Incredible people, the Muralidharan are, very generous and I still am not close to understanding them. They have South Indian eating habits, though their mother was raised in Northeast India. They are a resilient, caring, hard-working, intelligent and open-minded family. Tata (Aruna's grandfather) has hundreds of publications in his name as a researcher on limnology and sustainalby fisheries. He likes to eat oatmeal for dinner and make his own filtered coffee. Uncle (Aruna's father) is a well-read physics-reluctantly-turned-banker who is against eating raw vegetables and also eats oatmeal for dinner. He has an excellent memory, especially when it comes to cricket stats. And, Auntie is the one who knows who wants oatmeal and when, cooks and runs the household. She is an official cancer-survivor and has an amazing ability of admitting when she is wrong.
Ok, enough about them, their flat is amazing. It is a 3 bedroom place in Walkeshwar and the best part is they have windows on either sides of the house and they keep them all open all the time to let the sea breezes cross-ventilate the flat. Household electronics have shorter lives, but they say its still worth it.
Aruna enjoying the window breeze.
Uncle and Auntie at the table. Auntie is showing me how to choo choo and blow a train horn with my hand. I was not a successful student though I put in the effort. (photo credit: Aruna)
In South India, wearing a lungi (wrapper around waist) is common. Aditya, the Northern Indian son-in-law has picked up the lungi habits. Sweeping, however, is no easy task in lungi (photo credit: Aruna)
The Muralidharan residence served as our workspace for discussing in much more depth, learning from each others' experiences, and brainstorming ideas around this urban workshop idea. People can say similar sounding things, but only with time do you realize that you are actually sounding similar but meaning different. We also had some help for Anil, a local friend of Aditya and Aruna's.
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