Fowl Play

As someone who grew up in the decades following the country's independence and studied in Tamil medium and had problems of communicating with people who could not understand why I pronounced Leopold and Leopard similarly and why champagne remained cham-pag-ne to me for a long time, I could fully relate to Gautam Nadkarni's haibun world where children and some adults constantly have to deal with gaudy green blazers, cats named Nebuchadnezzar, bananas with such a terrible identity crisis that they split and getting drunk on Coca-Cola on the rocks. And there is nothing really wrong if you think Istanbul is a male cow, for does it really matter, in the long run, as they say? The haibun and senryu with haiga drawings that come as bonus certainly pep up the otherwise dull lives that we live, listening to stories of falling bridges and falling planes, not to talk of fallen and falling leaders. Like the kid with the mouth full said, "More thugar in my oatth," I would like to say with my mouth full of sambar-soaked idlis, "I want more of these 'thories' to keep everyone 'thortling.'"

- C S Lakshmi 'Ambai,' Writer