Monday, July 16, 2018

Another wet day.

It was pouring as the day began. The weatherman has now said that the deluge will continue till the 19th because of a cyclonic depression over the Bay of Bengal. And one thought that the heavy rains were from the monsoon clouds hovering over the west coast! Not that it - the origin, that is - makes any difference when it pours.

Kerala has taken a battering from this year's monsoon. The movement of trains have come to a grinding halt, the Ernakulam Junction railway station - to cite an example - has become a huge puddle with the tracks totally submerged. People living in shanties have been hit hard and there seems to be no let up on their miseries. The roads have, again, got submerged and the potholes remain unseen, making the motorist's life unsafe!

I'd gone to town as there was work to be done in the bank. A sum of two and a half grand had to be transferred into the caretaker's account as our contribution to the recital of the Ramayana at our family temple - though it has long since been handed over to the devaswom board, the proprietorial attitude of mine has not even suffered a dent - on the 18th, the second day of the Malayalam month, Karkkidakam. I was also trying to activate my new platinum ATM card and I must say that these cards, invariably, know how to puncture your ego.

To generate the PIN, one's supposed to insert the card into the ATM and follow certain procedures of punching in one's account number followed by the cellphone number. The PIN was supposed to have been transmitted into my cellphone. When I'd done it for the first time, the day before yesterday - actually Sai, an employee of the bank had punched in the necessary details - my cellphone didn't react at all and today, when it was attempted the second time, I wasn't carrying the instrument on person! It, indeed, was a 'Comedy of Errors!'

On return, I found that my cellphone had got the PIN which I'd changed and given my own PIN, when I'd gone out in the evening to the nearby bakery to buy a packet of rusks! Meanwhile it continued to pour!!

Today's the 32nd day of the month of Midhunam on the Malayalam calendar. Our copy of the Ramayana was taken out and Lekha has begun reciting the epic from this evening, as per traditions. She'll now, go through the entire epic in the course of this month by reading it twice daily.


Tailpiece.

There's a Pappaya tree in the neighbouring Ikka's compound and the bunch of fruits hang - tantalisingly, within the reach of anyone standing on our balcony. In fact, Subin, who'd come by in the morning to plug the leak in the overhead filter had mentioned about it and I told him that it was for them to pluck it and have it or hand it over to their neighbour if they didn't require it. On scrutiny, it was found that it was already delayed because the beautiful fruit had a hole made by the hungry birds; but there's another one, adjacent to it, that's ripe and fit for eating. But, then!  

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