Mangoes

My earliest memories are that of Thatha buying kilos of it during our summer vacation as my sister and I stood and watching as he bargained almost every day in the morning at about eleven-ish with the dusky , betel nut chewing woman who sat our spacious verandah in Salem, with its classic black and white mosaic asking one of us to get water to quench her thirst.

The mangoes were mostly consumed post dinner, with my Ajji insisting that we had huge glasses of milk after the mango. My aunt would cut huge pieces and pass it on and ceremoniously ask which one of us wanted to eat the fruit stuck on the seed.

The seed was sucked, until it had little juice left, till it was pale yellow and there were mango stains on our dresses and little pieces of straw stuck in my teeth.

Bck home in Bangalore,Appa of course bought boxes of mangoes as summer arrived– Alphonsas and Malgova from the Malleswaram market and each mango was cut with utmost care ,sometimes it made me wonder if the mangoes really tasted that good only because Appa is so perfect with the knife. He cut the mango into perfect little pieces ,the taste of mangoes cut by Appa still tastes very distinct to me. It would of course be too cheesy to say it was flavored with his infinite patience.

This summer most of the mango I have eaten is with friends, not surrounded by family and after a sumptuous dinner like it has been all these years . The Mambalam market of course is flooded with mangoes, but I tread cautiously, buying half a kilo of Banganapalli , making two blunt cuts on the cheeks of the mango and eat with friends. The taste of course reminds of all those endless summers, with cousins, thatha and I wonder what happened to the betel nut chewing lady who gave us mangoes all those summers ago.

Read more mango stories here
http://tulikapublishers.blogspot.in/2012/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

My Aunt Agatha

Last weekend was spent in the typical Bangalore "function" way. Except the Bangalore is very new now, and we were at the Raghavendra Swamy Matha in Indiranagar and the metro was flying past us in all its glory.
I was smiling in a " I have come from Chennai in a Airavat bus,with very disturbed sleep" fashion,eating Uppitu and gulping down coffee on a pleasantly cold Friday morning greeting tonnes of my mother's clan with eerily similar faces,familiar old Bangalore/family snootiness apparating mostly from Malleswaram , Sheshadripuram and one part of the clan were from Bannerghata.

My mom made it a point to glare at me every time she realized I was not being the ideal niece to any of the three hundred aunts from Sheshadripuram.
So she beckoned me and asked me to take one of them , a retired teacher from Poorna Prajna, I was always scared of this one and apparently she taught maths,gulp,before she retired.
She told me how she had taken the metro to Indiranagar, after taking an auto to M.G road station from malleswaram. She spoke of her morning jaunt with a childish glee and we had a very nice conversation ,as she ate her way through uppitu and kesari bath, she spoke of her kids, I had known them,older cousins with a good collection of Tinkle at their place ,now away , and I suddenly felt a sudden sense of loss, she taking the metro all alone on a sunday morning seemed to have a sad ring to it.
I was of course broken out of this reverie when Aunt V ,came to greet me, it was her son's munji and I thought I had escaped her wrath about I had dressed for the occasion,forgive me if you think I have exaggerated, Aunt V had called me called me at 9 on a monday morning at asked me to take friday off for deversamardhane and was yelling into the phone so much that I suspect that my boss heard it and nope, I didnt hear a whimper from him when I asked for leave later in the evening. She is of course my Aunt Agatha.
Very fond of me, but thinks I'm not capable of handling the ways of the world on my own.
She told me my blue churidhar was too simple and gave a stamp of approval for my sister's red-polka-dot churidhar.
I was of course furious,both of had put it in great effort,gone to chikpete and bought dresses -our only criterion being will Aunt V like it? And of course little sis A got the "stamp of approval" as she calls it.
Amma was horrified when she spotted two children reading during the proceedings of the munji and called their mother,(turns out childhood friend of Aunt V) and told her that she was happy she was not the only mother who was scarred by the shame of having children who "read " at functions.
In my defense I only read post-lunch and hiding in the room, ante to the proceedings.

It was a delightful weekend with many "coolpix" moments ,and on the way back home ,Appa asking me to talk to a boy whom he thought was suitable for me. I smiled thinking how it would be just an other function in my beautiful city,exasperating,slow,homa smoke ,Aunt V who I doubt will approve my saree, to be on the safer side I have decided to take her with me then.

New Year and all that

Written by Shubha Mudgal, Vasu Dixit, Pavan Kumar KJ and Jishnu Dasgupta

http://swarathma.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/dewarists-track-by-swarathma-and-shubha-mudgal-duur-kinara-lyrics-and-translation/

Vo gaye balam

Vo gaye nadiya paar

Aap toh paar utar gaye

Hum toh rahe majdhaar

(Fragile memories,

Snatches of sound,

Faded photographs

Feelings unbound,

Birds flying in a V,

Homeward bound)

Doorada oorina katheya

Kelide nanna hridaya

Ee gaaliyali, nadiyalli

My heart has heard the tales of that faraway land

The tales that waft in the breeze, and flow in the rivers

Taayiya madilalli

geleyara nageyalli

Naa kandenu katheyannu

In my mother’s lap, I’ve heard these tales

In the laughter of my friends, I’ve seen these tales

Re gehri nadiyaa

Naiyya jhanjhari, duur kinara

Us paar saajan hamaara

Re gehri nadiyaa

(Fading photographs,

snatches of sound,

fragile memories,

feelings unbound)

Kanasolagina kanasali naa kande aa ooranu indu

In a dream within a dream I’ve seen that faraway land



In my mother’s lap, I’ve heard these tales

In the laughter of my friends, I’ve seen these tales



Yes,it was the year I saw that faraway land, poignant teary post for me this.
This year I have missed, my sister's warmth,my mother's cooking full of her love, I have missed it the most,when I was eating food prepared by strange hands, I missed my time with Appa, his laconic self, not finishing his sentences, reminding me so much of myself, I missed these glimpses of myself in an other person. At the end of this year I realized I would never miss all this again in the same gut wrenching way. And that just saddens me,realizing you can never come back again,In the same way.
In other news,Chennai beckoned the year 2012 in its usual brash way,with strong winds blowing threatening to blowing away our umbrellas.
I have discovered awesome eating places in the other city. I promise to write about them in the coming year.
Thanks to flipkart, I have managed to read a decent amount of books.
My software engineer's salary is making KSRTC and the Railways richer.
I wish I had a picture of Jayalalitha or Vijaykanth posters which dot the road I take to office to make this post more interesting.
p.s You missed Jayalalitha in a Ramadan cap :p

Happy birthday bugger

Happy birthday Bugger. I know you are in some other continent and I cant even call you or wish you in the most stupid fashion one can wish their best friend on her birthday this time.Have a wonderful day tomorrow in whatever crazy timezone you are in.

Bugger-Are you high?
Me-No
......

Shall we down it?

Mokkai

So it is summer in Chennai. I heard horrendous tales about how I would melt like Amrith vanilla ice cream, but nope , it looks like all the ice cream i have eaten in office cafetaria has comfortably settled around my hips and we can call it trainee engineer learning curve,just so that we can all feel better.
Anyway it is time to educate all the Bengaluru people with the Chennai Slang.
You never know when your offices might set shop in this city,considering the fact that our city is stretched to its limits and Chennai is ever expanding with its advanced MRTS and the new fangled metro which is being built at a pace which i find highly disturbing to my sluggish Bangalore senses.Anyway lets move on to the lesson.
The first lesson would be in Mokkai
Mokkai is your one stop shop word for everything. If the oxford dictionary had to define it , it would be defined as a 'poor joke'. But please do not be misled by such definitons. You can use it to prefix anything ,when i say anything , I mean anything under the sun. Such is the power of this adjecto-verb.A few examples to demonstrate the same.
What is all the fuss about royal wedding? It is so mokkai.
Or Mantri mall is the most mokkai mall ever.
Chennai weather is the mokkaiest etc etc

So you think mokkai is putting too much vetti scene?
HA!Caught you unawares,Did I?
Vetti scene simply put is showing off.
It is most commonly used in the form 'Romba scene podadhe' transalated to kannada, 'ThumBa Scene haaK beda'.
Alternative usages can be'Scene Party',used on unsuspecting well dressed colleagues from the HR.
You can use this phrase to slightly admonish colleagues who constantly complain about their unpreparedness for the CAT, but are secretly studying very hard on weekends that you spend playing angry birds.

Bulb
This word can be roughly translated to facepalm. Finds a high occurance of usage among madras vasis who seem to take everything to heart.
Few of my friends tell me that this words could have its origins in the IIT in this city.

Lastly the phrase without which my stay in this city would have lost its meaning to my ickle grandchildren, grand neices and nephews.

If they ask me fifty years down the line about how my stay in Chennai was, I am not as gifted as Orwell to just fling a book called 'Down and out in Mambalam and Tambaram' at them and get back to my reading and sipping tea. I can only tell them I 'Kuppa kottified'

It translates to emptying garbage.Succint no?

Amma calls from office to check on me.
I tell her I'm up and she tells me to drink the watermelon juice in the fridge after I place it outside for a bit,so that i dont catch a cold. I drink it cold and watch made of honor, waiting for my sister to come back from college.
gee, i'm such a home-bird and i love it

Tinku

I sit in the winter sun
In a red plastic chair
Tinku ,my neighbor's dog
stares bleary eyed at me.

It is a white and fluffy
pomeranian,
with rarely brushed teeth.

It barks at the kids
on tricycles
And Amma of course thinks
Its too stupid for a dog,
recounting the lore of
Blackie and Brownie
Who unlike our friend
Rarely threw tantrums
or asked for
Idli with ghee.

People

Long back, Granta had a special issue about fathers and I came across some beautiful writing about people. The kind of prose which makes you truly happy. I have always wanted to write about people who are dear to me, but every time that I do make a beginning; it just doesn’t seem to do justice to them.
Today I’m just making an attempt to write about people whom I have known only by sight or exchanged a few words with. Ask any kid who has grown up in malleswaram, they will most certainly know these people. But I’m doubtful if they will remember the lady with the goats as my sister does not seem to remember her. The goat lady came only in the afternoon with a dozen goats and she kept talking to herself continuously while she fed her goats leaves from the trees on our street. You knew it was time for the afternoon nap on Sundays if the goat lady was near the gate. Her mouth was red and it used to mystify me (later I realized it was paan, of course). She was tall , dark and had wiry hair and I somehow feel she would make a beautiful subject for a painting.

Though the goat lady was a pretty common appearance, the haal cover man was a regular every two weeks. Back in those days he would religiously knock on every door step and collect the blue milk covers and would pay us two- three rupees with which twerp and I would rush off to buy lollies in Amrith. The huge basket he carried was a matter of huge curiosity to us and we would try peep into it when he was off collecting milk covers, Amma used to frown at the bottles he carried (you know what kind) in the basket. The funny thing I remember about him is, he was mostly toothless, wore a green lungi in classic Vadivel style and was mostly smiling. You can still probably see him on hot afternoons hardly uttering a sound (like some annoying guys who screeeech paaaaaaaaaaaaaper) going to all the houses he always goes to collect empty spirit bottles and haal cover.

The thatha who stands on the pavement of 4th main, seems right out of an idyllic children short story book with his silver mop of hair and a brown sweater .He lives on the very same road next to a school in a house with a long yard and rusty gates. Thatha spends most of the day taking delight in families which walk on the very same road. Some stop and talk to him and for others he is just a permanent fixture.
Then of course we still have the crazy man who doubles as a watchman, traffic regulator and you can always spot him at the center of festivities, whether it is the procession of urchava moorthy of Venugopalaswamy or the 8th cross Rayara Matha. Amma finds him scary for some reason.
I already wrote a post about dasaiah of course, he being my all time favourite.

The man with many bags as we call him of course is a legend. I only have a vague recollection of a scruffy man with too many round dirty polythene bags, oddly shaped like children. The family says that I used to finish my meals in a jiffy every time he was mentioned and how he had already carried away most of the fussy children in his bag.

These people seem ageless, some of them, the only reminder of times gone by. This post hardly does justice to these very abstract people. I wish I could paint them.

p.s- owe this one to buGblu and King

for all those bugging times

this post is for bugger, whom it feels incomplete to know by any other name.
this is for all those things you mean to me
- for bugging me to buy a buy a phone in second semester and not be such a recluse
- i no longer get scared of stray dogs when i see them, i remember all the stories you have told me about Tiger and i have an unnatural kinship with them now.
- for always being there for me no matter what, in very little ways.
- for letting me sit silent through all the bus rides and auto rides, it is something i can only do with you.
it is impossible for me to bid you goodbye tommorow at the airport.

We lived in a two storey house in a leafy neighborhood, my room there overlooked the busy road below, its beauty unmatched on rainy evenings. My sister and I would sit on my bed admiring it on such evenings, the dark rain washed road, sheltered by trees all of them ,almost of the same height, a sudden calm would descend on us, we acknowledged this only in the last few months there, my room of course of course was dusty and the bars on windows always blemished in spite of my maid's constant efforts at keeping them clean and the red oxide floor cracked, whose contours i can still remember. It was a place which had felt my presence for twenty odd years.
As i write this I'm in a room with beautifully painted walls, the bars in its windows a clean off white ,but they seem distant, to my thoughts and tears as i lie down and hence i resort to writing, in a place which seems faintly like home.

the story behind a sari

shopping for saris can make three women so happy, Amma dragged me off to Girija's day before, to buy a sari for the college farewell ( i cannot seem to clearly define my emotions about leaving college, sometimes it is good this way, its over even before you start weeping or crying with joy ).Girija's of course is legendary and my aunt has piles of old green Girija boxes and she has a story for each one of them. Amma is right, saris are boring without their stories. Anyway, what would i tell people if they asked me the story behind this one- that it was an end of an other even semester? it was the last and we had projects to document, write exams,pictures to take, drinks to try, and was wondering how to wear my hair on the day which was supposed to be my last in college, and these were the only good things to sort out. At this point though, I'm at my lowest ebb, with all that unshaken belief i had, of being different, and knowing what i wanted completely gone. Would i tell them that?
I could have made this post humorous in that silly way of mine, i just did not want to.

gloomy doom and everything is a sham

Its almost over. And doesn't look like I'm out of here on my own terms.

of flying caps

OF FLYING CAPS
There are so many instances when you laugh your head off but that moment just dissipates leaving you with a light feeling in the head, this past week were full of these. Early twenties i guess , you earn your freedom, Amma and Appa fret, but not too much, they think they have raised you right, and apart from frantic phone calls ( they panic when you phone is out of reach or you dont pick your phone cause you are engrossed in a chick flick eating amazing potato fry), occasionally Amma will say that i have 'gotten out of control' and should be married off to the benefit of mankind, apart from this its all very wodehousian like a comfort read.
Anyway getting back to flying caps-
Naaandu and I are gearing up to ride all the way from suburbs of south to north Bangalore, when I with all my CAT cracking / engineer buddhi wear a cap to shield me from the cruel March sun.What happens? SUUUUUUyn, the cap flies inside S's Apartment, these two break into giggles and I feel stupid. But this is so not funny, when it happens in the middle of BEL road, with 401s, whirring past. Well, it so happened that it did fly off, and i told nanduuu about it. She stops the gaadi (no exasperation, trust me) and midst of laughter, asks me to go get it. Well i totally feared for my life and would not budge, one final threat and i slowly walked up to middle of BEL road to get it, all the while imagining what my Mum would say if lost an arm or leg in this adventure.
S makes amazing food, like your favourite aunt, who will add liberal portions of potato or cheese just cause you like it. I actually figured out how a kitchen works, and i make very watery maggi, also if you add pepper to maggi, the maggi goo in the end becomes sort of gross. I loved the tomato rice, cutting veggies and bonding over sour curd. waaaaaaah.
Driving at 1 am from jayamhal can be an experience, did you know that? Sounds godawful wannabe , but i would never forget that.
Girl talk is fun, and it so happens that, my humour turns willfully classic for the benefit of my friends, they call it my pillow moments. Otherwise I'm generally surly and sulky.
CTR/JANATHA totally pawn VB, Mantri mall will make me cry, haunts me even in volvos from banashankari to bommasandra. Sigh.
Waking up S and N can be a total pain. You cant even pour water on them, you save such priveleges for your younger sisters.Wooden snakes might work.
To the only boy who likes litchee cake, my brother jeep, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
There was a time when i was reckless happy, sometime in second year, i reckon certain things never change, though I feel very much at crossroads now, with too many decisions to make but this week was just perfect.
PS:whatever this template might say, smoking is injurious to health.

every Sunday at about nine in the morning as I sit devouring the sunday supplement, the sound of conche would resound, and I would automatically take two rupees from the kitchen dabba ,which has change, run down the stairs and give it to daSSaya. Giving change to daSSaya was something that made me really proud as a little kid, it was an incentive promised by aunt when i refused to eat, other threats , when things got out of hand with me,included giving me away to the garbage man with many bags, she told me they all had little children in them and i still remember how he would threateningly glare as he took milk covers away, enough to make me eat boiled carrots for a couple of days she says. daSSaya of course still comes every sunday and day before i gave him the usual change and his smile lit up his ancient dark face, my neighbour's daughter all of four years old stood groggily waiting for the daSSaya.

freshly hewn out of old wood
you are going to be my pride and joy
you were a part of all my fantasies
and though i always dream't that
you would be full wall length
now you seem so right.

will stack all my Austen,
and Blyton
in a mock haphazard way

you will grow old in your own way
all my books will find their home

a treasure trove you will be
i know
it comes from a child
who discovered the joy of reading
from her aunts old
english prize books
stacked away in a old bookshelf.

looks like i'm finally learning to appreciate music. As i was telling a friend earlier today, i always had a vague sense of disconnect when i was listening, nowadays i feel that gap slowly growing small.
the familiar outline of eleventh cross is so soothing on a sunday night. the chill in the air, and the lights all around, the huge monolith of my school.

faces you know so well
the laughter unmistakable
the places you grow up in
and play
all your little games
come back in a rush
you ask yourself
where is my piece of truth

deepavali

deepavali has a routine to it ,not something planned early on at home but a sequence of events which just seem to fall in place during the festival, and at the end of it faintly reminiscent of all the previous ones.
It generally starts with Appa asking us in a mock serious way if we still want crackers , now that we are all grown up, we do not bother replying since we all know that he will be fiercely competing with us for rockets and his eternal favorite the vishnu chakra, all bought by K dodappa in Salem in the true spirit of a station master (oops!)
When we were small A and i would spend long winter afternoons bursting bijli paataki, days before the festival, our nails charred black at the end of it till amma shooed us in.
Every year we would always promise ourselves that we would buy better rockets for next year, not the standard standard ones.
The festival to this date never feels complete without S aunty(a Gujarati family friend, but more kannadiga than any iyengar ajji in malleswaram) bringing the customary jamoons and other khara stuff which i shamelessly devour ,talking to us in herfamiliar sing song kannada, exchanging recipes with amma, telling us that deepavali was the new year for gujju's and all that.

the crazy phone calls, new jeans , little cousins whom you can scare the hell out of, and of course shooting rockets on eleventh cross which is probably a near death hazard.

This year, we had two screaming NRI kids , opposite, who were just learning the ropes of bursting crackers, heavily chaperoned by their mum, and were awed by our bravado. (hahaha)
these hols were probably the happiest the whole of this year, and please don't talk of global warming.Obama ,will figure it out.

this post is for A & A , the best set of parents one can ask for. And sometimes it feels like i dont need anything else to go on. this is so archie's card on the inside.
being the prude i'm i would probably never tell you guys this. let it collect dust here.

so freaking scared.