My husband’s (Sunny) friend and his wife dropped in once without notice. Sunny had gone out, and so i was left entertaining them. That was the first time i was meeting them. As i got up to make tea for them, his wife said to me.
“Mrs. Joseph, we are vegetarians. We don’t eat eggs too’
“OK”, i said sweetly. I had no intention of giving them any snacks but since she announced her expectations, i quickly pulled out ready to fry small samosas I’d stored in the freezer, and deep fried them and served.
“You sure it’s fully vegetarian?” asked the lady anxiously.
“absolutely’, i said with the sweetest smile i could plaster around my lips, hoping it’d sufficiently conceal my irritation.
The husband, Mr. A was obviously embarrassed by his wife’s obsession with vegetarianism. With an apologetic smile he explained how they once found some non veg stuff in the food served as vegetarian, and ever since his wife’s was paranoid.
And then he related a story.
“Two years back, i went to Paris. The European countries do not provide for veggies. As the official dinner was flagged off, two waiters walked into the banquet hall carrying a huge sizzler tray with a piglet sizzling. The creature was complete with the head tuned towards its right. They carried the tray and placed it in one corner of the buffet table. Then, i heard another sizzling sound, and turning around, saw another piglet sizzling in another tray, but its head turned towards its left. It was placed at the other end of the table.
The buffet started and i went around. There was nothing i could eat. So i walked up to the bearer and asked him what there was for vegetarians. He pointed to a table. I found leaves of different hues and shapes arranged high in fancy dishes.’
‘Do they think we vegetarians are cows, to eat grass?” he asked indignantly.
I repeated this tale to Sunny who had a good laugh and said.
“That story was for the benefit of his wife. I’ve seen him hogging non veg. Am sure he must have been the one to have had the largest helping of the sizzling pig!”
I have seen many many vegetarians who claim that label for the benefit of their parents, spouses and communities. Understandable duplicity. I have nothing against them. But i do have something against those hardcore vegetarians who behave as though we non vegetarians are still in the rhesus stage of evolution while they are in the ninth incarnation.
Many years ago, the doorbell of my flat rang and i opened it to find my neighbour – she was a Jain – with a steel plate in her hand. My heart skipped a beat 'cos i love some of the Guajarati dishes, and i invited her in. Before she entered she asked me, “Have you cooked non-veg in the house?”
I stared blankly at her. Who the hell is she to ask me whether i cook non-veg in MY house? After all, it is a free country.
Seeing my puzzlement she explained, “Today was ----- pooja in our house, and this is Prasad. We can’t give it to you if you have cooked non-veg in the house”.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
“Mrs. X, i am in fact cooking beef right now”.
The lady bolted, Prasad and all!
Actually it was lent period and it was the week we had decided to be complete vegetarians.
I find that the veggies have a habit of cribbing. We went for a trip to Italy in a group of forty. More than half were veggies. The breakfast at Marriott was on the house, and always there was a fantastic spread. Different types of breads, cheese, butter, fruits, fruit juices, veg salad, boiled vegetables etc. Along with this there was ham and sausage and omelette. Though the veggies could have a real sumptuous breakfast, they crib and crib and crib about how they are always ignored by the hotel caterers. A sort of dog in the manger attitude. Fed up of listening to the cribbing i ventured to say, “but there’s enough vegetarian stuff for a grand breakfast”.
“but you have more’, one irate lady squealed, a little hysterically, i thought.
“and yours and our package is the same. It’s not as though you pay more’, butted in another grumpy veggie.
The most exciting part of our trip was at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The travel operators arranged to have typical homemade Italian food at a restaurant run by an Italian family just a stone throw from the tower. The restaurant was originally their home. I was quite excited, ‘cos that was the first time that we were having Italian food. Throughout the trip, the veggies in our group insisted on Indian restaurants whichever part of Italy we were in ‘cos ‘Europe doesn’t cater to vegetarians’. And i was quite annoyed. Imagine coming all the way to Italy and having roti and pulao and makhani and kofta! But then, often in crowds such as these, we non vegetarians find ourselves feeling apologetic for our very existences – like inhabitants of planet of apes who are stuck like aliens among superior humans! So we maintained our peace.
To come back to the Leaning Tower, the members of the family that owned the restaurant themselves served us. All the men looked like Robert de Niro. The younger ones looked like him in his youth, the older ones as he is now. One of them made an announcement that the vegetarians and non vegetarians must sit separate. Immediatelty, all the vegetarian ladies went up in arms. They wanted to sit with the usual group. Some could not be separate from their husbands who was vegetarian “but ate chicken, fish and egg”. So they sat together.
Soup began to be served. I saw that the family was having some problem identifying the vegetarians from the mixed group. We started our Italian soup. I was beginning to have it with great relish when a piercing scream rent the air. A vegetarian lady was up on her feet at the table next to mine, looking agitated, gesticulating wildly.
“there’s fish in my soup, there’s fish in my soup”, she screamed at the top of her shrilly voice.
The father of the family came charging to her table, took away her soup with profuse apologies, and literally ran towards the kitchen with it. The charming son came to the table with his mother and told the lady another bowl will be served.
“make sure it has no fish pieces in it”, she said unpleasantly.
I was furious and embarrassed about my compatriot. I turned to the lady and very politely told her. “This is why they wanted to separate vegetarians from non vegetarians”.
“so they put fish into my soup because we didn’t do as they said?” she asked me angrily.
Sunny asked to not to interfere. But it really spoilt the only Italian meal we had.
I wish someone would convince these veggies that though they may be at an advanced stage of evolution we are not evolutionary dropouts because we eat non vegetarian food.
Showing posts with label Lighter vein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lighter vein. Show all posts
Monday, August 01, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
FAIR & LOVELY
My father was one of the earliest people in Kerala to manufacture soap. He had a soap factory in Thevara. My mother used to go into fits of laughter each time she related the story of my aunt’s – my father’s doting sister – effort at marketing her dear brother’s product.
My aunt was doing her graduation in St. Teresa’s college. She had a friend - let’s call her Theyyamma- who was deeply distressed 'cos she was not fair – and therefore not lovely.
‘My brother is manufacturing soap’, said my aunt to Theyyamma
’Soap? What’s soap?’
‘It’s a cake like thing which lathers. If you wash your face and body with it, it’ll remove all dirt. More still. If you leave the lather on your face overnight, and wash it off in the morning, you’ll be several shades fairer.’
Theyyamma went home in a high state of excitement.
But she did not come to college the next day – and the next, and the next - - - .
When my aunt came back home from college on the third day of Theyyamma’s absence, she found Theyyamma’s mother at home, looking worried, and my mother who was with her looking tense.
‘What happened to Theyyamma? ‘, my aunt asked T’s mother. She hasn’t been coming to college for three days now?’
“Theyyamma has become FAIR’ said my mother sharply. 'Her skin has come off her face!”
Fortunately for my father, those were not days when people rushed to the consumer court.
And fortunately for Theyyamma, my father apparently hadn’t USED too caustic stuff in the soap – for her skin came back without any damage, thereby not adding one more illustration to the repository of examples of the Malayalam proverb VELUKKAAN THECHATHU PAANDDAYI (what was applied to become fair caused permanent discolouration).
This happened in the late 1940s.
Today, five decades later, women continue to try out home remedies and multinational products to lighten their complexions.
And the ads for these fairness creams are so idiotic that one cannot but marvel at how anyone – from models to script writers – can have any involvement with them. i recently saw one in which the dhoti clad pundit complete with the mark of Vishnu on his forehead stride to the tune of Vedic chants to dig out ancients wisdom from antique books handed down to him to find the formula for fairness – all because his daughter was denied a job on account of her colour. Of course, the wisdom of the forefathers did not let him down. The result – herbs crushed and made into paste to create the ayurvedic Fair and Lovely cream!
Of course, the daughter is selected for the same job after a week’s application of Fair and Lovely!
And now, the fairness bug has bitten the male species too. I belong to the generation where the more idealistic believed that handsome is what handsome does, and less idealistic ones believed that handsome is tall and dark. Now all that’s changed. Now handsome is fair! And so we have fairness creams for men, and equally ridiculous ads selling them!
How does one explain this obsession with fairness? No dearth of theories, i know, but can i have yours?
My aunt was doing her graduation in St. Teresa’s college. She had a friend - let’s call her Theyyamma- who was deeply distressed 'cos she was not fair – and therefore not lovely.
‘My brother is manufacturing soap’, said my aunt to Theyyamma
’Soap? What’s soap?’
‘It’s a cake like thing which lathers. If you wash your face and body with it, it’ll remove all dirt. More still. If you leave the lather on your face overnight, and wash it off in the morning, you’ll be several shades fairer.’
Theyyamma went home in a high state of excitement.
But she did not come to college the next day – and the next, and the next - - - .
When my aunt came back home from college on the third day of Theyyamma’s absence, she found Theyyamma’s mother at home, looking worried, and my mother who was with her looking tense.
‘What happened to Theyyamma? ‘, my aunt asked T’s mother. She hasn’t been coming to college for three days now?’
“Theyyamma has become FAIR’ said my mother sharply. 'Her skin has come off her face!”
Fortunately for my father, those were not days when people rushed to the consumer court.
And fortunately for Theyyamma, my father apparently hadn’t USED too caustic stuff in the soap – for her skin came back without any damage, thereby not adding one more illustration to the repository of examples of the Malayalam proverb VELUKKAAN THECHATHU PAANDDAYI (what was applied to become fair caused permanent discolouration).
This happened in the late 1940s.
Today, five decades later, women continue to try out home remedies and multinational products to lighten their complexions.
And the ads for these fairness creams are so idiotic that one cannot but marvel at how anyone – from models to script writers – can have any involvement with them. i recently saw one in which the dhoti clad pundit complete with the mark of Vishnu on his forehead stride to the tune of Vedic chants to dig out ancients wisdom from antique books handed down to him to find the formula for fairness – all because his daughter was denied a job on account of her colour. Of course, the wisdom of the forefathers did not let him down. The result – herbs crushed and made into paste to create the ayurvedic Fair and Lovely cream!
Of course, the daughter is selected for the same job after a week’s application of Fair and Lovely!
And now, the fairness bug has bitten the male species too. I belong to the generation where the more idealistic believed that handsome is what handsome does, and less idealistic ones believed that handsome is tall and dark. Now all that’s changed. Now handsome is fair! And so we have fairness creams for men, and equally ridiculous ads selling them!
How does one explain this obsession with fairness? No dearth of theories, i know, but can i have yours?
Friday, July 08, 2011
Autograph
My cousin Martinette (name changed, of course), about ten years older than me, held her hand behind her back and asked, ‘Where’s aunty’
‘Upstairs, with the seamstress’. I replied.
She walked backwards till the stairs, giving me vicious looks all the time, then whirled around so fast that i couldn’t see what she had in her hand, and bolted upstairs.
Martinette – i hated her. That look on her face portended impending danger for me. I was in the 7th standard, and did a lot of things Martinette didn’t approve of. I used to read a lot, something she believed spoilt a girl. And i read English novels. Some of the Erle Stanley Gardner books had covers of women who looked and dressed like Marylin Monroe. During one of her visits home earlier, Martinette carried one of them to my mother and told her i was reading pornography! Amma was shocked, distressed and furious. For two reasons. Her daughter was travelling down the primrose path that led to hell. Also, Martinette had a vicious tongue. She’ll make sure that the whole family with roots in many parts of kerala and India will come to know of the path chosen by amma’s darling daughter whom she had put through Nazareth convent for years, while she(poor me) should have been playing cricket with her brothers, and climbing trees. I still remember the way amma came into my room holding the Perry Mason thriller.
‘What rubbish are you reading?’ she demanded with anger and sadness in her eyes. The second emotion upset me, and i was furious with Martinette who stood triumphantly next to amma, her Iago like beady eyes moving expectantly between amma and me, her jaws literally dripping with the blood she was about to draw.
‘It’s not rubbish, amma’, i said.
‘It’s dirty, aunty, it’s dirty. I know, you read it if you want’, butted in Martinette.
‘Yes, you read it amma, and you’ll know it not a dirty novel’, i said, looking earnestly at
amma.
‘I don’t have to read it. I can see the picture on the cover’, amma said. It was the picture of a slim tall blonde win a red gown with plunging neckline and a long slit in the skirt which exposed most of her long leg. To make matters worse, she had a cigarette hanging from her lips.
Martinette was looking at me with such glee that that the well-bred soft-spoken girl that amma had brought up cracked like a mud face pack and the real me emerged. I jumped up, snatched the book from amma, grabbed Martinette by her hand and dragged her to my father who was reading newspaper in the living room.
“Where are you going, Molly. What are you doing? Leave Martinette alone’, she shouted after me, following me. Poor amma, she was really upset. Amma probably thought i was going to throw her out of the house or give her a beating. Martnette, then, would have something more to talk about me to all my relatives.
My father put down the paper and quietly sized up the situation. He seemed to have got the right picture of what was going on.
I held out the book to him and said, ‘is this a dirty book? Martinette says so and amma believes her.’
Ichayan (i call my father that) looked at the book and asked Martinette, ’what’s wrong with this book? Have you read this?’
‘No’ said Martinette sheepishly.
‘Then how do you know it is dirty?’ asked Ichayan.
‘Look at the cover’, said Martinette, still assertive and belligerent.
‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, he told her. He then looked at amma and said, ‘i bought her this book yesterday’. That was not true. But i was delirious with happiness. So was amma. She was ecstatic that my father had removed the fuse out of a potentially explosive scandal.
To come back to the next episode, I wondered what she was up to as she raced up the stairs. In a few minutes, i heard amma call me and i went up, nervous.
Amma was reading my autograph! I was leaving the school i had studied in for seven years and had passed the autograph around to my friends. She looked at Martinette with a poker face and said. ‘Ask her’.
Martinette opened the autograph at page in which was written
Drink hot coffee, drink hot tea, burn your lips and think of me. The signature looked like Ram.
“Who’s this Ram? ‘asked Martinette.
I ignored that pest and, looking at amma, said, “Rama, amma, Shenoy’s daughter’.
‘Oh’, said amma, smiling.
Martinette opened another page in which it was written
Life is not a Midsummer Night’s dream
Nor is it a Tempest.
It’s a Comedy of Errors
So spend it As You Like It
‘Well’, i said looking at Martinette with all the contempt i could hoist on my face.
‘What a message! Is this what you talk among yourself? How you trivialise all the Christian values! How horrible your friends might be!’ she said, miffed that the first bullet proved to be an empty cartridge.
Again i ignored her. I turned to amma and said, ‘amma. Don’t you recognise that they are all Shakespearean titles?’
‘Of course, i did.’ she said calmly.
Martinette’s face clouded over with a malicious, hate filled expression.
‘What about this?’, she asked, trying to smile triumphantly but ending up with an ugly grimace. Her final salvo, she read out from the page.
You no worry, you no care
You go marry a millionaire
When he dies, you no cry
You go marry another guy.
I laughed. So did amma. Martinette’s jaw dropped in utter consternation.
‘Aunty, you don’t find anything wrong with the advice given to her?’ she asked, angry and bitterly disappointed.
‘I find it very funny’, said my mother laughing. ‘That’s just an exercise in rhyming.’
You should have seen Martinette’s face. If she had her way, she’d have punched amma till my mother passed out and would have pounced on me like a predator.
‘Molly, why don’t you call all your friends one day for lunch’, asked amma.
That busybody has ever since kept away from my house.
‘Upstairs, with the seamstress’. I replied.
She walked backwards till the stairs, giving me vicious looks all the time, then whirled around so fast that i couldn’t see what she had in her hand, and bolted upstairs.
Martinette – i hated her. That look on her face portended impending danger for me. I was in the 7th standard, and did a lot of things Martinette didn’t approve of. I used to read a lot, something she believed spoilt a girl. And i read English novels. Some of the Erle Stanley Gardner books had covers of women who looked and dressed like Marylin Monroe. During one of her visits home earlier, Martinette carried one of them to my mother and told her i was reading pornography! Amma was shocked, distressed and furious. For two reasons. Her daughter was travelling down the primrose path that led to hell. Also, Martinette had a vicious tongue. She’ll make sure that the whole family with roots in many parts of kerala and India will come to know of the path chosen by amma’s darling daughter whom she had put through Nazareth convent for years, while she(poor me) should have been playing cricket with her brothers, and climbing trees. I still remember the way amma came into my room holding the Perry Mason thriller.
‘What rubbish are you reading?’ she demanded with anger and sadness in her eyes. The second emotion upset me, and i was furious with Martinette who stood triumphantly next to amma, her Iago like beady eyes moving expectantly between amma and me, her jaws literally dripping with the blood she was about to draw.
‘It’s not rubbish, amma’, i said.
‘It’s dirty, aunty, it’s dirty. I know, you read it if you want’, butted in Martinette.
‘Yes, you read it amma, and you’ll know it not a dirty novel’, i said, looking earnestly at
amma.
‘I don’t have to read it. I can see the picture on the cover’, amma said. It was the picture of a slim tall blonde win a red gown with plunging neckline and a long slit in the skirt which exposed most of her long leg. To make matters worse, she had a cigarette hanging from her lips.
Martinette was looking at me with such glee that that the well-bred soft-spoken girl that amma had brought up cracked like a mud face pack and the real me emerged. I jumped up, snatched the book from amma, grabbed Martinette by her hand and dragged her to my father who was reading newspaper in the living room.
“Where are you going, Molly. What are you doing? Leave Martinette alone’, she shouted after me, following me. Poor amma, she was really upset. Amma probably thought i was going to throw her out of the house or give her a beating. Martnette, then, would have something more to talk about me to all my relatives.
My father put down the paper and quietly sized up the situation. He seemed to have got the right picture of what was going on.
I held out the book to him and said, ‘is this a dirty book? Martinette says so and amma believes her.’
Ichayan (i call my father that) looked at the book and asked Martinette, ’what’s wrong with this book? Have you read this?’
‘No’ said Martinette sheepishly.
‘Then how do you know it is dirty?’ asked Ichayan.
‘Look at the cover’, said Martinette, still assertive and belligerent.
‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, he told her. He then looked at amma and said, ‘i bought her this book yesterday’. That was not true. But i was delirious with happiness. So was amma. She was ecstatic that my father had removed the fuse out of a potentially explosive scandal.
To come back to the next episode, I wondered what she was up to as she raced up the stairs. In a few minutes, i heard amma call me and i went up, nervous.
Amma was reading my autograph! I was leaving the school i had studied in for seven years and had passed the autograph around to my friends. She looked at Martinette with a poker face and said. ‘Ask her’.
Martinette opened the autograph at page in which was written
Drink hot coffee, drink hot tea, burn your lips and think of me. The signature looked like Ram.
“Who’s this Ram? ‘asked Martinette.
I ignored that pest and, looking at amma, said, “Rama, amma, Shenoy’s daughter’.
‘Oh’, said amma, smiling.
Martinette opened another page in which it was written
Life is not a Midsummer Night’s dream
Nor is it a Tempest.
It’s a Comedy of Errors
So spend it As You Like It
‘Well’, i said looking at Martinette with all the contempt i could hoist on my face.
‘What a message! Is this what you talk among yourself? How you trivialise all the Christian values! How horrible your friends might be!’ she said, miffed that the first bullet proved to be an empty cartridge.
Again i ignored her. I turned to amma and said, ‘amma. Don’t you recognise that they are all Shakespearean titles?’
‘Of course, i did.’ she said calmly.
Martinette’s face clouded over with a malicious, hate filled expression.
‘What about this?’, she asked, trying to smile triumphantly but ending up with an ugly grimace. Her final salvo, she read out from the page.
You no worry, you no care
You go marry a millionaire
When he dies, you no cry
You go marry another guy.
I laughed. So did amma. Martinette’s jaw dropped in utter consternation.
‘Aunty, you don’t find anything wrong with the advice given to her?’ she asked, angry and bitterly disappointed.
‘I find it very funny’, said my mother laughing. ‘That’s just an exercise in rhyming.’
You should have seen Martinette’s face. If she had her way, she’d have punched amma till my mother passed out and would have pounced on me like a predator.
‘Molly, why don’t you call all your friends one day for lunch’, asked amma.
That busybody has ever since kept away from my house.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Kochin Flashback-The Paris Tailor
“Where do you stitch your blouse?”
This is a query which is bound to pop up where ever two or three women gather for whatever purpose. I have lived in five states in India - Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra, and i have found that all sari wearing Indian women, regardless of the circles they belong to, can relate to each other on this issue. It’s a common ground for the housewife and the working women, the metrosophistcate and the rural innocent, the mallu and the bong to meet and discuss, all differences forgotten, and find a camaraderie comprising birds of the strangest feathers. Provided, of course, they all resort to the sari on some occasion.
Stitching the sari blouse is an art. And that too, a rare art which requires a skill of the highest order.
Here are a few excerpts from a sari blouse conversation. The M in the scripts is me. The other characters are real, but with names and relationships changed.
Period: 1970
Venue: Ernakulum
Nilu: M, where do you get you blouse stitched?
M: AT Menon’s.
Nilu: He does an excellent job. The neckline is very low (please reader, it’s BACK neckline, ok?), yet the fit s perfect. The shoulder doesn’t slip down.
M said nothing but smiled to herself.
Nilu: why are you smiling, M?
M: i just remembered what my father said as i was leaving for college this morning. He called me back just as i was about to open the gate, and asked –
‘M, who stitches your blouses? ‘
‘Menon’. It was my mother who replied
‘Next time you go there, you take take all my neck ties. I don’t use them anymore. You can stitch one blouse with each tie’.
Nilu: Was he angry?
M. No way. He was amused. After all it is only the back neck that’s low.
The plunging back neckline was becoming trendy, and M soon came to know that her blouses were becoming very popular in the college.
Now, now don’t let your jaws hang like that or your eyes pop out like Jim Carrey’s. She didn’t mean that M flew out to Paris to get her blouses stitched, like Jacqueline Kennedy who flew out there to get her apparel designed. Paris Tailor was an elderly man who had a shabby shop on the road leading from the college to the MG road. Stylish women, including those from the ‘conservative, ancient Syrian Christian’ families went to him to get their blouses stitched.
It fits like the second skin, someone said during a typical conversation revolving around this much sought after tailor.
Yes, it fits perfect, yet it has excellent wearing comfort. You can lift your hands as much as you want. It’ll not pinch.
The thing about him is, there is consistency in his work. And if there is the slightest suspicion of tiny fold, he’ll alter it for you.
In fact, he’ll not give it to you unless it is a perfect fit.
You mean to say you have to show him after you try it out?
Of course. He insists on it.
He must be a pervert. That was M.
If you want to get your blouse done perfectly, you’ll have to put up with such perversions. Anyway, he’s very professional about his perversions.
Ha, ha, ha. That was M.
What ha ha ha. A skilled workman is very finicky about the details.
M remained silent.
Why don’t you tell her about the way her takes measurements.
You don’t have to go into that. I’ve heard enough about it. replied M.
M’s cousin had once told her about how the Paris Tailor guy took measurements. He’d ask his customer to step in behind the screen. If the customer was a young girl, the mother would usually follow the daughter behind the screen. Then the tailor himself would take the pallu down and tuck it around the waist of the customer. He’d then start measuring. To stitch a blouse like it is second skin yet enabling you to raise your hand as much as possible, or swing it in all directions without feeling the pinch, the measurement has to be correct to the hundredth of a millimetre.
It is said that this guy even suggests to his customers about the brand of inner wear she should wear so that his tailoring skill will be shown to the best advantage. Regarding taking the measurements, well, I leave it to your imagination. Was it Keats who said that what is left to the imagination is infinitely superior to explicit descriptions?
M’s mother refused to get her daughter’s blouse stitched by the Paris Tailor, though she was very particular that M wore well fitting blouses. She always took M to Menon, who too was meticulous about measurements, but he had a lady assistant specially trained to measure. Menon would stand outside the counter and ask his client to get into the counter. At the opposite wall of the counter was a small room at a lower level. The client and the assistant would go down into that portion. The client would face the lady. Menon, standing outside the counter would barely be able to see the customer standing behind the partially drawn curtain . The assistant would take the measurements and call them out to Menon who would note them in his book.
He’s so decent, said M’s mother. Not like Paris tailor. And his blouses are good too. How can any mother allow her daughters to go to Paris tailor?
His work is perfect, amma. It’s like second skin. And very comfortable to wear. You can swing your arms as much as possible and yet feel no catch, said M to her mother. Menon’s blouses have perfect neckline, but there’s always a tiny crease at the arm pits and a small pinch too.
Amma gave M a dirty look. Every blouse should have a tiny fold, or people would think you’re not wearing one. And why do you want to swing your arm? Are you going to play volley ball in a sari blouse? Said amma crossly. Don’t get any ideas into your head, young lady. Menon is good enough.
So M walked up to Tinkle and picked up a quarrel with her for spreading canards about her. Tinkle, Menon stitches my blouse, not Paris tailor. If ever i hear that are going around telling everyone that i get my blouse stitched at Paris Tailor, I’ll sue you for defamation.
Those were the days when i was hooked on to Perry Mason novels and so i could get a little technical which i think scared Tinkle, who, i knew, read only the prescribed texts.
In the year 1973, Paris tailor caused a rather serious discord between my cousin and her husband. One day, my cousin came to my college during lunch interval and took me to a lonely corner in the college compound.
M, can you do me a favour? She asked in hushed tones. I had given four blouses to be stitched at the Paris tailor’s. I had to come to Ernakulum today for an engagement, and was hoping to pick up these blouses. But when i tried them out, there were a few minor problems which he said he’ll correct. He’ll keep them ready tomorrow. I can’t come again to pick them up. Can you please collect them for me?
M was horrified. If someone sees me going into that shop and tells amma, i’ll be slaughtered.
You manage it somehow, M. Be a darling. And keep the blouses with you. DONT SEND THEM THROUGH ANYBODY. I’ll pick them up myself. If my husband or mother in law or sisters in-law comes to know, i’ll be slaughtered. They are as stupid and laid back like you and your mother.
M got her tomboyish friend Beena to pick the blouses. I want to take a look at that lecherous old goon, she said.
M gave the blouses to her cousin when she came down to Ernakulum next.
M saw her next at a common cousin’s wedding. She looked glum.
What’s wrong with you? M asked
My husband was searching my handbag for change and found Paris tailors ‘delivered’ chit. All hell broke loose.Not only is he not talking to me ever since, that spiteful outdated creature who doesn’t deserve to be my husband cut up all the blouses, so that i won’t wear them. That’s why I’m wearing this stupid badly stitched blouse today.
Did you tell him i collected the blouses? M asked alarmed.
You think I’m that stupid? It’ll become a big family feud then. Why did i have to get married into a family which demonises the Paris Tailor?
The legendry old man of the Paris tailor has now been long laid to rest, but his son’s capitalised on his brand name and is now doing roaring business in Kochi. He is equally sought after as his father was, but is not talked about in hushed tones, like his father was.
Times have changed. To be more precise, attitudes have changed. A professional doing his work is treated with equal respect, be it a doctor or a tailor. In the seventies, the Paris tailor represented the vacillation of a conservative puritanical affluent society between the desire for professionalism and the entrenched values of modesty for women.
Today, i wonder how many mothers accompany their daughters when they go to the tailor to get sari blouses stitched.
This is a query which is bound to pop up where ever two or three women gather for whatever purpose. I have lived in five states in India - Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra, and i have found that all sari wearing Indian women, regardless of the circles they belong to, can relate to each other on this issue. It’s a common ground for the housewife and the working women, the metrosophistcate and the rural innocent, the mallu and the bong to meet and discuss, all differences forgotten, and find a camaraderie comprising birds of the strangest feathers. Provided, of course, they all resort to the sari on some occasion.
Stitching the sari blouse is an art. And that too, a rare art which requires a skill of the highest order.
Here are a few excerpts from a sari blouse conversation. The M in the scripts is me. The other characters are real, but with names and relationships changed.
Period: 1970
Venue: Ernakulum
Nilu: M, where do you get you blouse stitched?
M: AT Menon’s.
Nilu: He does an excellent job. The neckline is very low (please reader, it’s BACK neckline, ok?), yet the fit s perfect. The shoulder doesn’t slip down.
M said nothing but smiled to herself.
Nilu: why are you smiling, M?
M: i just remembered what my father said as i was leaving for college this morning. He called me back just as i was about to open the gate, and asked –
‘M, who stitches your blouses? ‘
‘Menon’. It was my mother who replied
‘Next time you go there, you take take all my neck ties. I don’t use them anymore. You can stitch one blouse with each tie’.
Nilu: Was he angry?
M. No way. He was amused. After all it is only the back neck that’s low.
The plunging back neckline was becoming trendy, and M soon came to know that her blouses were becoming very popular in the college.
Now Tinkle, M’s classmate, was that jealous type, and for some reason, she hated M. So she spread the news that M. got her blouses stitched at the Paris Tailors.
Now, now don’t let your jaws hang like that or your eyes pop out like Jim Carrey’s. She didn’t mean that M flew out to Paris to get her blouses stitched, like Jacqueline Kennedy who flew out there to get her apparel designed. Paris Tailor was an elderly man who had a shabby shop on the road leading from the college to the MG road. Stylish women, including those from the ‘conservative, ancient Syrian Christian’ families went to him to get their blouses stitched.
It fits like the second skin, someone said during a typical conversation revolving around this much sought after tailor.
Yes, it fits perfect, yet it has excellent wearing comfort. You can lift your hands as much as you want. It’ll not pinch.
The thing about him is, there is consistency in his work. And if there is the slightest suspicion of tiny fold, he’ll alter it for you.
In fact, he’ll not give it to you unless it is a perfect fit.
You mean to say you have to show him after you try it out?
Of course. He insists on it.
He must be a pervert. That was M.
If you want to get your blouse done perfectly, you’ll have to put up with such perversions. Anyway, he’s very professional about his perversions.
Ha, ha, ha. That was M.
What ha ha ha. A skilled workman is very finicky about the details.
M remained silent.
Why don’t you tell her about the way her takes measurements.
You don’t have to go into that. I’ve heard enough about it. replied M.
M’s cousin had once told her about how the Paris Tailor guy took measurements. He’d ask his customer to step in behind the screen. If the customer was a young girl, the mother would usually follow the daughter behind the screen. Then the tailor himself would take the pallu down and tuck it around the waist of the customer. He’d then start measuring. To stitch a blouse like it is second skin yet enabling you to raise your hand as much as possible, or swing it in all directions without feeling the pinch, the measurement has to be correct to the hundredth of a millimetre.
It is said that this guy even suggests to his customers about the brand of inner wear she should wear so that his tailoring skill will be shown to the best advantage. Regarding taking the measurements, well, I leave it to your imagination. Was it Keats who said that what is left to the imagination is infinitely superior to explicit descriptions?
M’s mother refused to get her daughter’s blouse stitched by the Paris Tailor, though she was very particular that M wore well fitting blouses. She always took M to Menon, who too was meticulous about measurements, but he had a lady assistant specially trained to measure. Menon would stand outside the counter and ask his client to get into the counter. At the opposite wall of the counter was a small room at a lower level. The client and the assistant would go down into that portion. The client would face the lady. Menon, standing outside the counter would barely be able to see the customer standing behind the partially drawn curtain . The assistant would take the measurements and call them out to Menon who would note them in his book.
He’s so decent, said M’s mother. Not like Paris tailor. And his blouses are good too. How can any mother allow her daughters to go to Paris tailor?
His work is perfect, amma. It’s like second skin. And very comfortable to wear. You can swing your arms as much as possible and yet feel no catch, said M to her mother. Menon’s blouses have perfect neckline, but there’s always a tiny crease at the arm pits and a small pinch too.
Amma gave M a dirty look. Every blouse should have a tiny fold, or people would think you’re not wearing one. And why do you want to swing your arm? Are you going to play volley ball in a sari blouse? Said amma crossly. Don’t get any ideas into your head, young lady. Menon is good enough.
So M walked up to Tinkle and picked up a quarrel with her for spreading canards about her. Tinkle, Menon stitches my blouse, not Paris tailor. If ever i hear that are going around telling everyone that i get my blouse stitched at Paris Tailor, I’ll sue you for defamation.
Those were the days when i was hooked on to Perry Mason novels and so i could get a little technical which i think scared Tinkle, who, i knew, read only the prescribed texts.
In the year 1973, Paris tailor caused a rather serious discord between my cousin and her husband. One day, my cousin came to my college during lunch interval and took me to a lonely corner in the college compound.
M, can you do me a favour? She asked in hushed tones. I had given four blouses to be stitched at the Paris tailor’s. I had to come to Ernakulum today for an engagement, and was hoping to pick up these blouses. But when i tried them out, there were a few minor problems which he said he’ll correct. He’ll keep them ready tomorrow. I can’t come again to pick them up. Can you please collect them for me?
M was horrified. If someone sees me going into that shop and tells amma, i’ll be slaughtered.
You manage it somehow, M. Be a darling. And keep the blouses with you. DONT SEND THEM THROUGH ANYBODY. I’ll pick them up myself. If my husband or mother in law or sisters in-law comes to know, i’ll be slaughtered. They are as stupid and laid back like you and your mother.
M got her tomboyish friend Beena to pick the blouses. I want to take a look at that lecherous old goon, she said.
M gave the blouses to her cousin when she came down to Ernakulum next.
**
What’s wrong with you? M asked
My husband was searching my handbag for change and found Paris tailors ‘delivered’ chit. All hell broke loose.Not only is he not talking to me ever since, that spiteful outdated creature who doesn’t deserve to be my husband cut up all the blouses, so that i won’t wear them. That’s why I’m wearing this stupid badly stitched blouse today.
Did you tell him i collected the blouses? M asked alarmed.
You think I’m that stupid? It’ll become a big family feud then. Why did i have to get married into a family which demonises the Paris Tailor?
The legendry old man of the Paris tailor has now been long laid to rest, but his son’s capitalised on his brand name and is now doing roaring business in Kochi. He is equally sought after as his father was, but is not talked about in hushed tones, like his father was.
Times have changed. To be more precise, attitudes have changed. A professional doing his work is treated with equal respect, be it a doctor or a tailor. In the seventies, the Paris tailor represented the vacillation of a conservative puritanical affluent society between the desire for professionalism and the entrenched values of modesty for women.
Today, i wonder how many mothers accompany their daughters when they go to the tailor to get sari blouses stitched.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Adjustments
The word “miscellaneous” is a standing joke in my family.
My father gave us, his children, access to the cash box in which money for weekly expenses was kept. He also had his famous account books – you know those long broad ones used in offices. Whoever took money from the cash box had to make entry in the cash book. At the end of the day, he used to check the account book. The difference between the debit and credit was entered by him as miscellaneous. When miscellaneous expenses exceeded permissible limit, he used to inform us. That was an observation that the entries were not being made properly.
It so happened that, at one point in tme, the miscellaneous expenses began to exhibit an unrelenting tendency to move up steadily. My brothers called an emergency meeting to conduct a post-mortem. I was around 8 years old and had just been given access to the cash box. Since the erratic behaviour of the 'miscellaneous' was a recent phenomenon, they realised that i was responsible for this inflation, which, they feared, would end up in controls on the cash box operation.
“Molly, you are the one messing up the accounts book”, accused brothers No.1. I had six brothers, by the way.
I was annoyed, cos there was some truth in it. I kept a grumpy silence.
“Have you been forgetting to make entry when you take cash?” cross examined brother No2. (The numbering, incidentally, is not in the order of seniority, but in the order of appearance in the narrative)
“No. “, i replied, angrily.
My younger brother (i have only one) who was three years my junior, and who had been the beneficiary of my recently acquired access to the cash box, played the Brutus on me.
“When she takes 4 rupees, she writes only 3”, the smart youngster yelled accusingly, trying to win his way into to the senior males’ good books.
I pounced on the traitor, rightly indignant, but was restrained by my older and wiser siblings.
“Take it easy, Molly, can’t afford to antagonise him. He’ll spill the beans with ichayan too. So better to humour him.” Said brother No.2
“The one rupee extra is for the Sea Lord ice cream for two of us – and now he is squealing on me”, i raged in high pitched excitement.
“Why don’t you write that you took money for the ice-cream? Ichayan won’t say anything”. That was brother No.3.
“Amma’ll scold me’, i sulked. “But i gave this stupid fellow ice-cream or sweets or bombay mittai each time i bought these. In fact, i bought them mainly for him”. I couldn’t get over the betrayal.
“Leave it Molly, he’s only a kid”, pacified Brother No.3
“But a real kandhari”, i said glaring at the little villain. ”You wait and see”, i told him shaking my index finger at him.”I’ll never buy you Sea Lord ice cream again”, i said viciously.
He started bawling, loud. “I’ll tell ichayan you took the money”, he screamed between wails.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, Mon”, said brother No 3.”If she doesn’t buy u ice cream, we’ll give you. We’ll buy you condensed milk and Cadbury’s too. You can dip Cadbury into condensed milk and eat, It’s so tasty”, said No 3, smiling encouragingly at him.
The wails stopped in a decrescendo while a smile slowly spread on the little fellow’s face.
After dealing with the probable threat from him, no 3 turned to me. “Take whatever you want but enter it in the account book. If you don’t want amma to know you bought sweets or ice-cream don’t write it, but show the correct amount.”
“But amma knows that six puffs cost only 3 rupees (i usually took money from cash box for household expenses, to be given to the helps who go out to buy things). So if i write 4, she’ll want to know what the one rupee was for.”
“Then you must write Puffs, pencil, eraser, foolscap paper or something like that and then show 4 rupees as the expenditure. You know amma won’t check the stationary items.” said No.3.
“What if she checks?” i said, not quite liking the idea of lying.
“Don’t be such a pedichhoori (lily livered). How do you think we buy condensed milk and Cadbury’s and badam kheer and go for movies?”
Years later, i discovered the truth that this accounts adjustment tendency is inherent in the male genes. When my son Mathew was in the plus 2, my husband was away in audit, and i had to take care of the accounts in the house – something which i hated. So i entrusted money to my son who was in the 11th standard. I soon discovered discrepancy in the balance, and told him this should not happen.
“OK, amma”. He said.”I’ll take care of it”.
Next weekend, when i checked the account book (it was a diary converted), i found a new entry had appeared as the last item in the daily acounts.It was XYZ.
“What’s XYZ, Mathan?”
“The money that i can’t account for.”
“Can’t or wont? ”
“ I don’t know when it went, amma. X, after all, stands for the unknown factor’ he said, grinning.
"And Y?"
"Another unknown. Z still another". This was followed by his stupid heh, heh, heh.
As long as he was the accountant in the family, the highest expenses in the family were for XYZ.
The grandfather’s ‘miscellaneous’ metamorphosed into XYZ in the hands of the grandson.
XYZ- the letters which fig leafed Adam’s weakness!
My father gave us, his children, access to the cash box in which money for weekly expenses was kept. He also had his famous account books – you know those long broad ones used in offices. Whoever took money from the cash box had to make entry in the cash book. At the end of the day, he used to check the account book. The difference between the debit and credit was entered by him as miscellaneous. When miscellaneous expenses exceeded permissible limit, he used to inform us. That was an observation that the entries were not being made properly.
It so happened that, at one point in tme, the miscellaneous expenses began to exhibit an unrelenting tendency to move up steadily. My brothers called an emergency meeting to conduct a post-mortem. I was around 8 years old and had just been given access to the cash box. Since the erratic behaviour of the 'miscellaneous' was a recent phenomenon, they realised that i was responsible for this inflation, which, they feared, would end up in controls on the cash box operation.
“Molly, you are the one messing up the accounts book”, accused brothers No.1. I had six brothers, by the way.
I was annoyed, cos there was some truth in it. I kept a grumpy silence.
“Have you been forgetting to make entry when you take cash?” cross examined brother No2. (The numbering, incidentally, is not in the order of seniority, but in the order of appearance in the narrative)
“No. “, i replied, angrily.
My younger brother (i have only one) who was three years my junior, and who had been the beneficiary of my recently acquired access to the cash box, played the Brutus on me.
“When she takes 4 rupees, she writes only 3”, the smart youngster yelled accusingly, trying to win his way into to the senior males’ good books.
I pounced on the traitor, rightly indignant, but was restrained by my older and wiser siblings.
“Take it easy, Molly, can’t afford to antagonise him. He’ll spill the beans with ichayan too. So better to humour him.” Said brother No.2
“The one rupee extra is for the Sea Lord ice cream for two of us – and now he is squealing on me”, i raged in high pitched excitement.
“Why don’t you write that you took money for the ice-cream? Ichayan won’t say anything”. That was brother No.3.
“Amma’ll scold me’, i sulked. “But i gave this stupid fellow ice-cream or sweets or bombay mittai each time i bought these. In fact, i bought them mainly for him”. I couldn’t get over the betrayal.
“Leave it Molly, he’s only a kid”, pacified Brother No.3
“But a real kandhari”, i said glaring at the little villain. ”You wait and see”, i told him shaking my index finger at him.”I’ll never buy you Sea Lord ice cream again”, i said viciously.
He started bawling, loud. “I’ll tell ichayan you took the money”, he screamed between wails.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, Mon”, said brother No 3.”If she doesn’t buy u ice cream, we’ll give you. We’ll buy you condensed milk and Cadbury’s too. You can dip Cadbury into condensed milk and eat, It’s so tasty”, said No 3, smiling encouragingly at him.
The wails stopped in a decrescendo while a smile slowly spread on the little fellow’s face.
After dealing with the probable threat from him, no 3 turned to me. “Take whatever you want but enter it in the account book. If you don’t want amma to know you bought sweets or ice-cream don’t write it, but show the correct amount.”
“But amma knows that six puffs cost only 3 rupees (i usually took money from cash box for household expenses, to be given to the helps who go out to buy things). So if i write 4, she’ll want to know what the one rupee was for.”
“Then you must write Puffs, pencil, eraser, foolscap paper or something like that and then show 4 rupees as the expenditure. You know amma won’t check the stationary items.” said No.3.
“What if she checks?” i said, not quite liking the idea of lying.
“Don’t be such a pedichhoori (lily livered). How do you think we buy condensed milk and Cadbury’s and badam kheer and go for movies?”
Years later, i discovered the truth that this accounts adjustment tendency is inherent in the male genes. When my son Mathew was in the plus 2, my husband was away in audit, and i had to take care of the accounts in the house – something which i hated. So i entrusted money to my son who was in the 11th standard. I soon discovered discrepancy in the balance, and told him this should not happen.
“OK, amma”. He said.”I’ll take care of it”.
Next weekend, when i checked the account book (it was a diary converted), i found a new entry had appeared as the last item in the daily acounts.It was XYZ.
“What’s XYZ, Mathan?”
“The money that i can’t account for.”
“Can’t or wont? ”
“ I don’t know when it went, amma. X, after all, stands for the unknown factor’ he said, grinning.
"And Y?"
"Another unknown. Z still another". This was followed by his stupid heh, heh, heh.
As long as he was the accountant in the family, the highest expenses in the family were for XYZ.
The grandfather’s ‘miscellaneous’ metamorphosed into XYZ in the hands of the grandson.
XYZ- the letters which fig leafed Adam’s weakness!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Indian English
“I want curtain material”.
That was the monsoon (since kerala doesn’t go strictly by the spring summer, autumn pattern) of the year 1976. I had just joined the most reputed women’s college in Changanasserry and wanted curtain for my room in the staff hostel.
The sales man looked blankly at me for a moment, and then said “We don’t have it here”.
“What”, i exclaimed. You don’t have curtain material here?”
“No’, he said mulishly. “We don’t have it here”
I was not prepared to buy that. I stood there looking around to see if i could locate for myself what i was looking for. This guy must be a discontented employee like that bus conductor in ALL ABOUT A DOG.
Sensing a deadlock, a more senior salesman came up and asked me what i wanted. I repeated. “I want material for curtain”.
“Can you explain what that is?”
“What curtain is?” stupefied, i asked. “Don’t people here use curtains?”
“You explain what it is. Then I’ll tell you”, the senior salesman assured me.
I stared at him incredulously. By then a few more salesmen had joined us, to join the fun. Many seemed amused and enthused. There was some excitement in the air about the outcome of the demand of this strange woman who walked into the shop with sunglasses which she pushed to her head (where it still remained) after she entered the shop, and wore choli blouse instead of the back open, open necked blouses that were popular in Changanasserry, and had painted nails and coloured bangles that went well with the sari.
“You know window?’ i said little desperate drwing a large square in the air. I was a bit embarrassed by the amusement i was affording them. “That strip of material that you put through a spring and stretch across the window- - - - - ‘. I was acting out the act of pulling a new spring across the window fter having hooked it at one end. There was a lot of grinning an exchanginsg of glances between the sales boys gathered around me.
But I didn’t have to complete. In a chorus, all of them said in unison said, “Oh! Kurrrrrrrrrrrtan. She means kurrrrrrrtain”. And they all laughed and dispersed.
I didn’t know then that the English that exists outside the phonetic class is a totally different ball game. The mid central neutral vowel in English that we have in such words as curtain, mercy has always posed problems for malayalees. But then i realised all that only after i stepped out of college into the malayalee world. During my stint in Mumbai much later, i came to know that the Marathi tongue had trouble getting around the vowel sound in words like hen, bread.
“Do you have pain?” C asked me as we were standing at the office counter to sign in the muster.
“No” I answered perplexed. “I have no pain’, I answered smiling, as i took out my pen from my bag.
C looked angrily at the pen and said,“ You said you don’t have PAIN and what is that”, she said pointing to the pen.
How can i tell her that i didn’t follow her pronunciation, especially since she and her friends entertained themselves the previous day in my presence over the mallu accent which at that time was the subject for a Hindi serial too. She’d think I’m giving it back to her.
So i said nothing. It did cause bad blood between us. It was a catch 22 situation. I remained silent and the story of how kochu refused a “pain” did a huge circulation among the teachers of the college. But better mean than ridiculing a person’s “English”. Like a Marxist friend once told me, we bloody Indians, we still suffer from colonial hangover. We equate education, sophistication and efficiency with proficiency in English. I think he was not fully wrong. I remember, a decade back a Malayalam professor took over as the Principal of the college where i worked. All were sceptical about her, cos she was ‘after all a malayalam lecturer’. But, she proved to be the best principal the college ever had. With an unparalleled vision she took the college leaps and bound ahead to put it among the colleges in the league of the handful of A rated colleges(rated by UGC’s accreditation committee) in the state.
One can have visions in Malayalam too!
What’s the purpose of this post? It’s to emphasise the need for an official Indian English, which should factor in the existing deviation among the Indian users of English from the RP and Standard English. The Standard English and RP are irrelevant in India. Like V K Krishna Menon once said. We in India did not pick up English from the streets of England but from classics. The present day user of English may not enjoy an intimate relation withclassics. The point VKK was making was that a non native speaker picks up English from the written word and not the spoken. So the ears are not tuned to the way language is spoken. Besides, the influence of mother tongue plays a major role on the non native speaker of English. Like for example the vowel sound in words mercy, map. Catch them young, and every speaker can overcome that difficulty. The problem is not with the pronunciation alone. Idiomatic English too sometimes doesn’t come too easily to an Indian speaker who is fluent in English.
As the utility of the English language is increasing by the minute, we should keep politics aside and acquire competence in the language. We don’t have to look westward for a model. Here in India we have one. Some call it convent English, others, metro English. Whatever the name, it refers to that English which is intelligible to both by Indians and the English speaking world. The reasons are 1. It does not follow the British stress pattern. It distributes word stress equally as should not be done in queen’s English (hence easy for the Indian listener). 2. It has devernacularised vowel and consonant sounds without going all the way British. Hence, on account of the second fact, it is easily intelligible to the speakers of English the world over.
This English – this Standard Indian English, should be taught uniformly in all schools in India – compulsorily. The phonetic drills need not be modelled on RP, but after the neutral accented Indian English.
With India growing into a super power, the Indian variety will gain recognition the world over. After all, the dominance of a language is determined by economics. The Anglo-Saxon English became the base of Standard English cos it was the dialect spoken in the East Midland region, the commercial hub of Great Britain from the fifteenth century.
To conlude, i must share with you an interesting experience i had when i found myself in a social gathering of academics and their families in Texas.
“You speak, British English. Because India was a British colony?” asked a professor’s wife.
I nearly fainted. I’ve been used to people telling me i speak mallu English, every time I step out of kerala, and here was an American saying that i speak queen’s English. Could she be pulling my leg, i wondered and looked suspiciously at her.
Seeing the perplexity on my face, my daughter told me “amma, you don’t have the American drawl. That’s what she means. Also, you used certain English idioms not very common here’.
“Like?”, i asked.
‘Yesterday, you used the expression ‘donkey’s years’ and my American friend remarked rather admiringly on the typical British nature of your language?. !!!!!?????
My my my! Uncle Sam too is jet lagged after all these centuries! He too hasn’t fully recovered from colonial hangover!
That was the monsoon (since kerala doesn’t go strictly by the spring summer, autumn pattern) of the year 1976. I had just joined the most reputed women’s college in Changanasserry and wanted curtain for my room in the staff hostel.
The sales man looked blankly at me for a moment, and then said “We don’t have it here”.
“What”, i exclaimed. You don’t have curtain material here?”
“No’, he said mulishly. “We don’t have it here”
I was not prepared to buy that. I stood there looking around to see if i could locate for myself what i was looking for. This guy must be a discontented employee like that bus conductor in ALL ABOUT A DOG.
Sensing a deadlock, a more senior salesman came up and asked me what i wanted. I repeated. “I want material for curtain”.
“Can you explain what that is?”
“What curtain is?” stupefied, i asked. “Don’t people here use curtains?”
“You explain what it is. Then I’ll tell you”, the senior salesman assured me.
I stared at him incredulously. By then a few more salesmen had joined us, to join the fun. Many seemed amused and enthused. There was some excitement in the air about the outcome of the demand of this strange woman who walked into the shop with sunglasses which she pushed to her head (where it still remained) after she entered the shop, and wore choli blouse instead of the back open, open necked blouses that were popular in Changanasserry, and had painted nails and coloured bangles that went well with the sari.
“You know window?’ i said little desperate drwing a large square in the air. I was a bit embarrassed by the amusement i was affording them. “That strip of material that you put through a spring and stretch across the window- - - - - ‘. I was acting out the act of pulling a new spring across the window fter having hooked it at one end. There was a lot of grinning an exchanginsg of glances between the sales boys gathered around me.
But I didn’t have to complete. In a chorus, all of them said in unison said, “Oh! Kurrrrrrrrrrrtan. She means kurrrrrrrtain”. And they all laughed and dispersed.
I didn’t know then that the English that exists outside the phonetic class is a totally different ball game. The mid central neutral vowel in English that we have in such words as curtain, mercy has always posed problems for malayalees. But then i realised all that only after i stepped out of college into the malayalee world. During my stint in Mumbai much later, i came to know that the Marathi tongue had trouble getting around the vowel sound in words like hen, bread.
“Do you have pain?” C asked me as we were standing at the office counter to sign in the muster.
“No” I answered perplexed. “I have no pain’, I answered smiling, as i took out my pen from my bag.
C looked angrily at the pen and said,“ You said you don’t have PAIN and what is that”, she said pointing to the pen.
How can i tell her that i didn’t follow her pronunciation, especially since she and her friends entertained themselves the previous day in my presence over the mallu accent which at that time was the subject for a Hindi serial too. She’d think I’m giving it back to her.
So i said nothing. It did cause bad blood between us. It was a catch 22 situation. I remained silent and the story of how kochu refused a “pain” did a huge circulation among the teachers of the college. But better mean than ridiculing a person’s “English”. Like a Marxist friend once told me, we bloody Indians, we still suffer from colonial hangover. We equate education, sophistication and efficiency with proficiency in English. I think he was not fully wrong. I remember, a decade back a Malayalam professor took over as the Principal of the college where i worked. All were sceptical about her, cos she was ‘after all a malayalam lecturer’. But, she proved to be the best principal the college ever had. With an unparalleled vision she took the college leaps and bound ahead to put it among the colleges in the league of the handful of A rated colleges(rated by UGC’s accreditation committee) in the state.
One can have visions in Malayalam too!
What’s the purpose of this post? It’s to emphasise the need for an official Indian English, which should factor in the existing deviation among the Indian users of English from the RP and Standard English. The Standard English and RP are irrelevant in India. Like V K Krishna Menon once said. We in India did not pick up English from the streets of England but from classics. The present day user of English may not enjoy an intimate relation withclassics. The point VKK was making was that a non native speaker picks up English from the written word and not the spoken. So the ears are not tuned to the way language is spoken. Besides, the influence of mother tongue plays a major role on the non native speaker of English. Like for example the vowel sound in words mercy, map. Catch them young, and every speaker can overcome that difficulty. The problem is not with the pronunciation alone. Idiomatic English too sometimes doesn’t come too easily to an Indian speaker who is fluent in English.
As the utility of the English language is increasing by the minute, we should keep politics aside and acquire competence in the language. We don’t have to look westward for a model. Here in India we have one. Some call it convent English, others, metro English. Whatever the name, it refers to that English which is intelligible to both by Indians and the English speaking world. The reasons are 1. It does not follow the British stress pattern. It distributes word stress equally as should not be done in queen’s English (hence easy for the Indian listener). 2. It has devernacularised vowel and consonant sounds without going all the way British. Hence, on account of the second fact, it is easily intelligible to the speakers of English the world over.
This English – this Standard Indian English, should be taught uniformly in all schools in India – compulsorily. The phonetic drills need not be modelled on RP, but after the neutral accented Indian English.
With India growing into a super power, the Indian variety will gain recognition the world over. After all, the dominance of a language is determined by economics. The Anglo-Saxon English became the base of Standard English cos it was the dialect spoken in the East Midland region, the commercial hub of Great Britain from the fifteenth century.
To conlude, i must share with you an interesting experience i had when i found myself in a social gathering of academics and their families in Texas.
“You speak, British English. Because India was a British colony?” asked a professor’s wife.
I nearly fainted. I’ve been used to people telling me i speak mallu English, every time I step out of kerala, and here was an American saying that i speak queen’s English. Could she be pulling my leg, i wondered and looked suspiciously at her.
Seeing the perplexity on my face, my daughter told me “amma, you don’t have the American drawl. That’s what she means. Also, you used certain English idioms not very common here’.
“Like?”, i asked.
‘Yesterday, you used the expression ‘donkey’s years’ and my American friend remarked rather admiringly on the typical British nature of your language?. !!!!!?????
My my my! Uncle Sam too is jet lagged after all these centuries! He too hasn’t fully recovered from colonial hangover!
Friday, April 15, 2011
Of Old men, Amul baby, Shashi Tharoor and Kerala elections: Post election disconnected reflections.
The elections are over but the generation war continues. In the media, which is trying to prolong it.
Yesterday, Shashi Tharoor, the super diplomat (a misnomer? – has been getting his foot in the mouth every time he opens it) took up the cudgels. The Amul Baby is a symbol of development, he tweets. Of White Revolution, of the success of cooperative movement and what not. And the NIE, 15th April 2010, has done everything in its power to sensationalise Tharoor’s tweet as another instance of foot in the mouth. They are using it to launch another controversy on Tharoor, the media’s pet.
‘NEW DELHI: While the entire Congress went hammer and tongs against(sic) Kerala Chief Minister V S Achutanandan's "Amul Baby" remark against Rahul Gandhi, former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor says he does not find it insulting.
"Don't see why "Amul baby" an insult. Amul babies are fit, strong, focused on the future. Symbolise white revolution which brought milk to the masses,"
The party on the contrary had slammed Achutanandan for it.
And then the paper continues “this is not the first remark by Tharoor in which he has taken a different stand from that of the party. His cattle class remarks blah blah blah - - - .
The NIE efforts will come to naught 'cos the party would like to bury the issue in which Rahul Gandhi was the loser and Achumamman came out victorious!
And the people of Kerala had a good laugh - with Achumamman and at R Gandhi. Many, however, were annoyed by R Gandhi’s remark, which was very much in bad taste – particularly since he was backing to the hilt another octogenarian CM in the neighbouring state who has proved to be a super manipulator from his wheel chair, beside being the godfather of scamsters.
Unlike Karuna who has become the very epitome of corruption, Achumamman is known for his uncompromising integrity. But then, the Congress party has perfected the art of backing, and leaving no stone unturned to shield a corrupt or evil ally. They have intelligent, articulate and glib spokesmen (Abihkek Sanghvi & Manish Tiwari to mention a couple) to do that for the party. The KPCC leaders, the Congress spokesmen and that Bong heavy weight FM found Achuthanandan’s remark ‘uncivilized’!!?? oh, come on, give me a break! And they were deafeningly silent on the most objectionable remark made by the 40 year old R Gandhi!!!
This is a country which reveres gray hair, and the “old man” remark by the uncrowned king of the Congress party was most unwarranted. It would have been most appropriate for the Congress party to admit that it was R Gandhi who had his foot in the mouth, and tendered an apology on his behalf, if R Gandhi’s overblown status prevented him from apologizing himself.
Coming to the damage coalition governance has done to the Congress party, the scams rocking the Centre will testify to it. In my state , the most unpardonable action of the party was the way the KPCC and the Opposition leaders went up the hill and down the dale defending Kujnalikkutty. The least they could have done was to keep silent. Oommen Chandy whom I’d always admired crashed beyond redemption in my esteem.
I’m happy about my inability (technical reasons) to cast my vote. It would have seriously affected my integrity to vote for the Congress party that has been mulishly giving protection to scamsters and rapists. To vote the LDF back to power would have made Kerala an unlivable place for the next five years with Gunda Raj of the DYFI taking over. Of course, in the opposition they are even worse – they will not allow a single day of proper governance.
How long are we, the silent majority, going to take this predicament lying down, I wonder?
Yesterday, Shashi Tharoor, the super diplomat (a misnomer? – has been getting his foot in the mouth every time he opens it) took up the cudgels. The Amul Baby is a symbol of development, he tweets. Of White Revolution, of the success of cooperative movement and what not. And the NIE, 15th April 2010, has done everything in its power to sensationalise Tharoor’s tweet as another instance of foot in the mouth. They are using it to launch another controversy on Tharoor, the media’s pet.
‘NEW DELHI: While the entire Congress went hammer and tongs against(sic) Kerala Chief Minister V S Achutanandan's "Amul Baby" remark against Rahul Gandhi, former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor says he does not find it insulting.
"Don't see why "Amul baby" an insult. Amul babies are fit, strong, focused on the future. Symbolise white revolution which brought milk to the masses,"
The party on the contrary had slammed Achutanandan for it.
And then the paper continues “this is not the first remark by Tharoor in which he has taken a different stand from that of the party. His cattle class remarks blah blah blah - - - .
The NIE efforts will come to naught 'cos the party would like to bury the issue in which Rahul Gandhi was the loser and Achumamman came out victorious!
And the people of Kerala had a good laugh - with Achumamman and at R Gandhi. Many, however, were annoyed by R Gandhi’s remark, which was very much in bad taste – particularly since he was backing to the hilt another octogenarian CM in the neighbouring state who has proved to be a super manipulator from his wheel chair, beside being the godfather of scamsters.
Unlike Karuna who has become the very epitome of corruption, Achumamman is known for his uncompromising integrity. But then, the Congress party has perfected the art of backing, and leaving no stone unturned to shield a corrupt or evil ally. They have intelligent, articulate and glib spokesmen (Abihkek Sanghvi & Manish Tiwari to mention a couple) to do that for the party. The KPCC leaders, the Congress spokesmen and that Bong heavy weight FM found Achuthanandan’s remark ‘uncivilized’!!?? oh, come on, give me a break! And they were deafeningly silent on the most objectionable remark made by the 40 year old R Gandhi!!!
This is a country which reveres gray hair, and the “old man” remark by the uncrowned king of the Congress party was most unwarranted. It would have been most appropriate for the Congress party to admit that it was R Gandhi who had his foot in the mouth, and tendered an apology on his behalf, if R Gandhi’s overblown status prevented him from apologizing himself.
Coming to the damage coalition governance has done to the Congress party, the scams rocking the Centre will testify to it. In my state , the most unpardonable action of the party was the way the KPCC and the Opposition leaders went up the hill and down the dale defending Kujnalikkutty. The least they could have done was to keep silent. Oommen Chandy whom I’d always admired crashed beyond redemption in my esteem.
I’m happy about my inability (technical reasons) to cast my vote. It would have seriously affected my integrity to vote for the Congress party that has been mulishly giving protection to scamsters and rapists. To vote the LDF back to power would have made Kerala an unlivable place for the next five years with Gunda Raj of the DYFI taking over. Of course, in the opposition they are even worse – they will not allow a single day of proper governance.
How long are we, the silent majority, going to take this predicament lying down, I wonder?
Friday, February 04, 2011
Fast Forward
A renowned scriptwriter in Malayalam told me this story as we were traveling in the Parasuram Express chair car.
He (shall we call him Mahavir?) was an English movie buff. I guess scriptwriters are all movie buffs. That’s one source of inspiration for them.
Allow me to deviate for a minute before I continue with the story.
‘Have you read Tess of D’urbeville?”, Mahavir asked me after I introduced myself as a teacher of English Literature.
‘Yes’
‘Pokkaan pattiya oru kathayaanelley?’!!!!!? Literally that meant, “It’s a story worth ‘lifting’, eh?”
I stared at him incredulously. Not that I thought all scripts were original; but this guy was so honest and open about it.
I took an instant liking to him, and he proved to be a pleasant unassuming gentleman and an excellent conversationalist during the course of the journey,
Now to come back this story.
He and his wife used to watch the VCR daily, and it invariably used to be English movies. Their little five-year-old son also was part of this little audience. This necessitated having to fast forward certain scenes.
One day, Mahavir and his wife got into a serious discussion of some family matter while watching an English movie on the VCR. A decision had to be taken and they were weighing the pros and cons of the situation. This activity distracted them from the movie and they turned sideways on the three seater settee to be able to look at each other. Their little son sat between them.
The issue got more and more complicated and they lost their bearings completely – till the little boy shouted shrilly, excited, at the top of his panic stricken voice: ‘Papa papa, quick, quick. Fast forward, fast forward. Quick”.
His shouts brought them down to earth and they looked at him pointing to the screen, which showed a steamy scene between two mega Hollywood stars. Mahavir grabbed the remote, but before he could fast forward it do it, the scene was over.
“Chey papa, it over. No point in fast-forwarding it now’, observed the five year old philosophically.
**
I met this scriptwriter recently, some twenty years later, at a twin theatre. His film was being premiered and he was there to promote it. He came to me when he saw me.
I smiled, impressed that he recognized me after all these years.
“I’ve come to see X movie”, I told him
“Oh, not Y?’ he asked, looking disappointed.
“What’s your interest in Y?’ I asked. I’m laid back on these things. Besides I have a terrible memory. I forget what I read even before I put down the paper.
‘Y is my movie. It’s my script’
‘Ok, shall see it tomorrow. I’ve already bought tickets for the other’.
‘Ok, fine’, he said, and turned away, looking for those who had come to see HIS movie.
“Do you know him?’ asked my friend with whom I’d gone to the theatre.
I told her the story of that train journey.
‘But he didn’t recognize you’, she said.
‘No?’ I asked disappointed. ‘Then why did he come to me smiling, as though he recognized me?’
‘That’s because your face brightened up when you saw him. He thought you recognised him to be the famous Mahavir, the person who had written the script for the movie you’d come to see. Besides, he wanted to promote his movie. After all, he wrote a script after a very long break’.
I knew she was right, and felt a little crestfallen.
Anyway, I told myself. Who do you think you are, Molly? You think you made a lasting impression on him with you showoffy lecture on Tess of D’urberville?
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Muktha's Eyebrows
Mukta was a wonderful person to have around. She was doing her Masters in economics and was my roommate’s classmate. She used to come to our room often and create an impact akin to a whirlwind sweeping through the room.
She had thick eyebrows. By thick i mean really really thick. They joined at the center quite unapologetically, and then took off on both sides really really boldly, straying occasionally like unpruned hedge.
‘Looking at your eyebrows, I’m reminded of a not a very long shot of an eagle in flight’, I told her once.
A banana skin landed on my face without any warning and she went into peals of laughter, thrilled at having hit the bull’s eye.
‘Listen you nut,’, I told her. I’m only trying to tell you that you should try to make some sense out of that overgrowth that you claim are your eyebrows’, I persisted.
‘No way’, she said. ’My boyfriend has no problem with them. So what’s yours?”
“What’s that play you were reading yesterday, Molly?’ that was my room mate Leela.
‘Hairy Ape?’ I asked innocently.
Mukta looked around for something to fling at Leela, and finding nothing, grabbed the chair. Leela pounced on her laughing, saying. “ Hey cool it Mukta. It’s your boyfriend I had in mind – he must be a hairy ape himself to like you like this’.
Mukta swung at her, missed and fell. Soon all three of us were laughing out hearts out.
Our taunting appeared to have had an impact, for, a week later, I found Mukta in our room, sitting with her head flung back and resting on the chair back and Sumi from the next room threading her eyebrows. Sumi finished and we looked at Mukta. The transformation was incredible. Looking into the mirror, Mukta herself declared, with her hands on her cheeks Sushmita Sen style, “Where was all this beauty hiding?”
A week later, as I was running down the step during the lunch break I ran into Mukta. I was flabbergasted at what I saw. I grabbed her shoulders and stared at her incredulously, with my mouth hanging open. She tried to shrug off my hands and asked unpleasantly, ‘What’s it? What do you want? Why you staring at me like that?’
‘Your eyebrows have grown back full steam. I just can’t believe this. Just in one week? It’s simply not possible!’
The students who were going up and down the stairs were looking at us amused. Muktha noticed this. Angrily, she knocked my hands off her shoulders and ran up the steps looking furious.
I stood there looking at her, totally bewildered, confused and what not. Can eyebrows grow back like that in a week’s time? It was as it was before she shaped it a week before! And Muktha’s behaviour! Most unlike her – she who I thought didn’t have an iota of unpleasantness in her personality. What the hell was wrong, I wondered as I looked at her disappearing back. She flung a vicious look at me before she disappeared at the landing to take the next flight of stairs.
To date I haven’t forgiven Muktha for not telling me she had an identical twin doing masters in Fine Arts in the same college. The Fine Arts Department was a separate block from the main college, and those students therefore had an insulated presence in the college.
Nor can I forgive my friend Leela for not warning me about Mukta’s twin - identical in appearance but, in nature and temperament, as different from Muktha as two people could possibly be.
The day after I cornered her sister, Mukta walked into our room grinning from ear to ear, and shaking both her index fingers at me while she chanted happily ‘Serves you right, serves you right, serves you right - - - ‘ with her head bobbing up and down with the rhythmic chant.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Of Onions and Terrorism
In the late nineties, the price of onions soared, aiming, as it were, for the abode of Gods. We were in Mumbai then, and this phenomenon gave nightmares not only to the government which was on the verge of being kicked out by this bulb plant, and domestic cuisine managers like me, but also to my school going son!
The phenomenon now returns. Looks like the average Indian’s purchasing power has increased substantially – that’s why, Vis a Vis the nineties, no State or Central government is tottering, no deafening protests are heard and no nightmares haunt the common man. The BPL man just decides to go without a food item that is obscenely priced – a piece of wisdom that the middle class has not yet acquired.
I tweeted asking for onion-free recipes. Since no one reads or sees my tweets, I got no help from netavians (don’t look up the dictionary – it’s my coinage). But onions opened my eyes to the truth that one has to be a celebrity to have anyone take your tweets seriously. With the net world deluged by twittering sounds, only the rare or exceptionally harmonious tunes, or those emanating from rare or celebrated species will be heard. So am not grumbling. Griping, after all, is not the privilege of the nonentity.
Recently, with a group of ladies, I took a day off to a resort far from the crowd maddened by the exorbitant onion. But there was no escape from onions. I met a lady in the group who became an instant celebrity with the announcement that her cuisine has known no onions. I put in that extra effort for us to become the best of friends. After all one has to learn to live without onions. The plethora of onion-free recipes that was in her kitty excited me and I resolved to try them out one by one. But, I must confess, I haven’t yet begun. Am waiting for the last of the onions (which I use oh! So sparingly)from my last purchase to get over. Mebbe by then, onion prices would come down, with the raids on hoarders that’s going on and the onion treaty with Pakistan signed though after much hiccups.
Let’s hope Pakistan would not hold us to ransom with onions to let go of Kashmir. Forgive me, but I think for the common man, onions at the moment are more important than Kashmir. Oops, I mean the celebrity Indian, not the common man. I have no way of gauging the mood of the common man on Kashmir – he is not very vocal about it. But celebrities yes, they go up the Himalayas and down the Valley screaming themselves hoarse about setting Kashmir free from the brutal Indian soldier! Of late, they’ve been silent. Guess the onions have got to them too.
Talking of Pakistan and India, it appears as though onions would break the ice between the two countries. For time being at least, Pak has agreed to export onions instead of terrorists. This is the best news we’ve had for two decades. I get a gut feeling that if the people of India and Pakistan take over from the politicians, governments and ISI, and leave the rest to onions, peace will descend on the subcontinent and goodwill will prevail among the citizens of India and Pakistan.
PS. An extract from the conversation I had with my daughter before she started from the US to visit us.
R: Amma, what do you want me to get for you from here?
Me: How much are you allowed?
R: 40 KG.
ME: How much to spare?
R: More than 15 KG. What do you want?
ME: Onions.
R: You crazy, Ma?
Me: Yes. Onion crazy.
Friday, December 31, 2010
My first effort at New Year Resolutions
Another new year round the corner, and as usual I asked my self what I resolved to do or not to do in 2011.
I still haven’t found the answer, cos presiding over my deliberations on this issue was my own face, looking on with a mocking smile as though to say why this farce? Have you ever kept your resolutions?
That sets me thinking. Have I ever given any thought to my New Year resolutions beyond the moment I make it? The train of thoughts takes me to the first New year resolution I ever made.
The earliest resolution I remember was made in the second standard after Sister S, the class teacher described to the class what New Year Resolutions were. I don’t now remember what she told us, but I do remember us children sharing the resolutions we made with each other.
During the noon interval, Chitra announced , ‘ Each time my mother gives me money to buy a toffee from Babychettan’s shop, I’ll buy it and give it to Sr S for charity’ (she stumbled over the word 'charity' for that’s the first time we'd heard that term). She then looked at me and said, “Eddo Molly, can you give me one toffee every day, because I wont have any when I give mine away?’
‘No’, I replied emphatically. ‘ I buy two toffees every day. I’ ll give one to charity daily. You give one from what you buy’
‘I buy only one everyday. If i give that to charity, i wont have one for myself; and if you give to Sister S for charity, you’ll become Sister’s pet’.
‘If you give, you’ll become her pet. Why should I spend money to make you Sister’s pet?’ I countered. (My father was a businessman and I guess that streak of business acumen about getting money’s worth, was in my blood).
‘You are mean’, Chitra screamed.
‘What about you?(appol thaano?). ‘You are cunning. You want to make me spend money and then take the credit for yourself’. My voice had risen and a crowd was beginning to gather around us, like it happens in lower primary when two kids fight.
‘You always buy two toffees. I buy only one. Why cant you give me one?’ Chitra was beginning to scream.
‘Yes. Why can’t you give her one if you buy two toffees everyday?’ butted in a third standard student who had just joined the crowd.
Angry that a senior had supported Chitra, I whirled around and screamed, gesticulating wildly. “She buys one toffee every day. Why should I give her too?’
‘She wants to give it to charity’, said Rema, one of my classmates who’d been a witness to our exchange right from the beginning.
‘Let her either eat her sweet or give it to charity. I’ll eat one and then give one to Charity’. I was livid with anger because of the support Chitra was getting.
‘But she thought of it first’, said the wise but partisan Rema, ‘and now you are stealing her idea’.
I lost it. ‘If it was her idea, let her give her sweet. I’ll also give my sweet to charity. That’s my New Year resolution too’, I all but yelled.
The crowd had been steadily growing. The little onlookers were asking each other what the bone of contention was. Groups were talking animatedly to each other. Sides were being taken. The crowd split itself – physically- into two parts. My supporters stood behind me, literally, and Chtra’s, behind her. I was happy to note that the size of the two sections was even. It soon became my friends against Chtra’s.
Rema, the leader of the Chitra camp shouted, ‘you are mean and cheap. You want to become Sister S’s pet. So you are stealing Chitra’s idea’.
Vidya, who took upon herself the leadership of my camp retorted sneeringly.’Chitra is cheaper. She wants to eat at Molly’s expense and still get popular with sister S. Is that a decent thing to do?’
A huge volley of protest rose from the Chitra camp. It soon became a shouting match between Rema and me, Chitra, and Vidya, Rejiv and Shirley, Lija and Betsy, Lulu and Shobana - - -. Little girls and boys jerking their heads, flaying their arms, yelling and screaming.
Then the bell rang to indicate that the noon interval was over.
I wanted to have the last word and so I shouted at the top of my voice, ‘ I have decided to give one sweet to charity everyday’.
Silence followed. Then someone asked. “Who’s charity?”
Chitra and I looked at each other, but said nothing. We had no idea if it was a person, place or thing.
Then Rejiv, the Mr. Know-all in our class who could lie without batting an eyelid, came to our rescue. Pointing to the orphanage run by the nuns, he said ‘She’s a cute little girl who lives in that orphanage'.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Annual Fete and Cashew Nuts
‘Molly, i hear that you get the best cashew nuts in Kerala – and cheap too”, said Mother Peter, our HM, arching her eyebrows , enlarging her large blue eyes and shaking her wimpled head vigorously up and down in that typical European style. ‘Write to your father and ask him to send us some for the fete’.
It was to be my first fete about which my friends had raised such expectations. It was a two day event hosted by our school for which the little town of Pondicherry looked forward to the whole year. The school was St. Joseph de Cluny. It was the headquarters of the Cluny convent in India. In Pondicherry, besides the convent, it had two schools – English medium which was going from strength to strength and the French medium with it dwindling population. There was an orphanage too and we boarders were not allowed to mingle with them, though in the same campus.
I joined Cluny in the first year of high school – in the 9t standard. Ever since i joined in June, I’ve been listening to the boarders raving about the annual fete. They spoke about the happening in the previous fete. Most of the conversation was about some boy or the other who could on those two days gain entry into the tall walls of the convent which guarded the chastity of the wards entrusted to them with a fierceness which, at times, was almost comical. At every opportunity, the nuns warned us about the Romeos who waited at the corner of the street.
The streets in Pondicherry are absolutely straight and were cut at regular intervals at 90 degree by equally straight roads. The Cluny convent was spread over three campuses. From the boarding to refectory, we had to cross the street. From refectory to school, we had to cross another street. The Romeos knew our routine, and the fact that the nuns were paranoid about punctuality made it easier for them to wait punctually at the street corners to catch a glimpse of and exchange smiles with their crushes.
Among the senior boarders there were two groups – the ones who had boyfriends and the ones who did not. I belonged to the latter though i had sneaking admiration for those who had the guts to have boyfriends. Now let me get this clear. The ‘boyfriend’ in those days did not mean what it means now. The girls had not spoken even once to their Romeos. All they did was to look down the street and smile at the boy whose looks they liked. And then they would go ‘steady’ with them, i.e., faithfully smile at them whenever they crossed the road. Sometimes the boy would wear a kerchief tucked in the collar. When his girlfriend crossed the road the next time, she would tuck in a kerchief in her collar (our uniforms were collared), and then their eyes would lock and they would smile. And the day would be made for them.
During the recreation time, the girl would talk with high excitement about the kerchief. She would blush and smile and bask in the comments of how handsome the boy was. All of us would laugh and giggle and tease.
I remember the handkerchief episode cos it landed me into trouble. The nuns knew that i was new and uncorrupted and therefore could be used as an agent. The boarding mistress once called me and spoke to me about this and that and without my quite realising it, the conversation veered to the boyfriend topic. In all innocence, i let her into the handkerchief incident and who’s whose boyfriend. She then gave me a French chocolate which i rushed to share with my friends who immediately got out from me what had happened. They ridiculed me for walking into the nun’s trap and yelled at me and called me James Bond and Mata hari and ostracised me. When they got their dressing down from the nuns along with the punishments like cutting out bi weekly walks on the beach(where the Romeos tore down on their bikes with silencers off), they got downright nasty with me.
I was very very miserable cos i had no intention of getting anyone into trouble. My friends from the no boyfriend group consoled me, and taught me how to evade the interrogation of the nuns. I have never walked blindly into their trap after that, but it took a long time for to gain entry into the boyfriend group.
The fete was the time when all these roadside Romeos got entry into our fortress. They quickly found out in which stalls their girl friends were and used to hang around there.
The middle campus which housed the convent, refectory and the orphanage was the site for the fete. The Pandal as the huge semi open auditorium was called, and the playground which he orphanage girls used accommodated the stalls which sold items brought/bought/donated from France. Then handicraft items, embroidered kerchiefs, tea cosy, and delightfully beautiful things done mostly by the orphanage girls were sold at exorbitant price. Things sold like hotcakes. The stalls were manned by us, students of English medium school. Sometime the crowd was so heavy that me with my over protected Nazrani upbringing used to panic. Sometimes tempers rose, for the young crowd was not free from inebriation. Commotion would immediately bring the members of the discipline committee (made up of big shots in the local community), and they would put their foot down. That’s when commotion arose and people flared up. Once this happened right in front of my stall. My partner in the counter had a street corner boyfriend who had been hanging around the whole day, smiling at her and buying things from our counter. In the afternoon, after lunch, he had apparently helped himself to some French liquor. Then he became bolder. He asked my partner for a clandestine date and she was horrified.
‘”i didn’t know you were such a rotten person”, she snapped at him.
“What did you think you were doing when you smiled at me every day?” he asked.
‘I didn’t think you were the type who would get fresh”, she said, getting scared.
‘Fresh? all i asked you was to come with me for a cup of coffee”, he said
Then she said something which made even me want to laugh.
‘You are a very bad boy’, she said, almost sobbing.
By then someone had reported the exchange and the watch and ward arrived and threw him out.
After the fate, for the rest of the year, she stared at the tip of her shoes whenever she crossed the road.
Now to get back to the cashew nuts (i got carried away by memories, sorry), i wrote to my father who promptly send 5 kilos of roasted cashew nuts of the best quality. It arrived four days before the fete. I instantly became the pet of the nuns. Five of us high school students were picked to pack cashew nuts. We put 8 pieces of cashew nuts each into small plastic packets and stacked them on a tray from which the junior boarding mistress took each of them and sealed them with a contraption I’d never seen before. Because of her presence, we couldn’t pop even one piece into our mouths. However, when the work was over, she took some broken cashew nuts which she apparently had sorted out, and gave half a handful to each of us.
These packets would be put on a tray which would be carried around by the students who were members of the JVC Club. The trays were suspended from the necks on pretty satin ribbons. I so wanted to do that duty but as i was not a JVC club member, i was denied the chance. Each packet was sold for Rs. 5, which in the mid sixties was considered to be an atrocious price.
The big day arrived. Being my first year, i was not given stall duty, so i generally went around with my friends and bought things and delicacies and French chocolate drink.
On the second day, my parents sprang a surprise on me by landing up for the fete. They were on their way to Velankanni, and decided to see me and the fete about which i had been raving and for which had asked for more pocket money for the month. Besides, my father had sent cashew nuts (for which he had paid less than Rs. 100/including parcelling and shipping charge). All these had made him curious about the event. So they decided to reroute the trip through Pondicherry.
My mother was simply horrified at the crowd through which her 14 year old daughter was running around freely. She called me and asked me to remain with them. With a protective arm around me, we went around looking at stalls.
My mother always had a fascination for embroidered stuff and so i took her to that stall. She was so taken up by what she saw that she started buying up, despite the fancy price. Both of us were engrossed in selecting the items. After the purchase, we turned around, looking for my father. And lo and behold, there he stood taking out Rs.5 from his wallet. The JVC volunteer (known for her aggressive marketing ) with the cashew nut tray suspended from her neck with colourful ribbons beamed at him as she took the money from him, and handed over a tiny packet of cashew nuts .
Then holding up the packet for me and amma to see, he winked, smiling from ear to ear.
It was to be my first fete about which my friends had raised such expectations. It was a two day event hosted by our school for which the little town of Pondicherry looked forward to the whole year. The school was St. Joseph de Cluny. It was the headquarters of the Cluny convent in India. In Pondicherry, besides the convent, it had two schools – English medium which was going from strength to strength and the French medium with it dwindling population. There was an orphanage too and we boarders were not allowed to mingle with them, though in the same campus.
I joined Cluny in the first year of high school – in the 9t standard. Ever since i joined in June, I’ve been listening to the boarders raving about the annual fete. They spoke about the happening in the previous fete. Most of the conversation was about some boy or the other who could on those two days gain entry into the tall walls of the convent which guarded the chastity of the wards entrusted to them with a fierceness which, at times, was almost comical. At every opportunity, the nuns warned us about the Romeos who waited at the corner of the street.
The streets in Pondicherry are absolutely straight and were cut at regular intervals at 90 degree by equally straight roads. The Cluny convent was spread over three campuses. From the boarding to refectory, we had to cross the street. From refectory to school, we had to cross another street. The Romeos knew our routine, and the fact that the nuns were paranoid about punctuality made it easier for them to wait punctually at the street corners to catch a glimpse of and exchange smiles with their crushes.
Among the senior boarders there were two groups – the ones who had boyfriends and the ones who did not. I belonged to the latter though i had sneaking admiration for those who had the guts to have boyfriends. Now let me get this clear. The ‘boyfriend’ in those days did not mean what it means now. The girls had not spoken even once to their Romeos. All they did was to look down the street and smile at the boy whose looks they liked. And then they would go ‘steady’ with them, i.e., faithfully smile at them whenever they crossed the road. Sometimes the boy would wear a kerchief tucked in the collar. When his girlfriend crossed the road the next time, she would tuck in a kerchief in her collar (our uniforms were collared), and then their eyes would lock and they would smile. And the day would be made for them.
During the recreation time, the girl would talk with high excitement about the kerchief. She would blush and smile and bask in the comments of how handsome the boy was. All of us would laugh and giggle and tease.
I remember the handkerchief episode cos it landed me into trouble. The nuns knew that i was new and uncorrupted and therefore could be used as an agent. The boarding mistress once called me and spoke to me about this and that and without my quite realising it, the conversation veered to the boyfriend topic. In all innocence, i let her into the handkerchief incident and who’s whose boyfriend. She then gave me a French chocolate which i rushed to share with my friends who immediately got out from me what had happened. They ridiculed me for walking into the nun’s trap and yelled at me and called me James Bond and Mata hari and ostracised me. When they got their dressing down from the nuns along with the punishments like cutting out bi weekly walks on the beach(where the Romeos tore down on their bikes with silencers off), they got downright nasty with me.
I was very very miserable cos i had no intention of getting anyone into trouble. My friends from the no boyfriend group consoled me, and taught me how to evade the interrogation of the nuns. I have never walked blindly into their trap after that, but it took a long time for to gain entry into the boyfriend group.
The fete was the time when all these roadside Romeos got entry into our fortress. They quickly found out in which stalls their girl friends were and used to hang around there.
The middle campus which housed the convent, refectory and the orphanage was the site for the fete. The Pandal as the huge semi open auditorium was called, and the playground which he orphanage girls used accommodated the stalls which sold items brought/bought/donated from France. Then handicraft items, embroidered kerchiefs, tea cosy, and delightfully beautiful things done mostly by the orphanage girls were sold at exorbitant price. Things sold like hotcakes. The stalls were manned by us, students of English medium school. Sometime the crowd was so heavy that me with my over protected Nazrani upbringing used to panic. Sometimes tempers rose, for the young crowd was not free from inebriation. Commotion would immediately bring the members of the discipline committee (made up of big shots in the local community), and they would put their foot down. That’s when commotion arose and people flared up. Once this happened right in front of my stall. My partner in the counter had a street corner boyfriend who had been hanging around the whole day, smiling at her and buying things from our counter. In the afternoon, after lunch, he had apparently helped himself to some French liquor. Then he became bolder. He asked my partner for a clandestine date and she was horrified.
‘”i didn’t know you were such a rotten person”, she snapped at him.
“What did you think you were doing when you smiled at me every day?” he asked.
‘I didn’t think you were the type who would get fresh”, she said, getting scared.
‘Fresh? all i asked you was to come with me for a cup of coffee”, he said
Then she said something which made even me want to laugh.
‘You are a very bad boy’, she said, almost sobbing.
By then someone had reported the exchange and the watch and ward arrived and threw him out.
After the fate, for the rest of the year, she stared at the tip of her shoes whenever she crossed the road.
Now to get back to the cashew nuts (i got carried away by memories, sorry), i wrote to my father who promptly send 5 kilos of roasted cashew nuts of the best quality. It arrived four days before the fete. I instantly became the pet of the nuns. Five of us high school students were picked to pack cashew nuts. We put 8 pieces of cashew nuts each into small plastic packets and stacked them on a tray from which the junior boarding mistress took each of them and sealed them with a contraption I’d never seen before. Because of her presence, we couldn’t pop even one piece into our mouths. However, when the work was over, she took some broken cashew nuts which she apparently had sorted out, and gave half a handful to each of us.
These packets would be put on a tray which would be carried around by the students who were members of the JVC Club. The trays were suspended from the necks on pretty satin ribbons. I so wanted to do that duty but as i was not a JVC club member, i was denied the chance. Each packet was sold for Rs. 5, which in the mid sixties was considered to be an atrocious price.
The big day arrived. Being my first year, i was not given stall duty, so i generally went around with my friends and bought things and delicacies and French chocolate drink.
On the second day, my parents sprang a surprise on me by landing up for the fete. They were on their way to Velankanni, and decided to see me and the fete about which i had been raving and for which had asked for more pocket money for the month. Besides, my father had sent cashew nuts (for which he had paid less than Rs. 100/including parcelling and shipping charge). All these had made him curious about the event. So they decided to reroute the trip through Pondicherry.
My mother was simply horrified at the crowd through which her 14 year old daughter was running around freely. She called me and asked me to remain with them. With a protective arm around me, we went around looking at stalls.
My mother always had a fascination for embroidered stuff and so i took her to that stall. She was so taken up by what she saw that she started buying up, despite the fancy price. Both of us were engrossed in selecting the items. After the purchase, we turned around, looking for my father. And lo and behold, there he stood taking out Rs.5 from his wallet. The JVC volunteer (known for her aggressive marketing ) with the cashew nut tray suspended from her neck with colourful ribbons beamed at him as she took the money from him, and handed over a tiny packet of cashew nuts .
Then holding up the packet for me and amma to see, he winked, smiling from ear to ear.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The blog comments I reject
It does not matter to me whether my blog visitors don’t see eye to eye with me, or if they ridicule me or my understanding of the issue i deal with or my style. In fact i like comments which reflect such views and i publish them unless they use terrible obscenities or they hurt religious sentiments, customs and practices.
I do get such rejectable comments once in a way.
The two categories of blogs that generate such comments are the ones on Amitabh Bachchan and Narendra Modi.
All my posts on Modi have generated dirty comments. Some are so filthy that I’ve laughed out loudly (sorry. I’m not easily shocked though it is ladylike to be so, i know). In fact it’s a comment on Modi that got automatically published that prompted me to activate comment moderation. But that hasn’t caused me to budge one millionth of an inch from my position on Modi. I cannot drool over his development politics. For me his unofficial official stamp on carnage cannot be compensated by the paradise he might have turned Gujarat into. Two thousand odd people who were snuffed out were denied the right to life in democratic india. To me what happened post Godhra is comparable with the crackdown on Tinaman square. Modi’s re-elections after Godhra are reminiscent of the mass support that brought Hitler into power. Yes, i am a Modi basher – tho an armchair one. I believe it’s my responsibility to be at least that, for i enjoy the fruits of democracy. I owe it to my country. But post Godhra slaughter made me realise man never learns from the lessons history teaches him. That’s why history repeats itself.
Some tell me i am over reacting. But i say no. But i react more than others in my part of the world because i was in Vadodhra when it happened. Some of the images still haunt me.
But the foul comments to my Bachchan blogs are really funny. Most of them are written by those who apparently are not competent in handling the English language. Unfortunately, i don’t know how to get into those comments and do an expletives deleting act, so i reject the whole comment. I get a feeling most of those expletives (an understatement, believe me) are used without a knowledge of the meaning of the word used, or the part of human anatomy that some of the words signify. If i publish them, you’ll laugh your guts out. All such comments are anonymous, but i know their authors are not Malayalees. A Malayalee might get his English wrong but never his obscenities in that language.
My blog which generated such comments, ironically, was not actually on Bachchan, but on a bad piece of journalism on the retake of Sholay. Apparently, they didn’t get the point. They thought i was trying to establish that Mohanlal was a better actor than Bachchan!
Why do these two categories generate such strong emotion, i wonder. I think it’s because both Modi and Bachchan have achieved god like proportions with their fans. Fooling around with deities can win the teeth gnashing wrath of their followers.
After all it’s a very painful experience to be made to realise that your gods have feet of clay.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Thou Shall Not Bend
‘You must not bend”, said my doc. I had gone to him ‘cos of back pain – something a person like me fighting a deadly disease should not ignore.
‘Not even to pick up something from the floor?’, I asked.
‘No’, he said quietly. ‘It’d be nice if you use a walker at home. When you go out, use a walking stick’.
‘Not even to pick up something from the floor?’, I asked.
‘No’, he said quietly. ‘It’d be nice if you use a walker at home. When you go out, use a walking stick’.
The doc is a soft spoken man of few words and he seemed appalled that the instruction he had given three years back - not to bend - was not taken seriously.
'So it shall be', i told myself. ‘I shall not bend. Nothing to get panicky about’, i said to myself. ‘After all he said i could walk, travel, climb stairs.
But soon i realised that life without bending is not easy. Just imagine you can't bend to scratch your little toe when it itches!
After i got back from the hospital, I was taking the newspaper to my room when i dropped it. I started to bend when a shout stopped me. “Don’t bend, molly” yelled Sunny, my husband who was watching me from the top of the stairs. He came running down and picked up the paper for me and put the walking stick in my hand. ‘Use this’, he said, ‘it’ll remind you that you are not supposed to bend.’
Later in the day, wishing to make myself useful, i decided to help to set the table. The dish in which we served fancy dishes was in the cupboard below the kitchen platform, and leaning on the stick i started to bend down, “Miss, Miss Miss, don’t’, screamed Shiny who looked after me during my treatment. ‘I’ll take it. Don’t bend. Please go and sit at the dining table. I’ll manage on my own’.
Well, so much for my effort to be of help.
The next day I began to feel a little depressed. The implication of not bending at all hit me like a ton of bricks when i dropped my medicine strip and my eighty four year old mother-in-law rushed to pick it up with ‘Molly don’t bend, DONT bend. I’ll pick it up for you’.
Believe me life isn’t easy at all if you have to depend on people to pick up what you drop, to take something out of the lower racks of the fridge, wardrobe and book shelf.
I’ve got to find a way out, i decided. My son said he’d look if robotic hand is available in the US. But then I’ll have to wait till he comes. Till then i didn’t want to keep calling people to help me every time i need something which requires bending.
I looked down at my stick. IDEA! I snatched a chiffon dupatta from the hanger and dropped it on the floor. I then carefully slipped the stick under it and lifted it slowly. Half way through it slipped down. I tried again. It fell when it came almost within reach of my free hand. ‘Damn’, i muttered to myself (I’m not the cursing type – at least not the easily cursing type). i tried again – without success. I didn’t give up but tried again and again and again. I looked around to see if there were any spiders that could inspire me. I should have tried with cotton duppatta first, my common sense admonished me, and i cursed myself for being over ambitious. But by then it became a matter of prestige for me to pick up that colourful chiffon duppatta with my walking stick. i kept trying and trying and trying. And then it happened. It remained on the stick till i raised it high enough for my hand to take it!
Now i can pick up a lot of large and flexible objects with the help of the stick. But things like pencils, pens, spoons still pose a problem. Am sure eventually I’ll be able discover the technique of picking them up from the floor with the walking stick.
I have also found an easy to way to take things out from low shelves. Initially i tried sitting on a low stool but it became a pain going to where the stool was, pushing it with my stick to the site of operation.
Again i sat down and thought. IDEA! Yes, an idea can really change your world. As a kid and a teenager, I had learnt Bharatanatyam. So i was pretty flexible though not exactly anorexic. That day, when it was time for the evening news, I decided to switch on the TV myself instead of calling for help.
The plug point was just a feet above the ground. I could have switched it with my walking stick but i had misplaced it and everyone had been looking for it since morning with no success. So i decided to try out the Bharatanatyam technique. I went close to the switch, bent my knees keeping my body erect like the way Chandrika teacher taught me decades age and yippee! I switched on the TV without anyone’s help, and without the help of even the walking stick ! I felt grateful to my mother who is no more, for bulldozing me into each dance class all those years back.
The time came for me to go home to Trivandrum where Sunny was staying alone during my treatment in kochin. I felt pretty excited as much about going back to the familiar place as about having my husband around to do the bending tasks for me.
Then disaster struck, though of a temporary nature. Sunny sprained his back and was absolutely bedridden. Sitting helplessly in kochin, i looked up at the Almighty and asked, ‘Hey mister, what have you against me?’ ‘Nothing dear lady’, he seemed to say. ‘Just leave it to me. I’m here to take care of things’
‘Ok, sir”, i said shrugging my shoulder resignedly. But it made me feel better.
When we reached my apartment in Trivandrum, Sunny was waiting supported by a walking stick! I looked at him and burst out laughing.
“Am much better now’, he said. ‘Can move about, but cannot bend. Bending causes excruciating pain”.
‘So ‘m better off than you. I have no pain’
That doesn’t mean you should bend”, he said rather sternly.
Later in the day, we wanted to watch TV. The switch point was again a feet above the ground. I had started walking towards it with my walking stick poised to press the switch with it when i saw sunny bending his knee in that classic Bharathanatyam pose till he could comfortably switch on the TV!
Now i think i know how the basic pose of Bharatanatyam originated! An ancient Indian method of dealing with sprained back must have caught the aesthetic eye of some innovative artist who saw the beauty and the possibilities of the human body as it lowered itself at the knee keeping the torso erect.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
I dreamt of Brutus and Mark Anthony in Kerala
I had a dream some years back. A strange dream it was. Why I should have dreamt of Brutus and Mark Anthony, I haven’t the vaguest idea. I had’nt thought of them/spoken of them around that time. Yet I dreamt about them.
I do not remember what Brutus had said. But I do remember seeing Brutus standing tall a erect, in the fatigues of a Roman soldier, earnestness and sincerity writ large on his face, speaking in a rather stiff, baritone voice with no dramatic intonation whatsoever. The blue shirt, green shirt, red shirt head load workers of Kerala who were listening to him were moved to tears, and quite unembarrassed about it.
The only words of Brutus that i recall is the oath he administered to the assembly, which the huge crowd of head load workers, with their right arms stretched out, repeated after him with a thunderous resonance. Here’s the oath:
WE THE HEAD LOAD WORKERS OF KERALA SHALL HITHERTO EARN OUR SALARY. WE SHALL NOT CLAIM NOKUCOOLIE. WE SHALL NOT OVERCHARGE FOR THE WORK WE DO. WE SHALL NOT USE ABUSIVE LANGUAGE.WE SHALL NOT THRUST OUR SERVICE ON PEOPLE. WE SHALL AMEND OUR BODY LANGUAGE. WE SHALL LEND DIGNITY TO OUR LABOUR BY PUTTING OUR HEART AND SOUL INTO OUR WORK AND PASSIONATELY ABIDING BY THE WORK ETHICS SPELT OUT BY OUR LEADER BRUTUS AND BY OUR COMMITMENT TO THE NEW AGENDA.
Wiping their eyes with the red thorthu on their shoulder they sat down and waited for the next speaker. In walked Mark Anthony. There was something wrong with the way he looked. I remember thinking in my dream, “hey, this guy is a fraud’. His face was exactly like Richard Burton’s – light eyed, light complexioned and receding forehead. That was OK. But he wore a shirt the front portion of which had two colours. On the left of the placket was red and on the right, blue. The sleeves were green and they were rolled up half way up the biceps. The red thorthu was on his head in the form of a cocky turban. He wore an atrocious lungi folded over well above the knee and tied over his ribs. Some striped inner wear almost reaching his knees was peeping out cheekily.
He walked in with a slovenly gait, a beedi smoking from his fingers. The crowd greeted him with boos, but quite unfazed, he walked up to the mike, put his right elbow on the lectern, took a deep drag on the beedi and blew the smoke in circles and watched them as the circles dispersed and disappeared into the air. The boos died down and the crowd too watched the circles forming and then becoming ill defined and disappearing.
Soon silence fell. Mark Anthony threw away the beedi and looked at the crowd with one end of his lips lifted in a crooked, scornful smirk.
‘So’, he said, ‘comrades, you are giving up your rights, eh?’
Silence greeted him.
‘Eh, eh eh?’ We went on without raising his voice too much.
‘You fickle minded fools’, he roared abruptly, making the audience sit up with a start. ‘You traitors’, he continued roaring.’ You have betrayed the blood, sweat and tears of generations of thinkers and leaders who laid down their lives, suffered torture at the hands of brutal police toeing the line of the bourgeoisie, to win you the rights to earn a living without working. And now you stupid proletariat, you want to work?’
‘You want to work? You want to live by the sweat of your brows? You want to earn you salary? Then GET OUT OF KERALA. YES’ he roared ‘GET OUT OF KERALA’
'Your leaders first struggled and fought, then pressurised all governments to wrest the sacred right to earn a fat sum without moving your little finger, and now you want to throw that right away? Ugh, ugh, ugh?’ He snorted into the mike.
‘No comrade, no’, shouted the audience.’ No’.
‘And what is this new agenda? New goal that Brutus put into your silly heads? Increase production? Whatever for? Why should you care about the size of the cake so long as you are assured by your unions that you get your share of the cake, EVEN IF THERE IS NO CAKE. Where in the world are there workers who get every month without fail their share of a nonexistent wealth ?’
‘Nowhere, nowhere., yelled the crowd.
‘Yes, nowhere in this world. Remember, nowhere. Only in Kerala. That's why it is called God’s own country. We earn without sweating. Don’t you know “thou shall live by the sweat of your brows" is God’s curse on Adam when the latter was driven out of Paradise where they did not have to work? Work is a curse. A punishment. Your leaders redeemed that lost paradise where man could eat, drink and be merry without working. That’s the paradise which God made for Adam and Eve. Your leaders have outsmarted governments, why even God himself to create a paradise for you here in Kerala, and now you want to throw it away? You want to throw it away, ugh?’
‘No, No’, they yelled.
‘Down with the traitor Brutus’, someone yelled.
‘And’, thundered Mark Anthony, ‘if Brutus has put the idea in your minds that the absence of generation of wealth in this paradise will throw cockroach in your Kanji (literal translation of Malayalam idiom meaning ‘deprive you of your livelihood’), let me tell you this. With more than 2 million malayali NRI’s slogging it out outside India, we the labour class will never starve.’
Thunderous applause.
‘Long live money order economy’, yelled Mark Anthony waving the read thorthu which he had ripped off his head with flourish.
LONG LIVE MONEY ORDER ECONOMY, shouted the crowd
I woke up with a start at the sound of the alarm clock. It was early morning. I had to board Madras Mail at 6.15 am after cooking breakfast for the family and packing lunch for my husband and two children. I dragged myself out of the bed thinking ruefully “Why wasn’t I born a head load worker?”
I do not remember what Brutus had said. But I do remember seeing Brutus standing tall a erect, in the fatigues of a Roman soldier, earnestness and sincerity writ large on his face, speaking in a rather stiff, baritone voice with no dramatic intonation whatsoever. The blue shirt, green shirt, red shirt head load workers of Kerala who were listening to him were moved to tears, and quite unembarrassed about it.
The only words of Brutus that i recall is the oath he administered to the assembly, which the huge crowd of head load workers, with their right arms stretched out, repeated after him with a thunderous resonance. Here’s the oath:
WE THE HEAD LOAD WORKERS OF KERALA SHALL HITHERTO EARN OUR SALARY. WE SHALL NOT CLAIM NOKUCOOLIE. WE SHALL NOT OVERCHARGE FOR THE WORK WE DO. WE SHALL NOT USE ABUSIVE LANGUAGE.WE SHALL NOT THRUST OUR SERVICE ON PEOPLE. WE SHALL AMEND OUR BODY LANGUAGE. WE SHALL LEND DIGNITY TO OUR LABOUR BY PUTTING OUR HEART AND SOUL INTO OUR WORK AND PASSIONATELY ABIDING BY THE WORK ETHICS SPELT OUT BY OUR LEADER BRUTUS AND BY OUR COMMITMENT TO THE NEW AGENDA.
Wiping their eyes with the red thorthu on their shoulder they sat down and waited for the next speaker. In walked Mark Anthony. There was something wrong with the way he looked. I remember thinking in my dream, “hey, this guy is a fraud’. His face was exactly like Richard Burton’s – light eyed, light complexioned and receding forehead. That was OK. But he wore a shirt the front portion of which had two colours. On the left of the placket was red and on the right, blue. The sleeves were green and they were rolled up half way up the biceps. The red thorthu was on his head in the form of a cocky turban. He wore an atrocious lungi folded over well above the knee and tied over his ribs. Some striped inner wear almost reaching his knees was peeping out cheekily.
He walked in with a slovenly gait, a beedi smoking from his fingers. The crowd greeted him with boos, but quite unfazed, he walked up to the mike, put his right elbow on the lectern, took a deep drag on the beedi and blew the smoke in circles and watched them as the circles dispersed and disappeared into the air. The boos died down and the crowd too watched the circles forming and then becoming ill defined and disappearing.
Soon silence fell. Mark Anthony threw away the beedi and looked at the crowd with one end of his lips lifted in a crooked, scornful smirk.
‘So’, he said, ‘comrades, you are giving up your rights, eh?’
Silence greeted him.
‘Eh, eh eh?’ We went on without raising his voice too much.
‘You fickle minded fools’, he roared abruptly, making the audience sit up with a start. ‘You traitors’, he continued roaring.’ You have betrayed the blood, sweat and tears of generations of thinkers and leaders who laid down their lives, suffered torture at the hands of brutal police toeing the line of the bourgeoisie, to win you the rights to earn a living without working. And now you stupid proletariat, you want to work?’
‘You want to work? You want to live by the sweat of your brows? You want to earn you salary? Then GET OUT OF KERALA. YES’ he roared ‘GET OUT OF KERALA’
'Your leaders first struggled and fought, then pressurised all governments to wrest the sacred right to earn a fat sum without moving your little finger, and now you want to throw that right away? Ugh, ugh, ugh?’ He snorted into the mike.
‘No comrade, no’, shouted the audience.’ No’.
‘And what is this new agenda? New goal that Brutus put into your silly heads? Increase production? Whatever for? Why should you care about the size of the cake so long as you are assured by your unions that you get your share of the cake, EVEN IF THERE IS NO CAKE. Where in the world are there workers who get every month without fail their share of a nonexistent wealth ?’
‘Nowhere, nowhere., yelled the crowd.
‘Yes, nowhere in this world. Remember, nowhere. Only in Kerala. That's why it is called God’s own country. We earn without sweating. Don’t you know “thou shall live by the sweat of your brows" is God’s curse on Adam when the latter was driven out of Paradise where they did not have to work? Work is a curse. A punishment. Your leaders redeemed that lost paradise where man could eat, drink and be merry without working. That’s the paradise which God made for Adam and Eve. Your leaders have outsmarted governments, why even God himself to create a paradise for you here in Kerala, and now you want to throw it away? You want to throw it away, ugh?’
‘No, No’, they yelled.
‘Down with the traitor Brutus’, someone yelled.
‘And’, thundered Mark Anthony, ‘if Brutus has put the idea in your minds that the absence of generation of wealth in this paradise will throw cockroach in your Kanji (literal translation of Malayalam idiom meaning ‘deprive you of your livelihood’), let me tell you this. With more than 2 million malayali NRI’s slogging it out outside India, we the labour class will never starve.’
Thunderous applause.
‘Long live money order economy’, yelled Mark Anthony waving the read thorthu which he had ripped off his head with flourish.
LONG LIVE MONEY ORDER ECONOMY, shouted the crowd
I woke up with a start at the sound of the alarm clock. It was early morning. I had to board Madras Mail at 6.15 am after cooking breakfast for the family and packing lunch for my husband and two children. I dragged myself out of the bed thinking ruefully “Why wasn’t I born a head load worker?”
Monday, August 30, 2010
Carriers of Oral Tradition
This topic suggested itself to me yesterday when I came across a reference to Chanson de Rolland. The very mention of the epic and I found myself in the midst of a royal banquet in honour of Charlemagne emprior (Malayalam corruption for emperor . Tho’ chakravarthy is the word, this is the term my story teller used). A little hungry boy runs into the hall and snatches the hors d’oeuvre from the emperor’s table and dashes out. The emperor orders the boy to be brought in and soon discovers it is none other than his nephew Rolland, whose mother had been banished from the kingdom. The exploits of Rolland then came to me in snatches. I remembered the sense of horror that gripped me at the image of Oliver with his body full of cuts and scratches from the battle being dropped into the well of salt. The Saracens were the villains, I remember, and Charlemagne’s army that Rolland joined was God’s favourite. I remember the final scene of the epic where Rolland, knowing he is about to die, breaks his sword to smithereens, knocking it again and again on a rock. He did not want anyone else to use his precious sword!
The above details may not be accurate for many reasons. It is recaptured from memory of the story I heard as a child from Cicily thathi (thathi is a word for sister among a certain community of Kerala Christians), the seamstress who’d been around in my house ever since I remember. I must have been around 5 or 6 when my brothers and I, with our mouths hanging open at the sheer power of her story telling , sat in front of Cicily thathi as she embroidered delicate flowers on the bed sheets or pillow covers or table cloth or sarees.
Thathi told us a lot of other stories too. Of those, I was fascinated by the story of Pulomaja, the virtuous princess who guarded her chastity fiercely.
The source of her Charlemagne stories was the verses of chavittu nadakom, a Christian art form popular in rural kerala in those days. She was a voracious reader who read novels, magazines, newspapers. She had studied only up to the 4th standard, but was a huge repository of stories, which she gathered not only from what she read, but also from what she heard from her elders.
This set me thinking. Who were the story tellers that shaped my imagination as a child? My mother? No. Not really. She didn’t tell me stories when I was a kid. She did when I grew up and had children of my own. But when I was a school going kid in the lower primary, I used to tell her stories and episodes from school and she used them as illustrations to impart to me practical and spiritual wisdom. But amma was not a storyteller.
Most of the stories I heard were from the domestic helps we had in the house – and we had quite a number . Those were difficult days and amma used to look for the slightest excuse to engage these helps so that they’d get at least 2 square meals a day. Thus it was that there was Cicily thathi who told us literary stories, Rosa cheduthy (term of respect for elder sister) and Maria cheduthy who told us stories handed down by word of mouth.
The cheduthys were not literate and so their stories had a different quality. Besides, they were not discreet enough to know that certain details should not be shared with the children of a very prudish Syrian Catholic family. Their stories sent us into peals of laughter. They were rich in physical description. The women who were the face for vices were invariably shrivelled versions of once well endowed wanton ladies. Mariacheduthy took immense pleasure in graphically describing the now pathetic condition of these sinful women. I once shared the details with amma who was furious and admonished the two cheduthys.
But Maria cheduthy could not be stopped. She resorted to blackmail. She said she wouldn’t tell us any story if we shared them with amma. My brothers, who preferred outdoor games, were not affected by the threat. But I loved Mariacheduthy’s stories with the sleaze she injected into the story of saints and virtuous people and her demo in the form of dance (this almost seventy year old lady showed me how Salome danced to seduce Herod!) and mimicry (she could imitate the emperor’s gait as well as the old wicked half naked witch, bent double on a dirty stick with her shaky grating voice).
Looking back, I realise that a whole new world opened out to me during the time I spent in the company of these cheduthys. Many looked askance at amma for allowing me to spend so much time in the company of ‘those’ people. But I loved them and their stories. The values imbedded in their stories were the same that were taught by amma and my catechism teachers. In the stories told by the cheduthys and lessons taught by the nuns I learnt the same thing – the greatest sins were those against love and chastity. I learnt that there was no sin on earth that God wouldn’t forgive; so there should be nothing on earth that i too can’t forgive. Only, the cheduthy’s had a way of making the value system appear more attractive.
Sometimes, these stories acquired a class colour. I remember Veroni cheduthy, who came into my world when i was a little older, telling me that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to go to heaven. I laughed out loud ‘cos i knew what she was getting at (she was taken to task by amma for playing truant for a week) and also ‘cos i was taught in my catechism class damage control strategies for being economically better off than her. She became furious at my reaction, and came close to me, stuck her face close to mine and said, wagging a her furious forefinger at me: “You wait and see. When you are roasting in hell, i’ll be reclining against the chest of father Abraham up there in heaven. And when you ask for a drop of water to quench your thirst, i will not give you”. She then did a right about turn and walked off from me, throwing a couple of backward glances to see how the idea appealed to me. Her face, however, was beatific, probably at the thought of amma and me roasting in hell!
I wonder if we have that category of people anymore in Kerala. Highly improbable. Universal literacy dealt the first deathblow to them by giving access to all potential carriers of oral tradition to newspapers, ma magazines and serious magazines. And now with the onslaught of the visual media, who has the time or inclination to be carriers or recipients of oral tradition?
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