Mental Excursions

The memory still h aunts !  The second tower of the World Trade Centre bursts into flames after being hit by a  hijacked airplane, September 11, 2001 Image: REUTERS/ Sara K Schwittek In a cheerful frame of mind, I sat down to share with you that I’d be travelling, so would not be able to post anything for the next two Saturdays. To confirm, I checked the calendar and, the realization slowly dawned on me. My heart sank. The two-decade old painful image of my toddler son crying hysterically rose in my eyes, as it does this time every year. I had entered into the house after my usual afternoon shift one night, rattled and exhausted with the earth-shaking news of the day, when he rushed to me. Top left : The remaining tower of WTC, Tower 2, dissolves in a cloud of dust and debris about a half hour after the first twin tower collapsed, September 11, 2001. REUTERS/Ray Stubblebine  Top right : A lone police officer sits away from where family members of the victims were gat...

No water, no life. No blue, no green  Mentally prepared for the Chennai weather, I stepped on the soil of the city. ‘Hot, hotter and hottest’ is how everyone expresses it. Yet, I was in for a pleasant surprise. It was cool, no obviously not as cool as it in the hills, but bearable and one could sit under a fan and not sweat or curse. I lived in Chennai for only a year and a half. What to talk of reading or writing, I cannot even pretend to understand Tamil. It is Japanese and Chinese to me. I do not know the city, I cannot handle either the climate or the food for long, yet the city has a certain pull. It gives one a sense of freedom. And it is only in Chennai that you can see a woman dressed in a sari in traditional vibrant colours, her hair decorated with a gajra (a string of flowers) and driving an auto-rickshaw. The business I had gone for, over, Mani and I went to InKo Centre in the evening for a treat to our senses. A month-long art exhibition Chennai- Waterless , Water...