As the temperatures soar in the once-garden-city of Bengaluru, I am reminded of the summers we spent as children at my mother’s maternal grandmother’s place in Kumbakonam. Once known as the Cambridge of South India, this city is also famous for its temples. As children, we didn’t quite look forward to these breaks - the heat was too much to bear, the boredom was almost life taking and the facilities in the house were so ancient that we found it hard to cope. But the love we received and the food we were served were enough to compensate for all of that.
My great grandmother, Saraswati, was a very strong willed woman. Her husband was an engineer with Gammon India and she enjoyed much of the luxury that the British Raj provided at that time. Years later, I recollect how she found it quite hard to believe that though my father was a director in a leading insurance company, we did not have peons to help us with the drudgery of day-to-day mundane tasks. When she had her back to us, we children would often joke that she was quite a spoilt old lady! Sadly, she was widowed at a young age, and since, had to take control of the land and property that her husband had left behind. Since her father was a respected intellectual and religious scholar in the town of Kumbakonam, the goodwill he had accumulated in his lifetime came in handy when she had to handle her own establishment. However, I remember her to be quite an iron-lady, who was as much a disciplinarian with us, as she was affectionate towards us. She spent much of her time keeping track of the accounts and agricultural produce that would be stored in large granaries in the house. Once the land reforms came into place, the tiller/farmer, Muniya, became the owner of the land but he continued to owe allegiance to her.
Avva, as we called her, was the typical Brahmin widow - she had her head shaved, draped the customary orange or maroon sarees and wore absolutely no jewellery. The only ornament that she carried along was her disarming smile, rare that it was, and her sheer attitude of aplomb. She enjoyed relaxing on the lovely teakwood swing that enjoyed a place of pride in the house. She objected to my hair style (or the lack of one!) and would oil my hair, braiding it so tight it would hurt, but I daren’t so much as wince in pain! And then she would adorn them with a string of seasonal flowers and look at the me with approval.
The days were spent playing ‘palankuzhi’ and devouring the goodies that my grandmother, Satyavati, prepared for us. We sat in the front portico of the old house that faced the Reddy Rao’s tank and watched, with envy, the buffalos that waded lazily in the dirty waters. The closest we got to the luxury of cool water was to draw it from the well and drench ourselves in it. We kept ourselves hydrated with the ‘taati nungu’ (Asian Palmyra fruit). In the evenings, we would walk around the town or visit the famous Chakrapani and Sarangapani temples.
The house had a courtyard in the middle which would serve as the dormitory in the nights. We would spend hours counting shooting stars and identifying constellations and marvel at how clear the skies were compared to Bengaluru. Occasionally we would hear sounds under the tiled roof and my Avva would tell us rather nonchalantly that they were “just scorpions”. I had just studied Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion in school at the time and found neither her tone, nor the fact, reassuring!
This was the Kannada-Tamizh side of my roots. I shall, through some post, share my impressions of my Maharashtrian side as well. I don’t think my genetic inheritances could have got quirkier than this! But, despite that, I thank my stars that I managed to be blessed with the best from the two.
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