Smart Solution!

We had three palm trees in our street and it became our identity inspite of the addresses and plot/door numbers that every house had. From cylinder delivery walahs to postmen, everyone knew of our street as "anda moonu pana maram irukira theru thane ma?” We even gave our addresses to auto rickshaw drivers using them,” Our house is the second one or third one to the left/right of those palm trees”.

But as luck would have it the Panchayat people brought those trees down as they continuously interfered with the power lines. Now the dilemma was that we lost the easy identification to our street. So during the usual conference of all the aunties at 7 pm (the time with no serials on Sun TV) under the lamp post, the agenda was about the very missing dear palm trees. Gone were the scary reminders of snakes hanging from them, one aunty was already missing the "nongu" that we all had during summer , and the other was obviously missing the little shade those trees provided for her husband's bike in the afternoon, when he came for lunch. "Now we will always have to count the number of streets running across and tell everybody so that they would be able to reach our homes, che thalaivali” went one, while the aunty with the longest hair was also thinking on the same lines of how to tell the address from now on.

Just then our neighbour's daughter, a cutie pie, said “Amma why don’t we put a board here saying, “This is the place where there were three palm trees previously” and now we’ll tell our address to everybody using the board, how simple no?” and she ran away clutching her doll humming her favourite actor Vijay’s song from a new movie. "What an idea" said an aunty in the orange sari, "Adra sakkai" went one, but before they all could do “wah wah’s” for the girl someone realized that the time was 8’o clock, the time for one of the favourite serials of everyone present, and so they dispersed with a mental note to meet again tomorrow under another lamp post perhaps, but on the street where there could almost be a board saying, “This is the place where there were three palm trees previously”.

A smart solution hmmm!