Note: III Quarters challenge is about writing 750 words everyday to keep my writing muscle active. It is mostly unfiltered, minimally edited and more of instinctive writing.
In the corner of the room, a steel cupboard made that usual creaky noise as Paati opened the rusting door with her frail hands. After two or three pulls of the lever, she gave up and decided to call her dearest granddaughter, Mangai. This was a typical summer vacation afternoon, in the Srinivasan household. While Mangai parents’ left for their jobs at 9 sharp, Mangai and her younger sister, Sindhu were left to their own devices.
Paati yelled, “Mangai! Mangai, come here.”
On the cane sofa with cotton sofa cloth crumpled on the three-piece set like a football, a couch potato-like figure was struggling to move her hips to “Urvashi Urvashi” which played loudly on a random TV channel. It was one of those heavy, fat TVs which kids hurled toys at when it didn’t receive signals on rainy nights. Sindhu who’s performing a postmortem on her new doll waves her hands to grab Mangai’s unwavering attention. She signals to the direction of the sound, coming from the far end of the room. A distant voice finally pierced Mangai ears, like a sharp needle, which were glued to the groove.
“Aye, Mangai! Come here and help me di.”
“Ahh, coming Paati!”
Mangai pinches her younger sister hard, who flinches and attempts to get back at her sister. Mangai barely escapes and gestures out of frustration- “Couldn’t you go, you lazy idiot!”
Mangai walks into her parents’ bedroom, tidy unlike hers, with vintage photo frames and her mother’s saris arranged neatly on the shelf. A Mallipoo (jasmine flower in Tamizh) fragrance lingers in the room, the scent of her mother. She walks towards her Paati and sits on the bed to get a better view of her grandmother’s unassigned duty. Paati who’s sitting comfortably on the cold, marble floor, “Can’t your bum ever set foot on the floor? You’re sitting like a queen on the bed!”
“Paati, it is so cold, when there is a bed, why should I struggle?”
“Solluva di! (Why won’t you tell such things) Your parents are the ones earning, illa! That’s why you don’t realize it now. When you begin earning and your kids talk like this… I won’t be there to see it but you wait and watch….”
“Aiyo, Paati! Why are you babbling about the future again? Let it go na. What is it you wanted? I was nicely dancing to Urvashi, you interrupted.”
“Yeah right, as if that’s only going to put food on the table.”
There were a few saris lying on her lap, a huge cotton pool that outstretched itself because of the 9-yard cotton striped sari she wears. Mangai wondered how Paati, even at 80 could drape such an endlessly long sari and wash it the next day. It seemed as tough as finishing her Maths homework for her. Paati took out an antique, tattered notebook with tiny scribbles in ink. It looked beautiful despite being torn at the ends. She dusted it with her palms and cleaned it with her pallu, or the loose end of her sari. Mangai who until then was lying down with half her legs in the air, and head resting on her knuckles, suddenly sat up straight like a curious cat.
“Paati, what is that? Is that your diary?”
“No, no. I don’t even know to write without spelling mistakes. I can read a little, I barely passed the 3rd standard. It is my sister-in-law’s.”
“Wow, how come she gave it to you?” Mangai was inquisitive and thought to herself- Who would share their personal diary? Did it have any secrets?
Paati gave her usual childish smile, the toothless yet all-encompassing sway of the lips. An answer to Mangai infinite unasked questions, a smile that hid a thousand memories. Mangai asked she could see the notebook and Paati happily gave it. A token of a generation gone by, a time shell Mangai only got a glimpse of, represented by a long-forgotten notebook given to her by Paati. Mangai flipped through the notebook, barely comprehending what was written, what lay between the texts, just a kaleidoscope of Tamizh letters that looked like the jalebis Paati made.
“Paati, what is written?”
“These were the lyrics of her favourite songs. Film music mostly. She didn’t miss a single film on Friday. She used to watch them multiple times. We couldn’t afford it then.”
“Paati, can read something for me?”
“Which one?”
“Anything!”
Paati cleared a throat, flipped a couple pages and steadily recited as if trying to give a tune to it:
“புத்தியுள்ள மனிதரெல்லாம்
வெற்றி காண்பதில்லை
வெற்றி பெற்ற மனிதரெல்லாம்
புத்திசாலி இல்லை
புத்திசாலி இல்லை.”
Mangai was mesmerised as to what it meant, it sounded too mysterious to her ears. “Paati, what does it mean? And which movie is it from?”
Paati smiled and took a while too figure out this complex ideology, “Well, it means that every man who has a brain may not taste success, and those who are victorious need not necessarily be intelligent.” Paati wasn’t sure if she told this right, Mangai was staring into her eyes with a blank look.
“Paati, it sounds so confusing.”
“I know, you won’t get it now. Those days, songs had such great meaning behind them, unlike the stuff you listen on TV these days.”
As Paati reminisced about the past which Mangai could only visualize in her head, another chamber of interest opened within Mangai. She didn’t know then but it took her ten long years for that seed to grow and nurture into a tree. Paati arriving back from her reverie smiled and said, “Help me fold these saris and arrange them.”
“Aiyoh Paati, I don’t know how.”
“Don’t give me excuses, you know I’m short and I can’t reach the ones on top. You bring one stool and take them out for me.”
“Paati, seri (okay), I’ll do it. But one condition, you prepare murukku (a savoury snack) for me in the evening. I want two extra, more than Sindhu. Okay ah?”
Paati’s eyes twinkle and her lips slowly curve into that childlike smile again.
(Inspired from a vault of memories)
Srividya Vanamamalai
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Filmy Kadhai 