Today Chitra and I had our breakfast of appam and puttu at the iconic Paragon in Kozhikode. I was eating at this restaurant after 40 long years after being a regular there for two plus years in 1974-76.
The 1970s were perhaps its golden period, not just for its reasonably priced Kozhikode cuisine but for the way the hotel's Room No 1 on the first floor hosted every evening Kozhikode's own creative geniuses like M T Vasudevan Nair (Jnanpith Award winning novelist and Best Film national award winning film writer-director), Aravindan (cartoonist and film director), artist Nampoothiri, writer Pattathuvila Karunakaran, writer Dr Punathil Kunhabdulla and writer Prof K T Rama Varma, and occasionally visiting writers like O V Vijayan and Mukundan and a few artists.
My paternal cousin Ravindrannan and I had once hosted John Abraham, celebrated for his unorthodox living and equally unorthodox film making, in Room#1.
The first floor is now an AC restaurant after they demolished the rooms some time ago. I wish they had retained the iconic "Room#1 Paragon" as an exclusive bar adorned with wall pics of the room's celebrated drinkers and their quotes/scenes, admission to which would be reserved to only those who can prove their genius or creativity!
Kerala Varma: He hails from Chirakkal (Kannur), Kerala, is a former Deputy General Manager of State Bank of India and lives in Chennai with his wife Chitra. He is an amateur writer, who believes in “simple living, simple thinking”, welcoming enrichers of life like love, humour, long walk, the river, sea, mountain, books, music and Internet and avoiding complicaters of life like greed, anger, ambition, sentimentalism, sexism, god, rituals, religion and superstitions.