Friday, December 20, 2019

At my parents' place.

The day had started at 4 AM, when Lekha's cellphone's alarm had gone off. We went through our chores and try as much as we could, it was a half past 6 when we had hit the road. There were many buses ahead of our car and therefore, could follow those speeds and hence, reached the Paliyekkara toll earlier than usual.

The FASTag stuck on my car's windshield was called to perform and it did so with clockwork precision. The queue of vehicles, however, was long because there were many FASTag attachments that had misbehaved, a few of the motorists were furious that they'd to pay from their pockets and sorting out rising tempers took a long time resulting in the lengthening of the queue!

Called up Abu and thanked him for the installation of a glitch-free FASTag and wasn't he thrilled?

Shared a 'combo' - the plate consisted of a masala dosa, an idli, a medu vada, upma and a sweet pongal - with Lekha and a single plate was more than adequate for the two of us. Felt light, too, as we left the Ananda Bhavan!

The bottlenecks of Idappalli, Palarivattom, Vyttila and Kundannoor were thankfully, less in density in traffic. So, Kochi was passed without having to wait and the time was a trifle past 10. The sky was overcast at most of the places and my cousin, from Thiruvananthapuram, reported heavy rain there during the period.

Our lunch was at the Shilpa Residency which was again a light vegetarian meal on a 'thaali'. half an hour later, we were at Lekha's elder sister's house near the Ganapathi kshetram. We collected the ingredients for our dinner and left for Raj Nivas by about 1500 hrs. Enroute, I'd met our dish TV guy and ordered the recharge of the system....we wanted the television 'live' for the evening and through our stay of ten days.

We reached the house by a quarter to 4 to a light drizzle and the distance that I'd clocked was 260 kms.

The caretaker got us our evening cup of tea, on the dot at 1600 hrs. Unnichettan and Subhash were our first guests in the evening and it was nice to catch up with them from where we'd left last.

It was nice to be back at my parents' place and I'd a fairly long monologue with my parents, outlining
as to what we were gonna do over the next 10 days. A few call ons that were a must and also to catch up with the activities of the JSS, Kollam and meet up with the staff and the trainees in various disciplines.

The highlight of the evening was when a carol singing group had come by, seeing the house active and they sang a nice hymn that I am fond of. Bade them bye after Lekha had ensured that each of them partook a piece of cake from her. Hope to see many more of them over the coming days!



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                                     A SHORT STORY

A donkey was tied to a tree. A demon came and untied it. The donkey ran into the fields and was destroying the crop. The farmer's wife saw this and shot the donkey dead.

The donkey's owner was upset so he shot the farmer's wife. The farmer came back to see his wife dead, he went and shot the donkey's owner. The wife of the owner of the donkey asked her sons to go and burn the house of the farmer.

The boys went late evening and carried out their mother's orders happily, assuming that the farmer too would have been burnt with the house. Sadly for them it wasn't that, so the farmer came back and shot the wife and the two sons of the owner of the donkey.

Remorseful, the farmer asked the demon why did all this have to happen?
The demon said, "I did nothing, I only released the donkey, but, all of you reacted, overacted and released the inner devil".

Did you get it?

The devil doesn't do anything but wake you up by triggering the ego in you that turns into evil intent and goes harming others.

So the next time before replying, responding, reporting, rebuking or avenging a revenge, stop and think. Be careful. Many a time what the devil does is that it just releases the donkey in us.


Tailpiece.

And boy, weren't we dog tired at the end of it all!?


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