Ammani's Challenge - 4 - COUGH SYRUP

They had been cranky since morning… While she was packing they kept taking things out driving her up the wall… While she prepared food for the trip - for her husband, parattas and dry aloo subji, for her in laws, Uppuma and Puliyogere, for them, all kind of boiled vegetables and raagi kanji and some curd rice, in case they insisted on ‘thayirmammu’… For her? She’d eat whatever was left over after serving them all… Anyway, she never felt hungry while on a train journey… May be due to the stress of bearing all tantrums of the young and the old… But they were making her go crazy… She had some more washing to do… some more ironing some more packing… some more arrangements with the doodhwallah, the paperwallah and the maid… CRASH! They had broken something…MADE OF GLASS! In a panic, she ran to the hall to see her kids looking guilty and surrounded by hundreds of pieces of her china vase… She hauled them to a safe part of the floor and whacked them both which set them off howling on top of their voices…She lifted the little one onto her waist and dragged the other by hand into her room. She switched on the TV and told them not stir from the bed. Then she opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of Phenargan. Two teaspoons each, she fed them… That’ll keep them quiet for the next two hours, till I finish my work, she thought wearily. With a guilty glance at her kids, she went back to her chores. I must remember to pack the bottle for the journey, she told herself resignedly.

Ammani's Challenge - 3 CREDIT CARDS

What are credit cards made of?
What are credit cards made of?
Compulsive yearning and rashness in spending,
That’s what these cards are made of.

What are credit cards made of?
What are credit cards made of?
Offers and guiles and ‘plasticky’ wiles,
And such are credit cards made of.

What are spouse cards made of?
What are spouse cards made of?
Shopping that rocks and statement that shocks,
And such are credit cards made of!

Ammani's Challenge - 2 - SOCKS

She hated folding clothes. She hated washing them in the first place. Back home there was a maid to do all that. She had never touched anyone else’s clothing before. Marriage had transformed all that. Now she was expected to collect everyone’s soiled clothes in the morning from their rooms and put them in the washing machine. The maid would dry it and later in the evenings dump them on her bed. It was her duty to fold them all and leave neat bundles of everyone’s undergarments and towels and other clothes back in their rooms. She hated touching others clothes… the worst ordeal was folding the socks… She was expected to lay them flat, one over the other- toes aligned - and roll them up and tuck them into the opening of one so the pairs won’t be lost…the way Manni ( sister- in – law) had shown her…the way Manni had been doing it for years, till there was a younger Maatuponnu( DIL) at home to do it…
Today, in a fit of frustration, she just tied each of the pairs together… Well they won’t be separated…that’s what all these acrobatics were about…wasn’t it?

Ammani's Challenge - 1 CURRY

Take 1 – CRISIS

Anita sniffed and banged her fist on the dining table. She stared in anger and frustration at the print outs spread on the table with mounds of vegetables…

It was bad enough that she scarcely knew any cooking. Now she was expected to cook recipes he had downloaded from Google… curries whose names she had not even heard… Now Aakakkrakaya and Sanaga Pappu curry sounded so formidable. So did Bachala Koora, Ala Badun, Gova Mallung and Bonchi… She did not know yet that translated into Indian terms these were but day to day dishes her mother made.

Pity I love him so much that I am ready to traumatize myself… His parents had better approve of me, she thought mutinously… She was not one for currying favours, but he was insistent that they woo his parents, so that their living together could be legalized into holy matrimony… with their blessings!

With a palpitating heart she set about with the curries.

Take 2 - PHONIES

Give one of that, that, that and that! She said pointing to the 1 rupee sachets of detergents… Why don’t you take 4 pieces of one instead of … She shook her head frantically and I shrugged before handing her the 4 different sachets. Customer is the king…or queen… even if she is a chit of a maid servant.

She is a regular at my shop. I know she works for those software couple in that two bedroom apartment in Gangotri Block. She is from their native village and her knowledge of Hindi is minimal. No wonder, for she is not allowed to mingle with people in the apartments, she confided to me. We had developed a rapport since we were from the same state.

She came two days later. She wanted onion and potatoes. As I handed her the covers, I saw it… a purplish brown weal stretching from her elbow to her wrist. What happened? I asked. My mistake, she said woodenly. I spilled curry on Sir’s white T shirt when I was serving them…Madam was very angry…and beat me… Her eyes brimmed over. She wiped off the tears with the back of her hand and sniffed.

You know, she said pointing to the chain of small sachets of detergents. None of these soaps work… They just tell lies on the TV.

Ammani Asked, I Wrote-14

She was born in 1940. The second of five children born to Vedaranyam Seshadri and Rajalakshmi ammal. She passed away after a brief illness in November 2006. How will Jagada be remembered?

How does one pay tribute to someone who passes away at an age of 66? Not an early death… by demographic standards, but definitely not the age to die. There are thousands out there who are some decades older than her who want to, wish to die…but don’t. Here’s Jagadakka who succumbs to the call of Yama at a mere 66.

We shall remember her as a woman of substance…astonishing substance at that! We had heard of stories of her daring at a time when a woman’s place was considered to be definitely within the four walls of her home. In 1956 she created waves when she, clad in white shorts and short clinging shirt, played tennis at Country Club with youngmen, waves which turned into tsunamis of communal outcry when she posed in a two piece bikini for a local magazine. As expected she was ostracized and exiled by an influential father and a livid elder brother to London where she blossomed into a headstrong young woman, under the tolerant care of her maternal aunt. She was a great oarswoman and was the trailblazer in forming the first ethnic women’s team in Oxford.

I met her with a sense of trepidation a couple of summers back, when I was on an official trip to London. Will she agree to meet me? I wondered… She did… very charmingly and affectionately and I fell for her charms-- hook, line and sinker! She was very candid about her life and did not try to justify any of her actions. I was a futuristic anachronism, she laughed, patting my cheeks. My only regret is that I could not apologize to Appa for the heartache I had caused him. I hope I can apologize to Anna at least, before…! Don’t you worry, I cut in resolutely. I will arrange a family reunion and we will all be family once more. It took me two years to thaw the stone-hard heart of my 70 year old brother and finally my exiled eldest sister Jagada returned home on 13^th November. 14^th was her birthday. Manni and the other women in the family had prepared a feast fit for kings and Jagadakka had enjoyed herself. The kids laughed out loud watching her slurp paalpayasam noisily and not very successfully. At last, that last missing piece in the family jigsaw puzzle had been fitted in… Yet, Gods were jealous…Jagadakka succumbed to her terminal illness last week. But the banished princess had returned home to roost in our memory for ever!