remember..not to forget

in my ex-home or rather old home in Chennai, where i used to stay in 2002 and later for the few months between the job and the MBA, there was this Baptist church on one side, the left hand side when i sat on the parapet on top of the terrace. and there was a temple on the right hand side. there was a government primary school somewhere in between. straight ahead in the darkness (oh, the picture in my mind is of me sitting on the parapet, as the darkness gathers, setting gloom, crows flying home and..) the super tall street flood light stood over the heavy clamouring traffic of the highway i could see in the distance.
the whole picture was nearly trance like. the school students would always around this time go to the temple and sing, clapping their hands to the tune of some religious song. the tempo of the music shifting with the rhythm of clapping.i can
almost still hear it in my head. any minute i hear this steady clapping i am transported there. about a hour preceeding this, if you were to be there, you would have heard the Baptist preacher presiding over his congregation. talking in a frenzy i can only imagine, talking tongues, and then there would be this line of people, his
congregation, slowly walk home past our gates, and you would know it was nearly time for the children to start singing. these crows that fly home, start their daily trips at about five, and they keep coming, hundred to thousands of them, in a never ending flight of black. if you were to spread out and look at the sky, as they flew over you, you would never forget that feeling either. you would remember they always fly east to west, from the settting sun into the darkness, they keep coming, till the last few, perhaps the lazy or the overworked fly back in haste. you could always tell towards the end that they were in haste. they would not sit on the antennae on the terrance and craw at me, they would not fly down and try to scare me. at seven i guess even crow spouces wanted their partners back where home was, some tree in some corner maybe there was a she or he crow waiting, may be even a few young ones. you would have heard the urgency in their cries, as the sun was just setting, if you were there.
now, when the crows were still flying and the preacher was talking tongues, if you looked to the left, you would see the home of the menons. they lived one house after my building. there was grandma menon, then uncle and aunty menon. son menon was in
the US and send lots of money home, though he never came home, even on the day grandma menon fell ill in december, was it 2001? yeah, at about five i would always see the menons working on their garden, and then twelth standard students would come
on cycles to attend Mrs.Menons french class. as the count of cycles reached 6 to 7 Mrs. Menon would leave her roses and go inside. Grandma menon would then come outside with Uncle menon to water the lawn. this was the only time i would see them, or
else they were always inside their big gray home. closed and secluded. when i lived in that home, i dont think i was ever happy, i was happy in Chennai though. Memories of school are faint. but College left such an impression i dont think i will ever forget. Visual communication, if you were there you would remember too, Professor Rajnayakam, Father Jerome, Henry 'Sotta' maria Victor, Suresh "deadbore" paul. you would remember that amazing corner of Loyola that was our campus, no way you could forget the three sheds that became classes and the art centre, the comp lab, the photo studio, the development centre, the video centre, the staff room. those low asbestos ceilings, metal mesh windows, thick walls painted half white and half blue. you would remember the long blue beches i slept on. you would still remember the sound that the electric trains made as they clattered by on the tracks behind our classes. Roshan menon, Anant Gopal and Ashwin Ram made those years for me, friends in that god forsaken place, they hugged those trees with me, they went on the south indian trip, we drove down the korattur highway to taramani, ashwin ate so many canteen samosas you would never forget too. i can never forget Bruno, the german sheperd (he died couple of years back), shanmuganathan for his subservient love, roshans parents for ignoring my continuous presence at their home, roshans Grandmom for endless tea, Vignesh and Sid for company and coffee, and so many others for so many things. you would never forget them if you met them either.