Before I left on the month long trip with Beks, I thought that I would blog on this trip as well, especially since I was just getting used to it after mobile blogging from Palampur and so on. Once we started however, it just felt silly to write the same thing that Beks would just have done. I might have had a different point of view, but the meat of the post would pretty much have been the same.
We started our trip from Chennai to Allahabad on like the dirtiest train that I have ever been on. And I have been on a lot of trains. The heat of the day had sort of subsided when we pulled into Vijayawada and I jumped out of the train to buy the famous Vijayawada station fruit juice, the high point of any train journey passing through here. Beks switched on her phone to just check in with the parents when her mom informed us that Mummy (my mother's mother) had passed away. It was such a shock because she was so completely fine when we had left home two days earlier. Sure she was almost 90 but she had sort of just gotten a new lease of life and for the two weeks before her death, she had decided to do more stuff and gone to Cochin to buy jewellery and come to our house for the first time after we moved in two years ago.
The train journey made it seem more unreal and I thought that once it stopped and we got off in Allahabad it would sink in. But I think it finally sunk in only in the sailing club after the memorial service for the 40th day, when Amma and her siblings sang "Painting the Clouds with sunshine", my favourite song out of all the songs which Mummy used to sing for us.
I was always closer to Mummy than to my dad's side of the family when I was growing up. Mummy was just very cool and used to play chess with us and make berry juice and take us to the beach. I loved the house in trivandrum as well. I really understood how cool Mummy was when she taught herself the computer and started playing online chess at 80. When I took my friends from college to Trivandrum, they were surprised to see a computer in a grandparents house and shocked to hear that Mummy sent emails out to her grandchildren. This was like 8 years ago when the internet was not as popular. Of course Mummy kept up with the times and graduated to skype and blogging. I got kicks from mentioning in passing conversation "my grandmother? oh she's 89, oh yeah and she keeps a blog". I'm sure not many people in my generation could say the same about their grandmoms.
Amma used to spend so much time there in the flat with Mummy that she'll have to figure out what to do with so much time she will suddenly have on her hands. I guess till now she was busy planning for the 40th day and all her siblings coming down that she really hadn't gotten much time to think about what to do. Hopefully she can take the time now to travel a bit and see more of her grandson. Now that my dad's got a new PDA cum phone with GPRS and 3G and whatnot, he shouldn't mind travelling either since he can check the closing of the dow from the train or the beach.
After getting back from the trip, I've just been lazing around, hoping that the rains will start early (hopefully like tomorrow) so that its cool enough to do something. I've been slacking on my marathon training and haven't been able to get back into any sort of routine. At least I started my resistance training a week ago so thats something. Till the 40th day, I had also kept my life on hold and never settled back in post Goa. I think when you wait a long time for something, no matter whether it finally turns out good or bad, the next day always feels terrible. We also had my cousin Mani staying with us right from Goa so I was really kinda depressed when he left the next morning. Its so strange how genes work. I hadn't met Mani in 10 years which means I met him last when he was 15. And I didn't really know him at the time either, but we got along so well that we could have been cousins who grew up spending our entire childhood with each other and I wouldn't have been more comfortable with him.
My mom's siblings all met up together after 28 years for the 40th day. I can't believe not seeing your siblings together for that long. Two or three months seems like such a long time. After the sailing club party for my mom's side of the family, we went for my dad's youngest brother's 40th birthday party which was also quite a sentimental affair and I felt for the first time, that shit! i'm going to miss all this when I leave for my MBA. Anyway, I feel I've been rambling on long enough to get over my some sort of guilt about not blogging. I think I associate it with getting back into some sort of routine. I should also get back to my jogging after I got together like 10 people in Notre Dame to run the marathon with me...
We started our trip from Chennai to Allahabad on like the dirtiest train that I have ever been on. And I have been on a lot of trains. The heat of the day had sort of subsided when we pulled into Vijayawada and I jumped out of the train to buy the famous Vijayawada station fruit juice, the high point of any train journey passing through here. Beks switched on her phone to just check in with the parents when her mom informed us that Mummy (my mother's mother) had passed away. It was such a shock because she was so completely fine when we had left home two days earlier. Sure she was almost 90 but she had sort of just gotten a new lease of life and for the two weeks before her death, she had decided to do more stuff and gone to Cochin to buy jewellery and come to our house for the first time after we moved in two years ago.
The train journey made it seem more unreal and I thought that once it stopped and we got off in Allahabad it would sink in. But I think it finally sunk in only in the sailing club after the memorial service for the 40th day, when Amma and her siblings sang "Painting the Clouds with sunshine", my favourite song out of all the songs which Mummy used to sing for us.
I was always closer to Mummy than to my dad's side of the family when I was growing up. Mummy was just very cool and used to play chess with us and make berry juice and take us to the beach. I loved the house in trivandrum as well. I really understood how cool Mummy was when she taught herself the computer and started playing online chess at 80. When I took my friends from college to Trivandrum, they were surprised to see a computer in a grandparents house and shocked to hear that Mummy sent emails out to her grandchildren. This was like 8 years ago when the internet was not as popular. Of course Mummy kept up with the times and graduated to skype and blogging. I got kicks from mentioning in passing conversation "my grandmother? oh she's 89, oh yeah and she keeps a blog". I'm sure not many people in my generation could say the same about their grandmoms.
Amma used to spend so much time there in the flat with Mummy that she'll have to figure out what to do with so much time she will suddenly have on her hands. I guess till now she was busy planning for the 40th day and all her siblings coming down that she really hadn't gotten much time to think about what to do. Hopefully she can take the time now to travel a bit and see more of her grandson. Now that my dad's got a new PDA cum phone with GPRS and 3G and whatnot, he shouldn't mind travelling either since he can check the closing of the dow from the train or the beach.
After getting back from the trip, I've just been lazing around, hoping that the rains will start early (hopefully like tomorrow) so that its cool enough to do something. I've been slacking on my marathon training and haven't been able to get back into any sort of routine. At least I started my resistance training a week ago so thats something. Till the 40th day, I had also kept my life on hold and never settled back in post Goa. I think when you wait a long time for something, no matter whether it finally turns out good or bad, the next day always feels terrible. We also had my cousin Mani staying with us right from Goa so I was really kinda depressed when he left the next morning. Its so strange how genes work. I hadn't met Mani in 10 years which means I met him last when he was 15. And I didn't really know him at the time either, but we got along so well that we could have been cousins who grew up spending our entire childhood with each other and I wouldn't have been more comfortable with him.
My mom's siblings all met up together after 28 years for the 40th day. I can't believe not seeing your siblings together for that long. Two or three months seems like such a long time. After the sailing club party for my mom's side of the family, we went for my dad's youngest brother's 40th birthday party which was also quite a sentimental affair and I felt for the first time, that shit! i'm going to miss all this when I leave for my MBA. Anyway, I feel I've been rambling on long enough to get over my some sort of guilt about not blogging. I think I associate it with getting back into some sort of routine. I should also get back to my jogging after I got together like 10 people in Notre Dame to run the marathon with me...
2 comments:
*Hugs*
i find it interesting to read ur blog..kinda feel peepin into someone elses diary..but strangely liking it,.
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