Fights and Feuds…

July 2, 2009 at 4:02 pm (husbands, marriage, nostalgia, women)

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The doorbell rang as I was racing against time to finish an assignment. My son was napping and I prayed he wouldn’t wake up and ruin my efforts to catch a deadline.  For once.

H, a friend stood outside my door.

Her forehead was smeared with so much kumkum that it looked like she’d emptied a dubba on herself.

I invited her in and ran back to the comp.

She dragged a chair and sat next to me.

“I walked out of home,” she informed me.

“Why?”

“I fought with my husband”

“So what’s new?! ” I asked. ” you keep talking… just don’t expect me to say anything till I send this mail… “

She rattled on about the arguement she’d had with her husband (which was so petty, I can’t even tell you…)

I half-listened and made all the appropriate noises.

I finished my work and we lounged in the sofa with a cup of tea each.

She’d just told me how she had walked all morning from one temple to another to get some peace of mind… She was sure her husband must have been having hell trying to handle both their boisterous kids when the doorbell rang again.

This time it was her driver.

She looked at me flummoxed.

I just shrugged.

The driver informed her that his master was downstairs waiting for her in the car.

“Tell him I’m not coming..” She said haughtily.

“Ma’m… I’ll lose my job.. you please tell him whatever you want to yourself…”

She looked at me…

“Your man is smart..” I told her. ” He knows exactly where you’ll be when you run away from home!”

After dragging her feet for another ten minutes, she sheepishly said her goodbyes and went back to her waiting husband…

*******

Fights in a marriage is as common as cold, I think… I have my share of them too… But over the years they’ve tapered down to a curt word here, a killer looks there and we just get on with our lives.

I remember the first time we had a fight as a newly-weds. After a bitter arguement and a healthy blame-game session, my husband stormed out after yelling he didn’t want dinner.

I threw myself on the bed, cried into my pillow and ignored my own grumbly tummy for the better part of the night.

The next time, we had just sat down to dinner and I was ravenous.

But my husband who was suffering from a bad cold was mad at mje for the chilled curds at the table.  How could I be so inconsiderate?

I told him he’d been avoiding curds for the past few days and the chilled curds were for me.

He walked off in a huff.

I looked at the food in my plate.

Then I looked at his sulking silhouette in the balcony.

My hunger won. I ate my dinner and retreated to the bedroom and watched some TV.

But the dishes on the table bothered me.

So I went up to him and asked him ” Are’nt you going to finish your dinner?”

“NO!”  he barked. “I told you I will not eat!”

“Ok” I said. I cleared the table, cleaned the kitchen and went back to bed. After a bit of channel surfing, I drifted off to a peaceful slumber for the next eight hours.

And the next day my husband was back to normal, talking about the weather!

Having stumbled upon this brilliant way of handling a fight by sheer accident, I’ve stuck to it all these years …

But of course there was this odd incident when I was overcome with so much anger that I tried a filmy style walkout late in the night. (We were staying in a very quiet and lonely neighborhood then)

I was sure my husband would follow me with a thousand apologies, but when it didn’t happen, I quickly backtracked to find him glowering at the door.

I got an earful for being so foolish and how I could have got mugged or raped or into so many such nasty situations.

Anyway, now both of us don’t waste our energies  yelling or screaming. And now we cannot afford to raise our voices in front of the kid. (Thanks to all those advice you get on child rearing, free or otherwise!)

So its clipped comments, curt nods and murderous looks for us. And after a bit we just carry on with our normal lives.

I think such small fights add spice to any marriage. Imagine if  we all had predictable, happy and peaceful conversations with our spouses all the time… It’d be like having plate after plate of syrupy jaangiri! Absolutely no spice!!!

And one of my favourite stories is about a good friend when she was a newly-wed.

She stormed out after a fight, stopped at a wine shop, got herself a bottle of vodka, went over to a friend’s place, stayed up cursing all men the whole night. This was before the mobile phone days. The next morning she returned home to find an anxious husband, who’d been worried sick all night and had been just about to call the cops. He was so relieved to see her safe & sound that they had a tearful reunion on the spot!

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Ganesha – A short story

May 29, 2009 at 9:40 pm (ganesha, god, people, short story)

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Anand stands before me. His palms joined together in reverence. His eyes closed. Lips moving in prayer.

“Please, please, please…” he murmurs. “Please God, let me do well in my Chemistry exam tomorrow,” he prays ardently.

 “Don’t you think it’ll help things if you go home now and spend sometime with your books? “ I ask him.

He does not hear me. His mind is full of voices.

 His father’s. His mother’s. His teachers’. His friends’. His own.

Admonitions. Fears. Warnings. Dreams. Aspirations.

The din drowns my voice completely.

After one last look at me he leaves hurriedly.

He has tickets for the latest movie in his pocket.

I should know. I am after all, omniscient.

Assured that I’ll cook up some miracle tomorrow to save his day, he leaves while his mind is already with his friends waiting for him at the cinema.

******** 

A coconut smashes on the street.

It’s Kamala.

Soon she is  standing in front of me.

Her lips are moving in fervent prayer. But her mind asks me, “God! Why isn’t he speaking to me? What have I done wrong this time? Why don’t you do something?”

After each fight with her husband, she comes here with many questions, to implore me to help her.

“Why don’t you ask your husband?” I ask gently. “Talking it over with him will give you more answers than all your prayers here.”

As before, my voice goes unheard in the clamour of the thoughts in her head.

But relieved that I’ll solve her problems, she leaves, more light hearted.

*******

Sometimes I wonder if that’s what I am here for.

To solve problems.

Agreed, I am the remover of obstacles and all that. But most of the time, all people have to do is to bend down, pick up the obstacle and throw it away.

But instead, they just stand there, mortified, close their eyes and try to wish their problems away.

*******

Here comes Preethi.

She’s a delight to me. She lives next door. Comes to see me everyday.

I wait eagerly for her visits.

She comes in. After exchanging pleasantries, starts telling me the highlights of her day.

Her childish logic never ceases to amaze me. She makes so much more sense than the adults.

Today, she’s upset with her mother.

“All I did was ask her if my snack was ready,” she says mournfully.

“For that, she yelled and said, I bother her all the time!”

“Don’t worry about that, sweet heart,” I assure her.

“Your mother was not really mad at you.”

“Really?” she asks.

“Yes.” I smile.

“Go home now, your mother’s waiting for you with cheese crackers!”

“Wow!” she says and skips out.

************

She almost knocks over an annoyed Kannan, who’s coming towards me.

Of late, he’s here everyday, praying for his son, who’s appearing for his school finals this year.

“Please God,” he prays, “Make Arun get high marks and manage an engineering seat.”

“You fool!” I admonish him. “Your son has no interest in engineering. You forced him to take math, a subject he hates. Have you seen his paintings? They’re brilliant. Why don’t you encourage him to take up a career in art?”

Stubbornly refusing to listen, he drones on his prayers to shut out my voice.

Fine. I’ll do my best.

These are problems of another kind. The ones some create for themselves. Oh, how they love to do that! Arun is a brilliant painter who happens to hate math. Then why force him to learn it and then come to me and ask for a miracle?

Anyway, like I said, I’ll do my best.

*********

A few days later, Preethi walks in. Do I see tears in her eyes?

“Child! What happened?” I ask.

“God! I have to leave you,” she wails. “My father’s transferred to Madurai.”

“Oh! Is that so?” I feign bewilderment. “Don’t worry, girl. You’ll find a new friend” I try to console her.

“But I’ll miss you,” she says.

She stays for a long time. I cheer her up with things she can look forward to.

New house. New school. New friends.

It works. Still sad, but visibly cheered, she says her goodbyes.

I promise never to forget her and help her in all her future troubles.

She leaves.

 

I chuckle to myself.

She doesn’t know.

In Madurai, I sit in a small shrine, right opposite her house. She can see me from her bedroom window.

 

I am omnipresent, remember?

9 Comments

IIM – Ganjdundwara: Book Review

May 23, 2009 at 3:04 pm (books, people, villages)

IIM

indialog.co.in

This book was published in January 2008. I got my hands on a copy only last week. After I finished the book, I was so impressed.

I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of it till now. Was this raved about at the time of release and I missed it totally? Or the publishers chose to maintain a low profile?

Whatever it was, this by no means is an average book. It overtakes any other book in this genre (IIT/IIM guys writing their college/career stories) by its sheer content.

Though it’s a ‘dear diary’ type of novel, all the characters breathe life to the story, however small their role is.

It starts off with two management trainees finding their way to Rangpurgaon, a small village where they’ll spend the next 2 months as part of their training program.

How they adapt themselves to village life, live without a bathroom or internet connection, succeed in generating income to the women’s self help group with their products and finally get a taste of the brutal laws of village, is the story.

The narration is simple. Like I said earlier, it’s more like reading someone’s diary. But that itself makes it a very interesting read. The purpose of the book is not to showcase (or show off!) the author’s command over the English language. But to recreate (it’s semi-autobiographical) life in a remote village in all its glory.

It has humor too.  Simple incidents like the villagers wanting to buy the laptop from the trainees so they can attach it to their tractors to watch movies and songs as they work, the way almost the entire village escorting the two to buy a bicycle in the nearest town are two good examples.

The characters portrayed are so likeable. From the village supremo Martand Tiwari who terrorises everyone but clucks around the two city dwellers like a mother hen, his younger brother Anuj who is tongue-tied in his brother’s presence, but shares his dream of a ‘love marriage’ with the young city men… the star-crossed lovers Lalu and Manju whose idea of a date is to walk a few paces away from each other in the pretext of some chores… the old men who form the panchayat with Martand Tiwari, who grill the two men on their first day and after being shocked they’re still unmarried, offer to find them good matches… and not to mention Shyam who shares this adventure with the author..

All of them are so true to life and you genuinely start liking them after a few pages.

I don’t know if the dramatic end is fictional or not, but I closed the book with tears in my eyes.

5 Comments

Police story

May 16, 2009 at 7:26 pm (mobile phone, people, police)

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I was driving back home on a Saturday from a bit of shopping. Impromptu, I decided to stop by at a friend’s shop on my way to pick up something. I called her to check if the shop was open. Knowing its illegal to use a mobile phone while driving, I put her on speaker and gripped the phone and the wheel while speaking to her for a few seconds.

 A little later, a bike rode right next to me and the riders signalled me to pull over. As they parked in front of me, I realised they were cops.

“Oh, joy!”  I thought as I pulled over.

One of them walked up to me.

I rolled down my window.

“Madam, You cannot talk on your mobile while driving…”

” I was not,” I protested. “I was just holding my phone.”

“Even that is not allowed, Madam. You can come with us to the sergent and pay Rs. 1100 as fine.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s standing under the bridge you just came by…” It was almost a kilometre behind me. (It occured to me only later that the sergent must be a seasoned scuba diver to stand under that bridge, which was constructed over the murky waters of Adyar river! Unless he had meant to say ‘the other side of the bridge’!)

I hesitated. “Its almost lunch time and I have a small child waiting at home…” I said pleadingly. 

He seemed good natured enough to smile and suggested, “Then you can give us whatever amount you want happily, madam. We cannot give you a receipt, though…”

“Oh, that’s ok,” I said happily, intending to give him a hundred ruppee note.

But as luck would have it, my wallet had only 3 crisp 500 Rupee notes.

Reluctantly, I peeled off one and handed it over. Do I ask for change, I wondered.

He beamed at me as he asked his fellow cop to come over and take it from me. (Why couldn’t he take it, I wonder…)

“I’m saying this for your own good madam. Please don’t use the phone while driving, its very dangerous”.

He went back to his bike and made a show of directing the vehicles so I could join the meagre traffic… 

In the days of yore, this was called ‘vazhippari kollai‘…

And people doing it were respected dacoits…

7 Comments

My bliss…

May 2, 2009 at 11:03 am (food)

 

food1

Poppadam & Vathal kozhambu…

12 Comments

Bed Time Stories…

April 22, 2009 at 10:31 am (bed-time stories, family, kids, parenting, parents)

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When my brother and I were children, bed-time stories were a must-have ritual every night. During school days, we used to fall asleep listening to our father’s voice droning in the dark about Rama, The Pandavas or Alibaba.. 

And during the holidays, my grandfather used to read Brer Rabbit from an Enid Blyton book, when we fell asleep on a cot out-doors, staring at the starry sky.

Apart from this teeny bit of English stories, all others were home-grown. Tales from Rmayana, Mahabharata or some other mythologies were regulars and sometimes peppered with local stories of a greedy mother in law, or a shy, but gluttonous son-in-law, and such.

Now of course the stories I read to my son are stright from glossy books we find in upmarket book stores – Bob the builder, Mickey Mouse, Franklin the turtle, Thomas the Tank Engine, to name a few.

I was horrified last week, when he told me that Prince Ram from Raamaayaan – The Legend of  Prince Raam,  Phhawan Phuthrrr Haanuman are all American boys. (Thanks to Cartoon Network) He refused to believe they had their origins in India.

Mortified, I vowed to set it right. Maybe I’ll recount the stories of my childhood. 

That night he was all excited that I was going to tell him the story of Ramayan. I started off with King Dasaratha pining for a child and he got four sons…

But then, even the tamest of our epics is full of blood and gore…

Lakshmana cutting off Surpananka’s nose, Ravana slayiing Jatayu, Rama killing Vali with his bow & arrow and the finale, the bloody battle itself…

All the stuff which are  normally taboo for him on TV was all rolled in one story.

Mahabharatha is equally violent. 

So I tried some of the home grown stories. Each one was more violent than the other.

Here’s an example.

A mother-in-law tries to kill her daughter-in-law by asking her son to bundle her up in a sack and set fire on her… Why? Because the Daughter-in-law had eaten all of her favourite ennai kathrikka (an eggplant dish) The clever daughter-in-law escapes and replaces the sack with firewood. And when the sticks start to explode, the Mother-in-Law rubs her hands in glee that her Daughter-in-Law’s bones are breaking.

The younger woman escapes into the forests and gets on a tree for the night. She hears some dacoits dividing their loot under the same tree. She jumps on them. They run for their lives misaking her for a ghost and she happily gathers all the gold and comes back home. Her mother-in-law is shocked to see her alive. The daughter-in-law convinces her that she went to heaven and her father in law is rolling in money and gold and gave her just a bit. So the mother-in-law orders her son to set fire on her so she can join her husband and his riches in heaven. He obliges and the young couple live happily ever after…

How am I supposed to narrate this to my soon-to-be five year old?! What morals does it teach him? That killing someone for petty reason is ok? Living off stolen money is commendable? Its even worse than all the violent good Vs evil stories he watches on TV.

More importantly how did my own father and his kith and kin tell us this story when we were about the same age?

Actually speaking, it didn’t do us any damage emotionally. Both me and my brother were never aggressive as kids.

Am I over-analysing the effects of stories on young minds?

But still I hate it when my son’s favourite pastime is slaying imaginary enemies with a Ben 10 sword. Now most of his sentences are peppered wih the word ‘kill’.

Only yesterday, we had a power-cut which lasted about ten minutes (thanks to the upcoming elections!)

He was so annoyed and afterwards told me, “Amma, a bad god came and took the electricity away. Then a good god came, killed the bad god and gave me the electricity.”

Deivame!!

27 Comments

tea times…

April 9, 2009 at 10:28 am (family, people, weddings, women)

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A swank new tea lounge had opened up in the neighborhood. A small place, looked cosy from outside.

A friend called me. She was back in town for a holiday and wanted to meet up with the gang for tea. I suggested the new place.

A few days later, I walked in with my pals.

All of us collapsed on the comfy sofas and looked around appreciatively.

“This place is  so much like the Central Perk in ‘Friends’, I said.

“Wow!” S said. “Why didn’t we have places like these when we were in college?”

“Like we would have been able to afford it!” quipped N. “Dei, you still owe me money for your college binges!” he laughed.

The afternoon saw us relaxed and catching-up on each others’ lives. The ones returning home sat reminiscing with the rest of us who were definitely not going anywhere outside our charmed city.

The ambience of the place added to to our sense of  bonhomie. Dim lights, tastefully done interiors, a book shelf crammed with a wide variety of books, a lone waiter who was in no hurry…

…it was bliss.

A few weeks later, I wanted to go there again. So I dragged a cousin to the place and told her this is a must-see place for her if she wants a cool hang-out for her friends.

She was in college and was reluctantly plodding through a course in, lets just say more scintifically oriented.

“I’m just waiting to complete college, so I  never have to look at a science book in my life again!” she told me on our way. ”You know, I’m so much more interested in Arts.”

“Then why did you take this up?” I asked.

“Oh Akka! I thought this was my calling in life when I was in school,  and Arts was only a hobby. But now I realise there are so many avenues open to Arts..” She said.

Her jaw dropped opened when she saw the place.

“Oh wow!” She gushed. “What a place!”

She was alll charged up by the time we were seated. 

“Once I go back home after my college, I am going to start a place, just like this in my city!” She enthused.

“I’ll speak to mom and we can look for a place closeby…” 

As she was plotting the opening of her own restaurant, I lazily looked around.

Not many people on a Sunday afternoon, I mused.

The place was empty, but for a table on the other end.

The door opened and a couple walked in. They were holding hands and she was leaning on his shoulder. They took the table directly in front of us.

She was a PYT, pencil thin, in a tight-fitting lime-green Tee and tight denims. He was more the studious type, with a book in hand.

She looked vaguely familiar. But I just couldn’t place her.

After we placed our orders, I was still trying to place the PYT. “I think I know her..” I told my cousin, trying not stare.

I thought I was getting somewhere. Just when my brain found the last piece of the puzzle, I heard a pretty loud click.

My cousin just had to show the place to her mom. So she had clicked a pictuere on her mobile phone.

“She’s my friend’s cousin’s wife!” I said. I had been to his wedding last year.

The lovey-dovey couple, looked in our direction, startled.

“Is that her husband?” my cousin asked, not aware of the little storm she had created in their cuppa.

“No..” I replied as the girl hurriedly packed her things.

Then she walked to the door as fast as possible and let herself out.

“What have you done?!” I asked my cousin.

“That girl thinks we were spying on her and have taken a picture of them together to show her folks!”

“My god! Akka, I’m so sorry!”

But then the situation was so unreal, I burst out laughing.

The man still sat at the table, unmindful of anything, as he slowly sipped his coffee and read his book.

“Will you tell your friend?” my cousin wanted to know.

“No way!” I replied. “This is strictly none of our business. If this woman wants to cheat on her husband, its her prerogative. I hate meddling with other people’s marriages.”

“But you know Akka, these things happen in my college all the time,” She said.

“In my own class there are 2 or 3 cases. But if you’d rather not know, the righteous type you are, we’ll talk about something else.” She added cautiously.

“No, no! I”m ever ready for gossip!” I reassured her and I was greatly enlightened about a married professor living with a student and girls two-timing their class boys and so on and so forth.

And true to my words, I never mentioned my friend’s cousin’s wife to anyone at all.

And thank god I didn’t! Imagine my shock when I bumped into them in a wedding the following week. My frind’s cousin was just the same, but his wife was triple her size. I think she was definitely pregnant!!!

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Flying colours

March 30, 2009 at 1:15 pm (kids, superman)

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We were leaving a family function, when the hostess handed me the thamboolam bag. My son  raced to me. He loved receiving gifts. I handed him the bag and said, “This is a gift for you.”

Excited, he asked me, “What is it? Can I open it?”

Before I could tell him not to, he’d eagerly opened it and taken out a brown paper bag, neatly kept with the regular manjal kungumam and vethalai pakku.

He then proceeded to rip open the paper and took out a red colour blouse piece.

“Amma, look!” he called animatedly. “A red cloth for me!”

I couldn’t understand why he was so excited about a red blouse piece.

“Its for me to fly, silly!” he informed me, when asked.

Once we reached home he was flying about(more like jumping about from sofa to chair to coffee table) in his mini briefs with the red cape tied securely around his neck.

Wish I’d taken a picture to post as well….

13 Comments

Sir Crow

March 23, 2009 at 10:41 am (kids, lizards, people)

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I was in the kitchen, when I heard my son’s  scream and his hurried footsteps. Last I saw him, he’d been playing in the drawing room with his trains.

I ran out to see him standing on the bed in another room and sobbing.

“What happened?” I asked. 

He pointed to the drawing room and said tearfully, “Lizard!”

I ran to check. Indeed there was a big lizard on the floor, motionless on its back. Yikes!

To my immense relief, I saw my father-in-law approach it with an old newspaper. He neatly scooped up the lizard, walked over to the balcony and threw it away.

I went back to my son to updatel him, but he was already being consoled by my mother-in-law.

She had her arms around him and was rocking him back and forth, talking gently to soothe his fears.

“Don’t cry ma,” I heard her say. “Thatha has scooped up he lizar in an old newspaper  and has thrown it out. A crow will come and gobble it up.  So don’t be afraid now…”

After a moment of silence my son had this to say…

“The crow is very brave…”

7 Comments

The Milk mix-up

March 9, 2009 at 4:09 pm (family, husbands, people)

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This happened many, many years ago. 

We’d just moved into a brand new apartment. Of the total eight apartments, only four were occupied so far.

On the first evening there,  my husband came back after a hard day’s work. He’d taken the stairs to our second floor apartment. He told us he’d seen the milk packet from morning still lying outside the door of an apartment in the first floor.

“Who satys there?” he asked my father-in-law.

“Some bachelors, I think,” he replied.” But its locked most of the time.”

After we had dinner, we were clearing up the dishes, when the doorbell rang.

I looked throught the peep hole to find a tall, hefty & definitely scary looking man with a smaller man.

“Who is it?” I asked nervously.

He mumbled something in a deep, rumbly voice.

Terrified, I ran to get my husband.

He opened the door a crack.

“Fisrt floor, paal…” the stranger said. (Paal is milk in tamil)

“You can take it if you want. Its not ours. Why are you troubling us this late for that?” My husband thundered at him before shutting the door.

The doorbell rang again.

Again, my husband opened the door a bit.

“First floor, Paal…” The stranger repeated.

“Don’t bother us again. If you do, I’ll call the cops. Whatever you want, you can ask the building supervisor on the top floor.” My husband roared. Since some of the flats were still in the finishing stages, we were yet to get a security guard.

“He not there..” The stranger informed us gruffly.

This time, me, my mom-in-law and dad-in-law stood behind my husband nervously.

“Shut the door!” we all hissed to my husband. “What if he has a knife or something?”

My husband shut the door after warning him with dire consequences if he rang our doorbell again.

I ran to the balcony to see if the thugs had left.

They were talking to each other, just outside the gate, near a parked bike. 

“Should we call the police?” I asked my husband.

“Wait..” he said, studying them intently.

“Trying to remember their faces.” he instructed me. “Just in case we’ll have to identify them later.”

I shuddered.

I held a bottle of oil in my hand, ready to throw on them if they dared to enter our gates again. (Why a bottle of oil? I have no clue! Maybe that was the closest then!)

A little later they started the bike and rode away.

We had a liitle conference in the living room.

We took stock of the other three occupants of the building. Only the third floor seemed vulnerable. There were two teen age boys home alone while their parents were travelling.

We decided to warn all the others anyway.

The ground floor guys never bothered to answer the door.

First floor was locked with the milk packets still on the doormat.

The boys on the third floor opened their doors immediately without even checking.

“Don’t ever do that.” Warned my husband. And he went on to explain about the prowlers we’d encountered. And asked them to call him on his mobile if they ever come back again.

Back home we secured the doors and discussed the importance of being safe in your own house.  Having done our bit, we went to sleep after cursing the missing building supervisor and the state of our country.

*****************

Next morning, on our way out we spotted the supervisor talking to the mason. 

“Where were you last night?” My husband asked him.

“Night show, sir…” he answered sheepishly.

We quickly recounted the previous night’s events. 

The supervisor asked us, ” Was he very tall & hefty?”

“Yes.”

“Did he speak in a funny accent?”

“Yes, I think so…”

He then grinned from ear to ear and told him, “Sir, that was Paul sir’s friend”.

“Which Paul?”

“He stays in the first floor, sir. He has a Jamaican friend who visits him often. Paul sir has not been in town for a few days and his friend is looking for him. He came the previous night too…” He grinned at us, desperately trying not to laught at us to our stupified faces…

Once we were in the car, I broke the thick silence.

“So by first’ floor paal’, he meant ‘where’s Paul living in the first floor?’ and not ‘why is milk on the first floor doormat?’ isn’t it?”

“Shudduppp!” yelled my husband before roaring with laughter, “Oil bottle!!!” he pointed at me, gasping for breath.

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