To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Sunday, April 21, 2019
 

If I were to close my eyes and think back to the best times of my life, the one memory that always forms a part of this patchwork flashback is of summer vacations in Mangalore. And this memory revolves around an ancestral house in Ambalapady where my grandmother used to live... and where I was treated as the fondest grand-daughter of the family.
The days used to have a warm texture around them and I would wind myself around the routines of older people… I enjoyed being with grown-ups when I was little for some reason…not so much being around younger kids or kids my age. I loved listening to their stories…sitting like a happy dog beneath my aunts’ feet or on their laps. Sometimes I would beg them to let me try their activities like cutting vegetables or rolling the grindstone or scraping the coconut leaves for making broom sticks or going to the shops to get small groceries… my grandmother used to say that when I grew older she would ask me to do these things and let’s see how eager I would be then… I looked forward to as well as dreaded the rains because they would occur almost toward the end of the vacation in June… though I didn’t like to keep count of the days, I knew that rains meant that I was going to leave soon… I enjoyed sitting in the courtyard watching the droplets plop on the cemented yard… or running in the backgarden collecting mangoes in a large tub…. In the afternoons, I rarely slept like all the older people… I would quietly slip into the bedrooms and try on my aunts’ clothes or makeup or rummage through old stuff in cupboards and storerooms… I would find all sorts of things that piqued my interest…it was almost like a treasure hunt for me… I would bring back a few gems with me to Mumbai… other times I would use this opportunity to hunt for jaggery or nuts or anything else I could chance upon… the ice-cream man would make his appearance around this time for some unknown reason… so one had to actually wake a sleeping mom or aunt for some coins… but this was the best time to have something cool… the sun being scorching hot at this time of the day… there were no ACs in Mangalore then… but I don’t remember it being unbearable… the electricity was also extremely moody… here now, gone now… people would break into a sweat and wake up to notice that the fan had gone quiet… the quiet after the whirring sound of the fan itself would be enough to wake one up if not the unrelenting heat at the height of summer…
My grandmother would be up 3.30 pm sharp like an alarm had gone off… and her first task would be to milk the cow… I would run behind her to the shed to watch her… the shed was at the back of the house… leading to the large backgarden… where there were two wells… a cemented area to wash vessels… lots of mango trees, jackfruit trees, banana trees, breadfruit trees, lemon trees, and others I don’t know the name of… this backgarden looked on either side to neighbours’ backgardens divided by a short wall that ran throughout… you could chat with neighbours across the wall…
Everyone would lazily climb out of bed once they knew grandmother was up… one of my aunt’s would start making coffee (we had tea in the morning and coffee in the evening)… there was something special about coffee made with fresh milk… I can’t put my finger on it… but then there was something very special about everything that my grandmother made and that was made in that home… I almost remember the taste … no one can make anything quite the same… my mom probably comes closest to it… most of the ingredients would be grown at home… like the simple dish made with ripe mangoes… all that went into it was mustard seeds, curry leaves, coconut oil, coconut, chillies… but it tasted like heaven… with brown boiled rice… after coffee, grandmother and aunts would pull water from the well in what we call a ‘kollso’ … an aluminium vessel narrow at top where it was tied up with a rope and wide at the bottom like one half of an hourglass… I would try my hand at this too and perching the vessel at my side I would walk with them to pour the water around the trees… all the while some talk or gossip would be going on… and then we would all come back to sit in the front yard …watching the gathering dusk, the passers-by, the buses, the fisher-folk… feeling a contentment that was sublime for want of another word…
There was a tradition of saying prayers before dinner… everyone would join in the prayers… dinner was by 9 or 9.30 at the most… they would discuss what to have for breakfast the next day while preparing for bed… I used to chip in with options and they would take my ideas seriously of course…gossip would continue till it seemed like everyone had nodded off… I would call out to them just to check if someone was game to chat with me because then as now I was a late sleeper…I couldn’t wait for it to be morning again… to enjoy the pleasant routines again… to be enveloped in the lovely simplicity of those times again… I would give anything…
When I was a little older, maybe 14 or 15… and my grandmother had passed away and the house locked up (my aunts were all married and uncles lived in their own homes)… I told myself that one day I would buy and own the house… I think about that resolution now with the wisdom of years and I realise how foolish it was….that somehow I thought I would be able to relive those memories if I had the house… I attached the memories to the house… to something tangible… all these years so many things have changed that not only is the house a poor shadow almost unrecognisable from what it was… nothing about even the town remains the same… modernity has wormed its way there as much as everywhere else… but even if that hadn’t been the case… I realise now that I actually already own the house… I own what was most precious about that house to me in my heart and in my soul… it has made me who I am… I carry the house with me… it could never be taken away from me even if the house is torn down… it would only go down when I am gone…
The Notre Dame fire made me feel quite emotional…. I have never been there but just the idea of what it stood for and what was destroyed made me feel sad… people ask why there was so much outcry for a building, why the outpouring of grief or generosity… but it seems to me that it wasn’t ‘just’ a building… like my ancestral house wasn’t just a house for me…it stood for a part of me that I cherished… I feel that the spaces of our making sometimes make us… and there is something honourable in remaking them… if only to be held as symbols of what we are made through them… for the generations after us…
Happy Easter!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:12 pm 4 comments
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