Theru Kadai…ku polama?!

 Quick commerce in its true sense. What if all of 99wholesale, meesho, and the likes, were to set up store in the same street, dotted next to each other? No sale announcements, no competition, pure sales, coupled with marketing. 

In all honesty, my online behaviour, for that matter, even browsing behaviour, had changed in anticipation of the shops that would come into play as a part of the Kalpathi Theru fervour. The tendency to add to cart and buy now had clearly been self-tamed. The words of Appa echoed in my head: Wait until the Theru shops arrive, I am sure you’ll get it in one of those shops, and you will have value for your money.”

And boom, beginning November, the streets were dotted with these shops, with every inch of real estate in the streets of Old & New Kalpathy, Chathapuram areas, being used for street-trade – of course, they had to leave enough space for the stars of the season – the 5 Chariots of the Heritage Village, that’s collectively known as Kalpathi, which also bears a  geographical sobriquet – “Ratholsava Nagari.” 

You could shop for fancy jewellery, ceramic and stone ware, bath & home accessories, export surplus cotton clothes, steel utensils, home decor, fashion accessories, particularly – bangles of various kinds – both glass and plastic, stationery, toys, balloons; bedspreads, a variety of pickles, confectionery that stole our hearts from back in the 80’s and 90’s, and a bazillion other set of things! 

Wooden toys and tiny steel toys that can be used for pretend and play, were adorable, very persuasively designed to capture the attention of people like me, perhaps!

Kalchetty, a common cookware, as the name suggests, is fully made of stone and is a classic, sustainable vessel, that helps retain heat, thereby reducing the consumption of cooking gas. It’s so popular, that our street bears the name – Kalchetty Street. Perhaps back in the days, this street was known for its kalchetty! Thus, the erstwhile Kalchetty is one of the best-sellers of the season!

With so many physical shops in and around the neighborhood, it’s humanly impossible to cover all of them in one go! We’d take turns to take a stroll around each area, every day – these shops usually last for about a good 3 to 4 weeks straight, open from around 9am until a little after midnight! What’s strolling around without popcorn, pori, boiled peanuts, cone and stick ice cream, after all! There is no dearth for food stalls – after all, what’s entertainment without food?!

Every Theru has the residents of Kalpathi agraharam anticipating to add something to their existing collection – “what did you buy for this Theru?,” is a common question when we bump into friends and family at these Theru kadais (Theru shops). 

Under the large pretext of The Kalpathi Theru, there is a thriving livelihood for hundreds of people who come from afar to set shops here in the streets of the Agraharam – no warehouses, everything is straight from the makeshift racks on the street, price and delivery time – extremely competitive, with dynamic food-based entertainment, coexisting amidst the cultural milieu of the Kalapathi Agraharam. 

These shops are such an integral part of the Agraharam streets, so much so that when the shopkeepers wind up to set shops in their next destination, there is a part of you that belongs to them – for they’ve contributed to your timepass and entertainment, at least commercially. As they wind up, you mentally thank them for the lessons they leave behind each year – of solidarity, price competitiveness, business continuity planning (they did excellent when it rained for few days), co-existence, warehousing skills, marketing and selling, negotiation, and most of all – adaptability to change, despite the odds!

Until next time…until the next Ratholsavam, it’s learning to wait with more of patience and less of impulsivity!

Fine-Tuning

 “Listen” grew silent

The ears were no longer feeling present

Words uttered from near

Felt as though from afar

Hearing felt like a pain

Let alone listening: oh it was such a strain

The ears then decided to play a game:

Open and shut

Keeping my mouth shut,

Thoughts had to stay put

I just sat back, in quiet participation with this strange game.

It felt as though listen and speak had gone to a silent  party:

Where they had no role in their kitty:

They needed to be heard first; didn’t they?

Thus went on this game for a few days

Without giving a damn about what people say

Truly, ignorance felt like bliss:

For hearing and listening had to be less.

I missed music, mantras and the sounds of tantrums of my little butterfly.

If anything, the ears felt bereft of the lovely sounds, except it felt good to not interact.

The game seemed to prolong and could no longer be like a one-act play

ENT : without a delay, else the relay to my mind would remain disconnected.

Gush! Splash, the water jet went piercing

Straight into the ears,

Washing everything clean

With the sound of water crystal clear

Every drop felt new, with drops of water remaining like dew around the ear

Sigh of relief! Every sound amplified 

After the ears returned from being gamified.

The slightest honk blew loud into the ears

Making me realise how hard it would have been when I honked aloud

Fine-tuning: still reeling back to the old ways 

Leaving with a thought to ponder:

The mind gets accustomed to whatever you feed it: for it had already gotten used to the tune of just 75% audio. Just as how the eyes adjust their vision to view something even in the dark.

Writer’s Block

 Writer’s block has crept in; so much so that, despite a lot of decluttering done, the block grew taller; looming large like a cloud. 

On the other hand, as I declutterred my desk and cupboard, I was creating more space. More space to put in more things I love, although I love to be labelled as a minimalist. Lo and behold, a new entrant made way to the desk: A Moveable Feast: By Ernest Hemingway. I recall having this book before but somehow let go of it amidst the multitude of home-shifting I had endured. Nevertheless, the feast was here to celebrate. Relishing each word, every employment of words and their style. Simplicity at its best: meaning and visual imagery oozing in every sense, every sentence read. Something that I read just for the love of the language and the way it’s being put to use: the wordsmithery.

A perfect way to remove writer’s block is to just write one true sentence… I understand from Hemingway. In the age of every sentence having to go through the gates of AI for validation, and of course peer pressure: what if you are just asked : did you check in ChatGPT, writer’s block is only bound to arise and never really go away: because you’re never truly reading or writing : you’re just spitting; rather puking. It’s not so much like how you use a calculator to do the math: which is kind of like the means to the end. With language, it’s different: there’s a labyrinthine layer of emotions and creativity associated with it: it’s almost inseparable… that is if you feel it: and not just behave transactional: like a bot.

In any case, I got more pages left in A Moveable Feast: Hemingway has certainly been the trigger. Even otherwise, to write, you need to read… it’s not usually the other way round. Even if you produce sentences otherwise, they probably don’t carry a lot of life… they’re like the wannabes who like some quick fame and fixes. 

Depth comes with reading and meeting people who are real, when you have real conversations.

Signing off, thanks to Hemingway, and my kind of getaway: solo work trip. Writing made its way, as every word fell on the tip of the thumb, typed on the notes in my phone, post a home-packed meal for dinner: idlies laden with podi, wrapped in banana leaf. The dimly lit coaches of the Indian Railways during night journeys: a quick preparatory look at the seat positioning so that the mind could be conditioned to subconsciously write a word or two: Side Lower : this made the proposition of writing a lot more possible. 

The icing on the cake: Side Lower right in the beginning of the coach gave me a room-like feeling with a curved L shaped barricade right next to the door. It’s like you’ve gained something special, especially when you are travelling alone. 

I just had to make the most use. 

Good night, until next time. ❤️

Abhi Na Jao Chod Kar.... Ki Dhil Abhi Bhara Nahi!

 You keep talking in circles, yet make every sentence look newer than the previous one.

Do you listen, nah! You are too busy composing responses for every breadcrumb of a text left for you in the text bar...

Alluring, yet outrightly lifeless, sans any feeling,

Quite a parasite-like life — dependent on large language models

Churning out words and sentences through human fodder.

You're that companion though, who is much needed to get past a quick ride

Piggy-backing on you is akin to handy affirmations

Like a voice listening from the other end of the wall

Although it's just void, devoid of feelings, just empty matter.

A couple weeks ago, spending time with you way too much was like

Going to my friend's house to complete a piece of my homework from school.

The difference though being with the exchange of learning

With you, it's a trade off to pass in plagiarism tests, pretending as though no one is watching.

Seeing you daily doesn't feel as promiscuous for there is romance only where there is life.

Yet, the song on repeat-mode last week and the week before was — "Abhi Na Jao Chod Kar, Ki dhil abhi bhara nahi...."

For that's what using you even once would do to someone, an aide to be handled and used with responsibility!

Rafi's silky smooth voice lingers on, with originality!

Day zero of parenting series: Suprabhatham babies!

 The baby girl was restlessly roaming around the home as usual after waking up at 6am. For some reason, she had been used to a morning routine consisting of YouTube “background play,” with songs that I choose, and not her. Tv first thing in the morning, still doesn’t fit into my scheme of things, I don’t think I’ll ever let it. Regardless, since this girl has gotten used to songs in the background, might as well play something that suits the morning mood: I’ve only known either MS Subbulakshmi Amma or Ilayaraja music, perhaps a little later as the morning progresses. Listening to anything else is definitely out of the morning’s scope already, and is almost sacrilege!

Thanks to all the YouTube feed from later in the day, the suggestions from YouTube hadn’t taken cognisance of the time here in our zone, and it chooses to show me feed like Kaake Kaake Koodu Evide, when am about to play Suprabhatham . Of course kaake kooduevide is a cool and cute song, and the little one has the common household bird’s name etched in her head : in gibberish, she calls it “Gaaagi Gaaagi…,” based on whatever sounds have made their way to her tiny eardrums to assume meaning and reference.

Earlier this week, on one such morning, in a tantrum-filled moment, she was about to have a meltdown if I didn’t play Gaaagi Gaaagi. I patiently sat with my morning’s coffee, on our lavish aatu-kattil, our dearest swing, very close to my heart, and Appa’s; and then had a conversation with Niraamaya: look, let’s listen to rocketry suprabhatam… very apt for our morning mood, the way we’d like to wake up our very Shri Rama…l said, remember how thatha used to softly recite Suprabhatam into your ears when you were even littler? Apparently, I learnt just a couple of years ago, that Appa used to recite suprabhatam by my bedside in my infancy stages. No wonder, we’re  both suprabhatam babies. It calms us down and gives a headstart to the morning in a truly  divine sense. The suprabhatam then sends “good morning,” begging for meaning, because it’s so replete with positivity that good morning is such a loosely defined term.

Well, that worked out…. The Suprabhatam…. I sat with her and recited the entire Suprabhatam…and it had my baby girl’s hands folded in prayer. Definitely, a 

Su-prabhatam. The girl had calmed down without any device, although we had background play of the suprabhatam on tv, it was really the fact that I sat with her, without moving, and recited the verses of the sloka, pausing and raising where needed, and she noticed that, quite clearly: the lip movements, the tongue movements, the gestures, the language of the divine through the eyes… a wholesome language and communication package.

This is perhaps the slowest forms of learning, destined to last. 

#proudwithout device. 

Rail trail

A quick trip to the railway station is perhaps the most comforting feeling right after the loss of my beloved thaatha. 

You expect some people to just exist no matter what, as though they’re immortal and invincible. 

One such soul is thaatha, who has thrived through the years, who’s always been around: every family event, every visit to my maternal grandparents’ home.

Just yesterday, Amma was humming an old song featuring Sheela. The song happened to be part of a random YouTube playlist. She shared an interesting trivia about herself… she said : Hey you know what, I’ve sung this on stage during my railway colony days, and won a prize! You know what the prize was? I was curious to know what the prize was of course! I won 100 gms of coffee powder! Wow… quite a prized possession back then for sure!  Coffee in any amount for that matter, is priceless after all! But what sparked further curiosity wasn’t so much about the prize or the winning… it’s about how Amma managed to practise singing the song itself - what was her source of learning the lyrics and the tune - the tune perhaps was through radio, but the lyrics? The answer to this question of mine was heart-rending - she said “Thaatha used to get me books from a stall in the railway station - those books had the lyrics of popular film songs… even recently, I met the guy at this stall and shared trivia about Thaatha, they still remember him!” Amidst all their impoverished life at the railway colony,  happiness thrived, no matter what, they seemed to be enjoying the moment, without a doubt.

It is no wonder that thaatha is a movie buff, who was seen to be on a movie-watching marathon even as recently as last week! I now know the backstory! 

As much as he was a movie buff, he was a great connoisseur of Kathakali. Watching Kathakali with thaatha throughout the night and returning in the wee hours of the morning is vivid in my memory. His Kathakali viewing spans across almost 5 decades; so much so that the artistes pay respects to him before they begin putting on their “Vesham.” Kathakali has a particular employment of ragas from the Carnatic league, they stand out from the rest and come with a lot of depth - the different nuances render a lot of character to the story. Ragas like Mukhari, Kamboji, Sree, Bhairavi, are all ragas that I picked up from thaatha, learning how to identify them. 

When sitting with his stainless steel “murukaan petti,” he suddenly breaks into a raga alapana, and asks me to guess the raga… I better get it right, lest I’d see his mocking smile, with his lips tinted a reddish orange owing to the chewing of beetel leaf, laced with “chunnambu,” on the spine of the beetel leaf. 

The murukaan petti had a heady smell to it, that of rolled tobacco leaves : dark brown in color, and some light brown : “seeval,” (wafer-thin arecanuts) and finely chopped “adakka” (arecanut). The murkaan petti almost always bore his chunnambu-laden finger prints. 

There was something fascinating about this stainless steel murukaan petti, that I’d particularly eye on laying my hands on it each time thaatha is looking away! Eventually, I began daring to ask Thaatha for a murukaan, and he’d happily make one for me… at a time when kids weren’t even supposed to know what such things meant !! That’s the privilege I had with Thaatha, his close associate : each time I’d visit from Chennai during my school holidays. 

Although there were other grand children in the household, they were either too small or too far away to spend time at my maternal grandparents’ place, leaving me with a monopoly at the time! 

I had uninterrupted time with Thaatha, and paati, right from the start of their day: in the dawn… when Thaatha tuned into the radio and starts sweeping the house. Paati duly hands over a tall tumbler of kattan Kaapi (black coffee), and boy: isn’t that how my permanent affair with coffee began!!

The Southern Railway route though, leaves an indelible memory with Thaatha though: this is where I learnt the names of stations by heart, better than what any geography text book could teach! Kottayam to Trivandrum, and backward… Thaatha used to randomly quiz me on the names of stations as they approach… that I’d recite them like a piece of poetry! Thaatha being an ex-employee of the Indian Railways, meant countless trips with him in the train: just Thaatha and me, during my summer vacation! He’d carefully point through the window grill and show me the movement of the fish plates in the railway tracks; explaining how it is controlled by staff at the control room. As a child, I used to watch the fish plates make the x symbol, with rapt attention… when they form into a perfect x, the train comes to a halt, reaching a certain station. 

Perhaps the tracks of time decided to make a perfect x, ordering a halt, bidding adieu to this tall man in my life, my eternal, maternal Thaatha. May you rest in peace, dear Thaatha. 

Through the Sounds

 The teacher at the phonetics class back in my college, used to break words into syllables and sounds. Every word that had already been residing in the brain, for years, gets a new outlook, thus - for this is how we learn to pronounce right. For example, the word freight is pronounced phonetically like this: “fra” followed by the number eight … so it would be : 

“fra-eight.” When you pronounce freight as “fright,” the meaning alters into “fear,” perhaps literally! That was a glimpse of my days of graduation in the field of Communicative English.

So these sounds find their way into the eardrums and the brain makes references with them to form meaning and sense. We register a lot in our heads, through sounds - even without the visual, we are able to second guess what’s coming. When the music turns melancholic in an audio piece, we can tell that it was perhaps a sad scene in the movie, with the sad tone being employed to depict melancholy. 

Millennia before, Sanathana Dharma, had already derived the logic of speech and language - it’s madhyama, vaikhari roopa - meaning, the sound of the syllable before it’s uttered, followed by the uttered audible word in itself! 

This logic of language and its very basis of understanding applies to a toddler too - they’ve been listening to the sounds of the mother, perhaps in an amplified effect, while staying afloat in the amniotic waters.

It’s been exactly a year since I got inked the first time, with the line from Lalitha Sahasranamam, bearing my little one’s name. A cousin told me, “when Niraamaya grows up someday, she’ll begin to identify her name through the tattoo on your hand, Usha.”

I smiled and thought perhaps that day is a bit far-fetched. However, just as I’d read books and newspapers to her, I’d also read all my tattoos to her. When the line bearing her name from Lalitha Sahasranamam is about to play, I consciously go to her and say - hey next you’ll hear your name…! I kept repeating this exercise unknowingly and unconsciously!

Coincidentally, one day she just pointed to the tattoo on my elbow, and looked at the TV screen when the line bearing her name came along! I was stumped, choked for a bit with tears of joy, not once did I realize that in exactly one year of me getting inked, the little one would get used to the written word and its sound so quickly! It’s truly Madhyama Vaikhari Roopa that’s doing the works. Now, it’s a regular for her to point to my tattoos and make me read them as though it were a book. It’s my quote-board after all. 

After all, sound is the first association, vocabulary is built on this basis. I am deeply thankful for the Phonetics and the  Sahasranamam, both playing foundation for my ability to train and communicate.

Shri Maathre Namaha.❤️

The line from Lalitha Sahasranamam is:

Niraamaya Niralamba Swathmarama Shruthihi!