“Dabbu laedhu”. I’m sick of saying this to my kids, ‘Tuppperware’ friend, salary-advance-seeking maid, and just anybody who asks. I honestly mean it. With a huge home loan EMI gorging into our salaries, the husband and I seem to perennially fall short of funds these days.

This is when I look back at my parents with renewed awe. With a single modest monthly income and no inheritance on either side – apart from a few bronze urulis and silver lotas – they did a fantastic job of bringing us up. They built an independent house and educated and married off two daughters without borrowing a single pie.

That’s probably because back then we hardly spent anything. No pizzas, no b’day parties, no weekend getaways, nothing. Cinema meant movie tickets plus a packet of popcorn (most of which would be un-popped) shared by us sisters. We traveled second-class and stayed at relatives’ houses. Often these relatives were random people we barely knew otherwise but somehow they never minded. After all, we would similarly play host to them at our place.

For all this frugality, I don’t remember being unhappy at all. We were told horror stories of how our parents – in their younger days – had even lesser than what we did. No TV, no fan, no tube-light and no eating out, we were told. This made us immensely happy that we were born a good three decades later.

Two things we had unrestricted access to were food and books. Amma would ply us with a fantastic variety of dishes and fruits. Today, as a mother, I don’t seem to do a fraction of what she has done for us. We could visit the library any number of times and borrow any number of books. The budget for buying books was seemingly limitless.

Appa firmly believed we could operate with exactly two sets of clothes – one on us and one on the clothesline. For a good 15 years, apart from the Deepawali and birthday dresses, I was exclusively on hand-me-downs from my sister. This never upset me. In fact, I would often look desirously at her new clothes and look forward to inheriting them 3-4 years later. Once I hit mid-teens and grew taller than her, our lives became a little easier – we could pool our modest wardrobes, much to Amma’s chagrin.

Similarly, Appa was strictly against spending money on costume jewelry – what we call ‘pee porukku’. “You can save that money and invest in gold,” he would thunder at us if sis and I meandered towards Pondy Bazaar platform.

Today, I don’t buy any pee porukku either. For a different reason altogether – dabbu laedhu.

Generously inspired by this and this. Please don’t sue me for copyright.