The stories from Bala's life: The Introduction

EVERYDAY ROUTINE:

The mornings in Chennai was unusually beautiful. The pleasant and quite atmosphere allowed me to sip my ginger tea with peace in my house varandah. I glanced at my father, to what he was up-to. He had his own way of enjoying his morning routine by nosing inside the newspaper sipping his daily ginger tea which my mother made every day without fail. I had revisited my home after a brief stay in Bangalore because of work. I could see Mrs. Minnal down in the car parking taking her daily walk. She was called Minnal by everyone, after Eshwari Aunty coined her that name due to her lightning speed walk which she took on daily mornings and afternoons. Our building was neither so tall nor too big. It was built on one ground with which 18 families shared car parking and gym.Footpaths were made around the car parking to let everyone walk. While everyone would take 1-2 minutes to complete their one round of walking, Minnal would complete it in 30-40 seconds.

While we  were new to our  locality, Minnal too was quite new face there. She has come from Vellore. Minnal found my mother very interesting to converse with, as she would not even give anyone a minute chance to even patronize her conversation with  monosyllable nod. While very opponent would at-least utter to speak and convey their opinion, my mother would just nod at them with a pleasant smile. This made my mother to be the most desirable and convenient one to speak with for Minnal whose conversation was mostly about her son, family and other non-integral topics. My mother had postponed her cloth-drying routine in fear of beginning a conversation with her which would continue for one eternity as she would complete a round before my mom would dry one cloth up and then looked to clip them up.My mother found it very difficult to match to the speed of Mrs. Minnal. While all these flashbacks rolled on my mind, a familiar sound cut short my thought. It was Shoba- Our house maid. She repeated her same constant dialogue with no less  amazement on her face, when i heard her say it for the first time."Yenna ma, yeppo vandeenga?"(When did you come) she asked , as though she had no clue. She would have been here last morning to do her household job and had not spotted me or my stuffs, what does she expect? Me to have come to this house last week and become invisible or what? and then unveil my invisibility cloak and give darshan to her? Anyone with an average IQ would guess, i would have come in the time span between yesterday morning to today morning."Haa yesterday night" i responded to her with a grin though i thought it was a customary act to initiate a conversation with me.

While i went to kitchen to have a word with my mom, a sudden unusual sound stopped us.My father meanwhile has finished his tea and is now snooping around with whatsapp forwards, where suddenly a choir of musicians began to scream and shout. We waited for sometime and then my father asked my grand-mom" Is this your choir group singing?". This question has invoked absolute curiosity in my grandmother who was priorly engaged watching television. My father again played the loud sound again with increased volume, now it was with the sound of  TV running at the background score. My granma , having issues with hearing asked my father to play again, making anyone in the house impossible to utter a word. Shoba showed a signal to me by waving her hand indicating her departure, to which i waved back and closed the door. My father after a short conversation about the song , switched back to look into whatsapp updates, while my grandma talked about her past, her musical journey and other stories which lead one after the other. To which my mother was correctly predicting the next scene in the story, indicating that this was not the first time she had heard them. I was not new to them too.But of-course as a reader you are. So stay tuned for my first chapter of the story that is soon coming up.