Saturday, July 31, 2010

The grand mom I never met

I have never met my father’s parents. His father died when I was 6 months old (I am the only grandchild he ever saw) and his mother died young. We have a black and white photo of my grandparents at home and she was a beautiful and stylish lady considering that she might have died in the late 1950s. In the photo you see here, she is wearing a velvet blouse, which was fashionable those days - so my father told me. She was not just a photo on the wall for us. She was ‘Achamma’ and we knew her so well through this photo and a lot of stories told by my father. There was this photo of my father as a two year old wearing a top knitted by his mother. He would always say that she was very creative.

I have never seen my father talking about his mother without his eyes becoming moist. He lost her when he was perhaps still in school. I cannot really imagine how it might have been for him. She died in child birth. My fath
er was fast asleep at home when this happened. In his sleep he dreamt of his mother. She was calling him. She said, “Mone (son), I have made Neyyappam (a sweet made of rice flour and jaggery) for you. Wake up now”. He woke up from his sleep only to hear his uncles, his mother’s brothers, whispering, “How are we going to tell this to the boy?” They didn’t have to; he knew the worst had happened. The baby was still born and she too drifted off soon, sadly for my father, his three younger brothers and three sisters, the eldest barely 13.

Many people who knew her have told me that she was very beautiful. I greedily ask a lot of questions about her to people who had the chance to know her. I still do, but now I have more questions to ask. My father died when I was 22 and never had the chance to know my husband or kids. I now ask, “How was my father when he was little?” I asked this question to an elderly ayah, who was with my father’s family. She had also stayed in my house for a month to help me take care of my new born daughter. While bathing my daughter, she would remember some incidents involving my father. She told me he was very naughty.

Now my kids have a lot of questions for me about their Appuppan (maternal grandfather). Memories are real treasures we pass on to the future generations…

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Rinky was the cutest pup!


“You know Amma, Rinky was the cutest pup”, my daughter broke her silence. We lay in her bed, remembering the stray pup who died in his sleep that evening in his favorite place—beneath our car.

Rinky’s mom was a stunner. She was black and lean and stood out among other stray dogs in the locality. This was her second litter. All the three pups in her first litter had died. These pups were born in an isolated outhouse in the residential layout. In the brood of seven, only two were black like the mom. The rest were in varying mix of brown and white. “You know Amma, their dad is that brown and white dog. You must have seen him”. I hadn’t, but thought she must be right.

As they grew older, some of them got more adventurous and ventured out to explore. Kids loved the pups. My daughter was inconsolable when one of them died under the Corporation's van. Soon the pups grew in size and became really chubby and adorable.

We warned the kids against playing with the stray pups, which they often ignored. I am not exactly that fond of dogs, and prefer to admire them from a distance and detested when the pups followed us in our post dinner walks. It was like they had adopted us rather than the other way around.

Soon their number was reduced to three—Rinky and Pinky, both brown, and Musky, who was black. They always slept under our car. When I woke up in the morning, I usually found them sleeping, all curled up. I loved that scene. They always ignored my protests and made it a point to run around me or jump at me as though they sensed my uneasiness. My daughter would say, “It’s only a puppy, why are you so scared?” These pups made friends with our neighbor’s ferocious Great Dane. We were worried that he might kill them, but they got along so well.

Two days back, we noticed that Rinky was not eating anything. His neck was swollen and he looked like he would die soon. He didn’t suffer much, he died the next day. I never thought I would ever miss a dog, especially some stray dog, but Rinky will be missed very much!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Growing vegetables in containers

I guess everyone should experience the pure pleasure of seeing tiny seedlings emerging from the soil. But I should warn you, its addictive!

We do not have enough space for outdoor gardening, so my garden is limited to the terrace or balcony. I read on the Internet about the best practices to grow vegetables in containers and bottles we throw away. Actually almost everything came from waste. In the below image, you can see my mint plant growing in a used Coca Cola bottle!
I used kitchen waste for fertilizer and used sand and this waste to fill the pots. I also filled a large bucket with water and leaves, both dry and green we collected from around. These decayed leaves were also used as fertilizer. After a month this mix started smelling like cow dung! I diluted this to use for the plants.
In the images below you can see yard long beans and the beautiful white flowers of snake gourd. The best part of my gardening efforts was getting the kids interested. As soon as I return from office, they would say, "Come, let's water the plants!" They would tell me if anything notable happened. My son would say, "The cucumber has a new female flower, shall we hand fertilize it?" We did all that and also spent a lot of time, removing bugs and those tiny creatures troubling the plants.
This year, the harsh summer was so unkind to my plants, but many of them thrived. I am experimenting with grapes too. I managed to grow them from seeds. Here's a seedling below. Ladies finger seedlings are also doing well.
It's a wonderful learning experience. And I have really learned a lot from my experience. I am sure I will do a better job next time around.










Wednesday, January 27, 2010

When teachers settle their scores

What if a teacher tries to settle scores with his helpless students? I am sure almost all of us have been punished by our teachers at least once during our school years. But a teacher settling scores is a totally different and shameful issue.

My experience does not actually involve me directly, but that does not make it any different. It’s about how my younger brother and his friend were thrashed mercilessly by their chemistry teacher when they were 12 year-olds. The teacher, who must have been in his early thirties entered their class and wrote chemistry equations on the board and asked one of them to solve it. Fortunately for him, the boys were weak in studies and he was sure that they were incapable of balancing the equations. Then he called the other boy to solve it. As he had foreseen, both of them were unable to solve the equation. He dragged the two boys outside the class so that everyone from other classes too could view his ‘performance’. He started thrashing the boys mercilessly in full view of other classes and when one of them fell, he kicked him. Later we came to know that he had told other teacher friends of his plans. One of them confessed to my father later.

His friend, a physics teacher, an old student himself, was taking class in eleventh standard. He stopped the class and told the students that there will be some fun in 9A and stood near the door to watch the “show”. When the period was over, the group of teachers comprising a young biology teacher and an English teacher went to see the bleeding and swollen legs of the boys and passed comments. Almost all the senior teachers pressurized my father, a teacher in the same school, to register a complaint. However, he refused saying that teachers have the right to punish their students.

It was only later that we came to know about the actual reason for the circus. The newly married teacher’s wife reportedly received a letter describing her husband’s colorful past. The teacher, for some reason thought it was these boys who did this and checked their notebooks for their handwriting and made plans to punish them for this. Later the real culprit was caught from his friends' circle itself. The actual culprit had taken his wife’s help in composing the anonymous letter. So this was a well planned affair, not a teacher’s reaction out of righteous anger. This was not an isolated incident. This teacher has beaten up these boys several times with vengeance for reasons such as "bad handwriting". They were beaten and humiliated in class for many days. This was pure scheming and revenge on helpless boys. I would have forgiven him had he questioned the boys upfront and then punished them if they were proven guilty.

When we were kids our parents and teachers didn’t believe in sparing the rod and spoiling us. I have myself got beatings from many teachers including my father. Being the naughty kid that I was, I had many bluish finger marks on my cheeks for proof. But I think my brother would have got the most number of beatings from my father. But then we know that our parents and teachers did care. There were many teachers who were apparently very sweet, but turned out to be the opposite. It is not the physical act of beating that hurts, but the feeling that we were wronged.

I have not met this Chemistry teacher after leaving the school. Wherever he is, he is still hated very much.