menonsmusings20

Poor Pedestrians! Kerala during the rainy season is a tribute to nature. Even so, nature is not something that hangs out as poignant as a pedestrian’s predicament here. The economic boom comes at a cost. Indeed the cost the pedestrians pay for it is dear. They seem to have lost their right to walk! With the roads getting congested and pending litigations preventing widening of roads, the pedestrians’ track has become more redundant than ever. Wherever widening is done it is at the cost of foot path which disappear altogether. Also, perpetual coagulation on roads forces the motorists to use every lane to reach the destination a couple of minutes earlier. Lack of maintenance and unabated torrential rains have reduced the road space by half. This too puts a pressure on the pedestrian’s path. While these are unavoidable there are others that could be avoided. Automobile drivers use roads as some kind of racing track. Particularly the red town buses rocket down the lane or what is left of t

My Little Granny   She was small and myopic, but a great lady. In my family the women folk had guts of steel. And my granny had tons of it! She lost her husband early and her only son, our silver tongued ‘Humko Mama’, died of a horrible accident in the prime of his youth leaving behind a young widow and two bonny children!  Those did falter her steps, but she didn’t indulge in the misery, instead she immersed herself in work and more work. I remember her as a cherubic, buxom and witty lady always ready with a smile and chirpy laugh. She would tell us crazy stories and help us in our studies with equal passion. Mind you, she was a professor at the reputed Banares Hindu University! Yet she was so down to earth and such a jolly good person that all of us loved her. She was the one who named me ‘Samudra Guptan’ after an illustrious warrior king who invaded dozens of kingdoms and brought them under his rule.  Don’t be under the impression that I was a warrior of any sort. Far from it, I w

RAIN  It rains and rains and rains In the valleys and the plains  On the road it spills o’er drains  And snakes up the tarred lanes  It makes puddles of strong tea,  which grows into a big sea!  The frogs gather for the party  There they orgy in abandoned frenzy  Its little droplets march up to wind  Like smart regiments soldiers they sprint  In crazy gale they wrap nature in chintz  They tickle and play on the tamarinds  Cloudy by day and starless at night  The sky mourns draped in dark hide  Of her dear darling- the short-lived spring  All in its glory smiling and giving   Nonetheless, drizzles come tingling  Cloudbursts then come gushing  Sometimes hail go clamoring  Uninvited, the storms descend menacing  It sprouts the seeds and plants go all green  On farmers’ beaten face a smile is seen  Once or twice it turns a violent sheen  It stays for a while and leaves the scene  Sulking rain stays up as dark brooding clouds  When happy it just drizzles diamonds around  And jovial hails l

In the Twilight   She didn’t say a word!  But all of it he heard. In the dark their eyes flamed!  All alone in a crowd.  Her hair, he did brush with,  His hand all gnarled and veined;  She did heave a sigh of anguish,  As if she had lost the skill to wish.   They sat huddled in the twilight,  Huddled in the dusk of their life!  A pair of wizened mortals living,  The fleeting images of the past.  Gone were the days of their blossoming,  Gone were the excitements of living,  Gone was the confidence from winning, Their spirited wars and coveted glories.  They started young toiling with soil and tears, A hut they had and it grew with passing years.  Amina, Rafeeq and little Abu were born,  And came the harvests rich and strong.  Happy were those days of honest sweat,  In a Hindu neighborhood they got respect!  Nature’s bounty, with all they did share, and got cheerful welcome and lots of care.  The Khan siblings grew up frugal in comfort,  Yet they did have sumptuous meals in concert.  Raf

Fait Acompli   He was good looking, suave and bad and was the most important link in the Sri Lankan Felix syndicate, which ran several clean front organizations. But money came for the syndicate from several other unclean hidden agencies. One of them dealt with girl trade. JS was the lynch man for that operation which spread its tentacle to a good dozen countries. JS traveled extensively. His passport identified him as a Sri Lankan male, 28 years old 6 ft 2 inches tall and 60 kilos heavy. Neat! That part was true, but the rest of the information in his passports (he had several) were fictitious.  Angela was in late teens studying in Stella Maris, a reputed all women’s college in Chennai, when she met JS in a lending library. Then such libraries were popular. She fell flat for him. He was charming, talked with a sexy accent and had those dreamy blue eyes that ensnared girls in his trap with such succession that it even surprised him.  He was the bastard of a Swedish diplomat stationed i