Rural

The Pongal Magic

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The birth of the Tamil month of ‘Thai’ occupies a special significance in my heart. For a farmer, ‘Thai’ is the tenth month in the Tamil calendar.  The arrival of ‘Thai’ is celebrated with colour, splendour, nature, gratitude and of course, good food : Pongal, we call it.  For a long while now, Pongal festivities in urban areas have been relegated to a fun bonfire, a fancy ghee dripping Pongal (the dish) and a lazy time in front of the TV.

The festival, though, has a lineage of several thousand years and the least every succeeding generation did was to mark it on the calendar. Which is fantastic. Needless to say, they celebrated in accordance of the times they lived in and added a layer of flavour.

As a kid, I recall running with a carefree energy, in farmlands of a distant dusty village cluster near Madurai in Tamil Nadu on the day of Pongal. Careful not to trample on the colourful ‘Kolams’ that dotted every doorway. Running to see garlanded cows and goats with a fresh coat of paint donning their horns.  Jostling to get a better glimpse of events at the village centre, atop the shoulders of uncles and cousins.  A uniquely rural Indian moment, if you will. Replete with painted horns matched in their colour by glaring ribbons, and blaring megaphones.  Shy women stood at the doorway of quaint houses and watched drunken men, cows, and kids like us traipse by.  The world seemed to have a spring in its step.

That is my memory of Pongal. There was magic in the air. The Pongal magic.

For long, I believed that it was ‘Thai’ that did it. For it heralded new beginnings. It meant that there was a shift in the seasons. The seeds that were sown months ago and nurtured over several months had morphed into something else. Grain. Food. It was time for a harvest. It was time for abundance.

To date, on Pongal day, a traditional Tamil rural household converges outside of their homes under the benign grandeur of the Sun God and cook. Boiling the milk and adding freshly harvested rice, even as it overflows, to signify gratitude and abundance. Or at least, that’s the story I have experienced.

‘Thai Piranthaal Vazhi Pirakkum’ they say. ‘When the month of Thai arrives, opportunities arrive’ is a loose translation.

The urbanisation of our lifestyles has drifted away from the rhythms of its rural origins. Retaining the ritual and missing the flavour. Yet, the spirit of the festival permeates the mid-January air.

Sometimes, that’s all that matter.

Here’s to a super Pongal. May there be new vistas for health, happiness and fulfilment in all our lives.  And even as they knock on our doors, may we have the prescience to hear the knock and open the doors of our soul.

May we live!

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Death Of A Dad!

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“You look occupied”. He had said. And then added, “You must take time off from work. Spend time with all of us.  Read. Drop your computer and office. Write your book..” and almost as an afterthought added, “don’t keep peering into your phone so much”.

I laughed. For all his illness, he had the knack to pack a punch into every feeble statement that escaped the stiffness of his lips. I looked up from my phone that I was peering into and smiled. 

I was in a playful mood too. “For how many days should I follow that routine”, I asked. “Seven”. He said. “One week”.  The “At least” that he said after the ‘one week’ didn’t quite translate into sound. But by then I was used to getting by with the occasional capability to read his lips when the movement of his lips didn’t translate to sound.  

I smiled. Put the phone aside.  His message had reached my head. That was on Christmas day, 2013.  

Monday last.  I am making a few notes and planning the week ahead. The mobile rings piercing the stillness and breaking the silence of the early hours. The clock silently speaks as the eye darts to catch it says: 4.31 AM. It is my brother on the line.  A sundry thought assortment race up and down as the simple ringtone sounds shrill and tears into the morning. Perhaps, an accidental touch of the redial button or the nephew’s playing some game. I think.    

I pick the up the call to what seem like muffled sobs.  And then the sobs erupt in victory, beating the vain attempts to muffle them.  He says in-between the quiet sobs, “Appa is gone”.  My dad was no more.
Tears. Almost like a cloud burst triggered flash-flood, flow down my cheek. A sudden cold envelops my body. In less than ten seconds I shoot a set of rapid fire questions. “what are you saying?” “How is amma?” “How do you know” and such else.  

He composes himself and explains. In a short time, we quickly regain composure to discuss, as two pragmatic adult men would, the practicalities of getting to Madurai as soon as possible. Before hanging up, he says, “You take care. And you don’t get worked up.”

Since that moment, life has been a fast whorl.  Dad was central to our lives. If there was one person who I could look up with awe, regard and love, he was gone. If there was a purpose to the spirit of the daily fight, it was deflated. If there was an over encompassing hand that would soak all our troubles up and then set us free with energy, that hand was missing. If there was a compass to our lives, it needed resetting.

Born into a rural family with a dozen brothers and sisters, the rich beats of rural traditions were close to his heart even as a quintessentially modern outlook stayed as his most preferred lens. For the longest time I can remember. 

The last week has been an emotional roller coaster ride. The only seat belts we have had on us have been memories of earlier times, unconditional love from family, relatives, friends, well wishers and lots of people who I wished I knew better. At least their names, for a start! My phone and mail box reek of condolence messages and calls (several that went unanswered). All loaded with love and peppered with care. If there was a lifetime of debt that I was to carry, well, this is it!   

It may just be me. When the plot or a protagonist reaches a point of inflection, in a book that is well written, I pause the reading and put the book down for a bit.   Chewing and digesting what the lines say and what the spaces in-between them mean, invariably resisting the ever so compelling urge to turn to the next page and get on with “what happens next”.  So, I pause. Most times, reflect. Sometimes read passages all over again. See meaning that had escaped me. At other times, I even write, just to express what is running on my mind.
That is a habit my dad held dear. And amongst the stuff that I inherited from him, that habit stands tall. Amongst the most practiced!  

In that spirit, there will be a few blogposts this time. Not eulogies. But more descriptions of what happened since that call at 4.31 AM on a fateful Monday morning.  Maybe an incident here. A story there.  Memories all over.  And maybe from it all, there will be an inference or two. About our times, our cultures, of recalcitrant sons and a very different father.   

Truth be told, it is just my way of dealing with his death. Of loss. Even as peaceful sleep remains elusive these will be attempts to make sense of all whats on my mind. The struggle to piece our lives together and limp back to its regular rhythms is only matched by the acute awareness that our lives will remain inexplicably changed.      

And so, we consign his body to flames that very Monday.  Our heads tonsured, barefoot, our dhotis dripping wet, garlands around our neck, we walk back to the car.  The result of death taking him and we letting a rich paraphernalia of rural customs and traditions flow, and take charge of us.  A relative from our village walks close by in company.  

He hisses in my ear. “As part of our customs, you can’t go out of home or do your normal activities ‘like computer’ and so on..”  I turn to look at him in surprise and he understands my question before I ask it. “For seven days” he says. 

And then adds “at least”.  I hear the ‘at least’ loud and clear. 

My dad always had his ways. Only this time, it needn’t have been this way.  
  

PS : The last time I wrote of him is here. And I think it was better written!  

Chitirai Festival

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The ‘Chitirai Thiruvizha’ ( The festival that happens in the Tamil month of Chitirai) is an annual feature in a Madurai calendar. There is splendour. Pomp. Simplicity. Devotion. Revelry And a letting down of hair by rural and urban folk. Every body lets their hair down.

Save perhaps the policemen on duty !

Here is a video that i chanced on YouTube !

Pretty much covers one part of the festival spread over many days. The festival itself is a ten day long affair. The pomp and show of a ‘celestial wedding’. The majesticity of a ‘God’ in motion. The piety of the simple. The preparedness of the city. The commerce that keeps knocking on traditions doors. Yet a culture that somehow survives, are all things to see.

Its a must watch.




The next year around, give me a shout if you’d want to visit ! 🙂 The festival involves a deity taken in procession from Alagarkoil into the heart of the city ( a distance of more than 20 odd KM). The young and old rejoice. As part of the festival there is this traditional ‘water spray’ by the young and the old. Specially adorned. Chanting the name of Govinda.

Spraying water to cool things down. Spraying everywhere. Often targeting the camera of a stray blogger !

Here are some images that survived such targeting !






Sugar Circles !

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Somewhere between Shirdi and Aurangabad we see sugar territory. They see him. Slightly decked up. With an assortment of colour threads and beads on his forehead and frontage ! Visitors they are. To the rural plains !

He walks around. In circles. Almost in synchrony to the command he nonchalantly receives from a man standing afar.

“There are new people who have come’. The man seems to say. Our protogonist must commence his walk again. On the beaten path. In the much treaded circle. He walks. He walks the rounds. There are levers at work. Circles of wood that spin. Juice that’s made. Raw. Sweet. And complete.


The visitors sit there. In row of chairs that have been held to a straight line by a rope. Much to the awe of the city siders. Omni present simple solutions stump them.

They havent seen anything like this before in big city Mumbai or wherever they came from. The sugar cane juice disappears from the glass tumblers like money in an inflation prone economy !

And him… Job done. He looks at the visitors. Almost asking if he must walk the path again. For them to soothe parched throats with more juice that was sitting pretty inside the cane !

They nod. He walks again. In that circle ! All for sugar & juice !

Sugar circles ! Ah ! The story of our lives.

Pole Power Blessing !

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Rural India is littered with sights that get me open mouthed. Well, if you are a regular reader here, i can almost hear you say that i get open mouthed at the drop of a hat. Or at a buzz of a fly or whatever ! Sure. And yes !

Take a loot at this, for instance.


Seen somewhere in rural India. A common sight in urban India too. Power ! I quake in my boots to think of the chap who would climb the pole to fix a electrical problem. (Problems which must be as common place as a puny Tamil film hero fighting of ten people twenty times his size ! On screen of course !)

Here i sit. Not knowing which socket will hold which plug on my computer ! Heck, i cant tell between the printer cable and the phone cable ! Of course i fret and make the odd murmur of how complicated life has become and how powerless i feel !

To think that the chap who climbs the pole, figures out the problem amidst that maze of wires, unplugging the exact wire and replugging after ‘some’ work, is mind numbing to say the least ! Phew !

A chap like me will think that he deserves a ‘life time achievement award’ for just climbing that pole with a combination of ropes, bare hands and some degree of energy .

Oh yes, the other chap does it with no fuss. No noise. Only the odd instruction to his partner on the ground ! Often times, i wonder if i know how blessed i am. On the same keel i wonder if he knows how blessed he is.

On another note, the missus wonders if i chose this post because i relate to the tube light well.

Well. Well.. Blessings. You see !

Aching Thigh !

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For, here i am. With aching thighs. And a knee which announces a flex of the leg with a sound that is getting louder by the day. I still can walk. And run a kilometer or two. Thank all the Gods above for their big mercies.

But frankly, the ultimate strength lies in sitting with your backside close to hard surface. But not on it. Yes, In my mind, to squat is to have special prowess. And No. I am not kidding.

At another of those dull days, i wait, with my laptop bag strung across my shoulders. I wait by a Mumbai highway, for a friend of mine to pick me up.

There is a family that waits alongside me. The weight of the world seems to be on my shoulder, as the friend calls up every 7 th minute to tell me he is 5 minutes away. I yearn for a chair. I cant sit. Forget my backside, the thought of placing the laptop bag on the mud and dust of the highway, is non existent.

And then, i hear the lady of the family standing next to me tell her husband that her legs ache. And the next minute, she sits down. I mean, she squats. And there she was. In that position for many more multiples of ‘7 minutes’ till my friend finally showed up and i left the place !

Her sitting position was perhaps the most hygienic possibility. That you almost sit. I mean, your backside, gets as close as possible to a surface. The knees bend. The calf muscles touch the thigh. And you are not standing. Well, by those definitions, it definitely was sitting !

Phew. I wonder how many of you can do that. Many of my cousins who live in the rural hinterland, sit in this position with ease. For hours on end. I guess their daily morning routines give way for practice too.


But the fact remains, that if the next bus / train / friend doesn’t show up on time, i am going to walk about fiddling my finger and running my hand through imaginary strands of hair. While some chap will squat elegantly, right in front of me ! For hours on end !

And i would swear to myself that the next post on my blog would be on inadequate infrastructure !

And here is the icing on the cake.

You know, I try and go to a gym. And the instructor asks me to squat and get up ! 20 repetitions. And charges me for his supervisory act. I know i am missing something.

For, here i am. With aching thighs.