Conphusian

in three months i still have not figured out roads in ernakulam, i always end up where i want to go, but i never seem to take the same road.. it is like there are always 5-6 roads to most places.

today for instance i drove 45 mins to reach almost exactly where i started, and it is not like i turned back anywhere.. i took a road that kept going and going and apparently was going in circles!

and i could swear that the road looked familiar like i had taken it before but nay.. it was just enticing me to burn some fuel.

Funniest is when you ask for directions, the looks of happy satisfaction on the face of the person you ask as he tells you,.."ayyo sare ningal vazhi thetti poyallo.." or literally 'haha you messed up'.. and that smile as he asks .. 'you are new here na?' and if you dont leave immediately they would want to know where you come from, what you do, what you ate for breakfast and names of your parents. also here people always want to know where you are from! like it is not enough to be me, it is like i am me, from this place! every single person i meet asks sooner or later.. so where are you from.. if you think you can answer vaguely and get away.. no way! they will prise your birthplace with surprising nimbleness. and then it is almost a matter of pride with everyone to say that .."oh yeah, i have been there. in 1976 or something i was there for this or that.. yeah i have seen tat place.." it is like.. ah i have figured you out now!

and in ernakulam you'd never know where the city starts and ends, there are areas in between where there is so much open space and greenery that you'd start freaking out that you have actually ended up outside the city, and then in a few minutes building prop up out of no where!

to add to the general confusion, place names change with alarming speed, in that sense that if you drive 5 mins in any direction, you'd most likely go past five places. I mean like in bombay you have a bandra or malad and these are large places.. there are numbers and roads within the area.. here it isnt like that.. each individual place has a name! yeah i think that is what it is.. local buses for isntance dont have numbers.. they have names.. people wud say "ah alice is comng at 3 and i'l get off at meneka and then walk to whatever next place".. where alice is the bus and meneka is the stop.

because of all this any address in ernakulam will have atleast 3 roads names, 2 place names, 1 house name.. seriously!

House.. Home

The larger your home is more is the number of things you need to fill it up. Since i moved into this house in Ern i'v been hunting for things to fill it up, for gawd is it really difficult to fill up 1000sq feet!
I'v always imagined it might be fun to do up a house.. the 'house - home' thing was always a thing of the future.. like "the day i get a house i am going to have this or that.." a mental picture of that day in the future. but then suddenly that day is here.. a house..all to myself.. and only me to furnish, and not only that. only me to clean, wash, dry, iron, cook, clean again, pay bills, clear garbage, clean again !! dude i finally wonder is it worth all this effort.
Nope.. it isnt. that is the verdict.
even the most intersting part of the entire equation, doing up the house to a cetain taste and style.. TOO much work! I'v been thinking of buying new bedsheets.. and in three months i still havnt got arnd to doing that. I mean i havent even figured out where you buy good bedsheets.
and anyways in the back of the mind there is the big question of how long am i going to hold on here..

I shant deviate into that topic here as that would be an altogether different argument..

And i think houses generally take ages to fill up, and here i am trying to age it in weeks and months. Like my parents house, i wonder if all the things came at once... i am sure item has a story and a soul. when it came into the house, who selected it, why and where.. and i pretty sure the stories are varied and interesting.

I know stories of some items,.. like the small wood elephants that sit on the doorway.. they were picked up by mom in alleppey, by the lake i imagine. she loves elephants and so one day parents were driving to the grandparents house and somewere in alleppey, which is on the way, they stop for a break and on the roadside there is this man selling them, mom wants them, dad grudgingly buys them. sometimes when i am at that house, and generally when i am there i have a lot of time on my hands, i remember looking at those elephants and imagine that story as if it were a recent memory and not a story before i was born, told to me when i was a baby.