
Uncle Paul Gets A New Mattress
Gazing at you with a pair of the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen, 50-year old Thanabalam Rajagopal cuts a pitiful figure as the gaunt, tired-looking gentleman hunches over his walking frame in the dingy, dimly lit corridor outside his one-room flat. A deep tracheotomy scar is nestles in the folds of his weathered neck as he struggles to speak. His speech, though laboured, is at best slurred and hardly decipherable.