Yesterday was Baba’s birthday; his first without him. We were all remembering him fondly, his visits with Amchungla/Abu to Thekambattu.
Last year, I (Sonati) finished a painting; a view from Hippo Rock of the landscape where we all walked together the last time he was here. We posted it and it re...

To misquote Shakespeare,
“Cowards die a thousand times before their death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that a full septic tank, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

The potty backlash started getting ominous a couple...

Saturday afternoon: Both boys are away, but both Sonati and I had rain baths in a lovely sudden afternoon shower, and were having a cup of tea. I was in the front verandah and had just switched off the mains since the thundering seemed to be coming close.

I saw a bright flash of lightning, there w...

The return of our oven coincided with the arrival of a long awaited copy of Claudia Roden’s _A New Book of Middle Eastern Food.
_There we found a great recipe which made us wonder how come we hadn’t thought of this ourselves. Eggah is an Egyptian egg dish which uses the eggs for binding. It is like...

As all of you who have visited here know, hamara trusty bajaj has been delivering bread and cakes and assorted bakes for 19+ years. So when the thermostat gave up the ghost a couple of months back, we were handicapped to say the least. Toll-free numbers took a toll on our sanity, and authorise...

One cannot help but gasp with wonder and delight whenever one sees a butterfly flutter by.
We stop mid-sentence, if we are in a conversation, utterly distracted, and direct all our attention and also everyone else’s towards it.
Really, their beauty is so stunning and captivating.

Entomologists...

Eunice de Souza taught me (and hundreds of others) English at St. Xaviers’ College long long ago. We used to wonder why a poet would spend her time teaching us.

One of her poems that has always stayed with me is

Learn from the Almond Leaf

Learn from the Almond Leaf
which flames as it falls.
...

This Pongal morning, we heard someone calling out — Thangam ! Thangam! (Thangam means gold in Tamil) It was distinctly our neighbour Shaniamma’s voice, getting louder and louder as she came closer to our house. Quite unusual. For Shaniamma is generally seen or heard amidst the tinkling of bell...

One day, we heard that (Haoom Roar) Selvam and Jayamani had had an accident. He was OK but she was unconscious and in bad shape. (That parenthetical Haoom Roar is a story by itself: When Varun was a toddler, he used to get frightened by Selvam’s attempts to make conversation with him while deliverin...

Suddenly, there appeared, on the horizon, a big red-brown cow with horns painted blue and yellow on the east of the house, munching gaily on the foliage. We noticed her only after our morning meal. Bother!

All our thoughts immediately led to our neighbour Annamalai. Rogue Annamalai.

One always...

Bright yellow Shirish flowers
Against the clear blue sky
Butterflies do not observe lockdown

Many of you have been asking for recent photographs. All four of us were at home for New Year’s, so here we are in two’s and three’s and finally four :-)

On the 31st, I went to the bank in Karumandurai to say that my missing 20,000 rupees was still missing. Hari Bhaskar checked and found that it...

Sonati’s Dental Agony trip to Salem turned into a Mental Agony trip for me. We got off the bus and headed for the Indian Bank ATM [1]. There were a few people clustered around one machine and no-one at the other. I headed optimistically to the unoccupied machine, only to find that it was a pass book...

Yesterday, I got involved in a drunken brawl (Well, they were drunken, and I was brawling)
Four young blades found our approach slope a convivial place to have their beer and snacks. I heard raised voices for a while and then went down to investigate as I usually do.
When I saw them, I said, “Plea...

Whenever we have had children come for “tuitions” in English (usually on their parents’ initiative), we see that when the text books are opened, the children shut up. So our strategy is to convert everything into drawing classes, book-making classes, story reading/telling or drama classes. Then th...

A water lily flowered in the rock-pool, a poem was written, cards were made, and vast quantities of Masala Dosas consumed yesterday. Wish you were here.

Basic Tricks

It is September the twenty-fourth and 
Badri is Sweet 16 today
Surely Sweet Sixteen was a while ago
I hear some people say

After months of drought
A week of rains
Our hearts are lighter
The bees’ feet heavier
With pollen
The ground is carpeted with flowers

And Hope raised like a banner 
On our roof