Vanakkam Doctor !

It is PLUS two (+ 2) results , this time 23 years ago!!!! However, first I would like to apologise for the boring length of this blog. Life is a mere chain of incidents and possibly co- incidents, I suppose. I still, vividly remember a mallu friend of mine called Suresh, arriving breathless on the doors of my brother’s video shop to drop a bombshell on a May hot week day afternoon of 1986! Yes, I was blown off completely by the news. I had just become the top achiever in our school. The exams were State run Plus two exams, which provide the gateway for higher studies, on merit basis. Well, I scored a meagre 1086! It shows indirectly, the standard of my other classmates in St Gabriel’s School, Broadway, in 1986. The state record was around 1180 out of 1200 marks, awarded that year. The top notches from State toppers went to students with primary aim of scoring high marks and with ease, by taking up FRENCH, instead of Tamil. However, we in our school studied Tamil

What swayed me over to the kites? We lived in North Chennai, that millennium and that was the entire pre requisite for flying kites. There were no barriers to kite flying in terms of caste, religion, class or anything for that matter. You just have to have kite and thread kandai or a lottai, sooner or later you will be surrounded by anyone from the list above! I have seen upper middle class mingling with ordinary class people very easily when it came to flying kites and I still feel that it was the common bonding factor that was widely prevailing in 70's and 80's North Chennai, a sense of camaraderie, which may possibly still exists in that part of Chennai.........I love and admire! Yes, My father did it, his brothers and uncles did it and I am sure, their fathers did it and we all did it! I was possibly four or five, when one fine day; my appa came home with bundle of black maanja nool, a meesaii baana kite and a cooler on his eyes. Here we go! That was the

I was introduced to Barbie by a good friend of mine, a while ago, when we were living in Isle of Wight. He visited us with his then Spanish girl friend, now his wife, for a hot summer weekend. We were renting a terraced house in IOW and it had many luxuries, amongst which are Barbecue pot and a mooring site for boats! It was a moment of reckoning for me and my then pregnant wife! The Spanish friend prepared and in fact shopped very meticulously all the necessary ingredients and here we go!!! The highlight was the thin slices of lamb coated with garlic and olive oil along with full loads of home made “Shangri-La”- a Spanish cocktail. Needless to say I was hung over for the next few days and my friend puking as usual! Brilliant days! Anyway hope to do one this weekend and hope we stay sober!!!