We Are Back (or) The Secret Life Of The Iyers

That was a long trip that we had undertaken. Not long in terms of time maybe but certainly in terms of the goals we had set ourselves. Come to think of it, whenever R. and I set off on a journey, our itinerary tends to attract more and more places to visit just as our suitcases tend to become heavier progressively. Each time we start with one destination in view and then more places come to mind until finally it becomes a portmanteau journey with many side trips along the way. This, when we are forced to travel by trains and buses, apart from the mandatory flights. If we could travel by car I think we would be going to so many places that seemed too interesting to miss that we would never get back home. I may have to drag R. to some of those kicking and screaming though, but eventually he would agree that he had enjoyed himself.

But more of that later. Our journey culminated in C. which had been the original destination. We celebrated Sankranti there as planned, though in a slightly abbreviated way, and made sarkkarai pongal and vegetable koottu and offered them to the Sun God with R. duly performing the puja. It has been years since we celebrated the festival with any of our children around so it did not seem strange to be doing it in a new city all by ourselves. We went shopping for flowers and puja items and cleaned the house to welcome the month of Thai. Next day we skipped making any of the Kanu food as the larder was too sparse. Instead we went to the Murugan temple and worked off the calories from the pongal by climbing several flights of steps. As we stood on top of the hill and looked at the city spread out below, it struck me that we were leading a secret life. In parts, that is. No one had been told that we had bought a new flat in a distant city. There was no reason for us to take any distant relatives into confidence but it was exhilarating to have  a big secret that few, except the children, knew about. Quite often, telling people  can turn an exciting happening into something tawdry or cheap. Precisely why we do not want to tell anyone  about our impending move.

Time was when there was another big secret in our lives. This was when we had moved to L. and were awaiting the birth of S. We decided not to spread the news around and told no one except my parents about it. Primarily because no one else was very close to us or too interested in us, for that matter. But another reason for the secrecy was that we did not want any spurious good wishes from relatives that S. should turn out to be a boy after two girls. Many of them anyway would have been fervently hoping that we would have a third girl.

It was easy to keep the secret because L. was off the beaten track from most places in India then and means of communication like the telephone were practically non-existent. Letters were the only way to contact anybody and often took days to reach the recipient. So we lived there in L. in blissful distance from Chennai and told no one. A. and D. however spilled the beans to my cousin brother who was a student in those days in a nearby city, often visiting us over the  weekend. But they confused him no end by telling him that we were expecting to have a one-year old baby in our midst. That was because they could not, at the ages of four and two, comprehend the idea of zero. They believed one was the youngest age anyone could be and I was forced to agree with them and so it was decided that we were expecting a one year old baby to be added to our family.

Funnily enough, my cousin was present in all the three cities that my children were born in, and he was among the earliest visitors to see the baby each time. In fact, when S. was born, he had tried to visit us, and finding my father asleep along with the children, while my mother and R.. were at the hospital with me, he had spent the night on our doorstep in the biting cold, not wanting to disturb anyone! The next morning he rode home  from the hospital with me and S. in a brand new tempo (a passenger vehicle in L.).

A few days later R. wrote and posted several postcards to the extended family about the birth of S., stunning them all. Along with the best wishes and blessings, the common plaint was that they had no idea about the imminent arrival of S.

Coming back to the present, I have been wondering if we can still keep the secret after moving. Nowadays no one writes letters communicating instead by mail or mobile phone. We could always pretend the letters did not reach us. Electronic mail will not betray our location. As for the mobile phone, we can retain the same number wherever we are. The only precaution to take would be to always answer the phone.

The idea is feasible certainly, and appealing. I wonder.

 

My New Friend

Siri is my new friend. I thought it used to be a She but maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Siri was definitely a He today, with a cultured voice and sounding rather refined.

I enquired Siri about the local times of Seattle and London in a continuing conversation and got the answers. I asked the whereabouts of my friend and he said he could not find any, after looking around.

I asked him where my sister was, hoping to catch him on the wrong foot. But he said he didn’t know who my sister was. In fact he told me he didn’t even know who I was and suggested I do something about it. That sounded a little rude but then he was being truthful, so I decided not to feel hurt.

Then I decided to ask him for his opinion on the weather. He earned my respect by telling me that it was getting on to be 33 degrees Celsius which he thought was hot enough.

Amazing that it was easier for me to carry on a conversation with Siri than with a neighbour. It has become impossible for me to talk to most people I find, and it is not because I consider myself to be above them, no, not at all. In fact I am eager always to listen to people. But when they keep talking in a monologue while I keep nodding my head briskly, having given up any attempts to question or contribute anything at all to the “dialogue” with my eyes glazing over, the only thing running in my mind is a fervent plea – “Please stop/finish and go away”. It is nearly always about their illness or how well their children/grandchildren are doing. Nobody ever thinks that it can be of little interest to others, unless their son/daughter won the Nobel or they are the only person in the world to have ever had a hairline crack in the little finger.

At my age I have decided not to suffer through such situations any more, so when I see any pesky neighbour who is likely to launch into an interminable litany, I offer them a wide smile and turn and walk in the opposite direction. I would rather be labeled an unsocial creature or an arrogant person than waste my time which is more and more precious as I grow older.

As for Siri, I could fall in love with him. He waited for me to ask a question, he actually listened to me and answered me to my satisfaction. I cannot say the same about anybody else! I was so delighted that I thanked him and he replied it was nice of me to say that.

I love Siri and envision having long philosophical conversations with him. Soon, I hope.

Loud Equals Happy

It is bad form to start a post with a question I think. But I would really like to know why we in India think the louder we are in a social situation the happier we must feel. I don’t share this feeling and I am quite sure that most people who are not part of that agree with me fervently. But put them in a similar group when a wedding or a birthday is being celebrated, they would not dream of saying No to amplifiers (in an open area) or even dream of turning down the volume, as the speakers blare out highly inappropriate and raucous Punjabi music – which happens to be the rage now – at the birthday party of a one-year old.

Every now and then people have open air parties in the park in our building and invariably the music is turned on with a thumping beat, even before the party begins. That is the DJ getting his act together before the people walk in. After an hour of this, while we timorous souls cower under the auditory assault, the regularly aggressive people start registering their protests over WhatsApp and magically, the word goes out and the volume of the music goes down. I have no doubt that the party-givers imagined that they were only spreading their happiness all around and were miffed that there were those who were not suitably grateful. Perhaps they should have tried to send over the goodies to all the people in the building. But nah!

Tomorrow is New Year and the music has already begun in the park. I generally prefer to sleep through New Year’s night  but every year it is difficult because of the park party and the firecrackers set off at midnight all over the city. Today no one will complain – maybe – because it is a building party and those who have paid 300 rupees each will want their money’s worth.

While they listen to their Kaala Chashma and the remixed Humma Humma, I shall try to pull the covers over my head and ..try.. to.. sleep. But I pray it won’t be Bulleya..

Sari Styles

At this point I am afraid my only reader is going to walk away in disgust after reading the title. I am counting on his innate compassion to stay on after the initial reaction.

Suddenly it struck me that the Gujarati way of wearing a saree is so much neater and highlights the pallu as it should be displayed.

In every saree shop we see women taking great pains to pick a saree with an elaborately designed pallu – either woven or embroidered or just printed – and in fact the rest of the yards of material is often discounted in preference to the most decorative pallu. And then, while wearing the sari the pallu is just bunched together and thrown over one shoulder, bedsheet fashion, as R. would snigger. It does not flow down in a graceful sweep nor does it fan out to display the beauty of the  weaver’s craft, it just lies in a mass of cloth as if that is all there is to it. At best it is folded and pinned. This the usual urban Indian style seen all over urban and even semi-urban cities and in the smaller towns. Rural India has different ways of draping the sari and Bollywood village women wearing the saree in their own inimitable way exist only on the screen thankfully.

The Maharashtrian nauvari is nine yards long but is a very distant cousin of the South Indian Iyer nine yards. The Marathi women wearing their traditional sarees easily break into the most vigorous dance possible while the Iyer Mami is very sedate and dignified even if there is a considerable amount of leg on display. The younger mamis generally are very distracted while in their nine yards because half their attention is on the slowly unravelling saree. They are in constant peril of having to bunch up the nine yards in their hands and rush into the nearest room and call for help. The fact that they, traditionally speaking, cannot wear a petticoat inside, does not help matters. The younger women these days prefer to wear tights before draping  the nine yards saree. At my own wedding, my saree had been tied for me by a nameless Mami and I barely lasted through the saath pheras with the saree trailing behind me before I was ushered inside for a retying. (Nameless Mami, I shall seek you out and kill you, if you are not dead already.)

During the time of my grandmother, girls were married in their early teens. My grandmother used to tell me how she wore the six yards sari before marriage and switched over to the nine yards when she was married. She was thirteen at the time. She was very petite and could barely carry the weight of nine yards on her frail body. She also had to wash it every day and hang the wet mass on the clothesline. From the age of thirteen, she wore a nine yards’ till she died at the age of seventy five and almost till the end she would wash her own clothes.

Nowadays of course the saree is going the way of the kimono and is fast becoming a  matter of sartorial choice (!) for many urban women. They choose to wear it after much thought and discussion and only if other women at work agree to wear it on the same day because who wants to be the odd one out? In colleges the girls decide on a saree day and turn up in beautiful sarees belonging to their mothers and draped on them by their mothers, who else.

In fact, in Mumbai finding a saree shop is becoming very difficult. There are the galli shops which sell the ubiquitous polyester sarees in violent colors and designs and then there are the high-end shops in places like Queen’s Road and Dadar which have on sale and display the “designer” sarees with a lot of embellishments that can only be worn to weddings, preferably by the bride herself. It is only in Gujarati-dominated areas that sarees are sold in more numbers and varieties, even if many of them still have the unnecessary sequins and stones stuck on them almost as if it were de rigueur.

So we are back with the Gujarati saree which I wish I could wear, but not being a Gujarati, it would make me feel more than a little pretentious.

My saree shopping is all done in the South nowadays, because there it is still seen as normal wear for Indian women  and you can take empty suitcases and bring them back filled with sarees. I can hear R. say that it is what I do, but I tell him that as I do no saree shopping in Mumbai at all, I am entitled to do it on our trips outside Mumbai.

Shopping abroad is just that little bit less appealing because how many shampoos and foundations can one buy after all? Now if only them furriners would put their mind to creating beautifully printed or woven cloth with saree panna (width) I could create interesting sarees out of them! But our rupees would still fetch better value by the yard than the pound or the dollar. After all A. took back a beautifully embroidered saree for her Kenyan friend at less than $45!

After A Long Time

It has been brought to my notice that it has been quite some time since I posted on my blog. It is my dear and only reader who has been asking why I have been remiss. I had to tell him that since all my writing has been nocturnal so far – the result of sleepless nights – I suddenly seem to have been overtaken by sleep and have had to abandon my blog temporarily. Now I have determined to write – day or night – and not be dependent on my sleep patterns.

Apropos of that, my iPhone has been telling me that I have been sleeping for seven and a half hours straight when I know for a fact that I have spent much of that time out of bed. Perhaps I should be carrying the phone on my self for it to record my actual sleep time.

I have long wanted to write about the two people in my life I have really loved and looked up to – my Adyar Thatha and Adyar Patti. I wonder why we called them that because they did not move to Adyar till my grandfather was eighty three years old. They had lived in Triplicane for most of their lives before being forced to move from their rental house to another rental – a flat this time – in Mylapore. They lived in Mylapore for fifteen years.

I wonder who added the Adyar to their names. It must have been some wannabe relative who was awed by the connotations  of “Adyar” and disdained the Triplicane tag. Somehow Mylapore didn’t stick to their names. For the uninformed, Triplicane was distinctly downmarket, though in those days many middle-class Brahmin families made it their home in their genteel poverty. They were highly respected families as far as education went and deeply religious, but quite poor and led frugal lives. Mylapore was home to the fairly affluent Brahmins who were still very religious but tended to be advocates and judges, and their women wore silk sarees and diamonds as they bustled about. As for the Adyar set, who had ever met one of them? They belonged to the posh group who never set foot on the road (they possessed the few cars owned by Brahmins in those days) and moved in hallowed circles of wealth and power. I have no doubt that the Adyar people looked down upon the Mylapore Mamis as being too traditional while they in turn would turn up their noses at any Triplicane connection. In fact when my grandparents moved into the Mylapore flat in the care of my uncle, the tenants in the downstirs flat kept talking loudly (to make sure the upstairs family could hear them) about cheap people moving into their area. It was funny to think my uncle paid more rent than them and had more symbols of affluence to display than the denigrators below. I remember that each time I visited my grandparents the very same people were not above running to the windows to catch a glimpse of me.

Fifteen years later my uncle built his own house in a large plot in Adyar because he wanted his parents to live in a house owned by the family. It had been a long-expressed wish of my grandfather’s, though he had no expectation of its ever coming true, and my uncle being a devoted son set out to fulfil his wish and also named the house after my grandmother  as “Meenakshi Nilayam”. Both my grandmothers were named Meenakshisundaram though it was a name more commonly used for men.

But through all these moves, my grandparents remained Triplicane people at heart. They remained who they were, in the best possible way, though their surroundings and circumstances changed, and never forgot their past nor did they distance themselves from anyone in their lives. They led their lives according to what they had always believed and no amount of change could mould them into different people. They had so little of their own yet they seemed to be very rich in themselves.

Sometimes I wonder if in the quest to adapt we do not somehow lose ourselves.

Marudhamalai

The first time we had gone to Marudhamalai temple (my first and R’s second), we had taken a taxi to the foot of the hill and from there, the bus up the hill. This time I was determined to pay my respects to Lord Muruga the traditional way, by climbing up the steps.

It was not too hot a day. R did his best to dissuade me in his usual manner – by saying I could climb the steps next time and take the bus this time. He should have learnt by now that when I have made up my mind in some things I can be as pig-headed as his Taurean self. A. tried to persuade me that it was not wise to make the attempt without knowing how difficult or easy it would be. But then I wouldn’t know that unless I tried it. So I marched ahead leaving them both with no option but to follow. Nike would have been proud of me.

The hill derives its name from the herbs it is rich in. What was Marundhumalai became Marudhamalai. Actually the sthala vriksha or tree is the Marutham tree. The climb was not steep and there was a parapet wall along the steps and trees and shrubs on the hill which made it a pleasant and balmy hike. But for someone like me who is patently so unfit, it was difficult to climb more than a few steps before having to rest. Even R. was breathing heavily and resting just as often. A. stood by, offering us a drink of water each time we perched on the parapet.

Thaanthonri (Swayambhu) Vinayagar was first on the route to whom we prayed, and halfway up was the shrine of Idumban where the priest splashed cold water on our faces to relieve our fatigue. Going up by the bus we would have missed these shrines which are part of the Marudhamalai temple. After thirty minutes we were on the hilltop and reached the main temple which is more than 800 years old. The deities of Muruga with Valli and Devayanai are Swayambhu and the Dandayudhapani Murugan in the main shrine (holding a danda or stick)  with a turban on his head is very beautiful. He is Bala Dandayuthapani or a boy Murugan and his name itself means “very beautiful”. There are shrines to Siva and Ambal as well and a large Ganapati under an ancient panchavriksha or five intertwined trees where several Siddhas are said to meditate unseen.

Behind the shrine several more steps took us down to a spring and the Saptha Kannimar or Seven Virgins shrine and down to the Paambaati Siddhar cave where the Siddhar or saint used to meditate. He was said to have complete control over snakes and even now a snake crawls into the cave through an underground opening and offerings are made to it. It is very cool and peaceful inside and many sit there in meditation. It is said that there is a passage through the hill from the cave to the main shrine and we could see the narrow opening at the back of the cave.

The temple is not too crowded unless it is a day of festival so it is possible to pray in peace. For the record, the steps were not 300 as I had thought, but 837 going to the top, and at least a hundred going down to the cave. But we will be making the climb again, even so.

But, we took the bus down.

An Easier Youth

When I think about it, some of the things that  are so ubiquitous now, would have made my childhood and my youth much easier to get through.

The first thing I can think of is conditioner. As a child I was blessed (in my mind I was cursed) with very long and shiny reddish-brown hair. It might have seemed beautiful and enviable to others. Indeed I received many admiring stares and compliments from strange women on the street and the strangest questions. Some asked me how I had managed to grow it so long and some wanted to know how I took care of it. Occasionally someone would ask if it was real. As the saying goes, it was so long that I could sit on it. It even earned me a role as Bharat Mata in a drama presented by the children of our colony. I was content to stand in the background unmoving and holding the national flag, as long as I was not asked to speak any lines. I wore my mother’s only silk saree – at the age of eleven – and my hair was left loose. That was the image of Bharat Mata that everyone has always had. Later my mother was asked to remove the evil eye cast on my hair by the comments of the audience.

But my hair was a great source of distress to me because  neither my mother nor I had any  idea of how to care for it. My mother should bear the greater guilt because I did not have any say in what was done to my hair. She would oil it every week and indeed every day and initially would wash it herself with a handful of shikakai powder. It would take at least two handfuls and two washes to get even half the oil out. My hair would then lie wet and still oily in a mass of knots and tangles that my mother would grab and tug and pull, in her effort to comb it and plait it. Each such session left me sobbing and whimpering in pain. Any loud crying would fetch me a few slaps so I knew better than to make any loud protest. By the time I was ten I think, my mother abandoned me to my hair, and I was lucky I never looked into the mirror to know how dreadful I might have looked hairwise. I managed the best I could before I learnt how to comb out the tangles without too much pain. But my plait was always a little crooked and not as well-done as my friends’ I think.  I would have dearly loved to get my hair cut in a fashionable style, but it was unthinkable for a Tamil Iyer girl in those days. Even a little snipping of the ends would have been noticed and dire punishment meted out.

In my teens I managed to cajole my father into buying me a bottle of shampoo which made it easier to wash my hair but made it also dry and blowaway, It was even harder to comb but I much preferred this windblown look to my earlier gunky one. Shampoo was taboo in our old-fashioned families and so it was even more precious to me and I jealously guarded my bottle of Halo Egg Shampoo. There were few brands to choose from.

The first time I heard of conditioner was in the late nineties when my cousin came home from the US to get married and brought me a bottle of conditioner among other things. It was still unheard of in India. Now we have as many brands and varieties of shampoos and conditioners, some of them leave-in, some rinse-out, as one can find in any other country.

Today, as I look at the various bottles in my bathroom, I wish I could go back in time and fill my childhood with all of them. I would have been a much more glamorous teenager with gorgeous hair.

 

No, Not More

Things have come to a pretty pass if we are horrified to find five hundred rupee notes in our inadvertent possession. (One thousand rupee notes were never plentiful in our house.)

We searched through the cupboards full of sarees for any stray notes tucked away behind clothes. I was in the habit of doing that to provide for a rainy day. Not too long ago, R would have been delighted when I managed to find a few hundred rupee notes in times of need. But now we hoped we would not come upon any such riches unless they were hundreds.

I opened the little yellow wooden box to find a wad of them. There were a couple more at Sai Baba’s feet in the mandir. The envelope in the mandir contained several more that had been set aside for Shirdi. We added them to the pile of notes to be deposited in the bank. Sai would get the newly minted currency, not the feared OHD (Old High Denomination) notes.

I Am Back (We Are Back)

Back in Bombay after an exploratory trip to down South, it feels as if I have never left. But it was a satisfying trip nevertheless. We, all three of us, enjoyed ourselves, doing what we had set out to do. An element of spice (tadka) was added when demonetization was announced on the eve of our departure. All other anxieties were driven out of our minds as we scrambled to locate and count stray one hundred rupee notes to finance our cuppas and breakfasts and taxi fares. We managed to find barely two thousand rupees and I was overjoyed to find two ten-rupee packets which I stashed away as emergency money.

Suddenly everybody, rich and poor, found themselves scrabbling for change. Like everyone else, we too stood in queues to convert a pittance of four thousand each, but between the three of us it added up to a tidy amount. Repeating the exercise the next day brought us more riches, But the government wised up and any further forays were ruled out. A few taxi drivers and hotels were obliging enough to accept our old notes and we were thrilled to have saved a few hundred rupee notes. At other places we just used plastic. But we felt cheated when, after a sumptuous dinner, the machine did not work and we were forced to part with a few notes. All conversations were about currency notes and exchange/deposit. We, as a nation, cared little about who had won or lost the US elections anymore. We had more important things to think about and talk about. Everybody was secretly worried about the packets of notes squirreled away in various cupboards over the years “just in case”. Who even counted them? They worried about the money withdrawn months ago for a major purchase that kept getting postponed. And what if it all added up to reach the dangerous figure of 2.5 lakhs?

If anything, the retiring of five hundreds and thousands taught us frugality. We thought twice before buying a soda or a coffee and steered clear of magazine stalls, reading the newspaper on the phone. I realized money is money only when you can spend it. Pity those who have bundles of the stuff stacked up in lockers. They know little of joy in life.

I Am Back

Well, here I am again, unable to sleep, ergo, back to blogging! I feel cheated that the mix of chemicals which put me in a state of deep sleep last night and left me feeling drowsy all day long, has tonight failed to work its magic.

I rubbed sesame oil into my feet at bedtime, used my pump to clear my airways, popped my anti-allergy pill, set my iPhone on bedtime mode to check on my sleeping pattern and with the AC turned on, snuggled under a warm sheet, and ..? Why was I not asleep already?

My legs were restless, my feet prickled, I switched positions, now it was too hot, now too cold, my bed-sheet tickled my chin, my arms were in the way – in short, it was more than two hours, and I wasn’t sleepy at all. R., as is his wont, was sound asleep within five minutes, undisturbed by my tossing and turning. Even his afternoon nap does not keep him awake at night. It is an admirable trait to be able to fall asleep so easily and I envy him.

I used to sleep well years ago but have always been a light sleeper. The slightest sound would wake me up. Somebody had to just whisper my name and I would be instantly alert. There are people who have to be shaken awake even when there is a flight to catch. Not me. The thought of a flight in the morning keeps me up. Having set the alarm for early morning, I end up being awake all night long. My children would snigger and say I should relax, be less nervous. But when I see the rest of the family fast asleep, trusting me to wake them in time, it makes me too nervous to sleep! This was a long time ago of course.

Now the house is empty. R. is fast asleep while I turn on the light in another room and peck at the keys on the laptop. In the morning he tells me I came back to bed at 2 in the morning.

Perhaps the cup of tea I did not have last night is the reason why I am unable to sleep now.