The House at the End of Memory Lane

Memories are dutiful harbingers of nostalgia.

I have quite a pack of stark, lucid memories – one of the earliest is of my biting my twin in a well-justified bout of sibling rivalry and getting my first milk tooth loosened in the bargain. There is yet another one of both of us dancing a chicken dance (!!!), with a ruffled Dee at my side as a rooster because she did not get to wear the pretty pink dress of the hen. There are precious memories of Guruvayoor trips, Vishu kanis, a family friend bringing Gems packets whenever he came on a visit, our first dance teacher whose wooden stick (the talakkol) I hid behind our sofa because I had total conviction that she was going to beat me with it. My list goes on. We all have our memories. We all have our favorites too, the ones that we ruminate on, the ones that burn with an inner light, that can somehow make dark thoughts disappear.

One such memory is of summer vacations spent at our grandparents’ house in Madras (We knew it as Madras then, and Madras it will be). Excitement would start about a week before annual exams, which would invariably translate to terrible performances – mom remembers an instance where I came out of the exam hall barely after fifteen minutes of entering it, stating that the Math paper was very easy. Thankfully, I passed. According to mom’s memory, I just about did. Curiously enough, I don’t have any recollection of that.

We would pack a whole lot of things. Two suitcases, a bedding roll, a food container with hot idlis and chutney, a big water can – opening the tap and drinking water in its white cup was one of our pet pastimes in the train. By the time the train rolled on to the platform, our hearts almost ached with happiness and excitement. There would be fights for the window seat, over who drank water in the white cup first; there would be persistent questions about which station came next and the inevitable burying of heads when the train passed the Changanasseri tunnel.

After being rocked to sleep by the slumbrous jolting of the coach, we would wake up to mom’s insistent “Look, Integral Coach Factory, this is where railway coaches are made.” We would watch the coaches lined outside in fascination and have bizarre imaginations of how they are made inside. I think we knew Integral Coach Factory was in Perambur even before we knew that the sun rose in the east.

Our uncle would be there at the station – the one closest to our hearts (the uncle, not the station – though as stations go, Madras would be the one closest to our hearts), the one who considered us almost his own. We savored the haggling he would do in Tamil with the taxi drivers and then we rode through the big city, through the narrow T-Nagar roads to our grandparents’ house.

It was not a big house, but there was excitement lurking in its every corner – raisins and rock candy (kalkandu) in one of the bottles hidden away in a cupboard, an eccentric hand pump in the front that produced water at odd times, a big well in the backyard, a soap dispenser with red liquid soap, old moth-eaten albums, a dressing table with our aunt’s (the one closest to our hearts again) nail polishes, a black and white TV (which was Utopian compared to our TV-less Kerala days) and Shobhana Ravi reading news (on whom a younger cousin of ours, then aged two, had a crush), and most importantly, a big wooden swing on the first floor balcony, on which one could swing one’s heart away. We would go for walks with our grandfather, wear flowers on our hair, climb up the steps in the backyard to watch the Vaigai Express pass (there were rail tracks behind the house), go for interminable steel vessel shopping with the elders, visit Moor Market (which has since burned down), spend an evening at Marina Beach, and have the holiday of a lifetime. Funnily enough, I don’t remember any journeys back home.

After several years of growing up, the summer holidays lost their charm. Times changed. Our priorities changed. Our grandfather sold the house to a friend on the condition that they will take good care of it. Houses – and promises – are easy to break. I later heard that an apartment building has come up on the plot where our grandparents' house stood. We all speak of it with a hard-to-hide pang. But land is scarce and emotional attachments are tricky things. We just made sure that our grandfather did not come to hear of it and moved on with our lives.

I have memories that can bring a smile though. Maybe that will suffice.

Dear Time.....

Somebody very close to me lost her father day before yesterday. She lived in a faraway city and could not reach on time. She tried but still reached too late.

I live far away too and this fear of inescapable calamities is gnawing at my heart. I want to strike a bargain with Time - totally delusional no doubt - but let dreamers dream and pathetic versifiers doodle away.

Dear Time

Do not race when lovers kiss
Let them have their moment’s bliss
Do not hustle and bustle
Let the leaves in the wind rustle

Do not hurry on a starry night
When a tired man sleeps so tight
But when there is a storm, never tarry
When there is a mishap, never harry

Dance away when I am lonesome
Run when I am sad and glum
But hang on when I am having fun
With my friends out in the sun

When I say “please,” You stop
Be it to read or sing or shop
And then when I say, “You may,”
You can get up and go your way.

And when my steps grow weary
Be at my side, all cheery
Then I will dance along with You
And sing the same song anew.

Sleeping Partners

She cuddles close to me with her right leg on my tummy and her right arm snaking its way around my neck. I adjust a little to make myself comfortable, but my nearly-four-year-old is a determined boa constrictor.

“Amma, read.” She demands.

“As soon as I take your hair out of my mouth,” I sputter.

She chews a little bit of my hair to give me company.

“Okay. Here goes.” I read from her favorite Critter book. She laughs through the antics of Critter’s little sister and states that little sisters are naughty. I do not comment. Nowadays, there are too many “little sister” moments and I do not want to add to those.

I close the book and look at her. I see a layer of sleep falling over her eyes, but as I turn to switch off the table lamp, she blinks and perks up again.

“Amma, paattu,” she cuddles closer. Her breath on my neck is like a warm hug.

I begin my nightly rendition of Harivarasanam tunelessly but carefully lest I confuse the wordings. She likes to correct me and is ever vigilant to spot my mistakes. As I sing the beautiful verses quite discordantly, the melody which can put even a god to sleep starts to work on my little one. Her eyelids close despite a protesting mind and she sleeps, or so I think. When I end the song all out of breath, I hear her mumble again. “Amma, another song.”

I sing Auld Lang Syne this time around, as tunelessly, to the only one in the whole world who can enjoy my singing, and sleep listening to it too.

She wants more songs, she is not asleep yet. She whispers to me that her birthday is on Tuesday. I shh-shh her and sings her favorite omanathingal kidavo. Some time during all this singing, M slips under the blanket too.

When we finally doze off to the faltering strains of Irayimman Thampi’s lullaby, I momentarily feel suffocated. I feel sectioned off. My daughter’s arm is around my neck and almost suffocates me, while M’s left arm is heavy on my breasts, claiming them his own. My extremely territorial little girl owns the flat of my stomach and refuses to budge her leg even in her sleep. And M is the undisputed claimant of anything below my waist and he proves it with his heavy left leg sprawled across my hips and thighs. I squirm a bit. I feel suddenly itchy. I need to scratch my back. I need to turn to my side. I need a drink of water. I need to breathe. I need my freedom. I sigh. Finally, I give in to the bliss of being so totally and irrevocably owned.

PS: My daughter will turn four this Tuesday, on August 26th. She will be a big girl. She has promised us she will sleep in her own room once she turns four. She will cuddle her Fluffy and Appu, and Piku, her favorite penguin, and go to sleep all by herself. We tell ourselves that we will make her keep her promise. I shudder inwardly. I am not sure whether I am ready to be disowned.

A bug-bite and an itch

A bug with an inclination towards gastronomic snacking seems to have bitten me. This might have happened during our otherwise rather uneventful return trip from the US. After coming back, there has been this persistent itch which I diagnosed as an overwhelming desire to cook and eat. As nagging as it was, I decided to do something about it.

Now, let me make a confession here. I am a bad cook. Or I should rephrase and say that I am an apathic cook. With a terribly limited culinary expertise, my lunches do not go beyond unpretentious rice and sambar and my dinners are limited to unyielding chappathis and potatoes. Although what I cook is reasonably tolerated by my family – who might have no other choice in the matter – there is not even an ounce of creativity that might add more variety to my meals.

Faced with such a handicap, I turned to my better, plumper half who professes to be a better cook, for a second opinion on whether I should pursue this new yearning of mine. He said he would support me through thick and thin, wins and losses, triumphs and disasters. And thus we started cooking.

The first one – a potato “bonda” – was a success beyond even my wildest imagination. The phone bill might bear the brunt of a painstaking tutorial from our mothers, but our congratulatory smiles were intact on our faces. M, who still cherishes a nostalgia for Bombay streets, got burger buns and made “vada paav.” We celebrated.

Our next attempt was a more ambitious fish cutlet. M took the reins this time, while I was relegated to making oval patties, which he criticized lavishly for their lack of evenness. The fish cutlets were excellent, and if I did not like tuna all that much, I did not bring the matter up. We rode the wave of success one more time.

Our next project was an even more complicated “murukku.” For one, the dough cannot be too hard or too soft. Two, the circular shape of the murukku is almost impossible to achieve with a cookie press that weighs a ton. Of course, the hard job of making the precise circular shapes went to my dexterous husband while I took on the less strenuous but equally sweaty job of frying them. The murukku came out well too. Three hits in a row.

Needless to say, our beginners’ luck was about to give way.

The next weekend was set apart for “uzhunnu vada” – medu vada or urad dal vada or black gram dal vada according to the language spoken. Heeding the warning that the dough should not be too runny, we set to work. Our mixer/blender has a disinclination to grind without water, and with the confidence of a veteran, I said we could add a modicum of water. And so, the water went in. The batter was smooth. I asked M to watch and learn while I wetted my hands, deftly took some batter on to my left hand, pressed a hole in the center and tried to put the dough ball into the hot oil. I knew something was wrong that instant. The dough, with a surprising doggedness, just clung to my hand, a gooey mess. M snickered. It was too runny, we deciphered. I had an immediate solution to it – add rice powder. We added and added, and added some more. Finally, the consistency was just right and I congratulated myself. We fried our vadas golden brown. And then we sat down to eat.

The vadas were, quite explicably, rock hard. I ate one, commented on the suspiciousness of the texture, while M, with more resoluteness, managed to eat about three or four. A little dent in our record, our spirits were undaunted still.

As providence would have it, M brought home a huge packet of cashew nuts last Friday. It struck our minds almost simultaneously that we could make “kaju katli.” With the groundwork completed, we set about measuring the ingredients and faced our first hurdle. Our measuring cup measured less exotic items such as rice and sugar and flour but not cashews. Mom had cautioned us against guessing. We should have listened.

The sugar syrup was our next hurdle. The instruction was to boil the sugar in water until we got a thread-like consistency. Thin or thick thread? M asked. I did not know. While the syrup boiled, M expounded on the hygroscopic quality of sugar and the existence of a Brix value that measured — well, something. He was just showing off. I said I will hurl a brick at him if he did not shut up.

The syrup boiled and boiled and had almost recrystallized by then. We tried mixing in the powdered cashew. It just became a lumpy mess. We should add more water, I impulsively decided and poured some. What was once lumpy now became watery. We quite predictably panicked. We added more cashew, more sugar, tripled the existing quantity – finally, when we realized that our kitchen was becoming unrecognizable in a deluge of powdered cashew and sugar, we gave up our salvage attempts. We decided to call it our very own cashew fudge. A fiasco of unmitigated proportions.

Our fudge is still inside our fridge waiting for reprieve. We still nibble at it now and then and console ourselves that it tastes good.

The bug-bite might finally be losing its itch.

I and my socially-challenged friend

I and my socially-challenged old school friend decided to have an evening out.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Although I am the narrator here, I did not bestow this obnoxious epithet on her. The credit to that solely goes to my friend herself. But, being a mother of two immensely adorable but nevertheless extremely vulnerable children with age-appropriate naughtiness, her social challenge can be considered more circumstantial than temperamental. Housework and motherhood did not leave her much time and perhaps inclination, though subtly so, to mingle. And wise women that we are, we felt there was no social crisis that could not be solved with an evening out.

So a fine evening – or so we thought – we took off, leaving our children under the able care of our husbands. She drove while I listened to jazz music, her choice, and enjoyed the newness of the music and the landscape. The plan, as we had meticulously discussed and finalized, was thus – drive to West Falls Church, take the metro rail from there to Smithsonian, take a tour of the Lincoln Memorial, which my friend’s sight-seeing-driven hospitality considered a must-see, then walk around Georgetown, maybe go to a club, drink a little, laugh a lot (which I am quite notorious for after a whiff of vodka), relax, gossip, get nostalgic, and get back home socially de-challenged.

We didn’t predict the rain – which came in torrents. With all my navigation and my friend’s driving skills, the route map, and a husband on the phone giving verbal instructions, we still managed to lose our way, which was quite unplanned too. We almost crashed into a car stopped at a light, missing all that excitement by less than an inch. Finally, we did reach the West Falls Church station and got ourselves a couple of tickets from an unimaginably complicated and willfully hostile machine, shaken and a wee bit stirred, but certainly not deterred from our original idea of having an evening out.

Lincoln Memorial was, well, lofty. The huge statue of Lincoln looked on impassive while the dwarfed tourists crowded to read the Gettysburg address engraved on the wall. I read it too. “At this second appearing to take the oath of Presidential office…….,” a speech that apparently was long and did not resemble the rather iconic Gettysburg address. Seeing perplexity in my eyes, my friend, who might have muttered “you dummy,” led me to the opposite wall where I saw engraved the quite familiar words of “Four score and seven years ago…..” – a fitting tribute to martyrdom, freedom and equality, carved majestically on stone.

Later, walking down Georgetown’s M Street, we took in the quaintness and richness of the town in equal measures. Our intention was to find a club although admittedly both of us panicked a little. The questions we bandied were “have you ever been to a club?” “do you enjoy drinking that much?” “do you really know the etiquettes of a club?” “are we even dressed properly?” “Isn’t it too early?” The answers were mostly firm “nos” and a couple of equivocal “yes’s,” which did not make the matter anymore clearer. Maybe for an instant or two, we were eighth graders once more, daring to be different, confident of being special, but still aching to run back to our comfort zones. Luckily, we didn’t spot a club and didn’t have to make a decision on that. What we ended up spotting was an Indian restaurant, and that made our choice easier. Tearing out our buttered nans and munching our succulent paneers, we were gloriously happy in our comfort zone.

On our way back, we got into a wrong train – which was again unexpected because we were quite sober. Although we had become a bit heady by then with all the talking. We talked a lot that day – oh, there was no dearth of topics – husbands, children, life, husbands, children, life, husbands……

And that ended our special evening out. An evening where we realized that we are no longer different, that we will never get back our girlhood again, that we might be a little inept at ticket vending machines, but we still can be special in our own little ways.

And no, my dear friend, you are not socially challenged.

Of a canyon and a sun

It was worth the wait. This overwhelming of senses was corroboration enough that my trip was worthwhile. I was standing at Yavapai Point of the Grand Canyon waiting for the sun to set. And beyond the ledge on which I stood, and beyond hundreds of tourists gathered around the breadth of the observation station, the canyon unfolded in all its timelessness. “As old as time” – that was the phrase that kept flitting to my mind. I was gazing at maybe a billion years of natural history. I was witnessing the power of nature that can etch a landmark so pristine in its starkness. It was enigmatically beautiful, yes. But what was arresting was the very austerity in its wilderness – earth brown as opposed to fecund green, chiseled layers as opposed to smooth contours. And then, the unimaginable size of it all. I was almost a proselyte – from confused monotheistic idolatry to primeval pantheism.

The jagged edges of the canyon rim were turning golden under the setting sun. Wind had picked up while we waited as the sun came inevitably closer to the horizon. I whimsically wished for wings while I pulled my jacket closer. I mused on inevitability – of Colorado River flowing on, of sun sets, of life, of time ticking away.

I felt a tug and looked down to see my 3-year-old prancing around.

“I want to pee pee, I want to pee pee,” she chanted.

“Can it wait?” I asked miserably; I already knew the answer.

“Noooooooooooo,” came the plaintive cry.

“Now walk fast. I don’t want to miss the sunset,” I said half dragging and half carrying her to the rest room I had spotted near the car park, which to my impatient mind seemed to take forever to reach.

“You are not happy with me.” She pouted on the way back.

I hugged her tight and explained to her that I am of course happy with her. I was only unhappy with the inevitability factor that seems to rule our lives. “The inevitability of your pee pee,” I said, snuggling her. “But let us hurry, the sun has not yet set,” I squinted at the golden glow in the horizon.

“Why sunset again again?” She was quizzical, as she burrowed her head deeper into my neck. She too resigned to the inevitability of her mom’s quirkiness.

And thus we watched the sun set – the canyons becoming golden, then red, then brown, and finally a rusty silhouette against a darkening sky. We went back to the hotel, unsated still, but somehow at peace.

...........................................

Sunrise was at 5:15 AM. We reached Mather’s point at 5, a crispy morning, cold by my standards although my warm blanket of a husband termed it as pleasant. My three-year-old was up too and thanks to some curious turnaround in her mental makeup, she was actually keen to see the sunrise. Mather’s point was crowded. There were two bus loads of Japanese tourists and a convoy of Harley Davidsons, and of course a bunch of photography enthusiasts. Thanks to a Harley Davidson couple’s magnanimity and probably due to my daughter’s rather audible announcement that she can’t see anything, we were given a spot right at the edge of the safety railing.

“Mr. Sun, sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me,” I sang my daughter’s favorite ditty under breath.

That was all the encouragement my little songbird needed to erupt into the full song.

“Mr. Sun, sun, Mr. Golden Sun, hiding behind the tree…” she echoed.

“Is the sun hiding behind the tree?” I asked her.

“No, behind the Grand Canyon.” She immediately chirped and broke out into a revised rendition “….Mr. Golden sun, hiding behind the Grand Canyon.” Everybody around us laughed, either politeness or actual amusement, while I silently blamed my husband’s genes for my daughter’s propensity for unrhythmic parodies.

A Japanese tourist beside me enquired whether we were from India. I prudently did not get into the nitty-gritty of the issue but just said yes. He beamed at me and spoke of Taj Mahal. The heaviness of his accent made it almost impossible to understand him, but the fervor in his voice was unmistakable. I nodded quite proudly.

The sun did start to rise at that time and an expectant hush fell on the crowd. We all watched another spellbinding show of sheer gold spreading over one of the most recognizable landscapes on earth, and many among us were speechless – except my little songbird of course who sang on uninterrupted.

The show over, we parted ways, the Harley Davidson couple with a wave and the Japanese tourist with a nod. We hung back for a little while more, memorizing, recapturing, reminiscing. I thought of Keats and his slavishness to beauty. I thought of Wordsworth and his emotions recollected in tranquility. I thought of the transcendentalists – Thoreau and Emerson. I thought I understood them more, standing there on the edge of a chasm so deep and so beauteous.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever – be it a Grecian urn, the Taj Mahal, or the Grand Canyon.

May days!

This is a whirlwind month for me. My entire drab routine has gone topsy-turvy. Not a good month by my austere misoneistic standards.

First, there is this whole American dream vacation to plan for. After procrastinations and put-offs, after never-ending debates and discussions, we have finally zeroed in on June to be the month of travel. There are still interminable deliberations on what to take, what not to take, what to do, what not to do, how to do, how not to do, where to go, where not to go, where to stay, where not to stay – the whole nitty-gritty of the trip has left me cursing insomnolence at night as my overworked brain does exorbitant and probably misguided calculations on clothes and gifts to carry. That said, the entire onus of planning rests on the able shoulders of my brother-in-law who not only has to pick his way through the jumble of abbreviations that binds America together – JFK, MCO, EWR, IAD, BWI, LAS, IAH, to state a few – but also decide on hotel reservations and car rentals outside of Orlando (where he thankfully has his home) and then wait for a whimsical sister-in-law to approve or reject. Add to it the whole confusion on the practicality of carrying around car seats and strollers, and this whole dream vacation takes on nightmarish attributes.

A bigger hurdle I face is shopping. Realization dawned on me on a hot and sticky May morning that my three-year-old has somehow outgrown everything she has without growing an inch (!!!). I have never done so much shopping my entire life! It is not helped in the least by the very picky toddler who wants a jacket “with a hood amma,” no long sleeves because “they are so itchy,” and pink in color because “blue is for boys.” She does not want sturdy sneakers but a pink and white Disney contraption with a glass heel with colored beads inside. She does not listen to my futile protests and bravely hobbles the entire breadth of the shop just to show me she can walk in them. I give in as I watch my practically-oriented shopping go berserk. After six hours of intense shopping, I still have over a dozen items in my list to cover. If I haven’t said it before, I say it now – I hate shopping.

My husband dearest was in charge of buying gifts for our relatives and friends in the US. He is the knight-errant in our household and he is the one best suited to collect authentic handicrafts from the heart of our country – or so we thought. When our house started resembling an ill-sorted museum with gift rejects (rejected by me of course because of their broken, soiled, or ugly characteristics), we gave up our idea of being too authentic with the gifts. This issue still remains unresolved.

My three-year-old’s school life has gone into a theatrical overdrive this month. With their annual show approaching, there are innumerable dance practice sessions, dress rehearsals, and stage rehearsals on her calendar. As she has the all-important role of a table napkin in their production of The Beauty and The Beast, she is predictably excited and proud. And I, as a mother, have the dubious honor of assuaging her emotional outbursts when the boy behind her kicks her or when the girl next to her gets the costume and she does not.

Then my husband decides that he has to go to Dubai. “Not Dubai, we are going to the US,” I calmly explain to him. “No, I have a sugar meet in Dubai, don’t worry, I will be back in time for our US trip.” He consoles me. I rave and rant on the shopping to do, the plans to finalize, the presents to buy, the rehearsals I have to take our daughter to, my work that is pending, my dance classes, a grooming day that I had set apart for myself, and I tell him that he is leaving me on the lurch. He tells me that I am overreacting, as I always do.

To cap it all, the cook decides to go off to her village for a few days to tend to her ill mother-in-law.

I rest my case. May is simply not my month.