ALTER IDEM

You can classify travellers in these parts into two main categories, i) the indifferent local - born and brought up here, he takes his green surroundings for granted. ii) the city dweller aka the tourist traveller- for him, every step is a moment to be clicked and captured. And then, there is the 'in between i) & ii)' traveller like yours truly! As the number of years that I have lived here is inching closer to my number of years in big city, I'm neither indifferent to nature, nor do I gush over every other landscape. Take this scene for example .... The local traveller is speeding on his tractor. While the tourist traveller may have spent his few moments behind the tractor gaping at the unusual vehicle, I spent my few moments noticing the verse on the trailer! Hudugiya hinde hodre goLu Nanna hinde bandre dhooL Loosely translated, it means 'Follow a girl, woe. Follow me, dust' Flawed rhyming, wrong punctuation and o...

Over there! That man in the lungi ! He is the umbrella repairer! A nomadic umbrella repairer, in fact! His dress, his paraphernalia and his sudden appearance in mid-June....make me wonder if he has hopped out of an R.K.Narayan book! Calling out ' Koday repayri? ' (Umbrellas for repair?), he walks along the length and breadth of the town and repairs umbrellas at his client's door step, except, on market days. On this day, his clients come to him. You'll find him near the bus stand, the busiest part of the town on market days. Now, if you live in the Malnad, the brolly is one of your most important accessories for at least three months. Mid-June to mid-September, everyone lugs one around. Losing/ misplacing umbrellas is a common occurrence. When regularly used, umbrellas are prone to some common complaints. The most common one is of the cloth/ spokes slipping off at joints - such a nuisance! A simple looking problem, but, try fixing it! Within no time, you'...