Sporadic Writers Block and slow down of thoughts.. May be I am growing old.. Sigh!

Should it hurt to be beautiful?

Last week, I had chanced upon a used book store, running a 90% off sale. In all my excitement, I had walked away with a big bundle for a steal. It can’t get better than to have a shelf lined with books, you are yet to read or re-read for the love of it. It felt great to own the books, I so remember having enjoyed through the borrowed old latte-colored pages of Arcade, Eloor and Senthil libraries. As I digress to what this post is meant to be; I am reading snow flower and the secret fan a novel entailing Chinese women. Half way through -- the vivid descriptions of foot binding left a deep and painful impact on me.

In this regard I dare to be countered – Aren’t the pencil heels doing tardily what foot binding did irrationally? Aren’t we continuing to succumb to what the society prescribes as beautiful, though we have come a long way to stand up for what we believe? It opens up a whole new arena; of things that one does or has been doing to be beautiful, to be marriageable, to be hooked, to be famous and to be more feminine than feminine can be!

The acts of neck extending rings and painful piercing among tribal women in various parts of the world are well known. Of one such, I had witnessed were the deep holed elongated earlobes of older women in Kerala, so much so that the heavy blob of dangling gold could easily cut the soft flesh and many a times it does. If bronze-neck-stretching-rings and rib-breaking-hour-glas-shape-rendering corsets are looked upon as a thing of the past; fairness creams, silicon implants, gamut of make up options, plastic surgery and liposuction are the modern woman’s answers for perfection. And they hold evidence of the fact that beauty always comes with a price; the price of losing oneself in it.

I must confess I have not fared too well either. I endured ear-hole-widening a few months back to be able to wear jewelry for my wedding and continue to undergo a monthly routine to momentary spasms of waxing and threading; my threshold of pain ends there. One might say I am mixing grooming with inexplicable extremities. But then, the scale of pain and scope of sprucing up have been murky and almost undefined.

For, if -- Beauty lies within and Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder; so long as the beholder is blinded with the emphasis this world offers to pulchritude, the within bit is evidently lost in our quest for beauty.

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The family album

God gave us relatives. Thank God! We can choose our friends

It is the most cynical quip to forget family feuds and the most unfortunate during good times. Life sees many a circumstance to take the wisecrack seriously and many a times its existence is forgotten in happy moments and age of innocence.

As I look back almost twenty years, I was the happy four year old who had enjoyed every norm of a joint family; traversed the temple next door with grandpa, watched thathi say her morning prayers, waited for summer vacations to be able to make that cousins union, looked forward to be cosseted by aunts and uncles when amma scolds me – had been everything in the relationships I no longer adhere to and may be don’t belong to.

I sometimes wonder what happens to us as we grow; grow to be independent, grow to be judgmental of our lives and others, grow up beyond ourselves to not understand the happiness when we were four. And slowly, the same aunt and uncle who had every authority to pamper you would no longer interfere in your life. The cousin, who had been your best playmate, is the one you rarely talk to, you would prefer the company of your friends any day. And before you knew, the family tree had grown, strewn over the world map, divergent in thoughts and quests to make a life; had drifted to create hiatuses irreparable.

I am often confronted with requests to make a phone call to that distant cousin living in the same city as me, or the same country, to say a mere unreasoned ‘hello’. My reason to flee these uncomfortable gestures is my sheer ineptness to pursue mundane conversations about nothing with someone, I don’t relate to. I can no longer be the optimistic four year old, who would always think that cousins made best playmates.

At moments like these I often wonder when it had all gone haywire. And would it ever be the four year old bliss again? As I turn pages of the family album, with photographs that preserved the memories, I so wished to understand now; when life was beyond selfishness, beyond “having a social life”, beyond making decisions, beyond being rebellious. And there it was the whole family picture, together a million (read as: twenty) years ago, a several cousins I have not seen in years and a numerous others I have not spoken for ages, not due to lack of time or resource, but intention.

We had all in circumstance and pace of life, forgotten what it had been like to be fed by patti, to have slept in the lined up bedspreads, climbed the guava trees and fought for the most red fruit, swung the atukatil so hard like it was the end of life. We had in course of time, forgotten to share, to love, to care and live together.

They say “we are our relationships”; but then without these relationships, who are we?

It’s all about the city

Last weekend I had been to NYC for the umpteenth time in two years. And like every trip, I am engulfed by the urge to move there and like every other time, I don’t let it get past my hometown-ish love for the bean town *. It is one of those most comprehensible feelings we share as an urbane human being, to never leave ones abode and the world around it.

The city that never sleeps has a passion for crowd, a swirl of glamour, a restaurant at every corner and a shelter for the many homeless. Amidst it outrageous resplendence and the tendency to never slow you down, can be the most chronic allure that any ardent new-Yorker can experience. And it is this tempo of life and the callousness that comes with it, which drives me away from living there.

I have, over the past many years, been a dweller of many cities and fallen in love with a handful. And yet like a hurt teenager, I have moved on to make the next city of appa’s transfer my new love. Amidst these transitions of six schools in thirteen years, I couldn’t, but wonder what makes a city more affable than the other?

On one hand are cities like Hyderabad, which in its distinct tastes of culture, harmlessly harassed ‘hindi’, ever crowded Charminar markets and a spicy unconventional cuisine; easily turned into my first love. However, seven years away, I am bound to be lost in the zillion changes a fast growing city like her is metamorphosing into.

On an uncanny contrast is the unfathomable stagnation of cities like Trivandrum, which still lives in the eighties. On my last visit to TVM, a month ago, I felt an ineffable guilt combined with joy to be in my home town and to see her senile and pastoral like I had always known her. Even the pace of life and the modes of them have remained untouched to distraction. And in her retiring age she will always remain beautiful to me.

And there are cities like ‘singara chennai’, so apt to be disliked, but can win you over in no time; a city still cultural with every aspect of a sixteenth century tradition, lined by the splendid marina and unblessed with heat and untimely monsoons; making her an aged beauty of changing times and everything old.

A class apart is addictive cities like Bombay, which amidst the grime and clamor makes an impression so bold that it is unquestionable. And going by is the city’s womb to hold its variegated population, a pedestal slum, lifeline metros and BEST buses; all contrasting the commendable yet magical fairy tales of bollywood and charming capitol.

Be it my favorite *Boston, or the sultry Madras or the million other cities I have not lived to be fervent about, there is always a warmth in the city’s alienisms and sense of belonging to its novelty. For the city is always open and over the years, she nurtures and grows with you. And when its time to move, it’s like leaving an old companion for a new one, who had always been your best listener who was generous enough to let you take her for a walk or a ride when you please. For the city is always permanent, it is we her cohorts who change.

Holding back

There is nothing like an enrapturing book, on a warm Sunday night; the world is asleep and you are melted into an era so gruesome yet fearless, adhering to the lineage you come from or may be going into or never wanting to be in it. But, end of the beautifully narrated story in ‘The house of blue mangoes’ that preserved the wrath of caste-ism, I was but left with a lot of questions, for which I didn’t want to seek an answer.

I have never understood the fear, displeasure and nonchalant contempt associated with fellow beings. I have never tried to understand the decree which drives one to prejudice in the safe name of caste. I have further refused to realize the repercussions of breaking this very barricade that has been preserved so rigidly in our mindsets carrying it subconsciously and practicing them unknowingly in who we are and where we come from.

One of my first encounters at the factor of caste was at the temple of my family deity. Amidst the goddess’s clout and the Brahmin’s prowess to please her, the little sanctum was the prerogative of the Brahmins alone and the others had to be satisfied with watching the goddess at a safe distance on the outside. As a child, I never understood why we were given the special privilege to look at the Devi at such closeness, that you could almost feel the heat of the lamps dancing to the rhythm of the Brahmin’s enunciation of the potent slokams. He would amidst his rigmarole of ceremonies, keep a watchful eye to ensure no one from the unprivileged class made his way to the sanctum. However, over the years, I had decided not to question such faiths or practices owing to my sheer bafflement at the pace of life and ways of life that dwelled in regions like here.

As I grew out of the age of chaste, when one wishes to do everything that is a heady taboo, I had indulged myself in trying to taste the very disapproving in the Iyer family – non-veg. And because of one day of folly, amma to date takes my promises over phone that I have not touched chicken since and hence. Instances like these make me wonder if, faiths and practices were meant to make one live a life of blissful ignorance and convenience; even if they were not, I believe it has evolved to take that place.

I am not going to vehemently state the need to shun the beliefs one’s family or bearers have carried for a long time and banter the need to let go. I must confess, I am not a staunch subscriber to these thoughts either. How else can I explain my peculiar tastes to a Brahmin made vatha kozhambu and the need to hog curd rice with kadu maanga? How else do I owe my urge to seek education and independence above retiring to a child-bearer and safely said home-maker? How else may I cash on the secret feeling of relief to belong to an educated and respected class of Brahmin which abates the necessary rebel and feminist in me?

Life always seems to come to a full circle, or go in one. And when one is able to look beyond the bigger picture, living the life that elders disdain is a bitter-sweet one. My first headstrong encounter of skirmish was ‘meet-the-parents’. While the two of us involved cared less about our descent, bringing the parents together was a lot of hard work; honestly harder than the 12th std Board exams. And before we had come into terms with understanding the ramification of bringing cultures, practices and beliefs circumscribed in unyielding lines, life had turned upside down and inside out, until the only way to escape them was to let them be and us to be us.

It ruefully made me realize that even when one has grown above scorned values and misconstrued faiths, the urge to hold on remains deep down. It is something we are subconsciously told and brought up on. The tendency to wrath, speak aloud, eat meat, address elders, to dare, to survive, to learn; every little thing we are made up of, is influential and though most of us (including me) would conveniently never agree to coast these dispositions to the caste we come from, it will take a long time for these imbibed ingredients to erase from our sullied minds carefully honed for generations.

It makes me wonder when it will be that we humans would actually belong to the species we rightfully belong to. And in a million years we will. Life always comes a full circle.

The modest hypocrisy

I half-distractedly turned the pages of the book I have been reading to sleep for the past one month. I lifted my eyes to see the little ganesha idol, amma had sent me, sitting corpulently on the window porch. Belonging to a class of non-religious, yet non-atheist genre, I simply adore the paunchy god, who seemed to smile at me at that moment. Beside him were the pile of ten rupee notes and one rupee coins, I had bribed him to initiate a gambit of selfish requirements a long while ago.

It reminded me of the reverend Ganesha in my drawing room back home, who I would pray and recite prayers to, only on the tonic exam mornings. The kabir das dohe comes to mind –“dukh mein sumiran, aur sukh mein kuch bhi nahin.” It left the inkling of a god-fearing mind and I soon plunged back into the book, shunning the semi-guilty feeling.

It made me wonder if a little hypocrisy is more imperative than acceptable in life. It may range from how far we express our innate religious instincts to habits we possess or clothes we wear or how far we hold our tongue.

One of my oldest experiences of setting double standards was facing orthodox relatives. At the age of ten, I would obediently listen to amma and aspire to know if pottu should be always worn in front of Uma periammai or I must unquestioningly fall at Murli mama’s feet. Having told how to behave, because of the gender I belong to, rather than for my whims as an individual, I didn’t possess the liberty to defy traditions or unexplainable practices like most of my counterparts of the opposite sex in the family could; including appa. He would never be asked why the ‘punol’ always slept on nails behind doors, but adorned his chest only when elders accompanied us to temple.

When the phase of helpless rebel had weaned off, I had mastered the art of harmless two-facedness. If a pretentious humbleness could mean peace later, it must very well be done. One such instance was the jubilant 25/25 in the unit test in mathematics stuck to the fridge, making a proud daughter to amma; little did I know that Ramu mama’s arrival was to burst my bubble “Girls are very bad in doing maths. How come you seem to have scored well?” No sooner had the uncalled for been uttered, amma pinched me to keep more words to myself. I had the plastered indignant smile accompanied with the words much unlike me –“Well the paper was very easy.” Looking back, picking a feud then, might have spelt ruin of family ties for years to come.

I am further confounded by the cloak of needed duplicity as to how far can one go with it? It is often that you are expected to wear this cloak not just with people who hardly matter outside closest family circle, but sometimes with family or to be family as well. A classic example would be that of “meet the parents” when every pretence carries with it the jeopardy of working against you in future. And ironically, necessary pretence is more than welcome to make that first impression.

Another instance of well delivered profess, is the constant anxiety to be a daughter/mother/wife every economically and emotionally independent woman in this world undergoes. The world around her refuses to comprehend her as a woman but as everything aforementioned. I am sure, I will not be believed if I were to state that she clandestinely feels like a woman above everything else, which she carefully envelops with what her nearest world expects of her. It only varies to what extent she can be unassuming to express it.

It bewilders me to put myself in a state to walk this line between ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘modest hypocrisy’. When does one turn into the other, takes a composed yet mature mindset to decipher. As, I still linger in the aura of life as ‘me’ ahead and not as being an expected ‘she’; I say the line is a cake walk. But when the mind is puzzled to transition from ‘me’ to ‘she’ I am but apprehensive of what waits ahead.

Jigsaw

As a school go-er at six, in the freezing Patna winter, looking atleast five times me in three layers of warm clothes laden over a Vicks smothered chest for that perfect warmth; I was a naïve child, who half-sheepishly yet happily traveled the scooter ride on a standing ticket between appa’s protective arms, looking like little red riding hood with the red scarf wrapping my head and ears from the cold-prone winds and the water bottle garlanding my neck.

Often the pictures of me taken back then, with the mushroom hair cut and innocent smiles make me wonder if living life as little ‘divu’ was the best part of the past twenty-something years. My thoughts coast at the play-room, the storage hub of our flat with three balconies (a Dr.Bhishnudev Prasad owned building on Patna Main road), where I had created an immure world of me and my modest dolls, who would come to life in the puerile dramas I enacted with my kitchen sets. I was a contented child much to my parents’ relief, who could dwell for hours playing mother, teacher, soldier to the torpid, docile playmates.

I had learnt to amuse myself and in the process shared the perfect affiliation with self. As years went by, my playmates were replaced with books, paintings and jigsaw puzzles. As more years went by, the relationship extended to friends, good friends and best friends. Life’s rapport with self had almost dwindled away as a teenager and by the time I was twenty, spending time on my own was next to impracticable.

I, at now, at twenty-something, often spend a good many hours, bundled in books, fending for errands, attempting to cook, traveling to shop, listening to tunes while I run the treadmill. It makes me question if the little ‘divu’ had survived and was that autonomous me governing life all over again? Suddenly living as the stereotype independent working woman seems like the strewn jigsaw puzzle pieces, which I am trying to fit together, trying them on to make that complete picture, little by little each day.

I recall the jigsaw puzzle of puppies I knew by heart and fixed it almost ten times in fifteen minutes. I smile at the sardonic reality, when puzzles that seemed an effortless child’s play at eight are blurred veracities at twenty-something, when the pieces that fit the perfect life are yet so hard to find and when you do find them they are harder to fit!

Lost Identity

“ I speak tamil at home… it is actually ‘Talayalam’. But my native place is kerala!!” Does it quiet ring a bell??? Having told this over and over again and confused friends over this annoying identity… I belong to the supposed elite class of palakkad iyers. I have heard that my great-great-great-….. Grandpa lived in palakkad (town in Kerala). Technically I belong to Trivandrum, but that has never changed to ‘trivandrum iyer’… ‘Palakkad iyer’ remains! I speak a language that irks the tamilians and malayalees alike. It is a hybrid language not just mixing the words from the two languages, but combining them, making it look like ‘oh! We have the best of both sides!’ [the word ‘understand’ in malayalam is “manasulayo” and tamil is “purinjacha”.. I say “manasulacha”??] Surprisingly, I can handle Tamil, malaylam and talayalam with careful ease, which leaves me as a jack of all trades and master of none!

Anecdotes of mis-interpreted words, which have different repercussions when spoken in Tamil and Malayalam, have been the family’s source of jokes told at every family get-together. I must admit that many a times, even I have laughed over them n re-told them!
Jokes apart, I have always wondered where this misconstrued identity leaves the Palakkad iyres. Is it possible that the generations to come will transform into the original natives and forget talayalam all-together... OR will talayalam transcend into another language with its own identity? (Considering that there is no dearth of dialects or languages in India, as long as talayalam doesn’t call for another talyangana state, it should work fine!)

Firstly, I see very little of the language surviving in my family itself. My cousins in kerala speak more or Malayalam, ones in tamilnadu speak more of tamil and the ones abroad or in northern India scarcely understand either and may be speak ‘talayanglish’?! Secondly, hardly any of my cousins has married a palakkad iyer, or even an iyer to say the least! Thirdly, talayalam cannot be spoken or recognized anywhere other than family circles and not an easy language to pick up, unless you are born with it.

Amidst all this, what I do observe is the metamorphosis of the language over generations. Additions and deletions of words or changing words back to native languages; each generation has produced a new version. It reminds of the scene at the software industry where no version of the software is ever perfect and there is no such defined version that would outshine the rest. Are, we changing the face of talayalam into a sparsely debugging mode, not knowing what to debug? Is talayalam here to stay or is the original dialect being lost in the myriad of its versions?? I am just left with a bunch of unanswered questions and a sense of belonging to my dear old mother tongue that I call ‘talayalam’!