The House in Pudukkottai That Woke Up at 5AM

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By 5AM, the house in Pudukkottai was already awake. The old tape recorder would be blaring Pithukuli Murugados songs somewhere inside, and above everything else you could hear the steady creak of the wooden swing moving back and forth. My athai paati — my grandfather’s sister — would often be on that swing, singing “Gopala Krishna Swamy Gokulathiley,” a soft Krishna lullaby . She had been widowed young and lived the rest of her life in that house, and to me she always felt like someone straight out of an RK Narayan story. For us, summer meant Pudukkottai and Gobichettipalayam. A couple of days after the final exam, we would take the overnight Trichy Express from Bangalore, then a bus onward, and by the next morning we would be inside that long, bustling house full of cousins, relatives, and noise. Athai Paati with the kids on the swing The house itself stretched from one street to another, a lon...
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Call this sheer coincidence?

I have this habit of checking up periodic updates on RK Narayan on the internet. Last night when I googled RK Narayan after a long time, I stumbled upon an article written by N. Ram, the editor of The Hindu, titled Reluctant centenarian. There was a sentence in the first paragraph that really caught my attention, and as I read that sentence, I went back to this link to verify from where it was taken. I was truly surprised. Just read the first paragraph of both the links and check out the similarity.

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