Mar 26, 2026 THE BLOG

Greeting the Ghosts:
(First posted on my WordPress blog on Feb. 10, 2013)
©Vijaya Sundaram

Every morning, when I wake up, and every night when I go to sleep, I greet my ghosts.

They cluster around me, aching with loneliness.  “Tell us about it all,” they sigh and await the news of a world they crave.

They never got used to being dead, you see.

I take pity on them sometimes.  They are so very sad

Still, I ask myself, Is this all there is to it?  Shouldn’t they be floating higher and higher, and eventually get sucked into the vortex of the sun?

I don’t tell them what I think.  Their feelings might get hurt.  One of them, a tender-hearted spirit stays long by my bedside, asking me all about my sleep.  I lead it into my dream world, and it takes in a deep breath.  The other ghosts, jealous and fretful, pull it back into their world.  The tender-hearted spirit weeps.  The windows rattle outside.

I turn over.  I need to sleep.  Morning awaits me, fresh-eyed and abrupt, like a child waiting to roust one from one’s rest.

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Mar 25, 2026 THE BLOG

About my Grandfather, K.G. Madhavan:
©Nov. 10, 2020
By Vijaya Sundaram

I love walking.  I think I got it from my maternal grandfather.  He walked everywhere, and was fit until the day he fell down some stairs. He died a few months after that.

He was a lovely man, my Thatha.  He loved all his children, and his grandchildren, and was a sentimental man who surprised me when he wept in movie theatres (I don’t remember which movie I watched with him, but it moved and pleased me to see him weep).  

My sister and I used to visit him and my grandmother and aunts in Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu during our summer vacations.  (My brother hadn’t yet been born, so he wasn’t with us on any of these visits).  Their large, long, somewhat dark home (except for sunlight filtering in from dusty windows close to the ceiling in the grand living room) was a lovely place filled with magical things (a large, ancient transistor radio especially fascinated me, and a very large, “easy” chair made of wicker was also tempting).  I remember we used to play an Indian version of a game which I later recognized here as Mancala.  The feel of the cowrie shells we used was something I recall vividly.  At least, I think it was cowrie shells – memory can sometimes mislead, even if the sensation of the memory is true.

There was the little room in which (so I had been informed) I was born, full of mysterious objects which, alas, have faded from memory.  I would go in there, wrapped in visions of a past that weren’t exactly mine, maybe borrowed from other people’s accounts, but all these memories overlapped somewhat.  I’d imagine my baby self, look around, make up stories, pretend I was the doctor with the black bag and come to check on mother and child.  It smelled nice, that room – sort of like teak, like warmth.

Somewhere, at the other end of the house, was a set of stairs leading to an attic-type room filled with books which had belonged to one of his older brothers – gorgeously illustrated books, clearly printed in England, with stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and stories about Robin Hood and his Merry Men.  I adored those books, and would always rush up there whenever I visited, and proceed to lose myself in them, imagining I had time-traveled to ye olde England, among either knights and ladies, or robbers in forests.  Fun stuff!  

Another thing I remember is this: A peacock would visit their terrace regularly in the evenings.  Once I learned that that was the case, I never failed to hurry up to the terraced roof, and await this peacock, who would fly in, and appear at the other end of the roof.  Rich, turquoise-blue, royal blue, and velvety green, this peacock would strut around at the edge of the terrace.  I could never get my fill of him.  I would gaze in awe every single time, never tiring of his beauty.  And I’d take care not to go too close, or scare him off. 

My aunt Chaaru Chitti would make beautiful, complex Kolams outside their door every morning, and stunning rangoli patterns all by hand (no gadgets), and fill them in with vivid colored powder.  There’d be daily chanting of Vishnu Sahasranamam every evening at their place, and neighbors would join us.  I memorized half of it at the age of ten, and would feel strangely moved by the sound of Sanskrit chanting, even if I didn’t really follow religious matters.

My grandmother Gomathy Paati would make us all manner of fantastic, crunchy South Indian savories and sweets, and make sure we were well-fed.  And still, my Thatha would look at my sister and me, and say, “Want to go and get some cake?”  My Paati would scold him, saying she had made us delicious goodies.  Of course, we’d jump at the chance to head out to the bakery, and eat those cakes (pink, frosted, with coconut topping!), and my grandmother would be annoyed with him, but seemed to smile behind her hand.  Of course, the truth was that HE wanted to eat those cakes as well, and WE provided the perfect excuse.

Thatha used to visit my family when we lived in Madras (now Chennai), and would sometimes say to me (a young pre-teen, or teen at the time):

“Want to go and have a tiffin and filter coffee at the Udupi Bhavan?” 

We lived in T. Nagar, and there was a nice “hotel” (as we called restaurants then) somewhere in the vicinity, and he LOVED buzzing off to this place, and enjoying a little treat.  This always puzzled me, because the food my grandmother made was, and still is, out of the world, and my mother’s cooking is also divine.  I was always game to go, of course, because … why not?!

Later, of course, I understood that it was the act of going out and sitting among other people, generally taking in the world, and being served delicious restaurant food by waitrons that pleased him so much.  I understood it better when I used to push off by myself to grade student papers at coffee-shops, or even Cafe Barada (when it was in Arlington in those days).  I just liked being in the busy, or quiet, hum of a personal-impersonal space, and eating nice things made by people I didn’t know well!

Oh, and another thing: He used to embarrass me by burping and belching loudly and appreciatively after a good meal.  He’d burp, and pat his slim tummy, and look over mischievously at me. 

I’d say crossly, “Why do you ALWAYS have to make an aepam?” 

And he’d reply, “That’s the way you let the person who made the food know you really liked it,” or similar words in Tamil.  

Another thing that embarrassed me (there’s no end to the things that embarrass teenagers and young adults, as I found, to my pleasure as I grew into a middle-aged mom): He used to wear a “veshti,” no matter where we went.  Not only that, but he’d hitch it into a skirt-like half-dhoti, and walk around in the summer.  I was mortified.  Later, I loved the fact that he didn’t CARE what others thought of it.  He was comfortable.  He was a very handsome man, tall, slim, square-jawed, with a permanent stubble, and a tiny kudumi (hair pulled into a ‘man-bun’ at the nape of his neck).  He NEVER ever cut it.  He reveled in sticking to his traditional Tamil Brahmin self, and didn’t cave in to Western ways, unlike the rest of us.  I used to tease him about his skirt-like veshti, and his little kudumi, but he just scoffed at me.  This, paradoxically, pleased me no end.

He was a loyal and deeply affectionate man, my Thatha.  When my family went through hard times, he showed up, as if by magic, and took care of us in whatever way he could.  So did my grandmother.  As far back as my memory goes, they were always there for us.

When we moved to Poona (now Pune) to stay at my maternal uncle’s home with his family (before we found our own place), I had joined Fergusson College.  My Thatha went with me to buy my bike, so I could avoid the slow, crowded, polluted, stinky Pune buses.  I remembered being grateful for his help – buying a bicycle in a new (ish) city was intimidating (today, with our cell phones’ help, we can go anywhere, and buy anything, but it was way harder then.)   And I loved my blue BSA bike, had it for the longest time, and went everywhere on it.

Later still, when he was dying at age 92, I couldn’t go to Pune to see him  – I was stuck here in the dark winter, dealing with schoolwork, deeply sad.  Warren saw him, though (he was in India, on a short Hindustani music tour).  He told me that he had visited my Tatha, had held his hand, and had sung to him.  My gratitude was profound.

Thatha died a couple of years before S appeared in our life.  I wish he could have seen my baby.  He would have been happy, profoundly happy.  And he would have been thrilled that I’d chosen the name of a beloved goddess for her.

Thatha LOVED music, and adored my mother’s beautiful singing voice.  He was a gentle soul.  He was an Appreciator, a Rasika of all the good things that life offered.

And he walked EVERYWHERE.  

K.G. Madhavan, my beloved grandfather, my Thatha, is still bright in my memory today.  I don’t feel he’s gone.  I missed him today, suddenly, unaccountably.

Hence, this post.
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Jan 27, 2026 THE BLOG

Woke up with this Nirvana cover of a David Bowie song looping endlessly in my head.

Apparently, Bowie was inspired by this poem by Hughes Mearns titled “Antigonish [I met a man who wasn’t there]:

“Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…”

Bowie’s title reminded me of Robert Heinlein’s book “The Man Who Sold the Moon.” Checked that out, and I was pleased to learn that I was right.

Anyway, here is Kurt Cobain’s haunting rendition, which Bowie (reportedly) really liked:

Feb 13, 2013 THE BLOG

Fritter and Waste – A Journal Entry of Sorts
©February 2nd 2013
By Vijaya Sundaram

So, today was a weird day.  I had pulled an all-nighter last night.  Entirely my fault, of course.  Plus, I’d slept barely three hours the night before.  Also my fault.  I called it “doing work.”  I could have done that work earlier on Friday, and more of it on Saturday.  One pays the price for dreaming it all away in activities that are well … time-wasters.

Here’s the confession:  I like wasting time.  I am a time waster.  There, I said it.  Can I be excused now?

It’s fun to do.  One has the sense of being a naughty schoolchild, cheating time of its due, thumbing one’s nose at the hours, the minutes, the days of one’s life.  Since it’s all going to separate and break off in gigantic glacial chunks into a sea of anonymity and pointlessness, why not play on the edges of the glacier?  There’s a certain madness and pleasure in it.  There’s a strange satisfying sense of self-destructiveness to it.   Guilty pleasure is the phrase that comes to mind.  Then, after I do it, I feel ashamed.

My shame at being such an idiot, and also, a deeply Hindu sense of duty make me work even harder.  If left to my own devices, I would sit for hours on a field of grass (free of deer tics, fleas and hideous bugs, of course!) that would stretch for miles, and I would stare into the endless blue of a summer sky, mouth open, drinking the light, inhaling the sun, feeling all that helium, hydrogen and whatnot forming and reforming into nebulae within me, making me give birth to stars.

I wouldn’t feel in the least bit bad about it.  I would let my limbs relax (they aren’t relaxed these days).  I would surrender my body to lethargy.  I would dissolve into a protoplasmic blob of pointless, existentially satisfied matter.  And those stars would burn bright in the deep night of my protoplasmic blobbitude.

Enough with all this universe talk.  Back to reality.  I’m afraid that if I let my limbs relax, I will never tauten up again.  And I need to have them be taut and ready to face the mad onrush of my days.  I see upwards of one hundred and seven students EVERY day, and make eye-contact, exchange pleasant words, greetings (we’re not in Dilbert-land here) with hundreds more in the hallways of my school.  I cannot be anything other than alert, happy, ready to serve and ready to drop my all for another’s needs.  And that’s okay.  I like doing that.  I don’t begrudge it — but it takes a lot of energy.  One cannot be all slack-jawed in such a milieu.  One needs to be all aligned inside.  I’ve perfected the art of alignment while drooping inside, ready to dissolve.

I love being lazy.  I love wasting time.  And I also like to work.  Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then, I am Walt Whitman.

I suppose I should learn yoga, she thought, indifferently.  It would help, she thought idly.  But then again, I could just use my time better, she continued.  Go to sleep, for instance, and wake up, dewy eyed, and not giddy and hyperbolic (like I was today).

Back to my old theme.

Well, goodnight, dear readers!

Tags: #Time, nebulae, Pink Floyd, School days, Sleep, Walt Whitman, Yoga