Ayyanar

It was my maternal grandmother’s first death anniversary, me and my cousins travelled to offer our prayers to the clan deity Lord Shiva. A forty five minute ride from Sivakasi, Tamilnadu in an auto rickshaw took us to the Koodamadayar Temple in Puthupatti on the banks of River Arjun. Kooda meaning basket and adayar meaning closed in Tamil. Legend states a villager stumbled on to this place and blood started oozing from the land. He covered the place with his basket and left for the day. Later people lifted the…

Grandma

                        ………. A journey through five decades of togetherness till deathbed                 My earliest memories of my grandmother are when I was in my second grade and I would eagerly wait to meet her during my summer vacation. I remember how I and my mother would board the train from Pune to Chennai (then Madras) alight at the Madras Central station and rush to Madras Egmore for the connecting train…