PGDP AND AMMINIAMMA .

PGDP AND AMMINIAMMA .
2.45 PM 27.11.07

I decide to donate work. It is nearing three. Two hours of work. I will work with rubble and pave a few meters. Yes I do it. At three I remove my shoes, wear chappals, buy a new thorth, ie. towel to wipe extra sweat, roll up my shoes and pave the walk way fromculvert-2, where the tides will be marked. Worked from 3.30 pm to 5pm. One and half hours – half the distance between two concrete posts. That is five feet long. Width is 6 feet : means 30 sq feet. At the rate of Rs.20/- per sq.foot it is 600 rupees work! Material cost – two trolley loads of rubble – That is 2/12 equalling to 1/6th of a load. At even Rs.2000/- per load, it comes to Rs.333. Labour alone Rs.267[- for one and a half hours. Means rs.1068/- for six hours. I decide to work it for a day, teaching a Tamil worker. How to pave rubble. He will work for RS.250/- plus a bonus of Rs50/- for one day and cover the length up to the next culvert. Good idea. I pat myself and get ready to visit the Chakkians at Cheranellore. But the driver is not there. He had agreed to take me, Nambiar and Rajeev to the place, so that we can carry a few pots and a lot of cuttings. That was yesterday. But the ground was not yet prepared. So I told him tomorrow. He said OK. Then it is today. He told the watch man “Sir had told tomorrow”. I said when said it yesterday, it meant tomorrow. Cut off both the it’s and yesterday meant tomorrow. That also means ‘today’ in between is so hidden because it is the most visible. What we see is today. Rather today extends into yesterdays and tomorrows, elongating the rim, the circumference of the circle, widening the view till everything is blurred, the vision, the voice, the noise the seen and said and heard and smelled and touched are all blurred into this evening, it is past nine when I sit watching a very badly blurred east, the saturating sky and my old coconut tree. The year end has started. Winter set in with Diwali in the north. People welcomed the cold and moderately wet, [yet not raining] nights with a multitude of little lamps and the whole place is a spectacular thing from the skies! And it was only in the beginning of the blur. Later it blurred into a frog (frost and smog) You know, in the blur the form cannot be clear. Can be a buffalo. Yama’s people came on buffaloes and picked up the chosen ones. And Yama, the most knowledgeable according to Nachiketa sat in great demure, like a debonair king, young and cheerful, beaming with pure justice.

Then what is impure one? The one with any objective other than the continuation of the sacred laws, made sacred by the sacrifice of millions, all over the world to enact them. Also made sacred by the most important persons of the Constituents Assembly of the most important representatives of the most representative places, both towns and villages of the Most Sacred Nation of the times – India. We have one of the largest congregation of Muslims, another largest of Christians and ten times larger religions, all following different Gods. But every Indian knows that all gods are one. Sebastian the Saint of Kanjoor is brother of Bhagavati of Thekkumbhagam and so on. That is what Amminiamma taught me. She would every year, in the first week of May, come to give me a five rupee note to be put in front of St.George of Edapally. “All Gods are one, alle mashe” “I will bow to every god. If it is not a God, what does it matter. Alle Mashe.” I would have painted a sky and she would say it is fire and end it up with the same alle mashe meaning : isn’t it, master? Like every tag question, the answer had to be yes. If it is no, dear Amminiamma will somehow argue it out, cajole the listeners and establish her point, which would be as simple as seeing a fire in the sky. She would be seeing the other way too. She died after seven, after I had reached home riding back from Chakkians who promised to send the cuttings with Reni, the OISKA teacher, tomorrow.

I came out to get milk, my wife followed for an evening talk and the neighbour said the news and the other neighbour too joined and Sasi, the youngest of Amminiyamma’s children came on bike and confirmed the news. I said thank God, she has completed a cycle. Became a great grandma. Nursed her husband so well for so many years, reached every home in the neighbourhood, usually twice a day and invariably brought something on each visit. Some things like a cashew fruit or a wild flower or a bottle of tender mango pickle. The last item was her trademark. Every year for a decade and a half we spent at least a month with her pickles. Then there would be tender mangoes in brine. “I could not pickle it. You keep it. How many can I put in my China jar?”. And our Horlicks jars, half a dozen of them will fill. Fill with her love and grace.

The body will be brought in half an hour. I get ready to make a visit at 10 pm. I will go first. Baby and Jwala will follow. We all had been very much there at all functions of the family. So exactly at ten I wear a freshly washed mundu, the Kerala Dhoti which splits as easily as its history. Yes, the kind of all including, all embracing nature which welcomed the Jews and the Mappillais. Many called me mappilai, not only Thiru Balaraman who too considered my wife as his daughter, like Amminiamma who considered all of us her children, delivered to her to be simply loved.

Once there were quarrels between neighbours. I tried to be as neutral as possible but made my part clear by declaring that I will not be a party to anything which Mr.Panikkar, her very quick tempered husband who controlled everything from his bed, may be for over a decade and a half. Amminiamma’s stand was very simple and clear. You men do fight or not, we ladies and children are all one. And with none of the men noticing, she will pass on niceties to the children. Her Kallukatti mangoes will spread in all houses. She was indeed the light of the place, my God, illuminating the whole environment.

I reach there and already the body was placed there in upstairs. There was no light in landing. I got a couple of lamps hanging from the top floor and talked to her brother who is quite healthy by all standards. Then to her two sons in law and then the two elder sons in that order, because the mappillai, the son-in- law is more important as a comer means an athidi, the guest. That is what the lady did. Treated everyone as guest. ‘The guest must be treated like God, alle mashe?. I knew more than 90% of traditional Malayalis of age 75 years and above will have the same view. Let some one conduct a survey and let us see. If it is above 75 in 100, you pass me. If it is less than 60%, it means, times have already failed me. At the rate of two failures is equal to (=) one success, my Lord, I feel I will be correct.

That is why I write this, sitting at my usual window waiting for the sun to rise over Amminiamma’s mortal remains at 6.08 am. Must be punarvasu today. Yesterday was thiru-athira the star called Betelgeuse, consorting the Moon. Everyday a star, 27 of them are around the moon. All the stars of the sky stand around my dear, Amminiamma, the great grandmother. She preferred to be called Ammoomma these days.Earlier we called her Amminiamma. Then she was blessed with grand daughters who had daughters of schooling age. And she had become the Matriarch who lived happily protected in the strong shadows of her independent husband who took to nuclear family with the first few who broke the system. And the lady who considered husband as God could easily adjust so well, sometimes protesting [in fake] for that extra tenderness that her all-power-husband had eluded otherwise. Well, the sun would have risen in the hills of east. Still doesn’t appear here. I should make an early visit. I should go. Then I have classes at 7.30 and should take half days leave and attend the cremation. May God bless the day.

I POST THIS AT 1.00 PM ON 28-11-07 and it shows some other time. I understnd that times can change faster than we can think!