wutheringheights

Rajan died yesterday. At 47, he was not healthy but never showed any visible symptom of illness or uneasiness when he came to see me during my holiday in Kerala last month. We spoke for a long time, in fact he was asking for a copy of the coverstory that I did for my paper eight months ago. There was a reason for it. The story was a satirical attack on politicians. I met a couple of genuine boozers from different parts of Kerala and asked them what they would expect from the politicians. Most of them replied quite boldly and of course they were right. Rajan spoke against his favourite party, Congress. He went on and on...from his childhood to being a Youth Congress member. He said despite his hardwork, he couldn't make anything out of politics. "I am still a poor man. I don't have money to take care of my mentally retarded son. After all I have to find a good guy for my daughter. I don't know when I will have money for all these things," he said. He was sad. Me to...

Watching Ritwik Ghatak continuously for two days brings back memories of film festivals at my home town, Thiruvananthapuram. Akira Kurosawa was our favourite those days. I never had the opportunity to watch Ghatak so close. Yesterday, i saw Subarna Rekha and Nagarik. Today, Komal Gandhar...more to come....

Yesterday, a neighbour couple adopted a 4-month-old baby girl from a reputed orphanage in Chennai. She was sleeping when we, me and my 5-year-old daughter Mihika, went to see her. Though I was happy seeing the child, I was a bit disturbed with questions related to the baby's birth....who's her mother, dad? How did she become an orphan? etc etc.. Whatever it be, i didn't want to spoil my mood, for this was the first time in my life i came so close to 'adoption'. I had studied the subject in my Law days, but never got so close to the process. A friend of mine once told me he wanted to adopt a boy since he has a daughter. He had a reason. It was in 2004. The tsunami had just hit the Indian shores, killing thousands of people. He wanted to adopt a child among those who had lost their parents in the disaster. The idea sounded nice to me and i encouraged him. A couple of months later, the friend told me that his wife was pregnant and he wanted to abort the idea of adoptin...