
On a sticky wicket
The Hindu
What would you do if you end up with bunches of overripe plantains?
One day recently, I found myself in a jam. I had in my kitchen some 40 large plantains (nenthrppazham in Malayalam), all overripe. That was the fallout of several successive visitors bringing me gifts of bunches of plantains, I didn’t know why.
I have been living alone in my apartment for several years. I had plenty of visitors but rarely gifts of bananas or anything else. Things slowly changed after I turned 90. Stray visitors from my larger family started bringing gifts of fruits.
In the wake of COVID-19, the stream of visitors dried up.

“Judicial time is a valuable public resource. Every frivolous or misconceived invocation of constitutional jurisdiction results in diversion of time from genuinely deserving litigants,” said the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court while imposing a cost of ₹50,000 on a man from Theni district who filed a petition with an unusual prayer: permission to conduct daily protests till the ‘World War’ ends.












