Skip to main content

Sun and Shades

There is a saying in Malayalam, പാപി ചെല്ലുന്നിടം പാതാളം, which means 'Where the sinner is, there the hell is.' That is quite right because you create the ambient around you with your character. If you are a miserable creature, you'll create misery around you. If you are a happy person, happiness is what will happen around you. There are exceptions, of course. Saints, for example, create misery wherever they are just because they believe saintliness is all about misery for oneself and others. 

I decided to settle down in my native village in Kerala since I have reached the autumn of my life. There's something gratifying about dying in the place you were born at. But that's not the only reason I chose Kerala for the evening of my life. The perennial greenery and the moderate temperature throughout the year and the blissful monsoon were all added fun. 

But Kerala has changed since my arrival. Am I such a sinner? Well, I am not half as narcissistic as our Prime Minister to have such delusions of grandeur. The people of Kerala have been raping their lands, mountains and water bodies for decades and now they are paying the price for it. 

One such price that I've been paying is the intense morning sun right on the face of my house since the house is facing east. Now that the summer vacation has begun I'm at home and couldn't escape the sun by going away to school in the morning. So I got a sunshade fixed yesterday. Here it is:



In the north of my house is a my beloved cashew tree which provides much cooler sunshade. The summer has not affected it at all. On the contrary, it keeps growing inch by inch every day covering more and more areas of my front yard. People have to bow their heads now to walk in that part of the yard. I won't cut off those boughs. Let us bow our heads to the virgin green of the yearning nature. 



I planted two mango trees right in front of my house two years ago. They have reached a height of about 4 metres. That's good growth in just over two years. When they grow further they will be the best sunshades in front of my house. 



xZx

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. The surrounding is quite green. I'm trying to make it greener.

      Delete
  2. I am waiting for invitation! But then it will not be so peaceful and quiet any more :-)

    -- Amit

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r