Summer vacations at Viyoor

 Summer vacations were almost always opposite the Viyoor Central Jail in Trissur 😜 And rains were early then....full-on by May. The moss ridden walls, the tee-vandi millipeedes, crotons and jasmines, night long thundering and clapping on the tile roof, power cuts enabling the longing to sleep on the cool black or red oxide shiny floors.....so so many memories. But the most lingering memory is waking up early, on your own wish, to a rain drenched morning, and meandering aimlessly, in my maternal uncles old ancestral home, in a daze through the smoky and deliciously flavored firewood kitchen, to watch the cows being milked in the cow shed, trying out the umikari mixed with salt to brush my teeth instead of Colgate, and reaching the well in the backyard kitchen garden to finish off washing my face and return back to the kitchen, to watch with amazement the dexterity with which the women of the large household managed the  flames and huge vessels, in-between flitting across the adjacent treasure trove of a store room....while I was served steaming hot puttu (poootu in Trissur lingo 😀) with sugar on top  and milk in a steel glass on a bench and desk kind of dinning arrangement inside the kitchen 😍  For a city kid from hot, dry and relatively barren Gujarat, this was magical... Nothing remains now, neither the house or my loving uncle...my ma's only sibling, the hoard of cousins all dispersed. No scanned photographs for instant uploads. In my mother and with her I relive these memories....and of course, in the surviving tropical greens and laterite walls of KeraJoseph PadukadadJoseph Lazer LSijo Johny JAbraham Muringatheryatheryatheryery,