Wishlist From Kerala

I want you to bring back
kaapi in those small glasses you can
see his eyes through while you watch
him pour the tea and the milk in a type of
neat choreography over the metal
counter you lean on, and the

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കൊടികള്‍ക്ക് വേണ്ടി.

Flickr by mattlogelin

ഒന്ന്.

ശ്യാമ സുന്ദര കോടി കൊടികളുടെ നാട്.
പച്ചയില്‍ കുതിര്‍ത്ത- ദൈവം, മഞ്ഞയില്‍ കവിഞ്ഞ- പുനിതന്‍, കടും നീലയിലും കാവിയിലും സാരംഗവരകളിലും പണിത- സാമുഹ അവബോധം, ചോരചുവപ്പില്‍ – വിയര്‍പ്പ്, അരിവാള്‍, മറ്റേതോ നാട്ടില്‍ കുഴിച്ചു മൂടിയ ഒരപ്പൂപ്പന്‍ (മാര്‍ക്സ്).
അങ്ങനെ അങ്ങനെ എത്രയെത്ര നിറങ്ങള്‍.

To be most aware of the woman in me and the monster in you.

A Journey with No Destination

I quickly shut my eyes and took a deep breath. The open door of the bus allowed for two minutes of real fresh air as a woman slowly descended the fraying steps, her purple sari rising just enough to display her edemic ankles and puffy little feet. The conductor tugged on the rope and drew the door shut. I couldn’t help but lean forward and watch the woman waddle back into the darkness between the dusty-white buildings.

My sweaty hands were a constant irritation. One tightly clutched the iron bar above my head while the other was bound to a plastic shopping bag. I alternated hands, carefully wiping the sweat off onto my cream-colored churidar top. There were three layers of people squished behind me. I could smell the coconut oil from the hair of the lady closest to me. I shut my eyes and composed myself. I’ll make it through.

When the Heavens Distract..

..aren’t we, mere mortals, fully helpless?

How do I study when the World outside is performing Her masterpiece? The wind is singing her beautiful song, an old melody that I’ve learnt by heart; much more brilliant than Rahman and Dvořák (yes, they surely belong in the same sentence). The trees and the grasses perform a dance of their own. Opening the window next to this table I sit at is like encountering a whole another world.
Another World.
One in which there is a porch with three white chairs, made of a kind of straw.

As I sit in class…

Woah! Since when do we get laptops for labs? I stared in awe, and perhaps even drooled a bit, as our physics teacher began to pass out brand new and of course, the fully PERFECT Macbooks to everyone. Sanitize your hands, she was saying, you don’t want to get oil stains on these things. They’re worth a thousand dollars each… The instructions went on but by this point, everyone had already tuned out. After all, the point is- we get a new toy.. Twenty thousand dollars worth of equipments for each department? No wonder school taxes keep going up. And that too, just to save ourselves the two-second walk to the computer lab. Brilliant. Now we can do the calculations for the lab right here in the classroom (and then spend another few thousands on exercise machines.. right in the classroom). Superfluous, much? Of course, of course I’d love to peacefully protest and boycott this infringement of basic financial practicality. But.. seeing that everyone else was already playing around with the webcam and photobooth, just one question- should I make myself fisheyed, pop-arted or bulged? I love you, Steve Jobs (almost as much as Larry Page and Sergey Brin..almost)!