Hey, this K is a 22-K …

reading friends’ blogs is such a great, non-intrusive way of updating myself on what’s happening in their lives….but this is assuming that they are regular with their updates!

How different is reality from what we plan….The day before Deepavali we spent downstairs bursting crackers with my neighbours’ family and the newlywed couple, who traditionally spend the festival with the bride’s parents. We went to sleep at 11.30 pm and an hour later got a call that one of our friends in the family quiz group that we belong to, had died of a sudden and massive heart attack, at the age of 51. We went there and did a lot of arrangements as a tremendously shocked wife and daughter just could not cope. We returned home at 5 am and slept till 8.30, when I lit the lamps without feeling in the least festive.

I called my sis in law to speak to her before she left for Mumbai to visit her family; she told me that my childhood friends’ father (both the parents and the son and daughter live in Bangalore) had passed away the previous night and that since they got the answering machine at our place they thought we were still in the US.

Can’t post photos…don’t know how, and didn’t take any…but this morning, drove back from Chennai to Blr on the really excellent (except for patches) National Highway 7, which, though not as scenic as the old Madras Road, still got us from point to point in under 6 hours. The Honda CR-V, for all that I detest the idea of using a SUV for the 2 of us, is a dream to drive, and I, who never drive by the speedometer but by the road conditions, found myself pushing 120 kmph on amazingly long stretches. The only danger on this road is that, for various reasons including the road being under construction, traffic often appears on the wrong side of the road, and one always has to be careful.

I am sure no one has thought of this….I first realized it when I had mehendi the day before the engagement of a friend’s daughter. I didn’t intend it to,but it got on my nails. I rather liked the effect, and then I applied mehendi again just before I left for the US. Each date is thus marked on my growing nails, and the mark before the engagement was clipped off….just before I applied the mehendi for the same young woman’s marriage! So the passage of time is there to see on my fingernails….