Diwali in Benin

This was our first Diwali outside India. Without the bang of the festival back home, we celebrated by lighting a few diyas.

Seven star football

Dubai is a rich city with a short history. This accounts for the city's insatiable desire to build the biggest and richest structures in the world. Despite the tiring afternoon sun and the dust hanging like a mesh curtain, these young men were busy playing beach football in front of the only seven-star hotel in the world - Burj Al Arab.

Carrying rain inland

When the fury of the South-West Monsoon hits Nattika coast, the otherwise pleasant beach turns into a picture of anger. However, even the menacing sea cannot stop a few young men from enjoying themselves.

A temple by the river

The rivers that flow west into Kerala from the Western Ghats break into distributaries and backwaters. The Sri Rama temple at Triprayar in Kerala sits beautifully on the banks of one such river. It is believed that the Sri Rama idol was the one used for worship by Sri Krishna in Dwaraka and had drifted southwards through the Arabian Sea and was picked up by the fishermen from the sea coast nearby.

What-a-phone!

In the late 1980s, when I graduated from university and started working in New Delhi, there used to be a long-haired, French-bearded gentleman who advised Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi on telecommunications. Sam Pitroda dreamt of a telephone connection in every village.

Though I do not know if every village has a telephone connection, in the last two decades we certainly have witnessed a telecom revolution. At first there were the ubiquitous ISD-STD-PCO booths which spawned an age of small-scale enterprise in telecommunications.

This was followed by the cell phone revolution, which started another round of family-level private enterprise for talk-time recharging.

Roads to somewhere

Automobiles are spawning the growth and development of roads in India as they did in the USA many decades ago. In many parts of the country, national highways are being converted to multi-lane expressways. And in places like the crowded Kerala, where expansion becomes difficult, road surfaces are being improved.

For a person born in the 1960s, I have grown in an age where for decades the Ambassador was the only mode of transport from point A to point B. We filled the car with friends and relatives and rode on two-laned highways and pot-holed byways. A generation of Indians may soon be born that will take for granted the presence of good roads.

Cat genealogy 2

Every popular movie has a sequel. The story of cats in our ICRISAT home needs one. If you don't remember part 1 you can read it at Cat genealogy.

Ashley, the matriarch continued to deliver children every six months. Her children - Honey, Candy and Toffee - grew into mature adults. Tofee became the sub-dominant male in the region, fighting sporadically with Boyfriend (his father) to become the dominant male. Candy and Honey grew into pretty females delivering children of their own (I will come to them later).

Fluffy followed in Ashley's next instalment. She is a pretty, agile female who has moved into a new territory and has delivered kittens of her own.

In September 2008, Ashley gave birth to four more. We called them Gundumani, Koorachimoonji, Leopard and White Tigress. These kids grew in our house, and have still not separated from each other.

Candy and Honey delivered kids this summer. The heat took its toll and Candy lost her kids. Honey brought her kids to our house. Since Honey Bee is a famous liquor brand in Kerala, we named them Vodka, Whiskey and Rum.