The VIP grandson

Ash has gone off to my native place, Chandanapally, along with my parents when they came to visit him at Changanacheri. They had been in two minds about taking him since he had a couple of doctor appointments on Tuesday - both ayurveda and allopathy!

But the moment he saw them he wanted his bag packed and his clothes changed. Achacha naatil povvaa, he told his paternal grandparents and left to see Bruno the lab and the Other Ammachi's hens. When I called him at night he was busy playing with the wagons and railtrack set his London ammacha had got him. He sounded impatient and asked me to cut the call since he had to go play. But before he hung up, he pleaded: "Appa and Amma please come fast and take Achacha back to Madras."

One house has suddenly become dead quiet while the other has woken up to the squeaky chatter of a 4-year-old.

Women's Only

If any of you ever come down to Changanacerry in Kerala's Kottayam district, dont forget to visit Orchids, a boutique run by Tessy Auseph. Her shop, reminiscent of Fabindia decor, stores designer saris, salwar/dress materials and curios - each item is carefully handpicked by Mrs. Tessy herself from "the most appealing sales outlets in the country". The prices might seem a bit high to some of us. But as my mil (in a Tessy Auseph creation below) and her tenant assure, the saris are head-turners when you actually wear them.

The shop is in the same premises as her old-style house, which seems equally tastefully done. It is at Vattapally on Market Road. She can be reached at 0481 2420564 for any trade enquiries.
I particularly liked the block-printed Kerala saris she had in stock. As for Mrs. Tessy, she is a polite and patient shopowner - a trait that comes in handy when dealing with finicky women customers who will ransack the whole shop before selecting one sari.
When she heard I worked in a newspaper organisation, she sounded happy. She has got some positive reviews in the Vanita and Malayala Manorama. I promised her I will give her some publicity in my blog at least. The best I could offer in the circumstances.

A special lunch

This cream and orange building, which was getting a fresh coat of paint when we visited, is Karunya nilayam (Abode of kindness?), which provides lunch and boarding for the poor who come for treatment at the Kottayam Medical College. I did not that the KMC was located in an Onam-kera-moola (I mean a place where even Onam, our State festival, doesnt visit = a god-forsaken place). There are not many shops or houses on the way but opposite the hospital many shops have mushroomed. It is not a very planned development on that hilly terrain.

The centre is run by the Orthodox church. The CSI and Catholic churches also run homes catering to the food and boarding needs of the poor patients. The boarding is meant for the poorer cancer patients coming for radiation therapy. The CSI home charges a room rental of Rs. 150 for two (patient and attender), tells my old maid whose husband makes use of the facility. It provides free breakfast, while the Catholic home provides a light dinner.

My old maid confides that the boarding in karunyanilayam is free in the dormitories, there is a paltry rental of Rs. 30 a day for the single rooms.

Since we gave donation for a day's lunch for some 300 people, we were invited to partake in the lunch and view the proceedings. The women attenders of patients had already queued up when we reached.

They need to give a letter from the hospital stating that their economic status warrants assitance. An official checks their identity cards before giving them the green card to collect the food. The priest in charge told us that sometimes a patient would have 3-4 attenders, as when there is an operation, and food is provided for all of them.

Many people came with small buckets to carry the kanji. This is the counter where food is distributed.

The food meant for the patients is kanji (rice gruel) and payar (green or red gram) and pappad. As guests of honour we also got yummy cabbage thoren, banana and pickle. I think a couple of other families made donations the same day as they had just finished their lunch in the hall.

The gentleman in charge of the kitchen served us food in the basement dining hall. We had made the donation in Ash's name. There he is, getting a special treatment.

The centre is closed only on three occasions - Onam, Christmas and Easter. The cooks are mainly Hindus and need an Onam holiday. But then, who in Kerala wouldnt want to celebrate Onam?

There is me and Vaava having our meals. The food is simply great. I mean it is not an eyewash in the name of philanthropy.

Capital lure

I fell in love with Trivandrum this time again. The last trip I remember making to the Kerala capital was in 1999, three months after my marriage. The Onam festivites had made Tvm culturally vibrant then. But it was otherwise the same - quiet and sleepy, like a village - save for a few high-rise buildings. A Bihari friend who visited it told me that it was probably the only State capital he had seen that looked like a village.
Save for the historical buildings from its princely state era and the British rule, Thiru-Ananthapuri (anything holy or regal in Kerala has a thiru prefixed) has gone for a complete face-over. The old small houses and shops in the main avenues have all but disappeared. Rents are sky-rocketing; our hosts live in a rented bungalow in Sasthamangalam that invites a rent of Rs.12000 a month. But it is huge, and there is a friendly old lady for a neighbour to chat with.

One goes there with prejudices of its original inhabitants being rude unlike in northern Kerala.
But then most of its present inhabitants are settlers - those who work in government offices and other organisations in the capital or Gulf returnees and other NRIs who thought owning a piece of heaven in Tvm instead of their god-forsaken villages elsewhere in the state was the in-thing.

What strikes me about Tvm is the cleanliness - you dont find any garbage dumped anywhere. Apparently, it was once rated the cleanest city in India. Nostalgia fills you up as you pass the Kowdiar Palace or the Victoria Hall. I drank in the beauty of the Palayam church, the College of Fine Arts, the LMS church and the Secretariat. The new Assembly building sticks out as a sore thumb in that historical melee.
Our Poovar trip was not to be. Instead, after visiting a few relatives of V and seeing off fil a day after we reached the capital, we made a night trip to one of the less-crowded beaches in Kovalam. We let the breeze caress our sun-tanned faces before having dinner at Hotel Sea Face. The name intrigued me - was it the face of the sea or just a sea-facing hotel? I also sighted a the billboard of Linchu's Ayurvedic Resort (dont get lynched there!).

Kovalam is the tourists' paradise in Kerala but there is a lot of shady activities going on in the name of tourism now. Drugs, s*x, fraud - you name it, Kovalam has it all. The latest issue of Vanita reports that cross/s*x massages thrive in the name of Ayurvedic massages.

The Trivandrum zoo: We left Trivandrum the next day afternoon after a trip to the zoo. We did not visit the Museum nearby this time - the kids are too young to appreciate it. But enjoy they did the wild animals in the Maharaja's own zoo. Sadly there are not many animals now. Many have died of starvation - I am told the contractors who supply food for the animals smear cleaning lotions on the meat. We saw a crane go to the half a dozen dead fish in its cage, smell it and come away; it drank some water instead. The animals, save for the vultures pecking at some red meat, looked tired in the mid-morning sun. Too tired to eat, too tired to humor the visitors (save for a huge old stork posing as if for a snap with its wings stretched wide) and too tired to walk. A sloth bear swung its head in frustration, a lion roared from the moat below its enclosure and a tiger shat into the shallow pool in its enclosure - all of which fascinated my children.

Mira still tries to roar like the lion and laughs as she remember the tiger shitting into the water. It was also the first time she had seen a zebra and a giraffe. Ash came home and pulled Mira big ears and said: Elephant!

A wedding and a funeral

I like attending Syrian Orthodox weddings. I like the wedding songs in particular. I know most people - the bride and groom, and the guests included - would crib about the hour-long ceremony standing on foot through most of it. For a bride on stilted heels, it can be particularly hard. Many like my dad stand outside the church and chat with friends and relatives one gets to see only at weddings and funerals. The only thing that interest them is the sumptuous feast afterwards.

I thoroughly enjoyed attending the wedding of V's niece at the Vakathanam church on 18th. But not so much the traditional Kerala Syrian Christian lunch after that. The welcome drink was over by the time we reached the queue but I must say the food was quite good. The days of fried rice-chicken curry and mutton biriyanis at wedding feasts are over, people are reverting to traditional fare. The kids - Ash, Mira and their first cousin Minu - enjoyed the chicken legs and icecream sundaes. But we had chosen a part of the hall that had no fans on that hot, humid day. As V said, I looked like a kabaddi player after a match, sweating profusely but doggedly pursuing with my meal.

A week later, when I reached my parents' place, the first big news I heard was that an old neighbour nicknamed Kallakittu (Thief Kittu) had passed away. Mind you, he had a respectable Christian name but this was a name he had earned when his family was in hard times and he probably needed to pilfer things to eke out a living. I have memories of him going past my house in pouring rains with a banana leaf or a colocasia leaf in place of an umbrella. In those days, many people did that.

Well, Kittu ammavan's fortunes changed when his handsome son managed to marry a nurse working in the US. Doesnt matter if he tricked her into it or the fact that he was some 8 years younger to her. Kittu ammavan became David muthalali, and even made a couple of trips to the US with his wife to see his son and family. A palatial bungalow came in the place of the old, crumbling house and Kittu ammavan's wife stopped going to Balan's tea shop (now that is another rags-to-riches story - of how Balan the grocer-cum-tea wallah became Balan sir) for her morning and evening tea.

But Kittu ammavan's frail old mother continued to trek to the tea shop in the east of my village for her meals and murukkan (betel leaf-arecanut combo) until her death. For her daughter-in-law never liked her much and she had no option but to eat out. I am told the American son tried to change that but I dont know how successful his diktat was.

The families of Kittu ammavan and his brothers had another nickname too - sayippus (the Whites) because they were fairer than the fair. The men were all handsome while the women were quite beautiful.

Now, Kittu ammavan died and his body was kept in the mortuary for 3 days. His son, who had made a trip from Chicago only a week earlier, had to come.

Strains of samayamam rathathil njan ... (I make the journey to heaven on the chariot called time) wafted through the air as the ambulance brought the stiffened body on a Tuesday. What I hadnt bargained for was that the rest of the proceedings - funeral songs, prayers, tributes and directions to stand before the camera for a final shot with the dead man - would be blared on loudspeakers.

I did not go to pay my tributes - once you are married off you are not a citizen of your village - but I got to hear it all.

Nature cried too as Kittu ammavan made his final journey to the cemetery. The skies opened up in an unprecedented fury while the earth opened up to receive his cold, white body.