Bon Voyage

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...

  L – O – N – D – O – N, London!!!! Oh Yes! I spy you!!!    You moved!!!!     The game changes !!!   et là voici…the game changers… From Paris to London, yes, we made it across half the world!! – appears to say both  Achan and Amma as they bid Adieu to Paris in front of Hotel La Comète on the 10 th of December 1968. They seemed to be brushing away the dust of the Indian subcontinent, breaking the last link from the vast expanse of the Eurasian continent!   For Amma, the small-time village girl from Kerala, still draped in a traditional saree,     - visiting the hazy Taj Mahal,   - holding a naughty dialogue with the equally naughty Egyptian camel, as though to her favourite cow and calf at home, in front of the Pyramids of Giza, - awestruck at the feelings and questions bubbling up in her mind as she stood before Michael Angelo’s Pieta, the epitome of motherhood, or Da Vinci’s paintings of Gods and Men, be it Mona Lisa, Last Supper...

A ny visit to Paris includes a short trip to the castles built on the majestic river Loire.  It is along the banks of this river that Jeanne d'Arc secured positions after breaking the siege of Orleans to later rout the English, marching onwards to Reims to stand beside Charles VII as he was crowned the King, beginning an end to the Hundred Years War between England and France.  What remains of  Achan’s slides  tell us that they  did visit three fascinating ones. There emerges thus a true document. Achan and Amma did a tour of the chateaux in December1968 on a winter sunlit day. Just before embracing the Atlantic, Loire river winds and unrolls with its surface unmoved by the impending conclusion. All the while hiding its emotions deep inside, it reflects the shores like a clean mirror.     The architects of those castles in their creative endeavour of translating the detailed defense  structural elements of fortresses  into manors ...

    In the 80’s, while Chandrika was doing her Masters in French, her Professor Jackie Moreau of Alliance Francaise, Chennai used to boast that there  are not as many monuments in India as there are in France. During those days as   her   fluency in the  French language  was not sufficient to enter into a debate with him to point out that they package and sell better, she let that comment pass. Still it often made us wonder at the number of monuments in France   . Yes, Chandrika said, it was Jackie Moreau who introduced them to the wonderful architecture of the Roman and Gothic Cathedrals.  As  Chandrika reminiscences ………  How the invention of the broken arches called Gothic arches  blended so well with the religious élan! The combination heightened and beautified not only the intricate roofs, the exquisite spires, the first ever alluring  windows made possible by the walls supported by the now defining flying buttres...

How many of us remember our old aunts and uncles who have left for their heavenly abodes? Mostly, none. Bur for us, Madhavi aunty (Matha Cheriyamma as we called her), younger sister of our mother, is ever-living.  Early life:   Madhavi was born and brought up in our joint-family home, Manjapra Variam. Her mother Angachi Amma was a formidable woman, but was also kind and compassionate. There were altogether nine siblings-four brothers and five sisters (they used to boast about being ‘Navaratnas’ or nine gems, a claim which others conveniently ignored!).  Manjapra Variam members are generally jovial by nature, never unnecessarily worried about anything around them. They try to make the best out of every situation and see humour in everything. Madhavi grew up in a liberal set up in the Variam.  The eldest among the four sisters, Rugmani, became a widow in early life. She was solemn and spoke less. My mother Parvathy or Chinnamma lived in another village with...

 At Geneva - in my sister Chandrika's words.... From the Vatican and Rome, the incomparable spaces of deep religiosity, fabulous sculptures, art and architecture, Achan   and team reached Geneva, in Switzerland, the world   capital of the worldly wealthy on the 30th of November 1968.        The contrast between Rome with the ambience and milieu of the vast imaginative limitless horizons of Michel Angelo Buonarroti’s universe compared to the architectural elegance in the spiritual seat of Christianity   and Geneva, with its concrete global hub of super affluent business and technology is, to put it mildly, downright staggering. While Achan, with his exposure to the Western culture, would have been delightfully curious and contented to affirm his knowledge, Amma’s astonishment would have had no boundaries. To imbibe and live those contrasting spaces of dissimilar elegance, condensed in a lightning visit, must have absolutely dazed all four of them.....

  Chirichenne mayakkiya midukki penne…..Honeymoon kondadum jnan Amerikkayil……, Kottayathonnirangum jnan varunna vazhi…….. .( Hey smart girl who seduced me with your laugh……{We} will spend my honeymoon in America, land in Kottayam and buy a tiny dress for…)   A popular malayalam song of the sixties which the characters described here seemed to have enacted word by word!!!! Achan, who used to read newspapers and novels well into the wee hours of the night without skipping a single line, that included even the ubiquitous obituaries that appeared in the Malayalam dailies, knew London well enough, needless to say, because of his reading habits - Sherlock Holmes and P G Wodehouse being some of his favourites. Added to this Achan, having lived through the vestiges of colonial rule, witnessed the genesis of the Republic of India. So the hybrid education of Malayalam and English mediums also with a spatter of Sanskrit had gifted him with a deeper understanding of the cultural differenc...