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...

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

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...

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...

Pineapple Cakes on a Plane

A few weeks ago there happened to be some empty seats on our company’s chartered flight and my boss and I were put on it as we had to travel to Delhi for a meeting. So we took off from Ludhiana. Yes, Ludhiana has a runway and I’ll just leave it at that. The aircraft...