Chapter 9 - My Life ..., Paru Mami's Dignity
In Hindi they say Garib
ki Joru, Sab ki Bhabhi – a poor man’s wife is everyone’s Bhabhi, sister in
law.
‘Jyosyar Aathu Manni’ in Ramanathapuram typically falls in
this category. With five daughters and one son to support, her husband’s income
as an elementary school teacher was probably insufficient despite frugal
spending. The term, Jyosyar, a corrupt version of Jyothishar or astrologer,
referred to the family’s age-old profession, which ended with his father.
Manni’s husband had no clue to astrology; otherwise he could have made a side
income.
The family was often in arrears on rent for the house they
lived in. The owner, also a resident of the village, didn’t evict them on sheer
moral grounds, and compromised collecting rent in bits and pieces.
To ameliorate their predicament, mothers in other household,
in no major lucrative income group either, requisitioned Manni’s services in
their kitchen whenever they had a function.
On occasions my Patty did so she would add: “Also, can we request your elder
daughters to give us a helping hand to cut vegetables, grind different pastes,
pound spices, and fetch water from the well? And, ah, in between your
assistance, don’t rush to your house to prepare meals; ask all your children to
join us.”
This was the most honourable method the elderly ladies
devised to give Manni a day off from burning her own kitchen fire. As for
Manni’s husband, the ladies made sure to pack enough for a dinner on such
occasions.
As children personally, though this gesture did cut into our
own quota of Appam, Vadai, or Payasam, we felt for some strange reason elated
watching them having a rightfully earned hearty meal.
Also to most households Manni was indispensable for their
annual pickle event – mango, lime, naarthankai, veppala katti, you name any.
And every lady relied on Manni’s hand to add the final quantity of salt and
spice for two reasons. She knew the taste bud, the blood pressure level, or the
haemorrhoids problem of each member in a house. Also, the ladies believed that handled
by any other hand the pickle picked fungus sooner than later. At the end, the
lady of the house would hand Manni a jar of the product at the minimum, and
sometimes with Vettlai/Pak and a blouse piece or money, or both, depending on
one’s own capacity.
Thus, with assistance to a house too many, Manni had a good
collection of pickles which came handy for the rainy days. Sometimes driven to
despair the family had to make do with a bare minimum meal – rice, and thin
buttermilk to go with it. On such occasions Manni made up for the absence of a
full course with an offer to her children to choose their own pickle: Karikkar
Mami’s mango pickle; Karimasseri Mami’s lime pickle; or Kolathu Mami’s hot
kaduku mangai. This presence of mind to divert her children’s mind often
worked.
Visit of one’s son or daughter from Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta
or Madras on a holiday was an annual or biennial occurrence in most households.
It was a custom that when they returned the mothers packed them a tin of
savoury – murukku, thattai, ribbon pakoda, or thenkozal – and some sweets:
laddu, or Mysorepak.
Manni’s murukk chuttal,
the art of maneuvering the raw paste into twisted rounds of five and seven
circles, had a touch of class – perfect like Picasso’s circle, all enjoying
equal diameter, radius or dimension. She was best in the village, if not in the
town.
However, for preparation of Mysorepak, it was still a trial
and error, her years of experience notwithstanding. The outcome was as
unpredictable as an ODI match. You stay glued to the TV from ball one only to
watch the end turn a disappointment. But on an average her preparation made the
grade 6 to 7 times out of 10. This however is not to suggest that on the not so
successful occasions the product turned so bad as to be fit only as glue for
Navaratri Kolu decoration. You can eat it - just give it a new name. She was a
safe bet to make round symmetrical Laddu.
Thus Manni carried her domestic show with great dignity and
self-respect. If at any time she had to draw temporarily a measure of rice, or
cooking oil, it was just from our house - and our house only.
She gave her daughters in marriage one by one. Their eldest
daughter was very fair and attractive. The youth of the village hailed her in
private T.R. Rajakumari, the then leading Tamil actress. In fact one of my
relatives who visited us often, had wanted me, then probably 12 or 13 years, to
hand a letter to her. I refused though I still can’t figure out why I did. A
family from a neighbouring district came requesting for her hand for their son,
and it was arranged.
The next two were married to widowers, somewhat well to do.
The next in line stipulated that she would marry anyone of her parents’ choice,
but not in second marriage. And the parents respected her sentiments. She is
happily married, and her sons are very well employed. The last of the daughters
was also married, but by then I had left the village for a job. So I don’t know
much about her.
While on a duty travel to Calicut decades later, I visited
Manni who had shifted there with her only son and his family. They stayed in a
house of their own. Handsome and charming that he was as a child, I was keen to
see which actor’s features he had embellished as an adult, but alas, he was on
tour.
Two of Manni’s daughters also stayed in Calicut, one of them
operating a pickle business as cottage industry. So, after offering me coffee
and snacks, with items more than usual, she said: “We hear your uncles are
selling RNP house. I would be keen to buy it, just to perpetuate childhood
memory. Can you put in a word to them, please?” I promised to convey her
wishes. Yes, at that time all members of our family had moved to cities, and
the house was vacant, on the verge of dilapidation. My uncles were seriously
thinking of selling it.
As I prepared to take leave, she asked me to wait. She went
inside and returned with a wholesale shopping bag full of assorted pickles –
easily 12 bottles. “What a kindly soul that this girl of a poor but respectable
family is repaying to grandson his Patty’s kind gestures of help here and
there,” I said to myself. I had a tough time in convincing her that it would be
a problem for me to carry it either as a check-in luggage or as a cabin baggage
to Delhi.
On my way back to hotel I couldn’t help admire the wheel of
time. The family that did not have happy memories to cherish of their life in
Ramanathapuram was so serious on owning a house there, and we, who had nothing
but pleasant memories, were trying to sever connections. But then that is what
life is made of, I guessed, as I dumped all my clothing in my suitcase and
headed to the airport.
Continued…
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