Fountain Head

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...