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. Rakhi JayashankarApril 4, 2019 at 10:31 AM

    You have a beautiful house

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 4, 2019 at 11:15 AM

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

      Delete
  2. AmitApril 4, 2019 at 11:37 AM

    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
47 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

The Lights of December

The crib of a nearby parish [a few years back] December was the happiest month of my childhood. Christmas was the ostensible reason, though I wasn’t any more religious than the boys of my neighbourhood. Christmas brought an air of festivity to our home which was otherwise as gloomy as an orthodox Catholic household could be in the late 1960s. We lived in a village whose nights were lit up only by kerosene lamps, until electricity arrived in 1972 or so. Darkness suffused the agrarian landscapes for most part of the nights. Frogs would croak in the sprawling paddy fields and crickets would chirp rather eerily in the bushes outside the bedroom which was shared by us four brothers. Owls whistled occasionally, and screeched more frequently, in the darkness that spread endlessly. December lit up the darkness, though infinitesimally, with a star or two outside homes. December was the light of my childhood. Christmas was the happiest festival of the period. As soon as school closed for the...
14 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

A Government that Spies on Citizens

Illustration by Copilot Designer India has officially decided to keep an eagle eye on its citizens. Modi government has asked all smartphone manufacturers to preinstall a government app, Sanchar Saathi , on every phone in such a way that no citizen can ever uninstall it. The firms have been also ordered to install the app on existing phones too using software-update technology. The stated objective is to strengthen cybersecurity and protect users from fraud. The question is why any government should go out of its way to impose “security” on its citizens. For over a month now, I have been receiving a message every single day from the Government of India’s Telecom Department to install the app on my phone. I wanted to block the sender, but there is no such option. Even that message is an imposition. I don’t trust any government that imposes benefits on me. “ Beneficent beasts of prey ,” Robert Frost would call such governments. When Modi government imposes security on me, I ha...
8 comments
Read more