BYOB

Our love story is pretty simple. Sharan commented on my blog. I commented on his blog. We got married and stopped updating our blogs.  We were in very different places — physically and mentally — when we met. Sharan was in Delhi, emotionally well-settled, and ready to get married when he found a good match.  In...

The Ponmudi Trip

Part 1: Tea and Snakes The little hill station of Ponmudi is around 57 km from Trivandrum city, which means I've inevitably found myself running along its misty, grassy slopes on many a Christmas or Onam vacation as a kid and as an adult. I was seven when my parents took me there for the...

Conversations in the Car

When you belong to a family that keeps road-tripping together all the time (even if it is to the nearby Jockey store), some of the insightful conversations that bring us closer happen in the car. And sometimes, the silent breaks are just as unifying. The Naked Ape The other day, while navigating through Karamana, I...

How I Met Your Parents

അമ്മയുടെയും അച്ഛന്റെയും കഥ അവർ പഠിക്കുകയും ഗവേഷണം ചെയ്യുകയും പഠിപ്പിക്കുകയും ചെയ്ത ബോട്ടണി പോലെ തന്നെ നിത്യഹരിതമാണ്. കേരളാ യൂണിവേഴ്സിറ്റി ബോട്ടണി ഡിപാർട്ട്മെന്റ് വരാന്തയിൽ മസ്സിൽ പെരുക്കി നില്ക്കുന്ന അച്ഛനെ ആദ്യമായി കണ്ട്, 'ഇതിയാന്റെ കക്ഷത്തിൽ തേങ്ങയാണോ?', എന്ന് അമ്മ ആശ്ച്ചര്യപ്പെട്ടത്‌ മുതൽ, രണ്ടു മാസം തുടർന്ന കുത്തിവയ്പ് ചികിത്സയ്ക്ക് ശേഷം, 'അയ്യോ! എന്റെ ഒരു ബൈസെപ് കാണാൻ ഇല്ല!', എന്ന് അച്ഛൻ ആശ്ച്ചര്യപ്പെട്ടത്‌ വരെ, ഏകദേശം മുപ്പത്തിയഞ്ചു വർഷം അത് ഇങ്ങനെ പടർന്നു പന്തലിച്ചു കിടക്കുന്നു....

Window Creeps, John Pereira, and Gingi

I’ve always been the kind of creep who would stand silently and patiently outside your window, until you look up from the novel you’ve been reading, the dishes you’ve been doing or the horror movie you’ve been watching, so that I can stare blankly at you; an expression I practised and mastered on long evenings when...

Growing Up Yezdi: Memoir of a Petrol Tank Rider

Before assuming the duties of a perpetual pillion, I was a petrol tank rider. Seated like a little frog on our Yezdi’s petrol tank, I would watch the world zoom by unhurriedly (because potholes and proverbial crossing fauna of the avian variety). At petrol pumps I would get giddy sniffing the sweet vapours rising from...

Coconut Crunch

The other day I was discussing with Amma and Achan, who had come over to take care of a bedridden me, the weapons that were used over the years for warfare in our home. The list that I could recollect involved a saucepan and a curtain rod. They refused to accept it and attributed it to the...

Mount Saleem Sinai

Despite the large dimensions of my nose, I am not good at smelling anything. Except jackfruit. I, like the rest of tropical humanity, can tell when there is a jackfruit anywhere within a 5 kilometer radius. And once I smell it, I book my tickets and leave the country. Okay, no. But in 2012 I...

Leaf Thief

I was into eating leaves as a kid. Not leafy vegetables. Mostly tulasi chedi and begonia. I would visit my relatives and eat their begonias. This was also the time I started digging a tunnel to China in my yard and burning cotton with a magnifying lens. No, I did not burn ants. But these...

Strange Talk

Over the years many of us have been caught having conversations with random objects and living entities, real or imaginary and not necessarily human. My neighbours were chilling out on their porch when they saw my father walking by. It looked like he was in deep conversation with someone and because of the wall in between...