End of the year resolution

I wrapped up this year’s OBOC with Suad Amiry’s “Sharon and My Mother-In-Law: Ramallah Diaries” as the book from Palestine. I had originally thought I would read one of Raja Shehadeh’s works for Palestine, but was thrilled to find this book which also helped me towards my goal of reading more woman writers this year. Also marked my 93^rd book for OBOC – had hoped to hit 100 this year, but oh well a couple of 700 pagers and writings from my other favorite writers came out to distract me this year, so I fell short of the 100. 

 Back to this book. No matter where you fall in the matter of Israel and Palestine, what your opinions on who is doing what to whom, this book is well worth your time. Yes, it distinctly represents the Palestinian voice, but that is a voice we don’t hear in the media/ public often.  

How does one carry on living amidst curfews, shortages and ridiculous bueraucracies? How does it feel to live your life knowing your fate is being determined not by you, but in distant places like Oslo, Washington by people who don’t have to stand in line for 3 hours to get a loaf of bread, or get an Israeli id for your dog so the dog can get vaccinated, or deal with having a wall suddenly come up on land you were growing olives on or having to prop up a 90 year old woman over a fence to get her out of a curfew zone? Suad’s recipe is a bit of insanity, mixed with unwavering stubborness and a generous helping of humor.

Of late I have found myself in some ridiculous situations (sometimes at work, on the road, dealing with contractors etc) when I caught myself laughing instead of getting bogged down. Although light years from living in Ramallah, I felt Suad’s style of writing and her view on life and that of average Palestinians has a lesson for me.

Switching gears I picked up “The Dubliners” by Joyce again, and found myself enjoying it more this time around. I have a general fascination for Ireland don’t know why (maybe it was mind boggling for an Indian to associate fair-skinned folks with victims of colonialism). I devour Irish movies or movies set in Ireland, love their folk music, and their writers. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, release of Mandela, I think the Good Friday Agreement ranks as one of the important events fueling optimism around the world for people of my generation. 

Anyway I’ve told myself I would visit Dublin only after I read and understand Ulysses so that might be many many years from now. Maybe my daughter would read it before I do! But “The Dubliners” on the other hand is a fascinating read coming from someone who is not a fan of short stories. I have seen Dublin in my mind’s eye thanks to Joyce’s evocative descriptions, and this re-reading has prompted me to ditch all my other efforts and attack Ulysses one more time like Mahmud of Ghazini who plundered India 17 times (only in my case, much more timidly and so far unsuccessfully over 17 years almost!). This time I am well armed with guides that claim to help me go through Ulysses with a cheat sheet and a compass. 

That’s my end of the year resolution!

Morbid Musings

Atul Gawande, Margaret Atwood, Kira Salak, PJ Harvey and Cillian Murphy pretty much made it a morbid November for me. Maybe it is the change in season bringing early darkness that draws me to such stuff; whatever the reason, the mind has been mooring in morbid lands at least on paper and on screen.

I read "Being Mortal" over the weekend. A fantastic piece of work by Dr.Atul Gawande, that is so very needed particularly in a time when we think we can and should fix everything! I recommend the book to everyone who is part of the sandwich generation like me - caring for young ones, while also caring for aging parents. I know that end of life decisions are not great conversation starters under any context, but if you've had to deal with anyone with terminal illness in your life, this is a book to read. Took my mind back to a decade when I had to make such decisions on behalf of my dad, and to some extent on behalf of a friend much younger than I. Dr.Gawande does not offer ready made prescriptive solutions, but by sharing some intimate experiences both as a surgeon and as a son he gives us great ideas on how to deal with the inevitable.

Atwood is one of my favorite writers period, so I picked up "Stone Mattress" her latest work - 9 short tales, that tackle everything from aging, imperfections, aggression. Typical of her works most stories have an undercurrent of dark humor. The title tale was my favorite and also had an ingenious murder woven into the plot. I wondered why she referred to these short works as tales instead of stories. Having read them I see they all had some unsettling elements, something macabre, almost ghostly that maybe they did share more things in common with folk/fairy tales.

I then read "Cruelest Journey" by Kira Salak as part of OBOC - Niger. Yes I cheated here, the Niger Kira was journeying on was the river not the country, and most of the action was in Mali. Still I had heard of her and had wanted to read one of her books, so chose it for Niger. A woman goes kayaking for 600 miles on the Niger all by herself, attempting to re-create Mungo Park's historical journey - she had me hooked! What an adventure, and she is a great writer too! I loved the book as she also quotes extensively from Mungo Park, and compares and contrasts her experience with her predecessor's and we find that not many things have changed in 200 years! Kudos to Kira and I hope to read more of her works in the future. Makes me want to pack my bags and start traveling again, although unlike Kira, I prefer hot showers, nice beds, and actual food as opposed to Snicker bars.

The soundtrack of this month has been all PJ Harvey all the time. Thanks to Cillian Murphy and the Peaky Blinders I've revisited PJ Harvey's tunes a lot this month. "When under the ether" especially is playing constantly in my mind and rounds out morbid November for me.

I plan to take a break from OBOC and catch up on some more Murakami and Louise Erdrich this holiday season. Also trying to wrap my head around "The Science of Interstellar" by Kip Thorne.

So much to read and so much to see and so little time....nope not being morbid, just behind at chores:)

OBOC - Netherlands and Nicaragua & Murakami's latest

Just when you think you've read a million books about the Second World War, you discover there is one more "must read" book that you somehow overlooked. "The Assault" by the Dutch author Harry Mulisch was one such book for me that I doubt if I would have picked up but for OBOC.

12 year old Anton's life is forever altered the night his family was executed by Nazis as a retaliation for the murder of one of their own by the resistance. Anton's family only mistake was geographical. The murder of the police officer happened in their street and the body was moved in front of their home by one of their neighbors. Following such a dramatic event, the rest of Anton's life seems almost uneventful. Adopted by his uncle and aunt, he graduates from college and has a career as an Anesthesiologist, falls in love, marries and has a child and is actually a good father, but as a reader you end up thinking this can't be real! There is a certain level of disengagement that Anton feels that you as the reader end up sensing that he has not yet completely put things behind him.  Sure enough, chance encounters with people from the past makes him confront the history, albeit reluctantly. During these episodes we come to learn about the incident, and what really happened and why. I found the book riveting with the drama coming not from action but from inaction. Fascinating read!

Onto Nicaragua. I chose "The Inhabited Woman" by Gioconda Belli. Really wanted to like this book. Loved the premise. Lavinia the heroine is from one of the upper class families of the fictional country of Faguas. She is fiercely independent, outspoken, smart and a strong feminist, but lives very removed from the struggles faced by the working classes of her country. How she transforms from her bourgeois background to an underground guerrilla taking up armed resistance forms the crux of the story. The story is told in alternate chapters with two points of view - one the life of Lavinia, the other the spirit of an Indian warrior woman who inhabits the orange tree in Lavina's backyard and infuses her spirit of freedom into Lavinia's mind and body.

I liked the premise of the story and although a fairly long book it was a reasonably quick read, but I just didn't connect with the voice of the story. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende and many other voices from Central and South America and their rich tradition of magical realism. In this novel it seemed a bit too contrived. Still worth reading as the political climate and its impact on everyday life was beautifully done.

Now onto a non-OBOC book. "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage" had to be the most anticipated book this year. Launch of a book by Murakami is probably the only event that comes close to the launch of an iThing by Apple - religious fervor, anxious anticipation, long queues. So when I made the reservation for the book in my local library I had no hope of reading it this year (and the fact that I reserved it in the library should tell you I am not one of the serious Murakami fans) Surprisingly I was able to get the book much earlier than anticipated, and I wrapped it up in 2 days partly because the book was short and hard to put down, and partly because I didn't want to deprive other serious Murakami fans. This book I would say is a good introduction to Murakami for anyone who is dreading reading anything he has written. This is an easy entry, and has enough poetry and enough humanity to keep you enticed, and enough ambiguity to make you ask "Huh? what just happened here?". I won't say more but I regret not paying more attention to the train station of Shinjuku when I was in Tokyo. Give it a shot if you've never read Murakami or an experienced reader.

OBOC - Zimabwe and Nepal + a couple more

Work related travel and waiting in the Jury lounge have fringe benefits that aid readers like me to quickly get through their reading pile. So here I go, two more countries done – Zimbabwe and Nepal. Picked “We need new names” by NoViolet Bulawayo for Zimbabwe and “Arresting God in Kathmandu” by Samrat Upadhyay for Nepal.

In “We need new names” NoViolet describes the slow decline of her country under Mugabe leading to emigration of many to neighboring countries and to the West. It traces the life of Darling, a  girl born in post-colonial Zimbabwe, who roams around the shanty town ironically called Paradise with her gang of friends, stealing guavas from rich neighborhoods and shoes from corpses. She is offered an escape to the west as her aunt lives in “Destroyedmichigan”, but she soon realizes despite life being much better than in Paradise, America was not really the Paradise she had imagined.As most immigrants Darling becomes acutely aware of her outsider status despite her efforts to fit in, and has mixed feelings about leaving Zimbabwe. NoViolet describes the feeling of belonging neither here nor there beautifully, and there were a few passages in the book that resonates with any immigrant even if you have not fled your mother country because of war or poverty. Overall a good book, although I had some minor issues with the writing style - seemed to be a bit contrived and focus is more on the style. Still an awesome debut!

"Arresting God in Kathmandu" on the other hand failed to arrest my attention. As the first novel written in English from Nepal, it received rave reviews, and I can see why - the stories are all about juxtaposing the modern with the traditional. I thought after my recent positive experiences with short stories, I will be more inclined to read short stories, but this one did not appeal to me much, and none of the stories stayed with me.

Besides OBOC have been reading a couple of other great books. "The Goldfinch" by Donna Pratt  was a fantastic read, and very hard to put down. At 700+ pages it is not a book for the faint-hearted, but well worth the effort. I was on a 5 hour flight after a really long day, and thought I will start the book and then get some shut eye. Instead i reached home wide eyed and wired up and stayed up for a couple more hours reading the book. My only gripe, the book could've used some editing - the last section in Amsterdam was too dragged out and went on and on like a stream of consciousness narrative (which are always hard for me to read).

Just wrapped up "The Plague of Doves" by Louise Erdrich who is fast becoming one of my favorite contemporary women writers. I finally understand what one means when they describe the writing is lyrical. Absolutely loved the book.

A big let down was "A visit from the goon squad" by Jennifer Egan. I really wanted to like this book. I like puzzles, warped timelines, twists and even enjoyed the chapter written in powerpoint. But I feel the book focused so much on form and style over plot and substance. I don't know why it received the Pulitzer, maybe for the innovative style? To me it is fundamental that fiction should have a plot. Gimmicks are secondary. That's why i loved "The Luminaries" - despite all the gimmicks, hidden tricks, the plot was strong and was a perfect combination of Literary + Genre fiction. "Goon squad" on the other hand was probably written for other writers and not for readers.

I have 4 more to read on my book pile and will write about those when I get done. Have been very busy with children's literature as this is the "Golu" season and i wanted to pick out books for all our young visitors. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping they would love my selections just as my own young one did.

Adventures in composting

Our family has been composting now for the past 6 years, and we are by no means veterans. So when a friend, who is a total pro at all things green, asked me to share my experiences with composting, my response was similar to the guy from the vintage Godrej shaving cream ad that most Indians my age know - “Who me?”. There she was with her Midas touch (yep all garbage changes to gold at her home) and her green fingers, and here I am a bungling novice at best at anything I do in the garden. So you wonder how I came around to writing this post.

Well for starters you never say no to Ms.Midas Touch who singlehandedly raises  our group’s karmic greenness points by example, and a bit of guilt :) Secondly there is a reason why books for dummies have a huge market – there are a lot more dummies at everything than there are experts.

So dummies at composting, this is a post dedicated to you, from one dummy to another. I know you’ve always wanted to do the right thing, but it has just been so hard. And let’s face it – the beginner’s composting workshop is not really for beginners, is it? When they start talking about brown Vs green, carbon Vs nitrogen, heat Vs moisture, you are kicking yourself for not having paid any attention to the physical sciences in high school, and just when you are ready to give up they hit you with biological forms that you’ve tried very hard all your life to steer away from - flies, ants, worms, rodents!

But do not despair, there is hope for all of us! I first approached composting pretty much the same way as I approached most things in life (marriage, programming, motherhood, driving, cooking, birding,...) – A combination of naivety and arrogance (by now you understand I am serious about the dummy part) – “How hard can this be?” And just like all those things I mentioned, I was quickly humbled, realized that this can be very hard, but can also be very rewarding if you decide to keep at it.

We were in a townhome back then with not much of a backyard, and our first"compost bin" was an old trash can with holes poked through; brown material was mainly dried eucalyptus leaves which generously covered our yard, and green material well all kitchen waste. We didn't cut up the kitchen waste, didn't realize that eucalyptus leaves were too oily to breakdown quickly, didn't keep turning the compost frequently - all rookie mistakes. Sure enough we were faced with flies, foul smell and filth that we had to quickly discard before our neighbors caught wind. This bad start kept us away from composting for quite sometime.

What made it more difficult to accept defeat was the fact that we clearly understood the problems of filling up our landfills with garbage that can be "easily" diverted, the need for organic replenishment of the soil, and the fact that having joined a CSA we were bringing home carrot tops, brussel sprout stalks, cauliflower fringes that despite our best intentions to eat everything from the box were ending up in trash more frequently than I would've liked. 

That's when I stumbled upon an electronic composter which claimed to have converted the art of composting into a science - repeatable, simple steps that any dummy can follow! So for our 10th wedding anniversary we bought ourselves an electronic composter (No, we are not very romantic people). Yes it was plugged in, yes we had to chop up the produce (which by now we had learned), yes we had to use saw dust pellets for the brown material, and no we couldn't do dairy/ meat (both were not consumed at our home anyway). But for the first time composting worked for us! For a small home here was a neat solution which diverted more than half of our weekly kitchen waste, produced good quality compost in 2 weeks (instant gratification, in compost years that is!). The family was happy - less trash meant fewer trips to throw the garbage, enough compost to feed our small kitchen garden, and very minimal power draw that the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks.

More importantly, the small electronic composter did a few intangible things for us

1) Boosted our confidence
2) Now that we saw how much trash we were able to divert we couldn't go back to not composting - very similar to any technology adoption. Once you have a 45mpg hybrid car very hard to choose anything less for your next car, once you have high speed data modems you will not go to dial-up - similarly once you cut down trash by half you don't go back to producing more trash, you only want to push the boundaries to see if you can divert trash even further
3) We had no qualms signing up to a CSA or buying whole watermelons

It's been 5 years and we are in a bigger home with a bigger yard and as a corollary generating more yard waste. So for our 15th wedding anniversary we went ahead and bought ourselves 2 giant tumbling composters (I was serious about the non-romantic part), neatly set up in our backyard right next to our much enlarged veggie raised bed. No instant gratification this time as it takes nearly 2 to 3 months to fill up our tumbler, and yes tumbling it when full requires the strength of an ox, and we are yet to see our first compost. But to quote Mrs.Thatcher "the lady's not for turning"... back, I mean. Composting has become just one other thing we do.

The other day when one of us "tumbled" the composter with the lid not locked (do you really need more evidence that "dummy" was not really self-deprecating humor on our side), we didn't fret one bit - we gathered the mush of material that fell to the ground with no hesitation and put it back in the composter without holding our noses, 'cos frankly the smell was not that of garbage but just earthy. No flies, no filth and no complaints from neighbors. We are still learning about our composter, what it does well and what it does not, or as our daughter likes to say "what it likes to eat and what it does not", but the pride we feel as a family when we set out our minimal trash for pick-up is priceless.
 

So here is my salute to all those wonderful folks and organizations who set us on this journey either directly or indirectly - AID, Inika, Solana Center, C.Srinivasan of Exnora Green Cross, and numerous friends, especially Ms.Midas and her Zero Waste household, whose steaming compost piles fueled our interest, and have kept the fires burning.

Summer Scorecard - Books, Birds, Art and a Loss

As summer comes to a rolling stop I was doing a mental stock take on how this summer fared -“Mixed” was my answer. Books, Birds and Art would’ve been the theme for this summer as we got a healthy dose of all three the past 3 months.

I will start with the books, where I continued with my year of reading women and also managed to sneak in a bit of OBOC. Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Munro’s collection of short stories have made me re-evaluate my feelings towards short stories. “Interpreter of Maladies” by the former and “Runaway” and “Too Much Happiness” by the latter were fantastic collections! I also couldn’t resist Zadie Smith’s “NW” after having read her “On Beauty”. It was gritty, showed me a different side of London and a different side of women that I didn’t know existed. Having skipped all of Harry Potter, I went straight to “Casual Vacancy” by J.K.Rowling. Very similar to NW but different geography – a very honest portrayal of provincial towns of England. Then I re-read “Wordy Shipmates” as we were heading to Boston for a short vacation – my first time in Boston in the summer. Walking along the Freedom Trail, Sarah Vowell’s seemingly irreverent take on the early New England settlers provided me a nice background commentary for the trail. Although not a diamond ring/jewelry person, I picked up “The Engagements” by J.Courtney Sullivan DESPITE it being recommended by People Magazine (not a magazine on my reading list) as I later found out. Totally enjoyed the 5 stories weaved into one book and am glad there was at least one character who shared my attitude towards diamonds in it. 6 women this summer – not bad you say, but here comes my crown jewel!

Eleanor Catton’s “The Luminaries” –  The two weeks I spent with this book I was completely lost to the outside world and my family. I caught myself thinking about the book in uncanny places and situations (including a few dull meetings or when on hold). 19^th century New Zealand, murder mystery, manipulation of time that would make Christopher Nolan proud, weaving in the Zodiac, language that mimicked the Victorian novels, hidden tricks and treats that makes a second reading even more rewarding – this is THE book I am recommending to every one. This was my pick for OBOC- New Zealand, and I haven’t been able to pick up another book since I wrapped this one up as I am still “marinating” in it. Eleanor Catton deserves the Booker and more!

I have with me “The plague of doves” by Louise Erdrich which I will pick up soon, and another novel for OBOC-Nepal as I don’t want to give up on OBOC. Also just started "A visit from the goon squad" by Jennifer Egan. So on the book front this summer scored a perfect 10! 

This was also a great summer of birds for us. We were part of the conservation effort for the California Least Tern, and my daughter and I spent many weekends “ternwatching”. I am happy to say that this year San Diego (and us) witnessed the birth of a 100 terns which have all successfully fledged and are now somewhere down in South America. The day the last chick flew away, I learned for the first time what it means to be an “empty nester”. It was a unique opportunity to observe an endangered species in such close quarters and observe their mating, nesting, feeding, predator chasing behaviors. We will look forward to doing this again next summer. We also spent a week in Oregon chasing bald eagles, and the summer in Boston was filled with Cardinals, Chickadees and Woodpeckers.

I also got my art fix more than satisfied this season. Starting from visits to our local Mingei International Museum to LACMA, MFA in Boston, and Worcester Art Museum we were treated to so much art especially the Impressionists, that even my husband can now name a few :)

 

All in all sounds like we had a pretty terrific summer. Doesn’t tally with the “mixed” review I gave it at the beginning.  It got a mixed score mainly because of two events –  the cancellation of our trip to India due to a summer flu that afflicted all of us and more importantly the loss of a cousin to cancer. 

Loss of any kind is hard enough, but this one was a bit too much even for a battle hardened family like ours which by now should have gotten used to losing many warriors to cancer. Srimathy was 51, full of life and warmth, faced anything that life threw at her with a resilient spirit, and always ready to try anything new. She was a large part of my life as we grew up together and was an older sister to my brother and I and although she was our mother's niece she took on the role of a  younger sister to our mother. She had an uncanny ability to fit into any environment, make herself at home and becoming indispensable. She did not have an easy life, starting with a debilitating eye condition from birth which forced her away from her parents on account of medical care, but that never stopped her from working hard, not once have we heard her whining about the cards she was dealt with - lessons from her life that I take away. I used to tell her that her life can be easily turned into a book or a tearjerker movie full of drama and she would just laugh away. I think of all the roles she took on she probably cherished being a teacher and later Director at a local school. As I stood in the MFA staring at Gaugin's masterpiece "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" I can say Srimathy was on my mind. She will be sorely missed!

 
 

So as I look back on this summer and am reminded about how fragile life can be, I am grateful for the small pleasures of everyday - be it a book, a work of art, or a bird that chose to halt briefly in my neck of the woods before continuing its long journey.

 

Happy 375th Madras!

My Facebook page has been flooded with news about Madras’ 375^th birthday. The city I proudly call my hometown has changed in countless ways in the 19 years since I left it to live in the West, but in many ways it still evokes the same nostalgia and warmth for me. I come from a family of Madras fanatics, for whom the passion for their city trumps religion or cricket. For them, the hot and humid weather which requires you to have a fan in the shower, the traffic (which is still the best among the major metros, as they kindly point out), the two-party politics, are all just minor glitches more than compensated for by the coffee, the food, the music, The Hindu, the people and the culture that is Madras. When Madras makes the list for anything – quality of life, place to visit, I can be assured my family will make sure I hear about it from them! All this talk about Madras’ place in India, its historical importance made me look back on how the city has shaped me, and in many ways still does. 

The city fed my ever growing hunger for books, music and movies, like no other place I knew.  “The Hindu” remains the only physical newspaper that I have ever read till date. Even when I traveled within India I would seek out the newspaper although I felt that their regional editions were sub par when compared to the Madras edition. My dad and an uncle got me hooked to The Hindu crossword when I entered 8th grade, and I kept at it everyday until my dad's passing so much so that when I recently turned to the online version of The Guardian Quiptic I felt like I had reneged on some kind of a Holy Vow!

Although not widely known, Madras is a book lover's paradise. Long before the fancy malls and the

even fancier book stores established a presence in Madras, my dad roamed the streets of Moore Market looking for rare books. By the time I took to books, there were 3 institutions in whose musty ambiance I felt completely at home - Higginbothams (the oldest bookstore in India), the Connemara Public Library, and Raviraj lending library. The countless hours I spent in these during my formative years laid the foundation for a life long love affair with books. And then there was the annual Book Fair which was an event I lived for! To me the Book Fair was the most important event in the city's cultural calendar and ranked higher than the Music season in my personal calendar. The anxiety with which I used to make lists of the books I wanted to purchase at the fair, and the constant budgetary considerations, the thrill of finding a new stall with a completely unexpected surprise are feelings that I still remember. I don't think I missed a single Book Fair in the '80s and early '90s. 

Preceding the Book Fair season (Dec-Jan) is the annual Music Season (Nov-Dec), which is one of the highlights of the city. These days it looks like a proper commercial activity with round the clock TV coverage, sponsors, advertising and gossips. I don't recollect any of that when I lived in the city. Music season was primarily about the music - an opportunity to see world class artists in some of the best known venues in the city. Coming from a family of ardent Carnatic music enthusiasts, the music season was (and still is) much discussed at our home. Luckily for me, there were very few in the family who enjoyed the visual arts so they would gladly give up their season passes for a cousin and I to go see

Padma Subramaniam or Chitra Vishweshwaran perform. Recently when in Tokyo I had the wonderful opportunity to experience Kabuki. Although I don't speak a word of Japanese, I immensely enjoyed myself and was transported to Kalakshetra in Madras, the seat of arts in the city of arts.

The story of Madras is incomplete without mentioning Kollywood and cut-outs. The music of Kollywood provided the soundtrack for the lives of my generation. If Kollywood is an art form, cut-outs signified pop-art at its very best. Going down Mount Road, craning one's neck through the windows of Pallavan (another Madras fixture) to catch a glimpse of the towering super star Rajnikanth cut-out is akin to catching a glimpse of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, or Golden Marilyn @ MOMA. The city's cut-out artists are one of the most under-appreciated in my opinion. They would make Banksy proud! This was also the city that introduced me to movies from around the world - be it Hollywood, or French Noir.

I haven't even mentioned the diversity of people, the temples, the world famous Marina beach, the oldest engineering college in the country of which I am a proud alumni, the food, our unique dialect of Tamil, or the shopping but it already looks like I am preaching a

Winthropish sermon making out Madras as the "city on the hill". At this point let me acknowledge that not all is rosy - incessant pressure on water (something that has inculcated in me water-wise habits which are absolutely essential to survive in California these days), rising income inequalities, pressure on infrastructure are all experienced by this city like many other megacities around the globe.  The city has also seen its share of environmental tragedies - the Tsunami of 2004 hit the city hard, some political unrest (much smaller compared to other Metros of India).

Despite these issues, the city is still the gateway to the south, a treasure trove of art and culture and one of the fastest growing cities of the world. Maybe I am just living in a time-warp, maybe it is just pure nostalgia which I am told often hits people my age, maybe a Birthday is just meant to evoke happy memories - whatever it maybe, I can't deny that the city has a very special place in my heart.

Thank you Madras, and a very Happy Birthday!