Boo boo in select company

Boo boo in select company
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Friday 11 September 2020

Obedience is Bad, especially for Women


Obedience is Bad, especially for Women

 I think I was about three years old when I realised I had special status as a 'motherless child.') I was going to Madras (now called Chennai) to visit my maternal grandparents on that day in May, which I remember. My father told me to go next door and tell my echis (cousins, sisters) and ettans (brothers) there that I would be gone for a week or two. 

This is the house where I spent most of my waking hours. There were no children in that house and they spoiled me silly. Except Kannettan. He was a tailor, with a pedal Singer sewing machine parked on his veranda. He never smiled and would not let me go anywhere near his precious corner, full of multi-coloured bits and swirls of cloth, that I wanted to reach. But, on this day when I was leaving he went into his garden with me and plucked a perfect red rose for me. 'Poor motherless little one,' he said.

So motherless had its positives. Indeed, as far as I was concerned, it made no difference to me. My aunts and cousins loved me -- they combed my hair, dressed me for the day, wiped my tears when the kitten scratched me... Nani edatht always put a lot of love on to the semi-toothless comb when she did my hair.

However, our house was a little bare and naked compared to others I visited. Next door also had just the two chairs and the odd rickety bench. The women never sat on the chairs in either house. My Achan ate his meals at a small round table all his own, and the rest of us had palakaas -- low wooden stools. The food was served in tin plates on the floor.

My Velyamma hardly came to the veranda -- her domain was her kitchen. In houses with mothers, I noticed embroidered cushion cloths on the chairs sometimes. There would be a colourful hand-loom sheet occasionally on a bed. Next door, there was even a bunch of plastic flowers on a little table, on the veranda.

I had strict instructions from my father not to hang around in the kitchen, which I loved doing. Looking back, I think he was scared I would become like his sister and niece -- a denizen of the kitchen-world. So he set me work to do most days when I was at home. The long Malayalam poem, Karuna, by Kumaran Aashaan, was in four-line verses, and I had to memorise a verse a day. Tennyson's In Memoriam was another boring chore. I hated that one and have never looked kindly on Tennyson since.

I must admit the Eliza Doolittle role started early, with unforeseen consequences later on, when I started having my own ideas about what to think, how to live. At twenty-one I chafed at the bridle and gave my Achan enormous headaches. When he complained to a friend, the man said, 'But you told her not to be obedient.' This was true.

I remember my father going up the stairs one day while Velyamma complained I had been disobedient. 'Obedience is bad,' he retorted. 'Especially for women.'



Thursday 10 September 2020



I thought Covid would make me write. The thoughts were going to be a deluge in my head and then they'd reach these pages to flood them. But, actually, I've dried up. So I have called me to the head-mistress's office and chastised me: delinquent in duty, lazy, non-stop commitment to T V...

So I promised the ogre that I would write two blogs a week to please her. She didn't really believe me. So much for my stupid, task-master alter-ego. Time to show her up.

My recent murmurings in my head are about the new India. In the families I know, birthdays are celebrated with profuse wishes, mainly on Facebook and the recipient says a bundled thank you at the end. This is a new custom. On my birthdays as a child, I received no 'wishes' or gifts. Velyamma insisted that I bathe BEFORE breakfast, do my devotions in front of the puja-room plaster images, and thereafter behave myself. That was a special responsibility: no lying, swearing, leaving food uneaten on the plate... Also, no one else should shout at me in the house and they should all do things for me. So the echis (cousins) plaited my hair, put pottu on my forehead, made rice-and-jaggery sweets for me. When I misbehaved, almost, Veiyamma warned echis that today was special and I should not be scolded.

These days, Facebook reminds me to wish 'friends.' I am obstinate that I will not be instructed in this manner by Crazebook. I am often sorely tempted to give up my Facebook membership, but that and Whats App are the only ways I can keep abreast of the busy lives of my friends and family -- marriages, births, deaths...

One or two girls in my class would bring a box of penny sweets or toffees to lessons  on their day and distribute them. They'd be wearing new clothes and you could see they felt important on that day. Achan had a very extended family to feed and educate and his going to jail for two years didn't help. One day, I moaned to him, and as usual he came up with a brilliant suggestion.

A suggestion I could have managed without -- at the end of the day, you must tell me what you did for someone else, he said. That is what makes a good birthday, he insisted.

Why couldn't he be like other girls' fathers? I thought.

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