Musings from Antique Origins

I am now 52 and living in another part of the globe as different from where I was born. Since I look at me every day in the mirror, the passing of the years have not exactly entered my mind though the hairs going grey remind me of the need for coloring it periodically. Recently, at the marriage function of my niece Remya in Cherthala, Kunjunniyannan, the redoubtable pediatric surgeon, reminded me that my former physical charms have indeed waned. I jokingly accepted it and blamed it on the vicissitudes of a tough life. I have always maintained that our generation is quite unique. This post independent generation, younger to the midnight’s children – apologies to Rushdie- happens to be the last link of a long chain which has experienced two different worlds: the old world of shortages and less choices and the new world of luxuries and aplenty. In our childhood, there were large tracts of agricultural lands around the houses and there were many places to play. There were no chocolates, ...

The New Year is always associated with new resolutions too. I was wondering if I needed to take any resolution at this stage of my life. Having hit a fifty and feeling not too old, I have to go on. Taking resolutions to cast away vices seem to be the in-thing with youngsters. But, resolutions do not seem my cup of tea. I was born a vegetarian and I dazzled with non-vegetarianism in my early youth. Later, I found it abominable enough and turned myself into a lacto-vegetarian. The renowned writer, Kamala Das once wrote: “We cut the dead body of an animal, keep it in the freezer and take it out to eat when we are hungry. A piece of the dead body is again cut, and minced with spices we fry it and eat and again the rest of the cadaver goes back to the freezer”. This action is repeated like Ksheerabala (a fortified Ayurvedic medicine) and after filling our stomach with all these toxins we claim ourselves to be refined and want to be seated on a higher platform in the ladder of evolution. Bu...