Relationsips

Life may be viewed as a gift or a struggle. Truly speaking it has to be viewed only in terms of a series of relationships..We start with our relationship with our mother who had borne us for nine months and pampered us and looked after every need of ours. Fed, bathed,clothed and cared for in a manner only a mother can.
I remember seeing a picture of a very very old woman, shrunken, toothless and doddering. The caption it was that set me thinking. It said "Somebody's Darling Mother'. The negative reaction which the picture evoked initially, vanished and I saw in my mind's eye an adoring son who was borne, bathed. clothed and cared for by this mother of his. Every mother is a darling mother to her off-spring. There is a Tamil proverb which says that for the crow (said to be an ugly specimen among birds) her off-spring is a golden child.A poet had said God cannot be everywhere; so he created Mother-- what a fine expression. Next comes the father who moulds and shapes your mind with his own example and through precepts introduces one to GOD by telling stories and parables from Hindu mythology .. The benchmarks indicated by him gives a meaning and motive to our lives.
As we move along and grow, our ties with not only mother and father but with brothers, sisters, cousins, get stronger.We live, eat, laugh, struggle, and cry with them and the ties get greater permanence in our minds and hearts.. We then move on into the wide world and who stands foremost in our minds? Friends. Yes, friends, be it in schools or colleges or neighbourhoods or offices. Some of either sex are of course special and last a lifetime.
Then life throws you in the company of a woman whom you marry ..Love , whether before or after marriage, blossoms and takes concrete or rather 'flesh and blood' shape in the form of children..Then, grandchildren and so on. Relationships grow, ever-widening circle like the water in a pond into which a pebble is thrown.
And then the final journey from which no traveller returns.. Communion with one's God..Peace. Tranquility.That is life. Without all those relationships, what are we?

My Homestead

Veda Vilas!..The very name brings back memories...A land mark in Egmore, Madras
this house, where I spent the early part of my life, is no more. As the poet said
"Old order changeth, yielding place to new'". the house, rather my home, was reduced to a rubble and is expected to yield its place to a new four-storeyed building.

My house was laid out on a plot of over five grounds; the main building consisted of a lounge (Hall). of fifty by thirty feet dimension, behind which was another hall of more or less same dimensions. And, behind it was a verandah of about ten feet width.On one side of this main bulding was a suite of four inter connecting rooms where my father was having his law library , reference books etc., and a large desk with chairs forclients/visitors.
On the southern side were the living, washing, bathing and working areas. extending upto Samy Reddy St. On the first floor the lay out was similar but the front hall was only half the size , the rest being open to the sky. Again behind this was the tiled roof of the second hall.
What was it like to live in this ancient building?It is a chock-ful of memories.
I have , as a young boy sen my mother busy as a bustling mother-hen caring for a big family. It is now that I realise what a stupendous job she had done caring for a family of boys and girls, feeding and caring for them..bundling them off to school,,nursing their bruises.. aches and fevers..How much I had taken all this for granted! ifeel ashamed . Regrets ? I have many, the things I could havse and should have but never did for the parents .. How many times have I hugged her as a symbol of thanks ? None. How many times I have behaved caddishly without considering the mental agony I had caused. Too many , too many.