The Upside Down Boy

 It was the year 2000. The month of January usually saw schools take their students for picnics. The school where I worked was no different. I was the class teacher of grade seven which had  A bunch of naughty boys and girls. 

We headed for Esselworld, an amusement park that was very popular among the youngsters of Mumbai. 

There was a new ride called the Thunder, in which the participants were suspended upside down for arpund two to three seconds.

There was a lit of discussion enroute Esselworld about who would do the ride.

Laughing, cracking jokes amd singing, we all reached Esselworld.

Even as I was monitoring my students,  one of the boys from my class came up with a few more in tow and said, " Maam , we want to ride the Thunder. Do you want to join us? You will not survive it! Challenge!"

What did these pithy kids think of me? I was a veteran at such rides. Whats a bit of it being upside down? And so I marched with them into the queue.  And rode the Thunder like a boss. 

( that I didnt sit in any other ride, post Thunder was soon forgotten by all).

Two days later,  I had a major bout of nausea and vomitting. As I was planning my second baby, I went in for a pregnancy test. The result was positive.

While the family was rejoicing,  I took my husband aside and told him,  Two days ago I rode the Thunder and was suspended in air upside down! I need to get to the gynaec immediately to know all is ok with the baby! Blood drained from hubby's face! He anyway hated such rides as he suffered from vertigo! 

We finally reached the gynaec who informed us all was ok and baby was a strong one. 

Five years later I realised that my son's favourite sitting position on the sofa was with his feet up on the backrest amd his head down! The Thunder had a thunderous impact on him, for sure! 

High Five

 

In the first  year of matrimony, Baby no: 1 was on the way. Rituals seemed the order of the day with the religious ones interspersing the hospital ones.  Appointments with the doctor became routine. I was meeting the doctor more than I was meeting the Hubby.

On my first wedding anniversary, I went into labour. Hubby and me were excited at the thought of sharing the date with our baby. But Baby had other plans. Baby ensured I got admitted and then went into snooze mode. The next two days I was sweeping the hospital floors as if it had never been cleaned for the last two decades. The more I swept, the better chances I have of a normal delivery , said the doctor. 

If I ever got tired and stopped sweeping, a nurse would come and make me push the wall as if it needed to move to the next two stations. The wall doesn't move, I told her. No, she declared, you idiot, it won't move. But the walls of your uterus will be strong to handle the delivery! 

Finally baby decided she needs to bless the world with her presence. All I remember is being scooped on a  stretcher. I hear an ambulance screeching and then I see the planets! Wow, here I am on the tour of space. There is a lovely Jupiter with the  moons and Saturn with the rings. I hear voices of people telling me ,push hard, the baby needs to come out , not go back in. But I am  happily gallivanting in space.

A few minutes later I hear a screechy cry. I find myself holding on to my husband who is weeping.Why was he crying when I was the one who went through the pain? People were congratulating each other as if they had won a race. Wasn't I the one who bore it and did it all? Well, I was stitched up , cleaned  and packaged back to the room. 

A few minutes later a nurse appeared with a bundle. She gave me the bundle. So baby was a bundle! 

See your daughter, she said. 

Bundle  stared at me with big grey eyes. 

I looked at her, wondering, ok what next? What am I supposed to do with this? I smile at the bundle. The bundle continues to stare back and then yawns, closes her eyes and goes  back to sleep.

The next few days are a blur. Feeding  burping, cleaning,  sleeping swallowed each day. I realise my home window has 24 grills and there are 14 yellow flowers on each curtain and 28 red squares. The design is awful, I concluded. Designs hardly mattered when I  soon realised that the only design that mattered was that Bundle  has three forms:

A two piece baby, when she is all wrapped up after a bath in a swaddle, the pieces being the head and the body.

A three piece baby, when she manages to free her arms from the swaddle

A five piece one when she refused to be swaddled , with a head, two hands amd two legs. 

Bundle definitely believed in slapping a high five !

Home grown Amitabh

 After a long days work, I return home and plonk myself on the sofa. Hubby dear brings me a hot cup of tea and settles down on the sofa too. Even as i snuggle into the sofa comfortably , sipping the hot adrak chai, hubby switches on the television. The surfing stops at Agneepath, the 1990 blockbuster.

I stared mindlessly at the screen , hoping that it would change in may be a fee minutes.

Suddenly I could hear the dialogues beside me and almost like a forward time lapse. 

Hubby was totally into the movie , mouthing not just the dialogues of his idol, AB, but of every character in the movie. Back ground music played twice! First on the sofa and then on the TV. 

Yeh humara family ka bachha hain , shouted Hubby! Haan I said..looking at my son...aur kiska hain.

Yeh humara family ka bachha hain, says  Mithuns character exactly three seconds later... Oh woh family and woh baccha.

The next hour was a roller coaster. Not because of the cinematic excellence of the movie, but due to the hilarious rendition of Agneepath, Agneepath, lathpath, lathpath...dialogue by dialogue ( with own ones for additional impact) by Hubby dearest.

Even as the movie ended, I wound up the day wondering if Mukul Anand amd his team would ever have imagined that this movie could make people laugh, even more than any Golmaal or Herapheri! 

Home sweet home

 The house i presently occupy is my tenth place of residence. In the four plus decades of my existance , variety has been the house of life for me.

My parents tell me that when I was born, they shifted from the staff quarters of RBI to the officers one. A9 , in RBI quarters , Santa Cruz was my home for the first decade of my life.

I remember vividly the huge housing colony, the ground floor home, the wooden slide  in a sand pit and the wonderful ground that the colony had. It was a typical colony that celebrated festivals together.  There were movies screened every Diwali and Christmas. Every  building had four floors and every house was accessible. There was one telephone in someone's home. The entire colony would get their calls at that home. A staff bus would take all employees to office daily morning and bring them back home every evening. This was the place where I learnt how to cycle,  fell down on the water tank and broke my teeth( the repercussion of which I am facing till date...thats a wholly different story!)

Every evening all children would come down to play. We would play till late evening. Moms would come out to chit chat while we continued with games under the srreet lights. I would alide down banisters all the way down from the fourth floor. 

One of the strongest memories of this house was me getting locked up in one of the bedrooms. Appa had to climb in through the ventilator and rescue me. Till date he hates closed doors!

From here in 1982 we shifted to Vile Parle. Many members of the society were the same as the new one Snehadhara was a residential self owned colony of RBI employees. Yet the feeling was not the same. Snehadhara was scattered,  the dynamics were different and people shifted in at different times. The magic of the staff quarters was never replicated. They tried to host programs and recreate Santacruz in Snehadhara , but the leaky buildings and the varied infrastructural issues caused more turmoil in Ashrudhara as people began calling it.

Wadala tatha shifted in with us. He was old and sick and in pain. He spent his last days in this house.  Soon after his death we moved cities and went to Trivandrum.

Trivandrum was a wholly different experience. On one side there was the excitement of getting to live in a bungalow. The only other bungalow in my life was that of my Poona tatha and paati where I spent my vacations.

We shifted into this double storied house which had a huge terrace in a quaint place called Kuruvankonam. The house was located on a slope. It had a cocoa bean tree and a champakai tree. The champakai fruit became one of my favourites ever since I tasted them there. A few months into our stay in Kuruvankonam, I was bedridden with a bout of chicken pox. The reason I fell sick was the adventure Pushpa and me decided to emabark on , while comjneg back from school one day. We saw a lovely green patch of grass and were lured towards it. We stepped into what unfortunately was a deceptive puddle of slush. Both of us developed rashes and fever and mine developed into the pox. Amma decided we need to move near the school, so that such adventures or rather misadventures could be avoided!

We moved into Smrithi at Pattom, which later on became so popular at the Post office that just Smrithi, Pattom Trivandrum was enough for any  letter to reach us. This was thanks to the daily correspondence that Appa kept with his circle. Smrithi housed us for the rest of our tenure in Trivandrum. It was a small little bungalow, with a lovely garden , that was developed by Amma. We spent a happy time , watching Malayalam movies at theatres  near by, going to the zoo regularly and the rose show at Kowdiar palace. School was a stone's throw away and we walked everywhere. 

In 1991, I shifted to Mysore and in 92 the rest of the family  came back to Mumbai. Appa had got himself transfered back to Mumbai. The higher officals in RBI had forgotted he needed to return and he had to jolt them back to awareness.

In May 1992, we flew back from Trivandrum to Bombay for good. Snehadhara became my vacation home for three years.

Ganga hostel at the Regional College of Education was my home for four years.  Room no:160 in the first year and 64 in the next three have so many memories in them. Years later when I revisted the hostel and entered Room no: 64, I burst out into tears scaring the present inmates of the room. I would travel from Mysore to Bombay twice a year. Bombay trips meant shopping, replenishing stocks of achar,  thogayal podi and other snacks that would last atleast a month ahead. I used to shop not just for myself,  but also for friends who wanted clothes from Bombay. 

In 1995, I came back to Snehadhara. But I was not destined to live in that house for long  Groom hunting had begun and in 1996, post marriage I shifted into tiny Kulsum Mahal. I have thanked every single day in Ganga Hostel which helped me adjust in the small house with my husband and his family. Seven years and two babies later , we bought our first house in Kalina.

Four years later,  when the children were growing up,Gopal and me decided to buy the present house that I reside in. Since 2010 I have been in the present house ! But whether this will be my last house is destiny's call. After all I am the one with erratachuzhi on my head...the one who can never be in the same place. 

What a Paav!

 Tiĺl the age of 23- the only meaning i knew of paav was leg. Then I reached mumbai

Mumbai taught me that paav was a type pf bread that was had with vada in vada paav and with bhaji in paav bhaji.

Then I got married. And what does marriage have to do with paav? That too in the Iyer community?

In my life,  a lot.

Just back from our honeymoon, even as  I was settling into the new home and the new family, I am informed by my mil that I needed to go across the road to the bakery and get some paav. Its a crisp sunday morning and I tell her, OK, I will go after breakfast. She gently informs me , that is breakfast! For someone who has seen paav only outside the home, this is the mildest of the quakes. 

So I  bring in the warm soft paav home. I wonder with what it has to be eaten. I didnt see any bhaji. 

And lo and behold, my husband has replaced the dosa with the paav. There is dosa molgapodi and the til oil on the table to be eaten with the paav. Or rather the paav to be eaten with typical south indian accompaniments. I was duly informed that paav is highly accommodating and could be consumed with anything. As the first year of marriage chugged on, Paav was had , on most Sunday mornings with curd and sambar powder, with sambar , with moru kuzhambu, with dal or plain with it being lightly roasted in ghee. I ensured that I have my share of dosa batter in the frig, as I could never develop a taste for paav for breakfast.

As a young married couple   we were called for lunch to a friends house for lunch. The lady took me into her kitchen and showed me all her preparations. There were varieties of gravies amd curries. 

Ten minutes before lunch i realised both the husbands were missing. On enquiring I was informed that they went to  buy the ubiquitous paav  that was to be had with all the sumptuous curries she had prepared. Paav surely ruled roost here! 

My children religiously follow family tradition. They adore the paav for breakfast and can eat ot for lunch and dinner. Woe behold if one of them is not satiated with the number of paavs. Before every purchase,  a count is taken. This count is sacrosanct. You cant claim more than your share. You cant eat less and insult the paav.

I have survived the last two and half decades telling myself, Hold on to your dosas, you have nothing to lose but the paav! 

(Dinner today was Dahi Misal paav...sigh) 

Dosa delights

 One of my fondest memories of childhood is the dosa. I am a big fan of a crispy thin round dosa. And the only one to blame for this is my mom.

When my sister and me used to come back from school, there would be hot tiffin  waiting for us daily. It would be upma, poha, bread toast, idli or dosa.

I eagerly waited for the dosa. All other items would usually be ready by the time we reached home. But not the dosa. 

The dosakallu would go on the stove just when we opened the gate. Even as we cleaned up and got ready to tackle the evening, the first two dosas would be made for my sister. She was a regular dosa eater and didnt trouble amma with too many rules about the dosa. As she settled into her dosas , mine would arrive royally!  

Mine had to be  hot , crisp, round and slightly brown. No cold ones for me. No white ones for me. No thick ones for me. And definitely no torn ones for me. I remember amma narrating how as a toddler I had asked her to stitch up a torn dosa! She used to make  dosa after dosa and I would gobble them up even as the next one got ready. There would be days when I would ask her, how many did I finish? Eat as many as you want, she would reply, why count? 

When I got married, my mother in law obviously never expected a dosanazi as a daughter in law. She usually prepared dosas and kept them aside, as one by one people kept walking into the kitchen picking them up. She informed me that one of the major life hacks she had learned with four hungry teenagers, a ravenous husband and a band of motley relatives who perenially occupied her home was to make fat thick dosas so that no one demanded a third one! While the hack worked for her, my dosa sensibilty refused to toe the line. I offered right away to make my dosas myself,  so that I could make them crisp and brown and thin and hot and eat them even as I was making them! 

Sonny boy and me love it hot crisp brown and thin while my husband and daughter need the dosa slightly thick, white and warm. It may be served with molgapodi or chutney or sambar or even jaggery or jam. That is immaterial.

What is supremely important is it adheres to my standards of being dosa! 

My Great Indian Kitchen

 

This list is not just a random list. Each of these incidents have happened to me! 

Patriarchy is alive and kicking!

All the people who are mentioned here are not just educated, but highly so! 

Male members in my family leaving chewed up drumsticks and unclean plates on the table to be cleaned by the women.

Males being served food before women. 

Male members in a friend group asking my husband why he allows me to express my opinion openly in the whatsapp group!

A female member telling me that her prayers  have been granted when my son was born, as now I had a male heir( to what grand palace , i still wonder) 

Female members insisting on me following period rules and eating last.

A plate of food being hurled across the room on the floor towards me by a female.

Female members in my family asking me why i wanted to clear my post graduation  , now that I was a wife and a mother.

My son being gifted a gold chain for his naming ceremony,  while my daughter was gifted a dress as she was just a girl! 

Male members especially telescopically related guys who wanted to know if we have released the horoscope of our daughter the day she turned 20 into the marriage market!