‘Ammalu, we may be husband and wife–‘
‘We are’
‘OK, but we are two separate individuals. We have our own identities. I may not like what you like and you may not like what I like-‘
‘I don’t like what you like and you don’t like what I like’
‘OK, but let us both board this toy train and go merrily two three rounds’
‘SP, you board the toy train, go twenty rounds. In the meantime, I will just make a round inside the jewel shop’
‘May not be a good idea, Ammalu’
‘No more ‘mays’ please’
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Whom do you love more, me or your mom, Ammalu?’
‘Our children’
‘That was not an answer to my question’
‘I don’t answer foolish questions’
———————–
‘I should find out some new ways to please your mom.
My old tricks are not working with her. Any suggestion,
Ammalu?’
‘Tell me the purpose first. Money or material, what is the cause behind?’
‘Ammalu, you consider me as a cheat? Che,Che, I never expected such an evaluation from you. As she is advancing in age, I want to please her. That is all’
‘Is that your only intention?’
‘Yes, it is. Don’t suspect my innocence, please’
‘I won’t. Return her five hundred genuine currency notes which you exchanged with your Coimbatore notes, long ago’
————————
Ammalu, you resemble some other woman known to me, when I see your back, from a distance’
‘Could be my mom. You never dare to look at her face’
Blog
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Ramu and me
Ramu:
Mama, my elderly friend was happily humming to himself when I went to say hello to him on my way back from the murukkan kadai (pan shop )
Me:
May be enjoying the absence of his wife.
Ramu:
No, enjoying the absence of your posts in the FB.
Me: oh!
Ramu:
Mama, my desk-top had a stroke and am not able to copy and paste with my iPad.
Me:
How did you pass your matriculation without knowing copying ?
Ramu:
Who said I cleared my Matriculation exam?
Me:
Then how did you work and earn?
Ramu:
Who said I have worked and earned?
Me:
If you have not studied, earned and married, how did you become such a stupid ?.
Ramu got up from his seat and exited,
Yelling,
“It is better to tolerate what you write than what you utter. Let me buy a new laptop and read the rubbish you write.” -
Let the Spring come to your life and stay ever
U
Next to grave yard, hospital, specially cancer hospital is the gloomiest place in the world. It is a dry land of all negative thoughts. Mostly old, disabled, deteriorated mentally and physically people come there. Some of them see rays of hope in the wilderness. Many see nothing, only a huge vacuum. Some, who have been specially told to wind up their show are alarmed initially but slowly settle to the naked truth that man is mortal and he is one among them. He is not there in this hospital, in his home, in this word, the next year, the next month or even the very next week! Unbelievable, but true! He, as a father, as a husband, as a son, as a master, as a friend – all those merits and qualifications are gone, as he, himself is not there!
His identity as a living being is just to be wiped off with the speed of the hand movement of a boy who clears the image he has drawn on the sand bed!
Amongst such a gloomy men and women, I see the medical doctors and paramedics here, fully trained to infuse enthusiasm, fresh energy if not hope into the mind of the patients. They are always seen in a pleasant mood, going and meeting the people in their seats smilingly, hugging them, joking with them, patting them and helping to get up from their bed or seat or to board the car. The doctors, encourage the patients to ask questions and answer them unambiguously. Awesome is the attitude of the staff here.
Three fourth of my Radiation treatment is over now and I’m left with only 11 more daily sessions. Hopefully that too will be over in another two weeks and then the follow up remains.
The effect of the Harmone injection will be there for another four months in my body during which the tiredness and other side reactions will continue.
We neglect our body as there are more important things to be attended to! We neglect our wife, as there are more important things to be attended to. We neglect our food, we neglect our sleep, we neglect every thing and finally find one fine morning that we have become a dry leaf ready to fall down from the tree and vanish.
And remember, I didn’t neglect my body. I have been living a quality life as a child, as an adult, as an old man. Still, I landed here. Fortunately only here. Had my inner damage had been a few inches above, as my Urologist said, I won’t be writing this. Swamy Saranam!
The Spring has come to America. Let Spring come to you all, wherever you are and stay ever.
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The last shot
Glad to inform my friends that the first chapter of my treatment was over today, with the last dose of the Harmone injection. Originally, six monthly doses were prescribed, now reduced to four. So much so good.
What the nurse pushed into my system will play havoc for a few days, I know from experience. She too knows that from books but she smiled intentionally while unintentionally, I looked into her eyes. As a duty- bound para medico, her concentration was on my navel area around which she would select a holy dot to push in the powerful medicine.
‘Do you know the importance of my ‘thoppul’ or naabhi ?’ I wanted to ask her. Were a male nurse, I would have asked, but not to a female. My time is bad. Why invite problems?
For the nurse, male or female, It is only a scar on my abdomen, called ‘umbilicus’. There are many scars on the body and this is one among those!
No, lady with a syringe needle in hand, it is not just a scar. It is a perpetual monument to remind my relationship with my mother! It is the holy spot which connected me with her, through the umbilical! She nourished me through the cord which was sticking to my navel, which you now call a ‘scar’! Had I the wisdom which I have now when I was born, I would have preserved a piece of the long chord and worshipped. But another lady of your clan, holding a pair of scissors in her hand, cut it off merciless.
I was about to get up from the exam. table and grab the hand of the nurse when appeared before my eyes the ever enchanting form of Anantha Padmanabha, reclining on a multi hooded serpent, a long lotus stem projecting from his ‘naabhi ‘ at the top of which was a blooming lotus on which was seated Brahma with four heads turning and looking at all the four sides waiting for the signal from the boss at the deep bottom to start creation.
‘Anantha Padmanabham aasrayae’ I wanted to sing.
No chance, no words were coming out. I wanted to tell the nurse at least, ‘my naval is my center of gravity. What an amazing brain it was to suspend me to my mother’s womb through a chord, from the exact center of my body? Praise to Him!
‘Yesunathar Paadinaal avar enna paaduvar?’
No luck. No words were coming out of my mouth.
I was not moving out of the table too.
Time was running out. Other patients were awaiting some on wheel chair, some slanting on the arm or shoulder of the life partner and some simply looking at the roof wondering what past crime or habit, brought them there. The nurse looked at my pulse, which was precise to the text book reading .There was no need for Megh to see my pulse as her natural brain scanner which records every vibration in my internal cells and external skin told her that things were perfectly normal with me.
So, she whispered into my ears, Appa, ‘chakka pazham – Jack fruit’, which I like most, but for which, there is a ration card!
I got up from the table with a jerk, like the Kalpathy or Perinkulam chariot, given a push from the back by a huge pachyderm or like lazy Ammalu, wasting her time reading Ananda Vikatan and Kalki, when a picture of Ammini or Paru, Karthyayani or KalyAni , drops from the gaps of the pages.
When I walked towards the gate, through the long corridors, the nurse was watching from the back, till my shadow disappeared from her sight.
‘When is his next appointment?,’ she enquired the reception girl.
‘Over; no more shots for him’
She thanked Saint Patrick as it was his day yesterday.
Ps. Below is a drawing of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, to show the navel as the center in the circle – drawing from the Internet. The picture of the navel too from the Internet.
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Music flows on ; it never dies
In the predawn hours
When the world sleeps,
The sleep has pushed me aside
Like a baby who doesn’t like her toy
That doesn’t give her joy,
I think about you, who flew away
Leaving me alone ,
Like a baby who throws away her toy
That doesn’t give her joy.
I could read volumes in your silence,
As I do now from the winter sky
When moon shines, yes, that shine you had
In your face, in your life, a silent shine
Which did brighten all my dark, but now
You are gone leaving me in dark
Like a tree that has shed its bark,
But tree stays, trees are kind
But how do I call you unkind?
In vain, I look at the path I walked through,
Whether you are hiding somewhere in the bush
Like a deer deserted by its mother, by it’s herd.
Herd can desert a baby but how its mother?
Mother is kindness and Kindness was like a music in you,
That could be only felt, not seen,
When absorbed by my hard bones,
And so was love, like a music in you,
That could be only felt, not seen,
When absorbed by my inner cells.
I do hear that music now, when you are away.
Who said you are away, and how can you be away,
As you are always within me?
Then and now, like my bones and cells.
Oh, that is why I hear the music
Always, deep from my inside.
You turned me to music
Music only flows, never dies
Yes, music only flows, never dies!