menonsmusings20

Being back in rainy Kerala, I feel nostalgic about Amma's cooking. She would make here concoctions out of a confusion of raw and ripe fruits, an assortment of vegetables, and garam garam Indian spice along with all season coconut gratings, which would find its way into all sorts of Kerala cooking, either as such or ground into a paste with a wide variety of taste makers. She would serve us with hot hot idlies ( fashionably pronounced Italies), steamed rice cakes sprinkled with inevitable coconut gratings with equally steaming black gram curry, puri-potato etc for breakfast; a sumptuous and spicy lunch with inescapable rice and pappads; a high tea with as much tasty spread as you can think of; and a mouth watering dinner to boot. No wonder all of grew fat on her love!

I remember her soft and all caring. I remember her feeding us rice. She would mash all the ingredients together, kneed it, work on it with such frenzy until it became a juicy paste, which we used to slurp up. Something in her hand made it all the more tastier. Her perseverance knew no bounds. Although bronchial asthma made her bent, it couldn't bend her spirits. She doggedly refused to be intimidated by the nasty disease instead confronted the difficult chores with a smiling countenance. She lived to make feasty meals and serve to a large crowd. She had such good hands. Even if she made a swift meal it would taste like a gourmet's delight! Alas, fate stole her away from us. It was abrupt and merciless. I feel a vacuum, which I can never really fill. Words become futile to convey my longing for mom. I love my mom.

The Nineties . . . .  Then, the chauvinistic men looked down upon the chatty women deep in conversation. Many jokes have piled up one top of the other belittling this ‘women enterprise’ as if for men such trivial activities are demeaning and of course gross!  Yet, wherever I go, at least among the Malayalis, the men talk as much if not more than their female counterparts, including myself; and louder too. The topics they indulge in – as bad if not worse than the women. If you consider one unit of air going out in speech per syllable, at least a million units of air are expelled from a male’s mouth a day! That itself is enough to trigger a global warming!  Some love to talk loudly, or may be softly or in some other unique way exclusive to them. I listen sometime to conversation among men gab, gab, gab on and on. Sometimes they are so monotonous that it serves as a lullaby and I have caught myself nodding off to sleep. Some argue among themselves and it sounds so much like ...

I was recently at the ancestral home for the puja, which is an annual affair without a break continuing for the past fifty odd years. Although it was started for pleasing the deities, in the contemporary time of insular fragmented family units, it also serves as the platform for social interaction. So, the relatives gather for the event with enthusiasm and expectations. For several of us it is the time to indulge in nostalgia of our school days, youth and the good and the bad times unique to us. A kaleidoscope of events and a cascade of characters twinkle and disappear in our memories. For some it means sharing crass gossip, exchange juicy information of the black sheep among the family and have tempestuous orgy of criticizing everyone and everything. The over-sensitive teens suddenly plucked away from their high-tech gadgets and skyscrapers and catapulted into the quiet rural setting would sit alone weary of the elders and scoffing at their village-bum cousins. They in their lack of...

Where are you? Where are you?  O please tell me  I’m all alone a timid child of forty.  You’re a part that  I took would be there I can’t go on,  my legs falter, I’m unaware.  How high up are you in your heavenly flight?  I sit up wondering many a sleepless night.  I dream of you hovering up in the sky  All in benign grace, blessing us by.  I heard you talk to me, “O, don’t worry son,”  I’ve heard your warm chuckle soothing and fun.  I wish you would chide me into fair action  I really oughtn’t sulk around moping in the sun.  Alas, the big armchair sits ‘ere empty and bare  It’ll rock no more in abandoned care!  I picture you rocking in your abode  Telling gleeful tales to the young from your horde!  In walk my pretty daughter in the pretty park.  She asks dismay in eyes, “Where’s Grandpa?”  What do I tell her? I silently ask,  Life will teach; perhaps not her Pa!

My dad used to be a wonderful story teller among many other things. He used to enthrall the children around him with his animated sessions in which the demons and gods from the Indian epics would come alive. He would act out so well miming the characters that the episode he was narrating would come alive in our mind, like a movie! Even the adults used to be drawn into the hypnotic performance. The more he said the more the kids adored him.  One day the brinjal fry made for the lunch was unanimously rejected by us kids, which made my mom mad. No amount of tempting, cajoling, bribing and chiding would make us eat the stuff. If the leader rejected all the disciples would not dare eat it! Finally mom came to her wits end and turned to dad. Then he embarked on a story which went like this: There was once a Brahmin who abandoned his righteous deity and resorted to baser life. His only qualification was his culinary expertise, which made him sufficiently rich to indulge in nefarious activ...

In my Dad's days, names of people used to be typical. Kalyani, Karthyayini, Ammukkutty, Parukkutty and so on would be usual among girls/women. The male names would sound more masculine: Karunakaran, Krishnan, Radhakrishnan, Balakrishnan, Ravindran and so on. People never used to give so much relevance to the variety, but insisted on grandpa's or illustrious uncle's name for males; so would the females inherit their grandma's or aunt's name. These names used to be functional and meaningful, yet not very individualistic. Naturally, if you call out for a Radha especially in a crowded occasion like a marriage, several Radhas would answer the call, in this particular case, even males ( Radhakrishnan's short form is 'Radha'). I hailing from God's own Country, my treatise on names is insular to Kerala. My dad used to tell a popular anecdote in which he narrates about a poet laureate of his youth and father of half dozen children. Those days it was conventio...