The Greener Pasture

Episode 6 - The call of siren

There were two sounds that alarmed and also made me curious in my two-three years of age.  The call of siren from the nearby municipal council office morning and evening, and the mysterious sound of Rishi coming, when Thathi and me are talking something.   When we talked, or say I used to chatter a lot in the bedroom with Thathi beside me, Thathi used to try to divert my attention by tapping (without me seeing her hand doing that) the wooden headboard of the cot to make a sufficiently loud sound enough to alarm me, which she used to explain, "The Rishi is coming". (those are supposed to be the sound of his "footsteps")  But soon enough, I knew how Thathi performed this trick.  One day I thought, why not try that on Thathi?  She was speaking with me something seriously and I tapped the headboard and made that sound, and warned her that "Rishi" is coming.  She found that so funny, but was quite surprised that I had known the secret and yet respectfully allowed her to think that she was deceiving me, all these days.

I studied reasonably well and I think I was one of the toppers that time.  Since I never had a mentality of competition and did not care about others, I cannot really confirm if it is really so, but my marks were close to full.  In Uday, I realized my own music skills, my interest in Sanskrit ślokams, and my drawing skills.   I didn't make any new song, but just kept improvising that "Laho laho...".  It was my theme song for Diwali, and on each Diwali, since my four years of age at least, I would improvize it each time I sing, add new steps which I would forget the next time.  This continued as late as I was nine years old - when because of a necessity, I had to sit and compose a new song.  Thenceforth, I would start to finalize my song compositions.  I had learned the ślokams chanted in school, and quite a lot of ones my grandmother chanted, plus the śāntākāraṁ bhujagaśayanaṁ from Chakku thatha.  I also knew the mārgabandhu stavam as Amma used to chant.  And of the kālabhairavāṣṭakam and pañcākṣara stotram from her morning chants, and the śloka duḥsvapna duḥśakuna which Thathi used to chant to me before I slept so that I wouldn't have nightmares. 

Thatha was the storehouse of interesting stories from Mahabharata.  He would tell them his own way, adding funny details.  Like how Durvāsā and his disciples "belched" and felt full before they could be the guests of the unprepared Pāṇḍavas, while Krishna ate that one spinach leaf sticking on to the exhausted akṣayapātram.  Or like how Baka looked at Bhīmasena as the latter was eating the food meant for him, thinking "You just continue eating, either way I am going to eat you".  Or about Krishna's various tricks, especially the Jayadratha's killing episode.   Thatha was a great narrator.  Of course hearing these stories several times, we both knew what he would say, but still it was a pleasure to watch how he would narrate it.   Thatha used to stretch his legs from his reclining chair till the setty placed perpendicular to and beside it.  I used to sit on his legs and hear the stories.

Thathi was also a good narrator.  Thathi's stories, as I mentioned earlier, were more about little Krishna or Jayachandran elephant's bravery or the grandma fable of Pāṭṭi and Kuruvi ("The grandma and sparrow") which would end with verses :-

āṭuṁ māṭuṁ koḷaṁ koḷaṁ
ammiyār vīṭuṁ koḷaṁ koḷaṁ
moṭṭappāṭṭiyuṁ koḷaṁ koḷaṁ
ellāṁ ellāṁ koḷaṁ koḷaṁ

Of course it is a very old grandma fable, but Thathi had already made it hers own.  The Pāṭṭi of the story didn't look as if she was from stone age.  So even if it was a story gone really sour (we both referred to it as puḷiccu puḷicca kathai) it was interesting the way she rendered.   The last kolam kolam used to end like "kolankolankolam..." when she was narrating to me, accompanied by a joy of fulfillment in my face.  Later, when she used to narrate the same to my siblings, she had changed the music of that last line.