I stand on the street and look up at the
house. Nothing has changed. The ceiling-high wrought-iron gates that rise
up from the compound wall, the compound wall itself painted in bold stripes of
white and brick-red colours, akin to temple walls, the imposing pillars inside the thinnai (verandah) that bear the weight
of the roof above – yes, nothing has changed.
I can even picture my grand-mother and me sitting there on the thinnai – she leaning against the pillar
while I sit in front of her with my back towards her - her gentle hands
applying coconut oil on my unruly hair and slowly removing the knots. I close my eyes and I can almost sense it –
the wonderful feel of languor that spreads through my body as she slowly weaves
her fingers through my hair, so soft and gentle that I can only feel them
fleetingly, causing absolutely no pain.
I open my eyes and look outside at the
street. The corner opposite the house
used to have a tube-well with a pump fitted.
I remember jumping up and down holding on to the hand-pump, my braided
plaits moving in tandem to my jump, while drawing water from somewhere deep
inside the bowels of the earth and magically filling the pot with the clear,
transparent liquid. The tube-well is no
longer there. Instead, in its place is a
cemented, cylindrical tank fitted with a tap.
I turn my attention back to the house. I
walk up the four steps, unlock the heavy latch and push open the gate. The loud twanging sound made by the gate is
comforting – it is still the same, maybe a little less intense than I can recall. I walk past the thinnai and enter the long corridor that connects to the main
hall. It is dark. It was always this way. Sunlight hardly ever enters this place – there
is no window on the wall. A few steps
inside, there is a door to the right which opens into a room. This was kept locked then and it continues to
be locked. It actually acted as the
granary. After the harvest season, the
room was filled with sacks of un-polished rice, paddy and other produce. The
dim light, the musty smell of jute sacks, the slightly poky, brown sheath of paddy
strewn around, the thick cobwebs that covered most of the ceiling and the wall
corners – leant the room a mysterious air and as a child, I was a little
fearful of entering the room. My imagination used to go into overdrive – I
would conjecture all kinds of monsters and hairy devils lurking behind the
sacks, waiting to pounce on me.
I walk past the ‘granary’, take a few more
steps in the corridor and enter the main hall.
Sunlight streams through the couple of open tiles of the roof that act
as skylights. As I adjust my eyes to the sudden brightness, it feels like I am
walking through a time capsule. Despite the passage of 20 odd years, my Uncle
and Aunt have retained the place as it was then. With the exception of the television which is
a new addition, everything else remains the same – my Uncle’s writing desk that
has a plastic sheet covering it and an old radio sitting atop it. I remember the pen-stand too, a wooden one made
of mahogany with beautiful, intricate work adorning its sides. Instead of housing an ink pen, it now holds
an assortment of ball-point pens. The Bril-ink
bottle, the one with a slightly fattened belly and filled with a rich blue hue
is missing. I can recall the various
times I used to sit on the wooden chair in front of this table, drawing and
doodling on scraps of paper. Once, while
trying to fill the ink-pen with ink, I spilt quite a bit of it which left a big
blot of blue on the plastic sheet covering the table. In fact, as I peer at it, I can see faint
traces of the blue blotch.
Next to the table hangs the calendar
against the wall. Goddess Lakshmi stands
tall and dignified, with her right hand raised and open – offering blessings to
one and all - and a pot of gold coins streaming down from her left palm. I can
still see some of the earlier years’ calendars stacked behind the current one –
my Uncle does not discard stuff easily, especially those that carry a picture
of a God or Goddess. Neither can he tolerate
the rustling sound made by the calendar sheet as it moves and stirs to the
ceiling fan’s air movement. He pins the
sheets down with a ‘gem’-clip – I can
see the steel clips fastened to the sheet, on both the sides. A couple of my Uncle’s shirts hang from a
hook on the wall.
My eyes dart to the opposite side of the
room; the cot that my grand-mother used to lie on is very much there. I can picture her sitting there, leaning
against the wall, with a warm and happy smile playing on her face, eyes brimming
with love when she spoke to me or watched my antics - showering love as only a
grand-mother can. The small stool right
next to her cot is still there but the green plastic tray that held her
medicines is missing. The wooden doors
of the built-in cupboard stands mutely beside the bed. The doors are kept locked by dangling a steel
spoon through the latch. I remember it
was an aluminum spoon that did the trick then. The smaller open shelf on the
wall is as it was before. My Aunt has it
neatly covered with an old newspaper and it holds all the key items of her
daily make-up – a bottle of coconut oil, a comb, a rectangular mirror, a tube
of maroon-red Shringar kumkum, a
smaller round vial of Shringar kajal, and
a can of Gokul Sandal talc, with the picture of Lord Krishna as a chubby baby
lying on a bright green leaf and holding his well-rounded ankle with an equally
well-rounded hand and bringing it to his mouth, emblazoned on it. She is a lady of minimal needs, my Aunt.
The television is placed on a stand at one end
of the hall and a few odd chairs and a 3-seater sofa rests at the other
end. Right in the middle, are four huge
pillars, two on each side, forming a neat little rectangle. My eyes are attracted to these shiny pieces
of architecture, huge and round at the base, and tapering gently towards the
ceiling. They remind me of the Queen
piece in a chess set, which is also similarly structured. These 4 strong pillars have served as great
companions in our childhood games – hiding behind them while playing Hide and
Seek, acting as the ‘Home’ spot in a game of Four Corners, just going round and
round them while singing loudly and tonelessly, leaning against them while
seated and playing a game of Ass or Rummy.
The quadrangle, formed by these four pillars, used to be the most sought
after area in the whole house - because the ceiling fan hung on the beam right
within this area. So, after having a
quick dinner, my cousins and I would spread the paiis – mats made from a particular weed – select the best pillows
and lie down to sleep right underneath the fan.
Many a morning have we spent in this quadrangle, trying to thread the
jasmine flowers freshly plucked and collected in a bowl, plucked from the plant
growing outside in the backyard, with fibrous threads got from the half-dried
bark of the banana plant. This was also
the favored place for an afternoon siesta.
My mother and aunts would shoo us children away to the thinnai to continue our game of cards
there while they would lie down and take rest – chat and gossip for a good hour
before actually taking a nap of 30 minutes.
Often in the evenings, if there was a lot
of food left, my Aunt would get us cousins (we were six of us aged between 6
and 9 years) to sit in this area, forming a semi-circle. She would sit in the middle, with 2 big
bowls; one filled with sambar rice –
mixed with a good amount of ghee so
that it tasted heavenly and made all us children want to eat more; and the
other with thick, creamy curd rice. Just
thinking of the curd rice makes my mouth water.
We would stretch out our palm, she would place a small mound of the
mixed rice on our palm, which we would then drop into our mouth. Before she could finish serving the sixth
child, we would all be ready for the next round, with our palms stretched out and
clamouring for more. When she placed the
curd rice on our palm, she would make a small clearing in the middle of it; we
would then fill it up with a spoon of tangy and mouth-watering vathal kuzhambu and plop the whole thing into our mouth and
lick the remnants of the curd mixed kuzhambu
off our palms. It used to taste absolutely divine! Thus, we ended up eating more than we would
have otherwise done had we eaten by ourselves.
As I reminisce about my childhood memories,
I gently place my palms against the pillar close to me – it is cold but feels very
smooth and soft. I am suddenly aware of
feet clambering behind me. My little
girls, my nieces and nephews – my sister’s and my brother’s kids- are all
rushing into the hall from the corridor.
They take a few seconds to get used to the sudden change in light –from
the dark, dimly lit corridor to the brightness of the hall. They take one look at the four pillars and
they charge forward with outstretched arms to touch and feel them, their voices
squealing with laughter. Within seconds,
they devise their own game of Running and Catch and run around the pillars,
their voices echoing with mirth and resonating with the voices from my
childhood – their shrieking and yelling melting the years away, bridging the
gap and connecting with similar yelps of playful happiness that emanated from
me and my cousins.
As I sit on a rock and watch the gently flowing river, I am transported back to the times when we would visit this same place, almost every morning and have an hour long splash in the cool waters of the Amaravathi. Women would come down in groups, carrying with them rounded sacks of dirty clothes. They would then wash the clothes in the river while gossiping continuously – setting a rhythm of chatter, followed by the ‘swoosh’ of the clothes as each cloth was swung high up in the air before hitting it against the rock, causing the sound of ‘phat’,- similar to a drummer beating the stick against the drum; and followed by chatter again. This cycle would continue for quite a while and finally once all the clothes had all been washed and the water wrung out, they would then remove their saris and blouses, hoist their petticoats to the chest and get into the cool waters and have a relaxing bath. My cousins and I would play our own games, splashing around. Sometimes, when one of us ventured a little deeper, someone from this group of women would yell out to us and alert our Aunt or Mom who had accompanied us. Immediately, a barrage of shouts and rebukes would rain upon us and Aunt or Mom would threaten us to get out of the river and go home if we did not stick to safe areas. This would quieten us a bit but not for long.
I glance upwards and look across at the
steel bridge that was constructed to connect one river bank to the other. There are now two of them – a new one has
been built right next to the old one; the older bridge was designed for the
movement of bullock carts, cycles and the occasional four wheeler. It has weakened and cannot be trusted to
carry the load of buses and other heavy vehicles. The new bridge stands pompously, with its
shiny bright façade glinting as the rays of the setting sun fall on it. I shield my eyes and feel sorry for the poor
old bridge that has served diligently in its time.
The sudden shout of the kids wakes me from
my reverie; my daughter has slipped on a moss-covered rock and has landed
butt-first into the water; she has a small gash on her ankle, caused by the
rock’s sharp edge. She is in pain and
cries out to me. I comfort her and
threaten the other kids to play safely, else I will march them off home. After a while, with promises to bring them
all back again the next morning, we head back home.
After all that play in the river, the kids
are now hungry. I herd them to the
quadrangle formed by the four pillars in the hall, and make them sit in a
semi-circle. My Aunt has lovingly mixed
two bowls of sambar rice and curd
rice. I sit in the middle and place
rounded quantities of food into their open, outstretched palms. I watch them as they clumsily put the food
into their mouths and even before I can finish with the sixth child, the others
have stretched out their palms again and are clamouring for more! Life certainly
has come a full circle!
Note: Photos used in this blog post are sourced from the internet
