Deep Ties

Superheroes need not always be men with amazing strength and the power to take on an army of enemies and come out victorious. Sometimes there are ordinary men who have qualities of greatness in them, which make them heroes in the eyes of their loved ones. This article is dedicated to one such wonderful man whom I have known and admired, not for his longevity, but for the sheer zest for living that made him a colourful actor on the stage of life! My maternal grandfather, my Muthassan, was a tall good looking gentleman who got better and better with age. Age did not dare wither him, and he could have posed for the portrait of Moses or any such venerable figure in his seventies. Muthassan had a prodigious collection of books, most of which could be found verbatim within his prodigious mind. What I found fascinating in all his well-thumbed volumes was that almost every page found comments written in his crabbed but legible hand, comments that could make me pause, ponder, understand, and ma

"Cats sleep anywhere, any table any chair!" T.S. Eliot had probably never met a cat like Rusty - one who prowls about all night, making weird mewing sounds that run up and down the scale, from a shrill soprano to a sinister bass. It is even more weird when he pounces on inert sleeping bodies, and scares them out of their skins. When my daughter moved to Dubai and into a flat of her own, her ever concerned friends landed up on her doorstep with this adorable honey and white colored kitten, with the most beautiful eyes possible. They also presented her with a little cage and a litter box, which Rusty as he was christened, took to with surprising ease. Today Rusty is monarch of all he surveys, as he clambers up the kichen slab, tears up bits of paper or, most irritating of all, opens out his mistress' wardrobe and pulls her carefully folded clothes down onto the floor. He pounces at anything that moves, be it a billowing piece of cloth or a pair of quick mov