Of killing the past...

Life's all about moving on. Shedding the scales, and getting a new one. Well, easier said than done. Because, accept it, we all love our pasts. We would be happier if one day, we could just walk back to our house and find it as it was ten years ago, those days when you were spilling over with the excitement of having discovered something called"college". Your room would be adorned with posters of Gabriela Sabatini(remember her?) or a very boyish looking Sachin Tendulkar! You'll once again open and adore the new "action shoes" that you recently bought. You had just heard about Nike and Reebok then. You're discovering the first signs of real conflict with your parents, when you've just hung up after that call from a girl in class. "Oh come on! She's just a friend. You guys just dont understand". Its another matter that you secretly admire her and you, with a couple of close confidante friends are plotting big time to break it out to her one day, soon. You throw the slingbag to the bed and settle in to the tune of "Paint my love" or "Sleeping child". The world seemed just too big and too exciting.

These are just sidetrack thoughts that formed in my mind when I heard a piece of news today. One friend from the old company who chatted with me today said - "Ananthu is being demolished for technopark expansion". I can see a few hearts sinking, a few of those who're reading this....For others - Ananthu is the place we used to have lunch from.

No, that is a huge understatement.

Ananthu is about five or six kilometers from the campus. We have to ride through the byepass in bone-breaking heat to reach that place. There are about ten other restaurants inside the campus and several outside on the way. But, come 12:30PM, we chose to ignore them all, and head to Ananthu. That about sums up what Ananthu meant to us. Its a very small, unassuming shack-like place along the byepass. You're sure to miss it the first time you go looking for it, as we did. There is a name-board of sorts which says "Hotel Ananthu" in Malayalam. But its hardly noticeable. Maybe its that feeling that evokes memories of the food from your grandparents' place still lingering in your toungue, maybe its just the way the place looks and feels, you connect to the food immediately. Its not special. Its not pompous. And the menu is not worth advertising. There is absolutely no interior deco, save a few burnt agarbathis and the icy cool of the thatched roof. But thats just what you love about the place. A few of us had kep the secret closely for a few months like the closed community in the movie - "The beach" until others discovered about that place and began to come flocking in. Then the inevitable happened. It lost the very Ananthu-ness in all the mayhem. P had called it "globalisation" then. We had reluctantly started to look for other places to lunch. But the taste remained in our buds. It does still.

Memories are there, just to taunt us. And the sad thing is, they cant be run down by earth-movers like Ananthu is being done, right now!

Comments

mowgz said…
Ananthu.. we all miss it !
came to know from our news correspondents (:-p) that ananthu is reopening soon.. a little more far from the present location... but it will not be the same 'Ananthu' again :-(
11:26 PM
Anonymous said…
Touching post

~N
2:48 AM
Unknown said…
mowgz : Yeah? And where is this new location gonna be?

~N :Am not gonna talk to u! :)
5:49 PM
Anonymous said…
Suits me ..Im gonna keep talking.:P.
4:41 AM
Anonymous said…
You know, I read this on the day my grandfather died and it was too overwhelming for me to respond. But I just had to. U struck a chord...
-Sno'
3:21 PM
Unknown said…
I am sorry, Sno!
12:25 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Many many happy returns of the day? Maybe not!

Thus, Bejoy Babu enters into the thirtieth year of his  great struggle for existence against the elements of this planet last week. Like his very first year, he did it again in a hospital room. Talk about the ironies of life. Back then, he had a young and energetic father, who had sat hours on end admiring the red little thingy in a white wrapper (am hoping he did, most newly promoted fathers do, don't they? At least Ross Gellar of Friends did when Ben was born!). And now, 29 years later, his father was lying down weak, with tubes attached to his body, while he sat hours on end looking at him. Not admiring, but worried when his father will become alright, he will be able to go back, whether his leaves would affect his job, how the great plans of a first birthday together with his wife was spoilt etc etc. Oh 'cmon, there's no use being pretentious about it. Nobody enjoys this particular disposition. He didn't do it either, and he managed to kill time with 2 activities. 1
Read more

Puttum Kadalayum

"Puttum Kadalayum" doesn't really sound like something big enough to hinge one's career decisions upon. But it is. It was meant to be nothing more than a casual remark when Ch asked me yesterday, "Bangalore-ilo Pune -ilo poyal pinne puttum kadalem evidunnu kazhikkum??" But I know it, and he knows it too, that the Qn was a fatal setback to my plans to switch the current job for a better(?) one. I was crouching low down, ready to lift myself off, but this very innocuous sounding Qn made me sit back, and rethink. So what is it about Puttum Kadalayum? Apart from being my favourite breakfast...(I am no glutton, but this combo, with pappadam as the kinky sidekick, brings me to my knees, literally.) it represents everything good about working in TVM. There is a certain noisy chord inside me which is still chanting I should run to a metro. The fatter paychecks, the late-night discos, the cosmopolitan crowd, the rock concerts... hmm. Have you ever stuck yourself into
Read more

When it rains...

Silence.... I was almost tempted to use an adjective, but the silence contained nothing. An adjective would be most inappropriate. I try lowering the window gently, and suddenly, the world announces its existence loudly through the chaotic and sweet music of the rain. Water splashes through the top of the glass and lands on my lap, my hand and the steering. I raise the window back to its initial position. Silence again. I glanced around. I cant make out whether the other four persons in the car are asleep or awake. But for this moment, I realize, they don't exist for me. Mist gathers up in the front windsheild. I turn the a/c on, and try to concentrate hard on the road in front. The windscreen-wipers were doing the best they could in a frantic attempt to part the water gushing down to sideways. I can faintly see the dark grey of the tarmac, gently dissolving into the rain. The darkness all around comes out and reveals itself as greenery; occasionally, when a clearing is reached. Th
Read more