Saturday, November 27, 2010

These Mountains I Call Home


Home sweet home. As I get older I find cliches to be increasingly unerringly true. It was an indescribable feeling the night I woke up in my own bed after a couple of weeks away. Half asleep as I was, I had this unshakeable feeling that this was the loveliest, most wonderful bed I'd ever slept in, the most beautiful room I'd ever been in, the most blessed sleep I'd ever slept. Ever.

And it is always a beautiful time of year up here in these mountains. The rain and sticky heat is gone, and in its place comes stealing in what I call the sad soft feel of a year preparing to depart. A precious ambience I've come to associate over the years with oranges, dust, woollen clothes, cold nights, warming your back in the morning sun and ah, Christmas. And all the connotations of the year with its problems and difficulties doing a fast fade, and an anxious excitement for the new year to come in as if all the old year's problems will dissolve away with the last sunset. On the flip side, there's also the implicit realisation that all the year's good times and treasured memories will slide further away in time. Another year gone, another time was.

Time comes, time goes. Seasons change. People come and go. But these mountains are eternal.



Sunday, November 14, 2010

Ear we go again


Here's a new one - a micro blogpost via cellphone. Back at the CMCH Vellore. Had repair ear surgery on my right ear on Friday. The one I had in late April had been a great success but in mid September I blew it quite literally. I just woke up one morning with my ear off and when it remained stubbornly off the second day I did the unthinkable - pinched my nose and blew my ear open. And out.

My earlier visit here had been at the scorching height of a sizzling summer. This time our first day was rainlashed, grey and sunless. The handwork of cyclone Jal as it turned out. We had to dig out the woollies we'd packed for the home journey through the much cooler north east. Apart from that unexpected one day weather hitch, everything has been smooth-sailing. We even got in a day's sightseeing of the rather arid Vellore Fort which suprisingly holds not much else apart from a sumptuously elaborate 16th century Vijayanagar Hindu temple.

My surgery went well, thanks to the prayers of loved ones and wellwishers, and I'm looking forward to a gentle journey home, again by train to avoid air pressure damaging my new auditory structure. This time I'm planning to max out the home route by taking a two day rest and shop till we drop break in Cal. Whoopee de doo.

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