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.