You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 17th, 2007.
No, I’m not cussing, though I guess I should be.
I’ve been skeletally jinxed the last two months – I don’t mean Mr. Bones from the nearest med school anatomy lab is haunting me. It’s just that I’ve had a couple of bad falls – in the first week of March I bounced down a flight of stairs on my rear (only now do I realize having a well-padded backside has its advantages). It took three weeks for the pain in my tailbone to subside, only to be followed by a misstep – it was bad enough that my right foot twisted under me, but then I went and compounded the injury by losing my balance and sitting on it. A couple of hours later it felt like someone had upended a pail of live coals on my foot. X-rays belied my fears – no fracture but moderately severe ligamentous injury. I’ve been vegetating at home – off from work a week now… time enough to reminisce?
© Sosha Srinivasan
Conceived in Kashmir in the far north, born in Kerala in the deep south, raised in Bombay (Mumbai) on the west coast and further west (Dar). Will I give up the ghost if, by some unfortunate chance, I happen to visit Calcutta (Kolkata) in the east? I haven’t visited that fair city yet… but I now live in Chennai, so I guess I’m inching closer…? Sounds like something out of a corny fantasy novel, don’t it?
Dad was a short-service commissioned officer with the Indian Navy “on loan” to the Army in Ladakh, supervising the convoys between Leh (definitely) and Pahalgam (I think). Mom joined him at Srinagar and thus began the story of my life.
Dad left the armed forces in 1966 to do an MBA at IIM-Ahmedabad. After a brief spell in N. Delhi, we settled in Bombay for the next decade, first living in Santa Cruz, then Bandra, at Nirmala Colony at the foot of Mount Mary and finally at Khushnuma Apartments on Cumballa Hill (off Peddar Road).
All in all an irregular Bharat darshan… I’ve heard of Americans making it a point to visit, in their lifetimes, every one of the 50 states in their country. I wonder how many Indians are trying to do the same in their motherland – 28 states and 7 union territories. I’ve passed on this idea to my son and he’s pretty enthusiastic since he has hardly traveled around except to Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
© Sosha Srinivasan
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