In the City of Shyama

My mother hasn’t been around for a long time, this struck me on my visit home this time. 

It has been a while since I have been in Bombay on any significant day of her life.  So where once she was associated with the tangible things of the city and the places she lived in, my memories of her have got increasingly dislocated and unconnected with all that surrounded her.   It is not just the physical things – though it is a shock to see a tarnished necklace or a photo old with age and none to replace it.  The very places she lived in seem strange and she is no longer there in them.  In the immediacy of losing my mother I had an acute sense of loss and wrote a great deal, committing everything I felt to paper.  Her own house to me was redolent with the perfume of melancholia, her bedroom in her mother’s house where she lay when ill aroused vague terrors in me.   Because each such moment seemed eternal, I assumed that this would never change, that all my life I would feel the same way.   Instead that feeling has eroded.  The houses are inhabited by other people (albeit my own) and their stamp is on it, my mother’s irrevocably lost even if a few of her things remain.  It is a strange feeling to come back to the city in a month whose dates I still count and correlate with the last month of her life and find her completely absent, as if idly one day every trace of her was gone.

My mother hasn’t been around for a long time, a few people she grew up with aren't around either.  I have grown older and life has changed.  Perhaps no feeling is acute any more,  I hesitate to use the word resignation but life tempers emotions.  Then again even if she is absent in the physical world and no longer a part of things that once belonged to her and she loved, on many a day I am caught off guard by the same feelings that engulfed me in the early years after my mother’s passing.  Everything has changed and yet nothing has.

For my mother

1944-1993

The title of this post from a Spanish movie. 

A Wedding in Chennai

Now and then I go for a wedding and come away with the same feeling, a mixture of gladness for the couple (for at least the wedding day represents the hopefulness and happiness of coupling) and acute boredom.  My cousin’s wedding in Chennai this February was no different.  Though not a late marriage it was not an early marriage either, such weddings I find do not have the unabashed joy and extravagance that results when the principal participants are still young.  Instead it is mellow and there is a sense of relief that life’s journey has begun, if a little late.   Yet, whatever the age of the couple, the proceedings are always desultory and interminable.  This is more so for the Hindu wedding which in spite of modern simplification still stretches on for a day or two with ceremonies held at odd hours. A stint of dreaded residence at a “hall” is also called for (this bit perhaps is peculiar to Tamilians but is a practice that should be instantly banned given the condition of most halls).

People gather at a marriage to bear witness but there is no clear ceremony for this in the Hindu wedding, though the tying of the thali is perhaps the point where everyone gathers.  Instead the wedding ceremony requires little or no attention, most people simply mill around aimlessly.  Similarly food appears to be served all day long, the music bursts forth intermittently and video lights induce an instant headache.   The reception is so instantly mockable a spectacle that nothing needs to be said.  The hierarchy of invitees is apparent in treatment, in the gifts given out. Nothing can be enjoyed, everything must be endured.  The only exception to this truism is young children who find joy everywhere and young adults for whom a wedding provides an opportunity to dress up and is a socially approved means of scouting for future spouses. 

Still, I met relatives I had not met for a young time and was acquainted with nieces and nephews I had never met.  It may not be the beginning of lifelong friendships; nevertheless one takes an interest in the general well-being of the clan and enjoys their company.   I could have done without the wedding itself though. 

It’s a long time since I spotted December kanakambaram, here in the wedding hall it is strung with the "true" orange kanakambaram.  It reminded me of a phase in life when I had long hair and never hesitated to pin on flowers. And the South had many types to try, including the kadambam, a mixture of many flowers and leaves.

Madh and Marve

A few pictorial updates.

Not having ventured out much due to family stuff and a cold, I briefly stepped out with the pater  for  a short  trip to Madh and Marve, which is fairly close to home. It was a bit of a nostalgia trip for the dad as he has been making visits to the area from 1962.   Though much has changed since I last visited, a glimmer of an older Mumbai exists in these parts. While fairly familiar with the place, I didn't know a ferry operated from Madh to Versova.  You can see the Versova's buildings from the ferry point.

There were a number of boats about and here and there and in tiny patches, the last of the mangroves.

These areas of course were once fishing villages and remain so, you can spot Bombay Duck drying along the road.

At Marve beach we stopped awhile. A dog was asleep in the mild winter sun, fisherfolk cleaned caught fish and tucked away in a corner, a young couple enjoyed some intimacy.

Our driver scrounged around for some free catch and came up with a single tiny crab, not sufficient for his cooking pot on this day. 

And last, before we left, a flag for a rough and ready shop that had slipped unnoticed. And a notice at a restaurant for a rice plate and ice - cream, a combination I have yet to try.

Sengamalam

I often joke that I vacation in Ghatkopar/Kandivali.  So far, apart from a brief sojourn in Chennai, this has been the case on this visit too.  A lot has changed since my last visit but more on that later. In the meantime,  something that my grandfather penned and didn't want me to blog till he passed away because the salacious details of this story are from his grandfather's life and out of "reverence for this great man" he did not want it made public. Personally I didn't want to blog it because it does not fit in with my own views (I would have found it more interesting if Sengamalam was more angular).  Nevertheless here it is - a last hurrah from the grandfather so to speak - in relatively unedited form and with its pickled sexual politics intact. 

"Sengamalam belonged to the kallar community. This community's 'jaati dharma' was cattle thieving, The British government declared them as a criminal tribe and years of persecution later, at the time of this narrative, they were a subdued lot the majority of whom were farmers.

At the time I saw her she was probably in her late forties. She was very fair but had at that age a weather beaten face, due to a life of hard toil. She used to visit my grandmother once every year. My grandfather died when he was 52 and my grandmother and uncles then went to live in Karanthai, a suburb of Thanjavur. Sengamalam used to walk 25 miles from her village, Mohanur, bringing with her raw groundnuts and cashew fruits of both the red and yellow variety. She was a silent woman who spoke in monosyllables. She rarely stayed more than a day and would depart with the food my grandmother gave her.

Once after her annual visit I overheard my uncle telling someone that this was her annual pilgrimage to pay homage to my grandfather.  My grandfather it transpired had an affair with her. I was 11 years old then and my knowledge of such matters was mainly gleaned from gossip and local murmurings and the odd film.  My 11 year old fanciful mind imagined how it would have started.

My grandfather at the time of the beginning of the affair was the agent of a chettiar who secured a few villages as a pledge from a zamindar. He stationed himself at Mohanur. He must have started his life with his teenage wife in that village, they stayed in the village for 30 years till my grandfather's death. Sengamalam was a fair and charming girl, it was rumoured that she was born of an illicit relationship  between her mother and the family priest, a handsome Telugu brahmin. Sengamalam was perhaps engaged by my grandmother to do some household work. My grandfather was tall, fair and handsome.  Though quick tempered,  he was considered to be a straightforward gentleman. In my eyes he was majestic. My grandmother was short and lean. I imagine that the affair started during my grandma's visit to her  mother's place for her first delivery.   It must have been a leisurely day.  He is sitting  on a bench watching Sengamalam sweeping the floor. She has long plaited hair hanging loose, her skin is fair and her apparel doesn't allow for modesty (Kallar women in those days did not wear blouses).  My grandfather summons Sengamalam. She might have been shy, but also compliant in the manner of women of her caste and her times. Thus started an affair that was conducted on and off through my grandfather's lifetime. 

As for grandma, girls in Thanjavur had been trained to accept and live with such things. She was merely thankful that grandpa did not bring Sengamalam to live under the same roof."

Pic source here. 

In India

I am in India at the moment. For a change, it's been cooler here than in Sydney though the winter dust has settled over the trees making everything rather muted.  Still, the mild end of an Indian winter is quite nice. And I can see the first hints of spring, the odd mango and gulmohur bloom. 

The days when I read my way through a flight are in the past given in-flight entertainment.   The first leg of the journey was taken up by The Social Network which was decent but forgettable though its "revenge on the ex" motif was way too simplistic. Next leg, Tamara Drewe, a reworking of the Hardy novel, "Far from a Madding Crowd".  It didn't have the weight of the Hardy novel but was a clever adaptation and quite fun.  Last leg, appropriately, was Udaan. It was a straightforward story but entirely naturalistic - astonishing really given the way Hindi films are. And the Jamshedpur setting was a bonus.

I had a brief stopover in Perth, possibly the world's most silent airport.  Like many an Australian city, it simply didn't look integrated with the landscape.  Part of this is because of the Australian bush which somehow seems to overwhelm human habitation.  There is a certain familiarity to the bush, the nature of the flora is broadly the same in look around many parts of Australia, but there are very many variations in play. Perth was no exception and I hope to go back and look around a bit. 

Back home, the threads of family are being taken up.  I cam across an old "autograph book" of my uncle's from his schooldays that I had kept as a keepsake and the entries made me smile.  Sunil exhorts him to"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none". Harish says "Sugar is sugar, Salt is salt, If you forget me, That's your fault!". And Norbert relies on an old favourite, "Down in a Valley, Carved on a Rock, Three Little Words, Forget-me-Not". I have seen these in so many autograph books (I suppose they have mutated into a different form in the facebook age) and they are often a mixture of pious Christian strictures and sentimental Victorian poetry  that seems to have persisted well into the 1980s in India.

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The picture on top is of - I think - strawberry seeds that had just sprouted when I left Sydney.  The shoes  are discards from the op-shop and are excellent for growing young seedlings. Sadly, they may not survive my absence and the intense heat of the summer.