Get well soon...

All those infected with Swine Flu.

Those who are not, please take care.

Portrait of Independence

I often wonder, whether Independence Day means the same to these kids, as it did to us when we were kids. I could not speak with the kids this time, as I do not know Kannada, but I will definitely ask the kids next time I meet them. I might just have to find a school where they interact in languages that I know.

Is there a better reason to come to India

When someone asks me, Why did I come to India,
I just say because 'I Love India'.

Simple three words. Means a lot to me.

Daadi

My grandma's diet comprises mostly of chapatis, due to her illness. She has limitations in the things she is allowed to eat.

However the cravings for the things she likes is always there. This time, I spent a lot of time with her and talking about such things. Things that she misses.

She mentioned how in her heydays she used to thrive on milk, milk products, a non vegetarian diet, fresh food from the fields and gardens and an avid sweets eater.

Of all the the things she misses eating the most is rice. She has been diabetic for over ten years now and is constantly on medicines.

Grandma

Most of my childhood was spent at my grandparents house, as my parents were in college. From the stories of my childhood that I hear, I constantly traveled between my maternal and paternal grandparents. I have been literally been brought up by them, till I understood things. And the year i started to do so, I went to a boarding school.

This is my father's mother, who does not want to leave the village home and come and settle with her sons in the town.

After I went to boarding school, my stay at home was very limited. I used to go there only during holidays, which was never much. So whenever I went home, my grandma used to come from the village to meet me. She never comes empty handed. It could be either fresh corn, sugarcane from the fields, or home made fish curry, or rotis made of rice flour, or guavas and papayas from the garden in the village home.

Now her visit to the town is very limited. But mine to the village is not. I make it a point to go to the village every time I go home.

And I do not go empty hand either.

I See Me

In the pillars that bear testimony to the time that has passed.
The steps that it has born, without a word being said.
Of the hopping from one pillar to the other,
The uncountable number of rounds and rounds around it.
I see me.

In the next generation kids, who stop by to see a stranger,
A stranger to his own home, his motherland,
Little knowing that where he stands,
Stood that very stranger who just appears larger.
And I see me.

In his eyes, in the shorts, in the slipper-less feet,
In the desires, the dreams and the ambitions.
In his inability to go to a school in the village,
And a life that resembles after effect of a carnage.
I see me.

-Kshitiz, August 2009.

Like and Miss

Someone asked me, Do I miss the USA?.
I said Yes I do.

Then he asked me, Do I want to go back?.
I said No I don't.

Then he asked , why do you miss it then?

I miss my Friends.
I miss the Ocean.
I miss the Roads.

One day perhaps I will be back.
Maybe as a tourist, or visiting some of those friends.