loony life

A taste of his own medicine

2011-09-13T07:04:00.001-07:00

Mannan was totally besotted with the extraordinary instrument called the telephone that had arrived, bright and black, in neighbour Achari Mama’s household. Instead of posting letters and replying to replies, one could just pick up the phone and talk to the desired person! “Whatte invention!” If only he could speak to some girl on the telephone and impress her.

Speaking of girls, Geetharani had also got a new phone in her house. He had spied her giving her phone number to all and sundry. How Geetharani flaunted her newfound “telephone-ness”. For no reason she swirled her hand in circles in the air, as if she was dialling someone. When someone asked her if the next period was going to be Geography, she replied, “Sorry, wrong number.” She even wrote in the “My ambition is to…” essay that she dreamed of becoming a telephone operator. Her telephone obsession had percolated to that extent.

If only Mannan had a telephone he would also flick the phone off its receiver stylishly like Rajinikanth and speak into it in English like Kamal Haasan.

“Phone calls are expensive and cost 50p per call,” dissuaded grandmother Sitamma.

“But I want to know what it feels like to talk through a machine. Please-please-please,” begged Mannan to no avail.

“You can call Police, Fire and Ambulance for free,” suggested Jana kindly.

“But I wish to call Geetharani,” persisted Mannan.

“To say ‘I love you’ to her?” asked Jana mischievously.

“Thoo! I want to say something like ‘Your hair is on fire, want me to call the fire engine?’ Or ‘Please take a bath, you stink through the telephone’…,” Mannan smirked.

“Hahahahhahahhahahaha!” laughed Jana.

“Idea! I can receive a call, can’t I? That won’t cost anything, no?” exclaimed Mannan.

Brother and sister immediately put their heads together and wrote an anonymous note to Geetharani with their left hand (one sentence each to cover up the crime). The note read, “I have a famous job for your sweet telephone voice. Call 321342 at 3 pm.” Mannan left the note inside her lunch bag and waited with Jana by the neighbour’s phone at 3 pm (that was Achari Mama’s sleeping time).

Sure enough the telephone rang.

“Hello?” Mannan answered in a gruff voice.

“Please take a bath, you stink through the telephone,” said the voice from the other side. “Eh?” Mannan started.

“Your hair is on fire, shall I call the fire engine?” the voice continued and Mannan nearly collapsed. “It is Geetharani, but she is using all MY dialogues,” blubbered Mannan.

“I only told her,” confessed Jana.

“But why?” screamed Mannan putting down

the phone.

“WHY? You know why? We both cleverly wrote the note to her with our left hand. Do you know we also signed it? Geetharani threatened to complain to the Principal if I didn’t spill our plan,” Jana cried when the phone rang again.

Mannan answered again, first with a frown, then with a smile, then laughter.

Conversation ended.

“It was Geetharani. She wants to be my friend. She liked our prank,” smiled Mannan who had after all impressed a girl via the telephone.

Between Dusters and Rubbers

2011-09-06T01:25:00.001-07:00

“I urgently have to take revenge on Chandru,” Lal wept to Jana.

“Which Chandru?” Jana asked indifferently though she knew pretty well that it was the Chandru who owned the stationery shop at the gooseberry street corner. His garish billboard “Chandru arts ‘n’ inks” written in five gaudy colors not only made his shop the most popular landmark around the area but his manner of introducing himself to the customers — “Hello, I am the Chandru in ‘Chandru arts ‘n’ inks store’ — (especially) in English made him the most enviable personality in the neighbourhood. Everyone admired his ingenuity in naming an ordinary pen-pencil-paper-paint shop an “arts and inks” store.

So Lal wanted revenge on Chandru who was world famous in gooseberry street! Hmm!

“But what did he do?” interrupted Jana when Lal began to explain who Chandru was.

“He squealed on me to our Math teacher,” cried Lal.

“Are you or are you not a Math teacher rubber?” demanded Jana.

“Of course I am not. Shameless occupation,” spat Lal.

At school there were two kinds of students — dusters and rubbers. Dusters were students whom the Math teacher literally reduced to dust with his caning because they were too upright and honest to be apple shiners. Rubbers were students who rubbed and rubbed the Math teacher with oily smiles and unabashed flattery till he shone with a good mood.

“That man will put a tick even if the rubbers wrote 3x1=5” observed Jana.

“I went to buy two pencils from Chandru’s store. He said if I bought three pencils, he would give me a rubber free. I replied that rubbers were for weak students and not for 10 out of 10 candidates like me,” narrated Lal.

“Maha lie,” thought Jana.

“Additionally I asked him to make this free-rubber offer to our Maths teacher who was constantly in need of rubbers and also explained the duster-rubber concept to him. He laughed with me but later squealed to Math teacher when he came there for some red ink. That man peeled the skin off my palm with his cane,” sobbed Lal displaying his hands. Indeed they were red and bleeding like a peeled beetroot.

“He was angrier because I had described myself as a 10 out of 10 student”.

“Understandable,” thought Jana but added, “For all the business we give him, Chandru dares to squeal on one of us eh? Hmm, do we have a ladder and black paint?” Jana asked thinking quickly.

“I have very little black paint. Just enough to write three letters in capitals or so,” said Lal wiping his tears.

“Perfect! I think I can arrange a ladder. Meet me after midnight by the gooseberry tree. We have a lesson to teach,” said Jana slyly.

The next morning the entire neighbourhood, almost 100-200 people were assembled in front of Chandru’s shop and there was uproarious laughter. Even vehicles and passersby paused by the shop to laugh aloud — for added to Chandru’s bright beautiful billboard in bold black were three additional letters f, s and t which now made the store’s name read “Chandru Farts ‘n’ STinks”.

The Power of Spit

2011-08-30T02:26:00.001-07:00

“Never underestimate the power of spit,” declared Mannan sitting in his Durbar atop the gooseberry tree branches. His courtiers Appu, Lal and Jana past masters themselves in licking slates, plates, looking glasses etc to blinding brilliance with spit still listened to Mannan (literally meaning king) respectfully — for who would dare interrupt the biggest brother on street while he discoursed on things big and small and life essentials such as spit?

What the king didn’t know was that his saliva-speech was spittingly relevant from where he delivered it — for the gooseberry tree itself was born after Sitamma (Mannan’s grandmother) carelessly spat some gooseberry seeds from the terrace while drying clothes. Before long, the seed had taken root, shot out and become this big, beautiful and benevolent tree giving shelter to birds, insects and noisome kids alike. If there was a spitting match, surely Sitamma would win hands down, for our spits could only wet, but hers could grow a tree!

“Our saliva has great cleaning and healing properties,” Mannan stated and immediately Jana spat into her hands and began applying saliva over her eye sty which had erupted owing to too much fun under the afternoon sun. Red and round the sty looked like a red chilli ready to be tossed in oil. It sure burnt like one.

“Poor Jana, do you need our spit too?” Appu and Lal, the next door siblings asked generously.

“Aw! Just shut up and keep your precious saliva inside your own mouths,” snapped Jana, who sighed “sssss”, “ssss” in relief each time her saliva-brushed finger caressed the sty. “Maybe you should apply spit to your name also, Jana. You never did get out of the hurt of having a boy’s name,” laughed Lal, much to Mannan’s indignation, for Jana though incorrigible was his dear little sister. “Jana is not short form for Janardhanan. It is short for Jana Bhai,” explained Mannan.

“Hahhahahahhahahahahahahaha! See? The name itself says she is a boy. Jana Bhai, Jana Boy, Jana Bhai, Jana Boy,” Appu and Lal cracked up laughing, when Mannan dived off his high throne and landed WHAM on both the puny creatures.

Usually Jana would have creamed those boys herself, but the cool feel of her spit was so alluring that she not only passed up the fight but also proceeded to smear saliva on her other normal eye as “preventive measure”.

“Stop, stop, please stop. We will both give you 25 np each if you stop pounding us,” Appu and Lal pleaded and instantly Mannan hoisted a white flag, declared amnesty and continued—

“Yesterday our neighbour Achari mama gave me a full 50 np because I cleaned his board to sparkling cleanliness. Mama simply couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the board looking all new and bright. My secret cleaning agent? It’s spit! I spat all over the board and cleaned it superbly,” gloated Mannan.

“Which board are you talking about?” asked his courtiers.

“The one that he hangs on his front fence? The one that says, “Do not spit here and make nuisance”. That’s the board I cleaned.”

My house has perfect Feng Shoe

2011-05-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

"First we build walls to bring space in. Then we go to live within that circumspection. We are so inspired by that limitedness (which we call a house) that we even don't mind paying the mortgage for the rest of our lives. In order to convert brick and mortar into "love and beauty" or in other words to transform a house into a "home", we bring things in...lots and lots of things till the place looks either like a museum or a junkyard (depending on the housekeeper's sensibilities). Circumscribed, limited and bound, we lead lives thinking this assembly of walls and stuff around is security, home and life. What a rat's life", so on and so forth, I rant

as I continue to move my chair towards cleanliness and thereby godliness. Will someone tell me how I managed to gather so many things around me? I feel like the sum total of things I (we) have accumulated over the years and I am including my children also in this feeling of "accumulatedness". I keep remembering this famous line from Silsila, "hum yahan kaise aa gaye?" "How did we arrive here?"

There is a small 3x3 foyer ahead of the main door and believe me....its four days since I attacked that space and I am still not done. 39 pairs of unusable shoes and slippers, 19 pairs of carefully folded and completely mismatched socks, 8 vials of shoe polish dried beyond Sahara, a tangle of shoe laces, two packets of rice powder (!), clippings of my column (rightly housed next to slippers), three tool boxes (bought afresh each time because we didn't know it was here in this shelf), two pairs of expensive skating shoes (again bought twice because GPS to them wasn't available), two gaudy flower vases which we possibly kept for sentiment reasons but well hidden and forgotten in that shelf and some God pictures (!!!). All this stuffed into two shelves and the space above the upper shelf. I am not done sorting it yet. How, how, how at all did we arrive at this very Feng Shoe place in life? And now I remember the milk woman's complaint about having to place the milk packets right over a pile of shoes (predictably gathered) on the doormat. The pile was there because there was no space in the shelf and also in the morning I didn't have to bend down to retrieve the packets. I could just open the door and pick the packets on the pile from arm level. So convenient, so back buddyish and just sho(e) lovely.

So now things to do-

a) I have to dispose all these shoes, which I have now moved into my car's boot. I have to either donate or avail that discount which a local shoe store gives for old shoes when you buy new ones there. "Fling shoe for that perfect Feng Shui". How does that sound for a byline ;) eh? Or should I say "Boot the boots from the car's boot"- is that too much to boot?

b) Buy a milk box and place it on the grill so that my coffee does not smell like Bata showroom.

c) Remember not to use that rice powder in my dosa.

Rome may not be built in a day, but it can be unbuilt in hours

2011-05-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

The Wah-Wahs

Can you believe this? I actually sold the cot, found a safe and loving home for the two spool players and even gave the ailing tambura for repair. All this in a day. And very very coincidentally Pattu (a vegetable vendor from my childhood days) turned up at my doorstep and I have harnessed her to help me sort and fold the clothes. This will happen today. :)) I hope to give the DVD player for repair too.

The Bah

I returned from giving one of the three tamburas for repair and sat down to tune the other two, which had all their strings intact. Very respectfully I lay the orange instrument on the mat and turned the knob ever so gently when PING, the string snapped. When I inspected the other black tambura looked like it needed an entire change of strings too... :(

Aarrgh! Why didn't I check out before I made that long trip to the music shop?

The Aah!

Is this a worthwhile exercise? Must I spend so much time on something which is going to curl back to its primordial state before I can say Semmangudi Srinivasier? Can a house ever attain that alpha state of peacefulness and orderliness? Must I invest energies here when characters in my book are fleeing and running amuck?

:) I should be asking these questions, but I am not and I am not going to. Scepticism is boring and experimentation always exciting. I am liking this process :) Very healing, very cleansing and very very energising.

What you don't need, don't keep. What you need, keep it well.

2011-05-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

I look around me, I look around my house and the truth hits a home run. The truth is that I am keeping things I don't need and what I need I am not keeping well. The truth is simple and hence simply true too, if you know what I mean. I took stock of just one room, which has a largish bed, three tamburas, an ektar, one wardrobe (tucked behind a door), a couch and the TV. All three tamburas are out of tune, one has few strings less, the poor ektar shorn of its only tar (string) resembles a spittoon, the couch smells of coffee and beer farts, the bed completely broken on one side is bolstered with two months' collection of newspapers and a door from the broken toy rack (which is in another room so we won't count it in here), the TV rack has three remotes for the same TV (to play sha-boo-three before picking the correct remote), my wardrobe is spilling clothes from another era where 60 kgs was your entire body mass and not the one-foot-on-weighing-scale-minus-jeans-weight reading. Atop the wardrobe is an old spool player which my husband worked to its bones during his music restoration crazy days. I particularly want to see it go as I believe music from that machine has permanently injured my cochlea and the vestibular system. In other words, I can't hear well or comprehend well, thanks to that 40x40" machine. (Others wanting an excuse for their imbalances are welcome to rent/hire or buy that machine off us). The curtain painfully pale on the sunny side of the window is buttoned to the grill and not hanging from a rod like a respectable curtain. There are two dozen cords and wires rising like creepers on the wall to activate a home theatre and a DVD player that last worked when Titanic was the film of the year. All this usable-yet-unusable stuff in just one room, which we call a "low maintenance" room. Phew! I can't venture, even mentally into the kitchen, the store room, the lofts and god save me, the children's room. And I am not even going one light year close to taking stock of relationships. I am Ekalavyan sure that, in that department too I am keeping lot of things I don't need and those I need I am not keeping well. I think for the first time I have to grant it to my husband who has always claimed and warned that my irreverent, devil-may-care approach (aka "maire pochu" attitude) to people, career, relationships, money, material possessions and just about everything will come back to bite my bum one day and that it would be one hell of a Shylock bite costing me a big valuable pound of flesh close to the heart. As things look, I think only Captain Jack Sparrow will approve of me. What's there?

So here is what I am going to do. One room at a time, I am going to clean out, set right, take stock and bring to order. I really, really, really am going to ruthlessly throw things I don't need and I am making a promise that what I need, I shall keep well and in circulation. First thing first, a) I am going to set the tamburas to tune. Next, repair or give away the ektar. Find a home for the spool player. So music thingies are taken care of.

b) I think I want to sell the bed. Its a 7x8 bed with a good mattress.

c) My clothes.....friends and cousins are welcome to take what they want. But I don't know anyone else who dresses or wants to dress like me.

If any of you want any of my stuff (bed, spool players, whatever else of the above mentioned) do let me know.

I hope to finish this room eventually and systematically address other rooms in the house. Readers, friends and foes, wish me luck. Egg me on. Keep in touch. Hold my hand while I do this. I call it the day of reckoning. I really feel that I have been unavailable to my house at a "matter" level. My knowledge of physics says that matter and energy are the same. So when we shuffle, rearrange and refresh matter around us, we energize our environment.

Be with me as I do this. I will come back to tell you of my progress, my dilemmas and above all the healing which I hope this exercise would give me.

Of rainy days and stupid family feuds

2011-05-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

I wonder at life and how maximum scope for confusion and chaos is embedded in minimum intentions (not even actions). It was raining and gloomy and generally the 13-odd gathered family members were convinced that only hot jilebis would make them stop feeling like rats in a Chennai sewer on a rainy day.

“No. Not jilebis. Let us have pakoras and hot tea,” some young voice objected.

“Adenna pakora? (What pakora?) As if you are a North Indian! Say pakoda. And why tea? We will all have coffee only,” snapped Jagga (who had never adjusted to his name Gajendran being shortened to Gajja and eventually

reversed into Jagga. “Kollywood henchman name,” he often bemoaned.)

“What is your problem in life? Pakora or pakoda, it all tastes the same, doesn’t it?”

offered Kishmu.

“Hey! You Kishmu, don’t talk okay? I know why you are interested in pakora. You are trying to catch that block 6 Neena Thadani’s attention. Till yesterday you were saying

pakoda and now suddenly it has become pakora for you, eh?” shouted Jagga.

“Hello, hello! Jagga, stop this. You can’t randomly talk about Kishmu this way. You know how well he paints?” intervened Kishmu’s mother making us all stop for a full minute to wonder and exchange glances on what on earth the connection was!

“Hahahaha,” laughed Nattu, Jagga’s son. “This reminds me of the nouveau riche Iswari aunty. I bumped into her the other day and asked “How are you?” and she replies, “Oh! I removed my jewels just now,” Hahaha! What is the connection?”

“Chee! Why do you speak to the likes of Iswari? Do you know how they became rich? Her husband… forget it. For the wrongs they commit, their daughter should elope with the neighbour’s car driver or some such random guy and hurt their feelings,” snapped Kishmu’s mother.

“Your own son is ready to elope with Neena Thadani… can’t you see how he is calling a pakoda, pakora?” Jagga snapped.

“Kishmu, what the hell is all this? Who is this Neena Thadani girl? Her very name sounds like she has thunder thighs,” Kishmu’s mother boomed at him, sounding a bit like thunder herself.

“Will you people shut up? I met her just once to give her sister Reena Thadani a letter from our Nattu,” protested Kishmu.

“Hear, hear, hear,” clapped the other 10.

“Stupid. Why didn’t you just use email?” snapped Kishmu at Nattu on the aside.

“What the hell? My son is sending letters to some pakora family?” rose Jagga who was now really beginning to look like a Kollywood henchman.

“Peace, peace can we now decide if we are making jilebi or pakora… er sorry pakoda?” my mother the ever affable peacemaker tried to find a footing.

“No, no, let this be. We are already feeling light and much better,” said the remaining 10 members, applauding and encouraging the mindless fight.

“Kishmu and Nattu, come here. What is happening now? Who are these girls?” both parents of the delinquents demanded.

“Ayyo Appa, I said pakoda, didn’t I? Not pakora like Kishmu, did I? Isn’t that proof enough that I have no feelings for Reena, pleaded Nattu.

“Why the hell are YOU saying pakora then? You love Neena, eh?” Kishmu’s mother turned upon her son.

“Ayyo please, she offered to model for my painting free and in return I offered to make a portrait of her without any pimples,” explained Kishmu.

“See?” said Kishmu’s mother, proudly turning to the group feeling completely vindicated and relieved.

“So dumb! He is just reeling something from a pink face cream advertisement of a chap painting pimple-less faces. Beware eh? In the advertisement, the painter finally draws a ring on the girl’s finger…” the mischief-makers threw in their bit.

A huge fight had erupted when thankfully the doorbell rang and everyone (momentarily) sat back like good little children. It was the local confectioner.

“Pakoras and jilebis, for anyone here?” He called affably.

And that’s when the shit hit the fan.

As light wanes, the heart searches for love

2011-04-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

I love nights. I love the shroud of silence and contemplation nights throw on my mind. There is an involuntary stillness that enters my heart, as I find nature tucking in for the day despite human beings’ frenzied activity around them. Crows start turning to their nests at the stroke of sunset, trees fold up for the day and draw their leaves tighter around themselves like shawls, self-respecting insects (unlike mosquitoes) disappear for the day. A while later children’s eyelids start getting heavier despite the TV and homework. As the night bleeds and spreads its black fingers over lamp shades, the mist of sleep overpowers thoughtful minds and restless hearts. It is time to draw the curtains, not just on the day but on the rerun of events of the day in our minds. Nights are for rejuvenation, reconsideration and revival. In simpler terms, when the moon appears at your window it is time to hibernate, shut down or do an Alt+Ctrl+del.

For me, the beauty of nights has much to do with the colour black — the hue of absorption, mystery, seduction and death. As I look up at the fickle moon bobbing like a ball in the dark November sky with stars flitting around like fireflies I wonder which ignoramus labelled nights as the hour of the demons. What can match the cool beauty, subtle fragrance and deep sexuality of the night? Mornings and noon explode with activity and shake you up for necessary and unnecessary actions. The nature of light is such. It demands movement. Aristotle hypothesised on the nature of light as “a disturbance in the element air”. But as light wanes and movements subside, mind and body seeks its nest and the heart searches for love. If day is a factory to feed your body, night is the spa for pampering your self.

When I was breaking into my teens, I used to feel a ravenous hunger in the pit of my stomach at exactly the stroke of sunset and I would gorge. Noticing my habit, my mother’s music teacher mentioned in passing, “only rakshashis eat at sunset.” What was stated intentionally to shame me out of the habit in fact had the opposite effect. I fell in love with idea of being a rakshashi and “fuelling myself for the night” at sunset, which I supposed was dawn for rakshashis. In fact as days passed I not only had “breakfast” at 6 pm but also “lunch” at the stroke of midnight. Amma shaking her head would leave rasam and rice for me. At midnight, while the house was dunked in dark slumber, I would toss the food, top it with pickle and pappad shreds and go into the balcony.

We lived in government quarters then, on the seventh floor and the dining table was in that open balcony of sorts. I would sit, not at the table but on it. As the wind whooshed through my hair, as I watched the distant city lights and supped on the delicious gruel, I used to feel an incredible high, an insatiable thirst to “create”, throughout the night. On those special nights when I wrote particularly well, I understood it as a “female night”, a Rajni, a Nisha and not just another ratri.

I heard this lovely story about Adam and his first experience of night. It is Adam’s first day of being born. He feels comfortable in the light but fearfully anticipates the sunset as that would mean he is left in the dark. But

as night approaches Adam sees the moon emerge with her stars, the evening flowers bloom exuding their fragrance and the creatures of the night materialise to sing their nightly songs, Adam discovers life in the dark and falls in love with night too.

A sucker of blood Vs the monger of fear

2011-04-15T01:21:00.001-07:00

I still can’t decide whether my vote for the-most-obnoxious-God-made-creature should go to the cockroach or the mosquito. Indeed as creations go, they may actually make me look good in comparison, but that is still no excuse to be so loathsome. One sucks blood for a living while the other distributes free scares and screams.

Look at the cockroach. It seems like God was halfway through making a brown six wheeled limousine when some jerk from earth SOSed him for an adrenalin hike and God immediately minimised the limousine and sent it down to the jerk’s kitchen to make the floor under him a trampoline.

“Well, your adrenalin is up now!” laughed God and when Mrs God got curious he simply replied, “Honey I shrunk the limo I meant to give you for our anniversary,” and Mrs God sensing the sarcasm immediately sent out an addendum that the “limousine” would be anything but exclusive and should remain the cheapest thing made by God (because it was made for the wife) and it would always make every wife pause and contemplate, broom-in-hand, about what kind of life she is leading with her husband. The wife feels maximum hatred when these creatures suddenly fly thereby demolishing all logical and lateral correlations she had previously made between flying and liberation.

When I see a cockroach fly, I feel it is some neglected stooge of Satan with a flying license that lapses every five seconds. Yet, cockroaches, poor creatures are still very kitchen things who take the brunt of your hatred for your husband for putting you in the kitchen in the first place. They even inspired me to attempt a comic strip titled Roach and Encroach involving highly philosophical (hence funny) debates between a cockroach and a pesticide called ‘encroach’.

But the mosquitoes, their very name evocative of sting operations and war aircrafts, invade your bedrooms, prick, draw blood (like marital arguments), make you lunge for things with names such as nets, repellents, coils and N N-diethyl meta-toluamide potions. What are we doing here, warfare or what? But the recent “bat” which is a kind of an “electric chair” for the mosquitoes, which I call Vettayadu Vilayadu (“hunt and play”), after the Tamil film has actually taken insect-killing to the level of pleasurable sport!

If the cockroach transforms you into an encounter specialist-cum-sadist, the mosquito makes you feel like a pincushion-cum-masochist each time it stings. You slap yourself all over your body to catch the elusive winged thief and on that rare occasion when you manage to smash the insect against your flesh, you feel a remorse that is quickly expunged when you justify that the blood shed is your own, after all.

Between the cockroach and the mosquito I vacillate between the oppressor and the oppressed. Both feelings are pejorative. The two creatures are icons of people in real life who bring out the perpetrator and the victim in me. The symbolism is hardly flattering but it largely explains my hatred for these two creatures. What do you make of creatures which make you want to kill them at first sight? And what does it tell of you?

I hate those creatures precisely because they highlight the fact that I have these

reserves of hatred in me, which prompts me to even kill, if provoked sufficiently! And the murderous rage that I build up while I kill a cockroach is terrifying. My heart pounds, my eyes roll, I breathe with my mouth and with broom in hand I am a picture of Kali.

Indeed! Kali is the true pictorial representation of a goddess after a bloody kill and not the sweet smiling goddesses wielding unsullied weapons like ornaments. Try smiling with a golden crown above you and a lotus below after a kill, albeit the slain being a roach or a mosquito!

Breathless at an Indian wedding

2011-04-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

I love the colourful chaos that blooms from source to periphery like a ripple in a house preparing for a big fat Indian wedding. My sister got married recently. Five days before the marriage, an incredible fun and activity continuum sprang into action with rooms full of people going gekka-bekka-gekka-bekka with gossip and laughter, with corridors wafting the ‘sweatyscenty’ smell and kssksskss rustle of silks, mobile phones ringing in varied and similar tunes causing people to spring up unnecessarily from their warm seats, diabetics requesting in low yet firm tones for sugarless but really hot coffee, pockets of gamblers quarrelling over queen of hearts, aces, five rupee coins and making hopeless plans on sneaking to a nearby pub, grandmothers calling out for ‘a’ particular “Visalam” but some 10 women responding to the call as every branch of the family had at least one Visalam named after the chief matriarch, platefuls of sweets and savouries (with small ants also partaking of the feast) spread in the middle of dusty dhurries, queues forming for the overused toilet which stank over and above the Odonils and dozens of soaps and shampoos lined in there, anxious geeks impatiently waiting to have a go at the only laptop of the host household and small children crying in corners for their busy parents’ attention, wet towels drying on window grills as the crisscross of clothesline were already houseful and hanging low like fruit-laden tree branches, mischievous kids sliding off stacks of hired pillows, first cousins covertly flirting with second cousins, women squabbling and weeping over a random anonymous statement like, “she is so bitchy” and everyone assuming that the “she” referred to was herself, girls crowding around an elder cousin offering to apply mehendi patterns for “free” only to be spirited away by another rival mehendi group promising to inscribe the bride’s and groom’s names like tattoos using the very same mehendi cones, small children waiting tearfully for parents to arrive and wash their bottoms, some 50 hands searching for Ambassador car keys that everyone saw lying next to a green jockey underwear “just now”, small kids playing “wedding-wedding” with previous day’s drying flowers from women’s hair, someone from different time zone frantically hollering out for IST and someone responding saying it was “80 minutes past seven”, newly befriended youngsters exchanging blouses, shirts and tips for shorter SMSes, people going hoarse shouting for misplaced combs, safety pins and bindis, groups of daredevils agreeing to try out the revolutionary homemade face pack made with turmeric, asafoetida and mild detergent guaranteed to cure pimples, college going boys slyly holding hands of sisters’ friends in the pretext of reading palms, aunts yelling at uncles for intermittently disappearing to smoke their infernal cigarettes even when a wedding was in the offing, sisters weeping on the shoulder of the bride who would be leaving them soon, one or two responsible members counting wedding money and inspecting credits and debits running into lakhs with a pencil stub and a Rs 5 double- lined notebook, cousins from US scandalising local Mannargudi mamas with their noodle straps and skimpy skirts setting off commentaries on how yesteryear actress T R Rajakumari could titillate from under even three layers of clothing, aging siblings displaying and comparing notes on their swollen knees that dangerously resembled their own dead mother’s and discussing the pros and cons of knee replacement that was not available for their mother even while worrying about their brother’s “hiranya” (hernia), summons for lunches being ignored until mothers and wives threatened to close the kitchen for the day, complaints bursting in return on how the quantity of coffee served was so small that it didn’t even “wet their chest” leave alone the stomach, all this and much more from hearts brimming over and pouring out its contents like the open suitcases that will eventually zip up and depart but that were now bursting and spilling old and new gaudy clothes, memoirs, jewelry, make up kits, perfumes and those inevitable lacy bras…

Shutting the door on my dark, winged friends

2011-02-09T01:41:00.000-08:00

My winged friends have turned rowdy again. Six months ago I had to hurriedly weave a makeshift net across the kitchen window grill using discarded strings, as the crows were whooshing into my kitchen to feed on the milk (!) and the stock of bread atop the refrigerator. In a block of 24 flats, the birds display this roguish behaviour only at my window. Indeed I have spoilt them, as my sister says.
My association with these dark beauties began when I first entered the flat 15 years ago. As I stood on the newly washed kitchen floors feeling the frenzy of the morning’s activity in my lower back, I found the birds patiently lining up on my window sill. Maybe the previous tenant had been feeding them.
I only had a tiny packet of biscuits with me. Slowly I fed them, piece by piece. One-two-three and the fourth piece would go into my mouth. I was hungry too.
Long after the packet finished, the dark birds still waited. “The flat is still unoccupied dearies, no food here yet,” I murmured but just standing there and sharing my food with the birds calmed me down. My back seemed to ache a little less.
The birds always came back to wait whenever I visited the flat to move in my things, especially kitchen stuff. After all these years of feeding, I can recognise few of my friends, the regulars from others. Going beyond the ritualistic offering of first scoop of rice to the birds, I began to feed them through the day.
Leftovers at 6 am, hot rice at 10 am, food with vegetables or dal at noon, rotis at 4 pm and some bread crumbs at 6 before they go to bed. “Do you feed your kids this regularly?” my husband would snap at me. In fact whenever I eat, they get a share from my plate and they know it too. Nobody leaves my home hungry.
I just have to enter the kitchen and my friends will come knocking and banging at the window. They do not feel intimidated by me even when I stand by my sink washing a dish or two. These dark winged creatures are my friends, my messengers who bring me news from other orbits, my courier girls who take my prayers skywards, my sisters who share my food and portions of my weight gain.
But lately, one or two newcomers have come in the midst of my peaceable friends and taught them a whole lot of bad manners. These urban rowdies taught them how to enter the kitchen and perch on top of the milk vessel and dip their beaks into the fluid. When I enter the kitchen to shoo them off, they topple the vessel in their hurry to exit, leaving me to clean the floor, the vessel and the stove. Later I found that the bread atop the fridge was being assaulted too. I tried some wire mesh to keep these girls away, but it ending up blocking good sunlight as well. So a string mesh it was. My mother tied white cotton strings across the grill in a manner so haphazard and spontaneous that my window looked like a piece of modern art. Even while I was admiring my mother’s handiwork, an unruly creature put its beak through the art and pecked at my bum. I shrieked, and she rudely cawed in repartee.
These days I keep the glass window shut. My old friends nibble at the glass pitifully as if in apology. But I am upset over the litres of milk they have toppled over the weeks. I am upset my friends listened to bad counsel and compromised my love for the sake of few extra crumbs. For the first time in many years, I am shutting my door to them.

A dismal month of sore throats and broken limbs

2011-02-09T01:40:00.000-08:00

Last December was a dismal one for me with two hand fractures, three severe ear-throat infections and one long fever shared between the four members of my family. In week one — my husband broke his right arm. “Aren’t you glad we have something called a health faucet?” I joked. Curse my tongue; in week two he broke his left shoulder. “What do you do to him? Thrash him around?” snapped the Ortho. From then on if anyone asked how he managed the double feat within a wee gap of six days, we unanimously replied, “The wife did it,” sparing ourselves the onerous task of recounting the bizarre sequence of events that lead to the twin twists. Week three my son developed this peculiar earache which struck nocturnally only. His nightly howls put the entire owl and dog population in our locality to shame. One more week of screeching and I would have opened a night school for owls and dogs to learn a thing or two from my son.
“It is punishment from the cosmos for playing deaf to your parents during daytime,” I declared.
My son toggled between victim and perpetrator depending on the sun’s status in the sky, whereas I was victim round the clock. What with his antics during the day and howls during the night, and with me enduring his painful activities by day and panicking over his pain at night. Phew! To add to the misery, my daughter and I also contracted the very same severe ear-throat infection. Despite the pain, I must admit that week three was the best, as all three of us could neither speak nor hear well. A rare peace and quiet pervaded the house and for once my husband’s wish came true — his voice was the loudest in the house. We all didn’t talk back and he (despite knowing the truth) presumed we all heard him fully. Week three was quite manageable as long as the phone didn’t ring. The only person in the household who could speak audibly had both his arms tied. The remaining three of us had our hands free but voices and ears tied. It was sheer torture when the phone rang. I would have to lift the phone and place it on my husband’s ear for him to explain the unique ear-throat-hand situation to the caller. Next he had to literally put his ear to my mouth to decode what I was whispering and speak the same into the mouthpiece and follow it up by shouting into my ear what the caller had conveyed. Between the three interconnected tasks of listening keenly to me, speaking normally into phone and shouting back messages into my ear, my husband got confused. He whispered to me, shouted into the phone and put his ear on the phone’s mouthpiece, instead of mine. Added to this confusion, his questions directed at me, “Are you able to hear me? Can you be a bit louder?” were enthusiastically answered by the caller. All this became too much for him. He slammed the phone and wanted to fight. But I could neither hear nor speak. So we hit upon the idea of a scream-type match. My husband would shout at me at the top of his voice with his Gtalk open (which I logged on to for him) and I would type out repartees to his shouts from my laptop using my free hands. Not a very satisfying, fulfilling, crunchy fight but it served the purpose. Week four, my ear-throat infection turned into high fever and I completely woke up to the truth that moms can fall ill but cannot report it or lose their “cool” even while boiling at 1020C. It is January that finally sent me a get-well-soon card.

Response to Usha Mukunda's "Discovering Kabir"

2011-01-07T18:59:00.001-08:00

Thanks much Usha for the warm and detailed response to the book. I am particularly happy that you have documented the responses of young adults to the book. Thank you Dakshayini, Yamuna and Rishon for reading the book.
"How did the book begin?" is always a welcome question to the author. The answer I am afraid is going to be tad long.
My husband ( a musician) and I used to have these gatherings at home to discuss much loved poets with friends (many of them artists themselves). In the line of Bharathi and Meera (whose poems we sang, discussed and danced to), we took up Kabir next. It was Linda Hess' translations of Kabir's poems which opened my eyes and heart to him. I was so enraptured by the man's courage, vision and well....insanity (!) and there was so much drama around him that I decided to record my responses to him as a play. I wrote a short skit with just two characters- a warp and a weft. My sister Bindhumalini and I played the roles. Huh...well I was obviously the warp. The play had the threads singing out Kabir's dohas, his ideals and anxieties, not as his admirers and proteges but as an outsider who loved Kabir yet couldn't resonate in his frequency or subscribe to his beliefs. The warp and the weft became many things in the play; Hindu-Muslim, India-Pakistan, Mullah-Pundit.....but never Kabir. (I think he was still grey in my mind then). Sandhya Rao and Radhika Menon of Tulika were my special guests that day for the Kabir session and they called me the following day to ask if I would be interested in writing a book on Kabir. I, in my ignorance said yes immediately. Later when I began reading up on Kabir, I realised whatever authentic information was available on the poet could be summed up in just two lines. So what do I write? Where do I find him? How to cope with the complex-simplicity of the man and simple-complexity of children for whom I was going to write? I put the thought of book out of my mind and simply began to immerse myself in his dohas. 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, one year and I still hadn't put pen to paper. I knew only two things about this man. He was a poet and he was a weaver. One I seemed to know, the other I didn't. So I took up weaving classes. Thanks to G.Gautama, Principal, The School KFI, I was able to learn weaving at The School under Mr.Nagalingam. Weaving is such an intricate art, with so many intermediary processes and skill demands. One simply has to concentrate or risk losing the thread (literally). Frankly it is the loom which showed me a glimpse of Kabir. It is the loom which taught me creative introspection. It is the thakli, the dye, the loom, the warp and the weft which spoke to the image of poet Kabir in me. I married the weaver and poet as warp and weft to draw out a fuller picture of Kabir. I really believe like Thiruvalluvar (also a weaver), Kabir's couplet (two lines) is born out of the material at hand and his vocation. Warp-weft + tightness + brevity + introspection = Doha/couplet. Maybe a reason why the loom features so strongly in my book. Also I thought they stayed closest to Kabir and were witness to his bursts of poetry.
By now two years had passed and I was still only dwelling in the man. I hadn't written a word. The publishers checked now and then and I had a stock answer.."heh-heh, not yet". Then one day I completely gave up the idea of writing a book. How did it matter? The man had percolated into me and had (to put it very crudely) "screwed me in my head completely". Death and the value of here and now was resonating in me strongly. For awhile I even did drastic things like trying to fit all my needs into a small bag and living out of it, distinguishing between needs and wants, reducing needs, meditating regulary, walking and what not. The man does that to you. Unlike other Bhakthi poets we know, this man wants to take you along. He wants to share his truths with you. I weep as I write this for I am connecting to his compassion once again. Most enlightened souls wish to immerse themselves in thier bliss and loathe to come out of it to share it. But Kabir? He keeps shouting out to you- "Listen to me good ones". The man must have been a child to have so much faith in human goodness! More than anything I connected to his loneliness, the frustrating loneliness of a poet and a social visionary.
One day I simply began to write. I decided to take out all characters/events/landscape out of his poems itself. Where else to go? The legends can be, I decided. It took me only six months to write the book, but to get there took little more than two years. Somewhere in the middle, Sandhya told me they only hoped to get a picture book on Kabir for younger children. A novel was not what they were expecting. By then I had written until Midday portion. I must admit I was mildly agitated- I should have taken a clearer brief from the publishers. I waited. The agitation went off in an hour or two. I resumed writing. By the time I finished the novel, the thought of publishing was a distant worry. It wouldn't matter even if the book didn't see the light of day. For this particular book, the process was the reward and I was completely satisfied. But as is with all intense creations, this book also found its medium, its people (the writer, the publisher, the reader) and is in circulation. Tulika was particularly sensitive and supportive of the book. The editors Sandhya and Deeya were like Sahridayas.
It was a very difficult decision for me to "kill" Kabir and make him vanish that way. But to take a thread from his teaching and go in search of him like Dhaga is what I wanted myself and my readers to do. This, I decided would be the most fitting conclusion to the book. In fact if you notice, it is Kamali who grasps Kabir's teachings in its essence and she is the only one in the entire book who does not spew/recite/appropriate/recall even one doha of his. She lives the Kabir way and does not preach/remind herself of "his way" through his dohas. She simply lives the Kabir way, which is where I want to be.
Kabir was a fortuitous encounter. Yes. A life enhancing one.

A pen, an ink bottle and a filched filler

2011-01-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

It is ridiculous to see the number of pens in my house, standing in colorful clusters here and there and of course scattered everywhere. But pick up one to write when you need to note down that telephone number or address urgently and they will all go virginal and frigid and refuse to flow — classic case of “ink, ink everywhere, not a drop to use”. Ironically, I can never learn the colour of my pens by their inks but only by their caps (this subject to them wearing their respective hats). Sometimes I feel it is my stubborn writers’ block that has transmogrified into pens around my house. They simply cannot write though they are writing instruments, just as I am a writer without being able to write. The pens in my household, I hate to say, are more sheaths than mighty swords.I primarily think it is “problem of plenty”. What the hell, when I was growing up, there would be just one pen in the entire household, which would be enshrined either upon a high shelf or inside the out-of-reach shirt pocket. One pen, one bottle of Bril ink and one filler palmed off from some ear drops bottle. Nobody but nobody was permitted to touch that pen, lest the slant of your hand and your unique pressure of pen on paper changed the nib’s personality. Each one tweaked and regulated his pen into an amiability that suited his right-left slant and thick-thin writing preference. The pen was as personal as that once upon a time. Only best friends could share globs of ink and pen.If ever you were given the task of filling the pen with ink, it was a task worthy of filling your entire Sunday morning with and in a manner that would put Tom Sawyer to shame. I remember extracting bribes from my cousins for each go at pressing the filler’s head. Fifteen ml of ink filling was worth three gooseberries, 10 extra turns at the swing, three not-out chances (cricket gaajis) and one pair of fancy rubber bands. Pens could make life good. My Sunday business however folded after pens (such as Hero) began to arrive with inbuilt filling mechanisms. One could just press and pull ink into these hateful pens from the bottles without risk or mess and without having to cultivate bhaya-bhakthi (fearful devotion) towards the fragile glass and precious ink. That skill and dexterity to lift and pour carefully into the waiting mouth of the pen, drop by drop is an extinct talent today. I was permitted to touch a pen only after coming to class VI. It was an important occasion — almost like poonal (sacred thread ceremony) or puberty. Mine was a green Camlin and with a glass window beneath its neck, where you could check the ink level. At the end of each day I would measure how much I had written, not by counting the number of filled pages, but by tilting the pen to see how much ink I had consumed — a habit I carry even today in a different manner though. I measure the distance I travelled in my car not by the meter, but by the red needle in the fuel gauge.I think for me, the romance went out of writing when the stiff-collared, antiseptic ball point pens became permissible in schools. I used to bleed along with my ink pens, tame the nib’s sharpness or match mine with it, wrangle with the instrument, cajole them into being my sixth finger, take care of them and be possessive about them. Putting an ink pen to paper was a piercing act of love, an intercourse. I think everything just got worse when I abandoned all pens to write with both hands. No, I am not ambidextrous. I write with a computer.

This New year

2010-12-29T01:07:00.000-08:00

May onions be available for Rs.8 a kilo and not 80.

May I stop snapping at my mother and stop feeling guilty about it later. May I be present to my love for her when I speak to her.

May holidays this year not fall on weekends but close to them.

May my children stop looking at me as some vending machine which pours forth, food, love and advice.

May newspapers carry happy news in their headlines and reserve bad news for inner pages.

May the saying “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” be put to rest forever.

May the word “no” be three shades less offensive.

May wedding expenses be equally split between groom and bride.

May I shed atleast 3 kilos in the next 12 months.

May corporate setups change their HR policies, which make employee-exit at 8 pm compulsory.

May I continue to sleep at 9 pm and wake at 4 or 5 am and may I have the will and ruthlessness to severe friendships with those who send me obscene PJs, chain smses and silly forwards after 9 pm just to startle me out of my sleep.

May I have the enthusiasm and dedication to write atleast 200 words everyday for my third novel. 200 words is pittance, yet better than nothing.

May tapwater become potable.

May I get rid of my addiction for Tiger balm, which I apply generously at all times of day despite the fact that my skin turns black and sore under its heat.

May there be regular rains in Chennai without the regular mess that follows.

May people who are doing night duty at call centres get good sleep during day time.

May all the right handed be left handed for a day and vice versa.

May we occasionally smile at strangers.

May I be aware that I am loved, I am blessed and above all I am in the midst of good people. May I draw on these resources and find contentment.

May the TV channels put an end to reality shows and talent shows particularly involving children.

May I practice music atleast for 30 minutes with such ardour that neighbours will come banging and screaming begging me to stop.

May my readers continue to patronize me.

May I go on that long walk, a walk that will last for days together. May I take that long walk alone, preferably to some mountain (preferably Arunachalam) and come back with stories, sayings and solace.

May we surprise a beggar with a tenner once in a while.

May we play with our children for one entire hour without being distracted.

May I keep all the relationships which came to me this year and may I nurture them like my Tulsi plant.

May I come across more books like Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the time of cholera” and Stella Kramrisch’s “Presence of Siva”.

May we honk less on the roads and may we not say “women driver” like a swear word.

May my sense of humour graduate into sense of ridiculousness.

May eggless cakes me less expensive than regular cakes.

May my hair grow dark and thick so I may have more hair to cut off.

May BSNL, DD and AIR earn more faith and patronage from its customers this year.

May my children call me “Amma” and not by my name.

May my car forgive me for not taking it for the yearly service this year also.

May the child in me be healed, happy and honest.

May we forgive our spouses who might have forgotten our birthday, anniversary or just the fact that we are their spouse.

May we all understand that Happiness is a state of mind, which is as cultivable as patience, contentment and humour.

The house that knows no divisiveness

2010-10-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

There is a modest house in a modest lane in Madras standing quiet and humble amidst peace-loving people and quaint old trees. I don’t quite know its size, though I have spent many summers and seasons inside it. I have seen it swell like a mushroom under rains, when it had to receive sisters, brothers and hapless souls seeking respite and temporary shelter. I have also seen it shrivel like a raisin under the sun when loved ones left its shade seeking other pastures. Like a beating heart, the house has contracted and expanded many times over to accommodate its residents, the number again which I am not sure of. Who can really tell how many people have moved in and out of a Banyan’s shade?The first room of the house has a simple bench and an easy chair opposite it. A man wizened with age and wisdom used to sit in it to receive guests with a smile and a verse in Sanskrit, befitting the person or the occasion of his arrival. He had a word, a glass of water or buttermilk, some wisdom and most importantly, time for anyone who arrived at his door. When he came to Madras from his humble village, he brought into the house the courteousness and simplicity of his village, and also a way of life. He had four cows in a shed adjoining the living room, a well, a clay stove and a variety of trees in the backyard and a huge haystack piled on the right side outside the house. One couldn’t open the window of the living room wall without scraping one’s hand against one of the cow’s horns and one couldn’t open the inner room window without hay falling in like rain. Many of his grandchildren learnt at as early as seven years of age to shovel and carry baskets of cowdung to the open terrace to be mixed with hay and made into pancakes. When dried they would be thrown into the claystove as fuel to heat the bathwater and when done, their ashes would be recycled as scrub powder for the vessels. The man was a master in thriftiness. But he had to be. Otherwise how could he have nourished and educated his 10 children and graduated plenty others who sought refuge in the house into more prosperous climes with his meagre salary? And how could he have accomplished all this without his wife whom he celebrated as a true illal (homemaker), because she never knew how to say illai (no). Petite, naïve and deeply attached to her husband, the lady came into the house at 14 years of age and quickly understood that her husband was like a large tree and many birds would indeed come to roost and rest in him. Soft-spoken and always cheerful, she learnt everything; from milking the cows, to making brooms and thatches from coconut fronds to cooking for tens of people, to not distinguishing between her own children and others’. Bending over the stoves, how many countless meals must this lady have prepared? How many children, grandchildren, grand nephews and grand nieces must have passed through her heart, hands and house in the 65 years of her married life? I don’t think she knows the size of the house either. But lately, she is insisting that the house be reconstructed before her time and be shared amongst her peaceable children. To me, it is like taking an axe to an ancient tree, but who knows what is prompting her eagerness? Maybe grandmother is curious and finally wants to know how much the house could really hold. Maybe she wants to quantify and measure her work of a lifetime. Maybe she sees no divisiveness in the act because her heart knows none.

The truth behind 'group studies' sessions

2010-10-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

I hope my son never discovers this scam called “group studies”. Of all the
excuses students have come up with to waste time, exchange gossip, discuss latest movie releases, trade tips on ‘how to attract the opposite sex’ (what we called studying “biology, chemistry and physics of opposite sex”), polish the poor host’s refrigerator, lech discreetly at a friend’s brother or sister etc, group studies is the most creative and legitimate excuse and it works best with parents too!
Many things happen during group studies. An auto driver friend of mine confessed to picking up his paan parag habit while group studying with a senior (in paan parag chewing, by the way). Another musician friend confessed to having met his wife in a similar way and fallen in love with her simply
because she could find the value of “nCr” using both binomial theorem and Pascal’s triangle method (what he now describes as ‘math-aftermath’). Another laments that the high pitched hyena laughter he laughed over a silly joke on the day before his 12th exam during group studies is still echoing on him. He got a princely 58 per cent in the boards. Yet another, by name Varadarajan, tags the whole practice as mere group therapy to “dissipate tension and not accumulate knowledge.” Perorating further on the subject, he says, “It may seem a good idea to set 10 heads to crack that one subject, but it is still one head that has to go and write that exam. It is Ram and not Ravan who wins the battle.” I fully appreciate his intensity on the subject. You see, this gentleman answered his tenth standard Hindi exam paper in English.
There is actually a standard pattern way in which “group studies” will proceed. If there are four chapters to be covered in six hours, more often than not, the first chapter will take up the first five hours and the remaining three just one! One would have barely begun on Bohr’s postulates: “Electrons orbit the nucleus. They are ….”, when a candidate would ask, “Machan, what is there to eat da?” That is all. The next hour will go in serving, spilling and munching on every available eatable in the house. “Electrons can only be in certain, permitted
orbits, hey what did Priya tell you near the lab yesterday?” Another 20 minutes on the Priya-Arun fallout. “The radii of the allowed orbits… saw that awesome lip-to-lip kissing scene between Kamal and Amala (through sari) in the new film Satya?!” Another hour spent on “chemistry, physics and biology” and one more hour on cooking up the clever chant “Bohr-bore-boar!”
I remember a group of us were studying chemistry and I was reading aloud. I was repeating the line “Copper is a good conductor of electricity” again and again and somewhere I mistakenly compounded the words and said “copper is a gunductor” and that was all — the whole group laughed and laughed the entire evening, called me “gunductor-gunductor” till I cried. I daresay they all joined me the next day.
But I must admit that group studies did support me immensely when I was doing my BA, a time when my parents were struggling to educate four children. Sticking to just paying the college fee, I relied on my generous friends to share most of their textbooks with me (my mom says she did exactly the same while she was in Music college). So while the usual joking and chatting went on, I had my corner and studied rather diligently. In return for the favour shown, I would share nuggets of my textbook knowledge in brief bullet points with them, which they claimed was their sole reason for passing. Yet, my years of experience with group studies still say that it is Ram with his one head who goes to write that exam.

Solving the mystery of the lost tatkal counter

2010-10-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

Remember the article I wrote about India titled “The land where I lead a happy life”?
I am sorry I wrote it before I made a trip to the Regional Passport office. What a tour it turned out to be of the grand Indian Heritage of apathy and unresponsiveness. The one-day tour began right at the gate with the parking attendant refusing to tell me where I might park my car. But each time I found a space he would come running behind to say that it was not permissible to leave my car there. And this he would do only after watching me finish the complete procedure of parking, gathering my 59-odd things, stepping out and locking the door.
“You couldn’t tell me earlier, eh?” I snapped each time to no avail. After five demonstrations of my talent in line and parallel parking, the man relented and showed me a dune of sand and asked me to “adjust” my car there. The tyres whirred angrily in the same place before managing to climb the dune and come to a stop. Hurrah to Jaya Madhavan for finding a third way of parking called the Pythagorean parking where my car was inclined like a hypotenuse over the triangle of sand.
“Rs 30”, the attendant said handing me ticket for ‘Rs 20 only’.
“Rs10 for my tea,” he clarified evenly. One look at my poor car and I walked away without even answering.
Inside when I asked for the Tatkal counter, I was shown a queue longer than the tail of serpent Adi-Seshan. I stood there for an eternity only to be passed like a buck to the next counter. It was pure déja vu when the next officer also moved me like an unclaimed parcel to another counter. After experiencing all lengths of tails from serpent Vasuki’s to Hanuman’s to Kapish of Tinkle fame, I was finally told to “ask in the enquiry”.
“Of course,” I thought and asked in the enquiry (the longest tail yet) only to be
directed back to the very first counter I had stood in. Aaarghhhh! That day, I actually felt the indignant Tambrahm’s “I will write to the ‘letters to the editor’ ” kind of anger.
“As a senior citizen I demand to know who is responsible for the Tatkal counter. Enna ya, should one file an FIR to find out?” someone was yelling at a policeman.
“Next year I am also a senior citizen. In the year 1976, when I was transferred….” The policeman began his history and the senior citizen’s wife burst into cackles. Her husband had probably met his match.
The ‘Mystery of the missing Tatkal counter’ had to be solved before 1 pm failing which I would have to apply for a date again. Like me there were many Nancy Drews trying to solve the same mystery. But it was a tout who finally revealed the top secret to me for Rs100. Next, I found there was some declaration form to be signed by my husband. The tout helpfully pointed out the form to me for another Rs 50 (and it was right there).
“Oh! Now I have to go to my husband’s office to get his signature,” I fretted.
“What Madam, you don’t even know to put saar’s signature? He mocked.
More than the drive I was anguished about losing the hypotenuse parking space.
By the time I got everything in place and joined the correct queue and left the building at 6 pm (job miraculously done), I had revisited my love for my country couple of times.
Tired and irritated, I backed my car and crashed into a pile of bricks, scattering it.
“Who is responsible for this?” the parking attendant came running and shouting.
“Ha! Ask in the enquiry,” I answered and sped off.

Cornered heroines saved by the rakhi

2010-10-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

Rakshabandan passed off peacefully for me this year. Er… actually it has been pretty peaceful for me for many, many years.
Whatte sad considering that a group of us girls used to unleash terror in the college campus with this one tiny chit of a rope called Rakhi. Boys used to duck or run and hide at our sight or do “mass absent” on the day of Rakshabandan, lest we made brothers out of these Romeos. Most boys found Rakshabandan day a public nuisance. This festival never did cut much edge with us south Indians because: i) It is the exact opposite of Valentine’s Day;
ii) Who wanted any more sisters than what they were already enduring at home? iii) There was this tofa to be given; iv) And this girdle on hand (and heart) meant a full stop to all lecherous activities vis-a-vis the one who tied the rakhi.
It was only the very good and very boring boys who came in flapping and flailing in full-arm shirts to proudly roll back their sleeves and flaunt rows and rows of glittering rakhis and their sisterly conquests. But for their pants one would have thought they were modelling for GRT’s “Bangle Mela”.
Frankly, we Dravidians never needed something as overt as a cord to show-and-tell the sibling bonding, for in our download of Tamil cinema tradition one just had to say “Anna” (elder brother) at room temperature for the man to melt and immediately adopt you as his sister. I don’t know about the rest, but this is how MGR, Sivaji, Jaishankar, Rajinikanth and T Rajendar obtained dozens and dozens of sisters for themselves and uniformly called them all “thangachchi”.
It is the weekly Hindi movies (telecast on Saturdays on DD) which introduced us to the necessity of a non-verbal signage (aka rakhi) to seal the brother-sister relationship.
“Main lawaris hoon (I am an orphan),” wept Amitabh Bachchan in a movie.
Immediately the blind girl in the hut tied a rakhi and said, “Tum ab mere bade bhai ho (now you are my elder brother)”. Same scene would have wound up with just one word “anna” down here in the south. But who’s listening? Considering that rakhis are here to stay, I just got an idea. Usually heroines in Tamil movies cringe and start walking backwards when the villain approaches them with a thali (mangalsutra), for if he managed to tie that cord around her neck, she would have to be his wife. I suggest the heroine get a rakhi and walk forward menacingly in the direction of the villain brandishing this weapon of hers, threatening to make him her brother. And whoever ties first will decide the nature of the relationship. If both tie it simultaneously, then well, it’s a tie, a bad pun and a typical K Balachandar movie situation. “If I am your sister and you my husband, then what are our children to you and me?”
My friend Geetha was notorious for her appropriation of rakhis. Every boy she knew was her rakhi brother. Alternately, if she wanted to get to know a boy, she would approach him with a rakhi. “Safe opening, safe closure,” she’d grin. Once her best friend was hitting on someone tall and attractive. “Who’s Keerthana talking to?” she asked. “Why don’t you take a rakhi to him, find out, and introduce your brother to me?” I asked. She burnt me to cinders with a contemptuous glance.
This year, two days after Rakshabandan I sent a bulk sms to all my male friends saying, “Sorry, I forgot to send you a rakhi the day before. You are welcome to send me the gifts.” Not one scoundrel bothered to reply to it, except one scallywag who said, “Then please receive this one thousand kisses I am sending you as a gift.”

Amidst a murder of crows

2010-07-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Just when the much awaited rose powder and the lipstick were brought close to my face, Priya’s mother intervened and said, “No need for make-up, she is only a crow.”
It was my school annual day and I was all of six years old, geared to be the black bird in the rhyme "Sing a song of sixpence". Priya was the maid whose nose I as a blackbird was meant to peck off. Any surprise that her mother laid revenge on me? With that one statement she dashed to ground weeks of fantasising of arriving home after the programme in an open cycle rickshaw and my cousins scampering out of the house to admire my rosy visage while the crow mask lay limp at my feet.
The make-up pangs eventually faded, but the statement “she is only a crow” simply stuck in my subconscious and I all but grew black wings on my dark body. I thereafter developed a special kinship for my winged sisters.
If grandmom placed rice on the sill for the crows, I stealthily topped it with curd to cool my friends plying the hot sky. If I was sent to the terrace to be a scarecrow, I woo-woo-wooed the crows to eat their fill of vadams, instead of shoo-shoo-shooing them off.
“Don’t be scared, I am only a crow,” I encouraged. If grandma offered vadais on
a plate, I would say, “wait” and run around the house to arrive just outside the kitchen
window and caw until grandma placed the vadai directly in my mouth through the grill. “Silly”, she would admonish even as I ran away flapping my hands, looking for a branch to perch and eat my treat in peace without intrusion from Fox.
In my later years I was told that my first 19 years of life were spent under the malefic gaze of Shani (Saturn). It pleased me that I had been under the observance of a deity discerning and dapper enough to choose a crow for his vehicle. Whoever saw my horoscope tch-tch-tched in sympathy saying my first 20 years of life would have been full of painful lessons. Maybe yes, maybe not.
The realisation that “I am only a crow” was cosmically meant to be painful but by loony logic it, instead, became a liberating factor for me in a society that perpetually favours fair, lissome and coy lasses. Whereas, as a crow, I was free to be bright, inquisitive and loud. At best I would be shooed away. So what?
The crows were back again in my late 20s with Lord Saturn on their back. This time they hovered around for seven-and-a-half years to deliver their remaining lessons. Their time of departure coincided with the release of my second novel Kabir the weaver poet. Guess my publisher Tulika’s logo? Heh-heh- a crow!!! "For it being an unassailable part of the sights and sounds of India, our logo is the common crow, a bright, busy, intelligent bird, with a great sense of family,” read the publisher's note on thier logo. Can anyone describe Jaya Madhavan better? (note the word “intelligent” — ha!)
My favourite colour is black and my favourite pastime crowing. I never send away a crow hungry from my kitchen sill. When I find half alive hit-and-run crows on the road, I rush them to Blue Cross or hold them till they die. I have parked a Rs 3.5 lakh toilet called Alto for them on the road. Above all, like the crows I too have gathered around me a formidable flock (of readers and friends) who love me even though ‘I am only a crow”. And do you know what a group of crows are called? Not just a horde, hover, mob, muster, parcel and parliament but also a “murder of crows”!!!

Shaddup, you blahdy fooh

2010-06-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

In the thick of a very Tamil fight, Lal had said those three words that could shake the bedrock of any friendship. I had merely asked Lal why he must smear half a kilo of talcum powder on his face morning and evening — and look like a buffoon. To which he had demanded, “What bothers you?” He had asked that to me, one who had been friends with him for eight years out of the 10 years we had been alive!
What’s more, instead of the usual unakenna pochu? (What loss to you?) He had the temerity to ask “what bothers you?” in English, a language that was still alien in our street.
Adding insult to injury was his immediate exit for lunch and afternoon nap before I could formulate a clever repartee.
On second thoughts, his disappearance boded well as it gave me a two-hour window to craft a suitable reply to reply (badillukku-badil).
Albeit not enough for English retort, it would have to do.
I knew no English then (some would argue I still don’t). I urgently needed a three-worded retort that would put Lal in his place and reflect my English knowledge too, of which I had none.
Woe! Could fate be crueler? I cursed and ranted thus the entire first hour.
The only English words that came to my mind were “I love you” from the movies.
It had three words alright, but it was not apropos to the situation. Even at that age, I knew I didn’t want to say that to Lal. He used too much Gokul Santol Powder.
I could say “goodbye” to him but that was only one word (or was it two?) and too volatile a word to use. According to Tamil films, if one said “goodbye” along with salute gesture it meant, ‘it-is-over-between-us’. Hmmm, I was not sure about saying “goodbye” to Lal. But for his powder habit, he was a cool guy who did not mind climbing trees or stealing mangoes with me.
What about “bleddy fool”? I thought and practised saying “bleddy fool” a couple of times, before I changed it to “blahdy fooh” which is how my matinee idol Kamal Haasan said it. I felt empowered by these two great words that Kamal Haasan himself deemed fit to mouth.
I hid behind a bush and waited for Lal to emerge from his beauty sleep and appear he did, powder-faced and heavier by half a kilo.
I sprang out suddenly. Encouraged by the shock on his face, I said aloud, “April fool” to which he collapsed with laughter. I fled, hair flying.
From behind our gate I could see him dancing with glee. My brain worked feverishly.
What did angry professors tell raucous college students in movies? Yes! Got it. I ran back with gusto and said, “Shaddup and gedout”, to which he laughed harder.
“Do you realise that you are standing inside my compound and asking me to get out? Now I tell you, you “shut up and get out”, he commanded. “Oho,” I replied and pondered on it briefly. Ah! Got it!
“Lal, can you please step into my house for a moment?” I asked brightly. “Ha! So that you can say ‘shut up and get out’ to me when I enter your gate, is it not?” He asked shrewdly and I lost my cool.
“You-you-you-you-you-you-you-you,” I began…in English (!!) and kept at it endlessly like an indignant heroine of my time.
Twenty minutes of ‘you-you-you’ later, Lal was at my feet, begging for mercy and declaring me the Queen of English, England and all its colonies. Ha! I became world famous in my street for constructing the loooooooooooooooongest sentence in English with just one word.

The land where I lead a happy life

2010-05-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to live in any country or place which does not have Mylapore in it. If you happen to be in Chennai, just take a walk around the Kapaleeshwarar temple tank and see if the incredible juxtaposition of the ancient with the modern, old with the new, the rotting with the nascent does not strike straight into your Indian heart! If your heart is still Indian that is.
The “fragrance” of Mylapore is that aroma of coffee beans frying in ‘Sundaram coffee’ combined with the smell of vegetables, fruits and flowers on the pavement shops, mingling with the fumes of vehicles and the mild scent of holy ash (vibhuti) wafting from the bare bodies of tuft-wearing Brahmins, not to mention the urine on the walls. On one side is the clang of temple bells and just yonder is a sabha exuding music. By the temple car is the famous nameless roadside bajji stall shooting sizzling noises into the air.
And just as you feel divided between adai-ayival at Karpagambal mess and the roadside bajjis, the nadaswaram vidwans emerge into the streets leading the temple procession. One mallari or a brilliant raktimelam from them is enough. All appetite is sated. I… just love this heady bouquet of perfumes and sounds which is India, well... “South India” to me. Be it crowded, dirty or congested or whatever, I love my land, just as I love my mother’s cooking burnt or otherwise. If it is from my mother’s hand, I love it… Period.
I don’t know why I have to sound so apologetic about declaring my love for my own country. But you see when I urge people not to look for “US bridegrooms” or when I tell migrating friends and relatives not to become permanent citizens and “come back” at least in the distant future, they look at me queerly. Recently, I gave a guest talk at a famous college of technology. When I appealed to those engineering students who had written TOEFL and GRE to consider making worthwhile careers here in India itself and “first sweep our country before departing to sweep other countries” huge dissenting noises burst out in the hall.
I had opened a Pandora’s box. Many explanations poured forth from the students on how “quality life” was possible abroad and how they were “world citizens” and how India was “narrow minded” and so on. In a room of 300, I knew I was alone. It reminded me of the day when my parents were forcing me to look at my first love as mere puppy love. On both these days my love was ridiculed as naïve, silly and unrealistic.
Well, I went abroad too. While bidding goodbye, my grandmother took a pinch of earth and smeared it like vibhuti on my forehead. Once there, I fell severely homesick after the first few weeks. No amount of persuasion that “roads were bigger, environment cleaner and facilities greater” could take India out of me. “What the hell, you can drink water out of the bathroom tap here,” shouted my friend. “Go on and drink water from bathroom tap because that’s where you belong,” I snapped. In my poem Migratory Birds I wrote, “In the land of seagulls/the crows try to merge with snow.”
This Republic Day, my son’s school gave me the honour of hoisting the Tricolour, which I did with great pride and tears in my eyes. When they asked me to deliver a speech, I refused. How to express deep love in spoken words? I instead offered to sing and presented Bharathiyar’s song Enthayum Thayum (“This is the land, where father and mother mine/lead a happy life”).
That pinch of Indian earth my grandmother smeared on my forehead burned like a third eye, for long after the song.

Satori in a jam with a nose-picking chauffeur

2010-05-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Spiritual tests don’t come in the form of power, riches or dainty damsels (or sensitive men, in my case) they come in the guise of traffic jams, to test your limits of patience and endurance. There is a certain Karmic indebtedness between people caught in the same traffic jam, a spiritual connectedness that ordains that we spend time together in this unique urban open prison for a stipulated period of time. I use traffic jams to formulate theories like the above mentioned, make character studies and collect a week’s worth of laughter.
I was in a jam recently. I turned off the engine and looked around. A husband and wife on a two-wheeler were snarling at each other. The husband was shouting facing west and the lady (sitting sideways owing to sari) was yelling facing south. The duo looked like two inimical navagraha planets, not facing each other, yet relating. I thought it a great idea to have your fights in a traffic jam and pour all your woes into the existing confluence of confusion and tension and leave the traffic signal fresh and rejuvenated, instead of quarrelling in your home and spoiling its good chi.
Two vehicles ahead, a motorcyclist and a bus driver were locking horns. The driver stopped short of spitting on the motorcyclist from his tall seat. After ample ‘enquiries’ about each other’s families (mothers in particular), both passed verdicts on each other. The driver cursed that the motorcyclist’s head be caught under a bus on his way home while the latter, a little more creative in his sentence retorted, “Your testicles are going to swell and explode today.”
To my right was a school van, bursting with children’s chatter. The driver uselessly honked every few seconds. Then I realised the honking was not for the road but for the kids inside. Each time he honked the children ceased their noise briefly. I was mulling over buying a similar “shut up” horn to use on my family, when the driver honked all too loudly and irritatingly. I stuck my head out and yelled, “What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“Horn formation, Madam,” he proudly replied in English. You of course cannot be angry with anyone who comes up with an answer like that. Lightening my mood further was a lorry with multiple messages in its rear. “Smile OK please,” “Don’t kiss me,” etc. And amidst these messages was a mysterious black box that said “Main Valvu Boxu” in equally mysterious English.
To my left was a huge car with a lone chauffeur in no big hurry to go anywhere. He was picking his nose contentedly. I was desperate to know where he smeared his rich nose produce inside the Rs 25 lakh car. On the seat where his expensively dressed mistress sat? Or on the mat where the car owner’s kids might often drop a biscuit and pick it back to eat it? For a moment our eyes met and the chauffeur looked embarrassed. But as I pretended to turn away he
returned to his gold digging.
After few minutes of watching him, my facial orifices also began to itch. I wanted to pick something urgently. I couldn’t bear to pick my nose or teeth in public. My ears! But sadly like a mismatched adapter my little finger couldn’t penetrate my ears beyond a centimetre. My inner ears were begging to be prodded. On a sudden brainwave I removed the car key from the ignition and gently scratched my inner ears (eyes closed) with the key.
How can I describe that moment of satori to you? When I opened my eyes, the nose-picking driver was laughing at me. I smiled back sweetly. We had become kindred souls in a traffic jam.

Dare devilry on a fire spitting beast

2010-05-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

Get your butt on that cycle,” I told myself. It was 9.30 in the night and I had just finished a lousy day of making lemonades, lemon pickles and even lime rice for life had only lemons to hand me for the day. I was cranky, tired and irritable. In short, it was the perfect time to be out on a cycle. I knew that within ten minutes of pumping those pedals, good mood would rush back to me as surely as the blood that gushes to my face when I cycle.
It all began when my husband and I found some exquisite cycling trails in Pondicherry. Apart from the sheer pleasure of cycling, we found that we had walked (well, cycled) side by side for more than sixty minutes and we had not quarrelled once.
“This is an incredible invention,” said my husband.

“The cycle has been around since the 19th century,” I said dryly.
“No, I mean the fact that we don’t quarrel when we cycle,” he said.
“That would be a discovery and not an invention, Palooka.” I said and a quarrel broke out promptly.
Yet once back neither of us could forget the immense joy cycling had given us. When you cycle, the landscape does not whiz past you in a blur as it does while in a car or a train. When you cycle, you become aware of those limbs of yours that you have long used and soaped unconsciously and never acknowledged. The dull joint aches and the pungent sweat of your armpit make you feel strangely present to yourself. Cycling slows down life and makes your own body visible to you.
“Have you wondered how crazy we are? We have two cars, two motorcycles and we want to buya cycle after all this?” my husband asked.
“Let me see, that makes it totally 12 wheels in our house and any surprise we look like their tyres?” I asked.
My exquisite logic and its expression won the argument.
We bought a cycle, a unisex that both man and wife could use. My (okay our!) cycle is red in colour. It is done up in red and silver in fact. It is sporty, macho and its curious handlebars make it seem like a buffalo with huge horns. When I ride it I like to think I look like Lord Yama on his buffalo. Gives me a sense of power, a daredevilry and all those racy feelings that a motorcycle is so wont to give and a cycle is not.
Yet life is mostly lived in our imagination and so my cycle is indeed this powerful fire-spitting, smoke-exhaling beast that I tame each time I get on it.
After I finished my round on my buffalo, I egged my husband to take it to work.
“What?? Of all the….”
“You will set a good corporate example. This will emblematise your corporate cost cutting exercise. You will be a paradigm of survivorship in times of recession,” I perorated.
“Good idea. So can you drop me by cycle in car? Or should I cycle to work by car?” He asked. “You don’t understand anything that does not come via a PPT (powerpoint presentation) or your bluetooth, do you?” I asked.
“Recycle that. I mean come again?” he asked and I asked him to stop being a bull and doggedly argued until he chickened in fright and acceded to ride the buffalo to work.
As usual, my exquisite (animal) logic and its expression won the argument. My husband has been cycling to work at least three times a week ever since and he does no less than 45 km in a week.
He says all that pumping makes him mentally alert by the time he reaches office and when he returns home all his bad chi has already been worked off and there really is no need to start an argument or throw a fit to release tension. We really are quarrelling less these days.
That night, as I climbed on my bovine vahana, my son called out.
“Here, wear this orange hood jacket of mine. You will look sporty,” said my son.
“But it will conceal my attractiveness?” I complained.
“Er…yeah. Safer, don’t you think? Given the late hour, I mean,” added my husband.
So if you see a lady late in the night in an orange hood (to hide her attractiveness), setting the roads on fire, exhibiting hitherto unmatched daredevilry on a bike that resembles a buffalo, know that it’s me.

Cow is so good it can give milk in packets

2010-03-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

In a recent interaction with six-year-old children, I asked them to write a short description of any animal of their choice. I gave them a structure for the essay — namely the first line should describe their chosen animal in such specific manner that the readers should be left in no doubt, the second few lines should detail the use/danger of the animal to humans and the last line can be used to express their personal opinion of the animal.
I usually use this exercise to gauge how “schooled and boxed in” the children are and based on this I decide at what level I should begin my writing workshop with them. But it emerged that this particular group was full of poets. For the sake of my readers, I have remedied the children’s sentences and spellings a bit, but the import is intact. Read on:
A boy who chose to write on cow said in his first sentence (describing the animal in specific manner), “A cow is a cow. Not a goat.”
Going on to the second paragraph, he explained, “Many animals have milk, but a cow is so good that it can give milks even in packets” and his last line said it all, “I love a cow. It is so useful I know its spelling.”
Another child enthralled me with her version of the lion. Her first line read — “Lines are fat and hairy.” Second paragraph — “Lions run after non-veg items like chicken, egg, mutton, beef. We cannot be friends with lion as we are also non-veg item.” And finally, “Lions are useful to us in cinemas.”
Then came the dog. “Do I like my dog or my sister? My sister fights with me. My dog only bites me. I bathe in Dettol, my dog also. My sister’s name is Minu. My dog’s name is Joker. I feel sad because they make fun of my dog. He is not joker, but my sister is mean. I hate my sister. I love my dog. He is useful. Sister is dangerous.”
Yet another child wrote about the owl. “Owl is living in villages or forests, inside a tree hole. They are so wise that crow, sparrow and everyone go to Owl for wisdom. An owl sleeps in the day. But I cannot. I come to school in the day. Also I live in city. So I don’t know anything about owl. So bye-bye.”
Next came the snake. “Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssss, a snake shouts like this. When we say ssssssssssssssssssssssssss it means keep quiet. Teachers shout like snake. Snakes dance very well. For annual day we did snake dance. A snake is useful in school programmes.”
There was one on Hippos too. “Hippo has large hips. They live in Discovery TV. I have a hippo soapbox. If hippo and elephant fight, who will win? I am very sorry; I don’t know any use of Hippo.”
And I particularly love the one on elephants. “Elephant is big, black and very strong. From far they look like black clouds. They wear bells to warn us. Their anklets are so big we use them as chains. Elephant is the national animal of the world.”
There were many other lovely entries about the rabbit, peacock, monkey and even fish. The children eventually created some beautiful
poetry with me which I shall share with my readers in another column.
The children employed such exquisite
expressions, boldness and revealed such
expanse of heart and mind that I regretted my adulthood, which seems to stand in my way of writing good poetry. What more can I say? I only hope that the children’s “schooling does not interfere with their education” and I can only hope that these children remain the poets they so easily are!

Wash if you are Indian. Wipe if you are not.

2010-03-02T01:44:00.000-08:00

One of the easiest ways to heckle or ignite an NRI, I found was to ask in the midst of a genial conversation, “Wash or wipe?” The context is unmistakable and the question goes home immediately. We all know that paper or water in the toilet is no yardstick to measure degree of patriotism but it very well could be going by my NRI friends’ discomfiture.
Looks like the conversion to a western way of life, begins with the unruly Indian tongue massaging its “r”s into doughy “zh”s and ends with the bottom demanding paper over water. And between the tongue and the bottom, there lies a long drawn process of cultural adjustment and appropriation and between wash and wipe there hovers a great continental shift in world view. However to do our Indian brothers and sisters fair, let me put it on record that they indeed held on to the water by their bottoms as long as they could before they began to need more than the daily newspaper to accompany them into the bathroom. Their transition from wash to wipe school of thought (and action) had been anything but easy for them as the article will indicate.

Starting with better adjusted candidates- Vinu Warrier from Canada insisted that the “wash or wipe dilemma is the most under mentioned problem of Diaspora”. Living abroad for past two decades he proudly asserts his dual citizenship by first wiping with paper and later washing at his tub. (Thanks for telling. When I visit you I shan’t roll in your tub.) An uncle of mine admitted that he washes in India and wipes in America. (That must be one long journey for so poor a cause!). Sathya in Australia said he wets the paper with water and uses them as wet wipes (eligible candidate for dual citizenship).

Moving on to difficult customers who wouldn’t answer the question without first berating the Indian toilet - Raghavan s(h)itting pretty in Boston delivered a stinging monologue on the state of the Indian loos before he condescended to answer the question “Wash or wipe?”
Raghavan’s erudite electricity* (bottom’s name changed to protect identity) prefers paper over water and has arrived at the choice after smelly introspection. “With the western loo,” he boomed, “you have to deal with your own ass being a little less than squeaky clean after a trip. With the Indian style loo, you are frequently wondering what exactly you are stepping on when you enter. Sometimes you are left with no doubt, thanks to the clues on the floor left behind by the previous occupant. So, given the choice between having a little of my own produce on my ass and having other people's produce on my feet (and possibly hands), I choose the former, as any rational human being would. So that resolves it, right? I wipe now. I wipe. So what??” (The hysteria was moving, really).

Pavithra in London (here I mean the great city London and not the loo which many of us Indians still call ‘London’) discussed the “yuck factor” of Indian toilets before answering the question. “Despite all the new found economic prosperity of India, we seem quite reluctant to give up our rusty iron bucket in the loo that was bequeathed to us by our grandmothers. Sometimes the rusty bucket would spring a leak at the bottom, at which time, some bright guy in the household would come up with the idea of lining the old heirloom with a coat of cement at the bottom so that the bucket may survive another generation, not to mention that it now holds less water and weighs an extra kilogram. Also, you are sure that the previous visitor, after finishing his business picked up the bucket with his unwashed hands and put it back in place under the dripping tap. I hate Indian loos. Paper is definitely cleaner, drier and undeniably better.” She concluded.

Rumi who had in one of MTVs’ programs seen among other hot hangout spots in Asia, also pictures of the Asian loo, complete with arrows and drawings detailing how to squat and do business, was very excited on her first trip to India. Sufficiently briefed about Indian toilet practices, Rumi had just one Punjabi meal in an uppity restaurant before declaring, “I now know why Indians use water in their toilet.” When the fire in her tongue subsided she couldn’t stop raving about a new contraption she found in the bathroom, which apparently was not available when her parents were still Indians. “The mini shower hose is a riot. I heard it is a new addition to the toilet accessory to ensure dry bathroom floor.” She said before adding, “My aunt visiting from the village sort of missed the whole point. She dethroned from the western closet, squatted on the floor and got her aim wrong and ended up spraying her tummy or face before she finally figured it out. Paper is most definitely uncomplicated,” Rumi couldn’t stop laughing.
The question “Wash or wipe?” indeed seems a dipstick study on where the NRI stands vis-à-vis his country and its way of life. Among many things like cleaner environment, potable tap water and wider roads, what keeps our Indians comfortably abroad is….believe it or not is the state of the Indian loos. What our friends do in their bathrooms abroad is their business, but you know you have lost yet another wet Indian to the dry west when they start needing toilet paper even when they are visiting home. The toilet paper I am afraid is no ordinary tissue- it is the final cord that permanently binds our brethren to the alien land, a string that severes the umbilical cord with their homeland, a rope that draws our brothers out of the Indian amniotic waters. But be assured the Sons of Indian soil began to wipe their spoils only after sufficient turmoil! (Sorry about the melodrama-heh heh!)

Raghavan at Boston who briefly returned to his original semi-hysteric self wistfully shared his dreams of a toilet that would go beyond the narrow continental boundaries and address the true need of the customer. “The Japanese- these innovative people really have it all figured out - the spray and dryer are built into the loo and there is a panel of buttons on the side. So after you are done, you push button number one and lo and behold a spray of water comes up and cleans you even as you stay seated. And then one more button to blow dry it all out. Usually there are four buttons on the panel - I am not sure what the other two do, probably powder and pat. I really think the Japanese have it figured out - they are truly ahead of the pack in this technology, I think. Sometimes as I sit on my own humble loo with just a roll of paper on the side, I dream about a day when every loo will spray, dry, powder and fondly pat each ass that comes its way.”
Now we know what lies in the bottom of the Non Resident Indian’s heart or should we say in the heart of the Non Resident Indian’s bottom?

*******

* "Wash or wipe" is my very first article for Loony Life column in The New Indian Express

Between the two

2010-02-20T04:02:00.000-08:00

Yudhistira has logic
So does Manu
Sadly I don’t understand them
and that comes in my way of

blissful marriage and easy copulation
1+1=2 cannot be more complicated.

In the marriage firmament
I often wish to be a star
like Arundati
Whom or which I pretended to spot
standing on a piece of rock
“May your chastity be like rock”
The priest murmured.
And of course I rock.

15 years post standing on brimstone
Yudhistira and Manu - persistent men
keep coming (in) my way.
One trades wife and other sells locks
to women.
But I am not women.
I am single and singular
That also comes in my way of

Blissful marriage and easy copulation
1-1=0. That is also complicated.

As I float aimlessly in the corridors
of well swept institutions
I spy the two men
Yudhistira and Manu
photocopying themselves assiduously
and releasing flyers into air for quick pollination.

They pause. They even smile nicely at me.
Yudhistira binds my wild locks.
He hates them. It reminds him of many things.
“Choose between us.
Him or Me”, says Manu gently
and
calls in my son to take me home.
“It is either him or me. There is no third kind,”
adds Yudhistira.

Between the two
I hug Yudhistira.
The chief architect of trade-offs.
He will understand my request-surely?
“If the seeds are all the same,
then may I have four more men
and rotate them like crops?”
I ask.

****

Published in Unisun's "Mosaic" anthology of poems

Kali

2010-02-13T04:28:00.000-08:00

Tell me a secret, any secret.
Maybe on how
you live in dark marshy woods
and yet keep your feet spotless white
or
how you squeeze the serpents like washed clothes
till they spew the truth.

Can you reveal
how you wear a dress
tied only at the neck, hemmed with lemon beads
that I suspect to be living worlds
or how you keep the tongue
red hot all year round.

Kali
tell me how you carry
men’s torn heads like vanity
and use their prying arms
as leaves for your skirt

or
pray divulge why you should be
all black and blue
when you have no pending dowry to be paid
nor a man to maintain
and especially when you have a tiger of a pet?

Let drip just one coveted secret
from those luscious breasts of yours
that I can lap up to instantly become your sakhi,
something to stand me apart from your mother,
sisters, denouncers, devotees...

Kali, tell me a secret, any secret,
for how else can you love me differently?

******

Published in Unisun's poetry anthology "I, me, myself."

From an office window

2010-02-04T07:14:00.000-08:00

Have you watched a crow
polish off a rat?
I did.
Yesterday.

Well.
The juicy entrails long
winding and twisted
into gossip go first.

The rat’s innards flow.
First fluently.
Then
h a l t i n g l y
in small talks.

Coming to the heart of the matter.
The nervy crow
picks up an arterial thread
from a criss-cross
of thoughts and treads across
meatydetailssilentspacesfatsunshedandsuddenly
jerks up
………………..
to nibble on a memory.

Elsewhere
two clock hands
come together
in a beak closing
to devour time
memories
conversations.

Then comes the kidney.
But much water has already flown.
What use is a dead rat?
Or so I thought.

The glutton picks the bones clean.
Slowly, surely, leisurely.
Every peck, a jab at time.

The crow relishes the memory
of the rat that once was
and I remember our
old conversations.

****

Published in Unisun's poetry anthology Peacock's cry

Empty musical afternoons

2009-12-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

It is the December music season at Chennai and all of us rasikas are in our Kangaroo avatar hopping from one sabha to next. But what saddens me is that there is a Friday-evening-Satyam-theatre kind of rush for certain concerts while certain afternoon concerts have as much crowd as the bus stop opposite Theosophical Society at Besant Avenue. Nobody knows it is there and nobody stops there, not even the buses.

The afternoon slots are usually reserved for junior and sub-junior musicians and possibly the audience are too hoity-toity to appear in their best silks at a “junior” concert. The poor afternoon musicians sing to empty chairs with such gusto that if I were a chair, I would lift my two arms and applaud them heartily. However, some smart parents of certain afternoon musicians had ensured a decent crowd by pressing relatives and friends into attending the concert. As you enter the hall, you feel you are intruding a family get together like a seemandham or punyajanam. “Where is Kappu living now? Was Kalli’s delivery normal?” and such talk abound. Two people (presumably father and uncle) go around welcoming and thanking people. You almost expect them to tell you, “kandippa saptutu daan ponum” (please have food before leaving). During the concert, one lady leaned forward and I thought she was going to ask “who on the stage are you related to?” like they ask in weddings “which side do you belong? Girl or boy?” Thankfully she only wanted to know the raga. Yet not all relatives and friends are as obliging and something has to be done about these performances which have more people on the stage than in the seats.
I am not going to make any serious suggestion here like switch the senior musicians’ concerts to the afternoon slots because they get their audience anyway and/or don’t spread so many concerts across so many sabhas, it only thins the attendance etc. These suggestions have been made by many to deaf ears and therefore I shall not waste further time. Instead I have a new set of suggestions.
Just as certain sitcoms have a laughter track running behind, the sabha people can switch on an applause track at appropriate moments to create a feeling of audience. But usually the organizers themselves are not present. So they may have to train the mike man to do it, only that the mike man, in the event of being tone deaf may switch on the applause track at inappropriate moments like when the vocalist is sipping milk or when he has lost a beat stupidly or when he is glaring at the violinist for a goof up. Still, some sound of applause is better than none.
Secondly the backs of the chair can be painted on to resemble human beings in seated posture. From the stage it would look like the chairs are people. And if the arms of the chairs can be robotically programmed to lift and applaud at the end of every song on cue, it would even be better.
Thirdly those rare few who enter the hall should be given ping pong balls cut in halves with the orbs of the eye painted on it. You see, most people fall asleep insensitively sitting in the very first row. These people can press the ping pong orbs onto their eyes and go to sleep while the performers sing rest assured that they have an audience who are listening “wide eyed” with surprise at their incredible talent.
Once I invited my friend at Royapuram for a book reading of mine and he said he would come if I gave him, “noor rooba, kaila kuska” (Rs.100 and a packet of Kuska in hand, which is apparently what politicians give to bribe voters). I think afternoon slot musicians should contact my friend at Royapuram.

The above article was published in my "Loony Life" column two weeks ago.

Enough Kohl to put Johnny Depp to shame

2009-12-23T03:31:00.000-08:00

By far, the Chennai December music season this time has been a case of “I went, I saw, I ran away” kind of experience for me. I began writing a stiff ‘Carnatic music and consumerism — Making the audience buy’ type of article. But considering my sworn readers who cannot brook one grave sentence from my pen, I have here a series of (loony) snapshots on the music season.

I thought I had wandered into a South Indian wedding when I entered a concert hall this December season. Rustling silk saris, fragrant jasmine strings, deep namaskarams, aroma of filter coffee and idli-sambar, snatches of gossip…eh? If I had anticipated such heavy dressing, I would have at least remembered to comb. But what the hell? I came to listen to music, not be seen. The violinist on stage had enough kohl in her eyes to put Johnny Depp to shame, while the vocalists glittered like Christmas trees. So much so, I was tempted to carry one back home and hang some gifts for my kids. My vote any day is for Sanjay Subrahmanyan, who prefers to throw his flamboyance into his music rather than his clothes. If musicians felt glittering jibbas and flashy saris added weight to their music, then why wear just one? Why not wear four? Or maybe I belong to that dwindling population which expects only a good concert and not a ‘good-looking’ concert.
There was just so much fanfare on stage and off stage in every concert I went to that I wanted to shout, “Will the real performers please stand up?” Where were those good old mamas and mamis hugging yellow cloth bags, taking the 23As and 12Cs to arrive at Sastri Hall and Music Academy? These good souls, who could outcry any geko with their appreciative tch-tch-tches, were completely lost in the overdressed crowd.
For those unacquainted with Carnatic musicians, people who sing in pairs give themselves creative names like Mambalam sisters, Hyderabad brothers and Carnatica brothers. Given the burgeoning talent base, there will come a crowded day when we will see Thambiah Reddy street sisters, 4th main road (next to Pizza hut) brothers etc. Tomorrow perchance my daughter and niece begin to perform as duo I plan to call them Vatsalya sisters after the playschool they go to.
Coming to music reviews in a popular daily, one can never make out if the concert soared or sucked from what they write. Consider this convoluted writing — “Mutual enrichment of the musical fare was facilitated by the individual merit of each expert member”. Translated it simply means, the musicians did a good job or at least that’s what I think. And then there is this insufferable alliteration critics get into. “Mellifluous Madhyamavati, kindling Kalyani, meandering Mohanam, roaring Ranjani” ad nauseum. As such Carnatic music is inaccessible. For God’s sake, should we employ ‘twilight language’ while speaking about this art form?
Carnatic musicians have really smartened up. They act in movies, endorse products, appear in reality shows, write books, email their concert schedules religiously, have perky music profiles, perfect PR, well- updated blogs and websites. It is a good sign that one can indeed make a living out of Carnatic music. I am saying all this so that, that segment of population, which still drools over Carnatic musicians as if they were messengers of God, should wake up and understand that they’re all in this field as professionals, just as any doctor or engineer is in his.
Visaka Hari(ji) is one performer who has spoilt every Tambrahm married woman’s chances with her mother-in-law. She is the dream daughter-in-law of every mamiyar, what with her madisar/straight hair parting/diamond earrings and absorption in all things politically correct. She makes all the mamis wonder why it didn’t occur to them to make a career out of the bedtime stories they knew and wear their madisars with more pride. For foot-in-mouthed, jeans-wearing failure of a character like me, Visaka Hari is a Kafkaish nightmare (my mother-in-law loves her). The way the older generation spring into action to ‘catch’ seats for her programme — well, you have to see it to believe it. She makes them forget their rheumatoid arthritis.
Amidst kanjeevarams and namaskarams in the concert hall, I also spotted some straight skirts and hugging and kissing on both cheeks. Wasn’t this behaviour usually displayed by the audience of Alliance Francaise programmes? Good! So Carnatic music is also turning ‘happening’! And may it happen minus the trappings!

This article was published in my Loony Life column

G.Madhavan Vocal. Dec '09 Carnatic music concerts for season

2009-12-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 07, 2009
2:45 pm to 4:15 pm
Nungambakkam Cultural Academy
Ramarao Kala Mantap, Habibullah road, T.Nagar
Sudha Iyer on violin, Vijay Natesan on Mridangam

Friday, December 11, 2009
12:15 pm to 1:30 pm
Karthik Fine Arts
Naradha Gana Sabha Mini Hall

Saturday, December 12, 2009
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
All India Radio - FM Gold

Saturday, December 12, 2009
6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Papanasam Sivan Sangeetha Sabha, Madipakkam
Kalyani Shankar on violin, Mannarkoil J.Balaji on Mridangam

Sunday, December 13, 2009
5:00 pm to 6:15 pm
Chennai Fine Arts (RTP Concert)
Gokhale Hall, Mylapore
Dr. R.Hemalatha on violin, K.S.Ramana on Mridangam

Monday, December 14, 2009
2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Krishna Gana Sabha
Gana vihar, Maharajapuram Santhanam Road, T.Nagar
Usha Rajagopal violin, T.R.Sundaresan Mridangam

Saturday, December 19, 2009
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Nadha Inbam
Ragasudha hall, Mylapore
Usha Rajagopal violin, Sherthalai Ananthakrishnan Mridangam

Saturday, December 19, 2009
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Hamsavinodhini
Sankaran Temple, Kuppiah street, West Mambalam
Usha Rajagopal, Sherthalai Ananthakrishnan

Friday, December 25, 2009
9:00 am to 10:30 am
Valayapatti sabha
Anantha Padmanabha swami temple, Adyar
Kalyani Shankar, Madurai Shanmugam, Mayavaram Somu Pillai

Friday, December 25, 2009
2:30 am to 4:00 pm
Brahma Gana Sabha
Sivagami Pethachi auditorium, Luz church road, Mylapore
Kandadevi Vijayaraghavan, T.R.Sundaresan

Ganesha never fails

2009-11-08T01:47:00.000-08:00

Somebody was having fever. High fever. High exam fever. It was none other than Lord Ganesha, who lived in the small temple under the arasa tree at the street corner. In the last one week, dozens of boys and girls had assailed him, begging to be promoted to the next class. To help them get through in maths, history, geography, civics. Ooh! How much could a god remember?
Lord Ganesha’s brow began to feel hot and clammy. He felt very feverish. Exam feverish. Something had to be done about this. Fast!
***
Gangadharan went and wrote VI Std for the third time on the small Pillaiyar temple wall. He did this without his mother Sitamma’s knowledge.
“You cannot pass by writing your class on the temple wall or by promising coconuts to god. You have to study,” Sitamma would yell if she got to know.
Gangadharan or Ganga didn’t care much about being scolded. All he wanted was to pass and go to class seven after all, how could he be separated from his best friends? Wouldn’t he be left behind if he failed? And who wanted to be friends with Nattu and Rangan of class five chee! They still played hand cricket and even did underarm bowling. Shameful!
“Pillaiyar appa, you have been the scribe for Veda Vyasa and written the Mahabharata and all. What is a mere Class VI exam for you? Please make me get 35 on 100. I am not at all greedy I just want to pass. Are you listening?” Ganga asked eagerly, opening one eye to look slyly at the trunk god to see if any of his flattery had had an effect. He was dismayed to find eight other small figures writing I, V, VI, IV and other such class numbers on the wall.
“Dai ! What are you all doing?” Ganga demanded.
“Mmm? Same thing as you were! In fact we got the idea from you, anna,” said the youngest kid in the group.
Ganga had nothing to say to this and so quietly went home to spend the rest of his study holidays wondering how to pass.

“Will you start studying now at least?” asked Sitamma. Since morning Ganga had done nothing but sit at the study table and stare blankly into space.

“Yes, amma. First, I’ll arrange my bookshelf and then I’ll start,” Ganga said. For a full one hour he arranged his books to kill time. When Sitamma was not looking, he played book-cricket and admired his large collection of stickers which he had traded, won and earned by chewing innumerable bubble gums.
An hour later, Sitamma checked on him again to see if he had started his lessons at all. Sure enough, Ganga was still arranging his books.
“Enough of that Ganga, open your book now,” commanded Sitamma.
“Oh! I just remembered that Chakkarai has my maths notebook. I’ll just run across to his house and get it,” said Ganga and scooted before his mother could say anything. By the time Ganga returned, it was time for lunch. After lunch (which consisted of his favourite koottu and thuvayal), Ganga felt so full and satisfied that his eyes started to close slowly and he began to nod. The bed looked cosy and inviting.
“Why does everything seem more pleasurable before the exams? Almost everything seems better than this wretched study table,” he said to himself. He was about to doze off when Sitamma barged into the room angrily.
“Ganga! You have not read a single page since morning. Just what do you think of yourself?” she thundered. Just then, the skies outside rumbled and broke into a sudden summer shower. Ganga jumped up, grabbed an umbrella and ran out. He ran in the direction of the Pillaiyar temple.
“If the VI Std I wrote has not been erased in the rain, then I will surely pass; if not aiyo! No it can’t be erased,” hoped Ganga. Before he got there, eight small figures were already standing with umbrellas outstretched to protect their handwriting on the wall. When they saw Ganga, they all smiled impishly, some a little foolishly.
“Have you all studied anything?”asked Ganga.
“Yes I did,” said Paramasivam of Class V.
“What?” asked Ganga.
“I studied the school pledge and the national anthem. I thought maybe there will be a surprise oral test on that,” Paramu said innocently while the rest of the group laughed.
“What about you da?” Ganga asked Vichchu.
“I don’t have to study, I think I am going to get fever. My head is already spinning,”
said Vichchu very seriously.
“I too am going to get fever and vomit,” said Krishnaswamy of Class I.
“What do you think I can get?” asked Ganga hopefully.
“You are going to get three hard raps on your head,” said a voice from behind, hard as thunder.
The terrified gang of boys turned to see a figure dripping with water from head to toe, with hair scattered all over the face.
“Mother!” Ganga was the first to react.
“Why have you come without an umbrella?”
“Mmmm? Your father has taken one umbrella and you have brought the other. I just
had to find out what you were up to. So all of you are planning to get fever and vomit,
is it?” asked Sitamma angrily.
“So what have you promised to the god?” she asked, looking at Rangan.
“Hundred sit-ups,” he said timidly.
“And you?”
“Three coconuts,” said Kishmu.
“All of you just march behind me. I have something for you,” Sitamma commanded angrily. Everyone obeyed.
Once they reached Ganga’s house, Sitamma made the boys sit in a row and went inside. When she came out, two girls were with her. Both looked like they were in college and they looked alike. Looking at the boys’ wonder, the girls said in unison.
“We are twins. We belong to Padippaal Uyarvu Sangam (progress through education).We are going to help you with your studies and make you all pass with good marks.”
The boys looked at each other skeptically but were glad that help was at hand. They all ran home to fetch their books. Soon everyone began to assemble in Sitamma’s verandah every morning to learn their lessons from the twin sisters.
The sisters placed a huge Ganesha idol in the centre of the group and said, “Look at our Lord Ganesha. He is the embodiment of learning. His ears are so large. It means He listens better and understands better. He is the world’s first scribe. He knows how to write very well mainly because he never writes anything which he does not understand. Look at his trunk which looks like an ink pen, it is full of knowledge. If you know your lessons well, your pen will automatically seem to write better and flow faster. And last but not the least, look at his broken tusk it means you must learn more and munch less!”
Day after day, the sisters drilled and coached the entire group of boys. In fact they did it so well that the boys were actually looking forward to writing their exams. On the day of the examination, the boys did ten sit-ups before Lord Ganesha, wished each other luck and left for the hall accompanied by the sisters. (Vicchu actually had fever (really!), yet he went to take the exam.) When the results came, the boys were exultant. They had all passed with distinctions. There was great jubilation in the air. They bought lots of sweets and went to the Padippaal Uyarvu Sangam to thank the twin sisters. At the Sangam, they asked to see the twin sisters.
“There are no twins working for us. What did you say their names were?” asked the officer.
“Siddhi and Buddhi,” said the boys.
“How strange! There are no twins by those names here!” exclaimed the officer.
The surprised boys went home and told Sitamma about what had happened. Sitamma was totally nonplussed. She looked at the Ganesha in the centre of the hall and then at the boys.
“Boys, did you know that Lord Ganesha’s wives are called Siddhi and Buddhi? Siddhi means successful completion and Buddhi means intelligence. It seems like the trunk god himself sent them to help you with your exams. I am sure they will visit us to find out about your results,” said Sitamma.
The boys were surprised too. But soon their happiness surpassed their surprise and they all ran out to play with sweets in hand. Only Sitamma kept sitting in front of the Ganesha idol not knowing what to make of the entire thing. Was this a mere coincidence or were the twin girls a real godsend?
Can the Chatterbox readers guess?

Ganesha never fails was published in Chatterbox magazine. Incidentally this is my first story ever published for children.

Ghost on call

2009-10-10T22:02:00.001-07:00

Kurali–Gnyamali had to be summoned. The brouhaha (make that brouhaha…hahaha) kicked up by Ganga, Kishmu and their entourage had wreaked havoc on Sitamma’s
nerves.
“Kurali-Gnyamali, come immediately!” Sitamma screamed. There was instant
silence. Those were the days when instant coffee had not arrived in the small township where Sitamma lived. But instant silence was very much available—especially when the name of Kurali-Gnyamali, the instant silencer, was conjured up.

The gang huddled into a corner, looking subdued. “Stay this way,” ordered Sitamma and hurried into the kitchen to giggle in peace. The gang squeezed itself into the corner. Legs, hands and heads merged to look like a single respiring, perspiring organism. Like a king spider with tentacles swaying up and down and up and down and up and down. Armed with multiple heads and innumerable legs, it looked like it had descended on this world to preserve and protect the spider species. The king spider started to move slowly, hoping that Kurali- Gnyamali would not make an appearance. Until Kishmu, who was scared of anything with more than two legs, spotted a real spider bungee jumping in his direction from the ceiling.
“Aiyyo!” he screamed loudly. Instantly the king spider disintegrated into human beings of various shapes and sizes. Everybody except Kishmu thought that Kurali-Gnyamali had actually arrived. There were shrieks, yelps, screams, cries, screeches, bawls, shouts, barks, yells and howls which resulted in a strange mishmash of sounds.
“Kurali-Gnyamali!” Sitamma screamed again from inside the kitchen, unable to bear the hullabaloo. Immediately the entire bunch fled the house, from raw fear.
“Who is Kurali-Gnyamali?” Amirthavalli asked when the gang reassembled under their favourite tamarind tree.
“Kurali-Gnyamali…you don’t know Kurali-Gnyamali?” asked Kishmu.
“No, we don’t,” said Rangan a little angrily.
“Mmmm…” (Kishmu was doing some fast thinking. He had never thought about it at all, except that whenever Sitamma mentioned the name Kurali- Gnyamali, he and his brother Ganga froze with fear.) “Are you going to tell us or not?” demanded a voice from somewhere in
the group.
“They are Sitamma’s ghost friends,” Kishmu said quickly. “They can appear anywhere. They recite Kurals, which is why the name Kurali. They tell stories and even find lost things.”
“Yes-yes! They are very good at finding lost things,” chipped in Ganga who couldn’t forget the time when Kurali-Gnyamali had retrieved his Tamil classwork notebook from god knows where. What had happened on that eventful day was this. It was the day the school was reopening after the Dusshera holidays. Ganga was packing his bag for the day and just couldn’t find his Tamil classwork book. Now Ilango vaaddiyaar, a die-hard Tamil pundit and a terror among the boys, was well-known for the choicest Tamil phrases he used to scold students who forgot their
notebooks at home. Even hard raps from his cane were easier to bear than listening to confounding abuses like Kodari kambe, Eena puzhuve, Brahmahathi and Tamil drohi . Not knowing what to do, Ganga resorted to the only solution he knew, which was running to Sitamma and begging for her help.
“How many times have I asked you to check your timetable at night and pack your bag?” emanded Sitamma.
“This is not the first time something like this is happening. I always seem to be the one finding your geometry box, your school badge, your diary and also getting your father’s signature on the test papers.”
“Amma, please…one last time. I have looked everywhere but can’t find it,” pleaded Ganga.
“ Oho! If you have really looked everywhere then I’ll have to ask Kurali-Gnyamali,” said Sitamma.
Ganga had no time to ask who this Kurali-Gnyamali was. He was in a tearing hurry to reach school on time, failing which the headmaster would cane him in front of the entire assembly.
“Okay, please ask this Kurali to find my notebook,” Ganga begged.
“That is not so easy. You have to pay Kurali-Gnyamali a dakshinai, a fee to find your notebook,” said Sitamma.
“How much? I have only saved ten paise since last year,” said Ganga.
“No need for hard cash,” retorted Sitamma dryly. “All you have to do is run around the house thrice and clap your hands over your head saying, ‘Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook, Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook, Kurali-Gnaymali find my notebook.’ Only then will you get your notebook,” concluded Sitamma.
Ganga was dumbstruck, but not enough to give up the only chance he had of finding his notebook. It was sheer luck that his younger brother Kishmu had already left for school. Otherwise he would have become the laughing stock of the entire neighbourhood. It was either the disgraceful exercise of running around the house clapping his hands over his head or being admonished in front of the assembly on the very first day of the new school term.
“Let all disgrace happen within the compound of one’s own house,” Ganga muttered to himself and stepped out. He started running around the house mumbling, “Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook, Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook, Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook.”
“Louder,” yelled Sitamma from inside.
So Ganga raised his voice a bit during his second round. He was finding it quite difficult to chant these stupid lines and clap at the same time. “Still louder,” persisted Sitamma mercilessly until Ganga was literally screaming. “Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook, Kurali-Gnyamali find my
notebook, Kurali-Gnyamali find my notebook.” Meanwhile, and unfortunately for Ganga, next-door Kuzhali was drying her tresses on the terrace when she heard Ganga’s voice. Now Kuzhali had a soft corner for Ganga, though he was younger than her and despite Ganga’s obvious dislike for her. Whenever she crossed his path, Ganga used to cover his nose so as to not breathe the same air as she did. Despite his rude behaviour, Kuzhali still liked him. When she heard Ganga chanting what sounded like her name, she interrupted him. “Are you calling out for me?” she asked coyly.
“Shut up and po di ulla,” hissed Ganga.
“Why should I go inside? This is my terrace and I will do what I want here,” retorted Kuzhali.
Ganga was close to tears now. He decided to face Sitamma’s wrath rather than let Kuzhali the ogress know what he was doing. He ran inside. And what do you think he saw there?
His Tamil notebook on the swing! Ganga grabbed the book and rushed to school.
Conveniently forgetting the embarrassment he had gone through, Ganga started to wax eloquent about how Kurali-Gnyamali could retrieve lost things, recover things fallen into
the well and find hidden treasures. The gang listened to him with rapt attention.
“Can it find the doll I lost last year?” asked Pankajam.
“Er…it can, but it won’t because it is a family ghost. It is our family’s ghost and it will help only us,” said Ganga convincingly. “And know what? I have never lost anything after Kurali- Gnyamali came into my life,” he continued, sounding triumphant.
Now it was Kishmu’s turn to feel that he too had to contribute something towards promoting the family ghost. If Ganga knew so much, then he should know a few stories as well. After all it was their family ghost.
“Kurali-Gnyamali can narrate such interesting stories, that too in the form of couplets—just like the Tirukkural,” started Kishmu.
“Narrate one,” challenged Varadan.
“Yes! Yes! Why not?” spluttered Kishmu quite at a loss for words. He had no clue what a couplet was. So he decided to try his hand at rhyming. He cleared his throat and began,
“In times very hoary Lived a lion called Hari,
Who befriended the fox Pari-Nari
Despite his sore psori.
But ungrateful Pari-Nari
Gave his sore psori to Hari
Who felt very sorry
And that is the end of the story.”
The entire group was silent. Very silent. “You call this a story?” said Neelakandan sounding very bugged. “Why not?” countered Kishmu.
“Stories are supposed to have morals,” pitched in Rangan.
“Even this has a moral. Never make friends with people who have sores!”
“Stories are never this short. They are long…much longer than this,” said Pankajam.
“Well, if both the lion and the fox have sores and are busy scratching, how can any story happen? Just take this moral and keep quiet,” said Kishmu authoritatively.
By now it was time for lunch and the gang dispersed after deciding to meet under the tamarind tree an hour later. But before going home, Ganga and Kishmu extracted a promise from each one of their friends that they wouldn’t tell anyone about their family ghost. There were lots of uestions in the post-lunch session. It was obvious that the entire group had been thinking of Kurali-Gnyamali and the family ghost’s contribution towards the overall welfare of the Ganga-
Kishmu family. More obviously, none of them had kept their promise about not discussing Kurali-Gnyamali.
“My mother says there are no such things as family ghosts,” said Nattu boldly.
“What do you know?” countered Pankajam. “My mother said a Malayali ghost had possessed her cousin and that she had to be nailed to a tree for forty-five days before the ghost left her. Then the same ghost entered her aunt who had to be nailed to the very same tree. The ghost then left the aunt and possessed her youngest you vomit blood. There was a man in my father’s village who was slapped by the kaatteri while he was crossing a bridge. He became dumb after that and the only thing he wanted to do was to marry the kaatteri,” added Rangan.
“If that man wanted to marry only the kaatteri, then it could not have been a raththa kaatteri. It must have been a mohini pisaasu, a female spirit which bewitched him with her beauty and then struck him dumb. My grandmother always says that one should never comb their hair or dress
up or look into the mirror at night. It attracts the mohini to you,” said Amirthavalli knowingly.
“Actually, ghosts are supposed to live on drumstick and tamarind trees. They mostly hang upside down and grab anyone who passes under the tree at the stroke of midnight. Then they invite their friends to share the victim,” said Kishmu.
“Since ghosts have no legs they can conveniently wrap themselves around a branch,” said Ganga looking up at the tamarind tree they were standing under. “Aiyyo! We are all standing under a tamarind tree and tempting the ghosts by talking about them,” he shouted and started running. The gang followed closely on his heels. The terrorized gang spent a sleepless night. Any small sound made them jump. Everyone kept looking for ghosts which might be lurking around
to grab them. Some closed the windows tightly to prevent spirits from seeping in. A few chanted the kanda shashti kavacham to ward off evil banshees. Amirthavalli tossed her anklets into the well because her own footsteps scared her. Nandanaar applied lots of sacred ash on his forehead and chanted ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ before going to bed. Ganga and Kishmu however had lots of
things to sort out with Sitamma. They had concocted wild stories in front of their friends. But now they had to match the tales with their mother’s version of Kurali-Gnyamali. The question of utmost importance being if Kurali-Gnyamali was one ghost or two.
That afternoon, Ganga and Kishmu had spluttered like fools when they were confronted with this question. “Is Kurali-Gnyamali one ghost or are uncle. At any given point of time one person or the other from the family was nailed to the tree. Soon it got to be a very mundane affair. By the end of it all, the entire family had learnt Malayalam from the ghost! It even taught my great aunt how to make chakka pradaman,” she ended, feeling rather important.
“I have not heard about family ghosts, but I do know of Raththa Kaatteris, vampires who slap you till they two ghosts?” Pankajam had asked curiously.
Kishmu had said “one” and Ganga had said “two” simultaneously and had ended up looking like “filtered fools”—Sitamma’s favourite term of abuse. Her explanation for this analogy went something like this. To make original aromatic filter coffee, one filled the brass filter with freshly roasted, coarse coffee powder and poured boiling-hot water into it. Since the powder was grainy, the water took long to seep in. Hence first decoctions were akin to people who had thick, grainy heads that prevented penetration of any kind of knowledge and advice. Second decoctions were slightly better, the third even better and so on and so forth. But as far as Sitamma was concerned, she preferred first decoctions not only for her coffee but also for her friends and acquaintances. “Makes life easy,” she would say.
Coming back to Pankajam’s question on the number of ghosts, the gang had been relentless with Ganga- Kishmu on this issue.
“One or two?” they had demanded.
“One,” Kishmu had said with an air of finality.
“Then why is it called Kurali-Gnyamali? It can just be Kurali, no?” Rangan had asked.
“Why? I am called Amirthavalli, which is Amirtha + Valli. One person, two names. Likewise Kurali-Gnyamali,” Amirthavalli had explained. Not convinced with this explanation, the gang had persisted mercilessly. Luckily for Ganga-Kishmu dusk had fallen heavily on the surroundings, setting off an eerie glow. Spontaneously, the brothers had broken into a run shouting, “Kurali- Gnyamali!” And that was all that was needed to scatter the ghostbusters in
twenty different directions.
Back home, the brothers waited for an opportunity to check with Sitamma about the family ghost’s history. The opportune moment presented itself after they had eaten dinner.
“Amma, that Kurali-Gnyamali…” Kishmu started hesitatingly.
“Yes, what about it?” asked Sitamma who seemed to be busy searching for something.
“Are they one ghost or two ghosts?” asked Ganga, scared even to utter the name.
“Mmmm?” Sitamma asked, still preoccupied with her searching. “Are they one ghost or two ghosts?” Ganga said a little loudly.
This time Sitamma turned around immediately and looked long and hard at her sons. She knew very well that the boys and their gang had been thinking of nothing but spooky things all day. Then she quietly said, almost in a whisper, “Dusk has fallen. I have lit the lamp. I cannot utter the name or talk about ‘it’ now. But let me show you something.” She led them to the
door which opened into the backyard and showed them two flickering images, two moving shadows on the ground. “There…” she said and turned away. The boys stood transfixed. They ventured to look at the shadows bravely, thinking that Sitamma was standing right behind them. In the faint moonlight, the shadows looked eerie. They appeared and disappeared in quick succession…All at once, the two images merged into one and then disappeared. The boys were bewildered and pretty scared. All they could now see were banana trees swaying mysteriously in the evening breeze.
“Amma, we saw two…then one,” Ganga whispered.
“Yes, amma,” said Kishmu and turned to see an empty space behind them.
That did it! The boys ran into their mother’s room yelling, “Why did you leave us alone?” Quickly they smeared sacred ash on their foreheads, recited the kanda shashti kavacham and closed all the windows and doors. It was only then that they noticed Sitamma frantically searching for something. “What are you searching for?” asked Ganga-Kishmu simultaneously.
“My gold ring,” replied Sitamma.
“Why don’t you ask —— (remember, the ghost’s name was not be uttered after dusk) to look for the ring?” asked Ganga. Then he went close to Sitamma and whispered into her ear, “Why don’t you try that clapping-your- hands-above-your-head exercise?”
“U-huh?” said Sitamma distractedly. “Why can’t _______ look for it, amma?” repeated Kishmu.
“ Oh! It’s vacation time and ‘it’ has gone on a holiday,” said Sitamma absent-mindedly.
“But just now…we saw ‘it’ in the backyard, no?”
“No, no. What I mean is ‘it’ left on its vacation just a few minutes ago…” said Sitamma quickly.
“So that means ‘it’ won’t be here tomorrow?” asked Kishmu excitedly.
“Umm…err…well…no, Kurali- Gnyamali…have gone on a holiday. I guess I have to find the ring myself because Kurali-Gnyamali won’t be back for a while,” replied Sitamma, realizing what she had done. Sitamma’s reply was received with a big whoop of joy. The boys immediately opened all the doors and windows. They ran across to their friends’ houses to inform them about the ghost’s departure…There would be no Kurali-Gnyamali any more. Well...at least till Kurali-Gnyamali were on a holiday. Sitamma was cursing herself silently in the kitchen. The brouhaha in the hall had already begun with renewed gusto.

Glossary
1. Kurals: They are didactic poems in the form of
couplets written by the Tamil saint-poet
Tiruvalluvar.
2.Dusshera: A festival in October celebrating the
victory of Rama over Ravana (or of good over
evil).
3.Vaadiyaar: Teacher in Tamil.
4. Po di ulla: Go inside! in Tamil.
5. Tirukkural: A book of didactic poems written
by Tamil saint-poet, Tiruvalluvar.
6. Chakka pradaman: A Kerala delicacy made
out of jackfruit.
7. Kanda shashti kavacham: A hymn composed
for Lord Kartikeya, believed to ward off evil.

Ghost on Call was published in Chatterbox Children’s magazine in September, 2001.

When the neem tree spoke

2009-09-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

In the front yard of our neighbour’s house was a lush neem tree, wearing a green, which was almost fluorescent. The tree trunk was of an unnatural girth, like the rounded body of a pregnant woman. Dark and curvaceous, the neem tree rose to the sky in a winding, vertical path. Rooted exactly opposite the front door of the house, the solitary neem tree was a formidable dwarapalaka standing guard over the house.
Our neighbour and we belonged to two parallel streets. Their backyard and ours used to meet over a fence which was anything but a fence. “Good fences make good neighbours” didn’t stand good as an advice for Sitamma or our friendly neighbour. The barbed wire, which had seen better days, was torn down in places. Children of both houses used to skip across the fence gaily, feeling equally free in both houses. There was good traffic coming and going between the two houses by the adults too.
The neem tree’s shade was an important hang out for us children. The shade stretched to around 15-20 meters on all sides. The farther we played from the trunk, the greater the chance of us being left in peace, for the main trunk was considered sacred. Every Tuesday and Friday, the neem tree enjoyed special attention. The trunk was reverently splashed with water and milk. Sitamma then anointed the tree’s mainframe with sandal, turmeric and kumkum. Some flowers, agarbathis and a lamp were also placed beneath the tree. Some even circumambulated and prostrated themselves before the neem tree. We children were encouraged to do the same, but we usually stood at the shade’s periphery and watched. Our only interest was the jaggery and puffed rice that would come at the end of the ritual.
“Mahamayi is housed in this tree,” Sitamma used to whisper.
“Can I see her?” I asked.
“Ssh. Come away. When night falls, don’t go near the tree,” she used to murmur.
Sure enough the tree seemed to whoosh with a frenzied intensity during nights, verily like the possessed, dancing hysterically, their hair flying this way and that. Once a visitor planted a coir cot beneath the tree and fell asleep. Well past midnight, he shrieked for help. He tumbled out of the cot, ran into the house and gasped that some invisible thing had pressed him on the chest, choking him.
“Oh! Come on now, it must have been the heavy volume of oxygen exhaled by the tree,” said an elder.
But Sitamma felt differently. “Mahamayi is a protective deity. She does her rounds after all her children fall asleep. She does not like intrusion into her space during nights. We must keep away from the tree after dusk falls. Did I not tell you?” she asked. The visitor was finally cajoled to sleep on the floor between two of his cousins (he wouldn’t dream of sleeping on a cot again, even under a fan!)
“Pick one,” Sitamma used to say softly. It meant she was in a dilemma. Not for her, a rational weighing of pros and cons or arriving at a solution using her objectivity. She always operated between extremes of “yes” or “no” for any given predicament. Writing yes/no, on two chits of paper, she rolled them at the neem’s tree’s feet. Calling any child within earshot, she used to ask the child to “pick one”. If the answer was unfavourable, she would sigh, ever so briefly, but recover almost immediately. It was infinitely more important to obey Mahamayi’s dictum. Her desires could wait or be quelled. However if a “yes” was drawn, she would smile her bright toothless smile, lighting up the entire vicinity. The point here is, the neem tree was not a tree which had to be watered, fenced and tended for, instead, She was the protector, the guide and of course God herself.
Then came a day when our neighbours bought their own tiny flat and decided to move out. Much tears and hugs were exchanged. One of our sons and one of their daughters fell in love and got married. It was a happy ending for the two families. But not for the neem tree. When the original owner came with plans for expanding the house, he felt the neem tree had to go. The roots were digging deep into the ground, too close to the foundation, too close for comfort. Lorries of gravel, sand and stone arrived. First things first, a good sturdy fence was erected between the two houses.
When the first stroke of the axe struck on the neem tree, Sitamma couldn’t contain herself. She walked up to the new neighbour and pleaded. “Sir this is not an ordinary tree. She has been standing guard over your house. We have been worshipping Her for years. Can’t you see the nests she holds?” I think she began to cry. The embarrassed gentleman was polite but seemed helpless.
That night Sitamma had a dream. An old lady, white haired, deeply beautiful wearing a simple cotton sari like the way they wear in interior Tamil Nadu appeared. Quite stoically she spoke, “It is better I do not leave.” That was all.
But who can stop houses being expanded, that too for the sake of a tree?
The tree went. None of us opened our back door for days. We did not want to hear the sound of the axe falling, or see that Amazon of a woman being carted away.
Shortly thereafter, there were some tragic incidents which touched the new owner’s life. Till date, Sitamma believes it is because the Neem tree was cut down.
“She was protecting the house from all ills, he would not listen,” she cried.
The tree is long gone. But I have never forgotten her, the coolness of her shade, the puffed rice and jaggery she yielded every Tuesday and Friday and the numerous games she allowed us to play under her watchful eye.

When the neem tree spoke was published in The Hindu on Sunday April 20th 2003.

Sitamma's Kitchen

2009-08-26T04:48:00.000-07:00

Sitamma's kitchen is a special place. As a child, I loved huddling in a corner, near the rice sack and watch her cook. This part of the house was warmer than the rest, what with two stoves going, but in the wee morning hours, the warmth was cosy and comfy.
Pouring the boiling hot porridge made of ten different protein ingredients into a large pan, she would let it cool, meantime asking me if my morning hunger was bearable or if she should just give me some plain milk. I would not answer instead I would look at the cooling porridge, then at the stew on the stove, the frothing lentils and the cut vegetables on the board on the floor. Waking from near my mother’s bosom and moving onto that warm kitchen corner was an everyday ritual, which readied and strengthened me for the less protective, less loving schema of my day. I find it difficult now to reproduce in retrospect and to articulate that particular feeling of security Sitamma’s kitchen gave me.
The vessels would be lined up in height order in neat, unchangeable positions. Rice, tamarind, red chilli had a separate corner and were stored in sacks. If it was found that a rat had made its way into the kitchen, then the sacks were immediately downed into huge vessels, which could be tightly sealed with lids. But that was very rare. The sacks were available for me to lean on every morning. the fragrance of her kitchen is something I am unable to replicate in my own. I store the same ingredients, yet that earthy, fertile, sumptuous smell of Sitamma’s kitchen is missing.
Unlike the monotonous, uni-colored, uni-metal kitchen vessels I possess, Sitamma’s pots and pans were cast in a variety of vessels. That curious mixture of hues and colors her vessels offered are inimitable. “Ever-silver” (stainless steel) vessels were not many in number. Each dish was cooked in a specific vessel made of a specific metal/material.
Rice was made in a Vengala panai-bronze pot. When the glub-glub-glub sound of rice nearing its boil reached Sitamma’s ear, she would pick out just one grain of rice from the pot and check its softness. “One rice grain’s consistency can speak for the entire pot of rice,” she would say and add, “what I mean is, just one utterance from you can throw light on what kind of person you are.” Of course, I understood nothing much less understand how one could touch boiling hot rice right off the stove.
Kozhambu was made in an Indoleum (aluminium) vessel or in Kall chetti i.e vessel cast in Ma Kal, a particular type of soft stone with which one could write on the floor, make kolams too. When Sitamma poured out the reddish brew from the black stone pot, I would say, “Paatti, doesn’t it look like Goddess Kali’s red tongue flowing out of her black mouth?” only to have my ears tweaked.
Oh! But I must tell you about Soin rasam. Rasam was made in Iya chombu, a tiny vessel made of lead. Iya chombu rasam is a brew fit for the gods. Laced with hand pounded cumin and pepper, garnished with curry leaves and coriander, the Rasam’s aroma would rouse your appetite strongly enough to devour a horse. When orange bubbles frothed near the vessel’s rim, Sitamma would heat a large tablespoonful of ghee in an iron ladle. When the ghee simmered, she would throw in some mustard. Tossing lightly she would immerse the red hot iron ladle with spluttering mustard seeds right into the bubbling rasam A huge ‘sssoooooooooin” sound emanated while the hot iron ladle tempered down with a hiss earning it the name. This soin rasam was very popular, what with its ghee and the taste of lead.
However it was the ku-chuk-chuk dosas which were my all-time favourite. What I thought was a ploy to make me eat dosas by naming them ku-chuk-chuk dosas turned out to be a valid nomenclature. Sitamma called the flat pan she used make dosais “Thandavalam” literally meaning railway tracks. Apparently the poor helped themselves to the discarded parts of the railway track, which were flat, smooth and excellent conductors of heat to make their dosas. Sitamma had a thandavalam in her village. “They hold heat for long. I can make upto four dosas even after the fire goes out. They never break.” So all dosas made on the tracks were called ku-chuk-chuk-dosas.
There are a lot more things I wish to dish out about that special place. Indeed lot many things other than just Kozhambu, rasam and curry got made in Sitamma’s kitchen. I think my recipe for life was written in Sitamma’s kitchen. The riotous variety of vessels combined with Sitamma as the chef added flavour, not just to meals but to my appreciation of life. What more could anyone ask for?

Sitamma's Kitchen was published in The Hindu on February 16, 2003.

Between the Barber and the Barbarians

2009-08-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

“Shear and shear alike,” Thathaji instructed Varadan. “Saar, is it a Sanskrit sloka?” asked Varadan innocently.
“Illa da! It means give everyone the same haircut,” said Thathaji as he prepared to oversee the hair-raising—no, hair-shedding event!
* * *
Varadan was a much-dreaded figure in my grandfather’s household. Every other Sunday he would promptly appear at six in the morning and sneak into the backyard and wait patiently until grandfather sauntered out. Nobody announced his presence. Everyone just assumed that Varadan would materialise on alternate weekends ‘to shear and shear alike’ the thriving locks of ten restless youngsters—an event that Thathaji directed with great precision.
Armed with a much-used comb, which was a mild orange in colour, a small stainless steel cup, some soap—a green and awful-smelling neem preparation—scissors and blade, Varadan would
arrive on his cycle bearing the entire luggage in a tiny yellow cotton bag advertising the famous ‘Swarna Coffee’ of yore. Unlike these days when you can just walk into a saloon on any day,
get your hair cut, pay and walk away, one had a strict set of dos and don’ts then. No haircutting on festival days. Or Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Which meant that the haircutting
exercise could be undertaken only on Sundays. (Moreover, it was impossible to assemble the ten uncontainable brats, except on a holiday.) The barbered lot were not allowed to step inside the
house until they had washed at the well, from which water could be drawn only by an un-barbered person. The ‘hair shirts’ had to be washed and dried on a separate clothesline on the terrace…
Haircutting then was surely a tough regimen to follow!
* * *

“Varadan, won’t you ever fall ill or something?” asked Lacchu, one of the Raman-Lakshman twins.
Varadan smiled impishly and said, “Ambi, switch on the radio, let’s hear some sangeetham.” Once strains of thodi came wafting in, Varadan began to hum slowly along with it. Not to be
outdone, Seenu also began to whine along.
“Adada! Ambi, thodi has periya nee, but you are touching bhairavi nee,” said Varadan earnestly, not understanding that Seenu was actually trying to rag him. Varadan was a nagaswaram vidwan, whose side-profession was barbering.
However, he was careful not to display his talent in front of Thathaji. Varadan went about preparing for the ‘event’, while the boys stood around waiting for the inevitable. Suddenly a
scuffle broke out about who has to give his head first. Screams of “you go first, not me you fool, you go first!”resounded in the air as the boys wrestled each other, ending up in the mud near the coconut tree. Varadan stood watching as he sharpened his instruments on a whetstone almost
gleefully.
All this persisted only until Thathaji emerged from inside and commanded one of the ten to fetch him a stool. The boys stood up, dusting themselves. “You, Lalli’s son, go first!” ordered
Thathaji. Soon, all the grandchildren were made to stand in a line for ‘treatment’ from Varadan.
Without much ado, Varadan got to work on Lalli’s son.
“Why is there so much sand in your hair?” he asked loudly, snipping away at the back of his head.
Of course, this resulted in a huge peroration from the grandsire (on the evils of getting sand in the hair, which could lead to worms breeding inside one’s stomach because of eating with
hands unwashed from scratching one’s sandy hair and so on…) that ended with a dig at Lalli’s son, “Is the kaliman inside your head coming out?”
Kinda, who was next in line, was a little braver than the rest and mustered enough courage to complain loudly, “What is the use of having an oil-bath yesterday if you are going to get a
haircut today?”
That somehow seemed to make sense to Thathaji. “The boys have their oil-baths every Saturday and their haircuts happen on alternate Sundays. Why bother pouring ladles of expensive gingelly oil on these thugs’ hair just to cut them off the very next day?” said
thrifty Thathaji. Kinda became the hero of the day when Thathaji declared that
henceforth oil-baths shall happen only on alternate Saturdays—one week ahead of Varadan’s arrival.
Thathaji seemed lost in thought for a while. “Varadan, how much do you charge for a haircut?” he asked suddenly.
Varadan looked puzzled. “25 paise per person saar, but why this question after so many years?” he asked humbly.
Thathaji grinned and continued, “If you were summoned to cut Ravanan’s hair, how much would you charge?”
Varadan scratched his head and said, “25 paise for each head saar.”
“What! You dare to speak untruth. Just now you said it is 25 paise per person and now you say it’s 25 paise per head,” Thathaji boomed. “Now tell me, how much would you charge Ravanan?” he persisted mercilessly.
"Er...25 paise sir," agreed Varadan.
"If your fee for Ravanan who has ten heads is 25 paise, then you should charge me also only 25 paise for the ten heads you are attending to today," ordered Thathaji.
By now, the ten hooligans were doubling up with laughter. “Saar, shall I cut your hair also, then
the count will be 11 and this confusion would also end,” pleaded Varadan pathetically.
Convulsing with laughter, Thathaji concluded, settling for a royal haircut on that
luxurious Sunday, “Ade Varada, sharpen your wits along with that blade of yours!”
The boys were besides themselves with devilish glee. It was a treat to see Varadan squirm like
semiya in hot milk. Lifting one leg over another, Seenu, tongue sticking out, struck a Nataraja pose to show his happiness. Rama-Lacchu did synchronised swimming in the air. Kinda folded his
hands and kept bowing his head like an automated toy that said “Jai Hanuman”. Varadan took it all silently. Quietly observing the boys’ black humour, he plotted his revenge. Thathaji’s haircut
was almost over. With other customers, Varadan would have stopped with the haircut for 25 paise. But for Thathaji he always threw in an oil massage for free. The old man was a tough customer. He always made sure he got his money’s worth and more. If this grandsire had
one weakness, it was money, and he never spent it unnecessarily.
Varadan poured some oil onto his palm and got to work. Moving his fingers soothingly over Thathaji’s scalp, Varadan began, "SaarI am planning to go to my village to meet my mother. I will be away for nearly a month.”
“Very good,” said Thathaji.
“I will ask Subbu, my barber-friend, to come to your house while I am away.”
“Very good,” said Thathaji.
“But he will charge you 30 paise per head saar,” said Varadan cautiously.
“Why is that? I will not pay so much. I’ll wait for you to come back,” retorted
Thathaji.
“Saar, at your age, hair will not grow back so fast. But what about these poor
boys? They will grow enough hair to make into a plait by the time I come
back. Summer is approaching fast. In fact, just yesterday I gave the opposite house
Dikshitar’s children a good headshave. They feel so cool and light now. I can do it for you at no extra cost, saar,”said Varadan, and stopped for the message to sink in along with the oil.
Just then Kappu came up to the well to draw water for the boys’ bath, when Thathaji stopped her quite suddenly. “Kappu, go inside and get some sandalwood paste. The boys are going
to get their head shaved!” Thathaji ordered, immensely interested in Varadan’s proposal because of the prospect of saving a month’s barbering costs. Kappu ran in giggling, yelling the
news to the others.
The boys stood transfixed. Seenu’s cosmic dance stopped. The twins’ froze and Kinda fell to the ground in shock. The other six boys, less brave than the others, were already sitting in a row
waiting for the blade to fall!
Varadan was too clever to laugh in Thathaji’s presence. But he talked about Tirupathi, the delicious laddoos one gets there and the medicinal properties of the sandalwood paste
used while tonsuring heads. No amount of rebellion deterred Thathaji from his thrifty decision.
“Keep quiet, you rascals. Going around with mud and lice in your hair. I’ll give you a shave every month if you don’t keep quiet now,” Thathaji said and shut them up once and for all.
In 20 minutes flat, there were ten gleaming heads, shining with sandalwood paste...ten faces yellow with anger! Seenu was almost foaming at the mouth with anger. Kinda was ready to pick up the nearest stone. But what could one do with Thathaji around? Having successfully finished
his task, Varadan bowed low to Thathaji and said, “Bless me saar, I’ll come back next month from my village. In fact, I decided to go there only after coming here. That too only when I was cutting your hair saar,” he said humbly, all the while throwing a sly smile at the ten
yellow heads.
The barber walked few steps. Then, as an afterthought, he called the youngest of the boys and handed him a rupee. “Buy laddoos for yourselves with this and say govinda-govinda before eating it, okay?” he said and sped off on his cycle before Kinda’s stone could hit
him!

Glossary
1.Illa da : No, man
2.Sangeetham : Music
3.Thodi : A well-known raaga in
Carnatic music
4.Periya nee : A high-pitched
musical note
5.Bhairavi nee : A musical note
from the Bhairavi raaga
6.Nagaswaram vidwan : A
person proficient in playing the
nagaswaram, a windinstrument
famous in South
India
7.Kaliman : Clay
8.Semiya : Vermicelli

*Between the barber and the barbarians was published in Chatterbox Children's magazine. Since I carried a Sitamma story last week, my family requested me for a "Thathaji" story this week. The story is in memory of my late grandfather whose birthday falls this month :) Hey cousins- enjoy!

Coffee, Kaapi or me?

2009-08-01T04:30:00.000-07:00

"Morning Kaapi (coffee) must be as fresh as that day's newspaper," according to Thathaji.
The grand sire likes to have coffee while the tang of toothpaste is still on his tongue. Reclining on his cane chair with newspaper eagle spread in his hands, he will wait for the coffee to arrive. Though the aroma would have hit him right from the kitchen onwards, it is customary that Sitamma coffee-in-hand waits for him to relinquish his paper. Thathaji would groan and grunt at certain news, check the obituary and glance through the sports section. When the newspaper curtains finally came down, he expected the next performance to begin.
Sitamma, hot "Kaapi" with aromatic mists hovering over the stainless steel tumbler and the vatta- all three stood expectantly.
"Why didn't you say you were waiting?" Thathaji would ask lamely.
But he would not lower his newspapers one instant before he wanted to and the petite lady knew it.
"Sitamma you look like one of those torch-bearing fisher folk heroines, standing by the sea waiting for their spouses to return," I tease when I see her waiting for Thathaji to put down the daily.
"Sure it is I am still at sea with him anyway. Thathaji wouldn't leave his paper even if his child were falling into the well. He will notice it only if it is mentioned in the newspaper. I wish they relayed news instantly on the paper too, like they do on the TV."
That was not all, for all the waiting, Thathaji never received the coffee cup from Sitamma. He would silently motion saying, "leave it here on the stool." But then if she left the coffee on the stool without his silent approval, all hell would break loose.
"Can't you wait for one kshanam for me to finish the paper? Which country of yours is getting ransacked for you to rush back so soon?" and so forth the peroration would continue.
"Only in this household will coffee making taking so long. I would have prepared an aviyal and a usili in this time," grumbled Sitamma.
But secretly, she loved this morning of ritual of serving her old man his Kaapi. And what a ritual! For that original, vintage-classic brew, Sitamma would choose light greenish coffee seeds and roast them. At a particular temperature, aromatic fumes would rise to fill the kitchen first, then the outer rooms. Gradually the coffee seeds' roasting would perfume the entire house. While the seeds cooled, Sitamma prepared that antique coffee grinding machine and other coffee-making gadgets including a clean piece of muslin, a smallish steel pot and some water on the stove. While the water heated, she ground the coffee seeds. By the time the water came to boil, the small quantity of coffee was powdered and ready for that morning's brew. The milk would be put to boil while the coffee diffused through the muslin cloth, like a brown lotus spreading its petals, turning the pond of water in the steel pot into a dark brownish fluid. Noticing Thathaji passing by the kitchen door after brushing his teeth, Sitamma would immediately start mixing the fresh-fresh decoction with the boiling milk from the stove. She never boiled milk and the coffee together. It was always boiling milk poured on the dark brew’s “head”. The amount of sugar added was important. It was that delicate amount of sugar- neither too much, nor too little. The coffee’s bitterness was intact, yet it was a refined kind of bitterness. Finally entire concoction would be mixed, not with a spoon (that is so unmagical) but by swishing and swooshing the fluid to and fro between the tumbler and the vatta. A thick thread of coffee flew between the two containers without one precious drop spilt and finally a frothy cloud stood the top of the coffee tumbler. This ritual for every coffee made in the household, morning, afternoon and evening. That too to be performed by Sitamma only, none else. If Sitamma were to ask Thathaji, “Coffee, Kaapi or me?” in all likelihood Thathaji would say, “Kaapi and also you because of your Kaapi.”
After coffee was served, Thathaji, his nose hitting the bubbly froth would draw in the heady concoction with a huge slurping noise, which is music to Sitamma’s ears. For the next 15 minutes, Thathaji would give his undivided attention to the freshly brewed nectar. Masticating on the news from the daily and mentally arranging his tasks for the day, Thathaji reminisced on his sepia memories while sipping on the brownish brew.
“If you want to marry someone, then treat him to Sitamma’s coffee and say that you made it,” suggested Thathaji.
“Which moron would agree to marry a woman just because she makes good coffee?” I demand.
“Well, this moron would and did,” accepted Thathaji sheepishly. Apparently, Thathaji fell for both the coffee and the golden hands, which made it. This during the usual dekho session arranged by the families before the wedding.
“Sitamma looked almost as good as the Kaapi she offered. Why, she even sang Kaapi ragam that day, what a coincidence! Intha soukya manine, how well she sang,” Thathaji went on gleefully.
“Day starts with coffee, life started with coffee….what more?” I ask.
“Someday when I drink coffee from your hands, my life will also end with coffee,” Thathaji said and laughed devilishly.
“Haven’t you heard of filters and coffee makers, Sitamma?” I ask.
“Things haven’t percolated down to that yet,” she replied dryly.
“What your filters and percolators make is coffee, what Sitamma makes is Kaapi,” concluded Thathaji categorically.
I can see that the art of coffee or rather Kaapi making can be so tricky and as demanding as the pursuit of performing arts. Particularly for Sitamma, when you have a coffee connoisseur breathing down your neck, the mere chore of making coffee becomes a performance of sorts. On stage no two performances can ever be alike. But Sitamma has managed to master the nuances of giving out coffee which tastes just the same each time- with the same thickness, flavour and temperature. One can patent it, I feel.
But how she manages a first decoction, second decoction, all this roasting, grinding, filtering through muslin cloth drama day after day, I really don’t know. It is nothing short of a lifetime commitment to serve her coffee connoisseur husband the best of coffees.
“I wish you were my wife, Sitamma,” I say taking in her painstaking efforts.
“I wish I were my husband too!” she replies with a sigh.
***

"Coffee, Kaapi or me?" was published in The Hindu November 17, 2002

Never Tease Gandhi- preamble to notes on Vasti treatment

2009-07-28T23:22:00.000-07:00

Imagine my mirth when I learnt that the last wish of my great grandfather was for an enema, which his wife had refused bluntly. He died soon after, his bottom most desire unfulfilled. For long his wife was plagued by grief that she had refused a dying man a simple last wish!
“You know, just as emperor Krishnadevaraya gifted golden mangoes to the priests and Tenali Rama offered branding with hot iron rods on his mother’s death anniversary, we must also offer enemas to guests who arrive for Thatha’s shrardam. Only then will his soul be assuaged,” I said most seriously to my great grandmother. The lady was not amused. She merely said- “My husband was a Gandhian. Like them, may you also know the pleasures of an enema.”

This story predictably generated high decibel belly laughter among my friends. Few smutty jokes made the rounds. One talked about Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel and his portrayal of Gandhi in it as Bhisma obsessed with colon cleansing. Another friend cited Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-candy man and Gandhiji’s views in it on bowel irrigation. Ideas abounded on how to placate the soul of my great grandfather who died wistfully dreaming of a warm enema. All of us laughed more than warranted. Then it happened. My stomach began “gesticulating”. Oh! How to describe it! It was as if my intestines wanted to step out to say hi to my friends and play dumb charades or something. I miraculously reached the bathroom on time.

While I was in there worrying that my intestines were descending so far down that they could say hello to the denizens of hell, I received an sms from my host (wise guy) from the other side of the door, “8 a kilo and shat 4? Bad Math. Worse aftermath.”
As my physical condition left me indisposed to retaliate in full strength, I merely stopped with not flushing his loo.

After that day I religiously began carrying the status message- “Never tease Gandhi” on my messengers to spread the news that one could attract painful stomach ailments if one teased the clean habits of the Father of the nation. But even this did not placate the forefathers for shortly after I developed a mysterious illness, which mysteriously enough had no apparent cure in “English” medicine. I was admitted into an Ayurvedic clinic- not the fancy green and ochre, oil dripping, back water facing thatch roofed kind you see in Kerala tourism brochures- but a real one which Shushruta would have been proud of- the kind which still uses leeches to drain bad blood and sets broken bones without anesthesia.

I was ushered into my room, where two shiny brass telescopes above the bedstead briefly distracted me from my grief.
I put one to my eye and peered out of the window. The telescopes smelt strange.
“Nice showpiece, eh? What happened to the glass lenses in them?” I asked the nurse.
“Who wants to see through them?!! They are the instruments for giving enema,” she giggled. Word spread about my faux pas. I was called Galileo by the doctors.
“How did you contract the illness, Galileo?” The Chief Doctor asked cheerfully.
“I teased Gandhi,” I said smartly and narrated the story of my Thathaji and Gandhiji with full histrionics and laughter.
“Heat the oil a tad more,” shouted the Doctor sternly and exited while the trembling nurses told me that their Chief was a sworn Gandhian!!
Oh! The old men were my nemesis. The next twenty days saw Galileo’s intestines being gargled with warm medicated oil and hot herbal concoctions through the telescopes. The nights in lieu of star gazing were spent tossing in fright after visitations from the two grand souls with toothless smiles. Not a day passed without me remembering the grand old lady who had cursed me to know the pleasures of enema.
A month later, as I left the clinic completely detoxified in mind and body, I swore to myself that a) I would spread the moral of the story - “Never tease Gandhi” far and wide and b) if ever I was to have a dying wish to be fulfilled by my descendents, I would die wishing for a full blown orgy on a barge - Cleopatra style.

"Never tease Gandhi" was published in Loony life column.

Days 12-16

Now we come to the grand conclusion of the long, hard, tummy turning treatment. After completing Ama pachanam (the cooking of 'amam' or toxins) through medicine, followed by Sneha Panam (internal oleation of body), Abhyanga and Swedana (massage and sweating) to move toxins of the body into the eliminatory system, we come to that final and crucial part of Panchakarma called Vasti which involves the elimination of the toxins dislodged from various parts of the body and made to accumulate in the eliminatory tract. Vasti involves giving enemas to the patient. Over a period of five days oil and herbal enemas (Sneha Vasti and Kashaya vasti) were administered and the bowels entirely irrigated. I feel extremely light, sprightly and "clean" after the treatment. My health has improved considerably. And I am keeping my fingers crossed for a complete cure. With this the "Purging of Jaya Madhavan" comes to a conclusion and I am going home to recuperate. :)

Abhyanga and Swedana

2009-07-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Day 9-11
Abhyanga and Swedana may sound like two apsaras descended from Indra's court to seduce Viswamitra but to bring you back to terra firma the two words roughly mean massage and sweating. Note on the two terms follows, but my story goes first.

Elements of Abhyanga scene- Two swarthy (female) masseurs. Hard wooden bed. A bucket of warm oil. A loin cloth. And me. Just arrange these elements in your mind and I will come back to it for I am going to digress a bit now.
There used to be a huge mortar and pestle in my grandmother's house. Washing the mortar and pestle by itself used to be a separate chore and women of the house used to vie for it. Not without reason. It needed two to clean that mortar and pestle and that pair who were in most urgent need of exchanging gossip used to tumble out to clean those mammoth instruments. Standing close to each other the women would bzzbzzbzzbzz softly and if someone were to pass by they would restore their voices to normal decibel. High and low, high and low they would whisper, giggle, gossip and pour out the contents of their heart even while the mortar and pestle got cleaned automatically and expertly, without demanding too much attention from the bzzzbzzing women.

Cut back to the clinic with me on the wooden bed, flanked by the two masseurs. Up, down, up down their hands move briskly and deftly. Tup-tip-toop, they turn me front to back, front to back effortlessly, all the while gossiping in high and low tones, completely oblivious to me, as if I were a mere pestle :(
Masseur 1: "And then my husband came home drunk and flung her to the ground. I turned off the TV and waited for his next move."
Masseur 2: "But that's what happened last week also after she came home in that particular way."
Masseur 1: "Yesterday was different. She was wearing flowers and an alien fragrance wafted from her."
Masseur 2: "What does your husband care?"
Masseur 1: "No, no she is.....what can I say? She is....."
Masseur 2: "Okay forget it; tell me what he did to her?"
Me: "Er...excuse me, but who is this "she" you are talking about?"

No sooner did I ask the question than the two sheepishly shut up and looked to finishing the massage swiftly. My head was exploding with curiosity. It was obvious they were continuing the conversation from the previous patient's massage bed and the previous patient must have known more about the "She". "Er....who was your previous patient?" I wanted to ask so that the story may conclude in my head. No such luck, for the treatment of the day finished and for the next two days I had two other sets of masseurs who nevertheless gave me a peek into their worlds with their gossip.

After the massage, a tube pouring smoke at its mouth was brought to me. It smelt of pungent herbs. Hot vapour was coursed down my body from the tube and I began to sweat as if I had run 6 miles. "This is Swedana," said the masseur answering my unspoken question. Shortly after, unable to contain their tongues the women returned to their idle gossiping.
I was worried that Swedana might be a Vedana (pain), but it is turning out exceedingly interesting what with the number of stories that float around like the thick fog above my bed.

Abhyanga and Swedana

Abhyanga is a gentle but firm warm oil massage done by two masseurs. Oils for the massage are chosen according to the ailment or constitution (prakruti) of the patient's body. The prefix “Abhi” means “into or towards” and “ang” has a root meaning of “movement’. So “Abhyanga” is the process by which bodily energy is reactivated even while moving the "amam" or toxins towards the body’s eliminatory systems. Abhyanga I find is an extremely comforting and rejuvenating part of the treatment. My skin is glowing from all that oil I was dunked in. My body feels lighter and many of my aches have subsided. I am liking it :) The stories of the masseurs are of course a bonus.

Swedana is yet another process of detoxification where steam from herbal concoction is blown on your body to stimulate sweating. As you "cook" beneath the steam, the body will begin to release its accumulated toxins through its pores. Together, Abhyanga and Swedana help in balancing the doshas and restoring health to your body.

Day 8. End of Sneha Panam. Also end of me.

2009-07-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

Today I had the largest dosage of ghee staggered through the day as two doses. The first glass of ghee was given at 6 in the morning and just when that "ghee burping" stopped and I heaved a sigh of relief, the doctor and his man servant appeared with the second glass.
"Dr.Sudheer you expect me to be friends with you even after this?" I asked as he blindfolded me and plugged my nostrils.
"mutu mutus?" I hollered at Nandakumar the manservant.
"Eh?" he asked.
I removed the nose plugs and repeated, "You too Brutus?"
"Eh?" he asked again.
"Your Shakespeare is wasted on him. Come on be a good girl and drink it up," Sudheer egged.
"GHEE is a four letter word," I said as the unctuous fluid coursed down my throat.
I really had it that day. I began purging the undigested ghee and god! my grandmother would have wept to see so much ghee go down the drain (literally). It reminded me of a childhood story filled with scatalogical references about a fox which stole into a wedding feast and drank up all the ghee and served the guests pus from its wound insteaad......YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH and such yucky stories my mind threw up. The mind is such a devious beast. On one side my stomach was bidding goodbye to me and begging to find a replacement, on the other my mind was chewing on useless old stories and frying my dizzy head in such slimy stories. I got a clear idea of a purgatory that day. Man! If I am writing so badly today, it is because of the ghee (heh-I found an excuse finally). Tomorrow Swedana begins. If you thought Snehana and Swedana are two attractive twins like the models Tapur and Tupur, heh- so sorry. Swedana is the next phase of the treatment. More after I digest this medicated ghee.

Day 6-7

2009-07-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

Today I got admitted into the hospital for the Snehana or pretreatment to Panchakarma. What you read till now was the pre-pretreatment which I carried out as an outpatient.
I chose a common room in order to have some company. As luck would have it, the only lady who was here moved into a separate room after spending a day with me. We laughed too loudly, we spoke too much, we displayed too much exuberant behaviour and such complaints rose within the hospital and hence she quietly moved out of the room after briefly crying over my shoulder. I knew it was that Nandakumar who spread these vicious words. His job is to ensure that we do not fall asleep during the day (as it aggravates pitta), make us sit erect in our chairs during and after meals and prompt us to have our baths before 6.30 am etc. He must have been a Puritan in his previous birth, always worried that “someone somewhere might be happy.”
The hospital is a fairly pleasant place, neat and simple, bright and quiet. All this at the first glance. Heh- as you begin your stay here, the harshness of the place unfolds. In my room, three fans hang above three beds uselessly. In this tropical heat, we are not to use fans. Three beds wait vacantly, but I cannot lie or sleep until the sun has set. I have this urge like Goldilocks to try all three beds…in vain.
My laptop beckons but I am not to work until it is dark. No talking, no sleeping, no serious working during the day. Only staying awake and being still. Try it and see if it does not drive you crazy.
There are other interesting patients here- one has hands that turn numb without notice, other has a tummy that cannot accept any kind of food without breaking into bleeding rashes, yet another has a growth in his brain and then there is me with this unglamorous mysterious illness and so on. Yet we cannot speak to each other to offer comfort or exchange notes.
“Conserve your energy. You can heal only by not doing routine things like talking, phoning, browsing, working, eating unfriendly food, sleeping at odd times and bad posture,” my good doctor instructs. Suddenly it makes immense sense to me. I got ill in the first place because of faulty habits. I must give my body a chance to heal. I immediately became a good girl and even read Skanda Shasti Kavacham. But in some two hours time, I tired of being good. Luckily it was bedtime. I was asked to be ready by 6.30 am the following day. I was told that I would be given “Sneha Panam” (literally ‘friendly drink’) first thing in the morning. Ha! A welcome drink at a hospital! What next? Would ill clad girls dance to me and pour wine from tall urns into my waiting glass? Mmmmmmm. I hit the sack with great expectations.

As I eagerly awaited the drink the following mornign, a lady came in bearing a steel tumbler, a longish piece of cloth and two cotton buds dunked in some unguent.
“I have to blindfold you,” she said and my imagination simply exploded. Wheee! Long live Charaka and Sushruta. Long live ancient Indians and the age that facilitated the writing of a treatise like Kama Sutra. So on and so forth I exulted as I permitted myself to be blindfolded. No sooner were my eyes bound than two oily cotton plugs were unexpectedly thrust into my nostrils. A smell that could make a skunk wither pervaded my entire being. As I swooned in shock a glass was pressed to my lips. I perked up immediately, knowing that it was that promised welcome drink and eagerly opened my mouth when of all things ghee flowed into my mouth! Can you believe I was made to drink an entire glass of ghee?!!
“You call this Sneha Panam?” I shouted.
“Sneham means oily. This is towards internal oleation of your body. This will help the toxins to dislodge from various sites in your body and move towards the alimentary tract,” they explained in Shudhh Sanskrit.
Shuddh ghee over Shudhh Sanskrit. I could not decide which was worse.
“Tomorrow we shall give you a larger glass of ghee, okay?” said the lady. I could only weep.

Snehana

Snehana is the pretreatment to Panchakarma. It literally means oleation. In Snehana medicated ghee (according to your illness) is administered internally over three to maximum seven days in increasing dosages, till your body reaches a saturation point. Sneha Panam or medicated ghee is given first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and no food is offered until the ghee has been entirely digested. Only hot water laced with dried ginger is permitted during the day. When the body reaches a saturation point, the patient begins to purge to empty the excess ghee out of the system. At that point, Snehana is stopped and the next phase of treatment begins. Just as we dip clothes in detergent for easy cleaning of clothes, Snehana is vital for the easy “laundering” of the body failing which the body will suffer like a dry stick under pressure.

Day 4-5

2009-07-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

No point mulling over this Ama Pachanam period. I decided to take my mind off coffee and food. I made this crucial decision after experiencing some severe “blade emotions” over something equally blade. I was going someplace with my son. It was pretty early in the morning so I liberally pressed on the accelerator. At one turning I made an intelligent manoeuvre and a car on the opposite side had to break roughly. I scrolled down ( rolled down I mean) the car window and said sorry to which the very young driver said a very bad word.
“Hello!” I said, blood rushing to my head. The kid was ‘young enough to be my son’ as the saying goes. I don’t think he was a bad kid, just a bad mannered kid.
He began to move away without an apology and I (as such without coffee) was highly fragile in my temper. A hot chase ensued. He sped away and I sped after him honking and waving him to stop and give me an apology. My poor car was no match for his swanky car. Yet, I pumped the accelerator. I tried to fly over his car and drop in front of him like Rajnikanth and compel him to stop with screech and/or his tyres bursting into flames. No matter how hard I pulled the steering wheel up as they do in films, my car still remained on terra firma. I decided then and there to take my car to a drive-in theatre, where she can also watch some films and pick a few fly-yourself techniques.
At one crucial turning, the boy cleverly gave me the slip leaving me to face a red signal. I said a brief “you-you-you” and turned back home. Despite the obvious defeat, I still felt triumphant after the chase. I had got my adrenalin rush for the day without coffee. “You are Ben Hur, I say,” I congratulated myself.
“Stupid-stupid-stupid,” my husband shouted. “Want to get yourself killed? Who do you think you are Ben Hur? I would rather you stopped this treatment and got back to your coffee and start behaving,” he ranted. My son and I exchanged glances and giggled. “Papa don’t preach,” we whispered lest it triggered another lecture.

Over all I decided the lack of coffee was making me jumpy and very blade-emotional. I decided to “like” the treatment for a change and see how my body was benefiting. As I begin to take stock of my body, I do feel that the Shaddaranam is doing its job. My body is feeling lighter. I almost don’t feel my stomach’s presence. It in fact it looks flatter. Sorry that was an exaggeration, it looks a little flat- that is all, not flatter (as though it was already flat.) Huh.
More about Shaddaranam will follow.

Day 2-3

2009-07-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

Ama or Amam is the flo(a)tsam and jetsam of the body. Undigested material and toxins which float around the body have to be coaxed to descend into the alimentary tract from where they can be eliminated. Ama Pachanam literally means “cooking of Amam”. The Shaddaranam which I wrote about earlier does the cooking and (near) elimination of the Amam. Those which do not get evacuated during the Ama Pachanam will be expelled during Vasti (enema) process.
I was on a strict fat-free diet. I was not permitted to take milk/curd (tell a South Indian to not take curds)/butter/any diary product, oil or vegetable other than snake gourd. My diet consisted of plain idlis for breakfast (no chutney or milagapodi), rice and ungarnished plain dal for lunch and phulka and un-garnished watery dal for dinner for seven days before getting admitted. Even the food was bearable but the lack of coffee tried me to the hilt. This treatment, I decided is a test for both- my physical and mental endurance.
If you thought maintaining a bland diet is easy, I challenge you to try it. By the third day you will be flying off your handle. I was continuously hungry and irritable. Food turned to dust in my mouth. Every little pile of work seemed mountainous to me. I was simply losing it. But in my mother’s words I was being perfectly myself even during the bland-diet days.

Day 1

2009-07-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Breakup of treatment into three phases

Pre-treatment, primary treatment and post treatment. Before I wax eloquent about the three phases, let me sob over the pre-pretreatment phase.

I am now undergoing what is called the Ama Pachanam, the pre-pretreatment phase where I have to go on a fat-free diet. No milk, no oil, no spice.
And above all no COFFEE. Can you imagine, no coffee? Tell a true blue south Indian to stay away from coffee and she will commit hara-kiri. Lucky for me I do not understand Japanese and hence did not commit the whatever.
But it has not been easy, I tell you.
I just have to hear the syllable Ka and my eyes dilate with tears. I feel intense viraha for the brown fluid. For the first time in my life I understand why most alcoholics trade every last ounce of their credibility for the sake of the bottle. What would I not give for now one cup of coffee?
Adding fuel to the fire is a magazine which has asked me to write on….guess what? ….Coffee! Life is a four-lettered word I say. By day 1 evening I was bawling over the phone to my doctor.
“What at all may I drink? I am craving a hot beverage. What can I drink?” I wept.
“Drink HOOOT water,” she said kindly.

I cannot have coffee, what I can have instead is Shaddaranam, this absolutely delightful bitter powder that can make a bittergourd seem like laddoo. Have Shad-daranam and all you can think of is the pot. If “Pot” gives you transcendental thoughts, Shad-daranam gives you thoughts of the pot.

To digress a bit, there is this medicine called Triphala (made from equal parts of Amalaki, bibhitaki and Haritaki) a super laxative that can churn your stomach in seconds and make it expel even ten days fixed deposit in your intestines in 2 mins. Now if Triphala is the mother of laxatives then Shad-daranam seems to be the Pitamaha of Triphala. I will get back to you on the ingredients of this bitter medicine which is working like a Super-Bat-Spider-Shakti-man of a laxative on me. My intestines, I fear are going to descend and drop into the pot shortly.
I should have one tsp of this "pot-thoughts" inducing medicine every morning and evening (instead of coffee). No need to explain where I sit rest of the day. Thank god for wireless and the peerless (pan) I continue to work from where I am.

A note to my gentle readers. There is an Amazon of a woman here who pops in every two minutes, asking me to shut down the "TV". No amount of explaining convinces her that what I have here is a laptop. According to her, "If it sings and shows video, it is TV". Hence my posts may come a little late. But hang in there. I will post something everyday for you people. Also try and leave a comment, good or bad. I love hearing from my readers (especially the coffee drinking ones) and especially during this unhealthy time of being away from civilization. SWAT, sorry that was a mosquito. Bye and hang in there.

The Purging of Jaya Madhavan

2009-07-11T03:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome and namaste to all my dear readers who have arrived to read about the purging of Jaya Madhavan easily one of the pleasantest topics to read just before brunch, lunch or dinner.
I am undergoing the Panchakarma (Ayurvedic) treatment and do not be misled by anyone who says it is one of the most ex-otic, ex-quisite and ex-hilarating treatments to undergo. If at all it is any “ex”, it is ex-asperating and ex-pensive.
Just to give you the context- I have been suffering an insufferable ailment the past four years- a way too unglamorous illness that does not suit my writer-image as much as a lymphosarcoma or a brain tumour would. After a long round in allopathic hospitals where doctors were about as helpful as BSNL employees, I zeroed in on an Ayurvedic doctor who in no simple terms told me that what I have is a Vatta disorder and my apana vayu (downwardly mobile bodily gas) is all screwed and angry and causing me the illness. The Sanskrit sloka she quoted to substantiate her diagnosis sounded something like “Vatta-shutta-butta-pitta-kutta-mutta-swaha!”
Just as I was fleeing both the Sanskrit and the diagnosis, a helpful Dubashi in the clinic told me kindly that, according to Ayurveda all diseases are a manifestation of the imbalances in the three doshas of Vatta, Pitta and Kafa (roughly gas, bile and phlegm) and once these three Musketeers are evened out, the disease should also automatically vanish. And a sure shot side effect of this treatment, he said would be weight loss upto 7 kilos in 22 days. Now that got me hooked and here I am, undergoing the Panchakarma treatment- the ultimate laundering of your body.

Note on Panchakarma

Panchakarma (literally meaning "five actions") is directed at cleansing your body by removing toxins through nasal therapy (Nasya), Vomiting (Vamana), Purging (Virechana) and two kinds of therapeutic enemas (Sneha Vasti and Kashaya Vasti with herbal oils and herbal decoctions respectively). To put the above jargon in simpler words, the toxins in my body are going to be moved to the alimentary tract through massage, fomentation and medication, from where they would be removed through enemas. My intestines are going to be gargled with exotic fluids. And I think by the time I am through with this treatment I would have been folded into five (hence the name five fold therapy eh?)

More to come

There are three phases to this treatment. Come back tomorrow to know more about the first phase of this five-fold therapy (human-origami, I call it). You are welcome to leave any comment, but without mentioning the word coffee/kapi. Please.