On Lake Ontario

Now Playing: Muse - Map of the Problematique

These pictures were taken during a sunset cruise on Lake Ontario.

Watching the Watchers

Now Playing: Alizee - Moi... Lolita

These pictures - of people watching/waiting for the sunset - were all taken from a terrace in the cliff-top town of Oia on Santorini.

Waiting...

Pretty Colours...

Really Pretty Now...

I sense a theme here...

The Grand Finale

The List

I’ve realized that unless I make a list of things that need to be blogged, and then cross them off as I post, I’ll never cover all the things I want to talk about – which means that I will go on mentally composing snatches of posts that are subsequently forgotten.

So, sans further ado, I give you, THE LIST (categorized, natch!) –

Affairs, Current:

• Lebanon
• Pakistan-Hair fiasco

Books:

• A Country of Strangers – Blacks and Whites in America: David K Shipler
• From Beirut to Jerusalem: Thomas Friedman
• Life isn’t all haa haa hee hee: Meera Syal

Life, Mine:

• Ongoing Occurrences
• Pet Peeves
• Trip to Greece

Movies, Hindi:

• Bluffmaster
• Fanaa
• Rang de Basanti

Movies, English:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Television:

• Battlestar Galactica
• Doctor Who
• House, MD
• Life on Mars
• Prison Break
• Veronica Mars

In Memoriam

Now Playing: Mozart – Benedictus

My paternal grandmother died last month, of complications resulting from angina. Amachi was 84, and had been mother to 12 children, and grandmother to 16. It was a quick death, in that she slipped into unconsciousness and thence into death – she would have hated a long, lingering illness, not least because it would have induced her to rely on someone else, something she would have hated fiercely.

Amachi was a remarkable woman – practical & tenacious to the point of stubbornness. She’d been ill on and off – diabetes, heart problems, glaucoma – as long as I can remember, and in early 1991 things had reached a head, with her doctor recommending a bypass operation. She refused, despite recommendations and exhortations from all sides. In particular, Velleappan, my uncle on my mother’s side, told her she should get it done. In a moment of high dudgeon, she replied that the doctor’s mother could get the operation, his dog could get the operation, but she would not. Ironically, Velleappan himself was dead within six months of a heart attack, while Amachi lived another fifteen years.

We were never able to communicate very well, as she only spoke Malayalam, and my Malayalam is terrible. In the two weeks we spent there every year, she did try and make sure I learnt something. I remember once responding to her calling me with “what?” in English, and she’d said, in Malayalam, “don’t say ‘what,’ say ‘endho’!” After that, I always did.

She loved watching Malayalam movies, with a passion. In the evening, after the work was done, she’d watch the evening movies on one of the Malayalam channels, and nothing could shift her from this routine. Before the movies started though, as dusk was drawing, every evening she’d cut up cucumbers and tomatoes to go into a salad, and we’d sit on the porch as she’d pass me bits to eat, and Safi, our dog, would nose around, hoping for some sort of treat before he’d give up and curl up next to us.

She was fiercely self-reliant, refusing invitations from her children to come live with them, preferring to remain in the house she and her husband had shared for more than fifty years. On the wall of their dining room was a picture my brother had drawn of them when he must have been seven or so – Chachen and Amachi in front of their house, with a well – and everytime we’d go, this would be pointed out to my brother, who was deeply embarrassed to have such a visible reminder of his lack of drawing skills displayed so.

Every year when we left, the ritual was the same – she’d take my hands in her cool, dry ones, and kiss me on the cheeks – and that is the last memory I have of her; a tiny bespectacled woman, hair in a bun, watching as we got into a Jeep to leave.

Amachi is survived by her husband, eight children and sixteen grandchildren.