This
is a blog about my very Indian other self. Actually Malayalee,
(from Keralam, speaking the local language, Malayalam)
because I probably have less in common with people of some of the northern
parts of India than with crazy Croydon, where I have lived since the late
nineties, with occasional forays into Keralam to recharge my
other self. I started this site in 2013 and never pursued it. But now,
senility combined with Covid Lock-down, and the remorseless tick-tock
(Rushdie style) of seconds, minutes, hours, days… persuade me that I must get
this going, if my granddaughter is to have any idea about her fractured
beginnings.
At
fifteen years, she has a room and bathroom of her own, you enter there at your
peril — unless your sneak in to pick up the daily debris, while she sleeps the
sleep of the innocent. In our house in Thalassery, in the north of Keralam, I
ponder, five of us females, aged between seven and fifty-five, slept in the
puja room. Ammamma, the eldest had a narrow bed, the rest slept on mats spread
on the floor. It was a small room; when the mats were rolled out, there was no
walking room, so you stepped over the others if you needed to get out. I did
not qualify for a pillow at my age, graduating to one only on my wedding night.
I wonder what my new, just unpacked husband thought when he found his wife
constantly slipping down a notch, in the bed, to escape the pillow. It didn’t
help that some kind souls had covered the nuptial bed in jasmine petals. JESUS
WEPT!
Men
were considered superior to us; they slept upstairs on beds and mattresses.
Indeed, but for the beds upstairs, the house was mercifully devoid of
furniture. My father had two chairs in his office in the corner of the veranda.
His clients sat on a bench, which was not trustworthy, as it had uneven legs
and tended to go up at one end, when a weight came down on the other. My father
also had a big table and a Dutch glass-fronted almirah. The almirah contained
his law books, with The Indian Penal Code occupying pride of place. He was a
lawyer.
We
had a Planter’s chair too on the veranda, on which I used to curl up and sleep,
waiting for my father to pick me up and carry me up to bed, when I was still
little. It was a lovely object, that chair, until you got close to it. Most of
the wickerwork had torn off on the seat and you had to stick to one little
Strip, which had a few strands left. And look out for those sharp bits of
unravelled cane sticking out!
For
the rest, we sat on palakas and thadukkus , wooden
stools and small grass-mats. These days, when I visit India, I see no stools or
mats to sit on. The middle classes sit on sofas, while the poorer families sit
on basic wooden chairs. Just as well considering the shape of my knees
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