She went to school wrapped in a saree. She loved Marathi and Sanskrit, and reading English novels. She wrote short stories, learnt to swim and admired everybody else for their qualities.

In her 20s she went from Bombay to Coimbatore and set up home there. During the next few years she zigzagged from Tamil Nadu to Madhya Pradesh to Karnataka and back again, making friends along the way. She started playing badminton, stitched baby frocks, made stuffed toys by the dozens for exhibitions and kept honing her cooking skills. She embroidered frocks and chair-backs, grew flowers, loved and kept pets and got along well with neighbours. And felt guilty about doing nothing.

A decade or so later, she set up house in Bombay, for her children’s education. From leading a secure and protected life she learnt to handle bank drafts, face earthquake scares, make visits to the doctor, electrician, school, post office and pay bills, with a couple of kids hanging onto her. Somewhere on the way she painted sarees, smocked frocks, baked cakes, attended RWA meetings, stood in queues, brought home books and magazines from libraries, read to her family, taught the children their school work as well as manners, and cooked one great meal after another. All the while wondering how she could be a useful member of society.

She looked after family, innumerable guests and friends with the same honest attention to their likes and dislikes. Her parties were a treat for the eyes and stomach, and my father was a proud man as he relished his friends’ delight. She read my college texts, discussed them with me and translated ‘A tree grows in Brooklyn’ into Marathi  because she loved it and wanted my grandmothers to enjoy it ,too. To this day, I can feel the happy anticipation as my grandmas finished their tea and sat waiting expectantly for her to come to the table with the latest translated chapter. Tea, lunch, dinner, everything served on the dot day after day; and still she had time to clean the house, enjoy gardening, translate stories, write long newsy letters and play with her grandchildren. But she always looked at other women admiringly, lamenting her own lack of ‘initiative’.

In her 60s she was wary and afraid of the mobile phone and the computer, but messaged me regularly, peppering her messages with exclamations and smileys. She typed out her stories on the computer but would hurriedly pass on the credit for it to her children who taught her.

Now she is 75. Active, still as interested in cooking as ever though she doesn’t taste a thing; regular with her exercise and walks, and turning out one beautiful patchwork quilt after another. For a person who firmly says she is no good at stitching, she has made and gifted more than 30 quilts!

I cannot give you anything, Amma, that you do not have! I can only wish for and hope I get some of your qualities so that my daughter can feel proud of me. As I do, of you.

Hating someone or something is a full time occupation and I really do not have that much time. All I can manage is an angry feeling now and then, an uncharitable thought once in a while, a bit of trouble falling asleep sometimes. More than that I honestly, seriously cannot afford.

Hating is a luxury that young people indulge in. They hate this, they hate that… they hate old movies, unbranded jeans, green vegetables, bananas, bhajans, exams( or maybe not exams, thanks to Kapil Sibal’s botching up of the education system!) They have the energy to hate and they have the confidence that their view point is the only right one.

When I was young I, too, hated a good many things. And I was pretty vocal about it. I hated the smell of cabbage cooking, I hated bad grammar, I hated the Mills and Boon kind of books, I hated people who made fun of South Indian languages, I hated washing clothes…….oh, there was a long list of things I hated.

But somewhere along the way crept in a washing machine, some experiences, some empathy, some sympathy, an epiphany or two. Having a very calm and balanced spouse also did its bit. Reading opened my mind to the realization that man is both unique and not at all so at the same time. Add to all this, my growing love and enjoyment of the place I live in, my circle of friends, the laughs we share; and as I inch my way past half a century I realize there’s no time to hate. There’s time to dislike of course. But more about that later. 

Whatever happened to wooden handled black cotton umbrellas that spelt father/grandfather and security, cycle repair shops, cobblers, cloth school bags, fountain pens, ink bottles with droppers, hair nets and U shaped hairpins, charts of leaders to cut out and stick in notebooks, watches that had to be wound up, wooden clothes pins, the black telephone with clackety numbers, sudden impromptu antaksharis, LP records and cassettes?

And the ‘pepsicola’-that sweet frozen ice in a polythene cylinder one could suck on the go- jeeragoli, unbranded potato wafers, green saunf bunches for 10 ps, the chikki seller outside the school, the fellow carrying a pole topped with a sticky mound of pink, white, green stuff that he pulled into fantastic shapes for the brave hearted to eat, Mangola, lemonade made with fresh lemons, home made aam papad……

So also Ambassador cars, wooden tops wound with multi coloured thread, marbles, fragrant pink roses, yellow and orange Camlin compass boxes, home made gum (atta cooked with water) for book labels that cockroaches ate up!, scented erasers with an alphabet on each(costly at 20 ps), Indrajal comics, movie tickets at Rs 1.60….

And what about coconut leaf fans, embroidering pillow covers on hot summer afternoons, copying down recipes in one’s best handwriting?

The ball of string in every home, growing bigger by the month as thread from grocery packets was carefully wound around it, the stash of pins/ clips/ chalk pieces that every grandmother hoarded, crocheted tray cloths and torans…the stories that all grandmothers seemed to know..

The happy pile bought in second hand book shops, Vividh Bharati with its Hawa Mahal and horde of ‘shrota’ from the musical sounding Jhumritalayya, TV that said good night at 11 pm, long letters to friends and pen-friends and family members and the time to write them in…when bed time was 10 pm and buying a 5 star bar meant a treat for the whole family..

Guess Nostalgia is here to stay.

                     

I do not like the Pears soap advt in which a little girl pushes away everybody(grandparents,father),eyes closed, till she reaches her mother. She wants to see only her Pears-soap-washed mother ‘kyonki aap mere liye lucky ho.’ So rude, and what a loving hug she gets for it!

Then there’s the Cadbury advt, in which a little girl licks up all the pieces so that she needn’t share them with anybody. And there are all those doting looks showered upon her.

So, all those of us who spent time teaching our children to respect elders, share whatever they had, who have lived with these values all our lives…..what are we? Misfits in today’s world? Plain idiots?

Children who refuse to imbibe anything but packed juices, who cannot be cajoled into eating anything but bowlfuls of noodles, children whose mothers thank Boost and Bournvita and Horlicks for keeping their children healthy—are we supposed to be proud of such bratty children and their silly mothers?

I have no patience with mothers who make a habit of asking their young children what they would like to eat. It’s such a sad way of passing on ill-health and blame onto a child not competent enough to understand what is to be eaten and what isn’t. Do ask, by all means, on the child’s birthday or when she is celebrating some small victory. Maybe on Sundays too. But for every meal???

Don’t children have a right to be taught to eat well, behave well and grow up into decent adults capable of co-existing with their families and the society at large?

How I wish I could let you remain a kid! I wish I could stop worries from touching you….How lost you look sometimes, how desolate! I can see your effort, your wobbly smile, unshed tears- and there’s a pain, a helplessness in me, and a towering rage against whoever or whatever is making my lovely warm baby so vulnerable and sad.

Wasn’t it just a while ago that you were so carefree, playing outside on warm summer nights with all your friends? I can still smell that warm happiness as you skipped inside at last, so hungry you didn’t even want to wash up! When did my warbling, skinny, happy child grow up? Why do kids grow up? When man finally becomes immortal, will childhood last a few hundred years? And will the mothers then, too, lament their child’s growing up?

There are so many wonderful things written about the joys of motherhood. All true. But nothing prepares you for the vice around your heart--that squeezes you a hundred times, as your kid comes home with skinned knees, as you spot the loneliness in her eyes as a friend turns out to be unreliable, the hurt bent of her shoulders at a teacher’s unfair criticism, the worry creases on her forehead as she prepares for an exam, the sad surprise at the politics of real life…..

I remember every single person who hurt you. And I know I’ll never forget. I wonder at your sweetness, as you interact with some of them. So, you don’t consider them your enemies? Hmm… I am beginning to understand my mother’s suspicious or downright angry looks at some from my circle.

A daughter grows up faster and differently, until she becomes a mother. That’s when her life changes hugely—and she never recovers.

Why ‘small town’ musings? How does it make a difference whether it’s a town or a city, a friend asked.

Well, it does make a difference. Living in a small town means having the time to look around leisurely, forge relationships, chat with neighbours, exchange recipes while buying vegetables—sometimes even with the vendor. It means having the time to look after the neighbour’s kid while she cooks/ cleans, it means leaving your kid at the neighbour’s while you shop/ visit at the hospital, knowing that she’ll be fed and cared for till you get back.

Of course, living here also means having to satisfy curiosity about your guests, your routine, answering direct blunt questions pertaining to your salary, your relationship with the in-laws and so on.

Having lived here for more than 25 years now, I’ve got used to all this. Moreover, on my annual trip to the city I miss the friendly smiles, the namastes and the comforting chats I rely on. My thinking has been shaped by the town I live in. It’s taught me to care more about human beings than ideas and given me the time to look, observe and enjoy people.

It’s like being a child, not very high from the ground, noticing the ants, the weeds in the road cracks, the tiny wild flowers. The city child sees the high buildings and if lucky, the sky. Both views are important. My musings are about the small things in life (well, some of them actually pretty big). I have no ideas that affect the world….. so be it.

A pet theory-- most people fit into either of two categories: 

Those who hum as they work, and those who start humming another song loudly and continue till the former stops, unable to carry on her own tune.

Those who read books, and those who discuss the book without reading it.

Those who do their housework, and those who don't but advise all about how to do it.

Those who pay the auto fare, and those who give loud instructions to the auto driver and co-passengers.

Those who foot the bill in restaurants and theatres, and those who squirm out of it but are still discontented.

Those who work and are unappreciated, and those who don't but are praised.

Those who blow up balloons for parties, nursing their aching face muscles quietly, and those who burst the balloons energetically within minutes.

Those who work, and those who theorize.

Those who believe that everything is their fault, and those who believe such people.

Those who read the newspaper quietly, and those who hold forth about everything in it.

Those who attain a mature level of thinking early in life, and those who are immature even at 40 years of age.

Those who are embarrassed to ask for money that is theirs by right, and those who demand loans loud and clear.

Those who wear gold jewellery sparingly, and those who wear large amounts of costume jewellery.

Those who are in contact with childhood friends, and those who aren't.

Those who like plants, and those who talk about liking plants.

Those who, as guests, make the host feel capable and appreciated, and those who leave the host feeling sad and incompetent.

Those who remember birthdays, and those who don't.

Those who remember birthdays and wish, and those who remember but don't wish!

Those who are humourous, and those who are devoid of humour.

Those who can't sleep for hours during the day, and those who can.

Those who forget grudges and move on, and those who nurture grudges.

And those who belong mostly to the second category have a loud voice and are often crashing bores!                       

A few weeks away from my 50th birthday, I have come to realise that the greatest gift I can give myself is to accept a few things in my life, to know that there's nothing I can do about them except move on calmly.

That there will always be some people in front of whom I 'll be tongue-tied, at a loss for words. It could be because they are superior in intelligence and knowledge, but there will also be some whose incredible stupidity I shall never be able to match.

That the tunes in my mind will never sound the same when I give voice to them, the paintings I can see so clearly will never ever see a canvas.

That there will always be people who will love me unconditionally, for no reason that I can think of.

A poem/song/ movie or book that touches me WILL bring tears to my eyes, so instead of trying to hide them I must learn to wipe them away calmly.

That one by one my loved ones will make an exit and so will I.

That the gap left by them has to be filled in with happy memories and smiles.

I must learn to let my daughter go, to stop worrying about her so that she can go ahead with her life and stop worrying about me.

To accept that my inability to deal with certain matters, my dependence on others, is a problem to be dealt with. It doesn't make me despicable( in a personal world filled with super independent women)

That misunderstandings will always be a part of life, however clearly I feel I've spelt out something. Each person has her own mental sieve and the will to wield it in her own way.

To let be people who are grumpy and unsocial/ mean. Why should I let them spoil my joy?

Most importantly, to keep in mind that inspite of the 'there's some good in all of us' conditioning, I need not make excuses for all the mean people I come across. Surliness, pettiness and irresponsibility are excusable only till the age of 12.

That more than half of my life is over. There have been many joys and some sorrows, many right and wrong decisions---but one thing is definite. There isn't enough time to dwell on the past-- the present and the future are not long enough now to allow that indulgence!

And lastly , that my prose is often poetic but I cannot write a line of poetry.

Tears aren't necessarily a sign of weakness. Yes, sometimes, when I am exhausted or ill. Physically weak. But there are tears in my eyes at other times too. When I am touched by a loving gesture, when I hear of someone's bravery, something good that has happened to a deserving person, something bad that has happened to one who didn't deserve it.......the list is long and as I grow older, the list is growing longer.

So what? It's okay to be human, I guess. To participate in the joys and sorrows of other human beings, whether in the flesh or the characters in books.

Long ago I read a poem by, I think, George Herbert. It was about a little girl, Margaret, who cries when the yellow leaves fall. At 14, the poem seemed strange; there were no yellow leaves in my life then. Margaret's identifying with the falling leaves seemed stranger still.

Now, hair graying and the heart learning to cope with the many good-byes of life, I understand Margaret's tears. Leaves turn yellow and fall, and with every falling leaf I am reminded of our uncertainty and mortality. Parents grow older, friends lose touch, children follow their calling away from home......

But from now I hope my tears will be more about beautiful memories and re-unions. I shall learn to weather the sorrows of life and look forward to the joys.

Bend Before Strong Winds

Failure is vastly under-rated. It is probably the most important of all the lessons we should teach our children. Unfortunately it is the rare parent who takes the child's 'failure' casually or normally. So our kids grow up thinking they have to shine, no matter what. 

In my day to day life I face so many failures. Each day when I get up I make a mental list of things I've got to do. And invariably each night there are a few things left over. There was a time when this used to trouble me a lot. I would lie awake wondering why I hadn't had the will power to do that one last thing on my list….. Now I've realized that guilt, that sick feeling was because I never really prioritized things. And like most women, agonized over one or two undone things rather than feeling great about the ten things I'd achieved. 

It's not for nothing that one comes across sayings like 'failure is the stepping stone to success' when growing up. But it's true that one never takes it seriously. Right from the Bournvita kid who wins the race and pumps his elbow with a 'yes!' to the 96% student who is idolized, only 'achievers' are the favourites today. What happened to the bright but easy going tribe of students who were well read, creative, thinking young individuals? Well, some of them are trying to keep afloat in a sea of 'packages' all marked with someone else's names and some , unfortunately, have given up. 

It's very necessary that children should grow up with the realization that living a life fully doesn't mean only great marks and golden stars and an all A+ report card. The priority is to live well, sensibly and happily, with concern and consideration for self and the people around us; and for this to happen, one has to face failures, too. If a spider can go on making a web time and again, can't we, the evolved species, pick up the pieces and put them together again and again? 

If I had my way, I would abolish all exams till class V, not grade any student, and make only one thing compulsory – reading books. But I would definitely not do away with the Board exams. Why not teach kids not to attach too much importance to marks rather than remove the exam itself? Handling that pressure is important. One's daily life is filled with tensions – learning to handle tension is important, and not doing away with the tension itself. How many tense situations can I remove from my child's life? Facing problems makes one stronger and isn't it a fact that the mighty survive the onslaughts of life while the weak ones perish unknown?  

Am human, will fail. Am human, will learn from it. Let's keep it simple.

My Best Photographs

Some of my best photographs are the ones I've missed taking. Top among these is one of N--small frame, all of 5 years old, in jeans  and a thick blue pullover, shoulder length hair and normally pleasant expression replaced by obstinate lines as she looked at me defiantly--arms folded over 4 plump puppies hugged to her heart, trying not to let go as they wriggled. Then slowly the dawn of a sheepish smile, and all the while the utter bliss in the eyes.

As a dog lover, I did understand her feelings and was glad too to see her love for animals; but these were street dogs(pups) and I had been worried that their mother may bite N. So when I didn't allow her to go out, she had quietly slipped out and......

Fifteen years down the line, God knows where and how those dogs are, but in my mind they are still snuggled in my 5 turned 22 year old's arms.

Early morning in Hyderabad, 24 years ago, we were walking back to our hotel when we spotted four men getting off their cycles. Lungis folded knee length, large towels tied like baskets on their heads....Even as we watched they swarmed up to a bill board and loosening it, brought it down on the road. Intrigued we stopped to watch. And how we rued our camera less state as those men swung the huge board onto their towel wrapped heads, gracefully climbed onto their cycles and pedalled away calmly on that empty road, quite unaware that their beautifully synchronised act would forever live in my mind.

Going back from Ooty to Coimbatore, our car turned a corner and we suddenly came across the most ramshackle dwelling with an old man sitting in the warm sunlight, surrounded by the most amazing roses on bushes around him...and then we were gone.

A long summer road and heavily laden gul-mohur trees on either side, making a canopy for us as we sped by....A surreal effect, as if we were in a painting.

The alarm on my little one's tiny face when served a cauliflower subzi. She had confused it with  the mogra which grew abundantly in my mother's garden!!

Another missed photograph-- the astonishment on our pup's face as the ice-cube he was chasing suddenly melted, and his frantic searching.

And how can I ever forget the hailstones that burst over Bhilwara, covering terraces and roads almost instantaneously with their sago white roundness? Our normally dreary brown landscape was transformed into a fairy tale. And our 4 year old enjoyed  ' climbing the mountain' of hailstones on the terrace until it melted a few days later.

Not a single photograph in the album but all of them stored in my mind, forever.

In my own little way I have always been a story teller. But I have never consciously worked at the art of story-telling. Besides, I have never come across anyone who is a professional story teller, as in America. Maybe it's because practically every other house has a grandmother who has a fund of stories, generally mythological. I grew up in such a household, with a maternal grandmother who knew hundreds of stories, of kings and queens, of gods and goddesses, not to forget the stories about my mother's childhood, which seemed more fantastic to me than all the others!

Being a shy child, I never did any sort of public speaking. But my parents and friends always enjoyed my descriptions of people, incidents etc. and called it vivid and entertaining. Having inherited some of my father's great sense of humour, I could make people (read friends and relatives) laugh. All through my life I have read voraciously and I also loved writing letters. My enjoyment of language was, however, largely limited to the written word.

Then, in my 20s, two things happened that changed my life. I started teaching English to 15-17 year olds, whose usage of English was limited to the classroom. To get them interested in the texts I unconsciously started relying on facial expressions and gestures. Soon I realised that both the children and I were enjoying our English classes.

The 2nd change came about with the arrival of my daughter. When she was 2, she enjoyed my reading to her, but she actually screamed with laughter and her eyes went round in astonishment as I told her stories cooked up on the spur of the moment. From repetitive stories (of a little girl going to school with her father, facing obstacles like a big black dog, sudden rain etc. )we progressed to the universally loved The lion and the mouse, the hare and the tortoise, the Pied Piper(it was such fun to do the various rats!) and soon  moved on to stories of topical interest--The girl who didn't like combing her hair, the girl who got ready for school by herself (need I say more?!). As she grew a little older, I found this story telling grew more and more interactive, with my daughter supplying a lot of the twists and turns.

Somewhere around this time Subbu came into our lives--a lion cub glove puppet that enriched our lives beyond all expectations. Subbu could be naughty one moment, sad the other; he could cajole and coax; whisper, whimper, talk and roar-- storytelling with Subbu opened up a whole new world of sounds, voice modulation, even movements as I experimented with Subbu scratching his head, cocking his ear, twitching his tail--all by moving my fingers. The reward was my daughter's delighted squeals. She enjoyed it so much that Subbu, to her, was a real cub with a life of his own, not at all connected to my fingers!

These were private storytelling sessions where both my daughter and I were completely unselfconscious and often used a mixture of 3-4 languages, and where creativity led us into hysterically funny situations.

My storytelling sessions in school, however, were different. For one, they were always more controlled and I was conscious of the time I had at my disposal. I used only English, because improving their language was my focus. I generally chose stories with a message, but took good care to wrap up that message in layers of interesting situations. I often told them bits from the classics and was delighted when some read the whole book. I have always been interested in folk tales and enjoyed telling them to my students. Many of those students, now themselves parents, tell me that their interest in English started with those stories in class.

When I started telling stories to my students and my daughter, I did not realise that I would be enriching our lives so much. Along with the enjoyment we shared, there was the bonus of improving our language skills, gaining confidence, developing a sense of humour and definitely becoming more good-tempered.

What else could one need in life?! Those memories are the warmth of winter evenings. As I write this Subbu's presence on my now 22 year old's table assures me of the next storytelling session 8-10 years down the line, this time with grand-children!