can completely rid yourself of it…

I’ve also tweaked a few questions here and there coz I found them to be a little er, well, boring? So here goes…

Four Favorite things:

 Four places that I have lived in

Calicut, Coimbatore, Cochin and Chennai.

Four TV Shows I love(d) to watch

Heidi

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Whats that lil robo girl’s show called? With an annoying freckled girl for her neighbour’s kid? Damn, I forget. But I used to watch it regularly.

I used to love watching “Surabhi” on Doordarshan

Four places I’ve been on vacation

I’m changing this question to: Four of the best places I’ve discovered during my childhood summer vacations:

The military barracks up the forbidden hill, where we discovered fox dens, sinister caves and the most beautiful of beaming blue skies…

The-three-storey high water tank in the apartment, a climb that got me grounded for a week!

A cycle trip to the beach through the fisher colony and dark alleys of Kozhikode with my two comrades in 6^th STD. (A secret I had been hiding for the past so many years. Dead meat I am tonight!)

A full blown tour of the haunted construction site outside our apartment. I encountered a tiny ghost called ‘Guchi’ up a coconut tree, and developed a fear of sleeping alone ever since.

Four favorite food items

Puttu kadala, amma’s prawn fry, cheera (spinach) curry, medu vadai, rasam sadam…. Well there are just too many items. I wouldn’t know how to restrict it to just four of ‘em…

Four Websites I visit daily:

I don’t visit any websites regularly. Although, I do occasionally go to etsy.com, deviantart.com, 52prints.com and many more of such art based websites.

Four places I’d rather be.. I’m changing this question to:  Four places I’d like to visit:

The Himalayas

The Saharan desert

The Pacific islands

And the North Pole

 Four things I hope to do before I die:

Visit the Himalayas

Put on some weight

Adopt a mongrel puppy

And live happy

Four novels I wish I was reading for the first time

Eh, did you mean books I don’t mind reading over and over again? Then I must confess, I don’t like to read a book once I’m done with it. Although I can read Tintin, Asterix, The Coral Islands, and a lot of other books I read as a kid.

Four movies I can watch over and over again

Old Mohanlal+ Srinivasan/ Mohanlal + Jagathy movies

All animation movies

A few Tamil movies

And Pather Panchali

And now the victims of this tag:

Me: Whom shall we attack first?

Thoughton: Damsel’s behind obviously

Me: Shush, dont humiliate me so.. but she and philip have already been tagged

Thoughton: Ok then, lets sniff out some fresh meat. Lets tag the famed ‘Ice maiden

Me: You like her?

Thoughton: Oh yea!!

Me: Ok then

1. Ice maiden gets a sticky note

Thoughton: Next should be Bullshee. Lets stick it up his cuffs.. him and his fancy lil suit!!!

2. Bullshee watch out!

Thoughton: I wanna try it out on Ambareen and cool muslimah. I kinda like the kids… they have this innocent goodness about them…

So there… hope ya all find the sticky tags before others find it on you….:)

Thoughton’s corner in the house…

 

 

    

 

….where he drags me to lie down and read when the summershine peeps in, and listen to the sound of music and sleep when it rains…. Today we are reading Rashmi Bansal’s “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”….

Puppy love!!!

Sat beside me this li’l fellah,

To lick his paw comfortable!

But on my feet he saw a li’l black buckle,

And at it he went all ‘wiggle wiggle’….

I am not exaggerating when I say I left a part of my heart there with him when I returned to Chennai from our trip to Pondicherry. He must be leading a very content life with sunny sandy beaches and hot chips and of course, the many leading ladies! He is probably chasing chicken from behind shacks  and winking at pretty women and distracting ‘em, and helping himself to the extra large burgers and meat pies on their plates as I write this now…

But every now and then, I go back to this album and try to relive that moment, all the while asking… “Why, why oh why, dint I bundle you in my arms and bring you back home…?”

Chennai ‘pattinam’ summer shots- ‘Madhavi amma’

‘Madhavi amma’, mispronounced and later christened by the kids as ‘Madhyamma’, died when I was in 10^th std. She was the great nanny of the ‘Chengalam’ house, my ancestral home. She took care of my mom and her sisters when they were kids, and then became a nanny to me and my cousin sisters when we were kids. I remember waking up early in the Chengalam house and walking out with my eyes half open, with lots of sleep weighing down the unopened part of my eyelids. I’d walk upto Madhyamma, who would be sweeping the courtyard and demand to be lifted. She never resented it. She would pick and hold me with her left arm and sweep with her right. And I’d clutch her tight and dangle from her hip, and look down, to see the pattern the broom made on the ground….

I didn’t go for her funeral. But to this day, I remember her by this particular pattern in the sky. It happens whenever Madhyamma sweeps!

This post is lovingly dedicated to my mom, her two sisters and brothers and of course, Mathyamma….