Whats Up?

Grandma was busy typing into her new smart phone and did not realize I had walked in. Of late Granny has become inseparable from her new acquisition.  It is obvious she has once again become a child with a new toy. These days she does not follow her favourite soaps on television and is not even aware that Arvind Kejriwal had become the CM of Delhi for a few weeks and resigned. She now talks about her new friends on facebook, twitter and whatsapp.

I decided to indulge her in her new passion.

I:  “Hi Granny, howdya?” (Enjoined with an obvious expression of patronizing enthusiasm)

Granny didn’t hear or she did not bother. I waited for her to disengage herself from whatever she was doing. When she finally spotted me staring at her she had the expression of a child when caught red handed doing something she shouldn’t be doing!!!!

G: (Sheepishly…) cira tuhanu ithe kita gia hai?

In a state of nervousness Granny can speak only Punjabi….

I:  It is okay granny we can discuss the net….

G: Dek putr, This facebook thing is so very fascinating…

I:  (Encouragingly …) Yes, Grandma..

G:  I found so many of my old friends and it is just like old times….

I noticed a youthful twinkle in granny’s eyes, never seen hitherto after Grandpa had gone. I probed…

I:  pind da log bhi hovega

G: Han! Balwan bhi milliassi! (The moment she said that she bit her tongue in a way a little girl does immediately after letting out a secret)

I:  Haha! Who is this Balwan, Granny.

G:  Now, I will tell you. I have to. But please don’t tell anyone. He was my crush in my teens befor I met your dada!

I: (aha! We are getting somewhere now) Oh!

G:  He is now settled in the US and he came up on facebook. We talk everyday now – of old times …..

I:  But Grandma….

G:  Listen putr, it is ok. I had told your Grandpa about this soon after our marriage…..

I:  No. No. Grandma…get onto whatsapp, it much more easier to….

G:  Son, I am already on whatsapp, and see here is a picture of Balwan…..

I:  (My jaw dropped….) Oh! (a feeble sound emitted from my throat) Shall I get you some coffee……

G: chad..chad.. Don’t be embarrassed….

(I mumbled something about getting to an appointment and left…)

All is not lost

A family vacation at a youthful sixty can be categorized as a non-plan event. With the dynamics of todays’ working environment it is nay impossible for all members of a family to plan to get away from work during the same period a couple of months in advance. Getaways and short vacations are impromptu events conjured up at best, a day in advance. So it has been with us all these years for the past decade. The planning is done in a jiffy like “Ok let us all take leave this Friday and get out over the week-end”. Some times it works. When it works, we hit the road night or day .So it was last Thursday we bundled into a hired Maruti Ertiga and headed for God’s own country from Bangalore at 9 PM. After crossing Hosur we stopped at “Adyar Anandabhavan” short of Krishnagiri for a midnight snack. These are some indulgences we enjoy when on vacation. For most part NH 47 via Salem is a six lane highway usually busy with all sorts of traffic.

The going was smooth. Too smooth to be real, for all of a sudden, at about 3.05 AM the vehicle hit a divider rose up in the air vertically and landed on all four at about 18 feet from the point of takeoff in the direction of travel, veered to the left and came to a halt on the edge of the road. All of us in the vehicle including the driver were shaken but unhurt. We may call it luck or providence or whatever there was only one truck speeding behind us in the same direction. The driver of that vehicle which would have been our nemesis  managed to avoid a collision, as we came to know later, he was not under the influence of alcohol. A great feat by him. That fellow, a portly sardar from Gurdaspur and his cleaner left only after ascertaining all was well with us and a “rab di kripa…”.   In Tamil Nadu, the state we were in on the road then, the highways are dutifully patrolled by the police. Within a couple of minutes, yes in the time it takes to cook a two-minute noodle, two cops arrived on the scene riding Royal Enfield mobikes, Hollywood movie style. After dutifully checking the driver was not under the influence of liquor and all papers were in order, they proceeded to assist us in determining the vehicle condition which was hopelessly jammed with the right front wheel driven into the body. There was also some damage to the front axle as well. The cops then exchanged mobile phone numbers with me. One of the cops left to find an alternate vehicle for us to continue our journey while the other one remained back for our protection in the wilderness. Within half an hour we were on our way, while the accident vehicle was towed away to the workshop. Friends, let me assure you, we are NOT in a desolate God forsaken country, Arnab Goswamy notwithstanding.

We stopped for a cup of tea at a wayside tea stall. Will we meet Namo there? No chance – for there sat Amma, nay stood Amma, at the front of the stall in the form of a life size cut out. 

All is NOT lost, would you say?

National integration of a kind!

In the early sixties in the one ox town where I lived, barring the equivalent of the French nobility in the town, people moved about naked waist up. The first of saris in Kerala was known as chela. It was always of red colour and the length did not matter except when it had to be spread out to dry after a wash…many owned only one chela. While that one was drying on the shores of the pond the nubile wearers had to swim in the buff until the chela was dried. Unfortunately the dressing patterns have changed over the years forcing less exposure because of more exposure.

The exodus of Malayalees to the ‘gulf’ spread over a period from 1972 to 1983. If Haryana had at least one member from a ‘feuding’ family in the Army there was at least one ‘saviour’ in the gulf from each family in Kerala by the late 1980s. The off shore malayalees pumped in the much required cash to rejuvenate the perennially impoverished state economy if ever there was one.  The state then had no real industry to boast – not even the currently thriving “tourism” economy in the God’s own country. So it was in the late 1980s during one of my infrequent visits to my erstwhile ‘country’ where I had rubbed shoulders with the Gods and partook in the ‘toddy’ rituals which followed local acts of appeasement of deities known to the world as ‘Theyyam’, ‘Thira’ et al, I found that most women wore ‘maxis’. Maxi as is known popularly is a loose and colourful dress resembling the outer cassocks worn by the Christian clergy. This initial import from gulf into Kerala, the maxi, served as an all-purpose dress for all occasions. Women wore it to bed as well as to attend weddings!!! The general refrain those days was ‘uski maxi meri maxi se rangeen kaise?’ (hindi translation from Malayalam for better assimilation and picturisation in the vein of the popular ad echoing similar sentiments). The similarity of the dress with the traditional mundu (which is a white lungi, for better understanding by the uninitiated) that when donning either one had the option of wearing nothing underneath, for that forever liberated feeling. But the similarity ended there. The maxi can never be as elegant and appealing as a mundu.

These days salwar-kameez is the National dress of all Indian women! There was a time in the South when the unmarried wore half sari, the married wore sari and grandmothers wore the long sari(nine yards)…now everybody wears salwar-kameez in the South as the women  have been doing for ages in the Punjab…