As It Comes To Mind

  I grew up in a middle-class Indian household like millions of my fellow nationals. I say millions because, interestingly, by 2047, when India turns 100, the middle class is estimated to make up over a billion! Coming back to my household, it was an atypical South Indian one. The reason - I was born in Kerala to Malayalee parents but raised in New Delhi in a typical North Indian environment. So, basically I was a kid who had Hindi-speaking friends and classmates, but was exposed to Kerala influences including relatives, cuisine, climate et al at infrequent intervals. Infrequent because, my father got an LTC train ticket once in two years, and that was the time we all would visit Kerala during the school summer break. If due to some mischance I fell ill (it did happen a couple of times), the trip would get cancelled and would have to wait another two years. It was quite tough on my parents as they had virtually no relatives up North. I found myself an amalgam of North and South Ind...

  Some years back, I read in a newspaper article the renowned lyricist Gulzar speaking about his experience as a parent. He said something to the effect that when Meghna, his daughter was born, he felt reborn; reborn as a parent. So, he felt that along with his child he too was seeing and experiencing the world for the first time. In other words, a parent was born! The reason why I remember his words even though many years have passed since I became a first-time mother, is that I feel, no matter how much time may pass, no matter how old your child gets, he or she will always have something new for you, something that will surprise you, thrill you, shock you, agitate you, excite you and ultimately leave you gasping that they managed to get the better of you! That is, your child will always manage some way or another to turn your neat and ordered little world around with his or her sheer unpredictability! For, if there is one thing that every parent, especially mothers can wholeheart...

"What is the expiry date of a woman's dreams?' This is a line from the thought-provoking and commercially successful Malayalam movie, 'How Old Are You?' The movie marked the comeback of a beloved Malayali actress from a self-imposed fifteen-year sabbatical the reason of which was - unsurprisingly, motherhood!  A few years back, a friend of my mother - a retired nurse, who had been working in Vienna, and was now settled there along with her husband, leading a blissful and contented life, happened to comment, "pregnancy is not a disease or disability. Why is it that we, in India, get so nervous and on edge the moment a woman is discovered to be in the family way? In the West, it is a part and parcel of life - women do not get tense and start to worry the moment they realize they are going to have a baby. They carry their normal day-to-day routines like before. In India, we see the whole family start to worry and foresee all sorts of problems they can possibly im...

It was the summer of 1989. Monu was ten years old. Her school had closed for the summer break. As is wont with the summer vacations, Monu’s father had got train tickets booked months in advance for their trip to Kerala. Since her father was a government employee, Monu’s dad got free train tickets once in two years under the Leave Travel Allowance (LTA) policy. Going to Kerala was much anticipated by Monu’s parents as they longed to visit their native place and see all their near and dear ones. For Monu, the trip meant a brief sojourn in God’s Own Country, which translated to a whirlwind time of journeying up and down the length of Ernakulam and Thrissur districts. More often than not, the trip would involve getting bang in the middle of the unruly South-Western Monsoons. Still, Monu did not mind because she looked forward to meeting her grandparents and all her cousins. So, Monu set off with her family from New Delhi railway station on the Kerala Express bound for Thiruvananthapuram. T...

  I have been suffering from abscesses all my life. They started bothering me when I was 15 years old. I tried many treatments including Allopathy, Ayurveda and Homeopathy. The latter gave some relief, but the resilient and bothersome abscesses never really left me alone.  So, it was with utter resignation that I noticed a couple of abscesses forming over my belly few weeks ago. Usually, I just dab a bit of prickly heat powder over them and they subside over the course of a few weeks. This time, one proved rather too irksome and decided to burst forth with all insolence. The past few weeks have been quite challenging with my mother having suffered a foot fracture and being incapacitated. I was just coming to terms with the daily grind of cooking, cleaning and looking after the children assuming complete sway over my time, when the dreaded abscesses struck. Once the abscess burst, there was no other option than to consult a doctor. The affected area had become like a battle sit...

The newest web series ‘Dahaad’, streaming on Amazon Prime and starring Sonakshi Sinha (in her OTT debut) and the brilliant Vijay Varma as protagonists involved in a cat-and-mouse crime thriller, is one that gives the term ‘binge watching’ a tremendously satisfactory appeal. Although, married women especially mothers busy with their home routines and work might not exactly get time to ‘binge watch’, this latest crime series expects the viewers to do just! Unable to watch the show in one go, I managed to derive my pound of satisfaction by watching it over the course of a few thrillingly ecstatic days. The main drive was the superbly talented cast out of which Vijay Varma shines forth as the villain who steals the show. Although, he had stiff competition from the rest of the cast, especially Sonakshi (‘Dahaad’ is easily her best on-screen performance so far), he manages to keep the viewers rivetted to the unfolding drama anxious to see his next move in this pulsating crime series. The sto...

  I was fortunate enough to have a childhood that was full of memorable times. Among them a few stand out, more for their verve and enthusiasm than anything else. The summer vacations were undoubtedly the best time of the year; a time when two, (well, actually it was one and a half) months stretched out before me like the never-ending horizon, the hot Delhi summers notwithstanding. We were a group of five younger children and four older ones. Evenings meant playtime and I would find myself inevitably in the midst of one game or the other during those hot and dry months of May and June. Our parents could never understand why the extreme heat (Delhi summer temperatures can touch 45 degrees Celsius) never bothered us or made us ill. Even the hot dry winds call Loo (I saw it mentioned even in my Geography school textbook) never made us cringe even though most people were put off by the omnipresent dust that the Loos would generously blow about. I still fondly remember the exciting time...

  More than 125 years have passed since Swami Vivekananda called Kerala a ‘lunatic asylum’. This was in relation to the abhorrent caste system prevalent in the erstwhile state of Travancore, which is now a part of present-day Kerala. Back in time, when Travancore was an independent state, one of the taxes imposed on the lower castes and untouchable Hindu women till 1924 was the Breast Tax ( ‘Mulakkaram’ in Malayalam), if they wanted to cover their breasts in public. The baring of breasts by the lower caste and untouchable women was a longtime Travancore tradition and a sign of respect to the upper castes. While today, in modern Kerala, we might agree that Swami Vivekananda was right in calling this outrageous tax as symbolic of insanity, the fact remains that Kerala – the most literate state of India and the state with the highest sex ratio -  has a sordid underbelly in yet another blow to womanhood, the dowry system.  While the dowry system, despite being declared illega...

Teepi K and Teepi A were best friends and classmates too, if they got lucky. The school they studied in had a policy of mixing up the students at the beginning of every academic year, and consequently, the students had no choice but to mingle with new classmates and make new friends every new school year if they ended up in a section that their friends were not in. None of the students liked it and every year in April when school reopened for the new academic year rows of students could be seen crossing their fingers and fervently praying that they could be with their friends in the new class. Teepi K and Teepi A would be seen doing the very same thing and they would be glad about every opportunity that they got to be together in school if it turned out that they were not in the same section. If, on the other hand, they were in the same class then they would be inseparable and would gleefully celebrate their good luck by buying the 50 paise vanilla ice cream from the ice cream seller ...

The great Indian South-West monsoon dawned a trifle lazily at first, but soon picked up momentum as the wet and wild month of August came with its typically heavy showers that spanned almost the whole of the Indian peninsula. Most of northern and central India receives the bulk of their annual rainfall during this month. And rather fittingly the festival of Janmashtami or Sree Krishna Jayanti is observed and celebrated with much fervor across the country.  Monu and her friends loved the rains as any Delhi-ite does and used to have races in the pouring rain. It was during one such race that something unexpected happened that the children would remember with amusement for years to come. It was a Sunday morning and the neighborhood was rather silent with not even a hint of any movement or sound. Being the weekend, the younger children would be sleeping late while the elder ones would be engaged with household chores. For Radha, Shree and Neeba, weekends always meant that they were ...

It was the middle of March in the year 198_ and it seemed as if all of Nature was conspiring to make one feel as sleepy as possible. Actually this kind of climate would start about the last week of February and continue for about a month before summer took over, claiming its right to bake everyone and everything in sight rather like a ready-to-roast kiln. The weather was getting warmer by the day and Monu’s exams were inching towards closure. There were only a couple of exams left and Monu waited in patient anticipation for those to get over and the vacation to start. The holidays would last about ten days before the new academic year began and all the kids and their parents got busy with school reopening. Monu had been busy studying for her exams during the day that had been a study leave. As evening fell she looked out from her window towards the bustling main road beyond the red brick wall. She could see the vehicles big and small that ran fast and fearsome towards their destinat...