Memories

I remember one time I was feeling upset for some reason, and I went into my room (at home, this was the during the sweet times that I lived with blood relations), sat against my door, closed my eyes and transported myself to the edge of a stream, fed by a slim waterfall, which tanatalised me with the gentlest of sprays. There was a gigantic tree whose longest branch extended to almost half the width of the cascade, and whose leaves quivered with droplets every time the breeze made it sway. The debate was on whether I should place myself on that branch, or at the edge of the stream. The stream won because then I could dangle my feet in the sparkling water and collect round pebbles. Here I suddenly used imagination's license and shifted this place to somewhere a little further away from an cashew orchard near my father's ancestral home in kerala. I wish I could call it mine too, I don't think I have an ancestral home :(. There too there is a tree with a horizontal branch that I would like to clamber up on, (I haven't yet though, because my guide who had been spearheading the adventuring through the forest of jackfruit trees into the cashew orchard said it was getting dark and that we had to go home) and on which at least 4 people can sit abreast. There are lots of twigs hanging down from above whose leaves u can keep plucking (you know they will grow again) so I could never feel bored sitting on it. The smell of the cashew fruits can be quite overrpowering, but as long as you are lucky enough to not have too many rotting around you, it is ok. That is highly unlikely, considering the number of kids vying for collection records. Even if there were rotting cashews around, fenny doesn't smell so bad, does it? ;) Maybe I will take someone there someday and show them how beautiful it is. I can't believe it belongs to me in spirit. That I can't talk of it like this to my grandparents because it was home to them. They would wonder what all the fuss was about.

Mum talks about her mom's childhood in Aringad, in the heart of the North Kerala woods somtimes. These things that I have to imagine and picture myself in.. they were very real to them. People you consider seamlessly entwined with your urban way of life were once as removed from it as could be. My mom used to go there as a child and pick mangoes from the orchards nearby. My great-grandfather apparently built the only tarred road from their home which was far, far away from nearest civilization to the main road of the nearest township, so that he could buy a car and my grandad wouldn't have to walk all the way to school. There was no way a vehicle could make its way through those trees otherwise. He also owned two of the elephants who particpiate in the thrissurpuram festival on Onam, the one with twelve elephants with gold-decked trunks. Or is it twenty-four? Hmm. Before the car came, my grandfather used to go to school on an elephant! They had to be sold off because great-gramps was very generous with his money, and not very judicious in the disbursement of his assets and encouragement of prayers. It has come to mostly nothing now.. the acres of land would have gone to my mom's dad, and then my mom, if it hadn't been for the matriarchal style of society in kerala (an adopted daughter ended up getting most of it). Damn!

I wanted to go with here to Aringad sometime when we made those rare visits to kerala. She says there isn't much left.. the cascade has dried up (yeah, she had one too), the house has grown and derelict. Some of my grandfathers paintings were taken home by his children, including my mom, but some of his best were left there because nobody knew what to do with them. His books on painting too, by famous Russian and European critics and connoisseurs, easels, palettes, other materials. (I still hate the name 'burnt umbre', some shade of brown. He used to keep saying that. Even my mom doesn't like it. Always thought it should be 'amber'. I think he secretly wished I would inherit his artistic skills like she did :( ). Even if they survived the termites and scaling of oil paint, I doubt that they will ever regain lost dignity. Now time frames are overlapping and confusing me. This is the house and environment which my mom grew up in, more modest than her parents' aristocratic upbringing and surroundings, but every bit as intellectual and unique. I have gone there twice or thrice when I was a child, I think. Couldn't be more than four times in all, and the last time was probably when I was about 6 or 7. There was a swing from a jackfruit tree with the broad part of the coconut leaf for a swing and coir ropes. Man did they hurt your hands! And the thin rib of a cocunut leaf's leaf (I don't know what it is called :s), my uncle used to beat my cousin lightly when he was very bad. It leaves a red welt for a while, and hurts a bit. It's true what they say you know, every part of the coconut tree can be used.

There was also an old cat called raman who my mom knew for many years through her childhood and pre-adolescence. I did not have the honour of knowing him, but I have heard enough to form a mental picture. A huge, tawny, green eyed-creature who was such an expert at stealing milk that he vindicated throughly the use of a long ropey contraption to hold the milk vessel high above the kitchen counter. There were many other 'jantugal' around, but the animals can wait. She used to be made to go to the only English library for miles around by her older brother and her father and told to read whatever she could get her hands on. And after a while, she didn't have to be told anymore. I remember the red-oxide coated parapet on the porch on which my cousins and I used to sit and and play Idon'trmrwhat most vividly. And the mossy steps that lead into the temple virtually next door. Mossy stone steps. I don't think that visual is ever going to fade.

My mother's father was afflicted by cataract some years back, and his ability to see properly has been diminishing gradually in spite of an operation. Since then, his drawings have become more blurry and abstract, he mostly does forms now because faces are too intricate for his eyes. Landscapes have always been a favourite, though now I think what comes on paper is not what is in his head. We still have a painting he did of my mother when she was nineteen. And of a white eagle. And a seascape with a boat full of people and waves crashing against cliffs, Money style. Or is it Turner? There are others but these are my favourites. And I didn't spend more than 10 minutes with him when he wanted to show me his drawings when I saw him earlier this year. He's 87 and it the one love he has left. I should be guillotined. I wish I could make some of the sadness you might feel about the things that have happened in the past go away, amma. Wish I could undo some things and redo some things for you. You shouldn't have had to sacrifice so much. It is simply not fair. But then, like achan says, no regrets, ever. Eh? :)

Dad's family has been attuned to the town way of life for longer. I do connect my father's home to the Mathil temple, with its stone paving and red-tiled roofs and I do remember playing in the huge house there and getting lost in the back of the compound behind the house among the trees, but it is not enough. I don't rmr him telling me much about his childhood other than him putting a cockroach in an inkbottle and finding after three days that it was still alive, and conducting dissecting experiments on dead insects on a makeshift surgeon's table when he was 10 or so. And about how he fixed his grandfather's transistor. When he came for a few days from college, he was asked to make the contraption 'talk' being an engineer and all that. :D My great-grandmother passed away three months back. She was my only great-grand-anything. I wish I could have talked more to her. I don't remember as much as I would like to. There aren't as many stories because he doesn't tell them to me. Maybe for him dwelling on the past is raking up unpleasant memories along with pleasant ones. His stories beging and end with his schooling at St. Jospehs in b'lore, shillong, jabalpur, wherever else (His father was in the Survey of India, and that septugenarian is currently in the process of writing his third volume of memoirs, aside from numerous little stories about incidents in his life, and the clarityof his thought and memory, and expression is quite extraordinary. I am getting to know more about his parents and siblings, how education came first, the sacrifices that were made so that the children could go to college.. from his writings. I am not as vocal as this in my appreciation of them with him... I don't know why that is), and his college life at IIT. And they aren't comprehensive. They are just interesting things filtered out for my benefit. Tell it all, acha. I miss hearing those stories. I don't mind if you repeat them. They are my only connection to a world that you know and I don't and that I go ahead and love anyway.

These aren't even my memories. I don't have as many yet. There are many from my childhood, which I wouldn't want to let go of, but they're nowhere as romantic and exciting as theirs. Ergo I will save them for later. These are memories that I have stolen from them, for which I will always be grateful to them. Maybe it isn't exactly progressive to dwell in the past. In someone else's past too. But for some reason, it makes me feel close to things I want to feel close to for the rest of my life. Forgive me the many factual errors, the disorganized flow of thought, and the horrendously framed sentences. It has been a while. :) And thank you so much for sharing with me memories which have nothing to do with me.