Granny Potter!!!!

Chronicles of Naani-maaa:)

Granny Potter!!!!

Chronicles of Naani-maaa :)
Intro: Like most Indian families, when the schools shut or we were too young, we used to go to our maternal grandparents house in Jamshedpur every year for vacations. My mother being the second sibling, the eldest sister lived then in MP and younger brother in Jamshedpur itself. The rule laid down by my Granpa then was simple but loud and clear. Since the house was not too big, the visits of both sisters in Jamshedpur had to be one by one. First one sister and family would come and just when they are about to leave, the last week the second sister would come and join the family. This way the entire cousin lot interacted for one week in total. Great idea but in this fast paced society, this is one such tradition that is dying fast….
The cousin lot….
Delhi Kids (US): Me and 3 years elder sister Sangeeta
The MP Bros: Ramesh 4 months elder and 5+ years older bro Rajesh
Jampot Bachha: 4 months younger than me Kartik and (decade little kid sister Kritika not our generation anyways.)
FYI
Paati: Here Naani maternal side
Tata: Tata as in Tata Nagar, Jamshedpur and also Granpa in Tamil
Naiyee: White butter boiled and made to a southy ghee.

The Chronicles of Naani-maaa, well I am told they were mainly mine…read on…if you may! I can’t say…please though!

Paati: And then you put your foot into our Kadma (Tata Nagar) house latrine and your foot got badly struck…With super irritated shrilled pitch of your howls, and an absolute wrecked elder sister of yours, in all of 3 years or more your record of waking up the entire locality of Jamshedpur that morning should still be pretty much intact…

Me: The shrillness is still there, but in giggles now…But Paati I am on my father Na… the genes of loudspeaker voice comes from His Highness you see…Pat comes the reply, but then I also had adamancy and stubbornness mixed with the above mentioned shrill voice. A trait that I quite carefully exhibited and only when I was in need of something…How clever!

Paati: Do you constipate now? (Excuse me paati?) I mean, you constipated quite bad when you were little…that year when you came for vacations to Jamshedpur in 1983 or 84…You were some 5 years old…we had to use a famous soap then called'OK'…The screechy howls were back again and yet you just wouldn’t do it…It hurt you alright … and though you would start happily, suddenly you would stop…Tch! what a pain? You would keep it in an in-between stage and refuse to pop it out and insist you have to getup too as your legs hurt sitting in the latrine…To get you to do it was a daunting excersize… The entire family in the house would stop and watch the show asking “kiya? Vanduda? We never thanked god that much after each day…

Me: Oh My God Paati you are really Gross…what about the fact that Tata beat me because I plucked just a rose from his most exquisite garden…I was so young, how would I know? :(

Paati: Arey, don’t you say a word about him…he never could beat you…Everyone was so scared of your howls that they thought it was better to bear the brunt rather…Though you used this weapon quite effortlessly and do I say regularly...For poor Tata, his garden was everything just like Ashok Kumar in the film Khoobsoorat …and to pluck a flower was difficult yes but not impossible…but know what you would do? You would quietly go in the afternoons and mess up with the roses. Some mad girl had taught you how to scrape rose-petals and apply them on your nails as nail polish…Since we had most color of roses, you wanted a different shade everyday…and so child it was never one single rose…it was one single rose everyday…

Me: Ooops, paati sorry about that…Yes I did that but look at the irony of it…I hardly ever apply nail paints these days…But paati Ramesh used to cheat me on Gold Spot and Campa caps…why the heck, what would that do to him anyways…those were mine…just because he was older by silly 4 months…

(Paati swaying her head from left to right in slow motion reminded me of the girl in Ek chidiya anek chidiya…haha…)

Paati: Woh tum sab ajeeb thay (You all were weird) Rajesh loved to pick on road sides to collect matches (box), Sangeeta (my sis) loved pens, Kartik loved to simply sharpen pencils and loved to see the flowering of the wood above the sharpener and get slaps from his father…and Ramesh and you were mad about caps of Campa and Gold Spot and other drinks…apparently there was something behind the cap of these cold-drinks.. Mickey, Minnie Mouse…and you guys smelled the rubber to identify if it was a cola or an orange juice…and play some silly game…

Me: Okay, but tell me something, have I ever embarrassed that bad?

Paati: Of course you always embarrassed everyone; you would do the unexpected…we would hide Nayee/ghee somewhere and in order to eat it you would drop flour, coffee powder all over you…when you were very young, you caught hold of a cockroach, and that almost would have become your meal, had your mother not picked you in time…all this…again while you were sitting to…you know…hahahaha…

Me: Eeeeks, Paati if there is any one thing on earth I am scared off, that would have to be the one and only – Stupid Cockroach…Also, surely I think I was at my best behavior during ..Yes I know it! HeHe. But paati, don’t tell me everything was just me…We were five, Rajesh the eldest, Sangeeta after that…Ramesh, I and then Karthik… How is it that you have only me as a culprit… surely you would have stories of them too right….

Paati: What is a child that is not naughty, but this naughty, baba re… while all children were naughty, you stood out…you have bothered us so much in the past when you were all of 5 years and before…that even now when it comes to stories, it is only yours that comes to my mind the most… Things like aunty can I have a toffee, despite some 100 times told by your mother to not ask in public…you would ask for a toffee and to that your mother would lightly pinch and you would embarrass her by crying like a thunder saying she beat you…in front of everyone…

Me: Ha-ha Paati after all, I made the stay memorable, didn’t I?…Being naughty is nice paati, kids should be a bunch of trouble…But I am amazed, you have so much in your memory even after 83 years…how come paati…You are so cool…

Paati: These are not mere memories kanna; these are moments etched on my skin…. I am happy the way I am and as long I live, I just hope I am never a burden or bed ridden…God give me strength else take me…That’s all…and Sujju kutti…by the way, I still love plain non-masala Maggie…you used to make ages ago…in Sahibabad…

Me & Paati: What???? "School se aate dhoom machaate, ek hee baat hamesha dohraate, la la la la bhookh lagee hai.... Maagie Maagie Maagie" (Ha Ha Ha Chorus)

Me:…How am I glad that this visit happened and I could get her to my home and keep her here for a week and give her rest and maggie;) I agree the chronicles don’t really say anything much nice about me, but know what, I thoroughly enjoyed…There are still so many stories I need to re-hear and write…

O’ Paati, you don’t even want to know what you mean to me……I need a century from you now…Best wishes and TOUCH WOOD!

The (Mel) Bourne Identity!

The (Mel) Bourne Identity!
www.assault-mugging-rape.com: One would dread a website like this. Hopefully there shouldn’t be any but there is a lot www can decipher for the sufferance in the World today. The cobweb of factors, shattering names of countries and putting several nations to shame and embarrassment can be defined by these factors alone. WWW might be the new World Wide Web to us, but since time immemorial Women, Wealth & Wine have been the prime reasons for destruction of one and many. Most historical wars have been fought on the pretext of these three factors and in recent times, think of any hi-profile case and you would find one of these factors as reasons for the shocking cases we hear. Unless Religion is one latest aspect you would want to add. Amazingly the economics of WWW is anything but shrinking! And to cite that 3 countries come immediately to my mind!

Consider this! After all the splashes of horrid pictures, headline news items, debates, unending discussions etc – Assault is clearly now the new sick name for Australia (Melbourne). South Africa has always been the epitome for nefarious activities; prostitution, muggings being the favorite pastime. Even though Johannesburg has the dubious distinction of being the crime capital of world, you don’t want to deny the country its Kudos for hosting IPL at such short notice, Well done at that even while the ‘Wanderers’ kept busy mugging about…

But then, YET the winning tag in this loser’s category would perhaps go hands down to India – Unfortunate that GOA is fast becoming the new rape haunt, ask the Germans? Italians? Russians? Israelis? Lebanese? Surely, this one legacy is indeed going far and wide! And nothing to be proud about this part of Incredible India really!

Been there and done that? Yes and No. Somebody like me, who has taken a while to like countries despite being better and convenient in lot of ways than India, Australia was one place I truly liked. And why not…unlike other countries, there people Smiled. Aussies are known to be friendly; they could ask you for a drink even at 6 AM in the morning or offer you pizzas for practically no agenda and just few good moments of chatter. But then way back in 2003, on my way back from work, I was hounded by a group of drunken boys ironically in Melbourne. At a taxi stand, they tried playing Ringa-Ringa with me in the centre as my heart inconveniently kept coming to mouth. I realized I wasn’t alone and yet scared. To my relief; they just wanted to know what that little dot in the centre on my forehead was called. They wondered if one had to get a Bindi tattooed. I was amused, thinking how drunken gibberish always had to get to such extreme levels… They left me with no harm and in fact even let me hail a taxi before them. Gracias! It was a weird experience – I knew I was lucky; but then Wine of WWW had clearly been the culprit.

Cut to the land of safaris and you would wonder why a country like South Africa is third world at all? Pray, terms like apartheid had become history, brilliant infrastructure and better economy had taken over (face it! A Rand is any day good enough than a Rupee). Then what’s stopping them from crossing the line of the so called third world tag? Apart from many reasons I am sure, I realized the basic problems hadn’t been eradicated. As put in crisply by a black cab driver, the problems had just been swept under the crevices of flyovers and highways. He asked me to point him a single ‘White’ beggar and I couldn’t! Also both the times in 2003 & 2008, we were instructed strictly by our salary givers not to venture outside of our hotels: alone or even in groups – irrespective of the gender. Venturing after 6 Pm in the evening was entirely at our own risk. Muggers had been known to shoot/stab in desperation even for meager Rands! And so I realized “Wealth” of WWW or the lack of it had taken its toll….

But then I never go to India. I live there. I belong there. I am also somewhere responsible for what is happening there. While this page is not about writing goody-goody things about India, it is about stating the obvious becoming of the beautiful country. Sadly, India is coming a long way from being safe and is fast becoming anything but a secured haven for people and especially for women. From killing of unborn female fetuses to raping married women, India is indeed going from bad to worse in its reputation. Woman of the three cardinal factors is becoming a cause for concern now. Tourist destination of GOA has been hitting world headlines for sometime, just as Melbourne news is echoing our shores. Just that we don’t realize, that we are at the peak of not one but all the three of the W factors. A few incidents cannot make a country bad and this goes for India too. Just that for India few has become far from few, sadly a mere adjective!

But then I am lucky that my experiences of other countries were rather decent, but then there is also one other thing. You do not need Amitabh Bachhan to reject his well earned honor when we haven’t tried to be careful enough. By saying this, I am by no means undermining what happened to these boys in Melbourne. It is indeed sorry state of affairs, but then one should learn from it and discouraging going to Australia is not a solution! If that is the case, then after Mumbai attacks no one should ever come to India.

That it is high time we realize, no place in the world is safe now…. Not Melbourne, Not Johannesburg, Not Goa, Not any place on earth… Clearly you do not need a travel insurance alone to remain safe abroad or an LIC policy for security at home. The need of hour is simply to be little more sensible. No matter what we say the mantra for today is indeed….Better safe than sorry!
By: Sujatha Srinivas