Try to praise...

Adam Zagajewski, whom I have never heard of before I received this mail from the U.Chi poetics list seems to have written an amazing poem here...a grey poem with just a glimmer of light to be served with wild strawberries and wine on what would be an otherwise pointless Monday morning...here's to hearing him read this Wednesday!

Try To Praise The Mutilated World
- Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Today I found out the meaning of...

VADE MECUM
(c) Billy Collins

I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table to be perfectly level
when you cut me out of my lie
and paste me in that book you always carry.

LATE SHOW
(c) Billy Collins

No wonder everyone loved the private dick
whose only badge is a pack of Camels
and who never dies until the movie is over
and nobody can watch him writhe.

He charges a hundred a day plus expenses
and there would be plenty of time to relax
between cases.

The only suffering in the world would be
those blackjackings from the blind side
his nods to mortality,

but then he fades into a soft dissolve
and comes to on a sumptuous couch
a blonde in a nightgown rubbing his temples
and pouring brandies as she reconsiders
the double cross.

What better style of transport
than an open car squealing along
the Coast highway, one hand on the wheel
as you unravel the onion of the murder
so fast she can't even follow.

What better place to think things over
than a swivel chair in a darkened office,
the pulse of the neon hotel sign
illuminating your notorious face

your hat hanging on the rach where you
tossed it on the way in.

PS: Although I almost missed the generation of Mike Hammer,Carter and Travis McGee, I chanced upon about 30 of these novels in some corner at home. For a 14 year old, the charm of a divorced, chain smoking, rugged detective blustering his way through whistling bullets, skimpy blondes and the occassional weak plot was irresistable - later I realized that there have been more who succumbed.

This poem is a kind of a tribute to this genre...by gently smiling at all the impossibilities that the genre was composed of, Collins also seems to be tipping his hat to an old memory, a friend we left behind when we moved from the suburbs to downtown.

PPS: Especially loved the way he has etched...
"nods to mortality"
"reconsiders the doublecross"
"unraveled the onion of a murder so fast she cant even follow"

For those unfamiliar with these characters, a good starting point would be Calvin's Tracer Bullet ;-)

The Death of Allegory (c)

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.

Truth cantering on a powerful horse,
Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.
Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,
Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,

Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall,
Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm.
They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes.
Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator.

Valor lies in bed listening to the rain.
Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood,
and all their props are locked away in a warehouse,
hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles.

Even if you called them back, there are no places left
for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss.
The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums
and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair.

Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies
and next to it black binoculars and a money clip,
exactly the kind of thing we now prefer,
objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case,

themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow,
an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray.
As for the others, the great ideas on horseback
and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns,

it looks as though they have traveled down
that road you see on the final page of storybooks,
the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears
into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.

- Billy Collins

PS: Dont you know exactly what hes talking about when he says "The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair" ;-)

Visit by Azzarro

Today after church, went to the Medici bakery for spinach pie and soymilk…quite a far cry from my idli/ dosa/ appam/ upma kind of breakfast in India. A kid at the counter, about 18-20 years old, says “You smelling nice!”. I am like “Duh!?! - I am sorry; I didn’t get that”. And then the other counter girl also joins in and says “She said you are smelling nice today”…Embarrassment explodes! GT goes back to studying the menu seriously. After about 15 seconds, I gather the courage to say “Yeah, it’s a new deo”. At which both of them burst out laughing. Sheesh. General grin all the way back to the room.

People are strange when you're a stranger...

Some surprises at Chicago…

1. People are nice
A lot of people I met on the road were quite sweet-patiently explaining directions again and again, pointing out places and stopping at zebra crossings. On my 2nd day here, I asked directions from an old lady who was walking her dog. After pointing out the place, she said quote “You look like a decent young man” Unquote and invited me home for a cup of coffee. We chatted for almost an hour and half ; nice conversation spanning family, travel, art and relationships. She also gave me quite a few of her contacts and asked me to drop in once in a while if I wasn’t too busy…apparently I would enjoy meeting her husband who was a professor. Max, her dog, was kind of neutral initially, but totally surrendered to my secret dog weapon - a combo ear-throat and tummy rub, and rolled over! This experience apart, people at the campus are generally helpful while people in Chicago town are a lot more brusque…like say the diff between Mumbai and say, Sholapur in India. Unlike in India, there are a whole lot of oohs and aahs when people greet each other…on the road, you are often asked “Hey.howja doing?”; initially I was quite perplexed about how to handle this…stop and reply? Ignore and walk? Just nod? These days, I manage to nod and say “fine, nice day, ma friend”. But what my newly-American mind wants my Indian tongue cant deliver (yet!) and so I end up mumbling something which makes people even more confused…it would have been funny if it wasn’t me ;-(

2. Some aren’t
There seem to be very clear boundaries of safe and unsafe areas- between XX and YY roads, its safe- a few metres away it’s not …for eg, eager to check out a “Lagoon”, I crossed over from a safe street to an unsafe street…immediately a guy started following me at a distance of about 20 mtrs…I cross, he crosses, I stop, he stops…got a bit scared but he was smaller than me, so decided to make a run for the safer side again and this jerk followed me almost all the way into the next street too before he kind of slowed down. After 7pm, the “regulars” on the street are just a bit risky to deal with whereas the “travellers”-the executive returning home, the man walking a dog, the lady with her groceries seem more likely to be helpful.

3. Meeting up with Venus-after Alex, this is the 2nd blogger that I have actually met with. Venus lives just a bit away from Chicago and she pointed me in the general direction of Walmart and Kohls and by the time she caught up, I owed them almost a hundred dollars. She’s getting married soon and I am sure our hero knows he’s a lucky dude ;-) We had dinner at an Indian restaurant with a couple of her friends and laughed over jokes that only us, Indians could enjoy…after a week of strange accents and cheeses, it was nice to chat in Hindi/English over Rotis and Alu Gobi.

The first week at U.Chicago

Although my course starts off only by Sep 4th, I had to come in early because I had enrolled myself in a pre-MBA stats course - along with pre-MBA accounting (which I didn’t take), these give a brief intro to courses that might be otherwise a bit of a toughie… esp. for students who have been out of college for 5 years+.

After landing in town, I slept for something like 18 hours, which I think took care of the jet lag. I dropped into a small dept. store to pick up basic grub - fruits, bread, cheeses and milk. The sheer variety of brands and food was more than a bit confusing…take milk - you have regular milk, non fat milk, sweetened milk, fortified milk, fruit milk, organic milk and so on. Multiply so many categories with approx. 10 flavours and 15 brands and you might get an inkling of what I am talking about. Back home, it was either Aavin or Arokya in Madurai, Milma, PDDP or Penta in Cochin…life was simpler. The same applies for all FMCG categories-chocolates, cereals (it took me all of 20 minutes to buy 1 box-sheer fascination with what was on offer!), biscuits and everything else…if you love meat, this is THE place, dudes - with more than 2 complete aisles dedicated to the meats of every creature that can walk, fly or swim…and allows for breeding - every kind of meat with every kind of flavoring…free range chicken, free range beef, salami, polish sausages, steaks, minced meat…it would take me an hour to complete the list.

I can imagine the pop-eyed reactions of some CPI stalwarts from home were they to see this - “Rampant consumerism rules in American society!”. Which is true in its own way, though. Have been walking around the campus mostly and hopefully I am building sexy sexy calves. Time and the Chicago marathon should tell!

Ganja @ Chicago!

Yup…after $150 for extra baggage, lousy Jet Airways staff, a cracked suitcase, 3 stopovers, 20 hours and 40 minutes and 2 in-flight movies, I reached Chitown on the 16th of August. I moved into some temp accommodation initially after which I moved into a students hall on 1st Sep.

Tony, the guy I am renting the room from, was very helpful in helping me settle down- he’s all of 17 years old…staying away from his parents, working over the summer and saving money for his college education. Not bad at all. I didn’t want to unpack everything in this room, so haven’t started cooking-have been surviving on yoghurt, pita bread, cheese spreads, salads, apples, bananas, potato chips and “burritos”. Hopefully upmas, idlis and chutneys should kick in soon!

"My baby didn't make it"

Contrary to the title of my blog, sometimes Life just doesnt mean anything...take a look at this link about the V-Tech victims...

By the relatives...
"For us it was like an electric shock"
"So we drove down here praying for the best and just preparing ourselves for the worst and that's what we got, we got the worst"
Her father Grafton said: "My baby didn't make it."
"We tried everything to completely finance his studies in the United States," he said. "We only wanted him to succeed in his studies, but... he met a tragic fate."
"He was the simplest and nicest guy I ever knew. We would be studying for our exams and he would go buy a cake and make tea for us"

About the victims
Jamie Bishop: On his own website, Jamie said he had lived in Germany for four years and "spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer, and wooing a certain Fraulein". That "Fraulein" was his wife Stephanie Hofer, who also teaches at Virginia Tech.

Prof.Librescu: Internationally renowned for his research work, he has been hailed a hero for blocking a doorway to protect his students. His son Joe said he had received e-mails from several students who said he had saved their lives.

Prof.Granata:He was regarded as one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the US for his work on cerebral palsy. With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family, and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities

Jocelyne Nowak: In the 1990s, she lived in Truro, Nova Scotia, and was instrumental in creating the town's first French-speaking school.

Juan Ortiz: "He was an extraordinary son, what any father would have wanted"

Daniel O'Neil: Daniel O'Neil, 22, of Rhode Island, was a graduate student in engineering who also played guitar and wrote his own songs, which he posted on a website, www.residenthippy.com. "He was pretty much destined to be extremely successful".

Austin Cloyd: Austin Cloyd, from Blacksburg, Virginia, was a first year in international studies and French, and wanted to be a US ambassador. Her former pastor, Rev Terry Harter, said Austin was a "very delightful, intelligent, warm young lady" and an athlete who played basketball and volleyball in high school.

Waleed Mohammed Shaalan: He is said to have called home a day before the shooting to say he was returning to Egypt next month to take his wife and one-year-old son to the US. He is said to have been shot while trying to save another student.

At such times, one does not know what to feel...guilty relief at not knowing any of them personally, anger at American gun control laxity, utter sadness at lives snuffed out, empathy for an Indian mother....what does one feel? People who walked this earth a week ago like you and me, no longer do...so many precious lives, hopes, dreams wiped out in an instant of madness...Rest In Peace, y'all folks. And amidst sadness, hope, howoever frail, shall prevail.


PS - Thanks Iday for helping me stumble over the links...

SuMmEr - A study in light and black.

Summer brings limpid liquid memories...The Speshul drinks of Madurai:
1. Bovonto: For the unitiated, the taste of Bovonto (manufactured by "Kalimark",no less ;-) resembles at times cough syrup and at other times thick grape juice. But only the truest of tongues can detect the evolution of what was originally ginger ale. Bovonto is a dark, sweet fizzy drink manufactured in south Tamil Nadu by Kalimark. Remarkably, the brand is still strong in south TN despite heavy dumping and pumping of stocks by Pepsi/Coke etc. Bovonto,IMHO,anyday tastes better than Pepsi or Coke ...sigh, if only Kalimark had the millions to take on Shahrukh and Trisha! During my MBA, one of my fav dream projects was to craft a deadly marketing strategy for Bovonto that would see it reign the market share charts in South India...sadly, it remained a dream, as did the rebranding of the TVS Suzuki Fiero. When mixed with rum, such dark heaven swirled around in that glass that one could happily down 5-6 glasses without detecting anything amiss. Every Madurai visit sees me popping a couple of bottles of Bo-von-toh!
Last known rate: Rs.10 for 300 ml, Rs.20 for 500 ml (PS: I just love the fact that they price it at a premium to Pepsi!)

2. Fruit miksher: Yes, thats the way any self respecting shop of Madurai would spell it...this thick slushy drink filled with assorted fruits is available in the umpteen juice shops around the Meenakshi-amman temple in Madurai. With a scary orange colour that turns away most of the foreigners and "seths"(as Northies are called in Madurai), Fruit Miksher is savoured by the hundreds of Tamils who throng the busy lanes of Madurai, having come in from distant villages to shop for sarees and shirts. I have never bothered to ask what Fruit Mixsher is made of...after a long walk in the dry dusty streets of Madurai with Rs.10 in your pocket,a fruit mixsher is your best friend that lays to rest the pangs of your hunger, the piercing thirst
and the deadly heat that threatens to suck your soul away in Maduers.
Last known rate: Rs.4/ glass

3. Paneer soda: Like Bovonto, Paneer Soda is manufactured locally in Madurai by M/s Kalimark and M/s Mappilai Vinayagar. No relative to the cheesy paneer, this is a rose-water-flavoured-sweet-soda.After a long basketball game or a 17km bike ride to
college, a paneer soda and 2 paruppu vadas were all that one needed to get the swagger back into one's walk. Paneer soda was a bit more dignified than the "Goli" soda which involved drinking your soda through a chamber with a glass marble (serious,peoples!). Unfortunately apna MNCs are slowly strangling this drink to death...grab it while it lasts.
Last known rate: Rs.6 for 200 ml bottle

4. Jil Jil Jigar Thanda: Ah,that Rajnikant were born in Madurai, this is what his blessed mother would have weaned him on...what a name,huh...WHAT-A-NAME! A white mix of seaweed, milk and other never-to-be named ingredients, jil jil JIGAR THANDA was
usually available near the Tamukkam ground where the annual summer exhibition was held. This exhibition,was by and large the best possible entertainment for the peoples of Madurai and you could make out entire villages visiting this event over the weekend. Imagine a nosiy loudspeaker filled mela conducted in a ground with proper stalls and policemen at the entrance, that was the "chitrai porutkaatchi"-the annual summer exhibition @ Madurai. And jil jil jigar thanda did roaring business during these months, cooling down thousands of frayed tempers, tearful eyes and the occassional village belle, for whom the lads clamoured to buy this treasured liquid pleasure.
Last known rate: Rs.5/ small glass.

Apart from these super speshul drinks, summers brought other charms into our lives:

5. The Annual YMCA camp: This was the one fantastic thing that the Madurai YMCA organized every summer. The YMCA summer camps were toatal fun because my dad made sure some of my cousins were also enrolled into them. In the first camp, I played
football...14 fat,thin,lean,mean boys and a tiny tot of a skirted girl! We later came to know that this feisty character was the daughter of the proprietor of one of the biggest hotels in town, The Pandian Hotel (long buried into oblivion since). The
man was decent enough to sponsor sandwiches during those 15 days, so we always treated the girl with some respect. Camp was where I felt a seniors spike leave dark scars on my ankle, camp was where 10 of us fell in love with a 12 year old chess
player-Krithika, camp was where I started crying for no reason because Ashok, my best friend fell down...camp was where I learnt "Oh my darling Clementine" and "My bonnie lies over the ocean". Exhilarating fun was camp...thank god for Harris Manickam of the YMCA who almost flawlessly organized them, year after year.

6. Cousins: This was easily the best part about the summers. Whether cousins came over to our place or we went over to theirs, the kind of fun that one had during those days was mind-boggling for the sheer variety if nothing else. My cousins
taught me how to spin a top and break another's in "aakher", how to fly kites with powdered glass pasted on the strings,how to dig out scorpions, how to make a chameleon dance with snuff powder, how to smoke a cigarette, how to drive a cycle, how to swing on a gate with 3 other kids clinging on to it, how a turtle bites,how to carry a rabbit...my cousins were an absolutely smashing lot! We did not know nor did we care about the hajaar things that our fathers and mothers argued about...all we knew was that we had to come back for lunch and dinner. The rest of the day was spent in roaming the bylanes of Palayankottai, the slopes of the Nagamalai and the sodium vapour lit streets of Ellis Nagar. Now we are worlds apart and don't know what we have become, each a stranger in a strange world with only the past to weakly weave us together from time to marriage time.

7. I Know What You Did Last Summer: Summer was the title of one of my earliest poems durng a session at the British Council at Madras...a time when I looked at the world through what I imagined were the bloodied doors of perception. I specialized in what I called "poetrie noire" and wrote such bile-filled black stuff that an old lady once asked me if my soul was as dark as my poems...typical of that age, I said "Yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do and die" and turned away. Yeats in "The
Second Coming" wrote that "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"...that was me,then, intense blasphemic rage and rant, without a reason,with a rhyme. Since then, we've come a long way. Hopefully,GFM.

SETTING FIRE TO SUMMER
- Ganja Turtle
Summer was one of the nights
A drunken man raped a disabled kid
In the Metro
With 12 Mumbaikars watching
Proud race they be.

Summer was one of the days
Ryan O' Connor loved Gloria Axelrod
And won 3 bullets for his love.
The first 2 at the back of his knees
After one hour of
Bleeding,
Gasping,
Crawling,
Creeping,
The 3rd one to his head.
Catholics can't fall in love with Protestants.
Not in Ireland.
F#$%$ Jesus.

Summer was the twilight
When Sun burnt the air,
Water killed the fishes,
Mud dried into cracks,
And Space was filled with
A thousand screams
Begging respite.

Lets burn summer.

- Tagged by Lady Silverine...if only I could find one more to close the list, but then again thats the way life is ;-)

School Chalein Hum

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
- Miss flight from Cochin to Bangalore
- Miss connecting flight from Bangalore to Pune
- Fight with Jet Airways and try naatak...doesnt work! ;-(
- Shell out 40K for group tickets on Kingfisher.
- Sleepover at Bangalore guesthouse.
- Wake at 4.30am and reach the B'lore airport at 5.30am
- Chai at Cafe Coffee Day at 5.45 am
- Famous call from 00301 at 5.50 am
- Now famous dialogues at 5.55am
"I am at Bangalore because I came from Cochin and I am going to Pune"
" Thank you,sir" to Ms.Donna S
- Big grins ever since then...starting from 5.56 am.
- School chalein hum - Sep 2007!

PS: Thanks all...theres so much to say to so many people, but right now let me float around a bit...if I stretch, I can touch the ceiling,maybe! (Sheesh,what an admit does to some people!)

Such a lovely burden

Last night, I had dropped into Cochin's only English movie theatre to watch The Departed, an otherwise tightly spun movie spoilt by a Bollywoodesque ending. As all of us were crowding to buy burgers and fries, one of my colleagues said "Oh, poor thing!"; I turned around to see an old man, say 50 years, carrying, a young man...either severely handicapped or mentally retarded or both. He had pushed him on a wheel chair till the theatre's entrance, lifted the chair with a help of a few bystanders to the landing and from there carried this man, probably his son, up to the 1st floor and further on inside the theatre. After the movie, this old man, he came back...and without any ado lifted the guy again and carried him down...then he repeated the same act till the ground floor. Then he rolled down the wheelchair down to the rick stand, called one of the rickwallahs and lifted the guy again and gently carried him into the auto. As he was putting him into the auto, he did something that most fathers do when kids are trying to crawl under sofas or chairs-keep a palm on the edge so that the kids head doesn’t hit the sharp edge when he/she comes out or goes in...an exquisitely gentle haiku of a gesture...especially so for a 24 year old man being helped into an auto at midnight. Then the old man quickly folded the wheelchair, gave that "nice meeting you folks" smile to all around and got into the auto. Am not exactly too senti a guy, but my vision of Cochin's fishnet bridge may have been slightly blurred as I drove down.

Most people who have not had the chance to closely know someone either handicapped, retarded or bed-ridden would probably shudder at the life of such a person...especially as a son, daughter, brother or mother. But what they do not know is that such circumstances, however painful they continue to be, present infinite opportunities to witness unprecedented love or duty in probably the most selfless forms that one is likely to see. Instead of talking about the immediate family, let me tell you about a mentally retarded cousin that I knew and loved a lot...reputed surname and fancy name apart, she was always called "Kuttima" because she remained "kutti" all her life.

Kuttima was born about a year after me...she was a blue baby and was born with a hole in the heart. Some medical complication resulted in not enough blood reaching her brain or something like that and she became retarded. From an early age, Kuttima was the toast of the town. Every vacation when my cousins came over here or when we went over, Kuttima used to jump onto me the minute she saw me. Her two favourite demands were "5 stars" and "Double Deckers"(extinct brand) and in a very business like manner, after the first jump and hug, she would check out all our pockets to see if we had gotten anything. After this she would remove all the coins from our pockets ("For Safekeeping!", she would insist) and store them away in her stringed purse. By evening, we would have settled into our usual games of hide and seek and whatnot. Kuttima was always on standby mode, conscientously reporting each and every happening back to our fathers and mothers...about how Joe pushed his friend down the drain or Cruz threated to pull out her hair.

Since she was a retarded kid, she had to study at a local school attached to the church. She got till the 4th standard and stayed there. Everyday for something like 10 years, she went to the 4th standard...packing her bags, waving to us and starting off. Like every kid, she had her favourite teachers, "boyfs" who fought to sit next to her and the usual stories about school. Once back, she would teach us "A,B,C" and also make us spell the usual "CAT,MAT,HAT" stuff. Unlike her sister and brothers who grew up, played basketball and wrote the board exams, Kuttima was a permanent fixture at the primary school...she went on to become the class in charge for 5 consecutive years. On days when the regular teacher was absent, Madam took over and conducted the class with the 20 odd letters that she knew existed.

Among cousins, I think I was her favourite...not because of anything else, but mostly because I would fend off my brother who loved to tease her about her short hair, her "4th std" boyfs or something similar...when she came down to our home for vacation, she even managed to pick up a roly-poly 5 year old boy, Narasimhan ("Narsie") who followed her home from the park and joined us for lunch...much to the consternation of his panicked parents who spent some the entire evening searching for him.

It was lovely to see her entire family weaving their web of love around her condition... vacations would be planned around places she could climb or would involve a hefty porter who could carry her if she wasnt well. Extra sarees would be taken along for her to fold (fav hobby -"folding sarees again and again") and extra 5 stars taken to tide over any emergency. During such trips, she was allowed to become her favourite icon "Indira Gandhi"- she would tie up a saree, over whatever else she was wearing and would walk up and down in a very dignified manner...God forbid that she found a ruler, we would be forced to sit and recite "CAT,MAT,HAT" immediately!

Kuttima used to come down with fits and serious one at that...when she was about to get a fit, she would know...about 15 seconds in advance, she would start saying "I am scared, I am scared,I am scared"...so everyone would rush around to make sure that she was seated or laid down where she wouldnt be hurt...balms would be taken out in quickly to rub onto her palms and insole and a rosary would be pressed into her hand...she insisted on taking somebody's hand just before she went into a fit and would squeeze her eyes shut-tight and start sweating...after her fit was over, we would generally cradle her head and point out to people she had kicked or hit...especially my (then)kid brother who then suspected that this was her way of taking revenge! To show off her heart condition to other novices in the family, we would make her lie down on her back and keep a book on her chest...it would jump up and down @ 90/min...jump as in twitch an inch up and down...if u kept ur palm on her chest, you would have thought there was a small, fast engine inside. Later we learnt that because of the hole, her heart had to beat faster or something like that. We have won countless bets against other kids who didnt know about her heart rate...it was just a game, then.

As we grew up, Kuttima's condition became complicated...her fits became more often and she started getting headaches more often...her family also couldnt afford too much of treatment...even though a lot of relatives chipped in, considering her frail condition, the docs decided not to operate on her and put her on a steady diet of tablets. What’s more, somewhere along the way Kuttima physically became a woman...and it became a problem to keep sending her to the 4th standard...so she stayed at home and became the surrogate teacher for many a neighbourhood kid who dropped by for some sweets, "murukku" and a couple of rounds of "CAT,MAT,HAT".

Prayer time was all the more funny because Kuttima would peek around to check if everyones eyes were closed...if they weren't, she would complain. And she was the only one with a rock steady face as an aunt prayed for God to drive away my "pasi pisasu"(hunger devil) or a cousin requested the angels to make sure my brother didnt grow a tree from the grape seeds he'd swallowed. God was more a friend in need to someone like Kuttima and not a mighty being of the angel-filled heavens..."Dear Jesus, keep my fits away from me" was her daily prayer and we fervently prayed along with her. On many long nights, each of us would take a palm or a foot each and rub Tiger balm and keep her warm...she would get very scared at such times, unable to understand what why her body was doing this to her...but she always accepted this with the countenance of one oft acquainted to pain and would soon put this behind her and start laughing at Mr.Bean with my grandma. Between them, they downed hajaar cups of coffee secretly without the rest of the household ever coming to know about it. Only when the servant started complaining of empty cups, did we find out about "the coffee conspiracy".

Sometime during my MBA, Kuttima became quite sick and her condition worsened...I remember that I was in the middle of my bath at my hostel, when a friend shouted out that I had a call from my home...I said I would be out in a minute, but by then my mom had started crying and had kept down the phone. When I went out to an STD booth and called back, I was told that Kuttima had passed away...all of 20 years old, a child in a woman’s body, hopelessly retarded but thoroughly loved. Now you see her, now you don't...that’s the way it was...but for all her sicknesses, 90 beats heart and her consistent fits, she was such an angel of a cousin...such a lovely burden to love.

Next time you see someone like this, you shouldn't see it as waste of a beautiful mind, an innocent body or a scene to pity...such people are a testament of a family's love, the result of parents' conviction and firmly ensconced among such strong bonds that we will probably never come to know of.

God bless all the Kuttimas of the world.