Respected Sir/Madam,
Sorry for the delay in my letter. Usually I am very prompt with my correspondence. But this week all my schedules and discipline has gone to the dogs. Whose fault is this? If you are thinking Mrs. Mathrubootham, then you are 100% correct, computer lock kardiya jaaye.
This week full she has gone on excursion trip to Mysore with Housing Colony Ladies Association. They are going to see Mysore Palace, Chamundeshwari Temple, St. Philomena’s Church and all. Eating not one not two but three or maybe four meals a day from hotels. Full enjoyment without any self-control. Masala dosa for breakfast. Biryani for lunch. Vegetable puffs for evening tea. And North Indian naan, aloo gobi-type for dinner.
But it is easy for Indian ladies. You put on weight you wear same sari, you lose weight also same sari. Oh you are wearing salwar kameez? No problem. Just adjust the elastic. Luxury lifestyle.
Just before leaving I told her, Kamalam, you please take care, these ladies are all very suspicious Aruna Irani type characters. Maybe just in case for your protection, you keep jewellery and ATM card and other valuables inside secret purse and secretly deposit the purse inside blouse every night.
She laughed so loudly with her adulterated kerosene engine autorickshaw voice, I thought tubelight would explode. Then this woman is saying, old man we are living in this world or inside some Agatha Christie novel? I will be careful. You don’t worry, Mathrubootham. Maybe if I am lucky, I will see the young new Maharaja of Mysore. He is foreign-educated and very handsome.
Ok, then you marry him and live in his house no, bloody nonsense.
And at home? Poor Mr. Mathrubootham has to manage everything for one week. Cooking and cleaning and clothes and so many things. Whether my son will help his father? No chance sir/ madam. When it comes to home affairs, my son is more useless than zebra crossing on Mount Road. Actually he is even worse. Will zebra crossing use steel karandi on non-stick frying pan until pan looks like Eicher Map of Erode? Never.
What to do, it was only by 4 p.m. that I had a chance to sit down and read all the latest news items.
Sir/ Madam, as you are well aware, I am not like many other retired peoples who just sit at home and wait for painless expiry. I am constantly trying to understand all the latest developments in the world from sports to politics. So, after finishing one news item, I called my son and said, kanna, can you explain what is artificial intelligence? Apparently, it is going to take all the jobs from human beings. Is this why you very intelligently did not take any respectable job for all these years?
Sir/ Madam, you should have seen the excitement on my son’s face! He said, appa, I have been waiting all these years for you to ask me this very same question. For the next two hours, he did one Brilliant Tutorials on artificial intelligence. Not even a single thing I understood. So my son said, wait a minute, let me do live demonstration with mobile phone, computer, TV and all.
He pointed phone at me and said, ask for any information whatsoever, artificial intelligence will find it out. I said ok, what is Mrs. Mathrubootham doing in Mysore right now? My son said not like that, ask general knowledge type questions. Ok. Fine. No need to shout. So I asked computer how much is handsomeness of Maharaja of Mysore? Again he got upset. Appa, you ask normal questions like what is the distance from Chennai to Hosur or what is the capital of Yugoslavia and all…
So I said, ok computer, if son dies accidentally due to food poisoning, will father who made dinner go to prison or no? Son and phone vanished immediately.
Don’t worry, he will come back. I have made beetroot poriyal for dinner.
Yours in exhaustion,
J. Mathrubootham