Every Day Is Mother's Day

My best friend once remarked “dude, I’m not your mother, you should do it yourself”, when i kept on pestering her with too much things. Then I suddenly realised that I tend to seek and cherish the motherly side of all the females in my life more than anything else.

This is perhaps due to the influence of the three wonderful ladies who raised me. Amma, Ammamma and Shobanechi are the most important pieces of the jigsaw that was my childhood. They became audience to my childish blabbering with patience, fed me while I was hungry, taught me with stories and played with me like friends.

It doesn’t matter that I do not fit into that small attic under the staircase to play hide and seek or that I’m too far away to come home every afternoon for a mouth-watering lunch of rice mixed with fresh coconut “chammandi” and curd. I cannot stop needing them.

On this mother’s day, I cannot stop but think about the prominence of the mother and the motherly figures around us, doing what they are best at; “making us feel safe” from a world that can be so ugly and unsympathetic at times. I tend to use “ente amme” (oh! Mother) to express shock or surprise instead of the usual OMG!! Or Ayyo!!

During a time when headlines on violence committed against women seem to increase day by day, I feel so blessed to have grown up under the shadow of motherly love that has nourished the feminist in me.

Legend has it that the invincibility of the lord of Lanka depended on the sanctity of his queen Lady Mandodari. Angadha, the monkey was given the task to rape her and ensure Ravana’s defeat in the battle.

“So you are the Son of Ruma, only her son could do such a thing” said Mandodari, as she stabbed herself to death with a dragger (Lankalakshmi, C.N Sreekantan Nair). Those words must have shocked him and brought him back to his senses for sure. Angadha must have died of remorse about attempting to do such a thing later. But Angadha raised by the mothers of Kishkintha in “Ooru Kaaval” by Sarah Joseph can never do such a thing for he has seen the world through the eyes of his mothers, and possibly will disown the Ram of Ayodhya for the sake of the abandoned Seetha.

I set myself free.

According to the ancient scriptures, the victory over our emotions or “indriyajayam” is regarded as graduating to spiritual greatness. I have always wondered if that is all about becoming beyond everything that is human or just learning to be corpse and living the afterlife before death.

Laughter is my favourite. I laugh out loud, even among a strange crowd. There is an indescribable pleasure to let out happiness and joy that fills me. The waves of laughter seems reflecting back to me from the walls around, doubling the feeling of happiness.

Love comes second; I constantly remind my Mother and Grandmother that they are the most important. Even though it requires some amount of intoxication, I tell my friends that life would be truly dry without them. There is a best friend of mine, who has to undergo the torture of picking up my phone call in the middle of the night to listen to my random thoughts and nonsense about our friendship.

I remember telling my first crush that I loved her. She has ignored my existence ever since. Even though it was a disaster, I told her about it, and best of all, I discovered drinking.

It’s been a long time that I have wept; it is either due to my obsession to project a smiling face or my disinclination to announce my sadness. I educe my childhood when it used to be my weapon to get what I wanted and get away with something.

After most of those crying sessions sitting in the comfort of mother’s, grandparent’s or a loving teacher’s lap, I used to taste the traces of the dried stream of tears by protruding my tongue to all the part of my cheeks which I could manage to reach. The saltiness was perfect, like the salted lemonade that quenches your thirst on a summer afternoon; it gave a sudden relief to my mind that was longing to shatter like a glass vase kept on the brink of the table.

It’s magical, how each of the emotions plays an equally important role in our lives. How we often long to express our emotions of love, anger, sadness, lust and happiness. These emotions are gateways, doors that set the locked up mind free. Emotions which remain unexpressed never exist. When you don’t swear at a person who behaved inappropriately, it means that you don’t feel angry at all. When you don’t remind people that you love them, it means that you don’t love them at all. It is as simple as that.

Ammamma: My own goddess of food.

Providing social media services to some of the best restaurants have put me in constant contact with some of the people who love and make great food waking up the foodie in me. It has also given me a chance to learn a great deal on the art of cooking, complementing my own passion to experiment on new tastes. Love for good food is inscribed in the human gene. Legend has it that, when the sons of Kunthi and Madri had to go undercover as a penalty of them loosing a game with the Kauravas. Bheema, Kunthi’s third son, the fiercest of them all who later killed the hundred and one Kauravas and won the war chose to be a cook due to his love for food. He could resist Draupati’s fragrance but not his hunger.

Writing about food is a matter of great pleasure. So I find it important to write about my own goddess of food. My grandmother who i call Ammamma has a distinctive style of cooking which is often very hard to replicate due to her habit of putting her own signature into each dish that she prepares. I must confess that eating from our ancestral home in Vatakara for a period of time would make people have less appreciation for others cooking, making my mother, a wonderful cook herself, angry about me constantly complaining about her culinary skills after the vacations spent with Ammamma.

It is not her popular Biryani that is made during every festivity or her celebrated Sambar, appreciated by some of the dignified guests at our ancestral home, that I am smitten by. My personal favourite is the simple “Pulingari” prepared using cucumber or papaya along with tender jackfruit seeds or yam from the backyard. A flood forms in my mouth every time I think about it.

The strong flavor created due to the topping made of onion, mustard and uluva (Fenugreek) fried in coconut oil transforms the curry into something beyond description, acting as the touch of Midas. The aroma that comes out of the kitchen during the noon is so alluring that it makes you hungry even if you were full. It is a sheer pleasure relishing it by reducing the amount of rice in the plate. At the end of the meal even the fingers would seems edible, one would not wash them without licking the memories of the lunch which ended a few seconds ago. A fried fish and Mezhukku puratti (appetizers/starters) along with some hot literary and political discussions with my Grandfather and stories by my uncles and cousin would prolong the lunch time.

I always wonder what makes her cooking unique. It is perhaps the spoon, the same one which is used to choose the spices, including the powdered chilly and turmeric or is it the unique rhythm of mixing the curry with the long ladle. I often ask Ammamma how she makes the tastes linger on the tongue and how the flavor is felt deep in the lungs. With a smile Ammamma asks me not to over react and I should stop the habit of exaggerating things. “Cook for yourself and for your favourite people”, that my boy is the secret” she once revealed.

It’s the recipes that we make ourselves that are the best ones. No one is born a good cook. It takes years of practice to perfect the art of creating a mouth-watering masterpiece. The passion for the art of course is very important. “The fish curry will not taste good even with the Malabar tamarind if you don’t attend it while it boils in the earthen vessel with love”

Of falling sick, my Mother and Doctors…..

“Never lie to a doctor and a lawyer” goes the saying for they are life lines to our existence. I have not yet had an encounter with a lawyer, but doctors… yes they were one of the most ineludible part of my life since childhood. My mother used say that I was a “sookkedu neracha kotta”(a basket full of diseases), as I was allergic to almost everything around and fell ill at the first drop of the rain falling on my head.

The truth was that I loved falling sick for the extra care and attention that she gave me when I was ill. Keeping apart the weakness and the nausea, fever was more about the warm milk, rusk and mouth wateringly cooked, sugar coated bananas served in my bed.

A usual fever or a bronchitis attack would be cured by my mother’s home remedies and the warmth of her love; she has a special gift to sense my pain. Every time I lose my breath in the middle of the night I hear the “tick” sound of the stove lighter to heat water and the “Thud” sound of opening the home remedy for bronchitis, but when things went really bad, I was taken to a doctor. The pediatrician was a kind man who prescribed only edible medicines, i.e. pills that one could swallow without difficulty and syrups that had a pleasant taste.

There were also doctors that I despised back then, one among them is the is the most distinguished doctor in my place, who later saved my life twice, once when I was completely down with bronchitis and another time when I caught jaundice. Another one was the dentist who found pleasure in heartlessly pulling my milk tooth’s out. Good Goddess!!! I used to yell my throat out every time we visited a dentist. The dentist chair was my kryptonite… I fought vigorously to avoid the torture chair. My father had to sit in the chair to hold me steady.

Every time I recalled the dentist’s chair it reminded me of the Saw movie for some reason. Yes there is positive side for everything and for a dental appointment back then it was the comic book and the ice cream that I was bestowed upon. Later I devised my own “less pain” method to pull my tooth out, though a very bloody business; it spared me the horror of the masked, grim guy who resembled the Nazi torture expert.

Far away from home, falling sick is the worst scenario as I am beyond the warmth of father’s hug, the super natural healing power of my mother’s home remedies and friendly doctors of my home town. Perhaps the most intimidating place is the college dispensary and its indifferent doctor who wisely diagnosed jaundice as a “B- complex/ vitamin deficiency combined with lack of sleep”. He is more dangerous than the disease itself.

By the time I reached home I was weak with my eyes as yellow as gold.I heard the doctor who treated me back at home for a high level bilirubin, telling my dad that the doctor at the college dispensary must be a real idiot. I try my best to stay away from diseases and that dispensary these days, with sympathy for the unsuspecting victims like the boy who went to the ICU for a contaminated drip.

Expression.....

Cannot neglect writing anymore, the blogger tried very hard to find solace in many other things around him. I realise that this is the only method of expression that I ‘am comfortable with at this point of time. From the last blog post to this one I was not taking a break. It was not a matter of a writer’s block either. It was an experiment, rather a search for another apt mode of expression. A mode of expression for me is a place where I can put down the heavy bag of suffocating thoughts that I carry.

I tried a lot of stupid things during my search; I took to drinking and other sort of method to weaken the strong sense social conduct that I fear of breaching while I speak my mind. By Speaking out loud, I fear might be like puking at the wrongs of the society itself setting free all the butterflies that rumble in my stomach, but then those wrongs should be made right, I should be able to clean the undigested thoughts myself by finding solutions, if not I would reduce to the levels of the drunkard that shouts verbal abuses at people around him before falling asleep in the footpath. One can easily get a false sense of valour, to do anything and everything while being half asleep under the warmth of the fire that an intoxicant fills the nervous system but nothing lasts forever. The truth is the intoxicant only takes away the sanity; nobody heeds the words of the insane. Some of the people proclaimed as geniuses are also well-known worshippers of intoxication, but the fact is that their creativity worked only when they had a clear mind. I also realise that there is no high that can match the joy of artistic creation.

Only the basic instincts remain strong while one is drunk, one might fall asleep, or might have a strong urge to either eat or mate, but not the medium or the platform of expression that one seeks. It is terrible when one has ideas exploding within him but is not able to find a method to express it. I often experience a similar feeling due to the bronchitis that I suffer from, making me wake up from a deep slumber and grasp for some air, its painful, it is a time when I feel humble, I weep at my inability to take in some air, something that is all around. This is similar to the time when we are not able to express properly.

The whole purpose of life is to choose the right mode of expression. It can be anything that one is good at. But for the common good, we should avoid the path of evil (the lyrics of a song goes like this….”I may be bad, But I’m perfectly good at it”….what the f*#k…… what s so good about being bad.”). When one finds a method to express the creativity, one becomes an artist. An artist is nothing but a true human being, who cares for his fellow beings.

First Vote

This blogger is very excited as tomorrow he is going to cast his first vote and be a responsible citizen. He is all set to climb the 18 steps to the ultimate pilgrimage of democracy, the ‘Shabarimala’ of liberty, equality, justice and freedom. It’s been a long wait. It’s been a long wait, from the day he learned about the basis of government formation in the country.

At first he was surprised to hear that it was the common man who determined the powerful offices that governed the country. It shocked him at first because he had only heard the stories of Kings, Emperors and fables of his ancestors who were land lords. It’s been 10 years since his favourite Civics teacher changed all his ideas on how the administration took place in his country. He also learned that all men were equal and that everybody had the same rights and responsibilities and it was a much better feeling. Nobody had to suffer from tyranny.

He is thankful to the millions of brave freedom fighters who had sacrificed their lives for the liberation of their country from the 100 years of foreign exploitation and also salutations to Mahatma Gandhi, the messiah who lead them all to their ultimate goal. one should not let these builders of democracy down by not choosing to vote.
He is not sure if Kerala is going to colour itself' 'Red' this time. But is our responsibility to colour ourselves with patriotism. It is after all good to be equal among equals. Evolution is a gradual process, we are still evolving..... a class less society will come to existence. All we have to do is wait.

Perhaps the voter who waits in long queue every 5 years is like the cat" TOM" in TOMnJERRY..... wait ever happens to him, he never gives up. Whenever he fails he thinks of new plans to trap JERRY..... Like the old man Santiago.....
Let the remedies like the lok pal bill come to existence. Let equality and transparency spread everywhere.

Writers Block

I am like a seriously ill patient who is unlikely of recovery
I am the story teller who has run out of stories
I am like a cigarette Burned to the stub
Suck me deeply and I am sure-
I cannot heat your nerves any more
I remember the days, when I carried you
To places that you had never seen
Places that you wished to remain forever
Together we jumped over the moon
We rescued caged love, we killed the angry beast
And we lived happily ever after
My stories made you drown in deep sorrow
So did it take you to hills of joy
I made you dream of lions of Africa
And of the beautiful vampires
I am a sick plagiarist, a liar
Telling you the stories of others
And the nonsense I made up myself
Just to grab your attention
Now I am like the lonely tree
Atop the dry mountain, Leafless and fruitless
My roots run into depths I cannot fathom
I cannot move but weep on the dead spring