My first holiday after the pandemic.

After several years I went on an extended holiday. To be precise it was a ten-day holiday in Coimbatore coinciding with the `Palkachi`  ( Milk Boiling) ceremony that my daughter Sowmya had scheduled for 9^th June at her new home in Air Force Naval Housing Enclave in Ganapathy.  Her family is shifting from Bangalore to CBE  in August. I went ten days earlier because I wanted to meet my old friends and a few close relatives in CBE. It was my first holiday after the pandemic.

Coimbatore is the city where I learnt the true meaning of friendship when I was active in Round Table. I also met a few friends living in popular Senior Citizens Homes to get first-hand information about life in such Homes. With pleasant weather for ten months in a year, Coimbatore has become THE place for  Senior Citizen Homes mainly for the upper-middle and upper-class citizenry. Since I am not confident about traveling alone these days, my walking friend and a fellow Rotarian, Balu (Balasundaram), who has business interests in Tiruppur and a home in Coimbatore volunteered to accompany me to CBE and back by air. I am glad that I accepted Balu`s invitation to stay at his beautiful home in CBE. It was a five-star comfort that  I experienced. The variety of tasty food (especially the egg dosa) that I consumed has made me put on 3 kgs. in ten days. I was overwhelmed by the wonderful hospitality of Balu and his wife Kala during my stay with them.

 I also stayed at the Vedantha Satsang, a new senior citizen Home in Kovaipudhur as a guest of my schoolmate Raju, who has a villa in the complex. The facility is new and did not have many people staying there. The two-day stay at this facility gave me a practical idea about what it feels like to live in such a facility. I also visited a few other Homes to talk to my friends and a few other inmates.  (Await another article from me on the subject based on my talk with inmates of these Homes).

While in CBE I did not miss visiting the big  Shirdi Sai Baba temple on the two Thursdays I was there. During the stay, I also managed to find the time to read two books and finished proofreading my interview-based articles in Madras Musings to be featured in a book ( my 12^th in 13 years)that  I am planning to publish to coincide with my 80^th birthday in August. On the whole, it was a memorable holiday, totally relaxing.

After enjoying the salubrious weather in CBE I returned to Chennai to face the unbearable heat that has been scorching the city for several days. It feels like  landing  in hell after staying in a heaven for 10 days. It is quite possible that I may shift to CBE to a Home when I decide not to be a burden on my children in my old age! The weather in Coimbatore is certainly a factor that is likely to influence my choice!