Excited with a lot of stories from his Delhi trip, Muthu enjoyed the last few weeks of the summer vacation. He narrated stories of the people and places he had seen to his family and to his buddies, Maamu and Jones.
They ate more than a humanly recommended amount of mangoes. Smartly they also had a lot of milk and spent time swimming in the local pool to cool off the heat. They enjoyed the cricket matches both on TV and their own "league" ones as well. They watched the tourist crowd come
in hordes to cool off in the ultimate hill station of the South - at least as per Muthu’s ratings.
One such family looked Japanese to Muthu. There was a girl about seven-eight years old with her parents. The lady held a guide in her hand and the girl was using a very advanced digital camera with a bit of guidance from her father.
It had been a few months since the tsunami had devastated Japan. Muthu had seen the TV coverage and read all the newspaper articles pertaining to it.
The utter helplessness and the plight of the people did not fail to move him. He wondered what if he had been travelling to Japan then instead of Delhi. How would his parents have felt if he had been out of reach? How would he have managed?
Muthu longed to do his bit for the survivors and he collected and sent some sweaters and blankets to an address he had found in the newspaper.
On seeing these smiling Japanese faces, he felt curious to know how these people had managed first hand.
He approached them a bit cautiously. He in some cartoon series. They *reciprocated with a cheerful "Hello!"
"My name is Muthu. My house is down this road to the left of the school. See, there. That is my school," said Muthu slowly in case they had difficulty following his English "Hi Muthu. That was the Tamil Superstar’s name in one movie we saw in Japan. He has lot of fans there too, you know, " said the lady.
Muthu blushed. Not many had drawn such a connection with his name. He was also glad to know that his gut feeling that the family was Japanese had been right.
"Where in Japan are you from?" asked Muthu.
