Mud and Gold

Years of solitude can turn me into a snob. A visit to my home town every year helps me to shed my guise.

‘She has taken out all her money from the bank to buy a double layer bead chain in gold.’ My mother told me.

‘Why does she want one now?’ I asked.

‘She is eighty five years old and she wants to wear one before she dies.’ That’s it. My mother tagged me along with them the next day to the jewellery shop to buy it. A wish not yet satisfied in life should be declared as a death wish to get it fulfilled.

The next day she saw me wearing a black thread around my neck with a terracotta pendant dangling to it. I had admired terracotta jewellery long before a friend gifted me a pair of earrings and a pendant. I had left wearing gold chains daily.

She gave a reproving look and asked, ‘Where is your Thaali chain? And what is that black thing around your neck?’

‘Wearing gold is not safe in Delhi. So I don’t wear the chain',I said.

‘You are now not in Delhi. Take that dirty thread off your neck before you go out and wear your gold chain'. That was a statement rather than an advice or an order.

A year before my mother had her gold chain snatched by a pair of crooks on a bike. An old couple in the neighbourhood was robbed of their gold and money some six months back. Still the place was regarded safe because it was the place where we were all born and gave birth in.

I smiled inwardly. I was in a place where wealth and marital happiness were weighed in accordance with the yellow metal I wear. The glimmer of yellow can blind all other signs of impoverishment. All that glitters need not be gold but yellow metal.

Standing at the doorway of forty I am no less stubborn than a fifteen year old. I go out wearing that same black thread and terracotta pendant around my neck. I knew she would not mind. It was just her habit of articulating her thoughts and perceptions of eighty five years.

Professor of Love

“Love hurts”…Thus he went on

Professing love to us.

His tone always had a warning note

To us, his young envoys.

If love hurts, I whispered to myself

Why does he keep raving on and on

About the only feeling of love?

His beard was graying,

His skin was wrinkled,

His suit neatly pressed,

His shoes shining.

With the open book in hand,

His eyes searched those in front

And went out through the window

To the leaves in the breeze.

His face glowed in a delightful light

And he said, “It is better

To have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.”

His lips curled in a smile.

Love may hurt; I pondered,

But it still makes you smile.

Listen to me Mother...

Mother, are potatoes costly now?

Grandma gave us rice with gravy today

She saved the potatoes for brother

And fed them to him with butter

When he came back from school.

The baby cried all day today

Grandma said the milk was over

And she wouldn’t drink the rice water.

But I saw brother drinking milk

In the morning before he went to school.

Your cheeks are wet, please don’t cry,

And do not ask Grandma what I told you

For I cannot watch father hitting you again.

Mother, you told me I am three years old

But why can’t I walk like brother and sister?

I heard father say yesterday,

“If she is a cripple let her die.”

He said you burdened him with three girls

He would be happy if he could abandon us.

He said he would throw us out one day

Or take brother and Grandma to a distant land.

It scares me mother to stay at home

When you are away at work the whole day,

If father takes and leaves me far,

I would never be able to walk back to you...

To my sons

There are nights you come up to me,

To hold my fingers and touch my cheeks

And feel the warmth of the blanket.

Cuddling in with me and hugging me tight

You tell me things you saw and heard,

That intrigued and surprised you that day.

Many times you must have received

A slow mumble or a distant look from me

Which must have puzzled you of my concern

When I sent you out into the open world.

Some times when I smile hearing your tales

And press your hands in reassurance

I see my smile reflected on your face

Which does take me to heavenly heights.

I try to fulfill every wish of yours

Not because I am scared

 That you would love me less if I don’t

But because I know, no one else

Can fulfill them with more love than I.

I always try to keep you under my watchful eyes,

I seldom let you go places with others

And insist you tell me where you move about.

I want you to know that it’s only that I feel

You are safe when I can imagine where you are.

On the threshold of adolescence

Soon you would feel annoyed of my clutches

And would want to have secrets from me.

I want you to have your own thoughts

That I promise never to erase outright,

Even if you think aloud.

There have been times when I have refused you

The things you wanted to do,

There have been moments when I screamed at you

And made you hate me for that.

I want you to know that it was not selfishness

That made me deny you your desires

It was because I was just unsure

Of the goodness they would do to you.

May your heart tell you the right and the wrong

May you think independently but with kindness too

May all your wishes be fulfilled with love

May you grow up strong to be on your own

But I would continue my watch over you

For no one can convince me

That they can take care of you better than me.

IT'S KARWA CHAUTH AGAIN!!

I heard about Karwa Chauth fifteen years back. I was on my way back from a cocktail party thrown by a friend to celebrate her promotion. At seven o’ clock while returning home I found a colleague and his wife roaming about on the streets looking up at the sky. I found it ridiculous seeing the lady’s flushed up face and tired look. She looked as if she might faint anytime and the husband was solemn and silent, holding her arm. I was curious. As he was also invited for the promotion party I asked him why he had not turned up. He gave me a slow smile and said,”Actually she had planned the party on a wrong day. Today is Karwa Chauth” The man had declared allegiance to his wife by not going to the party because she had kept the fast for his well being and was waiting for the moon to show up so she can break her fast. The couple was out searching for the moon. By this time another neighbor who had kept the fast ventured near and asked me, “Didn’t you keep the fast?” When I replied in the negative, she gave me a look which made me go red in the face without fasting.

I did not want to explain that I did not know about Karwa Chauth or that I did not believe in fasts though I was not a glutton. Initially I thought Karwa meant the same as 'bitter'. The fast was a hard thing to do and so named bitter. Only recently I learnt that 'karwa' means an earthern pot with a spout - a symbol of peace and prosperity- that is necessary for the rituals and 'Chauth' means the 'fourth day' of the new moon on which the festival falls. There have been instances where I have been forced to go without food or skip meals due to many extraneous factors but the thought of fasting purposely would throw me into a fit of hypoglycemia. A lady at work who used to observe fasts every week due to domestic pressure once told me, “It is so good that in your house you don’t have to keep fasts.” Now that was some revelation to me. The poor lady was observing fasts every other day because her mother in law wished so. Can that be included in our fundamental rights? The right to choose whether to keep or not to keep a fast? All I could do for her was to not eat my regular quota of dry fruits and chocolates which I keep munching between meals sitting next to her, to keep my hunger pangs away.

Last year, returning from school I found the ladies of the society in the lawn waiting for their turn to get henna designs done on their hands and feet. One of them who was sitting on the bench with her salwar thrust up till her knees for letting the design to be drawn on her feet, called out to me. She wanted me too to get it done. I said I did not keep the fast but I didn't mind painting my hands. So I sat there and got the designs done on both my hands expressing solidarity with the tribe. While they were getting the designs done on their hands the women were throughout complaining of their household chores and their husbands who returned from work to relax at home and never moved a little finger to help them. I smiled at the thought that how wonderful a species were they, who even when narrating the insensitiveness of the men in their lives where enthusiastically preparing to give up food for a whole day for them.

How many husbands would keep a fast like that for their wives? May be there are many, who would hold their woman’s arm to watch the moon appear and some who would pamper them with gifts bought out of guilt for a day’s starvation. That is enough reward for even a grudged soul to reconcile and look forward to the next Karwa Chauth.

It’s the eve of Karwa Chauth again; time to apply henna and get ready for a day’s abstinence from food. Let love deepen and spread its warmth throughout the year ahead. Happy Karwa Chauth! Wish for a cloudless sky and hope the moon comes out on time.

Appeasing the appetites

“Why am I born as a South Indian?” I hear my ten year old son’s soliloquy from the dining table as I stand in the kitchen salivating in front of a bowl of two fluffy Idlis floating in thick Sambar topped with a blob of ghee and chopped coriander leaves. I was graciously admiring my culinary achievements that morning and thinking of the hegemony enjoyed by idlis in the realm of delightful delicacies when I heard this frustrated monologue expressing his dislike of South Indian dishes.

Before the onset of the packet powder revolution, making traditional Kerala food demanded time and patience. There were no instant recipes then. Even the easiest breakfast menu; puttu with plaintains would need a day’s prior preparation. The rice need to be soaked and  ground coarsely before it is roasted and then made moist and filled into the puttu kutti. For Idlis the homework started the previous morning with soaking of rice and dal for grinding in the evening and then fermenting it through the night to make fluffy white Idlis in the morning. The same batter would turn into crispy Dosas the next day. The mouth watering made-in-heaven Appoms asked for the experienced talent of a mother or grandmother to come out soft or they ended up hard and dry.

Now, armed with Nirapara, Brahmins and a host of other brands anyone with a little patience can become a good cook. I did not have this luxury when I got married fifteen years before. Staying in a remote town in Punjab miles away from home I could only dream of eating those delicacies for which I had little regard when I had them easily available. I tried Idlis which turned out as hard as cricket balls and Appoms which were good to be used as fans in that heat.

I was distraught over the fact that my two sons never enjoy customary food habits but also knew that arguing and threatening never work. I decided not to defend my super soft Idlis. Instead, I fried some onions and potato strips in oil. Tossed some chopped carrots, chillies and beans in along with some split almonds. I mixed the white rice in with a generous helping of soya sauce. The kerfuffle that followed on seeing it was enough to make me forget the morning’s disappointment. May be someday, they would longingly recall the taste of homemade Idlis and Sambar. I will have my sweet revenge then.

A HAPPY HUSBAND

“I am not going. Would you like it if I force you to go to a place you dislike?” I was trying all variety of verbal intrigue just to make him sense my displeasure of ruining a peaceful day at home. He maintains a silence whenever I am annoyed which irritates me. That is a clever tactic men employ when they know they cannot win over an argument. But this time he had to answer. I had put a question to him. I waited.

“Well”, he said, “I would go for you, if you wanted it.”

I had expected that answer. He was trying to remind me of the innumerable number of times he had accompanied me to varied places of my interest. Still that was not a reason for persuading me to go alone to a place where I hardly knew anyone.

“So you want me to go.”  I persisted not wanting to let go of the argument that I had started. I knew I had to go for that official function in his organization anyway but I did not want to let him have his way that easily.

“Attend the function for me this time. Please.” There was no touch of male domination or assertion of authority in his voice. It had come down to plain pleading.

With the most possible facial contortion that I could feign, I said “Ok, I will go this time but do not force me the next time.”

“I won’t” he said firmly like a minister taking his oath. Once the oath taking is over, no one remembers the lines.

He has to catch his midday flight to Srinagar and I have to attend the Women’s Welfare Association meeting of his organization in the morning for him or rather for his sake. It was not for my welfare anyway.

It was past nine and there was no sign of the coach which was supposed to pick me up. With his vehicle to the airport waiting below he stood in the terrace with me, his hands tied behind his back. There was a palpable tension in his manner. With an occasional glance and a nod he would try to reassure me there was nothing to worry. “If the coach does not come you relax. No need to go.”

I gave him a stern look. “So do you mean that I draped a saree in the morning to sit at home?”

Sometimes, contrived or real, men can give such pathetic looks that would make even a rhinoceros shed tears. That look shut me up.

A frantic coach driver gave me a call. The coach was stuck in traffic and there was another car coming to pick me up. I could see the relief in his breath.

The car arrived. The relief in his face was immense now. Once I was inside the car and the door was shut I could feel the liberation in his voice too. “Take care” he said and I stretched my lips to smile.

I discovered that a sweet neighbor, whom I was meeting for the first time was accompanying. It doesn’t take much time for two lonely ladies to befriend each other. The auditorium was full by the time we reached but we quite enterprisingly found a couple of seats which were reserved for some ‘still not turned up guests’. The pageant was splendidly colourful and I found myself happily joining the splendor and familiarity of the atmosphere. The spirit of a group of talented women mingled with the demand of a certain occasion can produce a pleasingly prolific outcome. Moreover, I found myself in the company of some long lost friends laughing and embracing each other.

With eyes and stomach duly satisfied, for the snacks were as good as the programme presented, we returned with the joy of three hours merrily spent.  

When I took my cell phone in my hands; I saw the message “Landed in Jammu”. I pressed the call button. “Hello” came his voice. “I am back.” I mumbled.

“How was it?” I could make out that he had recognized traces of the excitement of the last three hours in my voice.

“It was ok.”  I said.  “Call from Srinagar.”

I had the reward of good day out compromising a comfortable day at home but I believed I earned it.

Husbands feel and depict themselves as victims with no choice in the family drama. On the contrary they are clever aspirants of a peaceful family life. They always win with their seemingly giving in performances. 

Good fences make good neighbors

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence." 

"He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'."

It’s anyone’s wish to have a good neighbor. In a dire situation one would always run to one’s neighbor irrespective of whether he is a friend or a foe.

A good neighbor can make your stay at any place an unforgettable experience. I have enough friends whom I keep troubling any time of the day or at night with my ravings. But unfortunately, I never had reassuring neighbors except in three places of our nomadic life.

When we moved to the capital city I was well briefed by my friends about the hostility of the city and its people. When someone asserts that a thing is bad, I have this odd habit of wanting them to be proven wrong. I was keen on making friends. So, even when there was no sign of my neighbor, after three days of our moving in, I went and pressed their door bell. My fair, plump, bespectacled and ‘colorfully’ middle aged neighbor was all smiles and promptly offered all help along with coffee which I never let her make.

After that once in a while she would ring my door bell with a bowl or plate in hand filled with one of her gastronomic researches. After tasting her cooking once or twice, my elder son concluded that she was trying on us what her family was refusing to eat. Still, she was a sweet soul, always prompt in offering help.

When we shifted to the new house, I was hopeful, but my hopes turned soggy when I saw that my beautiful neighbor would jerk and retract every time she saw me. I heard they were moving out and thought that she did not want to make any new friends as they were to shift soon. I crisped up my hopes again.

I waited with anticipation for an amicable neighbor. The day arrived. I saw three gorgeous looking young girls in the house and was excited. Their mother would definitely be an elegant woman and would make a very good neighbor. I waited and waited to have a glimpse of the lady of the house so that I can befriend her. I could not see her and wondered whether she wasn't alive. Finally I saw her after a month’s expectation.

It is painful to see estranged parents fight for the custody of their hapless children; I saw it today, when I opened my door hearing loud admonishments in front of my neighbor’s door.

Good fences make good neighbors. Sensitivity and expectations don’t. I closed my door.

GEORGE EVEREST HOUSE

In the Museum in Thimphu, Bhutan, I had seen the model of a typical mountain house with the ground floor dedicated to the animals and the first floor to the family. The inhabitants spend most of their time around the fire in the kitchen to keep themselves warm. There were granaries for grains and also meat cut in the form of ribbons and dried in the sun stored for the harsh winter months.

It took almost an hour and a half for us to trek from the foot of the mountain in Musoorie to the top to George Everest House. It stood at an altitude of 6500 feet. The town of Musoorie lay at 500 feet below. I saw an old woman gazing at us from one side of the mountain. She was dressed in a Tibetan Chuba, their traditional dress. I waved at her and she waved back. I wanted to go and meet her but my enthusiastic guide who was keen to get me to the top promised me to take me back to her on our way back. Unfortunately, she disappeared when we came back.

I was surprised to find the board of a tea stall on reaching the top. It is in front of a small hut. A middle aged couple live there. They make a living by keeping cows, goats and some hens. Unlike the house I saw in Thimphu, here the animals live alongside their owners. The limited region of the fence surrounding their house is their area for cultivation. They sell Paranthas, Tea ,Cold drinks and of course Maggi to the lone trekkers who came up to the George Everest House. They have no water or electricity there. Water has to be fetched from a well almost one kilometre down.

Internet says that George Everest was Welsh and the Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843. He owned the house in Musoorie for some time. For a building of that age, the house is still in good condition. The cliff is steep on one side. There are wooden frames on the ceiling and well built fireplaces. 

The bath rooms at the rear end have tiles which give evidence of some recent renovation attempted in the house. Interiors of the house is badly littered with animal dung, used plates etc.

 The walls are 'bedecked' with names and vain declarations of love.  We could meet a couple of love birds out there who must have sneaked away from the buzz of the town. A cow greeted us from inside one of the rooms.

The mountain top offers the view of the Doon valley on one side and the Aglar valley on the other. Life looks pleasantly enticing from there. I am reminded of a short story by Guy Maupassant which I read sometime back. It is about a couple who elopes to an uninhabited island of Corsica and lives there happily together ripe into their old age. It would be wonderful to spend life only with the people whom you love around you without the hassle of worldly temptations in such isolated places.

 





For the masked urban eyes, though it may seem a living away from reality, it is indeed a living in reality.

A feeling of liberation

I have felt immense relief in giving away things I do not or cannot use. I like to do it without consulting anyone else. If I ask anyone else in the house, it would account for a more serious analysis and a conclusion that it could be of use some time somewhere.   

To be honest, when I was about to resign my last job, my one persisting worry was what I would do with my dozens of sarees stored in the cupboard. In the last one year, I have not bought a single one and those which are there; I have slowly started disposing off.

I don’t know whether the books I read are to be blamed, or fewer social activities, I find it a lot easier to live with less number of material things. It gives a sense of freedom from burdens; a feeling of being liberated.

The day I started disliking Physics.

After tenth standard, the choice of learning Science was my own.  I had no idea that the Science I had known till then would change its guise totally and would appear like a monster in front of me. My poor parents seeing my fresh enthusiasm to learn arranged the best tutors for me to learn Physics, Chemistry and Biology. I very proudly went to my first Physics class with cemented confidence. The tutor was a lean man of about thirty five with a beard. He had separate batches for boys and girls. When I reached there I saw that there were four benches and desks put around. All were already occupied by some fifteen girls. One of the girls generously made a little space for me to plant myself. The tutor was sitting in one of the benches flanked by two of his students on each side. He was asking the marks scored by each for SSLC. Hearing their marks, I found that I was having the least. I don’t have any memory of studying hard for exams in school. So, whatever mark I obtained was indeed more than what I deserved and I was perfectly satisfied with it. The teacher’s eyes almost popped out as he heard my score and seemed to be in doubt how he admitted me in his elite group of students. I learnt later that he had taken me after a recommendation from a friend of my father. He gave me a stern look and declared he didn’t believe I was going to do well in Physics. I gave him a distant look and pretended not to hear his remark. Most of the girls sitting there were rank holders and high distinction owners.

As the class progressed I realized that the tutor was right. I did not understand a single statement he taught. All the other girls were asking and clearing doubts. They were all  aiming to crack the IIT and Medical entrance exams. I enjoyed watching them. Soon the tutor realized that he was having an onlooker in his class and quite vindictively put a question to me. I had no idea of what it was. My silence was taken as an opportunity by him to vituperate. I felt tear drops looming around my eyeballs which I tried to fight back by constant blinking. He must have thought that I was too brazen to sit quietly through it all. He finally hammered the final nail on the coffin by saying that he thought I did not even understand English. This was something I could not bear and tears started flowing down my cheeks to my worst humiliation. Tears are always a woman’s powerful weapon. Even the unkind tutor was shaken by that. He took my notebook from me and tried to pacify me by explaining the theorem all over again. I had no interest though. All I wished for then was to turn into a monkey so that I can pounce on him, scratch his face and pull his beard out.  

When I walked back home from there, it was raining. The rain worked as a disinfectant for my wounded soul. As soon as I reached home, I took the phone’s receiver and dialed my father’s office number. I told him what happened and said I didn’t want to learn under that tutor again. He was silent for a moment and then said, “If you don’t like then don’t go.”

I could say no to the tutor but I could not say no to Physics. If Physics was Greek to me, Chemistry was Latin. I had to learn them for two years to pass the course. I studied both on my own from then on and managed to get a decent percentage of marks which was more than enough for me to get admission for the subject I wanted to study, English literature. I have never regretted my choices thereafter. Getting to live the life of your choice is the greatest freedom.

I read recently that people who seek happiness are said to be people without ambition. My ambition is to be happy. I am perfectly happy. 

Who lives in the real world?

Recently, while watching the climax of a film where the hero gets dreadfully beaten up, I squinted to avoid the horrifying details. However, I saw my younger son rolling with laughter while watching it. I found it disgusting that he was growing up without knowing how to be empathetic towards others and sternly reprimanded him. He looked at me with disbelief and told me that I should understand that it is just a film and the man is not really getting beaten. The fact that I was getting upset watching a film was beyond his comprehension.

This led me to go in for to a serious introspection. Am I moving away from the real world? When I was small, my grandmother and her team of friends, an enthusiastic group of film goers used to take me along with them on one condition. The condition was that I should walk back from the theatre and should not ask for an auto rickshaw ride. This condition, I gleefully forgot after the film and used to nag her to hitch a ride back in the rickshaw. While watching the film, whenever there was a fight scene, I used to get upset and hide behind the chair. My grandmother would laugh at me and then later narrate it to everyone much to my embarrassment. My dread of fights has not yet left me.

Tom and Jerry existed even in our childhood but only in books. Now, they are alive in TV and their fights look real than ever. The cartoon characters never get hurt or die even when they are run over by giant vehicles or fall from indescribable heights. Everything gets revived instantly. Even the heroes in the movie appear immortal and superhuman. So, unlike me who used to imagine the silver screen as in real life, today’s child knows to differentiate between real life and reel life.

In my childhood I was the only child in the house and neighbors’ and friends’ houses were a strict ‘No No’ to me. So, I could play only if one of my friends managed to come to my house. This over protectiveness of my mother still stands in the way of my making acquaintances. Though alone, I never felt lonely. I used to wander in the backyard among the bushes and trees. I used to play with leaves and flowers.  I was good at making up stories and dramas. I never had any dolls but leaves of different shapes and size became my characters. No one bothered as long as I was inside the compound of the house. So, I was free to do whatever I wanted to do without anyone watching. If anyone had seen me then, they would have thought that I was a crazy child. I remained happy in my own world.

Today, even in my wildest dreams, I cannot ask my sons to spend a day alone like that. I have been able to plant the habit of reading books in my elder son but I am still struggling to do that with my younger one. I used to drool at the books on the shelves of the bookstore when my father occasionally took me to buy them. I still treasure all of them and have handed some to my elder son.

For kids, a holiday is spent watching TV or playing on the computer. Otherwise, there are tablets and mobile phones to be engaged with. Even while riding in the car, their hands are around the tablet or mobile phones while I gape at the mountains, trees and water around. Whenever I see a lotus pond or any such diverse spectacle, I would in my excitement, try to divert eyes from inside the car which is received with little attention from the boys. Their father would nod with a smile to appease me out of sympathy.

A passionate view of any form of art should definitely lead to a catharsis; purification of the mind  by evoking the feelings of pity, sorrow, anger, laughter or any such possible human feelings in the audience. Art still evokes emotions but emotions seem to have undergone a drastic change in the present world where real and unreal gets mixed up. When witnessing any situation invoking response, the first reaction of many onlookers is not to react to the situation but to capture the moment in the cell phone camera. For the real expression of grief, there are also the endless serials that come on television. For many people, only their immediate family is real. The other complementary elements of the eco system stand isolated from their day to day life. Imagination is a sheer waste of time.

I seem to linger in my childhood world of imagination.

A true story of unrequited love.

“A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.”

Half a century back, in the sleepy town of Ananthapuri, a beautiful woman arrived to teach in a girls’ school. Chellamma was fair, young and fond of dance and music. It was on a fateful morning when out of curiosity, she followed her students to the school gate to watch a procession of cars on the road, her eyes fell on him first. After that, she saw him many times; in the temple, riding in his car and as chief guest for many school functions. She looked at him with awe and her heart fluttered for him. Whenever he was to come, she started dressing up for him. Sandal paste adorned her forehead and jasmine garlands, her long and beautiful hair. Her gold bangles and necklaces added more glow to her beauty. For every school function, when he was present, she always stood in a place where his glance easily fell. Chellamma was blissfully unaware of her surroundings then. A smile or a casual nod from him sent shivers down her body. She, like Echo, pined for a word from her deity but his eyes never stopped to gaze at her ravishing beauty.

When she was invited by her colleague, Bhanumati, to act in a play being performed as part of a state celebration, she readily complied. This was her chance to get noticed by her man as she knew he would definitely be the chief guest. Mesmerized and in her own world, Chellamma performed on stage only for her lover’s eyes. After the play ended, the actors were lauded and as customary honoured by the chief guest by giving Kasavu Pudava, a traditional garment with a golden border. As she accepted the Kasuvu Pudava, her hands brushed against his and she stood there entranced. She had been offered a Pudava by her man. Though it was a small gesture of kindness and appreciation, to a love smitten young woman, this was above her dreams. In Chellamma’s mind, that simple token of appreciation became the wedding garment from her husband. To her, by accepting the Pudava from him, she had become his wife. Blind love wiped out all saneness left in her.

                   She now considered it her duty to be near him. He lived in a place inaccessible to her but he came everyday to worship in Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple. Decked like a bride, she waited with bated breath in the temple for her Swami to notice her. She waited day after day but Sri Padmanabha Swami too had closed his eyes on her and one day she was thrown out of the temple by the soldiers. This was a shock to her tender mind. She stopped going inside the temple from then on but waited outside the temple at the time of her man’s arrival every day. She would stand there for him to see her and the rest of the day would wander inside the fort. Every year during the annual procession from the temple, she would be there among the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of her man in the middle of the procession.   

Her gold bangles and necklaces were lost with time but she made them up with glass bangles and bead necklaces. Even if she was reduced to a mendicant, how could she stop dressing up for her husband? Children ran behind her, calling her ‘Sundari Chellamma’. Men made shy glances at her while women looked at her in amusement. Unaware of all this Chellamma wandered along the streets around the temple, her only intention being to be on time in front of the temple for her man to see.

Sundari Chellamma, for more than four decades loitered on the streets inside the fort of Ananthapuri. The man, she was insanely in love with, never saw her. Chellamma had fallen in love irrevocably, once and for all. She lived in her imaginary world with the man she had chosen. Wearing gaudy ornaments and carrying a dirty cloth sack on her back she lived her long life on the streets, lost in love.

Chellamma’s hero was none other than the then Maharaja of Travancore, Sri Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma. The story started somewhere in the nineteen forties and ended with Chellamma’s death sometime in  late nineties. The elderly and middle aged people born and brought up around Sri Padmanabha Swami temple would still remember her vividly. Any overdecked female would always remind them of the name, ‘Sundari Chellamma’.

LOVE TO LIVE.

LOVE TO LIVE.

The first time I travelled up north was soon after my marriage. It was the peak of summer and the heat in the plains hit me with chicken pox. I had only started to experiment with cooking when I fell ill. With my limited knowledge I gave directions for my husband to cook. Armed with a pressure cooker and two recipe books I bought from Trivandrum, whatever he made was definitely edible.

The antibiotics which the medical officer had given suppressed the eruptions but I developed a very severe throat pain which led me to believe that what I was having was not chicken pox at all but cancer of the throat. The pain made me so blind that one full day I believed that I was going to die. It was the first time I was faced with death and it terrified me. More than my dying what horrified me was the fact that all others I loved would continue to live while I die alone. It was only when the doctor confirmed that it was the pain caused by the eruptions inside my throat, I put my fatal thoughts to rest. I had learnt a big lesson that day; it is not easy to face death. Still, I led myself to suppose that my fear was logical because I was too young to die. I thought it was acceptable to die in old age when life’s aspirations were either fulfilled or abandoned.

Some years later I visited a renowned scholar who was ripe into his old age and was gravely ill. He had a successful career and a good family. I felt he was satisfactorily eligible to enter the kingdom of the dead. He lay in his bed with a crumbling body but  still held a penetrating gaze. My four year old son was with me.The old man  looked at my son and raised his hand. I understood that he was asking to touch my son. Since no wish of a departing soul should go unrewarded, I pushed my son towards him. He held my son’s hand tightly, longer than required. His solid face held a frightening stare which sent a shiver down my neck. It looked as if the old man was trying to slither his soul into my child's body. My son was trying to pull his hand away. Regretting that I had brought him there I pulled him away from the old man. I could make out that my son was scared as he fell very quiet. The old scholar succumbed to his age within a few weeks. I had concluded that day that he was a selfish man who didn’t want to die even after living his life to the full. But, today I wonder, he too must have experienced the same feeling which I had when I thought I would die. He was old and life was slipping through his fingers when youth and childhood thrived in front of his eyes.

When my father fell ill at the age of seventy and was diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer which was incurable, I remained in shock for weeks together. Eight months later, I travelled with my sons to his death bed. My son, who was then eleven, had gone very pale seeing his grandfather’s grave condition. My father understanding this told me not to bring him again to the hospital as he was finding it difficult to look into the child’s petrified face. When his doctor came, she called me out and told me that his condition was very bad and he can go anytime. When I re-entered the room he was waiting with his hopeful eyes and asked me whether the doctor said he would survive. I was shattered to see his hope. Gathering up whatever sagacity left in me, I slowly sketched his life in front of him.  I reminded him of his successful career, wife, children and grandchildren. Stifling the pain in my chest, I told him it was okay to let go. I do not know whether this put his thoughts to rest but he was peaceful after this. In the evening I saw him insisting his male nurse to go to the canteen and have tea. I left in the evening from the hospital only to come back in the night to take home his lifeless body.

Intriguing it may seem but the hassling ugly death is hard for any sane person to embrace. It was not selfishness but the love of life that stood in the way of consenting to the inevitable.  Solving life’s puzzles seem to be more captivating. I love to live.    

Sarada

Every day without fail she sits on the footpath in the market place, impassive and quiet. A begging bowl with some coins, an aluminum container of food and a stick spread on a neatly stretched cloth, on which she sits, forms her paraphernalia. She is never seen begging to anyone but I guess her gentle looks incite munificence in the onlookers. Coins thrown by them by way of compassion must be unintentionally becoming the reason for her steady attendance in the market square day after day. Apparently she herself does not come and sit there on her own. Her frail frame does not guarantee such determination. Who is the unflinching presence behind her occupation in the street?  Is it her children who found their mother’s old age lucrative or a cult which thrives in the city with the help of weaklings like her?

Speaking of weaklings and tough ones I am reminded of a woman in my childhood. Born into a backward caste in the middle of the twentieth century, her occupational life had a natural flow of ending as a maid servant. Her married life however was tumultuous. Following the caste based profession, her husband used to climb coconut trees. As expected of a middle aged man who earned daily those times, he religiously spent his evenings in the local toddy shop. This gave a riotous disposition to their home atmosphere in the evenings. Seven children were born out of their chaotic nuptial knot and one of them was struck by polio and was crippled for life. Sometime in the early 1970’s the drunkard husband for unknown reasons tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from the roof of their house. He succeeded in ending his life story in his second attempt. She was halfway through grinding the rice for the next day’s breakfast in our house when a neighbor came running to report the appalling incident. She ran to her house half a kilometer away and seeing him hanging from the roof took out the hatchet from the kitchen and cut the cloth which hung his body. He died in her arms. She has recollected this moment many times later without a speck of emotion in her voice or face. She brought up her seven children and married off her eldest daughter with the income earned by working in our house and weaving palm leaves. Her extreme honesty and reliability earned her a steady income.

Today, all her children are married and settled. Each one chose their own path. Some she conceded and others she reconciled but was never perturbed about their future. Her second daughter married a Muslim man. For two of her sons she found brides the others chose their own. The polio crippled son got a government job but had to take an early retirement due to his ill health.  Her old thatched house was renovated after the three cents where her house stood came in her name after the land reform acts.

Every year I go home, she comes to see me and tell my sons the tale of her walking me to the nursery every day in my childhood. Impassively she would accept the hundred rupee note I inconspicuously thrust to in her hands and leave with a mischievous smile on her face. She stays separately in a room in her house and still works for a living. She broke her right arm in a fall which is a little twisted now but doesn’t stop her from sweeping courtyards and washing utensils which assure her food and livelihood.

This woman always had an air about her which told that she is her own master. Years and serendipity does not seem to worry her. Knowing not how to read and write, how has she learnt the universal truth, the secret of a healthy life without ever worrying about the future?  May be she belongs to a different world than ours.  Blessed is that generation who got to enjoy the best this earth has to offer in terms of resources and splendor.

THE PARO CHU

THE PARO ‘CHU’

I came to Paro for the first time in July 2006.  There were lot of apprehensions in my mind relating to the place, climate and the people.  I was briefed by the people who had been here before that it would be for me a very very lonely life.  Being born and brought up in a South Indian city and used to moderate weather, I was even more scared of the cold winter months.

The first thing that caught my eye when we reached Paro was the river.  It flowed majestically and triumphantly through the valley and it immediately reminded me of the ‘river in Macondo’ described by my favourite writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his classic novel, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.  The river in Macondo was “a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs”.  The river in Paro exactly matched the description of Marquez.  When I telephoned my mother after reaching Paro, I told her,” Mother, I am in a heaven”.  The view of the river from Khankhu with the small bridge over it and the mighty mountains towering around…I could describe it in no other way.

As I mentioned earlier, I belong to a South Indian city famous for its lovely beaches.  There is a small river too which runs through the heart of the city; polluted with sewage and waste; it was always out of bounds for us.  Whenever we used to go for picnics from school and college, we preferred visiting a waterfall or a riverside.  We loved to wade into the cool water to refresh ourselves from the hot and humid tropical weather.  The sight of the pure and lovely river of Paro aroused hopes in me.  I wanted to sit by the banks and dip my feet in the water.  Alas!  I could only enjoy it only from a distance.  I never got an opportunity to touch the water in the first eight months of my stay in Paro.  I used to go for long walks from home and longingly look at the river from behind the iron fence by the side of the airport.  After eight months my husband took pity on me and took us for a picnic to the riverside.  It was the first time I felt the chill.  The water was so cold that I realized that I will not be able to wade into the water as I wanted to.

In summer, especially after the rains, it swells and becomes a mighty and powerful presence.  It acquires the image of a giver as well as a taker.  The depth and darkness arouses in one’s mind its omnipotence and it appears omniscient as it moves down the valley in rapture.

Sometimes, while gazing at the river, its rush down the valley reminds me of a working mother running to catch her bus in the morning.  I wonder why it has to hurry down; oblivious of the beauty and life around; only to merge with the sea.

When I go back from Paro, one thing I would like to take with me is the river in winter, though I know it is not possible.  Instead, I will carry in my heart the love and friendship of the equally beautiful people of Bhutan.