For a few days...

Hectic is the word. By monday I was fighting a losing battle against time. Booked my train ticket to Delhi and bus ticket to Thodupuzha at Thampanoor...I actually took the dear old city buses there, got on a new bus service called Ananthapuri Fast and for the first time sat back and relaxed and observed all the new, old and renovated structures that have come up over the last few years. After taking the tickets, I walked over to East Fort to visit the National Book Fair going on a the Putharikandam Maidan, crossing the rail tracks, and as I passed by the Ajantha theatre I looked at my watch, realized I had 10 mins to the 11:15 show of Ananthabhadram, though the balcony seats were sold out I was never a stranger to the "thara" seats. Barely made it in on time, the movie what do I say about it, I am the wrong person to review it since I had read the novel already(i read it an 8-hour stretch like a spell wuz cast on me!) and the story has changed considerably to adapt it to the silver screen which sort of pissed me off...but if you wanna see some great camera-work, great editing, beautiful sets and a film without the superstar concept dont miss this one. About the acting this movie belongs to Manoj K. Jayan and Prithviraj all the way.

Evening my closest bud from Loyola, Anand aka Motta(he gave me my Jabban nickname) came visiting and we sat and talked and joked for some time before he dropped me off at the bus-stand. He is getting married in May and tomorrow I head out for lunch with him and his fiancee (he had 6 girlfriends before this one and i remarked i have an idea for an autograph movie and he retorted with a "onnalla rando moonno autograph ninakke eduthhoode aa kathakalokke veche"!!!)... On the way we had a providential escape as the bus driver dozed off and insterad of falling over a cliff, hitting a vehicle or banging into a home crashed into a load of metal piled on the roadside for road-work. The entire front part of the air-bus was damaged, though scared shitless nobody ever complained...people seem so used to this kind of incidents...neways got to moolamattom without any further problems. On getting down I realized I had forgotten the way to my grandparents house...the funny thing about villages is if you ask people a question they take it as a license that in return they can ask anything about us!!! So instead of just telling me the way, they want to know which family i am from, what i am doing now and how i am related to the home i am going to!!

My grandmom has hunch-backed even further, my grandpa fit as a fiddle, even at 80 still driving a kinetic honda and a fiat car, not showing any signs of slowing up...this is their 60th year of marriage, yet they fight like schoolkids and they dont feel any embarassment in their grandson having to play mediator(i gave him a chivas regal and all day long appachan and ammachi were playing a cat-and-mouse game finding and hiding it from their respective hiding places!!!) Oh I had so much fun that day. Went to my native village Arakulam, visited my dad's and appachans brothers... its a fascinating land as i have written abt before...just acres and acres of rubber, just silence and solitude,and not even a neighbor in the vicinity...sunday's at church is the big social event in these places!!! Had some real tasty food...the food I have enjoyed for the last one week wuz just awesome!!! At night said goodbye to my grandparents and headed back to tvm again....it was a quick 18 hour affair at Arakulam, have never paid such a short visit to appachan and ammachi, i wuz dead tired on arriving back, and i fell sick too. missed my train to delhi, went to a doctor who gave me some good medicines and here i am back to checking out all your blogs after almost a week.

I look at people here and i see so much apathy to fellow-beings and so much competition to survive...what i see on tv irriatates me, they show the nightclub culture and materialism of america, but they dont show how americans are law-abiding, orderly citizens who work honestly for a living and treat others courteously. Our population has to be brought down....otherwise there will never be dignity for a human life.About India, let me not talk about the bad things anymore. I see a lot of stuff which seemed liveable with, in an earlier time and age but not anymore. Maybe in a few months I will get used to it or not. Knowing the right people and working the system gets you results here. I am really tempted to find a job in tvm and settle down - there is so much of my kind of life here - the friends, the movies, the thattukadas and my people and my language I guess I will give the CS a few years effort and then see what is to be done next. And to taper off...I wonder...why cant Thiruvananthapuram be renamed Ananthapuri...it means the same, is shorter, sweeter and has been used by our writers for ages, as a sobriquet for The City of Ananthan!!!