Aishwarya Rai and Arisi Upma

May 1998

A tiny hamlet on the banks of the river kudamurutti. A girl of 10, sporting neatly oiled pigtails is playing hopscotch in the courtyard of her grandparents’ traditional ottu veedu. Innocent kid is blissfully unaware of an event that is going to unfold over the next few days. One which will have a deep & everlasting impact on her tender heart.

As you may have guessed, the girl in question is me. And I think I would be doing my memories a great disservice if I did not document this traumatic event in my life. So here we go.

So, girl aka me was playing hopscotch when I was called inside and informed that we would be going to a movie the next day. The movie in question was one called “Genes” and to my surprise, it was a Tamil movie. It was the talk of the town because it starred Miss World 1994 Aishwarya Rai and had music by some guy called AR Rahman. Now before you judge, at the age of 10, all I watched on TV was Scooby Doo and Dexter’s Lab. Rahman who?

To give a little background, my grandparents’ place is a teeny weeny hamlet near Kumbakonam. (Actually that’s like saying Bangalore airport is near Bangalore, but you get the drift.) There was one dusty bus that would take you from the village to the city in the morning and the same bus would drop you back to the village in the evening. The other option was to order a bullock cart and you had to do this three days in advance. So, we i.e. me, Bombay cousin sister, Madras cousin brother (aka thambi), Bombay athai and Madras athai promptly woke up the next morning, gobbled our lunch by 9:30 am and scooted to the bus stop in anticipation of the bus. The bus never disappoints. Rain, thunder, floods, snow – nothing can deter the driver from making the daily trip up and down the village.

Now while getting in to this bus, I observed something weird. My Madras athai had a koodai ¹ aka. plastic basket in her hand. Now why would one carry a koodai to a movie theater? In hindsight, this should have been my first warning. So after changing two buses (village -> city, city -> theater), we finally reached the destination about 3 hours early. Let me take a minute to remind you that it is 1 pm on a sunny May afternoon when the proverbial Agni Nakshatram is at its peak. Poor me is sweating bucket loads. And then I turn around to see the poster of the movie we are about to watch – JEANS. Eh? Am I going to watch a movie about a pair of blue jeans? A little embarrassing background – 10 year old me thought that this movie is called GENES and rightly so, it had something to do with science and stuff. Though what I expected from the movie, I couldn’t tell you.

Moving on, it was soon time for the afternoon show and we found our seats in the dark and dingy theater – half torn and moth eaten. The first slide that played on the screen read “KASI A/C” . The A/C was in reference to the air conditioning facilities that this theater provided which is why we shelled out the extra Rs.30/- for the ticket. As you may guessed, the theater neither had A/C nor the humble ceiling fan. Second disappointment for the day.

Mopping my sweaty brow, I tried to immerse myself in the movie which seemed pretty okay – a beautiful Aishwarya Rai, an okay-ish plot, catchy songs. Everything seemed to be going fine. Suddenly, I heard the clink of a steel tiffin box – the sound that you can hear when you unscrew the top of the box. And Bombay cousin pushed one such box into my hands. Bewildered, I tried to make sense of its contents but given that there was pitch darkness all around, I failed. Sighing, I took a scoop of the contents and pushed it into my mouth.

Argh! There is no mistaking this one. The unappealing, the unsahikable², the undisputed king of the worst tiffin items in the whole wide world – The Upma. And to top it all, it was the queen of all upmas – The arisi upma. For the uninitiated, this is the generally accepted upma hierarchy ordered from palatable to OMG-I’d-rather-die-of-hunger-than-eat-this.

khara bath >> semiya upma >> rava upma >> arisi upma.

Basically, I would rather eat glue than arisi upma. But what can one do when one is force fed arisi upma with a side of mango pickle in the blistering Kumbakonam heat in Kasi A/C theater where the A/C is not functioning? So mustering up my will power, I proceeded to stuff the upma into my mouth silently accepting my fate. That is when I glanced at the thambi who seemed to be gobbling up his food without so much as a grumble. I proceeded to take a closer look. Hold on! That’s no upma! That’s curd rice and mango pickle!!

The cunning fellow had somehow found out in advance about the upma and had convinced my athai to pack curdrice for himself. Imagine my trauma when I saw him slurping curd rice in the 1000 degree heat while I was trying to shove little moth balls aka upma into my mouth. Ah betrayal! Piercing my heart with a poisoned spear would have been less painful. Lord Voldemort pales in comparison. I least expected my adorable younger brother, the apple of my eye, my partner in crime to “ditch” me and make me eat upma while he happily polished the cool curd rice. I decided to control my rage and asked him for an explanation.

His reply was “…but but…. I hate upma!”

Dei. Who likes it?? No one LIKES upma. Upma doesn’t like upma. One is force fed upma by mothers who cunningly dangle the “I will make poori and potato saagu tomorrow” carrot in front of our eyes.

Fast forward to 2020 and I still haven’t forgiven the thambi for this monumental betrayal. Revenge will be exacted. I will wrestle a visa out of President Trump’s hands, cross the seven seas, take thambi to the FDFS show of the next VJ na movie and shove a steel box containing arisi upma and mango pickle into his hands during the interval. And he will gobble it under my supervision.

P.S: Have you ever wondered why theatres in India forbid you from carrying your own snacks? They probably want to prevent a poor child from being force fed upma.

¹Koodai : A basket that is made from plastic wires and has two handles to carry it. Mostly used by 90’s middle school kids to carry their steel lunch boxes and water bottles. 90’s high school kids, however would steer clear of this embarrassing piece of equipment.

²Unsahikable – A Tanglish word which is used as a superlative and denotes the highest ceiling of tolerance that can ever be achieved.

Synonym: Cannot able to.

Usage: I cannot able to withstand this heat wonly