Bon Voyage

MONTREAL PART 2  - Mrs. K.R, as my mother used to often address herself, and the KSEB team led by my father K.Ramachandra Warrier, arrive at Montreal, Canada –  a lot of hard work has been put in over a period of three months at least by my sister Chandrika to collate the data which makes very interesting reading!!! As the first snows softly and silently spread everywhere Amma and Achan landed at Montreal.  Red leaved Maple trees, the Canadian emblem, bereft of their enchanting and colourful autumn leaves could be seen as mournful black silhouettes against the white snow.  Nevertheless, Achan and Amma must have considered being present during Xmas in the Metropolis of Montreal itself as a bonanza. Though Montreal derived its name from the neighbouring Mount Royal hills, they did not come across either reindeers nor for that matter – luckily - any Polar Bears ! Even so, they would have surely tasted Maple syrup, Canada’s lip-smacking honey tha...

    Cheruthoni dam with all five gates open It is generally said that everything has a time and things happen only at its stipulated time. Quite a few weeks back my sister Chandrika sent me the writeup for continuing our blog. I knew I had to do it and I had plenty of time to sit down and work on it but it seemed somehow incomplete. It is only now that the time has come but I should not be saying that the time has come – for such a disaster to strike a population so literate, so aware and so much forward in thinking but the tragedy that has struck is unbelievable and it has happened a second time in the last few years. A cloud-burst has washed off a major part of mid-Kerala once again. The last time when the flooding happened due to rains it was at the fag end of a monsoon season and skies should have cleared for Onam festivities, the best time to be in Kerala. We were there, right at the point where it all happened and we escaped the floods by the skin of our teeth. This was ...

From day one of their travel plans Achan’s dream and destination was Montreal. The purpose of their trip - discussions, training and decision makings of the design for the first arch dam in Asia – the Idukki dam However, come to think of it, was the destination really Montreal or was their destination “Home”! If so why did Achan have to see the other dams?   Like Brunelleschi, the Florentine architect, who found a solution in Rome for the transept of the Cathedral of Florence or more recently as Le Corbusier, the architect of Chandigarh, whose journeys to Italy inspired the architecture of the workers’ houses in France and other places, my father’s and his team’s journey could possibly have inspired many a small detail later in their lives.      So for Achan the journey itself was a dream which enlarged into the reality of a journey of finding himself. Amma’s presence throughout was a flavourful energizer for him - seeing the world through her eyes, her heartbeats an...

  Here Amma is photographed with the Beefeaters, having a Legacy of over 900 years –  the ceremonial guards of the Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London Later in Trivandrum Amma appointed Unni, a deaf and dumb   young man   to help her in some odd jobs. The weird excuse for appointing him was that he had my brother’s pet name and my brother used to know him in the University college. The Dumb Unni, as he was addressed, used to maintain the tennis court in the University College grounds, dragging a heavy stone roller up and down - A heavy price for being deaf and dumb, yet always light on the feet and in mind, smiling all the time.  Chandrika’s anecdotes continue in her own words…..  In the final year of my under-graduation program studying English literature I had to read a bit of British history. While I was sitting in the verandah and reading Henry the VIII – a book with a splashy   cover of Henry the VIII, th...