Of Every Quarter

As the rain pours down today and thunder crashes outside I’m drawn to memories that can’t possibly be mine and yet form the veins of my existence. 

I’m an immigrant child. It’s something I say with pride. My heart bursts with the thrill of my gypsy roots. I live far away from anywhere my accent would place me, so every few days I get asked “where are you from?”
I’ve taken to laughing each time somebody asks me this question in anticipation of their puzzled frowns when I answer. It has been pointed out to me how rude this is, but for once my intent is not to be rude. I like saying,
“I’m from Chennai, that’s where I grew up but I’m a Malayalee. Honestly though, it’s probably more appropriate to say I’m an Indian because before we moved to Chennai my father was in the Navy and I spent some time in Goa and Arakonnam; After school I moved to Bangalore for a bit and spent what feels like an awakening in Mumbai.”

It’s a slow journey to Rajasthan where I find myself now but as people piece it together they go back to my name (Menon, mind you) and ask me if my family lives in Kerala. I like telling them then that my parents grew up in Chennai and Bangalore- not Kerala themselves. That a love story worthy of the movies took my grandmother on my mother’s side to Chennai with her husband while a love story as tragic as any Greek poet would write took my grandmother from my father’s side to Bangalore. 

This would mean that my mother is more Tamilian than Malayalee- she grew up in Chennai; while my father’s childhood gets more mongrel. He grew up in Sainik School, in a place called Bijapur and would holiday when he could in Bangalore. He speaks a smattering of Kannada,  Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and English and understands a bunch of other languages, speaking it all together in a language of his own. It’s hard for most people to tell when he’s trying to speak one language instead of another (other than with English)- it sounds the same but funnily enough he’s understood.

And so I was born with the bloodline of my gypsy grandparents. To draw from poker, I saw their stake of immigrant lives and raised them on it, moving more than them, more than my parents in their life on Naval bases (we’re counting up to each of your 26, oh parents of mine).

But it’s a funny story that started this entire legacy that can’t be measured in wealth.

(Note: Look for the Malayalam to English translations at the bottom of this post)

Nobody who has met my mother’s parents can deny that my Ammama and Ammachan were madly in love up to their dying breath. By the time I met them Ammachan was terribly ill from emphysema and Ammama was losing the power of her heart and sight from the complications of diabetes, and yet, as Ammachan sat with Ammamma on the dining table or Ammama called out “Noku (look)” to Ammachan in the middle of her TV serials that nobody else was allowed to make a sound through, there was a peace between them- a love that was theirs.

I didn’t know it then and can barely believe it now, but there was almost twenty years between Ammama and Ammachan. I’m told that Ammachan at one point had declared he didn’t want to be married and one day, on a visit he saw Ammamma in the porch of her house and found his heart had changed his mind. I like to believe that he stood mesmerized by the beauty he saw debating with himself about the child she was to his late thirties and finally gave up the battle and spoke with Ammamma’s father. Muthashan wasn’t terribly rich and he has a lot of children to take care of.  I’m told Ammachan and his family met with Muthashan, he was convinced that his Lakshmi would be taken good care of because of the family Ammachan came from, and agreed to the marriage. It was that easy.

And so my Ammamma found Chennai- a city that I can imagine being so much more her style than Pattambi, that gorgeous little village (now town) in Kerala where she grew up. Mind you, from my few visits to Pattambi I can tell you that I will forever hold a torch in my heart for the place. The Tharavadu (ancestral home) with its endless well, steep stairway and wooden floors, the temple with its Kollam (a Kerela version of a swimming pool), and Jolly cottage are filled with memories that I can’t place of joy and laughter. 

There is a room that Apputimama, Ammamma’s youngest brother, used to live in. I remember for some reason this being my favorite place in the mini Tharavadu. In our U shaped house, Apputimama’s was the section that was by itself. His rooms were in the first floor. I used to be scared mindless about going there alone- spiders, darkness and any number of monsters would jump out of crevices but the lure of Apputimama’s voice and actions as he pulled out book after book from his vast library and point out the joys of the world in them was more than I could resist. My bachelor uncle was every kind of eccentric but nobody would dare question his love for books. My mother likes to point out that his book collection, before it was emptied, was probably worth as much as the house is. A cousin found her greatest plunder in Apputimama’s books- of the many wonderful things there was a first edition Shakespeare. I’m not surprised. The leftovers I rescued from the trash cans may not be first editions but they smell of adventures and many evenings spent in discourse. 

This is the one thing that makes me like my Ammama. She was a voracious reader. I remember that towards the end, what upset her more than my Velliamma insisting that she follow her dietary restrictions, was the fact that she couldn’t read. She had this humongous magnifying glass with which she would struggle to piece words together. Ammama would read in Tamil and Malayalam while Ammachan read his English novels beside her, his glass of whiskey (or was it rum?) on the table between them- a companionable silence filled in by the ads on TV.

But we weren’t similar at all my grandmother and me. She was the young beauty whisked off her feet by a debonair older husband. A man who introduced her to the many wonders of the world and loved her for the enthusiasm she brought back to them. They really were a sight to behold even in their old age but when I look back to the pictures of their youth- that is when I truly lose my breath. The pictures have a woman in clothes that would put even the fashionistas of today to shame. She had poise and grace to match a queen, and beside her smiling like the cat who knew he won the world is my grandfather in his suit, neatly combed hair and perfectly styled mustachio. When I close my eyes and try to remember the picture I also see a car and a pipe, sometimes a telephone- the signs of wealth, the proof of their life, a far cry from my other grandparents.

My Achachan and Achamma were the very opposite it would seem. I have never met Achachan. I know little about him other than his love for cycling (like Achan), his insistence on having his children learn their arithmetic tables absolutely right (like Achan) and his quick temper (like Achan). When Achan’s youngest sister was 6, Achachan passed away. I always thought he died alone of a heart attack on his bicycle but Prasanna Cheriamma told me the details when we met last.

Where Amma and Velliamma’s childhood in my mind is of studying in the best private school, being chauffeured around in cars and spending weekends on the beach after a movie; my picture of what Achachan could offer his five children on his meager income as a post master casts the Vakkiyls in a grey pallor that bursts into surprising light each time I hear one of my aunts or uncle laugh as the wise adults they are.

I’m told that Achachan was working with the Indian Postal Service. A funeral is really the worst time to ask for details so I didn’t, but I know that there was a common house for men and another one for women in Bangalore where all the recruits lived. One by one everybody in both common houses got married. While I can’t grasp at what Achachan wanted, what is clear is that he went home to his village in Kerala once and came back with a bride. 

Now my Achamma, if you see pictures of her (and I’ve only ever seen one from that far back) is the picture of a Malayalee beauty. She married young (like my Ammamma) and though the pictures have faded into a black and white sepia, you can see a shy woman unsure of herself attempt to sit up straight for a picture, her face framed by a shock of curly hair pulled back. She looks shy, like she would do whatever it was that she was asked to. And maybe she did. 

I’m told that unlike Ammachan who fell in love at the first sight of his future wife, Achachan married Achamma in what was (and probably continues to be) an acceptable barter. For his sister to marry the man who had "enquired" about her, Achachan would have to marry his brother-in-law-to-be’s sister. I could draw a diagram to explain this, more easily understood but the crude way to explain it is that the daughters of each family were exchanged for the sons to marry. 

I don’t know how happy or unhappy anybody was about the arrangement. I have reason to believe that there were some tensions but these memories can’t be mine because I haven’t seen the house in Bangalore that my Achamma lived in.

I’m told it wasn’t poverty but my privileged mind with its privileged upbringing finds that hard to believe. Achamma lived in a four room house with her husband, children and a colleague of Achachan's with a compound bathroom to share with people in other houses. Her oldest son (my father) was sent away to Sainik School because it was all Achachan with his ambitions for premium education for his children could afford (Note 1). I remember Achamma telling me this story, but if the voice I remember is indeed hers I find it hard to believe that the memory is mine. 

I can hear her voice as she tells me in Malayalam in that soft voice I would have to tilt my head to hear. She tells me Achan was a sickly child. He always had a cold sniffing and sniffing constantly looking malnutrition-ed. He had a handkerchief, often hers that he would twirl around his finger and walk around with. When he was (I wonder if I have this right, I can only hear her say she was young) six, Achachan came to know of admissions in a Government Residential School where boys would be taught in the English medium at the State’s expense with the hope that they would serve in the national defence when they grew up. He offered to coach a neighbor’s son while teaching Achan. 

If my childhood learning Maths with Achan is any indication, I can imagine the thirst for knowledge those evenings stoked and the stark terror that any incorrect answer on a test would bring. I have no doubt anyway that both Achan and this neighbor’s son were thrashed impartially into learning all the facts it takes to do well at one of these tests. 

When the results came they found that Achan had cleared the papers while the neighbor’s son, with his less frightening father, hadn’t. I always ask Achan why he wrote the exam if he was so frightened about leaving home and he always looks at me like he is asking himself how somebody he has invested so much in can be so foolish. He yelled at me last time in his attempt to explain that he wasn’t spoiled like our generation is. He did what he was told to- there would be consequences for anything else. What he was told to do then was to excel at this exam despite being the sniffly dunce (Note 2) that he was deemed to be; that his father did not need permission to make him write an exam. 

I suspect he’s right about that, we really are privileged in knowing we can get away with the choices we make. I know when my parents tried to pull that trick with Ettan it didn’t work at all. They wanted him to join the National Defence Academy after his 12^th standard and seeing no way to escape writing the test (is it a good time to point out that when my brother was born his name was decided on because Flt. Lt. Tarun Menon sounded best of all the options they thought of?). Ettan did everything he could to fail the exam- he makes no secret of it and there were no “consequences” other than my parents accepting his choice. 

And so, on clearing the exam, Achan was bought one trunk and whatever else was on the list of demands Achachan received from the school to prepare him for the next seven years of his life. I’m told Achamma broke down and amongst the few times in her life refused to do as she was told to. Achan was her first son, the boy who survived despite his elder brother’s death in infancy a close year before, her Sivan. But Achachan held his ground, locked Achamma into a room and made a little boy say goodbye to his mother from a window while she cried rivers (Note 3).

Achachan wasn’t a bad man at all. I’m realizing as I write this that it come across as being that because if somebody did that to me I would run screaming for the hills accusing him of abuse. I don’t think his intent was to hurt anybody. Achachan was a poor man who was doing everything he could to give his five children an education that would find them a way out of the poverty he suffered and didn’t take any pride in. (Note 4)

Baby Mema told me a story about him- Baby Mema is the youngest of Achan’s siblings. She says that when she started school a van was arranged to pick her up and drop her back- a luxury in those times, especially on a post master’s salary. This convent that she went to was just far enough for a little girl to not be able to find her way back home from and thus the luxury of a van. This is the story in Baby Mema's own words,
"On the very first day, my dad was busy and so sent me in the van putting me in charge of a 7^th std student of the same school, called Sheela, requesting her to drop me in my LKG class. As planned, the van dropped us kids at the school gate and Sheela took me by hand to my LKG classroom and since it was quite early, my teacher Ms. Dallal was not yet in class. Sheela told me to sit in the first bench and wait until my teacher came. I guess I waited for sometime and not finding anyone come in I walked out the gate (God knows how I found it) and then walked all the way home from Frazer Town to Shivaji Nagar (what Google maps says is a 2km walk).
I reached home around 11.30 or 12, that too since my house was at the corner of two roads, my mom was looking out of the kitchen window and saw a little girl with a red sweater with lot of slush around her legs, walk past her window. She initially thought that the red sweater looked similar to her baby’s only to suddenly realize with shock that the child indeed was her baby. She rushed out to pick me up from the other road and then all hell broke loose. My dad took the van driver, the teacher, the gate keeper, etc to task and that was the end of my van usage." 

Mema says Achachan didn't trust her with the van anymore and so would drop her to school and back everyday but I can't help but think that a part of it was also that he was a softie :)

I’m sure Achachan wasn’t cold, he was a man of his time making sacrifices whether in his life or another’s for what he believed was a greater good, things that must be done.

When Achachan passed away Achamma went into what can only be called depression. This was even before Achan was married so the woman she was got lost in the tangle of sorrow and confusion she felt at his sudden instantaneous death to a massive cardiac failure. The story Prasanna Cheriamma told me is that Achachan was cycling to the house that was being constructed in RT Nagar- the three bedroom house with two bathrooms of their own- a step forward in life. He collapsed while still on his bicycle (note5) but managed to have Prasanna Cheriamma called from her classes at the veterinary college. When Cheriamma rushed back, she took her father to a clinic close by where he was injected to bring his BP under control while they made a longer journey to a bigger hospital. By the time Cheriamma had him bundled into a taxi- a rare luxury that she couldn’t enjoy that day, she could feel his heartbeat gallop even faster. They cut the web of a toe to relieve some of the blood pressure but the man in the clinic had injected him for low blood pressure instead of high, ensuring his death. 

My aunt had one brother at sea to inform of their father’s death, two young sisters and a brother at home and one mother who did not know life outside the four walls of their house. Achan I’m told couldn’t even make it to Achachan’s funeral. He received news of his father’s death two days after the last rites- something the eldest son usually performs. I remember somebody mentioning that Achan had received his first stipend as a cadet earlier that week and had set aside money to finally give his father, a token of one dream coming true. He didn’t get the chance.

The Achamma I visited every summer in Bangalore was a quiet woman. I knew little about her other than how she would plead with her children and their spouses not to punish her grandchildren as all us cousins would get together and turn her house upside down. All the ettans would climb up the mango tree in our backyard yelling incorrigibly or turn Achamma’s bedroom into a skating rink by emptying a tin of talcum powder to slide around in.  As I grew older I saw a woman who shrank further and further into herself not even being able to hold her books of prayer or recognise the faces of her children. I always wondered if she saw Achachan in the dreams she would wake up from. I wonder if it mattered to her that none of her grandchildren ever met him. I’d like to think she had a fire in her that wasn’t entirely extinguished from being a woman of her time; that the bursts of anger on her sickest days weren’t her only release from injuries inflicted years ago.

My Achamma passed away a month back. I woke up to 5 missed calls from my mother and called back to hear Amma telling that Achamma had passed away. I remember feeling relieved. The woman I spent my college years in Bangalore visiting wanted nothing more than death even as she watched life go by from her place beside a window. She was ill- physically and mentally but most frighteningly, every time I saw her I felt like her soul had already died and that when she saw the rest of us she felt ashamed. On my lowest days I felt like she could see right through the façade I would put up for her benefit into the shame in my soul and on others I thought she felt ashamed of having to be taken care of by the son she took care of. 
On a note that has nothing to do with the rest of this telling- my Elema is a gift to the family with how much love and understanding showered on Achamma well after Achamma could no longer recognise her despite seeing her almost every hour of the day. 

In a strange stroke of luck I managed to get onto a plane to Bangalore that morning and make it in time to see Achamma more peaceful than I had in years. Achan truly does have the worst kind of luck. He was in Kerela to attend a Pooja that was meant for Achamma, something that my otherwise very practical father was told would ease her soul. When he got the news he hurried to Coimbatore to catch a flight to see his mother one last time- a flight that was delayed twice before being cancelled. His cousins who left Kerela at the same time that he was in Coimbatore for his flight, reached Banaglore hours before he did despite hurrying into a taxi as quickly as he could. 

As we waited for Achan that day my cousins, aunts and uncles from across the country came to Elechan’s house. We were her legacy and as each person walked in I couldn’t help but marvel at what this unlikely couple, thrown together as a bargain, had achieved for the world.

It took me back to when we sat around Ammama as her life slowly ebbed out of her. I know we sat around her- Reikhi and Pranic Healing all around and Oppa straight in from the UK changing her clothes and singing to Ammama as she drew her last breaths.

Both my grandmothers passed way in peace- one with all her family around her and the other in the peace of the early morning looking more serene than ever before, still waiting for her son to return. My grandfathers died differently but both in their daughter’s laps. One left a family that needed to pull itself together and find a way to survive while the other left a family who mourned his loss but celebrated the life he lived.

When Velliamma and Velliachan  (my mother’s sister and her husband) drove up from Chennai to pay their condolences I realized that I was in a room full of the people my four grandparents caused to happen- a room that was bathed in the sparkle of laughter and a certain togetherness. Their life, their sorrows, the dreams they had, the people they were- the people we are. Every chance was held together in this room.

Us cousins were banished into Amu and Ponnu’s room for being too loud. The “adults” (as if we weren’t that already that with my two brothers’ wives in amongst us grandchildren) smiled at us as they said we were too loud for a house in mourning. But, I wanted to shout (and knowing me, I probably did), we weren’t a house in mourning- we were in house in celebration; a celebration of the legacy my Achamma and Achachan had left the world. 

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A special thank you to my Baby Mema who read this and tried as best she could to point out my madness and prejudice without being judgmental about any of it. These are her notes to clarify a lot of what I got horribly wrong. 

Note 1: I personally wouldn't put it this way because it was prestigious and honorable at that time to enroll one’s child for the service of the nation and not because of an affordability issue. I’m not sure if I’m right or wrong but my understanding is that it was not very cheap to do so and had tough entrance exams and interviews to get through. Your dad was brilliant in academics and so he got through to Sainik School

Note 2: He wasn't a dunce! There are stories of him and Prasanna winning prizes like toys for standing first in class

Note 3: Haven't heard about this part and don’t think it was necessary because nobody raised their voice against my dad's, ever! Other than under-the-breath protestations once in a while by my mom, or shedding quiet tears which was always over looked because the need to do what's best for everyone prevailed on dad and mom was considered as not having seen enough of the world to be able to know whats best! I don’t blame him for it because unlike today, that’s how all families behaved where the father was truly the head irrespective of whether he had the capability or not  

Note 4:  I know that each one of us found my dad very strict and found nothing wrong with not being given the chance to voice our opinions because the families we lived and interacted with around us, too behaved in exactly the same manner. That’s how below middle class families lived and we were happy too because the expectations were not there at all in the first place to feel unhappy or disappointed. 

Note 5: Either you got it wrong or she has- the fact is that he reached our constructed, completed and now rented house, collected the first rent, felt uneasy and went to our neighbor uncle(his own friend’s house and told them he was feeling uneasy and got them to call  call Prasanna from college over telephone

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Malayalam to English

Achachan	Paternal Grandfather
Achamma	Paternal Grandmother
Achan	Father
Amma	Mother
Ammachan	Maternal Grandfather
Ammamma	Maternal Grandmother
Cheriamma	Aunt (father's younger sister)
Elechan	Father's younger brother
Elema	Father's younger brother's wife
Ettan	Elder Brother
Mema	Youngest Aunt (father's younger sister)
Tharavadu	Family Home
Velliachan	Uncle
Velliamma	Aunt (Mother's elder sister in this case)