December 4, 2011
"Ormayundo ennu nokku, Unni?" (See if you remember, Unni?) came the voice of Rema Aunty from the verandah behind the closed front door as I gently moved to open it. These days, ultra careful of my tender middle body, I move like a tortoise.
The main door of the house remains closed in the crucial hour of evening twilight as a defense against the bloodthirsty mosquitoes which rush in. Perhaps the red sky triggers their appetite.
The usually the doubled up 'lungis' that expose up to the knees are let down to the feet as a mark of respect by Malayalees. At this dusky hour, any Mallu man venturing out of the house is deeply respectful of the mosquitoes.
Gently, I opened the door and gingerly stepped outside.
Of course I remembered that face!
The always quick to smile Sherly aunty!
Sherly aunty and Thomaskutty uncle used to live in the house that has now been rebuilt by Anil uncle. Thomaskutty uncle had retired as professor from the Agricultural University. Achan never tires of remembering that the learnt uncle was the first and only person to ever ask if our house name 'Chandratara' is derived from the obscure Malayalam word 'Aachandrataram' meaning ever lasting i.e. as long as moon and stars last.
It has been at least 15 years since I saw Sherly aunty.
"Unni annathe pole thanne und" (You look just as before) she said.
What?!
She didn't notice that grey hair on my side-burn that consumes my attention in the mirror?!
May be her eyesight has begun to fail her at this age. Perhaps she was being kind.
They were going back to their native village in Kottayam early next morning. But she had few minutes to spare to catch up.
They had finally been on a long delayed US trip. It lasted four months.
"We landed in Boston, spent a month in Idaho, then Salt Lake city, San Jose, San Francisco, Houston and then back to India from New York" :the full perimeter!
They stayed the most with her niece's young family.
"In America, everyone is so busy, busy, busy, busy, busy" aunty summed up her trip.
Her niece used to work in a different city and fly down only on weekends to spend weekends with her husband and two kids, 6 yrs and 4 yrs. The husband left by 6:30am and returned from work only by 7pm. Weekends, they have to rush the kids to different events.
"Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy"
"She had her degree in electronics but the company has put her in the power division. But her managers are good folks. So now they have allowed her to work half the month from home. But then she goes into her room by 7:30am and comes out 10 minutes for lunch and then back in till 5:30pm. Busy, busy, busy, busy!"
"I tell you, it is better to get some job here in India. What is the point of living like this when all you can think about is work?! My niece's husband, he keeps working on new microchip patents. The competition keeps him awake even at nights. Busy, busy, busy! Work is so much more relaxed here," She continued completely ignoring the fact that the "relaxed" approach work is what keeps the roads here full of potholes, hospitals full of stray dogs and among other things, thugs in charge of nation here!
She seemed oblivious that nowadays DINK families in Bangalore work round the clock with the husband on duty from 7am to 7pm and the wife on from 7pm to 7am. The 'NK' being a symbol of fidelity in such an arrangement.
I wanted to start discussing the existence of relaxed life in America, but then I have been there only 11 years while she was there full four months and had seen one family up close. That is not a factor. Most importantly, she has been on this planet twice as long as I have been. And in India, that seals the fate of all debates. So I kept quiet.
Channel flipping this morning, I chance upon a Telugu movie. The hero for some reason is beating up goons in Kerala. I think that is a trend that existed in Telugu cinema few years ago. I remember a movie, Simhadri, in which residents of Thiruvananthapuram go en-mass with folded hands, praying to the young hero to deliver them from the gang-rapist goons plaguing the city. And deliver he does, after chasing the villains on foot, across the length and breadth of the city, making sure that he chops them up only in front of the major landmarks.
The film that was aired this morning must have managed to convince the audience that all women in Kerala dress up in blouse and lungi and all men wear 'kalaripayattu' martial arts costume. The women, ever ready to transform into background group dancers and the men, always willing to be beaten up by the hero.
The reality must have been quite disappointing for the youngsters who came for TCS training to Thiruvananthapuram.
Shah Rukh Khan, the king of Bollywood, was in Kochi today, inaugurating world's largest textile showroom. Part of the entertainment program at the event featured couple of dozen Caucasian women (Eastern European, I presume) in two-piece costumes dancing to a Bollywood song.
This was on top of the team of white cheerleaders. Not the Indian 'fair & lovely' induced-white, but racially white.
The event was telecast live on 3 channels.
The camera regularly cut to show the hundreds of wide-eyed young men who had forgotten to breath while watching this dance.
Tavernier routinely mentions the 'baladines' in his 17th century travels across India. Almost all celebrations in his book involve these local dancing girls. "Without these Nachnis or dancing girls, Persians and Indians do not think they can enjoy themselves properly" he writes. And during his journey, he frequently notes that "We amused ourselves late into the night."
Prostitution was legal and coupled with alcohol (local 'tari' or toddy) sales in the kingdom of Golconda. He says the 20,000-odd women of the night in the city were so flexible that he saw a few of them team up and contort to form the shape of an elephant at the King's court.
Today's India is a market big enough to import flexibility.
Women of the night reminds me of another episode Tavernier discusses; a classic example of the quick reversal of fortunes. He writes that in the 16th century the Portuguese in Goa were so fabulously wealthy that they rarely dealt with any metal other than gold, even for utensils. Then the Dutch arrived squashing the Portuguese monopoly. The Portuguese and their dependents plunged into abject poverty, quickly and irreversibly.
In the span of less than a century, by the time Tavernier arrived in 1650s, the once richest in Goa are forced to visit him with recommendation letters from priests requesting monetary help. The women, from these once super-rich 'noble' families, would arrive in palanquins and were willing to accept the offer for a late night drink, a sojourn that 'usually ended with a light meal next morning' as gently put by Tavernier.
Achan keeps repeating the story of a young man from an erstwhile ruling family of Central Kerala who worked for a courier service and had requested him Rs. 10,000 bank loan for repairing the leaking roof of their small, dilapidated house. His elder brother, the royal heir, worked as a well cleaner in the village.
Fortune is fickle.
World's largest textile showroom opened in Kochi today. An estimated 18,000 tonnes of gold, worth $950 billion, is stored in Indian households.
Fortune is fickle!
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