These days I dream often of home. It’s usually me being back in Trivandrum. My brother is driving my Mazda, which was shipped across continents for (apparently) no good reason.
The other day I cooked rasam. I couldn’t decide on what to cook, which is where I struggle most when it comes to cooking. I got the idea from Uma who was preparing rasam the previous evening when we spoke. I had a nice meal (which means there was fish), and then I had a post-lunch nap.
These days I dream often of home. It’s usually me being back in Trivandrum. My brother is driving my Mazda, which was shipped across continents for (apparently) no good reason. Towards the end of the dream I watch as my 23kg-luggage bag shuffles away across a container belt, while logistics of my return flight hover around my head like calculus in cartoons. It’s as if I’m contemplating shipping back my stuff to Texas, but not myself. Wonder why.
Over a month ago my physiotherapist had asked if I miss home, and I quickly said no, just the people, things, and some of the places (lol).
Interestingly, after my big fat lunch I dreamt that I was back in school on a late evening. There were crowds by the stage and something loud was playing on speaker. It must’ve been School Day, you could hear commotion and cheering from back there. I was rushing from behind the stage to our classrooms near New Hall, there was a sense of urgency to the whole thing but I have no idea why. I spotted many familiar faces, made up and in costume. I quickly waved at a friend, it seemed I was surprised that she showed up in my dream still in her uniform. Some were friends from undergrad. All of us weirdly affiliated.
I couldn’t with my dazed dreamy head make out the timeline, but I had to. If I was still in school it meant I might have to practice for a group song I was better off lip-syncing to anyway for everyone’s benefit. If I had just got out of high school I might have to attend felicitation and line up backstage – but in that case someone should be looking for me. If I was in undergrad and just visiting, why were my friends in costume and practising? Or was I in the present, working in the US and visiting teachers?
If my physiotherapist ever caught me in a dream these days I’d respond What are you talking about, I don’t have to miss home when I am home.
I remember being a bit sad when I woke up, and realizing it was Teacher’s Day in India.
Hours before daybreak belong to television lights thrown on younger faces asleep on couches, parents driving teenagers to tuition classes and early morning goodbyes.
Hours before daybreak belong to television lights thrown on younger faces asleep on couches, reflections flying past their curtains into the damp, sickly air. Parents that drive their teenagers to tuition classes for lessons they’re happy to forget about until they drive their own in a few decades.
It is the hour of early morning goodbyes in presence of a thoughtfully packed bag that doesn’t quite belong nor assume relevance until a few hours. Amidst stolen moments of delight at an infant air that speaks hope and possibilities in a way the approaching noisy day cannot.
The exam in three months? You’ll crack it. The messy long-distance relationship? It will be okay. The project you have a deadline for today afternoon? There’s plenty of time, and you know what they say about the early bird. (They say it has a false perception of time).
It is the hour of walking past gym-goers in a world of their own behind glass walls. The hour before tea and coffee, where everything seems a little less unequal, a little more messy, real.
If I were home it’d be the hour to appreciate a peaceful dawn before sweat-stained morning drowns it in bus honks and handbags clutched to chests. To be proud to belong to the land of (good-looking) temples, to be thankful for the smell of agarbati everyday at daybreak, and the person responsible for it.
Most of all, the 5am hour belongs to the “You can call me anytime sir/madam” guy who will not solve any of your issues in life, but whose constant uneasiness somehow convinces you whatever is plaguing you isn’t as bad as his own.
(I wrote this while waiting outside Texas Driver License Center yesterday morning, I heard that “You can call me” line one too many times.)
They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?
They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?
I cannot think of any city I have lived in without feeling that lump in my throat, except Trivandrum. And maybe that comes from the knowledge that Trivandrum is home, it’s where I’ll always go back, and there is no leaving, really.
I’ve lived in Delhi, Georgia, Texas. And there are different, younger versions of myself residing in all these places. I only have to go back to see them.
When I visit Rajiv Chowk, I see the 22 year old me on my way back from visiting Valyamma or Achu Annan, waiting for Dwarka line on the other side of the rail. My backpack is filled with the fish fry Valyamma packed for me, or all the Haldiram’s Achu Annan bought me. In December that kid is preparing to become an IAS officer, in March she’s decided she will do International Relations in JNU, and in 2 years I’d be there for my visa interview at the consulate before I leave for Atlanta.
Years later, when I moved from Atlanta, I was sad. I was leaving behind my grad school friends, a place I had grown to love and that I could see becoming my home, a college that gave me my graduate education, a campus I loved to walk around in, gardens and shops I grew to enjoy visiting. I haven’t gone back, but I know I’ll find that 25 year old kid walking the bridge to Target, smiling mindlessly at dogs and the sunset and the dressed-up women posing at the Memorial gate.
There is comfort in familiarity, and I embrace that fully.
To think that we’re where we are because of choice, chance, and the associated what-if’s I grapple with if I ponder long enough (and I’ve had the privilege of choice for a few years). What if the 22 year old me followed another trail of thought to discover something else, what if I’d stayed in Atlanta and not moved? But we could spend the rest of our lives playing What If, and then some.
Today I was walking back from the Indian grocery store, and I realized I’m growing comfortable here as well, and I’ll miss stuff whenever it is that I leave. I’ll always miss Delhi because it has some of my happiest memories, and that happy innocent kid that I can never go back to. Atlanta, because it gave me so much. Texas, too.
So maybe what we leave behind is our present selves, because we know there’s no way to hold on that comfort even if we want to, except in the form of memories.
But whenever I visit, I know I’ll find those younger versions. They never ask, How are you? Because they aren’t curious, somehow, they’re happy right there.
That Delhi kid still lives somewhere around Karol Bagh. She looks forward to finding out what’s in her evening tiffin, shuffles her way through the loud crowds of CP and reads her yellow Vision IAS notes on the long metro rides home. In Atlanta, Crash Into Me still plays in my room on a dark, rainy evening while Uma hums a tune in the kitchen, putting the chai on.
And maybe we like to think there was something more there, something we missed out on by leaving, that we can’t get back to. That secret, the answer to the what if, only the version that stayed behind knows. Yet when you visit, they only offer you a naughty smile. It’s a secret that will stay there, stay there with that version of you that you left behind. 🙂
LDF had won, but the bigger news of course was that NDA* had scored 0 seats, sending Malayalis all over the world (once again) into the collective self-patting that we love to engage in
I once read an article someone wrote about their father who moved to the US 40 years back with family. When asked if he didn’t miss home, the father said he had woken up every one of those days wishing he were back in his hometown in India.
I woke up this morning to an Instagram filled with stories from my circle. They were all about Kerala election results. Last night on our video call, I had found from Amma that LDF was leading. LDF had eventually won, but the bigger news of course was that NDA* had scored 0 seats, sending Malayalis all over the world into the collective chest-thumping we love to engage in.
In the kitchen, I glanced at the hashbrowns I’d planned to fry for breakfast. I then proceeded to take out dosa batter from the fridge, and put on my kattan (black tea) to boil.
Sundays without practice are rare. Opening the Whatsapp group (renamed the previous night to Practice at 9) with a half-open eye at 8:50 on Sunday morning, only to see the latest message ‘no practice’ – heavenly. It’s afternoon, my stomach is full from all that kappa and meen curry, and I have a nap to look forward to and I also look forward to waking up hungry so I can go downstairs and eat more of that.
If you’re from a tropical place you’d know a Sunday lunch isn’t lunch if you haven’t sweated profusely either during, before or after it (I know it’s a tropical thing because Mark Wiens shares the sentiment). The kitchen is hot and humid, so is the market, so is the car, so is everything. Nobody wants to be outside but it’s Sunday so you have to sweat.
I should’ve aimed for a productive Sunday but it’s Sunday, and all that sun is going to lull me to sleep.
I should draw the curtains before falling into a nap, otherwise I’ll be sweating like shit when I wake up. Why are Sundays so drawn out yet so similar and short?
I wake up sweating like shit anyway, my back unpleasantly drenched, face sweaty, the sun bathing my room in all that light even with a single window open. The world outside is bright and blinding at 4, a distant jackfruit tree in my neighbor’s backyard hissing in the hot afternoon breeze. I stretch my arms, and the black pants I wore to market with Achan earlier falls to the floor.
Ugh.
I look around and the room is still messy. I cannot believe my room is still messy. It was messy before I fell asleep, it was messy when I was 15. It’s messy now at 20. It looks glorious in the sun though, all the colors (read clothes) on the single bed, encroaching onto the double one. And on the rack. I must find time at night to clean up, I’ve been judged my whole life for a messy room.
Well at least I have stuff on the walls, that should offer some redemption. Why can’t people just watch Jack Sparrow and the weird cat stickers on the walls and ignore the rest of the room? And David Beckham shining in the rays, who I’m not even a fan of but Tessa gifted that when I was 14? Why’s that still hanging on the shelf? How have I not noticed? The last time I noticed it I was 15 and rearranging this room and adding an embarrassing handmade curtain on the steel book shelf. Has anyone else noticed?
I want to sleep, but WAIT THERE’s KAPPA. That’s why I welcomed sleep in the first place. Do you know how horrible it is to fall asleep, wake up to realize there’s nothing nice to eat? If not you can never appreciate a sleep with the knowledge that something nice awaits for when you wake up.
Upstairs at 4 is just bright sunlight everywhere, it’s blinding. (Luckily I didn’t need glasses and didn’t get headaches when I was 20). Okay, Amma’s outside in the garden-slash-rainforest. The tiles are still warm and the day still bright.
“Harvesting aana amma?”
“This is the second batch,” she says holding up her cupped palms filled with kovakka. She’s also munching on them. I pick two sturdy looking light-green ones (that’s how you know they’re not ripe/bitter inside) and throw them in my mouth, proceeding to carry them all in my t-shirt crinkled basket.
I have never understood how people dressed up neatly at home. I probably dressed nice from 5-9, from 10-15 I’d rather not look at what I wore at home, repeat for 16-19. In a lot of pictures from those days I wear a shiny shorts from my brother’s jersey set (I had like 4 or 5 of them*), and one of his tee shirts I had picked up, or some random top from my cupboard that I wore like a derelict. 100% of the time I looked like someone who received terribly mismatched clothes from a donation.
The pictures are hard to look at. My mother never had issues with what I wore though. And the pictures are unbearable I tell you, and I have confronted my mother in later times on how she could let her only daughter walk around like that.
“There’s more,” I proceed to the creeper to pluck. “How long you been here.”
She tells me what she’s been up to while the rest of us have been on our Sunday siesta.
“Ottum orangeelle!” She slept a while. She’s really happy when she’s out here and lights up like a child every time there’s a rose blooming, and its close-ups end up in her Camera gallery. She also loves attending flower exhibitions and clicking photos at odd close-up angles, the latter also with couples at their wedding receptions. (I never got it back then but guess some 5 years later I click trees and gardens wherever I go as well.)
I’m looking out for the really young and tiny ones now, like the ones where the wilted flower is still intact, they’re probably a couple of days old and are super crunchy. They go straight into my mouth. I’m a bad person.
There’s a wind and all the mango trees and the curry leaves and everything else in the forest sing. Not dry rustling leaves on the ground but healthy, rich and evergreen bunches thick on tall branches. Tender curry leaves and long mango leaves and fat broad ones on the jackfruit tree plant which never grew up. There’s usually also tiny birds on the chembarathi, often attacking at my brother’s window with their sharp tiny beaks.
I ask if there’s tea.
“Illa,” she answers in a duh way. Sunday tea is late unless I’m ravenous and there’s nothing to eat and I prepare tea in a fit to calm myself down.
“Well it’s hot here I’m going inside, is anything on TV”
“Arinjudade, nokeella” (yes she is from Kollam :D)
I proceed back inside with my t-shirt harvest cup – and plunk transfer them on to the dining table. There’s a brass vase-like holder (that doesn’t match the table) which I should probably use but it stays empty. If I were hungry enough I’d chomp down all of it myself, but today there’s kappa so that’s where I’m going and couldn’t care less.
Later in the evening
I’m sitting on the verandah entrance with my tea cup, legs spread on the lower steps. (Pictures of the pose exist, they’re terrible). One of the things about tea is drinking out of a cup you like, and figuring over time just how strong you need it to be (and just how much) to relax, and how much to refresh. I notice how dark(er) my knees have become from that single knee drop step in the choreo, and a solar-system shaped blob from childhood that persists. I had claw marks from our poochas criss-crossing all over my two arms and my perennial concern during ages 7-9 was what if they’re permanent, how would I explain them to others (as I am now) for the remainder of my life that I wrestled with cats to take their ticks out? They’re gone now, so will this blob sooner or later I guess.
I now drink from a Walmart mug, but then I’m 25 26 now, after many effortful attempts the tea is prepared in a microwave and for better or for worse, I’m okay with that. Unlike the claw marks, I can still find the solar system somewhere in there if I look hard enough.
We had a bunch of virtual social activities in the orientation week of my summer internship. There were 55 of us summer interns, and one of the activities was sharing a favorite picture or a memory. I cannot say I enjoyed all the games we played, particularly If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you want to be?, which seems like it would be a fun game during Covid, but it was one of my bad days so the only place I could think of was home. (It was my fourth month alone in my apartment so…)
I landed in Atlanta on August 5, 2019. I was to stay temporarily in a senior’s apartment not far from where I live now, before moving in here. Another Gatech-bound student and I got off at the building, my network wasn’t working and he wasn’t able to get through to his friend to let us inside. So we waited on the pavement with all our luggage for somebody to show up and open the gate for us. That’s when I clicked my first picture in Atlanta, which is what I shared in the Photo-share activity.
Waiting outside with 50kg of luggage on my first day in a foreign country with no phone network is not something I’m familiar with, but the frame before me (apart from being obviously clean and well-maintained) was hot, humid and green, just like my home. This photo was a moment of taking it all in, realizing that Atlanta might not be too unfamiliar territory after all.
(While sharing with everyone, I mentioned for context that I was from Kerala, the “tropics” where it’s humid and full of trees, so this scene felt a lot like home, even while being away from home.)
Trees and beautiful skies – Atlanta
It rained later that day and I had a beautiful view from the room I was staying in. Shruthy wasn’t arriving until two days later, and I wasn’t jet-lagged so I just sat in the room watching the sunset and vehicles go by.
I hadn’t met the senior whose room I stayed in, but I saw her books and her desk, a couple of framed photos. And I hadn’t imagined a lot about this place (Atlanta or college) before coming here either, so it was just a lot of observing and taking in, than Aah’s or Ooh’s.
Ikea was right across the road (behind those trees) and I could see inside the building at 2am, past the scant traffic. I saw people climbing stairs in those hours, and for a while I simply sat on my bed and watched somebody sitting at his desk, like I expected something to happen, but nothing did. It was a great view to Ikea as well and I probably would’ve spent a lot of time just looking at it had we continued to live there, the way I watch the trees here.
Even while it wasn’t my favorite of plans, this country and a lot of people here have been extremely kind to me in the time I’ve been here. I’ve got to witness chaos – good and bad – especially in the last few months. Some days I marvel that it’s happening right before me, that I get to learn, witness and be a part of it, while some days the history overwhelms and exhausts me. But maybe that’s the way it should be. And I do love that it’s hot, humid and green here.
Viewfrom the room – Evening showers, sunsetand tech trolley hub
To everyone that asked how my first semester went, I’ve told I’m glad it’s over.
A painful majority of my week nights (or whatever remained of them considering I went to sleep at 3 and woke up late) were spent listening to Cherathukal in my bed. During week days I draw the blinds but keep the shades parallel so light can filter into my room, in case I over sleep. There’s a streetlamp right outside and there’s these trimmed grasses and short plants by my window throwing shadows on my walls to keep company.
(Only on week days because weekends are more cheerful.) Some days I turn on the fairy lights in my room. It’s a little weird because it’s sad yet it’s a good way to sleep, away from deadlines and college. The song reminds me of all the good fish I should be eating. All the meen-curry’s at home, basically. And I’m not even a meencurry person.
Kannan loves meen curry. Me-not necessarily. When coming home he asks if there’s meen curry to decide if he should eat from home. A yes suffices, never fails to amaze. I would have different questions. What other curry? Thoran entheluondo? If meencurry then what meen? And what meen curry? Because there’s so many.
The tame, orange, slightly watery kind made with puli and fine arapp so that the coconut doesn’t stick on to the rectangular or square choora kashnams that you can peel off layer by layer like kitkat. The red one with mathi is my favorite, with lots of ulli and tomato paste, sweet and spicy and sour and heads (with eyes and brains as well, for all you folks too puny to eat the best parts of mathi), and skeletons that you can chew and grind and yes, swallow (well muringakka allalo mathi alle). The fat juicy neymathi bought fresh from market that oozes bursting fat onto the frying pan, filling the entire two storeys of the house with the smell of mathi fry, it’s criminal to eat it cold.
Or even the netholi curry made with curry leaves and thick coconut paste that sticks to each shockingly yellow piece? On some days, manga pieces creep into the yellow curry (I’m not a fan). And that lame ass meencurry I ate from the roadside thattukada with a huge fish head-piece and was all the hype but tasted like an average emotionless curry even compared to my mediocre cook Amma’s worst.
And all those Sundays with fish bought from the market and onto the meenchatti straight with some arapp from the mixie, split green chillies, curry leaves and/or drumsticks. The fat fish that broke apart as you gouged out a big piece burning the index and thumb fingers and revealing white flesh underneath that turmeric coated yellow paleness and escaping fumes. And the greedy you go for it again before your finger has even cooled down and it goes straight to your mouth, the taste of fresh fish that you don’t get once refrigerated. Gulp. Another bite and another and another. You need more pieces. Chatti evide?
They say the arapp gets better and the curry tastier the next day even if a bit sour and if you’ve had your amma give you undas of that with pazhinji you’re as lucky as me, but there’s nothing quite like cooking fresh fish. The cheli of the market and the heat of a Sunday noon culminates in those easy burns, accompanied fumes and the juiciness in your mouth. Or even the coarse varutharacha meencurry for ayala that’s brick red and thick and you cannot see much else apart from the likely contours of pieces and a stray white eyeball floating here or there. Curry leaves? Somewhere there. Drumstick? That too. Less on gravy but amazing with kappa. Kappa. Goddammit. *pause for a dramatic sigh*
The best I came to making fish curry here was with grated coconut and puli and tilapia. It tasted good, edible, but nothing like a meen curry should taste like mostly because the fish has unfamiliar un-fishy flavors here. So like every other night I go to bed on Wednesday after a marathon to submit an assignment at 11:54pm for a 11:59pm deadline and I listen to cherathukal and imagine all the types of fish curries I could be having at home, if the kid in the film knows all of the different varieties, of the gleaming skinned fish in his curry, of his favorite way to make konj – with lots of ginger and garlic or with thakkaali or frying them deep red with crispy curry leaves or a glowing curry with coconut or?
This is not meencurry, this is fish moly. For a horror from this Christmas. (It tasted great, lime juice FTW)
I needed to believe in something larger than life, larger than anything I knew.
And it’s how I survived. (Also, this article may be summarized as Paalam kadakkuvolam narayana.)
Jab kahi pe kuchi nahi bhi nahi tha Wahi tha wahi tha Wahi tha wahi tha.
(When there was nothing, He was the one, the only one.) – Kun Faya Kun (2011)
Time is a great equalizer, maybe the only one?
How do you measure sadness, how much is too much? Do you need to be so sad that you find no joy in life, or is it when you somehow cannot force yourself to smile?
Who has seen the most sorrow? Can a child’s sad story be considered sad enough? Or do you have to be broken after you’ve built that adult threshold for grief?
By the time you’re 25, everyone has had that experience, from life or from people. Everyone has lain on their beds numb one night having cried their eyes out, thinking of how alone they are, of how right those were that left everything and everyone, of how they were brave, of how helpless we are by ourselves. Sat on the floor and bawled at this cruel world of those that hurt us. Defenceless, alone, but above all, innocent.
That’s the sad, but also the beautiful way we’re all equals at 25. How time is an equalizer, maybe the only one.
This isn’t about being 25 though.
Nobody is more sympathetic to our younger selves than us, I think.
Last month I was sitting on a bench outside DO class when two students approached me, said they’re from the Theology department doing a survey, and asked if I believe in God or a higher power. (My better guess is they were two friends in conversation looking for a random person’s perspective, but yea).
I do, I say. They ask me their theological question which isn’t relevant in this story, but they took me back to this phase I had almost forgotten I had.
I don’t have an adjective to describe it though, it’s just a vulnerable 19 year old me and an overflowing heart. There’s people, there’s college, there’s lots more people. But they’re somehow neatly tucked away like we belonged in parallel stories, in separate worlds.
Amma and I visited Padmanabha Swamy temple every month back then on my asking. It was the one place where I took peace in return for surrendering all that that plagued me, where I didn’t have to fight and was finally at ease. And I never wanted to leave.
Everything the temple housed was alive to me – oil that dripped to floors from large hanging lamps, flowers from prasadam that were gently squeezed to the back of aunties’ hair, the constant humming breeze to which untrimmed bushes swayed. Alive and sacred. They were glimpses, or rather a beckoning at a life sans desperation, a life that was elusive yet very much existed, that I was allowed to be a part of for the short while that I was there.
I saw beauty in every person, I could see only kind faces that reflected back at me the serene in passing, as if they all knew why I was there, as if they all said a prayer for me.
I saw old ladies seated on a mandapam reciting chants and that’s when I knew I could sit with them and cry my heart out if only I had learnt those songs that Amma knew. I wondered how they did not break into fits of weeping every time they sang them. I envied what devotion (and in all likelihood old-age) gifted them. They were already at peace and singing a prayer for me and others like me, just like the solitary cobweb floating on a high corner I chanced upon seemed to be.
Every time after going around the whole temple, Amma and I sat on the parapet facing the sands on my asking, watching the towering gopuram in the orange lights.
It was almost always 7pm by then, and I wondered how there were no pictures of that one angle of it bathed in shadows and light against the dark sky, one you can see only from the inside. How whoever constructed it back then saw the quiet splendor that I was looking at, or probably much more.
Of how somebody had known humans would house worries bigger than themselves to look for comfort in things larger than life.
I wondered if there were others who visited the place to absolve of all that taxed them, who marveled at its massiveness and felt the same empty light heartedness I felt then.
I watched a classical recital in the temple once, and I watched others who sat listening – silent, smiling, dissolving. I could only see pointlessness in my suffering then, how what I bore was boundless to my trivial self yet how the world was much bigger than any of it. And yet I knew I’d soon walk past the doors of the temple out into the world only to be overwhelmed by my own reality. It makes sense that I never wanted to leave.
I remember thinking Gopika was lucky for getting to visit so often, for staying so close by. I wondered what one did if you had no troubles to hand over, if you had no turbulent mind to begin with, and I couldn’t imagine much more. Looking back, what’s funny is I was either not in my elements while I was there, or it was the only place where I was. The lines are blurred and there’s no way I can tell now.
Jab kahi pe kuchi nahi bhi nahi tha, Wahi tha wahi tha, Wahi tha wahi tha. (When there was nothing, He was the one, the only one.)
There is a story of how when we were kids my brothers and I played in the sand inside the temple for hours, and I have listened to it being retold as many times as I’ve been there. I once asked Amma about why the place felt so positive, and she mentioned something unappealingly scientific about energy flow, unobstructed pathways and open spaces.
Every time I have gone back, I have still seen magnificence but in the “open spaces, positive energy” way. I’ve smiled at how I once looked to its huge corridors* and pillars to be a part of me, how I felt lighter with every step I took around the temple, how even the cheli of wet footprints had brought me peace. How I held on to this one place because I found nobody and nothing else to turn to. I’ve wondered at how young I was, how innocent I was, how I didn’t deserve any of it. Like we all do, I guess.
Yet I’ve not felt the same submission nor seen the surreal there since. I see beautiful faces, sure, but also the regular lives that go on behind them and the chanting. I see pottis and that solitary cobweb on the high corner, but they’re no longer conferring a hurried blessing upon the mortal me. And yet I had seen all of it there, the same way we seek comfort in music or art, but cannot go back once we’ve made it through. Like the Room of Requirement lending itself only to those that need (ask and you shall receive?).
Faith to me was hope. I needed mine to be larger than life, larger than anything I knew. It was, and it’s how I survived.
(You’re right, this article may be summarized as Paalam kadakkuvolam narayana).
Because a little faith goes a long way – 2014
* I meant pradakshina paatha but I’ve only ever called it chuttunna vazhi and hence.
“Am I Lola Milford?” She was watching him intently.
The air was less sultry now, the armpit rivers of smaller diameter. The streets were empty save for a few shops open in the slow-cooling afternoon heat, adjacent buildings looming on either sides of the narrow road.
They walked slowly in their shade, peeping into antique/curios stores and shops selling overpriced tea and unreasonably large white kurtas for the tourist. This was the last stop before catching their separate trains back home, and the thought followed them just as the falling daylight.
“On a Sunday afternoon..,” she sang Groovin’ loudly as they slowed their pace. He smiled. It was Saturday. She had only suggested the song to him that morning and it wasn’t one of their songs, yet.
They could easily live in one of these places, narrow and long, winding inwards, calm. There would be a small verandah with cheap aluminium rails, the kind you see in some houses near the beach, with cycles parked out. Afternoons would be strong tea and a playlist that switched between his, hers, and theirs. They’d sit with friends in summer and in rain, which meant they’d have to make friends here first. The long winding house would be a mystery that opened itself just to the two of them, with partitions for walls and ceramics taken out only during tea. Rent would probably be up the roof though so it’s best they didn’t gamble their chance at business. Would it be odd, living among all of them? Are only Jews allowed to occupy places here? Their music wouldn’t gel with the aesthetic, no. And they were glass-people, not ceramic. Kochi wasn’t their place to be, though they’d miss Shahabaz Aman.
“Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly –” , ending the song she dropped her head sideways and swiveled, stepping on and off the shade. Like during waves at the beach except he didn’t have to hold her from moving further away as she swayed back to him.
The melancholy suddenly taking over soon after the song ended, as if remembering their impending close, she asked, “What happens when I leave?”
He stopped to watch dreamcatchers hung between the buildings,
pretending like he hadn’t heard. It was sad when she was sad.
“Am I Lola Milford?” She was watching him intently. “No,” prompt came his reply and they continued walking towards the synagogue, brushing past the returning crowd, neither facing the other. He didn’t want them to drown, it was up to him now.
“Why not?”
And as if suddenly deciding to lift the mood, she cheerfully jumped, almost like she might break into dance again to yet another song. “Am I missing any of her 4 listed attributes? Para para!” Demanding an answer, threatening to pull his fat cheeks. He gave it a pause. “We’re too precious to be characters in a book.” He was serious, unlike his usual grinning self, still not looking her in the face.
“You mean we aren’t? Nobody’s tooprecious.” She stopped hopping and walked by his side again, with a face that looked like it’d been sad for far too long and had just cheated on a quick short break, and was back to being the sad self again. They stayed silent and walked on, neither minding the surrounding anymore.
They halted in their tracks and sighed. The sign at the deserted synagogue read, “CLOSED ON SATURDAYS.” They stared at the silent white building for a while and then at the clock on its high wall. He was slow but stern with his reply, filling in the shoes she’d left a while ago, his shadow falling on her as he turned.
“We aren’t in Lola, because you aren’t leaving. And neither
am I.”
The frame coyly shifts away, and we’ll never know if the two kissed before they made their ways back home.
The only early memories I own of pothichor are a misshapen package wrapped in banana leaf and newspaper, that Manichechi brought home when I was younger, with ammumma’s food inside.
Like everything else she cooked, there was as much coconut in the accompanying dishes as there was white rice (read: a LOT). Pink lovelolikka (is that how you spell it) and mango pickle staining a corner of the white rice with a shocking yet warm red. Red chilly chammanthi in very generous amounts. Two different thorans, one always being beetroot, both with lots of grated coconut. A separate tiny banana leaf wrap that you eagerly open to find the insides bathed in fried oil, with pieces of fish fried until crisp and more (well, almost black), yet surprisingly white and soft inside.
Amma talks about choodu pothichor that maaman brought to her medical college hostel from Vakkom early morning before classes, that stayed warm and succulent until afternoon and even up to dinner. She would wait for lunch time quite like Imran Khan did at work for his dabba in The Lunchbox, the anticipation of the banana-leaf parcel tingling her tongue. (And did I tell you she doesn’t care much about food? Oh not yet.)
As I grew older, especially in college, I saw more pothichors brought from home, sometimes for groups of 5 – 10. My own mother never cared about cooking much – eat to live, not the other way around she says. My father, an upholder of the other way around, still holds it to heart and lives a battle.
In circles when people said, “Mother’s food is always best”, I was always the sole one shaking my head. Once a friend said “Come on, you’re just exaggerating, I’m sure your mom cooks well”. The next day, I brought her my mom’s prepared lunch and she didn’t contest me after.
Once while my brother was admitted in the hospital for jaundice, my uncle and I were exiting the ward around 8pm as we saw an aunty eating from her pothichor. My uncle suddenly commented, “Did you see that.” Assuming he wasn’t referring to the only thing I’d noticed, I cautiously asked, “See what?”
“That woman was eating pothichor.. kothi ayi”, he grins.
“Oh yesssss”
In the past one year there has been this mad rush in social media over the nostalgia and memories associated with pothichor.
So a couple of months ago, when my parents were leaving on a train to Thrissur at 11AM, I suggested to Amma, “Let’s pack pothichor for you guys?” I knew she’d be excited, she hadn’t had one in years. While packing, my father said “It’s been decades since I last packed one.”
We packed 2 separately, it was vegetarian with an omelette for each, and they gobbled it up as soon as they got on the train, amma said.
Last week, my parents and I were travelling to Belgaum. Our train was at 12:50PM, and obviously it was time for another pothichor episode. An elaborate one this time.
Amma first fried large kilimeen (pink perch, from Google) with spices. She separately cooked onions with masala and added tomatoes to it, and finally mixed the fish pieces into it. Chammanthi from roasted coconut. I made a double omelette with lots of shallots (small red onions) and green chillies. There was cucumber thoran with fair quantity of grated coconut (by amma’s standards, not manichechi’s), and another kovakka thoran.
Last time, it was achan who did the packing, but he was busy eating Puttu with the fresh fish masala (LIVE TO EAT manifests in opportune moments such as these). I was already a tad bit hungry but saved the hunger for my long-awaited pothichor. Amma laid out the leaves and I apportioned.
A piece of fish in each, no pickle for Amma, more for achan, no omelette and more chammanthi for me. (Yes I agree, pothichor without pickle and chammanthi is just blasphemy).
Spicy onion from the fish stuck to my fingers and I licked them clean – yum. Yet I conquer my urges again, for later. “Should we add another fish piece?” Amma asks. Of course we should.
I wrap them up, two rubber bands each, neat and nicely shaped.
Needless to say we forget them at home and realize on the train by 1:30PM when we’re hungry and start checking bags. There is no pothichor. We buy a biryani and a Veg Meal at Kollam railway station. I could only be jealous of my father who’d atleast tasted the fish (so much for conquering urges. Live to Eat, guys). Two others in our compartment also brought pothichors. One of them had fish masala.
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