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Showing posts from January, 2014

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...

Last year

I have been meaning to write for quite some time, but I never found the patience to find a subject.  Trivial happenings make for good discussion, and sometimes, the serious topics fizzle out.  And then I thought, I never think when writing a blog post.  It just happens.  In any case, the writing sucks.  So, I thought, at least, let me continue the habit of writing something and worry later about the wherewithals of submitting the post for a Booker or Pulitzer. We saw a bunch of shows last year.  Newsroom was fantastic.  I liked the idealistic portrayal of the newsroom characters.  Aaron Sorkin brings the idealistic nerve in his characters to the fore with panache.  It makes for good viewing.  My wife tells me not to drool incessantly as soon as Olivia Munn comes on screen.  But then, she is awesome.  Yeah, even Olivia Munn is awesome. Then, my wife queued up The Wire from the library.  When you get past the first few ...