Memories unleashed by the written word.

Since we are looking at getting an LCD TV for the TV-room in Kerala, I spent sometime last week cleaning up the room and re-arranging the furniture so that we could identify the best location for the TV.

While cleaning the shelf in the room, I came across a diary, which even though I was seeing
after many years, I instantly recognised as one of the diaries maintained by my grandfather.
I should know, because in the later years of his life, when his eyesight deteriorated and a
stroke rendered one symmetric half of his body paralysed, I took on the role of his scribe.

While I relished the role of writing out his notes, the only minor problem was writing in Malayalam. Having never learnt Malayalam in school, my only exposure to it was the
private tuition that my Dad arranged for us when we spent 2 months of vacation every
year at Kerala. So while we could read the language pretty well, writing was a bit tedious.

But I still enjoyed the task and would look forward to the sessions of diary writing. I think
I might have got the habit of diary writing from him, because it was from around that time
that I started writing diaries for the next 8 years or so. All of the diaries are still with me
and it is fun to delve into one of them now and then - to relive the childhood crushes I had
and other incidents which seemed significant enough then to deserve a diary entry.

Even this blog is an extension of my diary writing. Instead of writing on paper, I have my thoughts in cyberspace. Only difference is that while I am very guarded about my paper
diaries, I have left the blog open to anyone who is interested to read it.

Anyway, I bring the diary to Chennai deciding to read it at leisure. Yesterday night I
decided to have a brief look and was floored by the varied contents and the memories it
brought back.

My grandfather starts the entries sometime in the early seventies around which time he
retired from his job. It has entries by him for my parent's wedding, birth details of me &
my sisters along with our stars (as per Malayalam calendar), construction details of the
home we live in today etc.

I can recognise my writing wherein I have recorded details of coconuts harvested every
few months from our 3 plots, detailed expense statements of the money my Dad gave for
home expenses etc.

I can make out my sister's writing on some pages where she has either used the pages
for making academic notes or for writing down the lyrics of some movie songs from that
time - the Tamil movie 'Punnagai Mannan' being one of them.

Ofcourse, some of the stuff written in Malayalam by my Grandpa is not decipherable by
me and I guess I will have to take my wife's help as she is more proficient in the language.
Anyhow, I guess it would be fun to post some of the info here as it gives an insight into
how life was some 35 years ago.