Music and Memory Wormholes

Over the past few years, my fondness for the absence of music grew quite deeper than I anticipated. I do listen to most things that fall behind, between, and beyond Bohemian Rhapsody and My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard. But it's mostly a background process even when there is nothing running in the foreground. Somehow,...

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...

GOaT

I like goats. I like clicking pictures. I like clicking pictures of goats. Okay. A tale of 2 goats on the ghats of Ganges

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...

If You’re Appi and You Know It…

There comes a time in almost every Trivandrum kid’s childhood when we do a double take mentally, physically and spiritually as we get adorably addressed as ‘Appi’ for the very first time in our lives. For most of us it will be our first tryst with the concept of duality and the sheer force with...

28

My 28 year old self wants to thwack my 26 year old self for not paying attention when her wiser friends were exchanging bhindi recipes because when you’re far away from home, there are only so many days you can survive by sniffing scraped-clean beef pickle jars or on Kurkure Corn Puffs. On other days,...

Hospitals, Fossils and Meals

Amma is quite the social beetle. Her students love her. Local cats come to visit her with their kittens or cronies when she returns home after long trips. Random babies at railway stations leap at her with their outstretched flabby baby arms. The other day we found an extra Parippu Vada in a takeaway parcel...

Charming India

Sometimes when you move around a bit, you see these intriguing sights and objects that broaden your worldly knowledge and make you grow as a person. Spotted outside the Jaisalmer Fort, this magic bed linen is crafted by the artisans of Rajasthan and marketed by someone who has scaled Maslow's pyramid in one go. It comes with prescribed spouse-quantity and...

Do They Know It’s Sting?

I saw a lot of pain on social media over the impromptu Chris Martin gig. People who don’t stay in Delhi anymore are regretting moving out of the city. People who have been to Delhi once in their life are asking themselves why they didn’t plan the visit so that it would’ve magically aligned with...

It’s Better Not to Spoil than to Put on the Hashtag of Spoiler Alert

A probably rainy morning in June, twelve years ago; I had successfully stayed away from watching television for two days and kept the newspaper at a distance. Achan confirmed my worst fears as I was about to leave for school. Malayala Manorama had pulled a Malayala Manorama. They had, for real, gone ahead and revealed...