Tailor made smiles: for sale

Time creeps on a feverish day. I got a very bad sore throat and body pain. My eyes are red and hands numb. Sensing the pain in each drop of saliva swallowed, I stay wondered on the revolving-retracting comfort of my office chair.

I'm to go home next week and what is awaiting me is the huge book of unwritten rules authored by the society since years.

Rule 1: Being an expatriate, you are supposed to bring loads of 'Tang' and 'Nido' which has been gloriously representing the pride of gulf since ages.

Rule 2: You are 26 and you are not supposed to love your old home anymore. The mango trees and sparrows that made your mornings, the lonely corridors floored as a chess board where you spent your afternoon gazing at the light beams that sieved in through open window pane, the rainwater rushing down from the terracota tiles paved through your roof,  all of them to be vanished into your memories. Only a two storeyed concrete cube can help you attract one more to the array of eminent engineeers and doctors that make your family.

Rule 3: You draw, you write, you click. But we just smirk.

Rule 4: Make money and you will respected. Make more money to gain more respect. Pleasure, satisfaction, passion, what is that ?

Rule 5: You are supposed to be fair and to gain weight. You are to impress the girls with your looks.

And there goes it unending. I see the lazy, cowardous letters hanging in bold, 'Priorities change', the very justification that goes in handy when you fear losing your face.

Hiding my fears with a weird smile, I hope an unexpected forking of road somewhere ahead guiding me to the wilderness. 

Stories of Life

This space had been inactive since long. All my efforts had being redirected in doing a series of photo-stories on life at paradoxical situations. It has been months of hurdles and distractions before I could strand them in a single thread.

Click the link to view the page - ZOE

I request each one of you to visit the page and give your valuable critics.

rambling by the narrow bridge

shrieks and cries from distance..mild. The yellowish fluttery light at the corner is another home..the street dramas play drums and harmonium in moonlight. Yellow n red flowers shed from the huge tree, the lonely cart below and the restless oxen.


The numbers on the pale wooden board..the red old telephone and the tring trings. The balloon bird who did somersaulting on a festival day. preserved glass pieces on the cement floor which made my mornings. The red barrels and the side-less truck on a rainy day.


The old cupboard and the sour grapes. The wooden cabin and heaped grains.

Memories between those parallels

Remembrance of Great Indian Train Journeys;

It was an art, the art of slipping in the General Compartment of crowded Malabar Express. The art of sleeping over the luggage rack. At nowhere else we used ceiling fans as shoe racks.

Its all art. Art of seat reservation in day trains; you need to carry a hand kerchief  for such emergency situations. The art of borrowing the co-seater's newspaper. The art of resting legs on opposite seats. Even the art of venting off at the shaky restrooms.The art of moving in and out of the Mumbai suburban. 

Indian Railway offered the signatured delicacies and the  watery coffees.Had sipped in more than a hundred of them. Pazhamporees of Kozhikode, Meduvadas of Chennai, Ankurs(grapes) of Ahmedabad, Idli nastha at Bandra, Appam-mutta curry of Shornur,  Onion Oothappas of Andra(on fresh round green leaves), Vada Pav of Madgao, Masaladosas of Uduppi, Lassis of Gandhidham. Memories down the broad guage.

Had a few acquaintances through my journeys; the middle aged man who talked about his son's jeans which has never been washed. The students who closely listened to the technical aspects of the train. The Penthecost sister who read my mumbai diaries with a smile. The boy who boasted of charging mobiles from the mango leaf. The women who sold jasmine and malli inside the chennai suburbans. The man who carried his brother's dead body.The Hijadas of Mumbai who made their living from trains. The women of Kutch who enquired about my dreams and lot more to the list.

I had collections of the thick hardboard tickets which no more exists. A few from the yellow coloured ones the Mumbai suburban. All safe in my wallet

The journey would continue. 

It is better to last it for many years;

and to anchor at the island when you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way

-Ithaca (Constantine Cavafy)

When my mind is longing for the next vacation, i stay pampering these frames. Snaps from an Ahmedabad-Chennai Trip three years before.