Her happy recipe...

In one of the movies I saw lately, a therapist asks the heroine to recollect one happy image of her childhood. And she had none. That night, as the moon and stars twinkled on my bedside wallpaper, I pondered on what was mine. And my ancestral house flashed across my mind. Days of cherubic joy and madcap zaniness that often accompanies the age. The sepia toned image of a house with broad verandah, old cemented stairs, huge mango trees in the backyard, green fields, the little pond where we cousins fished and the two tiny rocks we sat down waiting. The memory washed over me and I was relieved I had that one happy image.

The next day I asked my husband what his was. He had a grin as if I caught him red-handed on this one. ``Well, it’s all those adventures with my friends. All that fun,’’ he stretched out in the sofa, the grin never leaving his face. Unlike mine, it was not those ten days during Onam or Christmas holidays that he was counting. But the whole of boyhood that he explored with his friends in reckless abandon.

So, I left him to linger on his past and went down to make lunch.  My mother-in-law was arranging her wardrobe, which usually happens when she can’t squeeze in the last sari washed and folded onto the already overflowing racks. I have often asked her if she don’t find it easy to give away a few of the saris she hasn’t worn for a long time. And she would say, ``The next time I go home, I will take some with me. There are needy people there.’’ But this next time usually comes after a very long time.

Seeing me looking at her quite warily, she says ``Whatever will I do with all these colourful silks? I am not comfortable in bright colours anymore.’’ Three more months to go for her 60^th birthday, I tell her it’s quite early to retire from colours.

Then, as an afterthought, I throw the question at her. ``Amma, how was your childhood like? Were u happy?’’ She was more than stumped at the question, from a daughter-in-law who have never seemed to bother about her existence until then, for nine years. ``Well, it was quite err...good. The usual childhood. Playful and carefree,’’ she can’t quite get over the shock of the question.

The lunch was already made, rice and curries neatly plated and arranged on the counter, waiting to be served. Including `kappa and meen curry’, her favourites. Mine too until I turned my face on fish and meat a few months back. A dip made of roasted red chilies, tamarind and shallots, leftover from the dinner, also rested on the counter. As I put the lid back on it, Amma says ``I have lived on that red chilly dip for lunch on many days when I was young. There wouldn’t be much to eat. You know, times were hard and many stomachs to cater. Only men folk got to eat the fish, we kids would often be left with the gravy and the elder women usually resorted to chutneys and dips. And I loved this dip.’’

She had grown up in a village, born into an aristocratic family. As the story went, her grandfather had lived on ancestral property, not quite adding to the wealth but drawing from it. Her father had abandoned her mother and remarried soon after she was born. The family had gone to shambles gradually, living on a very meager income.

And later, as we sat down to eat, she went on to say how the large women group in the family grew crops like tapioca or sweet potato in the back yard so that there was something to be plucked handy and cooked for the kids. How they cooked huge quantities on big earthen pots and shared it over the dim kerosene light. There was no electricity, no bathroom inside the house. Nights came earlier, since there was no television. They had no radio too. A readymade frock she fiercely wished for, since girls would be stitched petticoats out of a large bundle of cotton cloth and those lasted for a year. She had always wanted an anklet but her mother could not afford it. ``So, when my daughter was born, I made sure she had one.’’ she says.

Not in the grim undertones of an unpleasant past, but quite enthusiastically as if she lived the best of her times. She recollected how the river waters were mirror glaze, how her mother owned a cow and loved it like her own child, how the kids roamed around in the village and knew everyone by their first names, how they went to temple crossing the river when the water was only knee length and during the rains they used the roads. Later, as a teenager, she had come to stay in the city with her aunt. She missed her village and her mother though there was no time to brood over it. Her mother had remarried too and was bringing up her own family. She studied tailoring, took to stitching and made money enough to support herself. At eighteen, she had gotten married. Lady luck had smiled on her and in the later years, health and wealth had blessed her abundantly.

``When I think about it, I always wonder how fast the time flew. Everything was less, but I was more than happy,’’ she says.

That night, as I arranged her words in my mind, I knew why she made all those dishes every day, however hard I have tried to dissuade her saying its more food for seven of us. I think I know why she never gives away her saris. And always wants her grandkids to be running around in bangles and anklets. And home is still that little thatched one in a far away village where she obviously left her happy childhood when she moved into a big city.

It is not always necessary we have a childhood that glints in the realms of our memory. Sometimes it is enough we recollect that childhood so happily that not a tinge of sadness can be traced anywhere. You know, think- happy- and- happiness- is all that remains-kind of formula. Amma does that so eloquently. Her son on the sofa, grinning over his boyhood, definitely has no clue. And her daughter-in-law has been floored by that simple mind trip.

Ends...