Light of the Lamp

Hi folks,                       As I write this piece, the whole of Kerala, my homeland, is mourning and coming with the terms of the tragic loss of the violinist and music composer, Balabhaskar. I had not known his existence and it was by accident (pun intended) that I noticed him. It is a pity that this gem of a violinist was not known outside Kerala and by the time we started to notice him, God snatched away from us.                                             From the day he and his family met with the fatal accident which was on the wee hours of September 25th, I kept track of him on whether he will recover from the injuries which led to the multiple organ failure along with head injuries. They had gone on the thanksgiving trip to temples in Thrissur for their 2-year-old daughter whom they had after 16 years of their...

Hi folks,                      I wanted to write few words on the rainbow ruling in India which was delivered by our Honourable Supreme Court last week. But even after one week, I find that I have not crossed more than a sentence due to lot of distractions around me. Though I was born in a conservative family, my views about many things in life have broadened over a period of time. Still, some part of me refuses to leave the conservationism. But there are certain issues on which I wish I could be strongly vocal about and write a lot about them which I am not able to do so out of hesitation and fear.                                                         This is one landmark judgement delivered by Chief Justice Dipak Misra which makes me happy. No, it is not going to affect my life in any way...

Hi all,                                      "Rain rain go away,                                      Come again after a long time,                                     We the people of little Kerala                                      Want to lead our normal lives !!!"                          Onam, the festival of Kerala is round the corner, and this is the first time in my entire life that I find no Keralaite including myself is in a mood to celebrate it. August, the month of Onam was a witness to the largest ever floods in Kerala since 1924...

Hi friends,                      July-August is the Aashadha month or Aadi month or Ramayana month in Hinduism and it is the official start of line of religious festivals upto Diwali. The weather will also be pleasant in most parts of the country before the onset of  North-East monsoons which will precede fall and winter! This year, many parts of Karnataka and all of Kerala were lucky to receive copious rainfall which to some extent helped in resolving the Cauvery issue between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.                                                               Talking about rains, we went for a monsoon trek last week with a group of enthusiastic runners from a marathon group. We are with this group, especially my husband who is a good runner and into running for a long...

Hi folks,                Forget about writing, even visiting my favourite domain everyday reduced to far and few in between. It being July, this is shamefully my third post for the year. As much as possible, I try to keep updated with the current events around me, but when it comes to putting my thoughts here, it is just not happening.                          Every once in four years (not leap years) is the time when the whole world is gripped with high fever around one ball!!!FIFA fever is reaching its final stages with just the semi-finals and finals remaining. I will miss the liveliness, action, the noise that surrounds the whole stadium filled with fans dressed in the jerseys of their respective teams. Mine is not high fever which means that I stay awake to watch the matches that take place close to midnight (IST). I will miss the time slot from 7:30 to 9:30 PM for some days ...

Hi friends,          If I am back soon after the last post, it is out of passion and eagerness that I am doing so. Hmmmm, not that soon. Again, travel and some other things kept me away from this space. The palpable excitement that I felt on January 31st this year may not be replicated anytime soon, as I considered fortunate enough not only to be alive, but also at the right place to comfortably view the once-in-a-lifetime celestial, astronomical event which was 'super blue blood moon' or as I coined it, the 'BLUNAR ECLIPSE'. Nature had cooked for us an astronomical treat in 'one pot'. The rare ingredients are the totally eclipsed moon, the super moon (moon closest to the earth), the blue moon as it was the 2nd full moon in the month, the pinkish red color which became blood red as the part of the shadow of our earth fell on it. The visual treat was served to us in a platter 'free of charge' to be directly viewed opposite to the complex where we live. ...

Hello folks,                        Happy New Year  and happy Sankranthi, Bhogi, Pongal, Bhigu or whatever to all of you. Hope all my friends had a lovely vacation spending the time whichever way you wanted. Getting back to the routine from the vacation does require an extra push and hope by now all of you are running a rat race seeing the next vacation in the horizon!                                        The year 2017 just whiffed past with the usual mix of memorable and forgettable, pleasant and unpleasant incidents. We are almost through half of January. Though there were innumerable incidents, calamities, political happenings last year, nothing much suddenly strikes my mind except the arrest of V. K Sashikala, the personal and political companion of the late chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Smt. J. Jayalalitha. Her dea...