FIRST MONSOON RAIN

It was well past midnight when I heard a soft splitter splatter against the pane of glass on my window. I rolled closer to the window and listened carefully. It took a while to realize that it was the heavy water droplets of rain that were making the sound. I threw the window open and saw that it was raining rather heavily. It was unusually quiet for such a heavy rain. Rain like alcohol amplifies emotions. It makes a happy man happier and it makes a sad man miserable. I was sad and as I watched the droplets falls to the ground softly I felt increasingly sad. It was the first rain after Kamala's death. It had rained heavily on the day Kamala died. Kamala and rain were synonymous to me and I could never think of one without thinking of the other. Rain was nothing more to me than an excuse to wake up late until I married Kamala. Rain was a character for her and a part of her life and existence.

Kamala waited eagerly for the monsoons each year and she would stay awake late for invariably the first monsoon rain always came in the night. She would sit by the window and stretch her arms outside the window and feel the cold droplets on her skin. Rain always made Kamala happy irrespective of what mood she was in. She was not someone who hummed or sung much but on the day of the first monsoon rain she hummed. I started liking the rains after I married Kamala but not quite like how she did. I liked it more when it rained in the nights and when I was indoors and complained when I had to travel in the rain or when a late afternoon summer rain caught me on the road by surprise. Kamala though loved rain unconditionally and nothing about the rain inconvenienced her. Life was a celebration for her and the rains enhanced the colors and flavors of life like nothing else did.

Kamala was tested positive for cervical cancer and when I had broken the dreaded news to her on a Tuesday afternoon she had looked into to my eyes and asked if she would be alive to see it rain one last time. The battle against cancer did not wipe the smile off her face and although she suffered physically and was turning frightening frail she managed to retain the gleam in her eyes. The monsoons were delayed that year and for the first time I feared if she would die before it rained and I felt indescribably helpless.

To be continued....

MY FIRST KOREAN MEAL

My hosts in Philippines took me to a Korean barbeque joint for lunch this afternoon. Like any other Palakkad Iyer I had evolved over time from puking at the pungent smell of meat to managing to eat a vegetarian meal sitting besides people who ate meat and that way I thought the Korean barbeque joint escapade could be pulled through. I was in for some serious trouble though.

We walked in and sat on a table that had a pit in the middle and I was naïve enough to wonder why an upmarket joint as that would have broken furniture. I looked around and realized that all tables had this pit in the middle and my hosts spotted my inquisitiveness and offered that the pit is where the barbeque would be done.

I let out a gasp and even before I could take in the shock a petite waitress lowered a bowl of burning coal into a pit in the middle of the table, put a lid over it and then layered slices of beef over it. For once I thought I was blessed to have the cold that I had been nursing for the past 4 days as the heat charred the pieces of beef.

The elaborate menu had the word "vegetable' just on one dish and so that's the one I had to pick. My host gave instructions to the waitress on the things that should not go into the dish and the puzzled waitress was not sure on what was left in the kitchen that could actually go in. I realized during this second meal in the Philippines that when you say 'vegetable' or 'vegetarian' what you usually end up having on your table is quite literally 'vegetable'. So the dish that was placed before me after about 15 minutes of wait was cooked white rice with raw carrots, raw spinach, and sprouts and again for some strange reason the waitress wanted me to mix it up myself. I found the rice to be sticky and uncooked and although I had to risk offending my hosts I had to leave it at just half a spoonful.

Thankfully I had ordered for coke. One lesson I learnt from my meal the previous day at a Filipino joint was you got to have at least one thing on the table that you can eat/drink so you are not offered suggestions on what to try. I was intensely focused on the coke therefore and comfortably ignored some suggestions to make my food palatable. Despite all the pesticides and fungicides, the coke was blissful and when we walked out of the joint after 2 hours it was raining heavily and I felt terribly hungry.

MILLION DOLLAR SMILE

A stranger smiled at me in the bus this morning. In India, if a stranger smiles at you he will either be an LIC agent or a multi-level marketing guy. Mine happened to be the latter and to make matters worse he had a bad breath. He moved closer by pushing me to the window and slowly and unsuspectingly weaved a web around me and harped to his heart’s content about the MLM philosophy and how I can mint millions without moving my ass. One of the arts I have perfected over time is to look absolutely delighted when I am utterly bored and that makes me a star amongst the sales and marketing brethren.

I nodded happily as he chewed my ear with the quality and range of the products that I could in turn harp about in buses and trains to unsuspecting strangers. His bad breath was making it tougher and tougher for me to continue my grinning and maybe he mistook that as undecidedness and he promptly opened a bag which was as unsuspecting as him. He pulled out a torn magazine and having been subjected to forced classes on MLM before I instantly recognized Sagayamary and Paulraj who my torturer claimed paid an IT of 35 lakhs last year and left it to my imagination on what kind of money they minted.

He then went on to pick samples of the products that we could sell and to my utter delight one of them was a mint mouth spray. I was seriously hoping that he would spray some of it in his mouth and blow on my face like a toothpaste model but to my disappointment he chose to spray it on my palm and made me smell it. Fuck you stranger. For the first time that morning I felt happy for the simple reason that I was not traveling with him the whole day to a godforsaken place. He sensed that his prey would be off his claws any moment now and scribbled his mobile number on a piece of paper and offered it to me. I promised to call him one of these Sundays when I felt like smelling some bad breath from close quarters and jumped off the bus even before it stopped. Paulraj, you should seriously consider telling your clan to use more of that goddamn mint spray man.

LOVE - PLATONIC, CORPORAL AND THE OTHER KIND

I fell in love for the first time when I was 9 years old with a pretty girl. She was a relative and her family had visited ours during that dusty summer of 1988. She was 6 years old at the time and was a skinny little girl who was fair skinned and whose eyes shone like a star. She was not pesky as the other girls her age and had a certain charm to her.

The summer that year didn’t feel hot and the world suddenly looked very colorful and smelt very good. Waking up early was not painful anymore and I was not sleepy until midnight. She hanged out with me most of the time and I proudly flaunted her in the neighborhood.

The bubble burst 10 days later and I recollect vividly standing on a crowded platform on an April evening waving at the tracks that stretched all the way to some fairyland where she lived. I looked at my wrist at the wrist watch her family had gifted me and for the first time in my life I wished I could go back in time and re-live some moments. When time simply stood still over the next couple of days I realized that I was missing her deeply. I had fallen in love before I learned algebra. The world became dusty again and turned odorless. The school reopened and life went on.

Our family moved to the same city as hers after my father’s retirement in 1989 and I would meet her off and on over the next couple of years when I went along with my father while he visited her family. Having now experienced multiple hues and shades of love I can reflect upon my first love and say it was the purest form of love. I did not want to own her. I did not lust for her body. I did not seek anything. I felt happy giving. I simply wanted to be around her and watch her smile. No words were pure enough to express my love for her and therefore it simply stayed within me. I had learned algebra by then.

Time didn’t wait for me to see her smile one more time on that April evening. It moved constantly and so did the train. Time doesn’t wait for you to find the purest words of a language to express your love for someone. It moves constantly. Time moved until we were both adults and I possibly woke up one day and simply lost interest in my pursuit. I do not know how far away or how close I was to the treasure but as is the case with all pursuits I simply gave up one fine day and I would never know what course life would have taken had I pursued for some more years. I would have possibly found the purest words of a language. She possibly would have been on a pursuit herself waiting to hear the purest words of a language. Life went on nonetheless and I was to realize two years later that there was love of a different kind which took a person to the extremes of pleasure and pain.

SEA, SAND AND MORE

November 22, 2007 6 PM

I stepped out of the car that drove me from Tellicherry railway station to Muzhapilangad and instantly fell in love with the beach. The white sand dunes and the deep blue water that stretched to infinity was a lovely sight on a November evening. As I walked my way through the sand, in the western sky the orange faced sun was readying for it's daily plunge into the Arabian sea. I was to stay that night at the Beach Pavillion resort which boasts of excellent proximity and view to the beach which itself is a drive-in beach and the longest in Asia at that. Muzhapilangad beach is about 7 km from Tellicherry and about a kilometer off the highway that stretches to Kannur. It is not yet on the Kerala tourism map and with tourists thronging the Kannur belt for their share of water and sand one would have the Muzhapilangad beach and the mightly Arabian sea all to onself. Moreso after dusk when the handful of locals lazing up and down the stretch of clear water, the bunch of youngsters playing cricket on the hardened beach sand, and the cars zipping through the drive-in stretch decide to call it a day.

November 22, 2007 630 PM

Sharath was walking along side me on the soft sand with my baggage in hand. The owner of Beach Pavillion had got Sharath to pick me up from the station and drop me at the resort. Sharath was an unassuming young man and given his upbringing in a tourist town was someone whom you would instantly befriend. He was thoughtful enough to suggest that I pick up something for dinner since the resort itself did not have a restaurant. The resort had a main block that housed four suites and 8 cottages until couple of months back when all of the cottages were demolished as they were built up in unapproved land leaving only the main block. Sharath led to me one of the two suites in the first floor which had a lovely view of the sea and beach through the coconut grooves and tall pine trees. The room itself was very spacious with a double cot and some ad hoc furniture. The bath was huge and a cottage in itself and had an exhaust fan with a dove's nest. By 715 PM I had unpacked and changed myself into comfortable clothing and hit the beach. By then on the eastern sky a full moon had bloomed in all its glory lighting up the waves and giving them a silvery glitter. The walk on the moon lit beach with cool November breeze blowing was a treat to all senses. I wet my feet in the water and as far as the eyes could see the water streched. Behind me in the cold dark stood the Beach Pavillion with a 60 Watt blub on its face flickering wildly and there was an eerie calm to the surrounding. As I walked back towards the resort after a long walk alongside the water, I could hear the rise and fall of the waves behind my back. The sea had suddenly become turbulent.

November 23, 2007 550 AM

The night was uneventful and I had laid on my bed listening to the waves for a long while. The deep silence was punctuated by distant clatters and bangs. I had to toss around in bed for a long while and feel asleep well past midnight. I woke up before break of dawn to the chirping sounds of birds. I stood at my balcony and through the pine trees could see the stretch of water. The sea was more serene now than she was when I turned my back to her the previous night. As I stepped out of the resort and into the beach for my long morning walk I could see that the sea was dotted by fishing boats. Morning is the most active part of the day on the beach with locals thronging for a brisk walk on the seashore and with fishing boats pulling ashore one after the other.