An Ardent Admirer

I was never much of reader. When my sister used to sits hours together with a book I preferred playing outdoors. But I eventually took up reading.

One of my first books was Sawmi and Friends by R.K.Narayan. I bought it in a school book fair. I guess it was one of my first 'real' books and therefore enjoyed it tremendously. It had a sense of me in it and left me with an unforgettable after-effect. From then on came this urge to meet the man who could describe everyday life with humour. This can be considered the prologue to this story.

With a bit of research I realized I was too late to meet the man himself. The next opportunity will come again only in my after-life as he had passed away two years back. With this my search died down. My life moved on with many things happening, like me and my family migrating abroad. And then after a couple of years with too much time to spare during the summer break I decided to take up one of the many R.K.Narayan's books that I owned. The one I chose was a book with a series of short stories called A Town Called Malgudi edited by S.Krishnan. This reignited my flame for the author. With time to spare and not much to do, I began collecting newspaper articles, interviews and all other sources of information on my most admired writer. One newspaper article stated news of his granddaughter living in Chennai. Idea! I am going to meet his granddaughter "she who shared a blood relationship with R.K.Narayan". BEWARE of FANS!

With Google to solve everyone problem it was a trivial affair to find his granddaughter's address. Yet in the beginning the addresses were misleading. I obtained the address of his grandmother's house in Purasawalkam and read elsewhere that the house had been demolished. After searching in Chennai White Pages for his grandson-in-laws name I did not achieve success. This was a time when the vastness of India population size had truly struck me. I obtained about 20 pages of search results for the same name. In a city with a population of 4.34million atleast a few people are bound to have the same name. I realized this was not taking me anywhere and so began again. I needed a more concrete search word. I went back to my collection of news articles and read over them again to discover that his granddaughter was looking after Indian Thought Publications which was started by R.K.Narayan and that he often used to visit his granddaughter's house in T.Nagar Chennai. This was the lead I was searching for. Typing Indian Thought Publications with T.Nagar did the trick. I landed myself with an address. BEWARE of desperate FANS with too much time to spare!

Summer holiday INDIA. The holidays were climaxing and in a days time I will be leaving India.

So adamant to accomplish my motive I started preparing for the visit. As Indian tradition had taught me never visit anyone empty handed I went and bought sweets for my visit. I wore my best clothes, shoes and checked the RavuKalam. I set out on my journey in search of the house, thrilled.

Number 15...16...17...18. There it was. If Mr.Narayan was alive I just might be sharing the same ground as him. A sense of immense joy and pleasure over came me. BEWARE of FANGIRLS with extremely good imagination! I moved forward to ring the door-bell when I realized that I hadnt thought this through well. Who was I going to proclaim I was was? What was my purpose for visiting her when her grandfather was no more? What if they thought I was her grandfather's stalker? These questions remained unanswered and I didnt ring the door-bell.

The sweets that I had bought were placed in the post box along with a note that read "From an ardent admirer of your grandfather R.K.Narayan".



- With love
Maya

Perfect world

Written with a bit of inspiration from an TV advertisement

In a perfect world, the tastier the food the healthier it would be, but the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, every girl would look like Angelina Jolie and every boy would look like Brad Pitt, but sorry guys the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, writing your assignment would be as easy as doing your FB status update, but the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, everyone would give way to you while driving, but the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, every cold morning would be declared a public holiday, but the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, you would always be able to fit your favorite clothes, but the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to worry about ethical consent to clone your favorite people, but the world isn’t perfect.

In a perfect world, you would always have money in every pocket, but the world isn’t perfect.
In a perfect world, people around you will always make you laugh, 

 Maybe the world is perfect....


(pictures acquired from unknown source)