Coral jasmines, pavizhamalli….. Childhood: Nilambur, every monsoon, without fail… The dilapidated house knew life only when one of us came from our towns for the vacation to stay with our grandparents for a week or so. The rubber trees stood all around the house and made the day seem like twilights. The partition of the house had resulted in the construction of two wells, one unused and the other minimally used by the workers who would pull out water in aluminium pails to wash off fresh mud from their feet. Every evening the grown-ups would sit on the parapet skirting the outer wall of the old house and talk about cousins, their childhood and make me (then harldy 5 years old) imitate Narasimha Rao. In the midst of their conversations, I would walk away towards the well, and gather the tender flowers of the night jasmine tree. The pale flowers with the orange stalks lay scattered on the wet earth around the well, fragile yet still fresh. On the tree, buds would dangle at t...
the writing on the wall is always blurred.