Madras Maydam and the Chennai Check-Out Girls

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 The shrill feminine voices of singers of the last Century have been replaced by almost croaky voices of songsters who mimic a husky tone set to gaana track with a pettai rap beat.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.
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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.
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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.

Why Men Decide What Women Ought to Wear

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.               

 

   

When they learnt Scatology in Shencottai

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?

 

 

 

Gaming Pwns

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).