Kerala - 3

Kozhikode has a Hillarious Chit funds among several other hilarious businesses.

Kerala - 2

The sea is something else, nai? We land-locked people never know.

-

Kerala - 1

I am planning to set up as a Malayalam translator when I get back; I am getting that good.

-

I am tired today. Too tired to move. Too tired to think. I have been waiting for a decent hour to sleep. Even TV seems like too much effort. I wanted something really nice before I slept. I looked in the right place and found it. For now and again –

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

_________________________________________________________________

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

_________________________________________________________

I’ve liked these before tonight, you know, but I find that to find joy in Wallace Stevens a really quite mind is dead useful.

Sib

They were showing The Apple on WorldMovies just now. I had been told about it but never got a chance to see it. As usual I had forgotten what I had been told about it, but since I’ve liked God, Construction and Destruction by Samira Makhmalbaf, I sat down to see it.

I should have expected it perhaps, but when it hit me that the actors were not actors at all, it turned my stomach. Now I‘ve turned off the TV and read the whole storyline and reviews on the net and am sitting here feeling slightly ill. Young ambition, artistic or otherwise, can be a bloody ruthless thing.

Moon blues

Oooooooo I would go and do something like this! Of all the days in the year to go and admire the moon, it had to be today. Most years I make it a point not to get out after dark on Vinayak Chauthi. If I do, I assiduously study the paving on the road. This year I plain forgot. After about thirty seconds of contemplating the lovely things clouds do to moons, a nigglet crept up. With a slap of the forehead I had it.

My mother who should have rightfully warned me in advance says she did not do so because it might have Freudian-pressured me into doing exactly what I should not.

Anyway it was done, and what cannot be undone should be remedied.

So for the fourth or fifth time in my life I reminded myself that-

The Lion killed Prasena

Jambhuvantha killed the Lion

Thus the little boy need not cry

He can have the Shyamanthakamani

This is an additional precaution: I would remind all my acquaintance that Krishna did not kill Prasena and I probably did not do any of the wicked things you might imagine I did this year. Remember 'twas only the moon.

P.S You do all know that if you look at the moon on VC you will probably be suspected of some horribly thing of which you are entirely innocent, right?

Monsoon Medley

an ocean came down

today

in a drizzle

The sun bright

The rain right

Stars in puddle

cocooned in the

window seat

till the roof dripped

Geele pe gila karenge na keechad ko kosenge hum

Abde minnaton se barsa hai abr-e-karam ab ke

Coming to a formal feeling

Na leke jaao...

Do chaar zulm gar aur kar kahin ho ke ho mera guzar

Hun jo jaan-balab ye chaaragar, tere hunar ka asar

Nigal gayee jinhen raat woh sawaabit kahin aur ke

Ab unke ghar mein dhoop hain na apne ghar hoga sahar

Kal tak jo tha hara-bhara jo ped tha yahin khada

Aaj dekha raakh-e-tar kahan yakeen huaa magar?

Jo sheesh mein dikhe mujhe woh main hi hun ya aur hai?

Jo sawaal ye khadaa kare mujhi mein hai ya digar?

Ye masaaib rozgaar ki ye shikan ye naraazgi

Shikaar-e-Dahr-e-talab huaa asvi tera mera shehar

Dry grey clouds

Ek do harf yun hi likh ke mita dena tha

Zahan Maa’oof bhi rahatha hai bataa dena tha

-Zaahir Gaazipuri

You know what they say about accepting the things you can’t change and changing the things you can? I am usually very sorted out about it. Most things, apart from morning coffee crises, fall into the not-mine-to-change category and as a result of this I manage a reasonably blame-free existence. Now suddenly I can’t seem to make the distinction.

I am overwhelmed by a feeling that the world is falling apart bit by gigabyte and my resolute non-involvement is anti-dharma. I - so sure that I had not an activisty bone in me - am alarmed by this unseasoned agitation of spirit. Since natural good sense does not seem to be doing its trick, I am going to attempt a little bit of systematic logic here. What are the issues at hand? Lists always help.

• We don’t have rains. The Karimnagar guys came and married two frogs at the municipal office. I don’t think they achieved anything apart from a tiny wrench in my heart. But what can one do for rains? Tried our little patch of conservation and harvesting (sort of!); what else? They say and I believe that larger issues are involved here, which are even more horrible to contemplate...
• We don’t have too much electricity or petrol for that matter and what we do have is horrendously expensive. The CM appears to be panicking and I am panicking with him
• The central government which is trying to get us some alternate energy looks like it may fall. I was ambivalent about this deal (not knowing too much about it), but now I think – someone determined to do something about something is better than nobody doing anything about anything.
• We have a HUGE garbage problem in our colony. Ours is the only garbage bin in about ten colonies and the cantonment does not have disposal trucks. We discuss the problem over breakfast every morning. I have no ideas.
• I have indigestion.
• They have taken away a bunch of children from Jubillee Hills by raiding homes where they had been employed. Is this wise? What is this transit home anyway? What about their families? I seriously doubt that the follow-up action is going to be all that it should. I am worried and I am only piping up in this ineffectual way on this blog.
• A news anchor was pretty bitchy to Katrina Kaif. She is a good kid and does not deserve it. Everybody is talking about the news. The news is that news is news. They should not be allowed to use reactions to their horridness as news. I hate this meta meta post-modern world.
• All the Hyderabadi autowalas are sad. They are especially disgruntled around Persis Takeaway. All that animosity for the consuming public ruins the taste of Biryani.
• Avva is feebler by the day. She found it difficult to sit down on the side-walk outside our house today. She said she hadn’t come for the past few days because of the pain in her back. She must be around ninety and I fear for the circumstances of her death and those of my life.

I am not at all sure what this list has achieved. I am not feeling lighter, just groggier. I also think this post should probably have a content warning. My sister will probably say that I should not be harassing the general public with depressing material.

But what this post will get instead is a disclaimer.

- The author is not responsible for any communication of ‘the blues’. Neo-Delhites in particular can wave away most material as not pertaining to them.

Mysoon

magpie robin
inspects the raindrop
on its wing

-

Clear and present duty

Jaanta hoon sawaab-e-taa’at-o-zahad

Par tabeeyat idhar nahin aatee

-Ghalib

Is there anything as perfectly designed to bore you to death and make you drum your heels in defiance and explore all other avenues of temporal occupation as the inescapable knowledge of what constitutes your present duty? Dear God, grant me some subuddhi before it is too late and I am sunk in a mire of guilt.

Doors of perception

There must be dozens of anthropology or behaviour science papers about this, skulking away in the ungoogle-able recesses of the internet, but I only began actively thinking about the evolutionary significance of the size of doors about an hour ago.

We have a cat that lives around us. This cat has had kittens and in the routine moving around they do en famille, one of their favourite pit stops is under the car. I was getting antsy because I have already sacrificed a brake fluid filter/pump (?) to the previous batch’s socialisation. I was thinking that it must be a bit cramped under there but also that they would be at a distinct advantage if I tried to crawl under to try and shoo them. So much easier to fly at my face.

From that, I started to think of all those animals and birds that chose to live in homes with impossibly tiny openings. Animals that will squeeze into minuscule burrows in the ground, crawl under rocks, birds with humongous tails that will undertake all manner of acrobatics to get into nests that have openings that are two inches lesser in diameter than their heads. One part of my brain is thinking “yes, yes, predators”; the other is wondering about this…what do I call it... gene for discomfort. Surely they live disproportionately uncomfortable lives for the degree of safety they are able to achieve on an average? In most cases, say, the snake’s jaw, the monkey’s paw, or the fox’s snout, are all counter-evolved to defeat these tiny stratagems. But it seems the less comfortable they are, the safer they feel.

Next of course I am thinking humans. Through societies, ancient tribes and modern urban cityscapes, almost evenly, we find that the humblest members live in small homes (even where space or building material are not a constraint) and even more significantly in homes with doors which they themselves have to stoop to enter. Small doors don’t keep out wild animals or more powerful humans. So it has to be a psychological need. Is it then an atavistic need in the insecure to be holed up? Is a small door a symbol of sociological submission, a crotch-covering device perhaps? Big doors of course are a symbol of power. Palaces and mansions have big doors, attention-seeking doors even. But of course they are always guarded. Security, guards or electronic anti-invasion devices – even the big man needs his defences. Who then is the king of the jungle in humankind? One who can live with open doors? Live without doors? Without walls perhaps? Without a sense of self to defend?
Do we diminish our minds with worry and fear to feel safe? Do we narrow the entryways to secure whatever little we think we already have? Perhaps we do. Of course we do.
Who is the predator?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Mind
Richard Wilbur

Man in his purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

_

Darzee ke dar par

This one’s for the footloose girl

That that lopsided grin might unfurl

A little tickle for the start

To funny-up the worry wart

दर्ज़ी के दर पर

लिए एक मीटर आस फिर उसी दर पर

तौबा कर निकले थे जहाँ से कल को

कल के चाक-ए-उम्मीद को कर के रफू

सब्र का देके नया सा अस्तर

होटों पे सी कर हसीं की गोटी

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

जहाँ हुआ था एक कुरते का कत्ल

और मिली थी एक सलवार की लाश

जहाँ मेरी भी एक नस फूटी थी

फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

देखो तो और चारा भी क्या है?

हर दर पे सद-रंग सितम सिलतें हैं

यहाँ से लाश तो बर-आमद हुई

कहीं कहीं थो वह भी नहीं मिलतें हैं

गुस्से को कर के दामन का गांठ

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

These heated days and nights of summer, one finds, are very conducive to thinking. Normally one could desist by asserting that over-taxing the brain is never a good idea. But in this heat what is half a degree more? So when I lie awake between dusk and dawn awaiting that precious half-hour when the old day’s heat has abated and the new day's heat is yet unborn, I ponder, dear people, upon life’s important questions.

Naturally then, I wonder what the factors are for success in IPL.

The bookies must have had something in mind when they went with the Deccan Chargers as favourites and gave the Rajasthan Royals the longest odds during the pre-tournament buzz. The light of bitter hindsight makes one wonder piteously what it could have been. But whatever potential or lack of it these teams had is of no consequence now. One must objectively analyse the Present Truth. The Rajasthan Royals top the tally and the unfortunate DCs and the even more pathetic Bangalore Royal Challengers are going “pehle aap” for the bottom slot in near Awadhi style.

So what makes a team tick? The mother has a theory. She thinks success at IPL is indirectly propotional to the level of bravado in the teams slogan. The unstoppables – indeed, what’s to stop? Duniya hila denge- definitely it is a shaky little world the Mumbaikars inhabit. And let us not even get started about the wretched professors of Jeeteinge hum shaan se.

All in all the theory sounds good, but is it rational? No, I’ll give you mine.

I think it is about back support. Not some spinal appendage but about how much your backers Chadao you. See , I’ll give you empirical evidence. Opening match – SRK turns up amidst the greatest hoopla we’ve witnessed since the Abhi-Ash wedding. To New Zealander Brendon McCullum who is probably unused to such herds of humans it must have seemed like the whole nation was there with the king in attendance. He must have felt like a gladiator performing for some roman emperor, because his glaze-eyed innings of 158* was definitely 90% charged by the adrenalin pulsing through his veins. Then SRK goes off to view his wax statue and guest-edit the Delhi Hindustan Times supplement and the team experiences a slump without their shahi patron.

Ms. Zinta’s team is performing consistently under the warm gaze of her approval, her beatific smiles and possibility of a hug. All well there.

The Mumbai Indians (what a silly name!) started off with injuries, ill-tempered outbursts and dismal performances. I hate to give him credit for anything, but ever since that terrible Ambani man has started turning up in a show of supercilious solidarity, the teams seems to be jumping through hoops to please the big man.

And the leaders- The Rajasthan Royals- the team that can do no wrong- what inspires them? I say blue and beige nylex saris. (or I suppose they are pure chiffon or something, but you know what I mean) Surely if the Maharanis of your host-land would condescended to wear uniform saris with your team colours, and come cheer with regality intact, that should give you an exalted opinion of your own importance? Not to mention the palace tours, the Rajasthani hospitality, photo-sessions in Rajput warrior ensemble, sword and all.

Basically I am saying, treat them nice, tell them they matter; works for children, works for cricketers.

And on the other side of the spectrum is an ace idiot like that intolerable Vijay Mallaya. Hasn’t the sense or the thaheraav to appear gracious. No sooner had they lost a couple of matches his whining and whinging began to be heard. A few more, heads had to roll. Now he has the gall to criticise Dravid. The stupid man would have been better served to just grin and bear it. At least could have salvaged some dignity all round. But no! Had to have his toys or a pound of flesh. Has single handedly destroyed every vestige of morale! Right now, I don't care if they don't win a single other match. Sometimes the face has got to be spited.

Again I find Swati Muthyam provides the theme song-

Andaa-dandaa untaadani aa vijaya malyanu nammu kunte

Gunde lenee manishalle ninnu kondakonalaku vadilesada?

Muthyala vana

Fell asleep last night wondering what had made Sreesanth bawl. Sheetal woke me up at the crack of dawn by announcing in my ear that it was Harbhajan. So the theme song for the day has been “chinnari ponnari Sreesanta ninnu yavaru kottarrayya? Bhajji nannu kottadu baaboi, Bhajji nannu thittadu baaboi!”

Find and keep

(Also posted at Urban Babblers)

A couple of months ago the Guardian Poetry workshop had a very interesting exercise designed by a poet called David Morley.The exercise requires us to find poetry in nature or descriptions of nature. Morley says that very often even the most prosaically intended, quasi-scientific descriptions of natural things and phenomenon in such material as field guides can be astonishingly beautiful; he is very right.

Being a birder and Indian I naturally turned to Salim Ali. My difficulty then was to choose a passage; they were all variously lovely. So I opened a page at random as suggested. I just took most of what I found and placed it in a ‘live’ context. It (the context) happened to be the intended one and one I am most familiar with.

Here’s the result-

ID

Could it be

the unmistakable cousin of the Indian Pond Heron

Upper parts chestnut-cinnamon

Check

Stripe down foreneck

Strike two.

Female duller

A male then.

Resident

Solitary

Hmmm

Habits:

very similar to those of a Little Green Heron

Bookmark and flip:

When surprised

on its nest

or cornered assumes

characteristic attitude of the tribe

termed the ‘on guard’.

Ocular note:

Neck stretched perpendicular,

bill pointing skyward,

the bird freezes,

astonishingly obliterated

amongst its reedy environment.

That’s a wrap.

But just to know:

Nests – in the south west monsoon

Nest – a small twig platform

Eggs – four or five

White.

Note: Chestnut Bittern; nos: 1

Indigo- a kind of blue

Heavy rains in Hyderabad. It stared off looking like some regular conventional-response-to-summer convection rainfall. Now suddenly in the past twenty four hours it has poured non-stop and the depression in the Arabian Sea has seeped insidiously across the drenched states and into me. It is a heavy somnolent sense of uneasiness. It doesn’t help that a lot of work lies pending in other opened files on this very computer. Of course, that is a sure-shot situation to make you want play mutinously at trivial pursuits, no?

So to entertain myself I am going to carefully select from the pictures of my frog ‘Tattoo’ from yesterday and S papa’s birthday party. It is an amazing thing how parents of young children will know so many others with children of the same age. S and S sure know at least a quarter of the folks with children under the age of nine in Hyderabad. At least that is how it seemed when I waited politely for my turn while child after young twerp queued up for their poster colour tattoos. I gave them all a slip after dinner (and my dessert unfortunately) to go and corner the young artist. Nice chap, fine arts from JNTU, graphic/web design artist, does this on the side. Painted me, as you will see, a nice attitudy frog. I liked. It is a good thing we always have plastic gloves in stock in the house; will stretch it for as long as I can.

Here-

As I said, you have pressing work, you will do all sorts of other stuff. Among that other stuff is this-

Kismat mein nahi nuks apne fitrat mein mila
Ye ilm ru-ba-ru-e-ruh hokar fursat mein mila

Taa-umr-e-daanishi ne woh lazzat nahi bakshi
Jho ek naagahaan saaat-e-jahaalat mein mila

Tang-zunjzadah raahon mein dab ke chhut gaya jo nafas
Doob kar us zahan-e-aazaad-o-salaamat mein mila

Ehsaas-e-saleeb-e-zeest kaandhon pe hotaa hi nahi
Woh kuvvat-e-eitbaar tere ibaadat mein mila

Tu hai to rang-e-jahan ghulta hai tere aab mein
Jab nahi tho zauq-e-berangee tere furqat mein mila

Tere naqsh-e-paa mein chal ke dekha hai har dam
Chal ‘Asvi’ ab ke nijaat bagaavat mein mila

Stumbling upon delight

The thing about living in an old fashioned little colony in a largish city is the lazy familiarity it breeds. Not so much the intrusive intimacy of village life, but a mutual mapping of life’s highlights. You know a lot about people with whom you may have exchanged no more than a hundred sentences in twenty years, because of the jobs they have held, their stand on garbage disposal, the periodic renovations of their houses, the kinds of women their sons have married etc. You live around them for so long that if there are no serious ripples in the facades, you think you have them pegged. When suddenly somebody manages to shake you out of this complacency, by revealing an exciting secret life, it is very thrilling, and makes you really wonder how much you are probably missing.

I got back from Devarakonda yesterday and felt like stretching my legs in the evening and so towed the mater along for a walk. There is a little dead-end littered colony adjacent to us that has quiet streets but is home to packs of jealous dogs. But we felt brave and ventured forth. I was in the middle of an animated sentence when something caught my eye. Too deep into what I was saying I took another dozen steps before I knew I just had to go back and investigate for my own peace of mind. On a very small section of the bottom of an otherwise ordinary building was an extraordinary mural integrated into the building, all with drainage pipe and beam structures. Intrigued, I walked closer to see that a little pathway of textured cement paving led up to a door. It was entirely inviting and no harm could come of just popping my head in. I was fully prepared to explain myself to strangers, when I walked into the darlingest room/artist studio you ever saw. Instead of a stranger, the man who stood before me was a man who I had thought of as salt-of-the-earth kind of banker for close-on twenty five years.

I just said Namaste and barged in and it was quite obvious that I had thoroughly discomfited him. But I was a little stunned by all the visual stimuli around me and the implications of it, and anyway I was too fascinated to be able to do the decent thing and leave quickly. Instead I stood there and gaped and asked questions. How long had he been doing it, what mediums does he use, does he exhibit and I jabbered on all the time staring at the walls – the man had talent, this was no keep-yourself-busy-after-retirement kind of outfit; quite obviously it was the real thing.

I think he was desperately tempted to pass off the whole thing as a something belonging to his friend, a very young man who was standing by watching us. But that man was even less interested than me in accommodating my neighbour’s obvious desire for secrecy. He showed me specifically to all the most interesting pieces and told me how they met at an art gallery and immediately struck a rapport and started a partnership. My head was reeling a bit by now and so it was lucky that my mother came to check if I had disappeared into a time-portal. This was not so lucky for the poor man who probably thought I was bad enough without having to contend with my mother too. Anyway she managed to draw me away before I could beg to be shown above stairs through that incredibly delightful yellow painted stairway. With repeated threats of visiting again, I left.

I bounced the entire way back home. It was too delightful a revelation to credit. I am just a very tiny bit concerned that I have chanced upon the secret life of a person and that I should perhaps have slunk away without uttering a squeak. But since I doubt I was capable of it if my life depended on it, I shall not fret. And it is such a wonderful secret that surely just me knowing it can’t hurt?

Treading Momin's ground

With one thing or the other Momin's masterpiece has been whirling in my head these past days. There is something about truly great ghazals (probably their familiarity) that makes their Radeef-Kaafiyaas resonate with an implusive energy. Well, I have been playing with this one, but crave pardon for the impertinence by paraphrasing Ahmed Faraz- (written originally as you might guess, for Ghalib)
'Momin teri zameen par likhee tho hai ghazal
lekin tere kad-e-sukhan ke barabar nahi hun main'

Well here goes-

Jinhe rashk tha mere roz-e-aaraam se
Unhe kaho ab raat ka savera nahi hota

Kusoor-e-naama-e-khushk naamabar ka hai
Varna woh dil hota naama nahi hota

Mere pindaar ko bakshaa hi nahi kadmon ne
kaash yun dil-kash tera koocha nahi hota

Jung-e-dil mein nihatton pe vaar kya theek?
Jadal-e-jazb ka ye saleeka nahi hota

And one in in butchered Dakhani because I am feeling homesick for Hyderabad-

Mereich naam ka koitho aur nikle tho achcha hoinga
Phir bol saktoon ye beikhtiyaar dil mera nahi hota

Devarakonda diary - 1

I am not trying here to run down the joys that we get dealt out in life, but the thing is, they do tend to be universal. Difficulties on the other hand have so much character. Sometimes they are so nuanced that they seem to come tailor-made for the person they afflict. It is possible to tell so much about a person from the kind of troubles they land up with. And it is a perfectly true cliche that people tell strangers their immediate troubles. It is one of the reasons I like travel. Not that I have some ghoulish fascination for human suffering; it is just that it gives me insights into lives other than mine. Perfectly whole viewpoints, opinions, lifestyles and minds - just not mine; it is very liberating. It is interesting to see someone's life, and then by an act of transference my own, as a construct of multiple elements and then view those elements individually.
And just because it will be nice to remember her by, I am putting down an account of a woman who travelled next to me on the bus to Devarakonda.

Returning home from visiting/nursing a probably pregnant daughter in Hyderabad. Desperate to get to Mallepalli before sunset because it is a ten rupee auto drive away from her home in a nearby village. She has a cell-phone but only has a few operations under control. She manages to call someone at the village to try and get someone to pick her up, but doesn't get through to the person she wants to talk to. There is a missed call. She doesn't recognise the number (she can't read), but we hope it is from the village and so she asks me to try and call back. Now I am the last person you need in this kind of situation and without knowing quite how, I connect to the very person she has been trying to avoid. A little background on this individual. He is married to her step-daughter and as a consequence feels that he is meted out step-mother-in-lawly treatment from her, despite her having been to excruciatingly conscientious pains to be perfectly equal in her behaviour all these years. My guilt mounts as he calls about seven times in the next hour trying to convince her to stopover at his village claiming her for his also sick wife. She turns him down with wonderful courtesy each time.
See, my lady has hens who have been handed over for safekeeping to neighbours. But neighbours never do more than their bare duty, do they? Then she is also worried about two other hens who have disappeared to lay eggs. Nobody to find and gather them. She also has to light the Tuesday lamp for the deity. Plus she needs to tend to her orange saplings which will yield fruit in about three years, hopefully. Till such time she depends on her sons'-in-law generosity, because her husband is a wastrel who obviously spends his time living and quarrelling alternately with each of his daughters.
The son-in-law (the one she has been staying with) has covered her bus and auto fare but for a meal she will have to get home.
My lady is tired and worn-out and somewhat offended for being treated in turn like a punching-bag, wet-nurse, provider and matriarch.
I think she is also a bit hungry, but she only plans to cook in the morning on account of the probability of finding snakes in the firewood after dark. She is very worried that she has possibily hurt and offended the only member of her family she is genuinely fond of, who does make unreasonable demands like the rest of them but does so probably more out of petulant affection than selfishness.
Mallepalli arrives ten minutes shy of dusk.