Thankfully, we are not employed at the mega functions like weddings and poonals, where the professional mamis take charge of the used vaazhai elais. At the lesser ones, like ayush homams, shashtiabdhapoorthis, seemandhams, etc, as well as at the various death-related ceremonies, it’s invariably my sis and I who can be spotted tucking in the saree pallus and picking up the darned leaves. Relatives who spend thousands of rupees booking caterers never think to spend an extra hundred or two to have someone pick up the used leaves. Instead they opt to invite me and my sister to the function.

Torn leaves with the rasam seeping into the floor, piles of leftover curries, broken appalams, untouched rice, mashed banana pieces, debris of payasam mixed with curd rice – we’ve seen ’em all. We even have a system of job rotation – one of us holds the bucket or huge plastic cover, while the other does the actual leaf picking. Then we jointly clean the table or floor.

When the function happens to be in my house or my sister’s, no guest is expected to do the job. We wouldn’t let them. Not that anybody ever offers.

Thus it went on for years and years. One fine day we noticed that, along with the other guests, the host had also washed her hands and sauntered into another room while my sister and I got busy with the leaf picking routine. The light bulb moment came very late in our life, but when it came it made us feel like worms. We officially gave up leaf-picking.

Last week, at a shubasweekaram, we decided to test our resolution. We ate, got up and sashayed into an adjacent bedroom, studiously ignoring the big black cover that was strategically placed near the pandhi. From a corner of our eyes we noticed the host mami throwing glances in our direction, losing hope, and then asking another ilicha-vaai relative to help her with the leaves.

The sister and I belched.

There are some conditions to this:

1. It should not require gymming at all. No treadmill, no elliptical, no weights. Walking allowed only if it’s about twice a week, to the local supermarket, with little sweating.

2. No dieting whatsoever. None.

3. No diseases. Actually I tend to waver on this one. Whenever I go for a lipid profile I half expect – even hope – to see some hint of diabetes or thyroid trouble. It would help me lose weight with nil efforts. But I’m careful in what I wish for. Plus these diseases require lifestyle changes strict diets. So no, thanks.

4. No weight-loss pills. Total trash, that stuff.

So there. Please say a small prayer for me sometime somewhere for a thinner me.

The aim is not better health or anything that lofty. In fact, from recent examples in the family and friends circle, I’m beginning to suspect that the slimmer and fitter ones tend to succumb more easily to diseases. The fat ones do fall sick but they seem to rebound rather well. Apparently all that adipose does store some survival potions.

I don’t even want to get thinner for beauty reasons. For that man this will do.

That 5 kg loss is to ensure that I get into my lovely designer blouses.  Painstakingly selected, tailored and paid for garments that are so mean that the minute I gain 0.005 grams, I’m notified thus. Hateful things.

Di. A two-letter, monosyllabic word (single-letter, monosyllabic in Tamil) that carries about as much import as Shruti Hasan in the song’s video. Totally dispensable, no doubt, but absolutely harmless. It’s just a sentence crutch, much like the Hindi yaar and the Anglo-Indian ‘man’.

This is not the first time it’s being used in Tamil songs. Yaradee nee Mohini… ; Adiye, manam nillunaa nikkadhadee…; Yevandee onna petthaan… Even Bharathiyar used di quite liberally in his Kannamma songs that ooze romance even today.

Finally, there’s an equivalent da. So it’s not even sexist.

So why? I am not understandu.

“Aiyyo! FB is showing everybody my photos.” “My phone number is listed and I wasn’t even told about it.” “I only allowed my friend’s athimber’s machchini to see my wall post but now I realize her LKG classmate can also view it.”

Well, if you are that particular about your privacy why the eff are you on Facebook? Nobody is begging to see you baby’s kitta papa vesham snaps.
It’s not like you pay FB to keep you Gummidipoondi holiday photos a secret. Neither did they steal info about you from your bank or hospital records. Whatever nonsense is up there about you was carefully keyed in by you.

There was a ruckus some time back because some idiot somewhere compiled a list of phone numbers from across the world. While I wonder at the joblessness of said person, I care two hoots about my number being on his list.

If you can tell all of humanity your bra color what’s the big deal about giving it your phone number?

With the recent spate of shifting houses, we lost quite a handful of kolu dolls. One such was Rama. Seetha, Lakshmana and Hanuman remained fit and I saw no reason why they shouldn’t come on stage.

Kutty was mighty perturbed by this Savitha Bhabi-esque state of affairs after one of her friends found out (the rest were too busy  trying to guess the ‘gift’ from the size and shape of the thamboolam cover).

So at the end of Navarathri we hit the market and begged the bommai sellers to give us a solo version of Rama. We did manage to get one but this Rama is a good inch or two shorter than our Seetha. Kutty bristled again.

“If Surya can sing duets with Anushkha, surely this Rama can stand next to our Seetha,” I reasoned out. She’s now okay with the idea.

As they like to say in India Today/Outlook/Week/etc/etc regularly, we Tamilians eat, sleep, vote and convince cinema.

Bullet points make life easier, especially if you only plan to rehash old stuff. You pull a few random thoughts together and voila! You have a post ready.

• Paiyyan is finally in college. The saga is worth at least 4-5 blog posts so I don’t want to waste it on a bullet point. Maybe I’ll feel less lazy tomorrow and decide to write about this famous OMR college that gives you the ‘quotation’ on a bit paper. Or this world renowned, research supporting, foreign students enrolling, AC bus running college that conducts an entrance exam, then ties up with a coaching institute for training students and then finally sells the seats.…it could go on.
• Kutty is at that stage when she and her pals can’t seem to discuss anything else. Leg pain, pimple, which day, she gotaa… I’m seriously sick of this talk but don’t object. It’s their way of coming to terms with something that affects them in a very significant way.

Some updates

• Krishna Jayanthi brings out the best and worst in me, as I’ve oft said in this space. This year round the uppu seedais had a party in my kitchen. Following huge bomb-blast noises there was oil all over the walls, the platform and the floor. About 250 ml of oil was dripping from the electric chimney. I cleared the mess and finally wondered where the seedais were. A good many were stuck on the shelves near the stove. I’m still fishing them out like bodies from earthquake debris – from under the wet grinder, beneath the sink, behind the microwave, and on the cutlery shelf, a good 8 feet away from the stove.
• Remember this aunt of mine who had four daughters and none to love? After P’s death Aunt was shuttled between the homes of the other three daughters. They all wanted P’s wealth for some reason or the other. They all had such great problems in life that they couldn’t look after their nearly-90 mother. My aunt, being the woman she is, dumped ‘em all. She gave away two-thirds of P’s money to an orphanage and kept the balance for herself. The orphanage has now given her a room where she’s fed and allowed to breathe till the time comes.
• Whatever happened to Bt brinjal? Are we eating them now or not?
• For all my claims of being networking sites-unfriendly, I’m quite sore about not having gotten a Google Plus invite. Paiyyan had three invitations at his disposal and refused to spare me one. His wife gets none of my jewelry.
• This syndrome is getting worse. At one point I feared Paiyyan would be shifting to a hostel and I would be stuck at home with two unfriendly aliens. Thankfully the boy stayed back.
• I’ve become such a veteran that I’m actually getting outsourcing orders. At any function I end up tying one for at least 2-3 mamis and mini-mamis.

My dad used to say the test of a writer lies in the last line. He would recall how his friends would write fantastic essays in the exams and then conclude them with a lame “Thus we see…India is a democracy / Indian economy is agrarian/ etc etc (repeat phrases from the question)”.

I’m therefore very self-conscious about how my pieces end. But now I’m truly stuck for a decent punch-dialog-last-line. Excuse me.

All the years of my mother’s struggle to make me ‘practice’ on the copywriting book, Appa’s 5-pages-per-day ‘handwriting impositions’ and even my semi-earnest attempts to write what looks like the Roman script have mostly been in vain.

The school teachers doled out the usual “If you don’t improve your handwriting now you’ll be stuck with it for ever – it will cost you your college admission and even your job at a later stage” advice. The college lecturers summed up my beautiful (ahem!) Shakespeare essays with a “Write more legibly” comment. Well, my fingers had a way of their own with my pen. None of my fault.

If there is a greater ignominy than having a lousy handwriting, it’s having a sister who writes like she carried a keypad on her fingers. My sister having a “muthu-muthu” handwriting that was supposedly worth “touching and praying” made my life hell. Nobody would let me forget it, least of all Meanie Sis. After all, she was the one ordained to write my name on my notebook labels and fill my application forms.

The only sympathetic soul was my friend who quoted her grandmom as having said once that those with a bad kai-ezhuththu (handwriting) usually had a good thalai-ezhuththu (head-writing, or fate), and vice-versa.

The old lady was quite right. Just as I started working, the Indian workplace began to get computerized. Which meant I only had to type, which I had always excelled in. I did not have to write any more! Nobody at office would ever know what a horror my handwriting was. At times I would have to pinch myself to believe it.

Life came a full circle when Sis and I jointly drafted a mail for my dad, to be sent to his pension office. Sis typed the mail and sent it across to me to ‘correct’ it. And correct I did. I aligned the paragraphs, brought in a uniform font, and added the requisite flourishes like bold and italics to make the mail seem important. The mail was royally ignored by the pension chaps but I was finally breathing well.

Yet today I’m a paranoid mother. I’m suspicious of the watchman, school bus conductor, laundry man, sundry uncles and aunts. After all, this is the world we have knowingly brought our kids into.

*******

When we were about 17, a good friend of mine recalled, amid sobs, an incident that occurred when she was about 10. She was on the window seat of a public bus when she felt a finger fondling her from the back seat. She didn’t raise an alarm for two reasons: (i) she was terrified that her dad, seated right next to her, would declare war on the villain and that seemed highly embarrassing (ii) after a few minutes of discomfiture she actually found the fondling enjoyable.

Point (ii) was the reason the 17-year-old was sobbing. How could she let a stranger – a rogue – do that to her? I tried to make her brush it off as a non-event but the poor thing had been suffering for long from an agonizing combination of guilt and shame at the event. Eventually I lost contact with her, so I don’t know what she thinks of it now.

I recounted this incident here because I feel it’s a child abuse issue that’s not often addressed – how do you protect your child from an abuser if your child actually doesn’t mind it? The good touch/bad touch wisdom works only if the child considers the touch to be bad. What if friend’s dad puts a casual arm around the shoulder and it feels good? After all, the hormones begin to work quite early. Do I tell this child that ‘good touch’ is also unwarranted?

I’ve told my children so. They think I’m a wizened fossil. Thank you.

******

It was about 2 pm on a Sunday. A father and his scrawny teenaged daughter – about 12 years – were walking down a busy Chennai road. Suddenly, a shirtless man darted across the road, hugged the girl tightly and tried to kiss her. After a micro second of shocked inaction, the father and other passersby sprang on the man, disentangled his arms from the shaking girl and thrashed him. He was obviously drunk, and fell on the road. The father quickly bundled his daughter into an auto and fled.

“He should have taken this rascal to the police,” said one passerby. “What’s the use?” reasoned another. “They’ll book him for eve-teasing and let him out after a couple of hours.”

Eve-teasing? That whelp of a child was hardly Eve, and the atrocity was far from teasing.

This incident happened about 2 years ago. I only hope the poor kid has come out of the trauma by now. If a child cannot walk on busy road in broad daylight with her father in tow without fear of abuse, what sort of a world are we living in?

Some thought nuggets:

• Nila kayuthu was… no… IS, very much a cult song. I don’t know any other Tamil film song that shows marital relations of the non-first-night kind in such an exciting manner. The older Shivaji-Padmini kattil-thottil types were so boring. The later and current sensuous songs are hardly ever picturised on married couples.
• I was about 10 when Sakalakala Vallavan was released, and I was sure the movie was the best thing that ever happened to mankind. I saw it in a dingy, non-AC theater with my parents and sis, munching soggy popcorn and ignoring a variety of bugs in the rexene-cushioned chair. No posh multiplex experience can ever match that.
• I had a Sakalakala Vallavan dress – a baby-blue shirt worn under a checked pinafore ‘midi’. It was the pride of my life. Later, I had a Mundhanai Mudichu pavadai in brown & orange that I hated.
• My sis and I used to sing the popular songs as duets at home. She would invariably take up squeaky S. Janaki parts and dole out the male parts to me. I was, of course, willing to grab anything that came my way. And so it was that we sang the entire Nila kayuthu song, moans groans and all. If my parents heard the lyrics, they chose to ignore them. Fantastic people, I should say. The other day I heard my 10-year-old singing “Watch me robot shake it, I know you wanna break it…” and I had a tough time stopping myself from gagging her.
• At 10, most Tamil lyrics were lost on me. For instance, I didn’t know why “aakki veccha soru” was being “aara pottufied”, and why the couple was so concerned about it. It could be eaten the next day, no?
• Ambika and Radha. The sisters divided my mum and sis into enemy camps. While my sister thought Ambika was the prettier of the two, Amma felt Radha was the one. She called Ambika “kazhudha mooki” (Amma continues to think her own daughters are Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai). I had nil opinion on which of the AR sisters was better looking. I did feel sorry for Ambika, though. Always playing second fiddle to a more popular and successful sibling – a younger one at that – must have been tough.
• While on Radha, I seriously think her daughter Karthika is cloned, rather than begotten. I mean, how can the offspring look this achu-asal like the mother? From the arched eyebrow to that superior air, no gene has been lost anywhere. Ennavo po.

******

By the way, the “Circa March 2011” mentioned in this post is round the corner and I’m back with my request. Repeatu.

The recent spate of parenting news made me do some self-stock taking. What am I? A cruel, demanding Tiger Mother (did any of you notice that here name is ‘Chua’ – mouse – while she wears her tiger-ness on her sleeve) or a West-influenced Sheep Mother who’s forever cuddling her lambs?

The fact is I’m neither. At any point of time I’m either cruel and pushy with my kids but masking it under soft, politically correct words, or giving them too long a rein and convincing myself that I’m only bringing them up in a friendly and affable atmosphere. The aspiration is to set high goals for them and drive them towards it, but the method is all screwed up.

Take yesterday night. Kutty was struggling with her Sanskrit translation lesson for today’s test.

Kutty: Two girls see two monkeys with two eyes.

Me: Yes. Say that in Sanskrit.

K: Baalike vaanarou…. But why 2 eyes, Amma? It should be 4 eyes no?

Me (voice raising): Doesn’t matter! Baalike vaanarou…

K: Baalike vaanarou nethraabhyaam pash… pash… pash…

Me (voice raised, gritting teeth): Pash what?

K: Pash…

Me (voice, teeth status quo, eyes flashing and hands threatening to strike): This is what happens when you open your lesson for the first time the day before the test, blah blah blah… I keep telling you but you don’t listen blah blah…

A couple of weeks back the threatening hand would’ve landed on her butt and I would be done with it. But post-Amy Chua, the parent in me ponders. Deeply and wisely. Should I hit her or not? If I hit her she’ll be pushed to study harder and do well the next day. Or maybe she’ll protest and form a mental block against Sanskrit. Well, I had come all this way so I might as well go the whole hog and find out.

“Kutty,” I said slowly, “You are garbage.”

That did it. All this while Kutty had been writing, lips pursed and eyes teary. With the G word, something snapped.

“Garbage?” she asked. And then she cracked up. She clutched her stomach and burst into loud laughter. “Why garbage, Ma?” she asked in between all the ROFLing.

“Amma!,” she added amidst fresh guffaws, “If I’m garbage, you’re the Onyx truck that picks me up and drops me.” That’s my child. Always logical.