i survived a heart attack on October 15 reaching Ananthapuri Hospital within half an hour of the start of an unusual burning chest pain and Dr. Bahuleyan and his team doing angioplasty on me to open a block in a major artery.

in fact, i had seen it coming a long a way off--had known for quite some time something was really the matter with me. now i am back home. have to take complete rest for one month, after which there will be a review. lots of restrictions on food, talking etc. have stopped smoking... will not smoke again.

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geostationary orbit

is there then a condition
when one is in a kind of geostationary orbit?

spreadeagled,
floating with no gravity,
moving stationary
in relation to the rotation of the earth,
seeing everything,
seeing...

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vijayadasami

my four-and-a-half-year old granddaughter neha initiated me into the world of letters for the year today, the vijayadasami day.
she has learned the malayalam alphebet sufficiently well to take my finger over the shape of the letters hari sree and so on without mistake.
it should have been the other way around. i was supposed to do the initiation on the auspicious day on her. but she likes turning everything into a game and reversed the role between us.

what she likes most about grandpa is he is game for anything.

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spaces in one's home

there are spaces in one's home one has never been aware of totally.

i mean i built my house my mind brick over brick caressing each corner of each room watching the track of the sun over the roof listening to the wind from season to season blowing in and out of the windows the rain and the spray the sun at sunrise and the sun at sunset the birds their timings the moonlit nights the neighbours their private worlds and overall, a house one thought one knew from all sides and angles, in a quiet part of the city.

i mean yet i find all of a sudden there are spaces in my home my mind is only beginning to touch.

i am on way to becoming the master chef at home and i now know which tin contains tea leaves and in which tin or tray pepper, onion, potato, green chilly, red chilly, masala powder and where we keep the pot to boil rice and how to rotate the dishes for lunch from day to day according to the vegetables available.

i mean spaces i had taken for granted and had left untouched i am beginning to touch. it had taken quite a bit from ambi all along for the house we built to be the home it is. washing, cleaning, taking clothes from the clothesline, putting away yesterday's newspapers and countless other things are involved.

her foot will be out of plaster-cast next tuesday.

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friends my age

friends my age are popping off one by one. last week he was udayan, a former national volleyball captain, and a week still before, thomas, a college mate and former colleague at workplace. udayan was four years younger to me and still an athlete at 54, when suddenly his heart stopped beating.

shamsuddeen, joy, jaiji, sashi, akkusootto... when i look at the list, i see it had actually begun when i was still a little kid. mohanraj was my classmate in upper primary school way back in 1960's when he died after being away from school for two days.

it had been happening all along--only, the frequency of it happening has gone up nowadays.

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i am 58. i did a story for my paper the other day about a new ageing survey done by the CDS here. according to the survey and census projections, Kerala will have as many people above the age of 60 as children below the age of 14 by the year 2024. Kerala's life expectancy is high and birthrate low and so the elderly are catching up with the children.

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yet, some of them who are yet to fall under the 'elderly' category are popping off, even those with very clean habits. bad habits are not that much of a factor unless one is too reckless. i had a relative who lived on to be 96 with nearly seven decades of hard drinking and smoking to his credit. he was healthy to the last day. he would have gone on to complete a century, had it not been for alzheimer's,

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talent

breaking legs can sometimes run in the family.
i had broken my right leg last year playing cricket with young boys forgetting my age and had to keep my foot in plaster-cast for three months (file picture by c. ratheeshkumar, senior news photographer).

and three weeks back ambi had a fall and broke her leg--the same right leg. her injury is less serious and she will be out of plaster-cast in another fortnight. for the first time in my life, i am attending to a bit of kitchen work and beginning to understand my hidden talents... they were all praise for the payasam i made on thiruvonam day. and my everyday sambar, aviyal and thoran, not to mention uppuma and idly, are getting better with each passing day. of course, i get minute-by-minute instructions from ambi, who will come and sit in the kitchen to supervise the cooking. but even she admits i have real talent. she says i have the potential to become a Nalan in the art of cooking.

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pulse

on my palms the kitten
purred,
snuggling...

pulse
upon beating pulse,
we purred.

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