A few days with a ghost.                    Chapter 10

life in Munich

 Stella is a brilliant  staff reporter and a sharp photographer working in CNN  in our team. During the recent accident in Munich, her swift movements covering the accident spot brought accolades to our team.  She has been in our team for the past four years and we both developed an intimacy because of our close association. 

 I was staying at Fieldmoching in Munich , a little far away from the City. I could see the BMW tower from my residence  which was a little far away. 

 Out side it was snowing down .Braving the biting  cold I stepped out of my apartment  wearing a long ash coloured coat and a cap to cover my head and ears.   I had  resemblance of  Mr Drake of Drake detective agency close aide of Perry Mason, the investigative  Lawyer. Weather was chilly and I was shivering inside my coat  and my HTC mobile showed the temperature  as -2 degree Celsius with a feel of -7 degree and the wind was blowing at 50 kmph. 

Stella held my arms closely. She looked beautiful in her brown coat with brown coloured  woollen bristles attached to her coat spread like an angel’s head dress over her head. She was thin and very fair with beautiful blue eyes, with a figure which may beat the best hindi cine actress. I have seen the German girls here and all are having beautiful features which may even outbeat the Bollywood cine stars. I wondered whether all Spanish girls would be like her. Cannot be, my possessiveness reminded me. 

Surprisingly Stella was a vegetarian. Unlike some proclaimed vegetarians in India  , though they claim to be vegetarian, there is no taboo in taking eggs or fish ,she never used to take eggs even. Probably as the embryo might not have developed in eggs,  they consider not killing any livings. I watched her walking along with me like  lovers walk in hindi movies. 

‘Do the Indian girls share their bed with guys?’

‘ Normally , no, because we consider Indian culture is unique and superior’.  

I imagined how girls are marched on the ramp , half nude and people around watching the breast size, narrow line of the waist line, then down the naval and measuring the  fathom along with blistering of photo flashes etc, etc. So also there is no objection from any quarters, even from feminists when nude scenes are shown in cinema. But speak loud about Indian culture. If I had to tell all these she would get frightened and never come to India at all. 

“ hai, I have read that Indian girls are sold out side and people make money even politicians are involved”.

I somehow parried the question and answered “ oh, these are all happenings throughout the world, and India is no exception”.  We talked about our great India culture, Kerala culture, Tamil Nadu culture each state will claim that its culture is the best. 

Her family consisted of her brother and parents. Parents were quite old . My initial assumption that all foreigners were rich proved wrong . Of course they were rich to their level, taking care of themselves and keeping themselves engaged. Farming was given much importance and her parents were engaged in farming.   As the government provided old age benefits like health insurance pension etc her parents were seemingly happy. Her parents came to Germany holidaying for a week. They stayed with us. Unlike their daughter , they were not vegetarians.

“ Hello, gentle man , How are you, Mr Menong?” her father addressed me in a typical European accent. He totally made me a Chinese.

A few days with a ghost.                          Adv. Janardhanan venkiachalam

                                                                                                                    continues