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 12th
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 7th
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.
--
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
--
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) | | |
