Drowned by a Song...

Its Sunday, 8:30 pm. In my cubicle trying to kick ass ahead of a trying development schedule, further aggravated by my leaving for India midway. Its so quiet all around me...I just love the ambience of my office at night, nobody to disturb my train of thought and at the 24th floor, I look thru a colleague's telescope down at so much human activity...the last children coming out of the theme park, the editors and sound engineers at universal studios burning the midnight oil lost in their work, the dark windows of the Sheraton beyond which my naughty spirit thirsts for a peek, the city lights and the cars with their headlights in the distance making quite a pretty sight. I feel so far away from the city and its million hordes of which I am another insignificant soul. I have realized, I am just not in the mood to wrack my brains. Its a nice time to blog, my mind is far far away from the confines of this building, the vastness of this country, the infinite expanse of the seven seas and falling through a tiny hole, deeper and deeper into a dark abstract region called nostalgia whose workings in me i still fail to understand but which ironically lights up my existence whenever it gets monotonous.

Chanthupotte made its rounds by LA this weekend and our guys decided to watch it with a lot of misgivings. Well who could blame us...after all, the hero, Dileep wuz playing a Hijra and for mallus so used to their moustacheoued heroes who are manliness personified there wuz a mental block to overcome here. But we came out satisfied, the movie didnt lapse to cliches like the hero turning manly after the interval or to the end which raised the movie a few notches and finally credit has to go to Dileep...it has to be the best-ever performance by one our heroes in a few years, he doesnt let down his guard in even a single frame...as he playes the effemminate Radha-krishnan to perfection. Well it wasnt my intention to write about the movie but the effect one of the songs in that, "Azhakkadalinte Angekarayilaayi" soulfully rendered by the timeless nightingale, S.Janaki and emoted to sublimity by Sukumari has had on me since then...its so beautiful and it brought back such a flood of memories..I thought of all the women who joined hands to bring me up...and out of nowhere the blogging process which I fear is dying within me re-awakened.

From my mom(a post on her will come some day and it will be my best) in whose lap, the moment I rest my head, even today in a few minutes I fall asleep, my maternal grandmother whose folk songs must have put me to sleep so many times those days and even later, when she knew we were studying well, would come up from behind and sing to us a few lines as a reward and when we begged her to sing more would back off with a shy smile(this december one of my projects is to beg, plead, cry and threaten her to sing all those harvest songs once more for me to record for posterity)...oh she's the most beautiful woman in the whole world, my paternal grandma...with the most sweetest smile in the whole world, so innocent and childlike and talkative ever since I've known her and all the heroics and mischief's of my ancestors from my great-great grandpa to my dad and uncles that she would recount and the spell that it would cast on me, and all the subconscious ways that must have affected me. My maternal grand-aunt whose only son became a priest leaving us as her grandchildren by default and oh...what a treasure trove of stories she is about my toddler days and my eyes always well up in tears when she tells us fondly of how I fell sick once and kept puking all over my face, and how my little eyes blinked up at her thru the vomit and with all the menfolk away how she took me up and ran many a mile across the paddy fields to the meppilikutti hospital.

This december I will savor each and every moment I get to spend with my three ageing girlfriends and our home which has been silent for so long will once more echo with laughter and light up with happiness...finally things have started to change...these days I look forward to spending more time with family rather than friends though i worry how i'll accomodate time for all these dear souls...we will once again make fun of my ammachi asking her "appachan ammachiyode I love you enne paranjittondo" and she will blush and run to my mom complaining "mole, ee pillere enne kaliyaaakkunnu" and my mom will give a sly smile and plot her escape bcoz she would be next in line wuth our taunts if she dared interfere with an "ithrem years kalyanam kazhinjittum mummy entha pappaye 'ithe' ennne vilikkunnathu" and so many more pokes....oh growing up was so fun...I could ramble on and on....but theres work to be done and deadlines to be met...so long as i can have my sweet memories and comfortably earn my livelihood, life's a fine balancing act that I should never complain about.