NaBloPoMo 2019: Day 5: Serving Love

Amma had standardized the process of cooking so well that I can’t remember a single instance when there was either a shortage or an excess of food. How can I be so sure? Because “lemon rice” or “chitranna” (which most people make with leftover rice), made only a rare appearance in our house. 

Of course it is quite possible that Amma may have “adjusted” by modifying her portions occasionally and made up the deficit by eating some fruit or kept the leftover rice for herself for the next day. Only much later, when we had all grown up, she gave in to democratically sharing with us anything that was leftover.

Evening coffee and dinner were one of the most delightful times of the day for us. In the morning, everyone would be hurrying and eating breakfast at different times before leaving home. But by evening, everyone would have returned home, and we’d sit in a circle around Amma, who would bring the steel chombu with piping hot coffee, and pour it out into steel tumblers for each of us.

Coffee chombu and tumblers - they're still at home

Chatting about our day, swapping stories and laughing like only little girls can, we munched on the savories Amma had prepared or Appa had bought from some shop (often from Purohit Sweet Mart in Ponda) and sipped the golden-brown brew. How we managed to get authentic south Indian coffee in cha-crazy Goa deserves a blog of its own – wait, I’ve already written about it, and you can read it here. 

For dinner, we girls would lay the plates on the floor in a circle, with glasses of water for each person. Then we'd plonk ourselves down, sitting cross-legged, waiting. Amma would bring and keep all the food and sit down in the center of the circle, and begin serving.

Rice, with a dollop of ghee, came first.

Then came whatever was on the menu for the day – the humble yet delicious parupu (dal) or the aromatic rasam, or the spicy sambar along with some stir-fried vegetable.

This was followed by a practice common in Appa’s family – mixing rice and chutney, or chutney podi or pickle with some oil to lubricate the mixture.

Last came rice and curds that no one could escape eating – you’d be reminded of how not eating curd rice was like killing a cow or a Brahmin (or something like that) to make sure you toed the line. To our young minds then, fear of that sin was more effective than today’s research papers that praise the health benefits of lactobacilli in yogurt!

Only after she had finished serving Appa rice and curd, would Amma serve food into a plate for herself, timing it such that most of us had also almost finished by the time she began to eat. She’d only rarely ask one of us who had finished dinner to serve something for her.

Those dinner-time conversations are still some of the best memories we sisters have. What we talked about has long been forgotten, but the warmth that bonding generated has sustained through the decades, and even when we meet today, like in those days, Appa has to admonish us to stop talking, and get up and wash our hands and plates, because it’s nearing 11 pm!

Writing this post, I’m struck by how well Amma nourished and nurtured her family. She “Cooked food and served Love” always, far before it became the tagline for Bharat Gas. Indeed, the love she lavished on us was the calm center around which all our lives pivoted.

NaBloPoMo 2019: Day 4: Upma? No Upama!

Reading my blog series about Amma, my cousin’s wife Kanaka replied to me, saying,

“I remember coming to your house most of the weekends with my kids. She used to give something or the other to eat.”

Knowing Amma, I’d say “give something to eat” is an understatement – “force to at least taste a little” was more like it! 

And once you had taken a tiny bite, you’d find your hand involuntarily kept dipping into the plate until it was empty! My colleague who tasted Amma’s Gokulashthami goodies had quipped, “This chakli is like they say in the Lays advertisement – No one can eat just one!”

Amma was a great cook and had that special touch that converted the simplest of items into mouth-watering dishes. I remember the first time my to-be-husband-and-in-laws came to our place to finalize the engagement plans. They were blown away by Amma’s signature dish. No, it wasn’t any exotic food – it was just the humble plain rava upma that many people deride as “concrete”, which, having been prepared by Amma’s hands, had acquired an unimaginably divine taste.

The food Amma cooked was always tasty. Had someone tried validation of her food, she’d have scored a perfect 10 for accuracy, precision, ruggedness, and robustness – every time she made an item, it had exactly the same perfect taste, whether she cooked for her family, or in larger quantities, because relatives or guests were coming home.

Amma’s kitchen always had those huge brass, hindalium and steel dabbas, and they were like a treasure trove of some or the other sweets and savories. 

Gokulashthami used to be our favourite festival because Amma would make at least 12 to 15 different items, each tasting better than the other. Today, when I struggle to make about just 6 of them, I can’t help but wonder where Amma got the energy to do so much work all alone!

We kids would realize Gokulasthami was coming because we’d see the rice washed and spread out to dry on mats covered with Appa’s old panches (dhotis). Amma would take the items to the mill for grinding, bring the powders home, sieve them, and store them carefully. When the festival was just two days away, our home would be filled with the aroma and gurgling of butter melting into ghee, and the jaggery water bubbling into a thick gooey paste, and the sizzling of the oil as it let Amma’s expert hands turn the milled powders into perfect golden-yellow chaklis and tengols and kodbades. 

Gokulashthami tindis tied in front of Lord Krishna along with fruits

Amma knew each child's favourite dishes, and in her typical impartial spirit, she would cook them all with equal frequency. And since you knew your favourite would come in its turn, none of us ever made a fuss about eating something that we may have liked a little less. 

Amma never pampered us by cooking something separately for someone – you had to eat what was made that day, and she wasn’t unduly bothered if you ate a little less because you didn’t like it. 

She’d bend her own rules a little once in a way, though. For chapati in the lunch box, Bhargavi got chutney podi and butter mixed in, while Vatsala got chutney podi with a ripe banana mixed in. (Or vice versa maybe). In case you’re surprised at these unheard-of combinations, well, that’s just another thing Amma was good at – improvisation and trying and learning new things. More about that tomorrow!

NaBloPoMo 2019: Day 3: Giving of Herself

In his famous work The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran writes....

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Having studied only till matriculation in a Kannada-medium school of Karnataka, Amma could never have read these lines, but anyone who knows her will agree she lived in this spirit.

I was probably 3 or 4 years old then, so I don’t remember, but my older sisters do. Appa was working in the mines at Pali, but we were living in Ponda. Two of his colleagues lived with their families in Velguem which is close to Pali, but far from Ponda.

Those two colleagues each had a son who was to answer the SSLC exams and the exam centre was in Ponda. Bus facilities weren’t very good in those times, and this would make traveling from Velguem to Ponda and back quite difficult and time-consuming. When they talked about this to Appa, he promptly offered to house the young boys and take care of them for the duration of the exam.

Once they came home, Amma simply took them under her wing. She would wake them up at 4.30 am every day and give them hot coffee (or tea, I’m not sure) so that they could get down to studying. Breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner went on as per Amma’s schedule, and no one could have known these two boys were not part of this family (except perhaps by the fact that they spoke Konkani/Marathi and not Tamil!). My sister Vatsala who was then in 12th Std remembers teaching them some Math, too.

At the end of their stay, the two boys had grown quite attached to Amma and went their way with long faces but I’m sure they went with a full heart (not to mention stomach, of course). When the results came, the boys had done quite well, and their families were extremely grateful to Appa and Amma.

I’m struck by two things in this anecdote. 

First, Appa didn’t have to worry about what Amma’s reaction would be when the two boys came. He KNEW she would take care of them well.

Secondly, it was a home filled with girls and yet, there was no fear of bringing in 2 unknown boys – I think that speaks volumes not only about how (safe? innocent?) times then were, but also the confidence of both sets of parents in the values with which they had brought up their children.

As for Amma, I’m falling back on a few more lines from Kahlil Gibran to describe how she gave …

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.
I wonder how much punya we 6 girls had accumulated in our past births to have had Amma as our mother in this birth!

NaBloPoMo 2019: Day 2: Till the last paise...

Reading yesterday’s blog post, my niece Rajashree sent me this reply:

If this was about Paati's business acumen... it deserves 3 more posts... if it is about her meticulousness... it requires 5 more posts about her...if it was about her innate skill at resource management and conservation... it could go longer... but since it is about her bookkeeping... an interesting one for starters... I'd say there's so much more... She used to write the account almost every day I think and she often had those petty zipper pouches or small purses from which she'd tally the account and the money in supply... then there was the petty cash pouch she'd have handy in the kitchen from where she'd fish out 10's or coins of smaller denominations when she needed something or wanted to let the kids buy something.
I had seen once... that she had given an account of managing our house and expenses when we took that trip to Delhi... and Appa was shocked at how the final amount spent was something and 75 paise and Paati returned him the money left... which was so many hundreds and tens and sitting on it... a 25 paise coin!!!
This last bit is so very Amma-esque and sums up her approach to any task.

Elsewhere in that same diary, I found pages where she had even recorded purchases made by my sisters for the house (fruits, or vegetables or miscellaneous) under that particular date’s entries.

I still remember her sitting with her glasses on, grocery list in hand, checking out the items that had been supplied, ticking them off as the shop’s errand boy called them out. Any error would be promptly reported to the owner and given her integrity, any article sent over by mistake would be promptly returned back too!

The meticulousness extended to areas beyond bookkeeping too.

If we had to go somewhere at a particular time, she would be ready at least 15 minutes before the time that been decided. No time was too early for her – after years of waking up every day at 4 am, she wasn’t a stranger to the wee hours of the breaking day. No matter how late she had slept the previous night, she would be up and about her work at 4 am the next day.

When we lived in Goa, we had to leave home for school/college by 7 – 7.30 am. Not one day was there any delay that originated due to Amma. Tasty breakfast and lunch dabbas would be ready at the exact time. No cutting vegetables or making the chapatti dough the previous night either – it was all made fresh in the early morning.

My sister Bhargavi remembers,
Amma had such a sweet way of waking us up in the mornings. She’d come and gently call out your name, and say, “Get up, brush your teeth and come. I’ve made coffee for you.” The thought that she had already done that was a kind of extra boost to wake up even though you were feeling really sleepy!
People who are meticulous about accounts may sometimes appear to be a little miserly...but that never was the case with Amma. At least definitely not when it came to giving/doing things for other people....more about this in the next post.... 

NaBloPoMo 2019: Day 1: My Mother's Diary

Looking for some paper to write my grocery list, I pull out a sheaf of papers I’ve saved for such use. The first sheets I see are pages torn out of a used diary. Used by my mother many years ago, to keep track of her daily expenses. I click a picture of one sheet and decide I’m going to start the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) activity for 2019 with this. 

Kannada text.
Reads as Milk....54, Flowers ....20, From old newspapers and plastic items, 45 rupees is received

Looking at this page reminds me of how meticulous my mother used to be about keeping accounts and not wasting anything. It was probably a skill forced by circumstances – having to run a family of 8 with just one person earning cannot have been an easy task. Especially through the 60s, 70s, and 80s when private companies in the mining industry of Goa (where Appa worked) didn’t pay grand salaries.

So, Amma did all the work herself. For many years, she had no maid to help with the housework. She did all the washing, cleaning and cooking on her own, with brief breaks from the grind only for a few months after each of her 6 daughters was born. (Note to self: She didn’t grumble about having to do it all herself 😅)

She somehow found the time and energy to learn tailoring and would stitch all our clothes herself at home. Sometimes, before festivals, or once a year, a local tailor (I think his name was Sripad) would be hired to come to the house continuously for a few days to stitch dresses for us kids.

Later, when Appa retired from active work and started to go to work only 3 days a week, he set up a shop to generate the much-needed income. Sudarshan Stores started out as a bakery of sorts, then morphed into an all-in-one kind of store. At first, Amma would go to the shop only to allow Appa to come home and rest. But gradually, her innate qualities of attention to detail, being systematic, and astute business sense meant that she began to (wo)man the shop more and more often. She would let us consume some goodies from the shop when we asked (especially the soft drinks) but I’m quite sure she would have kept an account of it somewhere so that there would be no error in her record of the sales!

Staring at these diary pages with her handwriting, I smile as I recollect how they came to me. Last November my parents and sisters were getting ready to shift to a new home. By then, Amma’s health was declining and yet, she got me to go through all the materials in her cupboard, deciding what to keep and what to discard. These diary pages were obviously of no use, but as typical of her, she didn’t want the empty space to go waste. And so, she gave them to one of her daughters whom she believed would make good use of them. There – I’ve done justice to the faith Amma reposed in me. Not only did I make my grocery list using the diary pages, I even made a blog post with them! 

The Rarest of Sightings

A tiny drop blooms and grows. It merges with other drops that grow in a similar manner and a thin stream begins to run down from the temple, down the outer edge of the right cheek to land on the collar bone. I watch this process in shocked fascination, wondering how the lady on my left copes with the sweat pouring down her face without trying to wipe it off. Minutes later, I find out the answer. At 10.15 in the night, my face is bathed in sweat too, but I can’t move my hand up to wipe it off – for the simple reason that there’s no space to move my arm.

Wondering where I am? Join me in the “Sarvadarshanam” queue waiting for the darshan of Lord Athivaradhar in Kancheepuram! 

(For those who are in the dark about this rare, once-in-40-years event, here’s a link that will give you more information.)

Standing in the middle of a 2.5 lakh strong crowd (as we later learn), I reminisce about the miraculous way in which this entire journey has unfolded.

My husband has been planning this trip from the beginning of July. One or the other thing intruded and the earliest date to travel is 19th July. We tried booking online for a special seva but that didn’t work out, so we’re counting on Athivaradar’s grace and some help from a person known to our relatives Narayan Mama and Lakshmi Maami who are accompanying us.


Miracle #1 - I’ve read up online about the huge crowd, the mismanagement, unsanitary conditions and the heat and yet, am raring to go, albeit with a niggle in a corner of my mind that I try to quell by constantly reminding myself that “surrender to the Lord’s wish” is the key to happiness – one divine Lord, and one worldly one, if you get my drift!

Miracle #2 – We take the advice of our Kancheepuram Mama and decide to leave on 18th afternoon itself (instead of 19th morning), so as to reach the place called Thoopul (about 2 kms away from Kancheepuram) by 18th evening , park the car there, and travel further by local auto/bus. This is important, because they’re not letting non-Tamil Nadu vehicles into Kancheepuram town.

Miracle #3 – We reach Thoopul by 6.45 pm and pay obeisance first to Sri Vedanta Desikan, the great Srivaishnava Acharya who was born here, and then, to the presiding deity, Sri Deepa Prakasar also called Vilakkoli Perumal which literally means “the giver of Light”. It being Sravanam day, we are blessed with delicious sakkarai pongal and dadiyonnam as prasaadam, too.

Kancheepuram Mama tells us to come there as soon as possible because the crowd is thinning now. Reason – a sad one - some 3 or 4 people have died in the melee and so, darshan has been stopped for some time, and many people have gone away.

Just as we’re looking out for an auto to take us to Kancheepuram, one of the elderly archakars from the Thoopul temple appears on his bike, and offers to take us close to the temple. Indicators flashing, and patiently waiting for our SUV to navigate the narrow bylanes, he is the Deepa Prakasar for us, helping us bypass the main roads manned by traffic police.

At one point, we lose him because it takes time for our large vehicle to pass through a traffic jam, but by then, we’re pretty close to the temple, and so we find a suitable spot, park the car, and start moving like the people in a walking race do, to quickly make it to the East gopuram (which is the entry point).

Miracle #4 – Even as we reach the place, police have just finished putting up barricades to stop entry for the day. One local Iyengar Mama suddenly appears, and tells the police we are “his people” and makes sure they let us in. We’ve never seen each other before. We’re the last set in – the barricades close after us.

Miracle #5 – We rush into one queue, then find ourselves jostled into another one and reach a point from where we’re turned back and told to go to the other side. Struggling to make sure we don’t lose sight of each other, the 6 of us push through the crowd, barge here and there, and finally, inexplicably, find ourselves in the correct queue. Other people around us have been standing in this queue from 3 pm, so a lady next to us wonders if we’re pulling her leg when we say we entered only at 8.45 pm. 

From 9 pm to 11 pm, we stand in the queue, like puppets on a string – not knowing when the next yank will take us ahead, or make us grind to a halt. Total sharanaagati! Being unable to move any part of your body certainly makes one the model of humility! The mind has grown totally blank and is filled with only the prayer to Athivaradar – ‘Grant me Your darshan, and make this ordeal end.’

Pushed forward by the crowd, we finally reach the Vasanta Mandapam where Lord Athivaradar is lying supine in all His resplendent glory. The dark-hued body looks like it’s chiseled out of stone – hard to believe it’s made of wood of the fig tree! As always, my mind blanks out when in front of the Lord’s form – my eyes focus on His feet and a feeling of immense gratitude for all my blessings wells up from within.

Miracle #6 – The policeman who is pushing and egging the crowd along, bends to pick and hold up, one after the other, two young children in front of me, who’re in the queue with their mother. This compassionate act ensures the kids a good darshan – it also lets me stay in front of the Lord’s form for a few more seconds than other people around me.

We make our way out and realize we don’t know which street we parked our car in. With help from some local people, and piecing together our memories, we finally find our car, reach back to Thoopul by the main road, this time, thanks to Google Maps, have a hurried dinner at 1.15 am, and collapse on the floor in the main hall of the Parkala Matham for a few hours of rest after the almost 7 km walk through.

Come morning, we catch up with a cousin of my husband who has arranged for a VIP pass and this time, the darshan is a breeze, and over in 45 minutes, allowing us to stand right next to the Lord Athivaradar Himself.

Tamil Nadu is a holy land and yet, it is also the land where many political leaders flaunt their anti-Hindu stance. Seeing the huge and swelling crowds for Lord Athivaradar’s darshanam has therefore been very reassuring of ground realities!

This is one pilgrimage I’m not going to ever forget. As my mother-in-law very sagely remarked, one can probably see the Lord sitting at home thanks to television and the internet. But for the Lord to see you, and grace you with His krupa-kataaksham, you have to brave the odds, and go stand in front of Him!

Note: None of the pictures are mine - I found them online, but forgot to note their sources and there was no time to go back and find them. 

Little Things….

There’s a washbasin in a little space just outside my staffroom in college. About a month ago, the tap in this washbasin developed a problem – it continued to drip even after being turned off. If there’s one thing that sets me on edge, it is the thought of water going waste when so many people in this world struggle for a mere few drops of it.

Years of living in a house where taps tend to drip because of “washer” problem came in handy. So, when I noticed this dripping tap, I realized what the problem was. Years of living in a house where the lord of the house is absent-minded enough to leave perfectly ok taps dripping and also least inclined to get leaking taps repaired also came in handy. So, I knew how to arrest the drip in the faulty tap. Not rocket science. Just a small twist in the anti-clockwise direction after first fully closing the tap.

But I realized this couldn’t be a long-term solution. And I was optimistic an institution wouldn’t be as laidback as the lord of my house. So, I spoke to someone in the office and brought the dripping tap to the notice of whoever was supposed to deal with such things.

Soon, I realized my optimism was premature. No one came to repair the leaking tap. And water continued to be wasted, as people (not as experienced as me with a leaking tap) didn’t bother to try to stem the outflow after using the tap.

One day, unable to take the torture of the dripping tap, I decided to do what little I could. I put up a poster right above the washbasin. With my rudimentary drawing skills, I depicted how the tap’s dripping could be arrested.

The very next day, a teacher from the cubicle adjoining mine in the staffroom, gushed about how doing what that poster explained, ‘worked like magic’ to stop the leaky tap! I managed to accept credit for the poster while battling the jealousy that sprang unbidden at an inference my mind drew - her not knowing about leaking taps indicated the lord of her house took his responsibilities quite seriously! 😑

As the days passed, I found myself keeping a close watch on that tap. And it was quite obvious that except for the sweepers who didn’t know to read, everyone else was following the instructions on the poster. So, I demonstrated to one or two of them.

A few days later, as I thought of writing a blog about this, I chanced on a video and an article that explains what one man is doing to save water. 

80-year-old Aabid Surti has helped save 10 million litres of water by going around with a plumber and volunteer and fixing leaking taps!

Read about it here, or watch this 2-min video

One drop at a time, he’s helped save a precious resource from going waste by just doing a 'little thing' he believes in.

As I ponder over all this, I’m reminded of a famous poem titled 'Little Things'.

I haven’t written a blog post in months because I’ve been busy, preoccupied, and in a slightly “focus-on-what’s-really-really-important-things-in-life” mode. 

But then, people have been asking when I’m going to write again, and as I read that poem, I realize that the things I write are also one of the “Little Things” that make a difference to the askers. 

And, as I re-experience the sense of joy and peace that comes out of writing this piece, I realize that this “Little Thing” of writing does indeed make a big difference to my own life, too.