It’s tough travelling down the back lanes of history and mythology. Where do myths begin? Where does history take precedence and how do religious beliefs reign supreme? Is it irrational to expect logic while expressing belief?

Amma was a student of history but she is an ardent believer in myths. I am untrustworthy. I can shift allegiance as per the diktats of the hour for I am often beset with doubts and unable to judge truth from tale. She requests a darshan of the sacred spot where god Krishna was born-Mathura.

As a believer in Hindu gods, I would often feel a sense of pique when I espied Westerners, in shorts, tees and sarongs walk around our temples with a mark of nonchalance and a sense of disbelief. ‘The spot is sacred to us; the deity is an embodiment of our faith; He is a placebo strengthened by the power of our prayers’. But how do you counter a non-believer approaching it from the point of touristy curiosity? Perhaps the same way I felt while visiting the Vatican- with a distant respect for a religion that was not my own; with a curiosity that made me look at it with fresh eyes; as also with a feeling that the place embodied the spirit of prayer and healing, though not of my faith.

In Mathura folklore rules, history is a talking point, and faith remains unchallenged. I found myself a bit removed from the faithful bit though. My Ummachi rests in my tiny altar at home. He nestles in mid crawl on a tiny silver swing, that is showered with flowers and decked with sandal paste. He is the unseen power that I beseech when I need succor.

Gautam is 13, a student, who hops into the passenger’s seat, as we fumble for road directions. He is the eldest of three brothers and the family makes a living off the sacred town’s tourist and religious attractions. His father does a bit of mixed farming- a couple of cows, a bit of vegetable farming to eke a living and sends the boys to a local government school. After school hours, Gautam and his classmates roam the streets surrounding the ghats and temples looking for pocket money. “Only 40 rupees for whole day of guiding”, he asks. Given the avarice of the notorious pandas this request seems reasonable. We don’t haggle over the price.

Our first stop is at the Krishna Janma Bhoomi or the Keshav Dev temple. It’s a difficult moment. Twin marble domes of a masjid stand cheek by jowl near the temple’s tower. A wall of the temple is shared with the mosque and coils of barbed wires guard the inner walls menacingly. It’s easy to feel roused, especially for believers of either faith who visit remnants of historical insults over mythical gods.

Gautam has the gift of a guide’s gab. He informs: “Ghazni, Lodhi, Aurangazeb all destroyed it, even today you can see a shrine missing and it has been replaced with a marble wall, devoid of idols. See, see”, he urges us. He insists that we train our eyes on the marble and make out the form of Krishna. Amma peers hard at the marble wall as the lad points out, ‘the peacock crown, the flute over there and his cowherds gathered around him’. I purse my lips and he argues, “See it with your heart and soul and you’ll be able to make out his form’. Other guidebooks inform that the ‘original’ temple is located near the ghats and this is a ‘new’ structure. Who’s to tell?

We are ushered into a chamber that served as the prison where the God was born. Amma nudges me to do a namaskaram at that spot and garland the small idols of the infant Krishna.

We rush past the kitschy moats of colour and clay and sip a lassi kissed by flies to go past the ghats to Gokul. We travel past the Yamuna. She will swell in the monsoons, Gautam informs. Today, she is placid, her banks dotted with shrubs and grass and folks partaking of her holy waters.

Gokul is amazingly rustic, idyllic, untouched by urbanity. There are low thatched mud houses and small brick buildings and livestock sheds and cattle grazing. You can well believe myths about the community of cowherds and the pastoral lives of the people that Krishna spent His boyhood. The lanes are utterly narrow, gutters spew forth filth, pie dogs laze around and the tiny cubicles along the lanes are makeshift kitchen stores. Here smiling men ladle huge vats of ghee, sugar, butter, khoa to make sweets. There is a faint smell of cooking butter as you walk down the lane to reach, erm, Krishna’s house. “Krishna lived 3000 years ago. This is Devki’s house,” Gautam invites us into a brick building that looks eerily like my grandfather’s home in Tirunelveli. Priests usher us in to come forward near the idols placed in various nooks and corners of the house around a tiny courtyard. The clay idols are utterly charming, folk forms, highlighted with bits of gold pigment and colourful clothes. Puppets of cowherds and villagers sporting with Krishna are arranged in a row. We circumambulate dutifully before taking leave.

More lassi, some sweets and we head back.

Did I enjoy the visit?
Yes, I liked the sights, sounds and smells.
However when temple visits such as these come together knotted with myth, history and current political babble I am unable to feel pious.
Hopefully Krishna, the Divine Benefactor, in my heart and prayers would forgive me for this.

Summer is ushered in here by a sequence of flowering trees. It begins with towering scarlet cannon ball trees in full bloom and a little later with the beguiling charm of frangipani blossoms. It is quickly followed by a rash of orange gulmohar flowering tree tops and pink powder puff trees. I stick a bunch of vinca into a small vase and sit down with a pot of tea.

I am feeling sunny today. That’s because my favourite flowering tree, the laburnum, is on spectacular display, its yellow orbs dancing in defiance against summer downpours. I sense a stirring in the bough, and unusual to his nightly jaunts the Owl flies in.

“Pretty sight, huh?” I ask, pointing to the droplets of yellow flora.

“Did you know that the male pollen cannot fertilise a female flower unless the laburnum flower is first punctured by insects?” nods the Owl.

“Sounds cruel”, I say, passing him a spot of tea.

“Talking of cruelty, is that Patrick French’s biography of V.S.Naipaul The World Is What It Is that you’re reading?” he asks, his round eyes turning saucer-like.

“Ah, yes and it is cruel. I’ve just been reading how he treated his wife Patricia Hale of 40 years, used her, visited prostitutes and gloated over it to torment her. He maintained a mistress for 25 years and inflicted mental cruelty on Patricia who suffered with cancer, only to abandon wife and mistress to marry his current wife Nadira Alvi, who from accounts, is a glorified secretary”, I rattle, snapping the big book shut.

“Whoo, we are upset here, are we? Appreciate the talent and not judge his life,” teases the Owl.

“What is it with geniuses and great men? Why do they reserve special cruel treatment for their wives and partners”? I pass him a biscuit.

“Eh?” He looks up from his cup.

“Say a writer like Ernest Hemingway whose own version of masculinity led him to abuse queers. Literary scholars debate whether his own hidden gayness led him to treat his many wives badly,” I say.

“Hemingway had bipolar disorder. He treated his women and himself real bad. Afterall he committed suicide”, the Owl shakes him head and asks, “What’s that baking smell?”

“Apple and cinnamon cake”, I reply, irritated by his disinterested tone. “Take Pablo Picasso, two wives, four mistresses and endless women. He would even watch his women cat fight and tear each other’s hair out, impregnating them at his desire and abandoning them at will”.

“That’s the red blooded Spaniard who painted masterpieces, had eight important relationships, treated his women real special by making them his muse for the moment. And who can paint with passion and grandeur than him”, the Owl says in obeisance to the master.

“Yet, so heartless? Using his women as his models for paintings and destroying their self and discarding them carelessly given the greatness of his own art and skill”, I’m unconvinced.

“I mean Albert Einstein maintained 10 mistresses, jeopardized his family life, scarred his children. Feminist scholars even say he did not give due credit to his first wife Mileva Maric who could have helped him with his Theory of Relativity discovery”, I remind.

“We can’t be sure of what angry women say”, dismisses the Owl.

“Closer home can you imagine what it must have been to be the Mahatma’s wife for Kasturbai and see her children go through his experiments on health, medicine and arduousness or his strange habits of sleeping naked between young women?” I wonder.

“The Godliness of the Mahatma outshone his human frailties”, the Owl clarifies.

“I’m not sure it did for his wife”, I say, shaking my head. “Remember how Kamla Nehru suffered illness, loneliness by her dapper and aristocratic husband, ten years her senior in their short-lived marriage?”

“Well, Pandit never remarried, you must grant him that”, reminds the Owl.

“But did he make her feel special when she was alive?” I ask him.

“Take your townsman Subramania Bharathi. He wrote verses eulogising his wife, did he not?” the Owl sets an example.

“Given Bharathi’s tortured self realisations, penury, exile, addictions, illnesses and untimely death, what did she have as proof of his affection than those poems?” I ask.

“That, my girl, is the price she paid for partaking the journey with a genius”, the Owl chuckles.

“Even our mythological heroes, warriors and leaders of men were those whose women had to combat twin burdens of chastity and obeisance to their husbands, despite the vicissitudes and tribulations they have had to face. Rama’s wife Sita, Pandava Bros’s consort Draupadi, Satyavan’s wife Savitri, Harischandra’s wife Chandramathi have all been through hell and high water for the sake of their husbands honours”, I count on my fingers.

The Owl goes for a refill at the pot. “True genius, great minds, big men have an aura that is attractive and destructive. To cohabit with them is at your peril. Women find such men attractive and allow themselves to be consumed and destroyed by their potent fire of brilliance and cruelty.Genius coexits with a bit of madness”, he observes, stirring his brew.

“Hah! And now you’ll thrown in the theory of multiple realities and how it’s common and a fault of an irreverent media to judge great men by their sexual exploits and moral fibre”, I say, miffed at the Owl’s composure.

“Mediocrity and effeteness hold no charm for women. Nice guys finish last”, the Owl swills his cuppa.

“You will be amazed by the capacity of women to maintain grace in the company of losers as much as they can hold up with dignity even while being manipulated by the power of achievers”, I say.

“Whatever, girl”, laughs the Owl. “And now, pass me a piece of that cake”, he demands.

“Go away”, I say, snatching the cup from him.

When I was 14, I received my first make-up box. It was a present from Appa, who had arrived from his first visit abroad. It was a flat purple plastic case. I flipped it open and the slight fragrance tickled my nose. It contained a compact rectangle, a tiny brush, a selection of creamy eye-shadows in purples, browns and oranges and tablets of lipsticks in red, maroon, orange and pink. The only time I’d used lipstick was when I was made to play a part in school function that included our Anglo-Indian catechism teacher smear fire-engine red on all choir singers’ lips and use the same to daub little rounds on our cheekbones. We were too worried to bring our lips together and sing. The feeling of treacle and perfume on lips felt strange, uncomfortable and yet I recall being excited, girlie and if I might add, feeling pretty and exhibitionistic.

Make-up is the first armour to battle the cruel lines of age on your face. It can uplift, make you feel better, give you a boost and make you confident if worn well and with a little finesse. It has been a clever invention, and it can be high art in the hands of the skilled.A make-over can sometimes mean a new leash of confidence.

Appa would say a woman needs make-up when she’s forty. He was of the old school that felt a woman’s youthfulness and freshness were her best calling cards. As for men using makeup, you had to be a stage actor in Tamil Nadu to use pink pancake, black eye-liners and shimmering lipsticks and curly wigs and all would be forgiven. Besides, all Tamil actors wore make up and looked none the better for it. The best of them had street theatre backgrounds that relied on guises, make-up and masks for larger effect.

When I first met Kamalahasan (No, he wasn’t Kamal Hassan then) it was on the sets of a flick called Singaravelan at AVM studios in 1991. He was the first hero that I fell in love as a teen, when I was allowed to watch cinema in the halls.

As I shook hands with him, he responded to potshots about his height-“Marlon Brando was short, but no one in Hollywood harps on that”, he bristled. I was struck by the sheer sexuality he exuded and his clean good looks. He spoke a lot in English with a faint accent that seemed to be in tune with the 1980s upper class Madrasis. He sounded verbose but you knew his intentions, political and cultural, were right, though he often sounded convoluted and contrived. Kamal is also the man who liked to chase an idea or reinvent himself. Is the man larger than the actor? Of course. All superstars are so anyway.

For over a decade we continued to bump into each other as the occasion demanded. We were formal and cordial with each other, though never chummy. There came a time, when despite his famed aloofness, he’d come over phone to take my call, and I was allowed to meet his then wife Sarika at his home, near the Rangachari Cloth Store. When I expressed dismay over the demolition and rebuilding of his office on TTK Road that I loved for its old Madras garden house deco, he shrugged it, “It’s just a house”, he said. Of the scattered conversations we’ve had I can recall his wish that he missed acquiring a formal education. It seemed like a little insecurity in his heart that despite his many artistic achievements he felt a need for learned confidence.

Ergo, it may not be to his relish to say he possesses the art of elevating kitsch. As a committed professional actor he has a never-ending fascination for disguises and the sheer thrill of impersonation and experimenting with looks and donning make-up. He excels at it as much as he does in generating ideas- small and big, the sincere and the mad, the fascinating and the revulsing. His forte includes toilet humour, grotesqueness, smarminess and slapstick. Yet he is almost MelGibsonish in his attempts at sadomasochistic pathos, use of excruciating physical violence and a Freudian urge for physical aggradisement. For a good looking man, he is almost physically attracted to appearing ugly.
“Why?” I had asked him.
“The narcissism works well there”, he had remarked wryly.

Dasavatharam is the big idea of an artiste who is grappling with things political, geographical, religious and historical. It wants to ask the big philosophical questions of how and why and who-some say the Chaos Theory and Butterfly Effect. It wants to meld hi jinks and kitsch, drama and colour with a grand sweep and a far vision. Sadly, it falls to its watery death, more because of a hero, who unable to come to terms with his middle-age and sagging flesh and sparse hair wants to try every trick to buoy himself much like a megalomaniac. And that includes playing each part and donning a variety of masks perfect for a Halloween’s night. As a result, the ‘tricks or treats’ moments and acts are few and limited. A fantastic idea turned fatal with an acting overdose.

Alas, Dasavatharam is a sad story of a gifted actor who has the brilliance to come up with interesting themes and stellar performances on occasions including Nayakan, Pushpak, Anbe Sivam, Michael Madana Kamarajan and many, many more but just unable to age gracefully.

Indian erotica exists in the past.

Any debate or discussion about the erotic in Indian context is always in relation to history. Evidence of erotica in plastic arts, temple architecture or literature are in context to the past. Predominant examples of Indian erotica include the Khajuraho sculptures (9-12 Century BC); texts like the Kamasutra (2nd Century BC);Prakrit love poems (2 Century AD) and Sangam Tamil poetry (1 BC-3 Century AD). Hindu iconography that includes religious symbols and deities having erotic significance such as the phallus or buxom, bare-breasted fertility goddesses date back to pre historic times. The cult of ecstacy as propounded by Tantra (2nd century BC) tantric art, tantric sex and kundilini yoga are said to awaken the primal instincts to a subliminal context, but they too began way back in time. Indian performing arts are recalled to have erotic and sensual contents that began long ago. Historians or indeed sexologists often talk about the erotic in Indian classical dancing, music, poetry in the context of how they flourished and thrived in the past.

People who are authorized to speak on contemporary Indian sexuality and erotica and mores are often historians, or else socialities, popular culture commentators, say like Shobhaa De, who often declare that modern Indian sexual vitality is dead. Else, like that Tamil maami, Sandhya Mulchandani, whose books concentrate on the glory of India’s erotic history. Indeed the soothsayers of today bemoan the epitaph of modern Indian erotica.

While little is known of the wealth in vernacular writing, contemporary Indian writing in English prides itself on its modernity but is devoid of juice. It is not surprising that the prize for bad purple passages regularly come the way of Indian writers in English. We even trot over to London to pick the damning trophy for lousy descriptions and discussions on sex in our books. Unlike Japan’s monster publishing phenomenon, the Manga books (Japanese for comics) that include violence, sex, humour and the erotic, Indian comic books are nascent and yet to evolve to include aspects of erotic in their narrative.

Contemporary Indian art offers some light in this regard and is expanding its canvases, literally speaking, to usher in the erotic.Examples can be found in the works of India’s renowned painters like M F Hussain, the works of F N Souza, Akbar Padamsee, Jatin Das or the raw masculinity of young Manoj Bhrammar’s male nudes, the lushness of Jogen Choudhury’s paintings of voluptuous women and eager men; female artists including Rekha Rodwittiya, Anjolie Ela Menon, and the sculptures of Mrinalini Mukherjee. However it must be said that female artists often paint the erotic in context of gender politics. The female body as a fount of pleasure has been rejected as commodification by these women artists and hence the erotic aspect is secondary. Modern photography and the rare nudes by celebrated Indian photographers like Prabuddha Das Gupta remain the most hopeful in this realm of invoking the erotic in the play of light and shade and celebrating the female form.

It’s easy to blame postcolonial lack of erotica in the current context as the aftermath of the effect of prurient Victorian values. But sexuality in the time of globalization is made subservient to market forces or enjoyment of the sensual. Pleasure is to be purchased, the body chiselled to look perfect, surgical or otherwise. Modern Indian fashion offers rare glimpses to being sensual and seductive. Sabyasachi Mukherjee is a hopeful for bringing it on the Indian ramp, that is, if he gets back to thinking about fashion and his feminine forms, and not keep himself busy designing bedsheets for Bombay Dyeing.

The politics of sexuality has subsumed the erotic in contemporary times into an area of gender, marginal sexuality and health. Lesbian, gay, transgender debates and feminist ideas that are taking root as part of contemporary discourse offer some insight into the mystery of awakening of female sexuality, but remain embroiled in gender politics and have not carved a niche for exploring the erotic within their ambit. Sexual sensibilities that speak of the marginalised, at times, offer glimpses into the erotic through paintings or short stories or poems, but remain in the realm of the alternative.

In the clamour of bimbos and himbos to arrive at perfect sleek limbs and botoxed beauty, Bollywood has probably not given a thought to the erotic through popular culture. Today Indian cinema is yet to showcase it despite the current display of the glory of the body-male and female. The erotic demands a certain mystery to sexuality alongside the awakening of the senses. Would Kareena Ms. Kapoor know of that which say, a Nandita Das is capable of invoking?

Has Bollywood’s new found show-all sexiness killed the beauty and mystery of the erotic on celluloid?
Is John the man sexy?
Oh, yeah.
But does Mr.Abraham come close to lighting the erotic spark?
We need a closer examination for that.

Maami is passé. It’s Maydam these days.

Maydam is on summer vacation. She snorts as the white glare of a ruthless Chennai sun douses her homecoming in perspiration and skull-bursting heat.A summer storm torpedoes dust, grime and mineral to cake her face. She licks the salt on her dry lips as if to recall a forgotten taste from girlhood.

Maydam looks out of the window of her taxi. She can’t see the ugly signboards, cut-outs or banners advertising silk saris or the billboard that has a dour jeweller in white veshti and shirt cupping his hands together for a vanakkam.Young voices in strange Tamil accents glib-talk on the crackling radio. The shrill feminine voices of singers of the last Century have been replaced by almost croaky voices of songsters who mimic a husky tone set to gaana track with a pettai rap beat. She finds comfort in the freshly built Spartan apartment complexes and their doubting grilles that imprison clothes that dance on lines inside tiny balconies. She is assured by the diligence that mark the faces of industrious men and women in bright saris and in nylon salwar kameez (How, oh, how, has it come to clothe the comely Tamil woman with its ugliness, shapelessness and lack of tailoring craftsmanship?). She notes the buzz of visible commerce and bling of prosperity that is evident in the unglamorous eateries where the meals are announced in a breathless manner, as if dining were a run-along activity along the way, meant to quaff, chomp and gulp in one quick act, before setting out again in brisk pursuit of daily living.

Maydam bumps into them-the Chennai check-out girls- almost immediately after setting her suitcase down at the flat. She needs a jerry can of water for drinking and steps out to the nearest departmental store that has edged out the corner stores of Madras, that were once predominantly under the retailing grip of Nadars from Tirunelveli.

The check-out girls recognise her. Shanti is 19, looks perky with ready smile that effaces the rash of zits on her cheeks. Her face is freshly washed, a tiny pottu and a slight smear of vibhuti mark her forehead. On her ears dance earrings encrusted in a bit of gold; she has tucked a string of jasmine in her hair and an orange rubber band holds her braid in place. She wears a white coat, like a lab assistant collecting urine sample over her faded salwar kameez. She briskly taps away at the check-out till, counts out the money and deftly stuffs the purchases into a plastic bag to send each customer away. Her smile has endless wattage. “Maydam! Eppo vandeenga?” she enquires with genuine warmth. Kalai joins her to say hello to Maydam. She is 21 and is similarly dressed, though she shows signs of keeping with trends. She darkens her eyes and wears nail polish and her rubber footwear is heeled.

They are sizing her too. Maydam is wearing her hair short. Why pa neela mudiya vetitaanga, che? Shanti is saddened. Instinct tells her a Maydam type woman chops her hair after a fashion but not in anger, frustration or like their ilk do, as penance. Kalai finds it modern. She would, if she could. But they’re ‘looking out’ for her. She giggles when Maydam enquires when the D-Day is approaching. She had proudly shared her scores with Maydam the year when she had secured her degree through correspondence. Shanti had begun work at the check-out after her Class 10 from the government school on the East Coast Road. They are cheerful. Things have improved for them. Retail revolution has made way for lifestyle changes.They get Rs 3500 as salary with “PF Maydam”. Kalai can speak bits of English and hopes to work in a mall selling cosmetics some day, when she tires of pushing tamarind and yoghurt.
************************

Another day, they are both on the morning shift. The bus was late, the floor manager had yelled at them and they have promised to do a bit extra with the pulses, lentils, rice counting and packaging and shelving. Maydam waltzes in with her friend. “Horrible flick,Kuruvi, my ears got blasted off. I thought it was a Telugu movie dubbed in Tamil”, she shudders off her last night show at Mayajaal. Shanti feels crushed. Her heart beats for Vijay silently. She notes it’s a Friday today and yet Maydam does not wear a pottu or thali. Kalai is a trifle disappointed that a lady from a priestly heritage abjures tradition, while her kind, politically exhorted to be irreligious, conforms to rituals and piety.

They catch snatches of Maydam’s natter with her friend walking down the aisles for fruit juice. Maydam is making plans for a luncheon at the Amethyst, the Jeypore Palace. Palace-a? Shanti wonders. She knows little that a dusty mansion, its sagging cushions, period furniture and grubby chic has strange attraction for Maydam and her friends. “A drink at Zara?” the friend asks of Maydam. Kalai does not hear that one. Her visit to her grandpa’s at Chengalpattu is uncertain given the nature of Kalai’s job.
**********************

It’s late evening. Shanti worries if her evening shift would make things difficult during the bus ride home that might have sour smelling drunks for company. As the night sets in the check-out counter girls stiffen in their seats, as if ready to flee home, and their smiles wilt as they quicken their billings for customers.

Maydam, unmindful of the hour, her hair tousled by the sea breeze, rolls in with a friend to buy a lemonade.
“Filthy ya, remember how it used to be, gold sand and blue waters?” Maydam complains.
Her friend’s jeans are wet with sea spray and she’s carrying an empty picnic basket. Her kids tug at her shirt hem.
She snaps at Maydam: “Our kids didn’t mind the trash and flew kites and licked lollies and ran down the sands. I’m the NRI here, not you, and where you live there’s no beach for simple pleasures, so shut up!”
Maydam mutters an expletive before asking, “And did you see how lovers hug each other and curl up on the sands unmindful of the whole world, balloon shooters, piddling dogs, ice-cream vendors, the Besant Nagar geriatrics and children?”
Her friend sneers: “We were the tayir sadam prudes. The polycot Chennai generation don’t ‘mind it’ Maami”.
*********************

It’s time for goodbye. Maydam grabs last minute vadam, vattral and appalam off the shelves.
“Thirumbi varuveengala?” asks Shanti.
“This is still my home” Maydam signs off.

A stone’s throw away from the Madhya Kailash temple, bordering the woods of IIT, Madras, stood a decrepit Institute of Tamil Language and Culture (now called Roja Muthiah Research Library). I chanced upon the gems that place holds in its dusty shelves and moth eaten library when I went to read up on Tamil textile history many years ago.

My reading revealed that until the 14th Century, as with most of India, before garment making, costume making and cutting and dress making were known, men and women were clad in a long piece of cloth that they pleated and knotted about their waist. Above the waist an upper cloth, a thundu, if you may call it so, was also used. Aristocratic women were often bare-breasted and they often annointed sandalwood paste and coolants over their breasts in the heat. Women of the serving class were known to cover their breasts with a kachai, a ribbon like cloth fastened and knotted at the back;mensturating women and lactating mothers too were known to wear the band around their breasts, especially in the zenana.

Tamil epic Silapadigaram makes mention of breasts as a tool of vengeance when Kannagi, the epic’s protagonist, in righteous fury, tears one of her breasts and lobs it to set the city of Madurai in flames. The famous Chola bronzes that were said to have been made a thousand years ago depicted the female form, as goddess or otherwise, in frescoes and sculptures in temples as bare-breasted.

Consequent evolved forms of garment-making and tailoring came with ideas bought by invaders and  subsequent colonisers who introduced different techniques of garment-making, tailoring and a happy amalgamation of styles and habits perhaps coalesed to form the kind of jackets, cholis, skirts that began to be worn by women in India. The sari in its many forms worn across the country did not have an accompanying blouse until much later.

Given their former state of undress makes you wonder what men of those times did about such provocation?

Because it seems that men are custodians of what women ought to wear. Else ask the Asins, Shriya Sarans and Mallika Sherawats who are admonished for their ’inappropriate’ clothing in Chennai. 

Kamalahasan’s forthcoming film Dasavataram will have Mallika Sherawat doing a jig on screen that will be watched by many such male judges of Tamil female honour and proprierty, who will whistle and cheer lustily at her glamour, skimpy costume, seductive display of limbs and curves for their benefit in the darkness of the cinema hall.  Considering politics and cinema are close cousins in Tamil Nadu, it may not be surprising if select screenings of the film are shown for the political masters of the state. No Tamil man, watching it, will find it objectionable. Afterall it’s cinema, and anything goes and what’s a wench who flashes her bits for their consumption?

However a different code of conduct and morality governs the private felicitation platform unlike the public screening of a film. Here egotistic heroes, self-important filmmakers, wily politicians will gather to promote the film. Of course the heroes would tog out in starched white veshtis and trousers and shirts, their impeccable reputations resting on the Ujjala whiteness of their threads. But as with flowers that decorate a table, the actress is expected to lend glamour to alleviate the gravitas of the important masculine gathering. She will clap her lovely hands in appreciation, help light a lamp and gush sweet words of thanks to the top dogs on the dias and dress up to invite attention.

Shreya Saran, the PYT of the monster-hit Sivaji was earlier hauled up by loony groups like Hindu Makkal Katchi for displaying her cleavage during a commemoration ceremony of the film that seemed nothing to the amount she displayed in the film. Poor Ms Saran and Ms.Sherawat have been quick to cower and apologise for any unintended ‘insults on Tamil culture’. Because they now know that Tamil culture rest on women’s sartorial choices. 

This is the state where the chief minister’s literary outputs included purple passages and details of the curve and crest of his female characters in his literary canons meant for public readership. This is the film industry whose toe-tapping numbers have lyrics that include vulgar innuendoes and metaphors on female genitalia and coitus whose audio releases are feted and celebrated.

This is not about whether Saran’s boobs were out or whether Sherawat’s knickers were peeping. This is about who decides what is appropriate conduct and dress code for women in Chennai. While the old Dravidian canons proclaim that they stood for women’s empowerment alongside social upliftment, the cultural and gender aspirations were quite opposite. The metaphor went that maatran veedu malligai manakkum (the blossom in the neighbour’s garden smells sweeter). It’s an analogy that hints at the Tamil man’s conquest over the non-Tamil woman, a certain covetousness that he takes as part of his patriarchal privilege. Hence the non-Tamil actress is enjoyed for her fair skin and her uninhibitedness on screen for his voyeuristic enjoyment but also denigrated for indecent exposure. 

If the actress is imported for her exposure and commodification why object to her glamourous abandonment? It’s what she’s meant for, is it not?  In the mixed-up kink of the male promulgators of Tamil culture and morality, the actress is but a pawn.

Pray why do they decide what is an appropirate dress code for women? And this is the film industry that in blatant constitutional discrimination disallows women make-up professionals and costumiers and will have only dirty old men pat pancake on the heroine’s navels and tie their saris.

Perhaps it’s time that the pretty young things of Bollywood say no to dancing to the tunes of self-imposed champions of Tamil culture. And the captains of Tamil cinema are chivalrous only to weepy mothers and wailing sisters. For them, any other form of female personality is to be trivialised with.               

In the beginning there was no word. No one swore, “Whatdeshit ya!”

The wise sages of the time did not wonder how certain evolved tribes, they would later call their forefathers, settled in Mohenjodaro and built sewers and drains. They were unaware of archaeologists who would pore over the dust of excavated houses to marvel at the private baths and toilets that stood among the ruins of a former city in the Indus Valley. Back then maharajas had slaves to clean up their royal thunder boxes. The wise men of yore had no clue that history books and encyclopedias would inform that the ancient Romans, who came later after the settlers near the Hindukush, would build common toilets of stone and alabaster perches that would later lead to the habit of communal Roman baths.

The gentle people of this story had no clue about future years too. Of toilet summits that would be held in the western world on global human waste disposal patterns and environment foot prints; or European self-help groups campaigning for ’rural Bangladesh to build dry toilets’. They knew not that battles would erupt over the efficacy of the WC versus the ST;our squat is cleaner than their flush spray;our sphincter is well-oiled because the Indian way is better;comparisons of water as a solvent over microbial carriers through paper;health issues of children and women and vaccinations for the Third World. Our young men sailing seas and entering foreign worlds for prosperity and knowledge would  quaver and recoil before rolls of paper tissue, while their blond backpacking bretheren, looking for mysteries in this ancient land of ours, would be flummoxed by plastic mugs and buckets for a wash of the posterior with bare hands.

“Eugh! But we use the left hand for the express purpose only; but I am left-handed. Paper on keister is yucky. Recycled paper does not kill trees. We fertilise the trees. I hate Naipul  for dismissing his motherland where he could see the squatting masses but not the great levels of prosperity and modernity. The flush is not working. Amma, yennaku varudu. We must never use diapers. Chi.A matter of shame. Oh, how can they? Do igloos have ensuite loos?”

Shencottai’s citizens did not fathom that a century later, installation art of virteous china by a brooding artist would be hailed as a, `metaphor on the existential waste of our modern lives’. Or renegade rock stars would sing of a Turd on the run, while Ivy League scholars would disseminate the transgressive nature, violence and humour of public lavatory scrawls and graffiti on toilet walls. That old gender war that became public amidst Victorian prudishness in London (’Thank you Sir Bernard Shaw for expressing solidarity for building separate toilets for ladies in public-The Westminster Catholic Ladies Foundation or some such)  would be revisited and objections would be raised when post modern architects designed public urinals like a woman’s mouth in America ( ‘Growl! How many toilets will be annihilated if we blow up the Twin Towers?’). Hollywood beauties like Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett would not flinch from wiping their peach derrieres, perched on the toilet for the camera (’Cinema reflects life dahlings, mwah!’).Bourgeois toilet aesthetics including fancy china, bidet, auto flush, book rack, reading the newspaper were unthought of not even by their soothsayers who were always prophetic.

For the simple folk of Shencottai it meant the act of explusion of waste from the anatomy. It was an unspoken accompaniment to the quiet waking of the dawn, a biological need and indifferent response to the first bird call, the early morning’s delicate breeze and the sibilant ripple of the silent river, whose bank, bramble and bush served as toilet bowls. Here master and serf, maiden and matron, would arrive, furtive and silent, swinging an empty shombu they would fill with the river’s waters before retiring to a spot for their morning emission.

Shencottai’s beauty had a rustic picturesque quality to it. Flanked by Coutrallam’s Five-Falls in the neighbourhood, the dark outlines of the Western Ghats, the catchment areas of Manimuthar, Papanasam and Servalar, it was a place blessed with water and bounteous green that those residing in Tirunelveli town were not privy to.Its dialect was a mix of Malayalam cadence and Tamil expressions,  result of a misplaced colonial mapping expert who drew the state’s borders where the boundaries   merged and tongues mingled.It was a happy place of verdant beauty and sweet sounding people.

The dense vegetation had its uses for the little colony that frequented it to coincide with the first rays of the sun. The elders would look away glazed when trespassers trampled the grass to come upon their moments of elimination. Children who giggled were frowned upon. Maamis warned pretty lasses to cover their faces with the thalapu when they espied male foot stomps (’ Cover your faces and you can’t be recognised only by your bottoms’).

“Shh, be careful of snakes or scorpions”, those who knew details of the story warned relatives and children as they led them out in the morning. These days many came in armed with a twig along with the shombu. Groups and parties were the norm and visitors were encouraged to sing (”That Suddhasaveri alapanei was a beauty, Kicha”, bramble called out to boulder). Loud discussions recollecting in detail ‘Nagarajan’s Serpentine Squat’ tale and his subsequent support for laxatives recommended by Ayurvedic practitioners from Kerala formed the crux of the conversations.

The tale of Nagarajan, whose footfalls would bring everyone on the streets to click their heels, bring tears to the eyes of his fragile daughters and make young lads shiver on their naked feet became a scatalogical legend. He held an important post of a sub-registrar at the Thoothukudi Government Port Trust, assured of a pension from the imperial coffers and was lorded over by a colonial master. 

The fount of the river that was lush and craggy marked for the twice-born of the colony was Nagarajan’s chosen area. However one morning a wandering reptile shattered the peace.It snaked its way  silently through the grass to stop before Nagarajan. He had frozen, his terrified eyes locking gaze with cold reptilian eyes. A shout remained locked in the deep recesses of his throat that his lungs did not bellow forth. The silly snake, in a moment of unreptilian warmth and whim, coiled at the gentleman’s left foot and lay in a kind of stupor, its tail touching the squatter’s toe. Nagarajan’s rectum recoiled and he sat iced-up, a silent prayer begging deliverance.

A good hour later Madhavan, the young tyke, had come bounding by to pick his spot to chew on a blade of grass as part of his morning ablutions. He stopped short before Nagarajan, his grand neighbour, who regularly insulted him for not taking up a job with Her Majesty’s Services and opting to be modern to take up job as an English teacher at St.Xavier’s College. Little did he know that Madhavan’s heart beat silently for Nagarajan’s daughter, Gomathi ( the country cousins called her Komadhi) who was pursuing her Intermediate studies at Sarah Tucker college, making them cross paths ever so often in Palayamkottai where their two colleges were located. 

A dry croak erupted from Nagarajan’s parched lips and his eyes indicated at the pendulous coil about his feet. Quick to the call, Madhavan  had plucked a twig and deftly yanked the limp snake off Nagarajan maama’s foot and tossed it into the dense green. He was, for Nagarajan’s tired limbs and thudding heart, quite the hero of the hour. The agraharam residents were surprised when Nagarajan consented to his wife’s wishes that Gomathi would wed Madhavan in the months that followed.   

Like a true gentleman, Madhavan had never discussed the serpent incident with anyone until after his marriage when he  proudly narrated the story to his young wife on how he had won her churlish father’s approval. But he did not know that the lovely ladies of Shencottai were not known to keep a secret. Soon the oral narrative went around with embellishments, the serpent’s species turned dangerous according to the venom of the narrator, and Nagarajan’s stature dimmed. In the thinnai pallikoodam, a makeshift classroom in the front of large homesteads, language teachers, initiating consonants through alliteration made the students repeat by rote, “Nagarajar nagapaambu nakki natratil nadungi nindraar”.

Poor Nagarajan’s nates had been whacked since that moment and he suffered from constipation for the rest of his life.Madhavan was ingenious enough to borrow an imperial contraption and build the first porcelin floor toilet in Shencottai at the farthest corner of his backyard a few years later. Nagarajan had a squatting invitation to partake of the amenity any day, any time of the year.

What more could a man want from a generous son-in-law?

The proceedings of the Ladies Club have come to a halt for a coffee break. The ladies are gathered in the hall, togged in their polysilk saris and tussar salwar kameezes, battling the slow whir of fans and the sluggish function of  the A/Cs, awaiting their speaker.

“Kaapi romba mosam, tch“, says Mrs. Kunchitapatham to Mrs.Swaminathan, both of whom, henceforth, shall be referred to as Mrs.K and Mrs.S, as brevity is the soul of nomenclature. They nod, saddened by their diminishing ranks before the new tricks played out by the new gaming enthusiasts-the new women on the block.

Mrs.Arvind arrives and takes over the mike. She has just landed from Kansas and has taken over the club’s charges to infuse new blood on issues subsumed in the battle of tambolas, kitty purchases and raffles. At her posh apartment in Alwarpet, she does not yell at her children, cursing, “Saniyane“ .Instead she will cuss, “don’t be daft”; no “pramadam Kanna“, only “awesome da Kanna“.  

“Dear ladies, they now say that cricket is a new ball game with the IPL upon us”, she begins without preamble.

“She is right”, nods Mrs. S in agreement. ”This IPL is very bad, my grandsons run to the stadium for Vijay’s autograph instead of MS Dhoni’s”, she says.

“I disagree”, Mrs.Arvind pounds the gavel before her. “What with Preity’s wardrobe, her yum-man, the dancing peacock SRK and other Bollywood heads, we have plenty to watch out for.Hurrah for making a spectacle of cricket. We love making a song and dance out of it”, she says.

Mrs.S nods approvingly. “Thanks to TV, my doubts over that Sourav were laid to rest when he swung his shirt off at Lord’s.”

“Eh?”, whispers Mrs K, not quite getting the drift.

“You see, he still wore his poonal like a necklace, not at all like our modern boyz of Chennai”, Mrs.S  explains, a trifle sad over her son Mohan refusing to wear his.

“Shh”, silences young Mrs.Ranganath, taking notes, as she dreams of being the next president of the club.

“First it was TV, then cricket and soccer matches that took our men away from our arms on weekend evenings and now they are playing new games upon us. Gaming exclusion is a brutal form of hegemony perpetuated upon the tender souls of slaving wives, “Mrs. Arvind thunders.

“I think her stay in America has put aggressive ideas into her head”, says Mrs. S, disapprovingly.

“Move over soccer widows and cricket widows, for the troubled lot of pwned widows of gaming need our support,” Mrs. Arvind yells into the mike.  

Mrs.K is shocked, “Yenna abasagunama she is talking, chi. Her husband is alive and healthy only, no? What is this nonsense about widowhood?” she says horrified.

“The weight of the pwn is killing us”, Mrs. Arvind says, drawing out the word she has gathered from the shouts that come from her sons’ room before the TV.

Mrs. S nods sagely. “She is talking sense now. Have you been to T.Nagar recently? The escalating price of a puhwn  (sovereign) of gold is unbelievable”, she says in a hushed whisper.

Mrs. Arvind continues, unmindful of the murmurs amongst her bewildered audience. “Our men don’t want to cook, don’t want to go shopping, do the laundry and listen to our woes.They arrive from office, gang up with the children and get into gaming. The  shouts of `pwned’ are eroding the dignity of our marriages. Whither the purity in our family lives?”, she thunders.

“Yes, yes, purity is a must. I have already changed all my old gold into coins from Tanishq before the prices rose to sky-high levels”, said Mrs.K wisely.

“Word is out that even at office hours, our menfolk act busy before computers comparing last evening’s scores with pals and are busy discussing new devices and fixing appointments. Some have struck gold by fashioning a career designing games. Some gift it to their spouses on occasions, instead of customary flowers and hard cash”, Mrs. Arvind says ominously.

“Her husband must work in a fancy office if they give designer gold for Deepavali”, Mrs.K says grudgingly.

“All that we women hold valuable in relationships has been pwned in our marriages. It’s time to protest”, says Mrs.Arvind, sounding the clarion call.

“Aye, aye”, claps Mrs.Ranganath, secretly happy that Mrs. Arvind’s valuables have been pawned. Afterall she best knows the weight of mortgages.

Mrs.K remembers :”Hey, they will telecast that old Bhagyaraj flick, ‘Puhwn Puhwnthaan this evening. I am a fan of his nasal-voiced digs”.

“Starting next week we begin lessons on gaming-for-dummies at our club’s premises.All those who want their husbands back in their marriages, learn the tricks of gaming and enjoin them. For if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, Mrs. Arvind rounds her speech with a wink.

Mrs. K and Mrs.S leave in a huff at this point.”Why does she want to beat our husbands and make a game of it? Let’s take an auto to Pondy Bazaar and check out the prices of a puhwn of gold”, they say melting into the Madras noon.

Mrs. Arvind  wants the last word. “Men will be pwned when we learn to play the game”, she says.

(Postscript:Rumbles within the club indicated that Mrs. Ranganath was secretly lobbying for the return of the tambola over gaming before the next elections).

Woof!

I yelped. Brat, my neighbour’s pug, was looking on whilst Mister and me were planning to rustle some heat between the sheets.

“Good doggie, little fella”, Mister said before turning back to me.

Eugh! Who wants to wag the dog now? Shoo!

But Brat howled the night down when I moved him out of the bedroom and shut the door on him. My neighbour is offended. “He is our child, our pet. He sleeps with us in the bedroom.Don’t Indian parents share their beds with children and still make out? He is a gentle child.Yet to learn to mate. Only a year old;never barks or bites, poor baby, baby!”

Thanks! This is what you get when, in a fit of good neighbourliness, you offer to take in their pet paws while they shut home to head for a weekend holiday resort.

Has the last word on this been written yet? What are the love laws that cover this? And am I alone in this petless protest? I ask around.

Jiji giggles. Her Tom is a fine creature. He’s a grey and black tortoise shell tabby with a bushy tail and unwavering eyes. Jiji says he may occasionaly meow and hop, soft-footed, into bed whilst they are at it and if they play shy, he purrs knowingly. “He knows, you know”, she says proudly. But then she won’t shut the door on him. Cats are independent creatures.You have to let them prowl about the place at will, she says indulgently.

Polto and wife are animal lovers too.Their home abounds with two turtles;a couple of Indian dogs, a couple of bunnies in their back garden, a huge acquarium and the pride of their last dinner, was the chimp they were keeping in the weekend to help a wildlife warden friend before they turned the animal to the local zoo.

Can I ask the unmentionable? The turtles apparently don’t look.The doggies sleep with their children (Thank the Lord), and as for the acquarium-”Fish don’t talk”-he smirks and she giggles:”They make you want to kiss more when they pucker their lips at you”. Oh, please.

In America, where every kink has a valid name, sexuality and pets are a big topic. No, not the beast with two backs types or not even sex-a-pet.com kind of thing where people send photos of their pets’s genitalia to determine their sex (”My goldfish are lesbians, how luverly”). And they say that modern times don’t allow us time to breathe! These are pet psychics who are quite in demand there.They are clairvoyants who answer all queries through ‘telephathic communication’ with pets to find out what troubles their relationship with their masters. You could ask the PP why your dog whines (”He wants it even though he’s neutered” else, “She’s a bitch in heat”)’or how your pet  cat can find its way back to your childhood home (”She was your mother in her previous life”).

Bible preachers object that it’s become a fashion these days like in Soho Grand Hotel in NYC to replace the standard bedside- Bible with a goldfish bowl. And we all know what happens in the anonymity of hotel rooms. Most pet psychics warn that it’s better to throw a dupatta over a goldfish bowl before doing the horizontal mambo.Pets apparently complain to these psychics that their masters mate before them and that’s too traumatising for their beastly sensitivities. 

So while Indians talk about family bonding that includes children, infants and pets inside the bedroom, it may not make for a nice picture for these wordless creatures.

Or else, be shamed as Sekar when we walk by to say hello this pet polly. She responds by squawking, “Feed me now”, and in imitation of the lady of the house, squeals, ”F**k me now” with equal vigour  as she swings in her gilded cage.   

“It was my Yechumi Pati who invented the poppadam”, Amma pronounced, as she popped a perfect round wafer into a hot pan filled with oil. In a nanosecond the poppadam bloomed, pimply and yellow.

Yechumi Pati’s name was Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity, though Pati’s life was one of deprivation and bereavement. Fondness makes Amma call her grandaunt Yechumi Pati.

Many Tamil families will tell a story about the `Yechumi pati’ who lived in their ancestral homes. She was the widow who worked herself to the bone in huge joint families in pre-Independent Tamil Nadu and who responded when addressed as Pati. She had been a constant figure in the history of most families, and her story of imposed austerity has fallen into our contemporary deaf ears with nothing more than momentary curiosity of a hazy past. If a cousin from America dropped by and she heard yet another Yechumi Pati tale, she would probably comment, “awesome” and move on.

Amma grew up motherless. Her mother died when she was two or so. She is often unsure. But Yechumi Pati had filled her in with all the details. That Annapoorani, Amma’s mother, had eyes as large as that other Lakshmi, the family’s cow that stood calm, swishing its tail in the backyard of the house. It was Paramasivam, the cheeky milkman, plucking at Lakshmi’s teats, who pointed out the similarity between his favourite cow and the lady of the house. Pati had been the only witness to that outrageous comment about Annapoorani’s large eyes, coming from that lowly rascal!

“Your mother Annapoorani was beautiful and a good daughter-in-law, but she died a shade too soon. It was the bad delivery that did her in as she lost a lot of blood. It ran like the Tamarabarani out of her. Your father, who doted on her, was inconsolable with grief. It took him seven long months of mourning before he married your step mother”, Pati had recounted.

Amma always remembered that Yechumi Pati would end all her stories with a long and deep sigh saying, “It’s a hard life for us born as women!”

But what of Yechumi Pati herself? Amma said if only she had not been disfigured with her hair shorn, clothed in the ochre robes of the Hindu widow, Pati would have been a stunner.

Each time I yelped, pulling cold wax off my arms and legs, Amma would recall, “My Yechumi pati had arms and legs as smooth as alabaster.  And she didn’t do any of this waxing rubbish. She would leave before any of the household members woke up, by the crack of dawn, to the Tamarabarani river, and sit on the cold steps leading to the river and use a piece of turmeric root to scrub herself before taking a dip in the chill waters ”. That was the only depilatory cum cosmetic Pati is known to have used.

Yechumi Pati was, Amma told me when she considered me adult enough to keep a secret, a `virgin widow’. That, those whispers signalled, made her plight more evocative. It was bad enough in those days if you were widowed, but her virgin status meant she had had no share of the fun times in life before bereavement struck.

Pati, Amma ponders, could have been betrothed when she was seven and was then probably married off by nine years of age. Pati had met her husband the first and last time on her wedding day. On that auspicious day, all aunts, uncles, and her parents had fussed over her and she had refused to have her wedding meals and preferred to nibble at the sweets placed before her. Her mother, she was surprised, did not scold her on that day or try and force-feed rasam and rice. The women had knowingly murmured, “Wedding day blues. Most brides lose their appetites”.

Wedding celebrations over, Pati had returned to her mother’s home. It was customary then Amma said, to send the child-wife to her husband’s home only after she attained puberty. She would be both underage to begin to have sex and would only be added trouble for the ma-in-law, already burdened with bringing up a truckload of children herself.

One day, Yechumi Pati, she could have been 12 years old, no one knows, was told that she was widowed. Her husband had died of a severe case of jaundice. He had been treated at home with local herbal brews and prayers, but the 16-year old boy had succumbed. This time everyone visited Yechumi Pati at her mother’s, only to mourn.  When she attained puberty, the crimson from her bottom had made a little map on her ochre robes and told her that she was a woman.

After her mother died, Yechumi Pati was left alone. My grandfather was her favourite nephew and he had great affection for his Aunt Yechumi and brought her to his home to live with his huge family. She lived as discreetly as she could, taking on as much chores as possible at home, and was called Yechumi Pati by the children of the house. Yechumi Pati brought up her nephew’s children and theirs, cooked and washed and slept late at night on the stone floor in the kitchen, with her head resting on the door step that doubled as a makeshift pillow.

Apart from helping the women of the house with the kitchen work and bathing and chaperoning the children to school, Yechumi Pati had developed enviable culinary skills.  She was a master of invention too, but those were days before glossy cookbooks and sassy chefs and no one recorded the culinary invention of a widow lost in a large household in small town Tirunelveli. Daughters leaving the house to settle with their husbands outside of Tirunelveli would faithfully sit by her side and make little booklets of cookery tips and draw a list of the choicest of recipes from Pati to impress their husband’s families. The first granddaughter, who was married off to a groom settled abroad even promised to translate the recipes in English and publish a collection of Pati’s recipes as a cookbook.

“She did nothing about the cookbook. Ratnam was just a big talker”, Amma remarked, making a face.

 Yechumi Pati was in charge of making preserves and pickles and making wheat and ragi wafers and sago vadams, lentil appalams and other fritters. These were usually outside the ambit of daily meal making and demanded elaborate preparations and skill. At summertime, she would take position in a shed in the backyard that had a thatched roof and was open on three sides. There she would sit on the floor by the terracotta ovens, lit with crackling logs, and would stir huge portions of sago porridge. She would also roll out the dough made of black gram lentils and rice flour to make appalams. A thrifty woman, for whom everything seemed precious and not be wasted, she would collect the rinds and peels of vegetables used in cooking for the day and mash them to make a mixture with the boiling sago to make colourful vegetable vadams. She would then make several trips to the terrace in the dead of the afternoon, when the little children and the mothers and grandparents snoozed, to dry the appalams and fritters. There would be irritable exclamations made by some of the sleeping gang if she disturbed them by letting slip a spoon or a vessel clank on the ground on the way up while carrying the mass of goo upstairs.

Then when the sun baked the roof to blazing proportions, she would tiptoe and hop on the burning terrace floor to spread huge sheets of damp fabric, usually her old torn nine-yard saris. On them, she would lay the round appalams and sago vadams to dry across the entire length and breadth of the roof. Work done, she would let her sari slip from her shaven head, glistening in sweat, and fan herself for a while. She would sit on the doorway to the terrace holding a long twig, whose end was tied to a piece of black cloth, and wave and shoo the crows that swooped to peck at the drying food on the cloths and would slowly nod off. A couple of frisky grandchildren would stealthily go past and pick the chewy semi-baked wafers and nibble on them. Pati would stir from her catnap and warn them of stomach upsets and send them scurrying.

Relatives, leaving for home after staying for the summer holidays, were dutifully presented with an aluminium tin filled with freshly made appalams, placed in a vertical row and tied together with a piece of string and a fair portion of wafers and fritters. No one could board the train without these send-off presents from a smiling Yechumi Pati.

One late afternoon, Amma remembers, two days after the month of Adi began, the household gathered around the kitchen, because Yechumi Pati had drummed up a new fritter. It was thicker and smaller in size than the round appalam and it was made of black gram lentils and country potash. It billowed when fried in oil and tasted salty but left a slight sweet aftertaste.

Are they small appalams, the children wanted to know, crumbling it in their mouths. “No, it’s not an appalam but a poppadam”, Pati announced grandly, chuckling that the new name rhymed with appalam.

“Pati’s maternal family’s widows who hailed from Palaghat learnt the recipe and made the poppadam popular in other parts. We didn’t know of this patenting business in those days. Otherwise, Yechumi Pati would have become world famous today”, Amma insisted, landing another crisp yellow moon on my plate.

Fame could not brush Yechumi Pati, Amma said sadly, as she died soon after her culinary invention of the poppadam when she was in her late forties. Amma remembers that Pati had often complained of ‘wounds in her belly’.

Could it have been stomach cancer or an enlarged spleen Amma asks aloud today?

“Why Amma, your father was a doctor, didn’t she tell him about her ailment?” I ask.

“A virgin widow didn’t complain aloud”, Amma says.