EVEN GRANDPARENTS HAVE WANDERLUST

Ammamma hates moving. Moving as in, traveling. I don’t mean the countless trips to kaigari kadai and back, blouse tailor and back, kaapi kottai kadai and back, Petthis market (to refill her toffee stock in old kissan jam jar) and back, paper kadai (to check if Thuklaq has hit the stands yet) and back, every single day. (Yes, even if she bought Thuklaq only the previous day, she would go to kadai to ask when the next issue was going to be out, although she already knows the answer to that. I think she hates the prospect of having to wait for a week for the next issue, and generally likes to live in denial.) Ammamma’s universe is restricted to block 93 of Sowbhagya Colony (although occasionally also blocks 94 and 95 but never beyond), and 1^st Street 1^st Sector where all the aforementioned essential kadais are located. Every two weeks, she goes to Aavin booth on parallel road, to grab the first two slabs of butter for herself and my mother. She also visits us – we live a kilometer away – at about the same frequency, taking an auto from the auto stand right outside her house.

She never used to take an auto, although she knew all the auto guys well enough. That’s because Thatha used to take her on his scooter. My Thatha is a stud. Really truly. He was a super sportsman in his heyday. Apart from playing every sport in the WORLD, he used to conduct judo classes outside his house. Thatha used to be this rowdy – a do-gooder rowdy like heroes of Tamil cinema. Any trouble in the neighbourhood, and Thatha would arrive (with only background music and slow mo missing) to warn the villains off and to intimidate them. Sheesh! Like a Brahmin rowdy, who went, bashed a few guys up, and came back home to do his sandhi and eat his thair sadam and maavudu. God. Thatha is my hero. After he retired, he devoted himself completely to his grandchildren, and so did Ammamma. Ammamma held fort at home, while Thatha was our caretaker – mine and Sheets’. He was our chauffeur, friend, guide, philosopher and hero. Thatha on his black Kinetic Honda, and later on his grey Dio was a cult figure in the neighbourhood. Everyone at school knew him. All our friends’ parents admired him. And we were so damn proud of him! Imagine a swashbuckling superhero named Iyerman (or even Iyervaal, for that matter). How exciting! 

Until, recently, kannu struck. No no, it can’t be anything but kannu that resulted in this. Thatha now has an extremely painful left leg and can barely move. As in, he can. But yeah, that would end up with him sitting up most of the night in pain. So now, Thatha sticks to his white plastic chair, and doesn’t get around too much. And his grey Dio is busy gathering dust in the shed. 

Sigh. Anyway, so Ammamma and Thatha have lived in their 93 B house for the last 30 odd years. No, it is no ancestral house that they refuse to move out of. It is but an incredibly modest MIG flat. But no, Ammamma hates to move. She hates living anywhere else. Forget living, even staying. For years, she refused to stay at her son’s or daughters’ even for a few days. But now, for the last few years, they do come and live with me and Sheets, when my parents are not in town, they do go to Mylapore (Ammamma cannot bring herself to say no to her most-beloved son anymore), and I know even though she doesn’t admit it – Ammamma and Thathu secretly love their annual trips to Hyderabad to visit Du and Nanda Chitapa. Mostly because Du is poor Du, and Ammamma can nicely bulldoze her around, and because Nanda Chitapa is the sweetest man in Hyderabad. 

Despite being so close to my grandparents, I had unfortunately thought of them as very one dimensional until recently. Ammamma and Thathu have been on many pilgrimage trips with us, all over Tamilnadu. Appa always took them around everywhere. But they have never had a HOLIDAY per se, until they went on a vacation to Munnar with Suri Mama and fly., and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They went on to talk about the vacation for more than a year after it happened. But the revelation came when I went over to do namaskaaram before I left on a holiday to Singapore. Ammamma was sending me off at the door. Thatha had just finished belting out his slew of safety instructions, and then there was a moment of silence. Suddenly, Ammamma started to sing “Akkarai seemai azhaginile manam aada kandene…” and smiled. Then, she said: “Mochai kottai, ennayum kootindu po da…” And my heart broke. I blinked away instant tears quickly and said bye, and ran away. I couldn’t have taken her along for what I was going to do at Singapore, and anyway it was too late. I didn’t even realize that even Ammamma might want to come along, and travel the world like I did. Ammamma and Thathu have no son in the US (surprise surprise, for a Brahmin family of that generation): they would’ve made a trip there otherwise. They’ve never been abroad. They only know what they’ve seen in Priya – all those wondrous sights that Rajni describes in that song. So then I decided that they must go to Singapore someday. 

Anyway, my wonderful time at Singapore quickly made sure I forgot all about it, and thereafter life sort of took over. Until I was painfully reminded again, when a slightly high Thatha, sipping his whiskey, looked at me and said “Enna ya, oru passport kuda ille… eppo nanga idellam pakardu?”, pointing to the tv. There. I could hear the familiar sound of my heart shattering into pieces again. I marched up to Amma and Appa (yes, in tears AGAIN) and said, “Look. Please take them to Singapore. They have actually opened their mouth and asked.” Amma and Appa agreed, but were disgusted with my unabashed maudlin display of emotion. Amma in turn said to me: “Stop crying like a fool. Why don’t you take responsibility for a change?” That’s when I decided: I am going to get their passport forms. I will fill them out, and take them to Thatha and watch his face. Amma said she’ll do the waiting at the passport office and blah. And then, my parents will take them to Singapore. Or if I have enough saved by then, I will take them to Singapore. Ammamma wants to come with us to Kodaikanal this summer. But space in the car is a problem. Thatha is also protesting a little, because he’s too proud to openly have trouble walking. Amma is fighting with him, by citing examples such as Pads and Meenamma who trot all over the country, even though they too battle old age problems such as knee pain and this and that. And Ammamma wants to go no matter what. So I have decided: even if it means that Sheets and I have to run beside the car all the way to Kodi, Ammamma and Thatha will go to Kodi. And then to Singapore. Ha! 

[ God. This post is so emo. Zzz.
And God. My titles suck. The title of this post beats the title of my blog hollow. Congratulations to me! Zzz. ]

YEN MA??

It’s really funny. You are walking about, always doing your own thing. You don’t hide anything from your parents; you tell them what you are up to in life. They try to make you do some things, but considering your record, they also know that you aren’t going to listen. And despite their slight unhappiness at your ‘lack of respect’, you know they respect your independence. (Sample: Amma with a mixture of pity and slight disapproval, on meeting this really chamathu, super obedient, good second cousin of mine after years: “Ayyo. Look at him. I feel really sad. He listens to his parents too much.”) But being parents after all, they do throw in the occasional emotional blackmail: “We trust you, so don’t do anything that would put us to shame.” But they are quite secure, because they know you can’t keep your gob shut, and have to come running home to tell them everything. Your mother knows your deepest secrets. She often disapproves, but always lets you do your own thing. She tells you not to get into trouble, but lets you fight your own battles. Your mother herself is not the conventional mother, you know. She is fiercely independent, and really cool herself, so you think anything goes.

Not. Their apprehension comes out in the weirdest ways. (This is what I find funny, like I said in the first line. Got sidetracked somewhere in between. Zzz.) I had decided, for personal reasons, to wean off my scooter. They thought I was being stupid then, wasting so much time and tiring myself out on the bus. But as always, I turned a deaf ear, and took to darling PTC anyway. Now, even if I really am tired, and want to use the bike on weekends, Amma starts to plead. “Please vendame. Take the bus. I’ll die of paranoia.” This, after years of you driving all over the city on your scooter. And when you decide to go anyway, they want you to message as soon as you reach, and message again before you leave and everything.

Even though it made me feel really liberated, it did irk me, just a little, when Amma wouldn’t call to ask if I was ok, when I had been out for hours and all. “Nee lam oru Amma va,’ I would ask her when I came back home, and she would roll her eyes. Now she has swung to the other side of the spectrum (and this I would attribute to her learning to message, and using her phone a lot – a big deal for my technologically challenged mother). “Message when you reach. Message me when you are going to leave. Message me if you get caught in traffic.” Even when I am travelling by bus. Imagine the number of instructions when I go to multiple destinations. *shudder*

I remember the times when I had to go to Shrimati class at 5; how Amma used to just roll of the bed, give me my milk, grumbling about not being able to sleep, and go straight back to bed in record time, even before I left home. Now, she wants to chaperon me to the bus stop when I leave home before 6. And when I am coming back home after 10, I generally find her standing at the bus stop, waiting to receive me, like I am arriving from Amerikkai. Zzz. Supremely irritating.

The Amma who told me to whack a staring bastard right across his face, now tells me not to make eye contact and avoid trouble. The Amma who wanted to chase me out of the house as soon as I finished school, now has conditions. “Delhi le velai panna kudadu. Bombay venna udren, pozhachu po.” The Appa who let me taste from every one of the little sample liquor bottles he brought back from France, now pulls a straight face and looks down when I tell him I tasted a friend’s drink. The Amma who had smoked one cigarette in college, because she wanted to try it, now glares at me, when my hair smells of smoke (My college canteen is a chimney with a roof). The Appa who used to buy me nice kutti skirts from everywhere he went on tour, now tells me to be careful when I wear short T shirts. The Amma who is slightly foul-mouthed herself, now asks me to shut up, when I inadvertently say “Shit” or “Bloody” at home. The Amma who used to laugh when I narrated drunken capers of friends, now clicks her tongue when I come back to tell her that beer was circulating in the party I had just been to. Even though she knows I don’t drink. The Amma who used to threaten her Amma saying she was going to elope with a Punjabi or Gujarati, now tells me, “Only Brahmin boys. Nyabagam vechuko.” The Amma who might have expressed thrill earlier, now looks scandalised when I tell her I am going to join the Pink Chaddi campaign.

‘Epdi irunda neenga, ipdi ayitele ma…..’, I say, like Sivaji in Vietnam Veedu. But they know that despite my irritation and indignation (and secret amusement), I will do my own thing anyway. I can hear them sighing behind me. And Amma saying, “Moni. Enkitte pesadhey po.”

MEETING AMMAMMA

No matter at what time of the day I go over, I always hear pots and pans clanging in the kitchen at the back of the house. I tiptoe to the kitchen, and peep in, half my face hidden. I see her stooped form, either washing vessels in her little sink, or cooking. Anything Ammamma does generates noise enough to compete with a garbage collecting truck. Obviously, she can’t hear me when I call out to her, in the din. And when she finally does, her face lights up in delight on seeing her favourite grandchild. She hastily finishes what she is doing and arranges all the vessels on the floor. (Ammamma has some sort of affinity to the ground level; all her essentials are always arranged on the floor, or on little stools just a few inches high. The reachable shelves and the upper shelves are always suspiciously empty. Sometimes I think that is why she stoops so badly these days and appears so much shorter.) She wipes her calloused hands on an old towel and drags me out of the dark kitchen, into the dining hall. She puts on the light, puts on her glasses and peers into my face, like an elf examining a giant shoe. Then, she smiles, and says, “Ayyo! Moni evlo osaram ayiduthu!” (Moni has become so tall!), five years after I have reached this height. She holds my hand and drags me to the interior room, saying “Come. We have to talk”, in her thick Tamil accent, in one of her frequent endearing attempts to speak English.

 

We sit across each other in two shabby, extremely comfortable chairs. This is how we always sit, when she decides to dispense her pearls of wisdom. She enquires about my life, college, my working hours, teachers and my future plans, from which she shrewdly picks a point she wants to harp on. “Naanum co-education le dhan padichen. Ana boys separate, girls separate. Sendu padingo. Ana edukku oruthar oruthar madi le poi okkandukanum?” (I also studied in a co-education school, but the boys and girls always sat separately. You study together, but where is the need to sit on each other’s laps?); or, something on the lines of “Cinema kaaraloda vechukadhey. Avale namba mudiyadu” (Don’t mix with people connected to the film industry. They are not reliable people.) or “Journalism lam vendam. Anavasya danger. Kandavaal oda lam pesanum. Nee pesama lawyer aidu, civil lawyer.” (Don’t do journalism. It is dangerous, and you would have to talk to the nastiest people. You become a lawyer, a civil lawyer). And when I either defiantly shake my head and argue, or laugh bemusedly, she smiles and says “Apdiye unga amma madri – rakshasi!” (You are just like your mother – a rakshasi).

 

I see her picking at the sleeve of her blouse as she talks, the colour of her blouse not ‘matching’ the colour of her sari in any imaginable stretch of the word. She shakes her legs back and forth, the dead nails on her dry feet making rhythmic scraping sounds against the floor. I think she is deliberately unkempt, so that people don’t think she is one of those immature oldies who try looking younger than they really are.

 

Suddenly, she remembers something, and disappears into the kitchen. Five minutes later, she reappears with a plate of mixture, a lacto king from her old kissan jam jar filled with toffees and two pieces of delicious homemade thenga burfi. As I feast on the goodies, she carefully peruses the day’s English newspaper while eating a toffee herself, her tongue clicking as she does, arrives at a page, and says “Ah! Moni, kekanum nu nenachen, ‘waiver’ na enna?” (Moni, I meant to ask. What does ‘waiver’ mean?), having read the paper thoroughly despite her limited knowledge of English. I try to explain in my limited knowledge of pure Tamil, arriving at the right explanation after five minutes. She then pinches my cheeks and says “Moni smart”, because I know the meaning of the word ‘waiver’. And then she proceeds to get to the core of current political issues, putting me to shame, but also helping me learn, if only her highly biased opinions on everything.

 

Then she goes on to tell me that I should wear my hair long, not wear tight clothes, and resume paattu class. She then zones out, staring into space, her eyes bright, as she recalls her younger days, vague lessons from her school textbooks, the Kaveri and the Kumbakonam temples. She starts to hum in her very sweet, trained voice, a song her father used to sing for her. Silence follows.

 

After a while, I tell her I have to leave. We walk out of the room, she, to the key rack, and I, to the fridge, to eat ice off the roof of the freezer. I hear an “Ey!” and turn around to see her brandishing a cane, threatening to whack my bum. Laughing I run to the gate; she turns on her ancient transistor as she follows me, and tells me to call as soon as I reach home, knowing very well I won’t.

 

She stands there in the balcony of her immensely modest house, waiting to watch me until my bike is out of sight. I turn around, and the bright red kumkumam at the crown of her white-gold head catches the sunlight. I vow to visit her more often.