Time and cloud!!!

Mukil (our son) was very annoyed with me few days ago. It was his birthday last week and I am yet to blog about him, unlike his sister’s. Well, I thought I would write something about him today, on this PONGAL day.

I have taken off today, which I normally do for PONGAL and the kids too. I love PONGAL, than any other Hindu festivals for too many reasons and which itself needs a bigoblog.

Well, coming to Mukil….

Mukil was conceived in a Travel lodge. I am not talking about the plans for of having a baby, way back in 2002, but the technical aspects were done in that Travel lodge, in East Didsbury, no that far from where we live now!

I have to thank, our friend Ramesh, who is a GP now in Grimsby for that entertaining and productive weekend! It was his son’s combined birth day celebrations, which he had organised in his then house in Blackburn. It was an unforgettable birthday party for tooo many reasons.

• One was Mukil’s possible embryogenesis.

• The second one was the 8 hour long wait, on the M62 motorway, over the Pennines, because of some freak accident on that day.

• The third one was it was that weekend, when we almost identified our current house in Cheadle

I was then, in the spring of 2002, working in Stockton on tees, as a LAT Registrar in Geriatrics and just been offered a proper training post in the Greater Manchester. Thus began our house hunt. We were relatively inexperienced, naïve and with none to guide us. In fact, we were the first amongst our friends from Stanley 86 batch to buy a house in UK (It is of course with a mortgage and still is!!!).

Mukil of course was on track and no sooner I realised that the foetus was a boy, I wanted to name him “Puyal Varman”. Puyal in Tamil is possibly Cyclone, and may be that I was also mesmerised by a Spanish footballer, who also had the Christian name “Puyol”!!

It was my Amma, who literally moved me away from Puyal and focussed me towards the cloud and so we opted for “Mukil,” meaning - Cloud in Tamil and possibly in Malayalam. We already had Nila, a moon by that time and therefore aptly Mukil!

Time is one hell of a creation…may be by man, out of NOTHING.

It is infinite and paradoxically, also measurable and never ceases to surprise me. I sometimes, long for the time to freeze and go static and also at times pray for it to don its flying gear!

But, it won’t budge and is never the same again……..makes you wonder, who is manning it, with those awkward asymmetrical hands! Time and cloud are possibly very mystic too.

It was Mukil’s seventh birthday last week and as usual was in his own elements, like a cloud! His bowling party has been postponed to this Saturday, as we were snowed down last week in Manchester. Hope it’s going to be fun!!

HAPPY PONGAL!!!!!

PS: Nila was planned (!) in a hotel near PIGALLE (!) in Paris!!