Vellaikkaari: I [heart] TN (pre-Deepavali)

Earlier I had been feeling homesick, or actually sick for a home -- any home that is at least semi-permanent. I was feeling sorry for myself, for still being completely itinerant at the age of 28 when my peers are settling down someplace and have a semblance of a stable, normal life (whatever that is). But then I started looking back at the photographic evidence of the past few months and started to get the feeling that there is something to be said for this sort of life as well, and that I am pretty lucky to be here. Probably in 10 years I'll be wishing I could be "free" again. Right now I am feeling that I really do [heart] TN. (TN meaning Tamil Nadu.)

Of course as I write this, my blood pressure is slowing inching up with each deafening and heart-attack inducing bomb (known euphemistically as Lakshmi Candle "firecrackers") that goes off in bursts of pre-Deepavali exuberance. It has just begun this evening. I first noticed them in Mahatma Gandhi Nagar this morning, and slowly but surely the explosions have spread like a cancer throughout the whole city. By Thursday I will be hating my life completely, as bombs will be going off twenty-four hours a day by then. My favorite is having crackers going off next to me as I walk down the road. So if I've got something nice to say about TN, I'd better say it now, pre-Deepavali firecrackers.