Cheechan Thatha

“You know what the astrologer told me after examining my horoscope?” quipped Thatha for the hundredth time. “This is the horoscope of a Sanyasi. There is no inkling of marriage, children, money, or property!” he exclaimed animatedly, shaking his right hand. Yet, three kids, four grandchildren, a decent bank balance, and various cultivable lands later, here was Thatha at the ripe age of 75, sitting on the dusty oonjal waiting for his second cup of coffee. Thud! Paati slammed the dabara–tumbler on the wooden oonjal and walked away, muttering under her breath. Thatha looked unfazed and proceeded to pour out the piping hot coffee into the dabara, seemingly content at annoying paati for the tenth time since morning. The favor would be returned at lunchtime when food was being served, but this was too good an opportunity to let go.

Cheechan Thatha, as he was fondly called, was the first of four children born to Jayalakshmi Ammal. How the name ‘Srinivasan’ changed to ‘Cheechan’ remains a mystery. Maybe a child with a lisp mispronounced his name. Maybe someone devised this nickname to differentiate him from the numerous other namesakes in the family. But the name stuck, and he was known by his pseudonym. Cheechan Thatha was born in an era when official birth records did not exist. But he knew that he was born under Krithika nakshatram, Chitra maasam. Once, I called him to wish him a happy birthday, and his response was, “Oh? Is it my birthday? Okay, what am I supposed to do now?.” This, in essence, summed up his personality – Practised nonchalance.

Thatha prided himself on being a rebel in his youth. In the days when men were not allowed to cut their hair, he sported a military-style haircut. When boys around him were content to take up a job after their SSLC exams, Thatha insisted on completing bachelor’s degrees in Physics and English and a third in Education. When his father advised him to take up a plush, well-paying bank job, he picked up the humble chalk piece to take up a career in teaching. “But why thatha?” I would ask in astonishment. “Simple. After a hard day’s work, I can just knock off the chalkdust from my hands and walk out. I can go home and have a life. I need not lose sleep over whether the money I lent to a borrower would be paid back”, he would exclaim, animatedly dusting off the imaginary chalkdust from his hands.  

Indeed, he did find time to pursue his hobbies – photography and sketching in his younger years and farming in his retired life. Thatha was a creative storyteller. He would jot down snippets, anecdotes, jokes, and puzzles in his little black diary and share them with us when we visited him for our summer vacation. Oh, his obsession for diaries! On the first of January every year, he would receive a dozen diaries as gifts. But he would be disappointed with every single one of them. “They don’t have a full page for Sunday,” he would remark. “I am a busy person. I don’t have an off day.” Every single thing that happens in the day would go into the diary. 

He was a creature of habit. He would religiously jot down every financial transaction in his “accounts” notebook. At the end of the month, the balance sheet from this “daily book” was copied into a “monthly” notebook. All twelve books for a year would be neatly stacked and tied with a thin, brown rope. His passion for organizing articles was unparalleled. Every day, after reading every word of The Hindu newspaper, he would neatly fold the paper and its supplement editions and stack it with the other newspapers of the month. All the papers HAD to be organized chronologically. “20 Hindu papers weigh 1 kg, ” he would confidently proclaim to the old newspaper vendor as he weighed this month’s bundle. 

He was known for his discipline and meticulousness. After his weekly trip to the local bakery, he would carefully unpack the biscuits and neatly stack them into air-tight glass jars. His hands would reach out for exactly two of them at tea time. And it was always two. I don’t know if he ever yearned for a third one, but I never saw him dip his hands into the jar to reach for another. 

Boredom was not a concept that he was familiar with. He would always find something to do. His day would start at 6 am. He would claim that he didn’t need an alarm clock as his brain would know precisely when it was dawn. Two coffees, daily prayers, and lunch would be done by 12 pm. After his afternoon nap, he would stroll into the kitchen for his 2 pm coffee. He would then cycle for four kilometers, back and forth to the nearby town on the pretext of running some errands. 

One of his most prized possessions was his “vethalai-paaku pai.” It was a simple, unassuming, faded brown purse that was gifted by City Union Bank in return for investing in a senior citizen fixed deposit scheme. It housed a dozen betel leaves, areca nut, and a little tobacco. He would take great care to see it not carelessly thrown around the house. The house was a thoroughfare, and laborers and maids would walk in and out as they pleased, and the sight of the vethalai paaku pai was a welcome stop for most of them. “Do you know one betel leaf costs one rupee now?” he would pique in anger when I told him he was needlessly worried. His love for betel leaves was only paralleled by his devotion to Amrutanjan strong balm. You would always find a bottle under his pillow. “It’s an addiction,” he would admit candidly.

Curiosity and quirkiness were his distinguishing qualities. He once brought a stray fox cub home. To everyone’s bewilderment, he coolly said that he wanted to see if looking at a fox’s face first thing in the morning brought good luck, as a famous Tamil proverb claimed. “The day was pretty much ordinary and uneventful,” he claimed as he untied the tether on the fox and let him go to the nearby forest. But the fox had had a good two days. He was offered the choicest food from paati’s kitchens and savories like murukku, thattai, and biscuits from the local bakery. Thatha’s hatred for bats, cats, and rats was legendary. Right from installing nets in the ceiling to dissuade bats from hanging upside down to enticing rats with poisoned bananas, he would devise innovative solutions to the pest problems at home. 

As my life became slowly engulfed in exams, coaching classes, and later work, my visits to Thatha’s place became rarer and rarer. On the few occasions when he would be in Bangalore for a short visit, I would beg him to stay longer. “But…I have a lot of commitments back in the village“, pat came the reply from this nonagenarian, much to everyone’s amusement.

“I have no attachments,” he would proudly state. “I have no fear of the unknown. It’s the guilty who fears death,” he would sermonize. Yet, the one thing that scared the living daylights out of him was his fear of missing trains. He would ensure he reached the railway station well before the scheduled departure time, often two hours in advance. “Train and time wait for none”, my all-knowing Thatha would remark. He embarked on his final journey in 2021, bidding adieu to paati, his three children, and the ancestral home he grew up in. The entire village was at his doorstep to pay their last respects. But I’m sure he would have shrugged indifferently and felt they were making much ado about nothing.

“Do you see birds or animals living with their sons, daughters, and grandchildren?” he would reflect as we were tending to the unruly shrub in the garden. “Do you see the cat over there who delivered three kittens last week? She will pounce on you and scratch your face if you try to touch one. The same cat will abandon her kittens and walk away once they are independent,” he would go on pensively. “We humans are stuck in this vicious cycle of family and emotions. We ought to let go of the people we love,” he would add. 

I sip my morning coffee in deep contemplation and wonder – if a person dies, is he truly gone? My eyes glance over the book once gifted by Thatha, now lying carelessly on the table. This is my Bible,” Thatha had spiritedly confessed, shoving a copy of “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” into my hands. “You will find it useful.” As I hold the book in my hands and flip through its pages, it strikes me that our dear departed do not really leave us. They reside in a corner of our brain as warm memories. Inanimate objects like these rekindle the fond moments we spent with them. Thatha may not be here today, but his image constantly flashes before my eyes. His discipline and systematic nature pervade all aspects of my life. His philosophy of life is something that I fall back on when I tackle its more difficult moments. Thatha certainly has had a towering influence on me. And his words of wisdom will continue to ring in my ears for the remainder of my worldly years.

The thrills of offline shopping

Is there anything more thrilling than a new frock?

The English language is bereft of words to describe the adrenaline rush and the bright flush on a woman’s face when a newly made dress fits her perfectly. How a few yards of fabric can lift a woman’s spirit is something that no man can understand.

In the pre-e-commerce era, one of the most awaited rituals at my home was the annual Deepavali shopping spree. The mothership would drag us to the nearest garment store to purchase “dress materials.” The shopkeeper’s eyes would light up when he saw us all. He knew that it would be a good day for the cash register. He would attempt to speak in broken Tamil to impress us. “Romba nalla material madam. Rajsthan le vardu. Ek dum first class“, he would remark. Of course, my mom would pretend to be unimpressed. She would look up and down at the fabrics stacked on all the shelves and sulk. Observing her facial expression, the shopkeeper would use his brahmastra. “Madam…wait madam …fresh pieces today morning coming from Surat,” and would direct the teenage helper in his shop to bring the “acchhe saaman” for display. And when the new brown carton was opened in front of our eyes, my mom would look at me and comment, “See, now he opens the good stuff.” A good hour later, after finalizing our purchases, it was “bargaining time.” This is when I would pretend to be very interested in a lizard crawling across the wall to avoid the sheer embarrassment of the mothership bargaining with the store owner. 

Now that shopping was done and dusted, the next activity was the trip to the tailor. My tailor was a skinny man who would always be busy or at least pretend to be. He would always be marking some measurements on a piece of cloth or cutting it. The moment I walked in, he would look up to see who it was, give a small grunt, and then get back to whatever he was doing. But he was the best in my area, and you must endure minor inconveniences if you want to wear your dream dress on Deepavali day. 

Thanks to my trendy friend, I was educated about the different technical terms in the tailoring world. “Hand embroidery,” “neck piping,” and “boat-neck” were some of the buzzwords of the day. However, all my enthusiastic suggestions would be shot down by the gentleman who would snort and say, “channag kaanala madam.” He was probably trying to make his life easy. Still, the only other tailor in the surrounding areas was doubly expensive, and convincing the mother to part with a few extra bucks was a great ordeal. 

Now came the most challenging phase of the entire activity – waiting! The date of delivery was often ten days away. But what if it was really ready in two days and the tailor was buying extra time? The next few days were spent volunteering for activities I usually wouldn’t care about. For a girl who didn’t know the difference between toor dal and chana dal, I would hurry to the nearest department store to purchase some when we ran out of pulses. Much to my mother’s surprise, I would volunteer to buy our daily quota of Nandini milk from the nearest parlor. All these trips would necessarily involve a detour to the tailor’s. I would deliberately slow down and glance at the display window to see if my new kurta was among them. More often than not, it would be missing. After the promised deadline of ten days had passed, I would rush to the tailor with crisp notes in my purse and demand the clothes. “Hemming baaki ide, evening banni,” he would occasionally remark. On a luckier day, the crisp new kurtas would be neatly folded and packed into a brand-new plastic bag and handed over.

Oh, the joy of running back home, trying on the outfits, and modeling them to the home audience of my sister, mother, and dad! “Of course, it’s good. After all, the tailor is my selection“, would be the reply from the mother. The father would briefly take his eyes off the television and shake his head in approval. My mind would be racing ahead to see if matching earrings were already available for the outfit. If not, a mental trip to Malleshwaram would already be planned.

Fast forward to the present, and I’ve more or less embraced the convenience of online shopping. I like that a new dress is just a few clicks away. I do like how the parcel is home-delivered. I do like how I can save time, energy and fuel by not stepping out in the boiling sun. However, I do miss the simple joys that offline shopping offers. On one aimless browsing session, I discovered that one could buy “dress materials” or fabrics online and choose to get them stitched by a local tailor. Suddenly, my eyes glistened. Multiple clicks and OTPs later, voila, the order was placed, and the item was hand-delivered a couple of days later. The child in me was once again excited at the prospect of choosing between boat-line necks and bell sleeves. I was on top of my fashion game this time and ordered a pair of palazzos and an umbrella-cut gown. “One week, ma’am,” the new tailor remarked as he scribbled the delivery date on the bill. Strangely enough, the anxiety and excitement of childhood came back to haunt me for the next week. Would the new dress fit well? What if he mixed up the cowl neck and collared neck? Did I choose the right color palette? Despite my hectic schedule juggling work, a toddler, and mundane household chores, I still had time to worry about my new clothes. 

The D-day arrived. A WhatsApp message from the tailor confirmed that the order was ready to be picked up. Nervously, I collected the parcel, managed a weak smile, and headed home. Immersed in my thoughts, I unexpectedly bumped into a fellow apartment-mate who wanted to socialize by complaining about Bangalore’s unseasonal heat. “Really, woman! I need to get home”, I mumbled in my head. A smile and a few words later ( “I know, climate change, too hot”), I rushed home, carelessly took the kurta out of the bag, and ran my fingers through the finished product. “Not bad! Seems to have done a decent job“, I thought. 

I tried on the freshly minted dress and looked into the mirror with dreaded anticipation. The child in me circled back and forth to ensure that my vision of what the dress should have looked like came true.  “Hmm…Looks good“, I thought. I deftly turned around and did a short swirl to capture Mr.Manga Pachadi’s reaction. The H took his eyes off the laptop screen for a nanosecond to give his customary head shake, signaling that all was well. Sigh! Men! I rolled my eyes in exasperation. It’s no secret that I had expected a more encouraging response. Mildly annoyed, I proceeded to stuff the remainder of the clothes into my wardrobe. Suddenly, I heard the jingle of anklets. Miss Mini Pachadi wandered into the room, dragging her rag doll in one hand and rubbing her sleepy eyes with the other. Bemused, she looked up and down at her mother in strange new clothes. Eyes twinkling, she exclaimed, “Amma dess…wow..“

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the validation I was looking for!! 

R for Rasam

It is a chilly winter afternoon. Your stomach is growling. You find your place on the dining table and serve yourself a large spoonful of hot steaming rice followed by a generous dollop of ghee. You carefully mash the rice with the tip of your fingers and make a well in the center of the plate. The mothership pours a ladle full of golden liquid onto your plate. You wait for it to gently coat the rice. You then proceed to scoop a bit of the runny mixture, make a dash for the potato roast bordering the plate, and hurriedly thrust it into your mouth before it escapes through the joints of your fingers. Ah! Bliss!

Rasam is the undisputed queen of South Indian cuisine. Wholesome, flavorsome, yet, reeking of humility. Unlike her vivacious, boastful cousin – the dal and tamarind-heavy sambhar, rasam prefers to shy away into the background. Rasam is not spoken about in the same breath as her North Indian counterparts like Paneer Butter Masala or Dal Makhani. It is probably not the first dish that comes to mind when asked to name a favorite. Yet, it is the one you reach out to when the tongue is sick of rich, indulgent culinary spreads. 

Few things in life are as satisfying as a bowl full of rasam. It is the perfect bridge between the decadent, vegetable-filled sambhar and the non-descript, bland (maybe boring?) curd rice. A well-made rasam is the food of the Gods. Made from wholly ripe tomatoes, tamarind, and a dash of hing, the ingredient list is as humble as the dish itself. Unlike other dishes, rasam offers no camouflage to the amateur cook. You can have a good rasam or a bad one – there is no in-between. 

Wars have been fought for rasam. It is the reason for the legendary Ganesha – Murugan tiff which led to Murugan seeking solace in the hills of Palani. Ultimately Parvati had to make an exceptional cauldron of rasam to satiate Murugan’s hunger pangs, after which he returned home happily.  King Alexander left home at lunchtime to find the perfect rasam to pair with his steaming bowl of rice. He never succeeded. The search for the ideal rasam is what kept the Britishers in the subcontinent for 200 years. All they could muster was Mulligawtany which is a poor pepper-based variant. 

There is a type of rasam for every mood. Feel like having a richer, more tomato-y version? Udupi rasam is the answer. In the mood for a nutty flavor? You have the famous Mysore rasam. Jeera-Milagu rasam, a.k.a. rasam made from cumin and peppercorns paired with some ladiesfinger palya, works wonders for that persistent cold and cough. Pineapple rasam, with cubes of pineapple soaking up the tamarind essence, is a crowd favorite at Tamil weddings. After the extravagant wedding feast, when the stomach craves unembellished nourishment, vaepam poo rasam is the go-to food. Made from sun-dried flowers of the neem tree, this bitter rasam variant is the one-stop solution for all ailments in grandma’s culinary book. Adding lemon and ginger to your bowl of rasam can transform the dish into a cracking appetizer. For the brave and the undeterred, citron or orange rasam is an exciting alternative. 

Rasam demands a messy eater. It is not for the snobbish aristocrat who cannot give up his cutlery. Table manners take a backseat. Foremost, rasam is best enjoyed in a steel plate with a rim. After tackling the rice-rasam mix, the excess rasam is polished off by slurping it down noisily.  Some may prefer the banana leaf, but the unseasoned diner may find it challenging to confine the free flow of rasam to the former’s leafy boundaries. Licking the fingers clean is a cue to the host that you truly enjoyed the feast.

For the fad-hopping relative who swears by a keto-friendly, gluten-free, lactose-free, vegan diet, this one ticks all the boxes. The best part is that it takes all of five minutes to whip it up. Winding down the day with a simple rasam rice calms those frayed nerves. A plateful of rice soaking in rasam can lead one back in time to savor those long-lost memories from childhood.

The vivid description of rasam, followed by all the constant typing, has undoubtedly made the author crave a hearty big bowl right away. Hopefully, you, the reader, are already reaching out to soak a ball of tamarind in hot water. Happy rasam-ing!

Era of the mini pachadi begins …

Earlier this year, rushing to meet the annual account closing deadline for banks, a slightly pink, tiny being with a tuft of black hair on an otherwise bald head came into our mundane lives. The light pink swaddle that she was wrapped in was no deterrent to her arm-swaying skills. Pushing her tiny arms out of the swaddle and throwing off the red blanket that was supposed to keep her warm, she thus distinguished herself from the rest of the inhabitants of the nursery. Even her cry was different – a short four-note wail as compared to the incessant whine of the others. She would smile contently, showing off her natural dimples, and bask in the oohs and aahs that followed. The little narcissist!

Fast forward to the present, and she is every bit the attention-seeking minion that we rightly guessed she was. She is the apple of her father’s eye, her mother’s kutti pisasu, and has her grandparents wrapped around her little finger. She intoxicates the rest with her wide, innocent, toothless grin.

Miss Mini pachadi is here to lighten and brighten our lives. We look forward to building a lifetime’s worth of memories with her.

P.S.: I hope she gets her mother’s sense of humor.

A dummies guide to the Navaratri goodie bag

Navaratri is almost here. If you are a South Indian, you know what that means. Golu season. Bringing out the kanjivarams that were gathering dust, taking the 9 day color-color saree challenge on Instagram and golu hopping. For the uninitiated, golu hopping is an age old tradition where the women of the house hop from one house to another, admire the dolls stacked up for display, sing a song (only Carnatic allowed and please finish the song with the pallavi only), collect their tamboola pais and don’t turn up until the next year.

Before the advent of Amazon (the website), the thrill of receiving a package of joy was during golu. Etiquette demanded that you wait until you reach home to open the bag and discover its contents (yay or meh). Given that this tradition is nearly dying, I have compiled a ready reckoner for future generations .

• Blouse bit : A square piece of clothing whose sole aspiration in life is to be converted into an actual blouse (though the probability of that happening is zero). The kind of blouse bit that you receive is a direct measure of the true feelings of the host towards you.
  • Cotton blouse bit (maroon, dark green or dark blue) – We love you so we reserved the best ones for you.
  • Cotton blouse bit (mustard yellow, parrot green, shocking pink) – Don’t look at me! These came in the bundle of blouse bits that I ordered from Shwetha matching center.
  • Polyester blouse bit with half inch border –  Lady! I barely know you and you want a Rs.100/- blouse bit? Really?
  • Printed polyester blouse bit  – This was a gift from last year’s golu hopping. This was never meant to be converted into an actual blouse bit. Its destiny is to hop from one owner to another until God destroys the world by sending the great flood. This will be one of the items that will go into Noah’s ark after which it will resume its journey.

• 4 inch comb (one piece) – A gift from us to the male members of your family.

• 3 cm X 3 cm pocket mirror – We thoughtfully chose one with a plastic flap on it because you know it can break from constant use.

• Two withered betel leaves : You can eat it. Maybe. At least people back in the olden times did so. What do I know!

• Areca nuts and dried turmeric (2 + 2) – This is reserved for privileged people only. Although I don’t know what you are going to do with it. You can probably add it to the areca nut stash that you have accumulated over the years from all the golu hopping. If there ever is an alien invasion, we can fool them into thinking that this is candy. And when they take a bite, their teeth will break. Alarmed, they will quietly go back to their home planet to see their dentists. Earth will be safe once again. Thanks to you – Adikke-Woman or Paaku-woman (you can choose your own costume and sidekick).

• 2-in-1 kumkum + haldi packet – Very useful in a kumkum – haldi emergency . You know when you want to use both together and you run out of them. 

• Coins/Notes
  • Rs. 10/- note – Pakkad mane uncle’s sister works in SBI . With great difficulty she arranged for a bundle of Rs. 10/- notes for us. Very difficult to get these days what with this sudden note banning and all. Also, do you see how influential we are?
  • Rs. 5/- coin – Sorry, I can’t waste a crisp Rs. 10/- note on you.
  • Rs. 1/- coin – Please be happy that you are getting free money.

• 2 green color glass bangles (secured tightly by a thin piece of string) – Disclaimer: Please don’t wear them. For display purpose only.

• Fruits
  • Apple – You are the chosen one.
  • Coconut – We think you are important enough to deserve one. Please think of us when you are enjoying the delicious coconut chutney.
  • Moosambi – Orange’s neglected step sister. Someone gave this to me when I visited their golu. And let’s be honest, what can anyone do with one moosambi? You need at least two to make a decent cup of juice. And who eats moosambi as a fruit? Orange yes. But peeling this is just not worth the effort. So in case someone else gifts you a second one, enjoy your glass of juice.
  • Two almost black elakki bananas – They were lying on the counter for a week. I was thinking of throwing it away but hey…

• Gift items:
  • Stainless steel dabba/cup – Got an incredible deal at Devi Prasad Superbazaar.
  • Plastic dabba / cup – Got an incredible deal from the hawker near Devi Prasad Superbazaar.
  • Metal earrings – You are not married no? Why waste a dabba on you?
  • Paper quill earrings – I made them by watching this jewellery making tutorial on YouTube.

• Tamboola pais aka bags
  • Ikat/kalamkari tamboola pai : Eco-friendly, recyclable, fashionable, sustainable, durable, decomposable, vegetable, unbreakable tamboola pais that we bought from an Instagram influenza. Don’t forget to upload a pic of this on insta. Hashtag SustainableGolu. Also please join me on my insta live.
  • Cloth bag with handle : This bag can later be used by your husband to buy your daily quota of Nandini milk packets.
  • Plastic cover : You didn’t bring your own cloth bag or something? Sigh! Now I have to rummage through my big plastic bag full of small plastic bags and find one that I can live without.

Mother-in-law + Son-in-law atrocities

I grew up in a simple Tamil household where the menu would typically range from rasam + palya (everyday food) to mysore rasam + palya with grated coconut (special food). Saturday morning breakfast was always the lonely pongal (Please note that sambar/chutney was not served). A cheat day would comprise of the above menu + fried vathal. Once a year, after constant nagging the parents would take us to Hotel Gokul Veg (A/C) and we would order rotis and Navratan Kurma.

Now, you may wonder why I am writing about the culinary habits of my early life. The humble rasam sipping, palya eating household encountered a watershed event a few years back – The arrival of the Mappillai aka Son-in-Law. This incident has brought to light the latent and previously unknown culinary skills of the mothership. When the mappillai visits for breakfast, pongal with a side of coconut chutney, sambar (with veggies) and wait for it – vadai is made. Yes, you read that right. Vadai – that crunchy, golden, delicious, drool inducing snack that one eats in restaurants like MTR and A2B. And half of those vadais were put into a bowl of yoghurt with boondi on top called thayir vadai. Lunch now has 2 courses that precede and succeed rasam along with 2 palyas – one is green veggie palya with grated coconut (good for health you know?) and the other is always potatoes roasted to a crisp. Oh and fried appalam. And one payasam with a generous sprinkle of nuts and raisins.

Do you know those tiny little white cubes that are in gravies eaten with rotis? Paneer you say? Yes. Pre-2014, the only place that I’ve ever seen paneer butter masala is in South Indian wedding receptions where it it served alongside other authentic South Indian delicacies like rumali roti , white sauce pasta and chaat. The mothership put these cubes in a dish, hitherto unheard of in the household , called “matar paneer” and made methi puris to go with it. Ladies and gentlemen, not rotis but puris. Not just any puri but methi puri.

Now why am I telling you all of this? Because the great Tamil pulavar aka philosopher Mr. Goundamani had foreshadowed this in his 1985 movie Kanni Raasi. There is a hilarious sequence where his wife, Sumitra makes a feast for her son-in-law who visits them. To call it a feast is to call the Taj Mahal a building. The three feet long grocery list includes 2 kg of muna paruppu or mundiri paruppu aka cashew nut and 3 kg of pista – an item that Goundamani has so far never heard of in his life. She then proceeds to make aatukaal soup – a delicacy that she has never made in 25 yrs of her married life. Goundamani is flabbergasted that his wife is actually familiar with the term “soup”, let alone make some.

Likewise over the last few years, I have discovered to my surprise that the mothership can indeed make chole bature, badam halwa, all paneer based side dishes and paruppu urundai kuzhambu (a very rare type of sambar that takes about 173685 hours to make). The only dish that hasn’t made an appearance so far is gobi manchurian and that too only because His Highness is not particularly fond of it and not because the mothership is lacking in Chinese culinary knowledge.

The mappillai for his part unfailingly does what all mappillais do – saying hello with a big smile while entering the house, saying bye when leaving and spending the rest of the time sitting on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, scrolling through Facebook on his phone. If he so much as *returns* the empty coffee dabara-tumbler to the sink, verses will be sung on his simplicity and humility and how I am the luckiest of all women to have been blessed with this 24 carat bar of gold.

It is surprising that Archies doesn’t have a category of cards to celebrate the unique and underrated bond between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law. (I’m seriously considering a signature campaign.) To think of it, ever other relationship known to man is symbiotic in nature – it involves giving and taking and mutually benefits the people involved. But the MIL-SIL bond is unique in that the concerned parties are genuinely aware of the nature of the relationship and immensely enjoy it being so.

A parasitic one where one cooks and the other eats.

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

Bucket list, Bantureeti kolu and Blogging

Covid 19 has done the impossible – bringing me back from a self imposed hiatus and type out these letters on a laptop (in 2020, this is a big deal). The initial 3 week lockdown brought out the child in me.

WFH = summer vacation = taking it easy = unadulterated fun!

The last time I had a 3 month vacation was in high school. On the last day of school, I would jot down the “fun things” I would do in my vacation which included stuff like

a) “Practice” music everyday. – I actually sang Bantureeti kolu at 5 1/2 kattai shruthi on my cobweb ridden shruthi box the first day.

b) Learn French from some old, moth eaten books that my aunt owned. – The only French words I learnt were “La salle de classe” but more on that another time

c) Learn cooking which meant learn how to make palak paneer and malai kofta and not the humble rasam that I gobble up day in and day out these days

d) Play tennis using a badminton racquet that I got “free”, the one and only time I bought Milo. Sorry folks, you are looking at a Bournvita loyalist!

e) Diligently learn *cough* Calculus & Trigonometry *cough* from my Thatha, a retired Math teacher.

f) Read books by John Grisham, Ayn Rand, Jeffrey Archer and all those fancy authors that everyone just seemed to be talking about. – I ended up re-reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the 57th time along with Gokulam (does anyone remember the Undir family?)

Obviously, I did none of the above including (e) which was a last minute addition to the list by the mother. All I did was while away time until the cousins arrived and then it was 10 hours of playing in the sand, feeding leaves to stray goats and frightening kittens. Now, Modi ji gave me the perfect opportunity to do justice to the above discarded list and I decided to add a few more items to the list like

(a) “Convincing” the H to “allow” me to avail the one month free subscription that Netflix offers.

(b) Try baking because clearly sourdough bread and garden foccacia are the palak paneer and malai kofta of 2020.

(c) Watching Breaking Bad, Money Heist and the Netflix series that has cute guy Oberyn Martell in it.

(d) Learn machine learning, deep learning and GAN because I have all the time in the world and can become an expert in emerging technologies.

So this time, I knew I was going to do everything as planned because two decades is a long time and is expected to bring about a semblance of traits like maturity, patience and all those complex words that mean the same. So what happened? I watched half a movie on Prime – Vijay na’s masala blockbuster Theri, 30 mins of the 1st episode of Breaking Bad, read the title card of Money Heist and typed out “Narcos” and hit the ‘Search’ button on the Netflix app.

On the cooking front, I went as far as buying a packet of baking soda and baking powder. That’s when I realized that there are more vital needs like rasam and sambhar powder and idli batter. I also bought vinegar and soy sauce and two packets of hakka noodles that are sitting on the shelf and will continue to do so until their expiry date. Needless to say, I signed up for an ML course but have clearly been “too busy” to continue learning.

Which brings me to the realization that I am the female equivalent of George Constanza from Seinfeld. I can sit at home all day, do absolutely nothing and still go to bed promptly at 10 pm out of sheer exhaustion. I’ve spent 3 months doing this. I can do this till the end of the year, probably longer and also whine about “going back to work” once the lockdown is over. For years, I thought that I have to find my passion in life, chase it, and strive towards doing fulfilling it. The lockdown and George Constanza have helped me realize that “doing nothing” is my passion and I’m already living the life.

Garden foccacia!! *bursts into laughter*

P.S: Today I found a colony of ants in my balcony and they seemed to be working in tandem, probably looking for some food without so much as a grumble. Now, did that inspire me? In a way, yes! I sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar around them so that they didn’t have to work too hard to find a bite to eat. Well I hope they learn to work a little less hard.

Marriage, Morkuzhambu and Medha Patkar

As the mangapachadi is on the threshold of completing three hundred and sixty five days with her co-inhabitant, here are some valuable life truths that have been discovered on this long, unwinding journey.

1) It is better to make morkuzhambu than lecture about feminism:

Medha Patkar might have had her way, lecturing about abandoning the kitchen and fighting for women’s rights. That’s probably because she had an awesome cook at home who made hot, piping sambhar. For the rest of the world, mor kuzhambu it is, with freshly cooked pooshnika to soak it up.

2) In times of conflict of interest in the television viewing segment, Prannoy Roy wins:

Remember those cute couples in advertisements adorably fighting over the remote and finally reaching a consensus on what movie to watch? Yeah, those things don’t happen in real life. News channels rule the roost. And if not news, death by test cricket it is! The slightest of protests will be met by a glare and a stern facial expression and needless to say a mini session on the importance of current affairs.

3) A for aviyal, B for beans paruppu usili…

Rewind to a warm, sunny day in spinsterhood where mom serves chow chow kootu and rasam.  I swallow the above mentioned mundane items reluctantly, dreaming of a green future where kadai paneer and mouth watering spaghetti is the order of the day.

Reality check: The H is an avid south indian traditional brahmin food gorger. So here I am learning the alphabet all over again! A for aviyal, B for beans paruppu usili, C for chow chow kootu…

4) It is okay to murder a guest but…

You must be wondering what crime can be more heinous than murder. Though the Indian Penal Code doesn’t rate any act higher than this, there certainly seems to be one such crime from which there is no salvation. The act I am talking about is the gifting of a 2 X 2 piece of cloth that is commonly known in tambrahm households as a “blouse bit”, to any guest of the fairer sex who makes the mistake of visiting you. Though the probability of a blouse bit transforming into an actual blouse is actually zero, the blouse bit must be given. Abstaining from doing so will lead to catastrophic results.

5) Your neighbourhood darshini *is* a fine dining restaurant

It doesn’t matter if couples around you go on a European holiday, upload pictures of fondue and plum parfait on instagram and exchange exquisite diamond rings. All that you will get is one plate mini meals at Mayur Sagar and if you are lucky, one half coffee.

Queen, Kangana and some random life lessons

I stepped out of the cinema theater a couple of weeks back, smiling. Queen isn’t your usual coming-of-age movie where the heroine suddenly rediscovers herself. On deeper thought, it is. But what I liked about it was its refreshing portrayal of a young girl’s wedding dreams gone astray. Rani(Kangana) can’t understand what made her fiance to suddenly call off the engagement . Tears well up in her eyes. She is helpless. All that she can do is shut herself up in a room the whole day and cry. She cannot keep the tears flowing for a second day as hunger crushes any grief that might be left in her. The girl needs to eat. She rummages through a box of sweets, which was supposed to be distributed to the guests on her wedding, and gorges on a large ladoo. Hunger and grief subside. She needs a break. She needs to let things loose. So, she goes to Paris on her honeymoon – alone.

I took back home pleasant memories of the movie, of Kangana’s childish innocence, her initial struggles in an alien land and the haunting soundtrack of “Hungama”. On deeper introspection, I realized that there is a Rani living in every woman. The Rani who is submissive to her other half. The one, who has to be miss goody two shoes in the eyes of the society. The one, who has to give up her dreams to fulfill her marital duties. The one who must live the way people around her, want her to.
We are long past the era, where women were forced into a marriage or shut inside the walls of their own homes. The modern urban lady is bound by chains that are imaginary and mostly a product of her own doing. Rani gives up her ambitions for she wants to be the ideal wife. She wants to please her husband. She wouldn’t mind idling away time organizing kitty parties to please her mother-in-law. She dreams of the perfect marriage. Vijay is the world to her. She doesn’t know what life would look like without him. That is why her world crumbles when he breaks their engagement. She doesn’t know what to do. She is distraught.

As little Indian girls, were we not too raised like Rani? To be young, well behaved women who were molded into future wives and mothers? Were we not told that the most important day of our lives was the day we would become the wife of some guy? That the most important thing to a woman was her family? Even the course that we were to pursue had to be well within the rules framed by the society. A loving doctor, a 9 a.m. – 5 p.m engineer, a teacher, but never a pilot or a young army officer. Career choices had to be well aligned to suit the future needs of the “family” as family always came first. The boys, on the other hand never had to please anyone. It would suffice if they merely concentrated on their careers. They would be accessorized by a girl later in life. Some girl who, bounded by the bond of marriage would take care of all mundane activities and who would probably give up everything that she cared about in order to make her family happy. They were the rightful heirs; the men, the nucleus of the family. Everything else would revolve around them.

The bitter truth is that even though we claim to have broken the old world shackles that we were bound by, we still choose to hide behind the men in our life. That is what Rani too did, initially. Like her, we too are content at playing second fiddle. We look at marriage and motherhood as the reasons why we were put on this earth. We place these two aspects way up in our priority list. Anything else must necessarily come later. We chose to make these, the nucleus of our lives. We think that these must necessarily bring happiness. But in reality, they don’t.

The truth, as Rani realizes is that we don’t need a second person to keep us happy. More importantly, we don’t need a man to find true happiness. The moment she opens up to the world around her, she realizes that it has far more treasures to unearth as when compared to the little world that she had built around her . She could drink without having to feel guilty, burp loudly, dance at a strip club to her heart’s content and kiss a stranger just for the fun of it. She comes back from her honeymoon, much wiser and having discovered what true independence tastes like.

Rani teaches us that being educated or choosing the right career isn’t just enough for us. We need to place ourselves in the center of our lives. We must learn to enjoy life. We must love ourselves for who we are. Marriage and motherhood are mere milestones and not shiny medals that must always adorn our chest. We need to learn to live life to the fullest. Like her, we too need to loosen the imaginary handcuffs that are clutching our wrists, step out of the shadows that surround us and discover the hidden woman in us.