On The Way Again

On an impulse, I joined a circle of friends last month, prompted by a shared commitment to daily writing. The hashtag was lyrical, #septembermusings. While at it, a friend from another group reached out, “Shall we do something similar in October?”. I hesitated momentarily, wondering if I could sustain this for another thirty-one days. The adventurer in me countered, “Why not?”  Meanwhile, some of the muses had also decided to go on in October – #OngoingOctober. A month of consistent writing began to shape a semblance of structure. Yet, the most heartening aspect was the ongoing introspection and ruminations. What should I write about today? It could be a recently finished book, something I observed around me that sparked a thought, a distant memory that still lingered, rehashed old posts, snapshots from a brief trip, or excerpts from beloved poems – the subjects were varied. I urged myself to conceive a theme for the upcoming month. Signs are all around us; we must keep our senses attuned, for inspiration could emerge from anywhere—a snippet of conversation, a passage in a book, a tune we heard, a movie we watched, or the latest news. Over the past couple of months, the Camino de Santiago had been beckoning me again. It all started with an article in a writers’ forum I’m a part of. A fellow member, who had walked the Camino del Norte a few years back, reached out to me privately. We set up a Zoom meeting to discuss her experiences, which strikingly resonated with mine. Then came Lea Page her book – ‘Between the Path and the Way‘. Lea had traversed the Camino Frances while I journeyed along the Primitivo. She continued her walk and went on to Via Francigena, a 1000 mile walk to Rome. Her article in Guardian had gone viral, this had initiated a few more conversations. Then came a request from another friend, to write about my walk in a literature journal published annually by a Malayali association in UK (more about it when the journal comes out.). Today, on October 1st, marks the 4th anniversary of reaching the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago. The theme was glaring at me, clamoring for attention. I had started documenting my experiences during the pilgrimage in detail soon after my return but had abandoned the endeavor midway. The time has come to resurrect those writings and delve into related reflections. Perhaps, this could evolve into a book. Thus, my focus for October is set – the Camino, travel. Let me start at the beginning, with my initial post on the Camino – Just Another Pilgrim (which might just make for a fitting title for the book, don’t you think?)

Padinjaaremuri – An Ode To A Room

(published in ‘The Palm Leaf,’ the flagship literary magazine of KALA (Kerala Arts & Literary Association) UK)

Hiraeth, a Welsh word that captured my heart the moment I read up its meaning. ‘A mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past,’ said Wikipedia. Cameroon born, Wales based writer, poet and playwright Eric Ngalle Charles has a more beautiful definition, “Hiraeth is the music you play constantly in your head hoping that you do not forget – it’s a place of comfort that you always return to.” Sounds like home to many of us, doesn’t it?

We had lived in rented houses in Alleppey from when we were small kids. Being an only son and with a house in the village that was his anyway, my father probably did not feel the need to buy another one in the town. The village house was never our home, though. It belonged to ammachi, our paternal grandmother who lorded over all the movable and immovable beings in and around it. A house that had more doors and windows than walls, it was our holiday home for almost fifteen years. By the time the parents went back there for good, my days of being at home was over. Higher studies and a job thereafter made it a place to go back to during Onam, Christmas, Easter and study holidays. Home those days was a constant, was taken for granted. 

My grandfather might have had unrealized dreams of being a school master, we used to joke. A verandah that went around the entire house; each room had doors in the front and back that opened out on to the verandah. You could walk in and out from anywhere and from one room to another too. To get from one end to the other was a long journey for us young ones. Only two rooms and the kitchen were kept open through the year though. The fulcrum was my grandmother’s room. It had one door that opened into the kitchen, another one into what was called the storeroom, yet another one into the front verandah and then another on to the verandah on the side. It had four windows too. The other rooms were locked up most of the time and used to store nellu, coconuts, fertilizers, the chembu, uruli and what not. Yet now that I think back, there is a faint memory of the room at the far end that faced west, of it being my parent’s bedroom and an old wooden cradle that was hung from the ceiling. The padinjaaremuri.

Ammachi was getting old though she would never admit to it. But it was a robbery that prompted my parents to decide it was time to go back. The thief had entered the house through the attic, into those mysterious rooms and had walked away with a few urulis and a beautiful wall hanging of Jesus Christ that was gifted by some foreign returned relative. Now you might ask what was that doing in the locked-up room? Well, one of the rooms was still maintained as a living room though no one ever lived there. It had the customary sofa and armchairs made of wood and cane. In preparation for the family’s return the rooms had to be opened up. By then, the days of storing nellu was over, we had graduated to buying rice straight from shops. Coconuts were delegated to the storage area behind the house. Ammachi moved from east to west, the padinjaaremuri became her domain. The piercing smell of fertilizers gave way to the familiar ones of her thick ayurvedic concoctions for arthritic pians and other ailments. 

It was after she moved on to meet the Holy Trinity and St. Theresa of Avila (Amma Thresia and she had a very special relationship, but that’s a story for another day), that the room was passed on to us kids. By then it was only the brother that was at home. All of us sisters had turned into visitors. A routine visit went something like this in my mother’s words, “In you girls would come, throw the bags somewhere and disappear into that room. Here I would be, waiting for someone to talk to, it was so frustrating,” she would tell us again and again. The room took on a different note at night. After the evening prayers and dinner, the family would congregate on to the two beds like sardines in a box. There was some kind of magic to that room, a fairy godmother hovering above that prompted us gently to open out our hearts, pull each other’s legs with bouts of laughter that was never ending and finally lull us into blissful slumber. Maybe it was the evening sun that left behind its presence, or the breeze that came in through all those windows or some part of ammachi’s spirit that refused to leave a house and land that was closer to her heart than her own kids. 

One of the five left us in between, it was in that room that we felt the void more than anywhere else. Weddings happened one after another, the room stood witness to the newlyweds’ amorous nights. It was the turn of the grandchildren next. The room now turned into a sanctuary, a haven of peace for the new mothers and babies. Babies turned into toddlers and young kids, mothers grew older, and the room continued to welcome all of us with unwavering warmth and succor. And then, suddenly, our light went out. A brief illness, in five days mummy was gone. She was fifty-nine, so full of life and active than all her daughters put together. Soon after, our father went to live with the brother in Kochi. Home turned into a house. It was locked up. 

Old, locked up houses are like young children. They need attention, constant, loving affection. Else, their spirit would falter, and they would wilt and wither away. And so it was for our home. The siblings would go there occasionally, walk around, take pictures, sigh and leave. I would echo their sigh from afar. Wistfully, with such pain filled longing. My hiraeth. 

Life, with its inevitable twists and turns gave some painful shocks and upheavals and there was nowhere I could turn to for a long period of time, no hands that could embrace and calm me. Meanwhile came a move across the seven seas. The second place that I had known and felt as home, a space that was carefully created with the choicest of paraphernalia was left behind. The most heartbreaking of all was letting go of the treasured books that I had collected or were gifted to me over the years. The transition was deeply painful for all of us. Attempting to cope, I turned numb. 

Months turned into years. Covid played spoiler to the plans of going back for a visit. All the while, I was struggling with the idea, the very concept of home. “Visiting home any time soon?”  someone would ask. I would give some perfunctory answer and wonder to myself, where, what or who is home now? 

Finally, it was time to go back. The first time after we moved here. I had become a social recluse by now, though hardly anyone noticed it. Meeting people and talking to them felt like a chore that drained my energy. But something was stirring deep inside too. The excitement that the family and some of the close friends shared could not but be contagious. But home, that was still a chimera. We would go to Kavalam for sure. But spend a night there? Impossible. Or so I thought. 

Two weeks into the visit, I was overwhelmed by the love and affection that was showered on us. How could I even have thought it would be otherwise? These were the people who had always poured life into my veins, infused me with energy, and loved me unconditionally. A family get together was planned for the first Saturday of July. The four of us siblings would be together after a long time and the extended family would join in too for a day and night. A few days prior to this came a call from the brother, out of the blue. An unexpected surprise, the best gift anyone could have given me, “The house is clean and ready. Plan to be there for a few days.”  He had been listening to the nostalgic yearning in our voices and working behind the scenes, silently. 

It was raining heavily as we started in the morning from my sister’s place in Manjeri. The clouds parted and the sun came out to smile brightly as we passed Kottayam. The river Pamba welcomed us with her soft music as we reached our village, the cool breeze calmed our tired bodies. We unlocked the gate, stood there for a moment, and gazed silently at the house. As we opened the doors one after another, our eyes filled with tears. Curtains fluttering at the windows, towels and toiletries in the bathrooms, mats to sleep on for the kids, oil, salt and other essentials in the kitchen, the brother and his wife had not forgotten a single thing. We fell silent, each of us retreated into one corner or another, our eyes fixed somewhere far away reminiscing about all the good times we’d had here. It was the younger niece that broke the silence, “Ammamma is here, I can feel her.”

There was no question as to where I would gravitate to. Easing myself on to the floor, I lay there gazing out of the window. Years of habit does not go away that easily, the body knows what the soul needs and where to get it from. The niece had dragged a chair and table to one of the windows by then. Night fell, I laid claim to the bed in the room. And then I slept, like I had not in years. Oblivious to everything, laying to rest all that had been bothering or worrying me. A baby’s sleep. At peace. 

The room that faced west. Padinjaaremuri. My hiraeth. Home.

‘Once There Were Wolves’ Charlotte McConaghy

Reminiscing the Reads

Inti Flynn has come to the Scottish Highlands to lead a team of biologists on a mission. They are releasing a pack of fourteen gray wolves in an attempt to restore the ecological balance that has been badly upset by lumbering and killing of the wolves. The local rural community is up against the project as they fear for the lives of their sheep and themselves too, for wolves are a much maligned and feared of animals.

Inti and her twin sister Aggie grew up splitting their time between their father, who was a lumberjack turned naturalist in Alaska and their police officer mother in Australia who deals with crimes against women day in an out. This background pretty much sets the stage for the entire story – intimacy with nature, excruciating mental and physical pain that follows them through life, crime and its gory details, the impact it has…

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Between Two Kingdoms : A Memoir Of A Life Interrupted

Reminiscing the Reads

Never judge a book by its cover, they say. Not for nothing, I say. One of those rare books that I picked up by seeing just the cover, did not even bother to read the blurb. The girl on top of a mini van, a dog next to her and a contemplative look on her face, a travelogue – the judgement was swift as the download. Little did I know the kind of journey I was getting into and what a journey it was!

Suleika Jaouad was like any other youngster, just out of college, figuring out what to do with the rest of her life. A career in writing as a foreign correspondent is what she wanted to be, her Tunisian heritage had more than a little to do with it. After a very short stint of summer internship at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, she…

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Perfect Round Dosha

“ദോശ വൃത്തം ഒത്തില്ല*”

If a girl who was just entering her teens could have killed her grandmother, she would have done it then and there. The old lady was a task master and a perfectionist at that. The girl, almost always lost in her dreamland, couldn’t understand why it had to a perfect round, it would lose its shape the moment it entered your mouth, wouldn’t it? Oh no, the food had to be savored with your eyes before being devoured in your mouth.

Grating coconut was another nightmare. The shell had to be perfectly clean with no trace of white and the coconut in the plate, not a trace of brown. The girl would have rebelled saying it is impossible, if the grandmother hadn’t shown it could be done. Not once, but again and then again, many times over.

She was my mother’s mother, ammachi to her children and grandchildren. A rare beauty, with perfect porcelain skin and a classy demeanor to match. Clad in starched, pristine white chatta and mundu she lorded over the kitchen, her home and in more senses than one, over the entire family too.

Summer holidays were always looked forward to. The day after school closed, someone would be promptly present at hour home in Alleppey, to take us all there. Those were days of dread and frustration too. For her, holidays were not meant to be enjoyed, but to learn things that would hold you in good stead as ‘girls from good families.’ My paternal grandmother was a miniature rowdy and I had inherited more of her genes. It was but natural then that each such admonition was begrudged, though silently. I wouldn’t have dared to voice my opinions outside though. Before she could have done so, our grandfather would have shut us up. For theirs was a love that was strange. Or so we thought.

I still remember one evening at the dinner table. Not sure where the conversation started or what the context was. She blurted out, “you always loved your mother more than me.” In place of a typical strong admonition that would have silenced her, he said in resignation, with a tinge of sadness “that’s true. She was widowed at a very young age. I considered it my duty to keep her happy.” Children understand quite a few nuances that adults normally ignore. There was no question in our mind about his love for her. Else, how did she have the latest household appliances even forty years ago in that village surrounded by water? Those exquisite cutleries that came out only on special occasions, the perfect bed linen that only esteemed guests could even sit on, the lovely lace curtains that adorned the numerous windows of that lovely old home. Love for us was quite material at that age. It took more than a few years and some distance to realize what their love for each other and for us was.

She was a legendary hostess. If guests were expected, the table had to be full, irrespective of which meal it was. If it was breakfast, appam, stew, steamed bananas, boiled eggs and a plate of sliced cake was the minimum you could expect. Lunch was a tale that had no parallels, a centerpiece of a whole duck roasted brown to perfection, a plate of carved vegetables adding colour at one end, karimeen fry, chicken roast surrounded by perfectly fried potato pieces, red hot fish curry, cabbage thoran, beef ularthu, cutlets and moru curry were the bare essentials.

Her sense of dressing was something to behold, it kept me captive even as a child. The white pieces of dress had to be soaked in boiling water mixed with some alkalic concoction, then dipped oh so perfectly in Robin Blue mixed in cold water in perfect proportion and dried in hot sun. The kavini was another story altogether. Once or twice a year, her favorite wandering salesman would arrive with two suitcases full of sepia toned pieces handloom pieces of cloth weaved so thin, you could fold it to fit in your palm. Only the ones with the most exquisite and authentic kasavu for her. Washing it was a ritual by itself. Gently cleaned by hand in lukewarm water, it wouldn’t be allowed to touch the ground. Two people would hold on to the ends and wave it up and down softly in the shade until it was almost dry. The edges rolled up perfectly, it had to ironed before completely dry. All these would go into the rosewood chest, and one set would be selected very diligently for the Sunday morning mass. Her collection of brooches was another source of wonder for me. She had the most exquisite ones of gold, diamond and other assorted stones. Wonder how and why I, her eldest granddaughter who got all the life lessons from her firsthand turned out to be so careless in this department. Some questions do not have answers, need not even be asked, I guess. Sigh!

The immense love that she had for us was camouflaged in those lessons of childhood, it was her way of teaching us to be prepared for life. It took us ages and our own trials and tribulations in life to understand where our fortitude and stoicism originated from. She was a mother who had lost three of her children in their childhood. Her livelihood depended on the vagaries of nature. A year’s crop that sustained the family could be wiped away in a single day of rain or a flash flood. Faith and love stood her through and faith and love she passed on to us.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say. But then mere sincerity doesn’t beget art, isn’t it? We could only aspire to her level of perfection. To attain it is a mirage that is always at a distance. While baking cake after cake, presenting a table covered with dishes of all kinds for guests, collecting the best linen and crockery for the house, I was trying to live up to her I know, subconsciously and sometimes consciously too. It is my sister that spent her some of her growing up years with her that has inherited most of her charm and traits. It is no wonder then that it is to her and her perfectly maintained homestead all of us tend to gravitate to now.

Ten years after she moved on to follow her eldest daughter and husband, the gap she has left in our hearts and souls are still deep. We know it is filled with her love and care. Each of us have our own special memories of her. If it was the guavas that she fiercely guarded from bats for me, it would be the perfect recipe and practice of the exquisite pineapple pudding that she made, for my sister. For yet another grandchild it would be the triangle shaped pooris that he used to take to school day after day after day, or the deep mauve pazham jam in old Horlicks bottles for another. For her children she was home, in all possible ways that one could think of. And I am sure all of us can feel the warmth from the skin of her palms tenderly caressing our cheeks, the scent of her loving embrace and the comfort of her voice even now. For she was pure gold, Thankamma.

And by the way, my doshas turn out perfectly round now. Well, almost.

*the doshas haven’t turned out perfect round