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!