Fountain Head

  On Day One, I rode from Poonamallee to Vadapalani in about 40 minutes. The same trip on Mount-Poonamallee Road used to mean 70 to 90 minutes of dust, detours and negotiation with fate. I stepped off at Vadapalani, walked straight across to the Green Line without touching a street, and thought: this is what a city sounds like when it finally exhales. But a good first ride makes you greedy. Here is what I’d ask of the metro’s future phases, in the spirit of a passenger who has just tasted what is possible. Lesson 1: Never Open a Line with Holes in It The ride was smooth and fast until Porur. Then the train swept past six stations (Alapakkam, Karambakkam, Valasaravakkam, Alwarthirunagar, Saligramam and Avichi School/Virugambakkam) because they were still waiting on finishing work and safety approvals. Those stops sit in some of the densest streets on Arcot Road. They serve the school run, the hospital visit and the Saturday market, so skipping them is a bit like serving birya...

  I stand at the edge of Azhiyar Dam again, four years later, and my hands are shaking—though not from fear this time. The water below glimmers the same way it did in 2022, but the peace I felt on that fateful day seems like a lifetime ago. That afternoon, I was simply walking along the dam near the Vethathri Maharishi headquarters, lost in the kind of tranquility that only nature can offer. The collected river waters sparkled below me, the air was crisp, and I felt completely at ease. It was the perfect escape. Then, in what felt like seconds but changed everything, that peace shattered. Someone—I still don't know who—had released a bee hive nearby. What happened next is a blur of terror and chaos. The swarm came at me with a fury I'd never imagined. I ran, but where could I go? On all sides, they came—dozens, then hundreds of them. My body became their target, and within moments, I was covered in stings, each one burning like a tiny flame against my skin. I tried everythi...

The sea near the Ashtalakshmi temple doesn't hurry. It took my Ganesha the way it takes everything else, slowly, one wave at a time, until the clay went soft and the shape went back into the water. I stood there with wet feet and turmeric on my fingers, and I didn't pray for anything. A thought came to me instead, and it has stayed with me since. I walked home in a few minutes. My parents were waiting there. A decade ago, this same festival started an argument in our house. My parents did not believe in buying an idol, keeping it at home and then immersing it. That wasn't how things were done in our family, and in their view it didn't need to start. I thought it did. I pushed and I insisted, and that year Ganesha came home, and that year he went into the water. I've done it many times since, wherever life has placed me. I've immersed him on the east coast and on the west coast. In Hyderabad I've carried him to the Musi and to Tank Bund, where a whole cit...

  மதுரை · 11 September 2026 அன்பு தாய்மார்களே Prof. Solomon Pappaiah · சாலமன் பாப்பையா 1936–2026 Tamil scholar · teacher · நடுவர் of some twelve thousand pattimandrams திருக்குறள் 423 · அறிவுடைமை எப்பொருள் யார்யார்வாய்க் கேட்பினும் அப்பொருள் மெய்ப்பொருள் காண்ப தறிவு. eppoRuL yaaryaarvaayk kEtpinum appoRuL / meyppoRuL kaaNba thaRivu Whatever the matter, and from whosever mouth it is heard — to see in it the true thing: that is wisdom. பொங்கல் afternoon, the plates cleared, the television on for the one programme everyone in the house agrees about. Four speakers on two benches. A topic no professor would call literature — who builds a good family, the husband or the wife? And at the table between the benches, an old teacher in a white shirt, hands folded, waiting his turn. He waits a long time. He lets them finish. Then he stands, says அன்பு தாய்மார்களே , and the room goes quiet the way a classroom goes quiet. For four decades that was the sound of a Tamil holiday. On Friday, 11 Sep...

  Whichever Comes First My printer did not die of overwork. It died of rest — and the warranty only knew how to measure the other thing. Product Epson L3255 Fault Black blank Warranty Expired 25.01.2025 Replaced Head + ink system Paid ₹5,410 They gave me the parts back. That is the detail I keep returning to, because on the ride home I had already decided, silently and unfairly, that they would not. Two small dead things on my table. One is a printhead, roughly the size of a matchbox, a strip of gold-coloured plate held in a black plastic carriage. The other is a black-and-white assembly with a spring, a length of soft tubing and a little geared drum, and it took me a while to work out which way up it was meant to sit. Together they cost me five thousand four hundred and ten rupees, plus three hundred and forty on the slip, plus the carriage in and out, which I paid without asking because the machine is heavy and I am not. The complaint I walked in with was simple to the point of i...

  My archery guru is in the tenth standard, and he teaches on the sand at Besant Nagar. Extended Elliot's, opposite the Mahalakshmi temple. Fifty rupees, four arrows. There is no light on the target. This is not an oversight. The sun went down some while ago behind the flats, the sea has gone the colour of wet slate, and the boy who runs this archery stall has decided that this evening I will shoot at something I cannot see. He taps the bowstring twice, the way you would test a bell for tone. Feel it , he says. Not look. Feel. I miss. Of course I miss. He does not laugh, which is its own small courtesy, and hands me the second arrow without comment. By the fourth I have stopped trying to find the target with my eyes and started finding it with my shoulder, and the arrow goes somewhere close enough that he says ah , softly, and that ah is worth the fifty rupees on its own. The extended stretch of Elliot's — past the main crowd, opposite the Mahalakshmi temple — is a market that...