My Former Neighbours

Posted on by Roshan Leave a comment

I saw some of former neighbours on my way back home today. The house next door to ours in Thrikkakara was rented out in 2005 year to a family of 5. Our earlier neighbours were very nice people – the father of the house died in a scooter accident when I was about 17. He is survived by his wife, son & daughter. His wife currently lives with their son, who is a Air Force pilot and his wife & kid. And the daughter lives with her husband and two kids in a house near their old one.

The family that came to live next to us seemed to be a good family as well – but they sure were noisy as hell! The two boys in the family are probably in their late 20s now and then in their early 20s. Their mom & sis are much more petite but they sure made up for the lack of size by high decibel levels. The father it seems is the odd one out, not only do I not know what he looks like, having never seen him, but he is also kinda quite! The two women and the younger guys used to have loud discussions from 10 pm to midnight and often beyond that. What’s more, I think their voices would scare the dog, Shawny Jr! She did not seem to like to spend time in that side of our plot and preferred to be in the front veranda or to the left side of the house.

The discussions could get pretty aggressive at times and it seems like some blood has been shed at one point or the other. I think it is the mom or the daughter who is the loudest. I have never met them, only seen them but not been introduced at all) so I can’t really make out which voice is of the mother and which is of the daughter as the two are quite similar. The boys start the debates rather whole-heartedly but give up in the end and surrender meekly to the ladies. Sometimes at night, when I’d go to the downstairs bathroom I could hear them go at it, as the boys’ room is on the side of the bathroom (shit coming from both).

The one good thing I like about them is that the guys have good taste in music. They are huge metal & rock fans with Metallica seeming to be their favs. But they play the music so loudly, my dad used to tell me that I’s never have to play my stereo system as those guys play theirs so loudly. Occasionally though they have played some stupid stuff like Celine Dion and Madonna. And they sing so badly, voices that sound like a metal pipe being viciously rubbed with sandpaper. One afternoon while going to feed the dog, I heard one of them mercilessly killing a song – it took me a while to understand that he was actually singing(??) that asshole Enrique Iglesias’s song (the one that goes “Why, Why”. I ran as fast as I could.

The Monsoon Update

Posted on by Roshan Leave a comment

Well the monsoon took it’s time in being consistent but it looks to be pretty consistent from the last few days. Usually we have heavy rainfall from June 1st onwards but although it did rain, it wasn’t like the previous years. After all the heat we suffered through I was hoping that we’d have a nice solid monsoon season. And meteorologists did predict a much heavier rainfall that earlier seasons (I’m sure some people were looking into building arcs) but it hasn’t been that case so far. In truth it has actually been more like a disappointment even though the rain has picked up quite a bit in July.

For most of the last few days it’s been raining early in the morning and stops around 7 or 7:30 am. Then it is mostly sunshine with occasional bursts of rain fall. It goes away in the late afternoon (probably to allow most of the office going crowd to go back home in a little peace) and then picks up at night. This way the nights are cool, the mornings are cold and the afternoons are mostly warm! Hmmm it might be ok for some but I like it to be a bit more warmer in the mornings – it’s not that great to take a bath in cold water! Like my cousin Sujith says – while living/working in Bangalore he didn’t have a water heater in his bathroom and during the colder days he would take a cold shower in the morning with icy cold water & scream all the while! The same is now true during the cold mornings we have during the Kerala mornings – is it that cold? Probably not to some in countries that have much colder temperatures. But for us – it’s too cold. Cold enough to imagine my sperm being frozen while still in the sack, as I take a bath in cold water.

I hope we do get lots more rain though. Especially in the Iddukki area because of the dams there and well we are dependent on the rain water for our electricity needs and supply. So yes more & more rain please. Only, could it be more in the afternoons and less in the early mornings?