Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Trepidation remains.....

We'd gotten off to a pleasant Janamashtami. The Ramanujans - my classmate and his wife, Prema - had altered their programme due to some last minute hitch and will now be dropping by tomorrow, at teatime.

My classmate and friend, Ajith, from his ashram at the Himalayan foothills had transferred money into my account, a few days back, to gift the eight volumes of the 'Mahabhagavatham', written by Shri Gopalan Nair, to my mom on the occasion of Lord Krishna's birthday. I'd bought the neat, yet bulky package and lugged it from the Devaswom Book Stall at the eastern entrance of the temple to our place in an auto rickshaw. Reaching the place through the huge crowd, waiting to watch the colourful procession on this auspicious day, was a difficult maneuver indeed. Mom was thrilled to see the gift though she said that her faculty of concentration precludes her from reading large volumes of material at this juncture! We'd a chat with Ajith, too!!

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There was another myth that I'd to sort out and it's regarding the 'dry cleaners'. Except for the ones in the metropolitan cities - and that, too, a few - most do normal washing of the clothes and claim to have carried out a 'dry wash', charging exorbitant rates! In a one-horse town like Guruvayur, the cynic in me, has veered around to this opinion after first hand experience. There used to be a place where we used to give our clothes regularly over the last few years - though the cleanliness achieved was acceptable, there used to be regular occasions of misplaced clothes! More importantly, post wash, the clothes did not have the aroma of having been cleaned by petroleum products which actually should, if they've been genuinely dry cleaned.

So, this morning, I'd given our clothes to a women's organisation for the needful. The only thing that struck me was that the young lady at the counter made a mention of the clothes and the number of pieces, along with my cell number, on her register but did not give any token of having received them from me! A strange system and when I queried her, she smiled and said that that was the way it worked and asked me to collect the clothes, a week from now!!

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The evening walk was, as usual, uneventful. After supper, when it was time to hit the sack, mom showed a reluctance to climb up the stairs to get to her bedroom. So, the plan was changed and her bed was readied in the bedroom below. But while guiding her to the bed, she complained that the way I was holding her was causing pain and began to weep. That baffled me, because I never intended to hurt her.......but! Hope it's not the Parkinson's syndrome that's causing this unexpected behaviour!!



Tailpiece.

Earlier in the day, I'd spoken to Mathew Abraham, the neuro physician - her doctor, at Kochi - who was returning after a short stay with his daughter at Bangalore. He has asked me to have three tests to be carried out on mom's blood..........accordingly, the neighbourly hospital's path lab team has been asked to fetch up at 7, tomorrow morning!!      



      

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