A Shade of Blue

College photos being unearthed and dried in the WhatsApp group. It's difficult not to get sucked into the mayhem of memories. One of the photos is of our graduation ceremony. All girls are wearing silk sarees, as was the rule, and I'm wearing Aayi's blue saree with the red border. It was a gift from her brother on the occasion of his son's Munji more than a decade earlier. And it was the only good saree Aayi had those days. So the red border had faded in places and it was hard to conceal. For some time inside the hostel I felt I was the poorest around. But the feeling wasn't novel so it didn't bother me for long. The only thing that mattered that day was that Mr. MF, our HoD, who had been a terror all along, was putting the graduation ring on my finger. I have the photo of a smiling MF. 

Anyway, less than a year later, I went all by myself to Mangalore and bought two sarees for my mother with my own money. One of them a silk saree, copper coloured. My mother wore it with a lot of fanfare for some years, before it became a habit for anybody and everybody to give her a silk saree as gift. 

A Slip of the Tongue

I think the word Haircut is wronly placed in the financial lexicon. Whatever it intends to convey needed a stronger word, actually. 

Checking a Box

I gave P a haircut! With scissors. My first. The front came out very neat but the back of his head looks like a model of step farming. Anyway, I got away with it and now the more I look at it, the prouder I feel about my creation. Like I am ready to give a haircut to the world. 

It's as if V suddenly stumbled on a box of old memories. These days she starts the calls with, "Hey, do you remember... " and before we know it, both of us are laughing even before a sentence begins. Yesterday we were reminiscing about the times we were talking gibberish. We used to have a gibberish conversation! We agreed that if it was a little structured, we could have it on Duolingo. 

What would we be laughing about ten years down the line? 

Lying in Wait

I've never felt frustrated about the idiom "Guduguva moda suriyuvudilla"(Thundering clouds seldom rain) before. I want rain! 

A Tall Order

I've had enough of people sighting Himalayas from anywhere and everywhere in this Corona season. Now I want to see Suratkal beach from Bangalore. That's it. 

The New Normal

In Bangalore, migrants are blamed for a host of problems like lack of civic sense, population, changing demographics, lowering the standards of living, increasing crime rates etc. Now that many have gone home and there is no picture of their return plans, I wonder if we'll begin wooing them officially. Small shops around are feeling their absence already. 

I must clarify here that I'm using the term migrant somewhat freely here to mean the North and East Indian labourers. Because to be precise, I'm a migrant myself and so are thousands more, who have stayed put in Bangalore during this crisis, who've not had to worry about livelihood even a day in the last two months. There are also migrant labourers from other parts of Karnataka. But yet, I find that in everyone's mind there is a clear distinction.