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Showing posts from January, 2012

Why Malleswaram Railway Station Still Feels Like Home

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Malleswaram Railway Station — a place that never felt like “just” a station. A few months ago, someone forwarded me a video of an elderly lady speaking about the charm of Malleswaram Railway Station. She mentioned how, whenever her children visit Bangalore from Canada, one ritual remains unchanged. Her son insists on visiting the station, picking up idly from Raghavendra Stores, and eating it right there on the platform. I smiled when I heard that, because for many of us who grew up in Malleswaram, the railway station was never just a transit point. It was a quiet witness to our growing up. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can hear the metallic rhythm of trains slowing into the platform, the echo of announcements bouncing off the tiled roof, the smoky sweetness of roasted maize drifting from the bridge, and the soft warmth of idlies wrapped in paper from Raghavendra Stores. The station was never silent — but it always felt peaceful. For nearly a decade, ...

New year resolutions

The first time my fifth or sixth grade school teacher asked me about my new year resolutions, I looked at her with a blank expression.  I had no idea what that meant.  And, I would have had no further idea for years to come if, I repeat, if she had not asked us to come up with essays on the topic.  That was also the year I was introduced to the concept of writing your own essays.  Till then, it was about cramming a few sentences in your head and spitting it out verbatim in the exam papers. I asked a few blokes around me as to what resolutions meant.  All of them were as intelligent as I was, save for a few exceptions.  These guys were writing as if their whole lives were about to be shaped by this composition. They formed a kind of protective enclosure, with notebooks and text books surrounding the sheet on which they were writing, on three sides.  The fortress had an opening only for the pen or pencil to find its way through the gap.  And the...