August 24, 2011
Vinod and Ramson who have come from Chennai provide priceless assistance in making dosas for breakfast. Vinod is the name of the deep spoon used to pour batter onto the hot pan and Ramson is the spatula used for flipping the dosa. All equipments and utensils here have "brand" names engraved on them. These names are not mechanical. Though hitech electronics have hitech names, the brandless brands that assist in housework are still, largely, anthropologically nomenclatured. Sona, the brush, helps me clean the toilet.
Yesterday night, my cousin, the one who runs finance firm among other businesses, showed up with a banana cluster. This was growing in our old home which he has rented. Amma had asked for it so that it adds a traditional glamour of prosperity in the marriage home. This large banana cluster (wikipedia tells me that the commerical name is 'banana stem') was brought over in an autorickshaw. The rickshaw driver helped us hang it in the kitchen.
How many mallu men does it take to hang a 'Robusta' banana stem? Ans: 4
This driver doubles as the area general secretary of the CPI party, the pure communist variety that is not Marxist. Just like utensils mentioned earlier, autorickshaws also have names. Usually drivers call their vehicles after their kids, so pairs of names appear like Arun-Priya, Sindhu-Sajan etc. Otherwise, the rickshaws will be named after some god or deity. Since there are way many more temples than rickshaws, such naming system also leads to uniqueness. But this particular autorickshaw in which banana stem came over had the most unusual name: "E=mc^2". The ardent communist obviously wouldn't have had any divinity in the name. And all the political involvement and social service had kept him unmarried. Cousin said that this relativistic name of the autorickshaw was reported in newspapers few years back when the city hosted national science congress.
Before becoming fascinated by Achan's family history narration yesterday evening, I was reading about Bhrthrhari's nephew Mezhathoor Agnihotri. Agnihotri is the son of Vararuchi, the son born to the Brahmin bride of Govindacharya. Remember Govindacharya needed a bride from each of the upper caste before he could marry his favorite Shudra woman, Bhrthrhari's mom. Vararuchi's story I will summarise here tomorrow. Before that here are the few things I learnt about Agnihotri. He was an expert in organizing and conducting "yajnas" (fire rituals). Legend has it that Indra himself came down from the heavens to block Agnihotri from conducting his 100th yajna which would have debililated Indra. Agnihotri, much to the disappointment of his fellow priests, always insisted that his lower caste carpenter brother, Perumthachan, light the sacred fire. Agnihotri reasoned that this was the correct way since it was Perumthachan and his team who built the ritual arenas.
Legends apart, the Yajneswaram temple associated with Agnihotri still exists in Kerala. There is a banyan tree, supposedly 1500 years old, planted by Agnihotri from whose branches even today special fire-wood that is used for starting fires (called Arani) is collected for rituals.
Another suggestion that M.P.Veerendra Kumar makes in his book is that Valluvon, one of the brothers in those born out of "Parayi" (low caste) woman to Vararuchi, is the Valluvar who composed the famous Thirukural in Tamil. I need to do more research on this possibility.
Since it has been some days since I ventured out, I offered to to assist Achan this morning in the vegetable shopping. In the Vellayambalam-Sasthamangalam road, nestled between the developed and developing apartment complex buildings, there is a walled property with a padlocked, tall, rusted gate. It is safe to assume that this property in this prime location is surely in some court dispute. Outside this gate, on the footpath, a lady has set up her make-shift vegetable shop that does brisk business.
We placed a convenient order: oru aviyal (one aviyal). 'Aviyal' is a great mixed vegetables dish in coconut gravy. When you order for an aviyal in a vegetable shop, you basically get a little bit of all the veggies in stock there. On top of this, we bought some okra that looked fresh. Curry leaves and coriander are always thrown in for free. All done for Rs. 75.
Major activity this morning was re-assembling a gigantic bed that had been shipped from Chennai for my sister. This was no IKEA type sissy furniture with multiple parts, well-labeled screws and illustrated instructions manual.
Super heavy frame and 4 intimidating bolts; this was a hardcore bed!
Sturdy beds like these led to the population explosion, I am sure. Achan and I were drenched in sweat by the time we were done.
Father and brother assembling the bed for the soon-to-be-married girl in the family. Totally tribal instincts in action!
To bang in the butt joints of the frame into position, Achan refused to use metal headed hammers. He didn't want to damage the precious wood. All wood is precious here. No wood should be nicked and wasted. Hence, again, the population! Finally, hard rubber dumb -bells were employed as hammers. Rubber for banging wood works extremely well!
The mother-daughter duo, sooner after they landed from Bangalore, spent the first couple of hours behind closed doors trying on all the dresses stitched for the wedding. At the end of the ordeal, Tara (my sister) looked visibly displeased. "Let's go", said Amma and they drove immediately to the tailor's. I didn't know fabrics can evoke such single-minded attention and swift action. The power associated with uniforms is one thing, but the perfectionist tendencies that go with bridal wear are in a totally different plane!
My oldest paternal aunt came over with my nephew and niece (her grandkids, the Tahsildar cousin's kids). This is the same nephew mentioned in an earlier note about identifying "Christian" faces. "Can we watch some CD or DVD?" they asked. Gone are the days kids asked to watch TV. The niece wanted to hear the story of Ramayana. I started narrating. My nephew couldn't hold back from pitching in. "Ramayana was written by...", I would say; "a sage...a muni...Dronacharya!"he would jump in. "Rama was the son of .....". "Duryodhana!" The poor kid was confused between the epics thanks to multiple versions of each running in all the channels. After an hour and a half of story-telling, my niece said she was sleepy and slept soundly for an hour before lunch.
It was only around 3pm that our tiny family of four were left alone in the this house after 16 years. There was no singing. We didn't have a family song in with each of us assigned to complete a stanza. There was no dancing and no holding hands. Amma was, as expected, complaining about all the rearrangements Achan had done. He was, with the hot iron, like St. George, slaying a towering dragon of sun-dried crumpled clothes. Tara sat silently worrying about the couple of layoffs in her company that she got to know via txt messages. Or may be she was thinking about the judgmental visitors bound to show up in the next few days.
Akira Kurosawa would be surprised to see the ingenuity with which divorce stories are spun into different versions here. Of course, after every divorce, the ex-husband's family describes him as a cut about the righteous Sri Rama. The ex-wife's family paints her as nothing less than Sita Devi. We have to listen like silent Hanumans with folded hands to both the fantastic versions. This MariyadaPurushottam, at the hands of the ex-wife's family, after divorce, transmutes into hard drinking, skirt chasing, ten headed demon king. She becomes an immoral, haughty, arrogant, hard hearted, unfeeling, disrespectful slut when viewed through the ex-husband's family's goggles.
Evening was spent with Brasso, polishing all the brass lamps and show vessels in the house. Then I went shopping with Achan to Chalai, the biggest market place in the city. Chalai is a corruption of the Tamil word Salai meaning street. From the main 'salai', the pagoda of Sri Padmanabhaswamy is visible. Plenty of merchants along the various crisscrossing streets are Tamilians in origin. The Travancore kingdom included a good chunk of modern day southern Tamil Nadu. Even in the couple of streets we went to, there were three stores and traders named Arunachalam.
One street is exclusively for hardware, the non-computer kind and another one for "provisions". In the provisions street, there are dedicated merchants for coffee, cooking oil, animal feed, onions and of course 'pottato',always spelled with an extra t. In a very narrow lane, atop a stinky sewer sits a line of shops selling incense and spices. In between the flower shops calling themselves 'perfumeries', small shrines. A lonely bust of ex-Chief Minister of Kerala, the late K. Karunakaran stands surrounded by haphazardly parked motorbikes and scooters.There are no computers or digital billing systems anywhere in sight in this market yet.
Achan wanted to buy plastic jasmine garlands for the pictures of gods in the house. "Rs. 75 each," said that young man at the first shop we stopped. "You won't get a better price", he was sure. 10 meters down the lane, the price became Rs. 60. Our third stop, three more shops down the same street, got us a reasonable Rs. 40 deal!
On the way back, Achan said that aunt who visited this morning i.e. his elder sister had bought some 'Kasithumba' (Impatience) seeds. He said it was the first ever plant that he grew when he was a boy. When the gardener gets here some time in the next 2-3 days, they will be planted along with the jasmines-in-waiting!
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