Knots tied

Whenever I think of a wedding and the little big intricacies that make it happen, I am reminded of the story “The missing mail” from Malgudi days. The story encompasses the pleasure and pain of bringing the observance together, surviving joy, hard work and crisis. And not so long ago, it was my turn to be in this rigmarole of a marriage, much unlike the era that Narayanan was describing and much like the beguiling ambience he had portrayed.

N and I come from backgrounds that are thankfully one-third alike; ‘thankfully’ since it makes the ritual a lot less complicated. But sometimes it is the other two-thirds bit that can make your wedding a little special and strenuous at the same time. May be that explains how we had squeezed time for me to adorn a madisar but carry a ceremony, as per N’s family tradition, that sans fire.

It had begun on a Saturday with a subtle pooja to the elephant god before dawn. As I prayed and chanted, it was appa’s sleepless night, playing host to the myriad of guests and finding them the respectable hotel accommodation all night long, which gnawed me. And somehow I had not understood until then that there is no such thing as a well planned wedding and if it were without consternations, it wouldn’t be a wedding at all.

The day had broken and spent with the many friends and cousins, welcoming and talking, all blending into that gregarious atmosphere, which was to linger for the next two days. The fulsome feasts had begun and the pedestals were laid for believing that something bigger was in the making. Before I knew, it was time for engagement ceremony in the evening and I was ushered to the bridal room for that first perfect look.

Our engagement was completed by the maternal mamas, who had thoroughly enjoyed the turban tying, garland exchanging and some pot belly hitting hugs that ensued. And with every little function, somehow the families, who had begun the journey with the two-thirds uncommon, were closing in on them. As for N and me, the blinding video lights and the gamut of pictures with constantly plastered smiles were only a warning of what we might be facing hence.

The wedding Sunday was deemed immensely auspicious and it seemed to me the entire town of Madurai was geared to wed. I was circumscribed to a saree only dress code from dawn to dusk, not that I minded, for that bridal touch. As my disoriented step cut hair was deftly braided into a knee touching length, I had mastered the skill to hold a heavy extension to my head. By the time I was worn the muhoortha pattu and jewelry I had spent hours and days designing and selecting, I was running a high temperature and the heavy drumming and gaggle of well wishers outside didn’t help my nervousness.

As I entered the decked pedestal, assuming an unbending namaskaram, the wafting redolence of my huge rose garlands, the olfactory of agarbathi, sandalwood and ornate jasmines gripped me. I was carefully whispered to walk like a bride and I had smiled inertly to my incorrigible clumsiness even in this heavy attire. If not for appa’s reassuring smile and N’s uneasy grin, I am sure I would have effectuated a ‘runaway bride’ scene. But I, in all my panicked calm, espoused the seat next to the pattu veshti festooned groom without further ado.

The ceremony was my first, of course for partaking, but attending as well. As a few words were being spoken by elders, I was but scanning the packed hall, for smiling at familiar faces much unlike a shy bride. Thanks to my humongous garlands and complementing hairdo, I couldn’t turn my neck to peek a word with N or appa. Soon, the gattimelam was sounded and I watched our fathers exchange garlands, followed by our mothers. And with that we had transcended into an ironic arranged marriage mode.

As if rising from my reprieve, we rose to a ritual, I never knew existed in Hindu marriages. With my hand in his, we repeated prose in wholesome Tamil, of words that sounded beautiful, but meaning unknown. Yet, we had in all proclivities agreed to marry the other through that lexis with a thousand odd people watching us.

The next few moments were lifetimes apart and if I were to recall, the only thing that stopped me from sobbing was N’s characteristic “it’s ok” nod, holding the wieldy chain of gold in his hands. No sooner had he given the nod; in the deafening noise and showers of well wishes, the taali had entwined my already crammed neck. And thus in the blink of the eye, we had accomplished the most defining moment of the entire wedding and managed to keep my eye liner intact!

With all anxiety weaned off, little did I know that, the groom and bride were to take a joy ride on the legendary kudirai vandi of Madurai? And to have a cousin hold an umbrella over you, as the horse made its way on the sunbathed streets, was indeed an unusual treat. What followed were a zillion wishes, a million photographs and the aftermath of many a magical moments. And somehow, everything post the crux is never as stirring, but the rituals never cease to end.

For many, it seemed like the new chapter to our lives had begun that day; but for me, it was one of the rarest days of my life when my whole family was together after many many years. Periappa, periamma, mama, mami, athai, athan, cousins and everyone bubbling away and am I glad that they could make it to this little town which they have never visited before.

That wedding night, as I prepared to leave my family to enter a new home, I had done something, I would have found cheesy as a third person. Having spent two days lolling with my entire family, all I wanted to do was stay back. And like a little child, draining my heavy makeup of the evening, I had cried my gut out hugging and refusing to let go of appa and in the bargain making everyone around me teary-eyed.

As I drove away, I was glad for I was married; not because I love N any better now, but for the blissful once in a lifetime episode, which had taught me the love for family again. For – if marriage is sheer optimism; it doesn’t get better than being given away into one.

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?

Heading Homeward

In less than twenty days, I will be making my first trip home in two years. Amidst, the clamor of joy and bittersweet excitement, I can’t but wait to feel the anxiously relieved smiles on appa and amma, glad to be waiting for their prized possession to come home. I am yet again reminded of how life teaches you to realize its worth when you do not have it.

I had been spending the past few days typing mails to friends and making an active presence in the group mails; making an earnest effort to catch up. It felt a lot different from the dolorous letters, mussed with ‘miss you’ on every second line, that we used to share as sixteen year olds. Standing many years away from class-parties and doleful farewells, each living in a different corner, a different world, somehow common grounds is always met with old stories remembered and guffawed.

At such moments, I uncannily realize the ghosts hidden in each of us, which surface to bring a timely smile, a momentary goose bum, a gush of nostalgia and a fleeting lump for that tiny tear. Yet, it passes, just like a hazy cloud, leaving you high and dry to return back to life around you, until another time.

One of my first instances of yearning for home was amidst rigorous goolging to complete assignments. I chanced upon the India map, out of an irking pop-up; and somehow, I have never been able to repeat that instantaneous jerk of patriotism and inexplicable pining to head home, the picture brought to me. Given, another minute of that rush of adrenalin, I am sure, I would have taken the next flight to Madras.

I knew that the inkling never died, and resurfaced as the easy sobs upon watching the award winning ad on you-tube yesterday, recommended by hiten . And yet, away from the two seconds of thoughts to give my best to my home country, return to people who love me, here I am fulfilling my responsibilities for the company that keeps my experience and moolah intact.

How is it, I muse, that we live selfishly amidst apparitions, that stay on optimistically dormant to haunt us on where we come from, and where we wish to go back to? How is it that the urge to ‘give’ remains to shake the nonchalance we display at it? How is it that life is still led at normalcy, while the lack of its worth is felt as an ignorant shadow at every step?

I am not sure of these answers I seek or questions I ask? But, as I take a step back and reminiscence a fast-forwarded flashback on life, with incepts of joys, misgivings, love, skirmish and achievements, I am at a loss of words to describe the wonderment and childlike contentment I feel, knowing that I would be soon tasting amma’s avial and small talking with pals at gangotri over rounds of bhel puri.

At these times, I am glad life doesn’t give you a rewind switch; for the pleasure of reliving moments and yearning for them is a bliss better than the moment itself.

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.

Bundle of joy

A week ago I received the three covers, dandily packed and cellophane taped. They carried the redolence of amma's hands and the warmth of Chennai house. It contained the carefully chosen perky Patiala skirts, two jeans from the very own Lee shop at Pondy Bazaar and not to forget the sealed boxes of home made, ghee emanating sweets, rarified 'chakka varati' (jackfruit jam) and my favorite murrukkus from Krishna sweets at Adayar.

This was one among the many bundles I have received from home in the past two years. That moment of turning into a five year old holding those doled out packages is an inexplicable bliss of its own. It may be difficult to comprehend the feeling as one of nostalgia or maudlin or happiness; but all of it in one sheer moment. I gladly undid the parcel, gathering the niceties inside, realizing how unknowingly dormant that part of me was, which ached to be a daughter and pampered.

Being the much hyped "Only Child" of the family of three, I had my share of being coddled and protected; not just by parents but for being youngest in family circles as well. I still recall the night, when eight year old veena akka was scolded for venturing into my space of the bed, spread in the long hall of grandpa's adobe. I, the cocker-ed five years old, pretended to be asleep and willingly rolled over to her side sauntering all over her, giving her a hard time.

When I had weaned off being the wicked spoilt brat, I was still fussed around as a teenager and loved unremittingly. Somehow, I had till date remained the divu all my life. It made me wonder if I had grown up, without appa and amma by my side and if only I could be their bundle of joy forever. I uncannily remember the elaborate arguments, when amma refused to let me cycle to school alone at thirteen, unless accompanied by a friend who would have to come over to my gate n pick me up.

Though the wiles of her shielding nature were pertinent, it was only after living seven seas away did I know that my contestations of “When will you ever let me be independent?” were not easy for her to grant, since she possessed more gray hair to know that living life is not easy. Ironically, I was brought up to believe in myself and urged to attain independence; but not of the foolhardy nature I was asking for.

It brings to my mind the incident of an equally cosseted cousin, who had made the much unanticipated STD call from his hostel room complaining “Amma, there is no mug in the bathroom. What should I do?” And today standing thirty something he is turning a dad himself! These little episodes make me believe that even the most grown-up adult still lives in the womb, wanting to be the child. And contradicting, there is no such thing as a grown-up; you are always a child to somebody all your life.

I copiously grab the home-made ribbon pakodas, munching down the sweetness of amma’s love wrapped in them, smiling to be the daughter which is the priceless gift of all times!

A letter for thought

It was one of those scorching, comatose afternoons in the little house in Hyderabad. I, as an eleven year old, anxiously awaited the portly post-man to deliver my letters, constantly eyeing the steel letter box. It was worth a wait and a feet-burning run down the stone pavement to grab the envelopes doled out by different hands and enclosed vividly in their own sweet way. There was one from Shari; the typical pink colors with drawings and stickers screaming “Miss you”. A tiny envelope from Anu, subtly yellow and mellowed “Missing you”, much like herself. A card from Karan, penned with his artistic writing and child-like words –“surprise inside. Open soon”. I hurried to unwrap the letters, smiling with unalleviated joy, to hear from my pals in a far away land (Trivandrum!!); waiting to give up my evening hours of play to write about my past week and reassure them that they would always be my bestest friends, signing off with “Reply soooooooooooooooooooooooon”s… Letters were my tickets to the fairy-land where I dwelled with pals; I had made for a life-time to come.

Looking back at the life that sans e-mails, sans messengers or orkut, sans mobile phones, sans every complex obscurity meant to ‘stay in touch’ and yet never to do so; I am amazed at the gratifying bliss, I shared, receiving a letter and putting all my love into its reply and living up to the promises made, signing autograph books with ‘Keep in touch’ or ‘roses are red and violets are blue, friends like u are very few’!

My tryst with letters had been persistent since the life in Patna, when I would be longingly given quarter sides of the blue inlands to stamp a few words to thatha (grandpa); write about a little poem I learnt or the new mathematics quiz score I secured as his proud grandchild or the latest Enid Blyton novel I enjoyed. Later this had turned into an enduring habit to write comprehensive letters to chums who I would dolorously leave behind, when I moved with appa’s transfers to a new school, a new city, a new circle of friends.

I still have the two brown boxes full of variegated letters, which have every emotion of a life bygone safely preserved in senile paper and soft ink. As I dig the countless envelopes, they travel from the postcard of my best friend’s five year old hand to the letter I received when I was eighteen. Emanating from them all, is the forgotten laughter and slight tears we shared as friends, as schoolmates, as luncheons-ers of others’ Tiffin boxes, as night-out group study partiers, as secret-keepers, as inseparable ‘Best Friends’ who pledged on the farewell day, only to realize in a few years that the very word ‘stay in touch’ had innumerous repercussions, one fails to anticipate.

I, at today, set alarms on the office outlook to remind me amidst work to call a friend on his birthday; make a mental note of all the phone calls I have to make on weekends, only to procrastinate the thought to the next weekend on the washed-out Sunday night; watch a friend come online, sweetly reminded by the yahoo messenger, only to prioritize a pending deadline and chat another time; midst hours of lolling on orkut pages, I decidedly leave a ‘Whats up?’ only to forget after a week that I did so when my friend responds; await a phone call on my birthday and expect to be scolded for being a lazy bum and never mail.

A wedding invitation, a solitary mail, a tri-monthly phone call, a yearly lunch, a new year wish has all that has become of a time when letters updated a weekly life. These rueful facets of life make me wonder if I have grown above everything in this world, may be even myself?!

Vishu- kani

Yet another ‘vishu’ came and went by. This time I had spent it cooking a hearty meal to my capacity and dawdled with pals indoors, rapt in a movie, owing to thunder storms outside. It has been two years since I experienced ‘vishu-kani’ (the first sight on vishu day) and the lovely feast amma would dole out for the genial vishu lunch, on the banana leaf. Warm afternoons of festive filled ambience, family banquet and sumptuous burps intermitting the post-lunch laughter marked ‘vishu’ as the most sought for festival, next to ‘diwali’, in my life.

The eve of vishu was often spent shopping for the little big niceties that went into making the first sight on vishu day graciously positive and meant to make the year ahead a very lucky one. I would look forward to take the seat next to appa, watch him gracefully arrange the ‘urali’ with rice, the coconut filled with ‘parupu’, the cucumbers, melons and fruits, all reflecting on the mirror that was adorned with gold chains placed behind the delicacies decked out on the ‘tambalam’. The ‘kani-konna’ (the yellow flowers that bloomed to aptness, during the vishu season) added the final touch to the festooned ‘kani’, prepared carefully to be harbinger of joy for the year to come.

A contented sleep was soothingly interrupted by amma at the crack of dawn. She would walk me down, closing my eyes, saving them from seeing anything else before I set my eyes on the bedecked ‘vishu-kani’. Slowly, appa would dampen my eyes and gesture me to open them to the sight that even after twenty odd times of redundancy over the years, still swelled my heart with unremitting joy. I would ritually go over the details of the kani I had helped appa ornate last night. It always seemed different from the night before, as if blessed to completeness on a vishu’s first light. Smiling, I would make a stamp of the sight in the memory lane, adoring every intricacy.

As the vishu day unwinds and the cucumbers and melons of the vishu-kani make a delicious meal for the afternoon, followed by the showers of blessings accompanied with 'vishu-kaineetam'(money) from elders, a pleased I would sink with happiness on the perfect day. This year, living a life that sans the presence of appa and amma and the beautiful vishu-kani, I simply reminiscence the vishu days back home and recite a prayer to keep the family hail and healthy for ages to come!

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!

Amma’s bajjis

It has been a week of incessant rains and intermittent wet flurries in Boston. The murky skies, punitive droplets and frosty winds give no indication of the spring that is supposed to have set in almost three weeks back. As I snuggle in a blanket watching the romantic showers trickle down the window, the whims of piping hot red molaga bajji dipped abundantly in coarse white chutney, complemented with sips of dicotion kappi in a tumbler, grip me. I fantasize the oil-laden golden bajjis and almost scent the mesmerizing aroma, so apt for the chilliness outside.

I suddenly shake back to life realizing that the wafting redolence is now replaced by the rustiness of a closed heated room. I dotingly remember amma, who would have, as if read my mind, walked in with a plate of bajjis and masala tea. I smile traveling back to evenings spent over warm tea (amma always preferred tea to coffee) on the huge dining table, cooling the tea back and forth from dawara to tumbler, table-talking about everything under the sun. It was those little moments of sheer nothingness and smiles, which brought me closer to her.

Amidst phases of elaborate arguments and instances of puerile laughter, amma and I had created a world of two of us for three years, in appa’s absence to Goa. She was my confidant, friend and fighter-cock sibling back then. As I look back at my engineering years; they wouldn’t be complete without this fifty something (still looks thirty eight), cherubically puny, enthusiastic, subtly pious, cleanliness freak, childish laughter filled and marvelous cook, my mother.

I grab the packets of chilly powder and besan, enclosed with love and emanating reassurance of amma’s touch to the perfect taste, enthused to try my first bajji. I imitate the unconscious observations I made watching amma cook, sitting on the kitchen platform munching down half cooked pieces of food, much to amma’s kind indignation. As I eye the amateur half brown bajjis floating in oil, I let out a little sigh and a sweet tear, missing amma and her golden bajjis.

The Family Dinner

Having brought up without siblings, in a nuclear family, I had grown to accept friends, family-friends and cousins as closest family. As a child I always looked forward to the three month beguiling yet burning summer for the company of cousins for the midnight capers, loads of ice creams, visits to the zoo, never ending picnics, thrilling rides in amusement parks and temple sojourns with grandpa. Later as we let life grow out of this phase of chaste, it was only at an obscure wedding or family-function that I spent quality time over a meal with cousins, uncles and aunts. Later even this dwindled down to once in a few years with family strewn all over the world map and camouflaged in the name of “Busy life”!

Amidst this transition, I have had moments of sheer bliss and loneliness, which has made me realize that home, is where you want it to be. It can be made at the very familiar coffee place you hang out with friends or the dinner table where you dine with parents. For me it is the few minutes I spend on phone yapping with appa everyday and the brief weekends of poker and dilly-dallying with pals. Yesterday was one such Sunday when I not only laughed mercilessly with my friends but found a family to share the joy.

We were visiting Vikram’s family in Mansfield last evening to congratulate his sister for her 15 day old baby. Having spent ample amount of time shopping for the little one's dresses and box of sweets for the older four year old shruti, I was but scared to hold the cherubic and delicate sleeping baby. I had reclined to playing Barbie and pacifying the four year old. As the evening unwound over the hot cup of tea and levity of old jokes lingered over the comfortable couch I recalled the very scene back home. As if breaking into my reminiscence, Vikram’s mother came by to ensure we don’t leave without a heavy dinner she had started to cook for the hungry grown ups!

Having tried my hand in playing dart, laughed incessantly over Vikram’s spontaneity and Vilas’s PJs, and cheered little shruti for her gymnastics skills I was all set to devour the amma-made food. Along came the many shenanigans over the dinner table in the four course meal which extended way over dinner time. It’s my experience of all times that the best conversation and laughter you share with family is post-dinner until the plate goes stubbornly dry. It ranges from healthy arguments to old stories re-told and guffawed over. I fondly remembered my mother’s cooking and her child-like loud chortle that I missed so much.

As it happens to all good times, when time flies by and you have not had enough, it is time to stop and get on with monotonic routine. As we drove away from that place last night, I felt I had left a part of me behind, one that had missed home, enjoyed family-dinners and got excited being with people I love. I gave in to the unparalleled love that came wrapped in the sugar coated 'gulabjmuns' of last night, before I let sleep take over my relaxed weekend.

On Superstitions

I had headed to the temple today evening with a few friends, only to find that it was closed due to lunar eclipse. We had washed away our disappointment in the Dosas we hogged at Dakshin, followed by watching the controversial yet bold ‘Nishabd’ of Big B. Meanwhile, I remembered the time I was confronted with a closed temple door; that time I was with family and I was made to believe that it was the most inauspicious thing to happen. The solution for which turned out to be the ever enervate wait until the doors opened in the evening after 5 hours!

This was not my first encounter of unexplainable and unquestionable faith within family that I found hard to digest and at many times I have vehemently opposed. It was taboo to touch even water during solar or lunar eclipse and predictably that’s when I would feel like guzzling anything I can lay my hands on. From Tuesday being ominous for hair-cutting; nails must not be cut after 6 pm; chuckling of lizards spelt bad luck , following 'rahukalam' for good times to begin work superstitions were a part and parcel of everyday life for my family! It reminds me of the Malayalam movie where in the actor dilip had lived the role of a family man who lets superstition take over his life, to the extent he jots the date of his death based on omens and signs only to find that he is hail and alive at the end of it.

I may sound like a hypocrite if I say that sometime in our lives we are all superstitious, which may not necessarily be religious. As a high-school student I used to ensure that I always write exams with this silver ink pen, which I termed “My lucky pen”. Later this had turned into a “lucky bag”. My best friend Divya used to have a “lucky frog”, well a stuffed doll really, called smoochy, which later turned out to be not so lucky. I also knew someone in college who would wear her earings inside out during exams. Even my dad had kept his twenty year old tattered wallet until it was detrimental to throw it.

Retaining possessions in the name of sentiments can term you as a sensitive person, but doing it to parlay ones confidence makes you unassuming. Above all letting external factors guide your life can even make u an incorrigible chicken-heart. Nevertheless to say, I don’t account anything “lucky” anymore and have somehow come to believe that ‘luck simply follows hard work’ and ‘each person is responsible to make his/her own luck’ … End of the day I am glad I am alive, contented, hail and healthy and at this moment awake to write this bantam blog…

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’!

89/100 in Lesson of life

How important is an 85% anyway?? I had this conflict ever since the day, I was six and my mother beat me hard for not having written answers to questions which could have made me a class first!

Class first...Hmm… does it sound familiar?? Brought up in typical south Indian Brahmin family, I was told that a career came before life. A 100% in mathematics was the biggest achievement and a stepping stone to all successes ahead… Life revolved around scoring marks that made you the top in class and among every cousin in the family, getting into IIT, fly to US for a Masters and becoming a software engineer like every “good” student did or should??!… Well… I sadly never achieved it all… I have never scored a 100% in board exams. Wasn’t the topper of my class... Didn’t make it through IIT… much to my mother’s disappointment … I was a much too a moderate student who ended up being a pseudo Software Engineer, that every city-born, Brahmin south Indian SHOULD! 23 years of birth n later I am a developer like a million others and became part of the Software genre of IT professionals, lost in the grains of sand that holds the US economy together and running after a Dollar dream!! Many a time I wonder is this really what I want and why?? And I am lost for an answer. Is it the way my family wants me to be? Is it the trend for every educated south Indian Brahmin family?? Or is it a simple “Be a roman in Rome” syndrome??

Yes, like everyone in the field, I am good at what I do… But the point is… Does this define life itself??

Is it ethical or even moral to tell a child that scoring more than everyone in class defines her? If she doesn’t come in the first 3 in class, her life is practically doomed?? How healthy is this competition?? Can this be defined as competition?? Is it right to force a child to tread a path she doesn’t want to?? Is it right to make a student feel that a failure can spell hell?? If she doesn’t do as well as half the world, does it mean she is a loser in life??

I spent the last 18 months of my life finding answers to these questions and ended up making my Masters experience a horribly good one… ‘Class first’ turned out to be a sardonic reality! Stuck in a classroom of my country men and women (a home away from home??) striving to be a part of the ‘software imports’, I felt immensely pressurized to perform better than ever. Little did I realize then -- that achievement among forty meant nothing when you are thrust against another forty million ; Confidence and time-management spelt success and not a 99/100 ; Working smart helped you get grades and not Working hard(er) ; Masters was all about following your heart and not proving to be better than the best!

My struggle to keep grades high through the ‘Be a roman’ ideals led to my first failure. Failing a course had been the ultimate suicidal experience of my life! I no longer feel embarrassed admitting it to myself or to the world through this blog. What followed in my life was determination and reasons to live, which has brought me where I am right now. I feel re-born, with the right ideals – struggle to follow your heart and dreams ; work to be able to smile and feel contended about yourself and your life ; Love what you do and do it only if you love it.

I look at the report card which reads – Mathematics – 89/100 ( “Can do better “ remark by my teacher ) and my heart no longer sinks with disappointment, but I feel proud that I was able to look at life beyond a piece of paper that said my mathematics score!!

Disclaimer: The author is not targeting south Indian Brahmin families, she belongs to one too!. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.