Away from Bangalore(written on 13th of May 2011)

Exactly 10 days from today, I will leave Bangalore for good (well one can never be certain of that) and will miss a whole lot of people and places. The calm of the ECC road, the romance of the outer circle of whitefield with its ancient houses, the solace of whitefield memorial church, fountains in the whitefield park under which my son and I giggled as the water splashed. I will miss the whitefield market with my favourite butcher, fruit seller, vegetable vendor,grocery store and medial store.

I will miss the little sunbird that built her nest im my house, the hundreds of eagles that loomed over the Holy cross school ground, my son's teachers, my son's friends and the tales they told me. I will miss the ladies who took care of my son in his day care and taught him Kannada, the smiling faces of children that played with him everyday.

I will miss the many many old people I have met and made friends with in whitefield, the ladies from the Cheshire home, the ones that waved as they walked their evening walks.I will miss the families that took me under their roof in my times of lonely sojourn in whitefield, thier sons, thier laughter, their food, their love. 

I will miss ITPL mall, the Kadamba hotel, the Piazza hut and the ice cream parlour,the many team lunches, formal and informal, the ITPL christian fellowship, the Sabre office, the tea room and the tea time conversations with good friends.

On your death anniversary

More days will soon go by
And so will the years role by.
More folks the family will have
Smart,bright and surely brave.

Your children may remember you year after year
The grandchildren may talk of you here and there
You will soon be a memory- fading away
But a little of you will live in me alway.

For a new acquaintance

For 33 years and more I've been traveling.
Traveling in a train, kind of journeying.
Every now and then,in this train of mine,
People keep going out and coming in.
At every stop there isn't always a person,-but
Some passengers travel thru' every station.

Awhile ago my train did stop-and
You boarded in as new stock.
Have you come to stay?
Or, will soon go away?
I do not know, I do not care- but
Memories of you, I shall for long bear.

Friends

Some I call my friends- cos,
I've been with them forever.
Some I call my friends- cos,
I love their sense of humour.
Some I call my friends- cos,
Much love for me they harbour.
Some I call my friends- cos,
I see myself in him or her.
and the company of such friends,
I deem a great pleasure.

St.Valentine Weeps

This morning I met St.Valentine
Sad, sullen and in deep pain.
‘Cheer-up man! It is your day today’- I said
‘Gifts, goodies and cards -all in your name made!’


He wailed loudly
‘Puppy love, passionate cards and crazy gifts
Not lasting families, but dressed up dates
No love, no man, no wife, just party mates’


‘Oh tell me, tell me’ –He cried
‘Has reason been lost in my name?
Has love been diluted in my name?
Has purity been put to shame in my name?’


I shook my head and walked away.
How was I to console him anyway?

The Blue Flask and Grandma

During a recent visit to my parents’ house I saw some very old stuff they had taken out of the loft after several years. And after nearly a decade I saw the Blue Flask, the first thermos flask I had ever known. A long, stripped light blue flask with the name Hammer Master written on it. I took the flask in my hands and the cap fell down. I laughed aloud, because the falling of the flask cap brought fresh memories of old times.
More than 25 years ago, my grandmother and I had carried this flask every day for a week to the hospital where my sister was admitted. She was a hardly four and she was hospitalized for an upset stomach. My parents stayed with my sister day and night and I was with my uncles, aunt and grandparents.
At 7 pm my grandmother would make supper and fill the flask with warm water and take them and me in an auto to the hospital. Being with grandma, even today can be embarrassing or amusing depending on the way one looks at the situation. She can bargain endlessly with any human to whom she has to hand out money. If she can do that emphatically now in her eighties imagine her vigour in her sixties. So she scolded and she cursed, she reasoned and she pleaded with the auto-driver to reduce the charges for our hospital trip. I can simply recite from memory the words she used for bargaining with the auto drivers, I chuckled then and I chuckle now. When the bargaining was over and the money actually left her hand (Phew! ), we got down from the auto to start moving towards the hospital. 'Tat-da da tat', there was a noise 'what was that Hannahma?' my grandma asked. 'The flask's cap','it has fallen down' I screamed. Together we crawled all over the auto and under it without letting the poor auto-driver drive away. The auto-driver would panic thinking my grandma would take back some of the money she had just handed him. After five minutes that seemed to last for an hour we found the cap and went into the hospital.
The next day, we would call out for another auto and my grandmother scolded and cursed, reasoned and pleaded for reduction in auto charges. And just when the money left her hands the cap left the flask. I started enjoying this. So I giggled, crawling up and down the auto in search of the flask cap as my grandmother lamented loudly and the auto driver accelearted his throttle impatiently. Then when we were back home I enacted the whole drama to my uncles and laughed so much. Grandma is a good sport so she laughed too but she ensured that the cap never fell off from the flask again.

Having relived those funny moments, I bent down, took the cap and screwed it back tight on the flask.

In a couple of weeks, the then four-year old sister will be walking down the aisle in church in bridal garments. Grumbling grandma will be gleaming grandma at her favourite grand daughter's wedding. Thanks to the many cars her sons own, some fortunate auto-driver will have a peaceful evening that day.

Ah!! Those Gadgets

People around me are obsessed with gadgets. Cell phones, iphones, iPods, mp3, video games… the list is endless. Gone are the days when people would build a conversation with fellow passengers during a train or bus journey. Now anyone who begins a conversation is considered a nuisance. We have let our love for gadgets kill the goodness of the human spirit. When two people talk continuously during a bus journey, the other passengers start getting their earphones to shut themselves out. They don’t realize that the bacteria earphones can bring into their ears, are far more harmful that the cacophony of fellow humans. It’s pathetic to watch the children of this era. It used to be common to find children in a super market or circus holding hands and giggling, despite inability to understand each other’s language. These days when a child stretches out his hand to another, I see parents pull him away and entertain him using games on their iPod. Can the sounds and visuals on the iPod ever replace the warmth of a human smile and touch?


Also gadgets have made us an impatient generation. Everything at the touch of a button, that’s the rule of the thumb. But most things are best relished when received after a wait. Nature offers nothing instantly, neither rain nor food, nor flowers nor off-springs. The waiting doubles the joy of receiving. But look at us, if you dial the number of a dear one and the recorded voice says ‘The number you have dialed is not reachable’, panic strikes us. If we forget our mobile phones at home, we feel like fish out of water and those that dial our number think we have been kidnapped! If you are introduced to a new person in the office one day, the very next day he wants to be your friend on FaceBook. We go ahead and accept the friend’s request and never drop a line to him for the rest of our lives. Friendships that last a life time most often take a life time to build. STOP AND THINK. We are becoming a rude, discourteous, in-different and impatient generation by clinging on to our gadgets.

Mark a day of the week as ‘No sms’ day, Mark a day of the week as ‘No iPod day’, Deliberately leave your earphones at home one day of the week. Mark a day of the week as ‘Two-minute phone conversations only’ day. Mark a day of the week as ‘No TV’ day. Sit down and write your dear friend a letter, not an email or sms, but a real hand written letter. For when he receives it, he will first sit down, and read it, and then re-read it and then preserve it.