The little neighborhood on the banks of a green river where I spent all my childhood was like a ghost town when I visited it a few years ago. The alleys were much narrower than I had remembered them, closing in, claustrophobic. The houses used to be much bigger in my childhood. Now they all seemed to have shrunk, aged.
And I couldn’t find my friends. Not a single one.
I sometimes wonder whether I had imagined it all. The big gang, hide-and-seek games in a cocoa grove, radio performances, ramparts of the ancient temple ruins, and lily ponds around school.
“School? Oh I hated school—don’t have any pleasant memories,” said one gang member when I met her in Chennai briefly, 10 years ago.
The Orkut community on my neighborhood has no familiar faces. Maybe I never existed there.
Or maybe I was always a visitor, an amusing outsider. “Gosh, your Malayalam has such a strong Tamil accent! You’ll never get it right!”
Being an outsider—oh, I do it well.
“Do us a favor—don’t even attempt to speak in Hindi! Your accent is atrocious!”
“You know how Tamilians spell moon? Yem-wo-yet another wo-yen!”
“Oh God, don’t be stupid! Don’t you know Torrance is very unsafe? Don’t go walking alone like you do back home!”
“How come you are staying here? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a South Indian locality?”
“It’s a Toronto Bengali Drama Club picnic. I know they are all complete strangers and you will not understand a word of what we speak, but you’ll have us! Do come along!”
Strange places all. The entire world.
“Madam, aayiye madam! Beautiful sarees madam!” touts hail me from shops in my hometown.
“Meenakshi very powerful Goddess, madam. Do archanai madam!” they sell my own God to me.
And dammit, where are my old friends?
“Remember you used to organize tennicoit matches for me and my friends?” I ask my sister.
“Really? I don’t remember,” she answers me.
“Remember you used to tell me about Mark Tully and what a good friend of India he is? I bought you a book by him,” I tell my dad.
“I don’t know Mark Tully and I have never told you about him!” he insists.
Where are my old friends who can endorse at least some memories?
As brain cells die, as friends disappear as if they never existed, as I wander like a nomad, the place I belong to has become mythical, held together by a few snatches of tangible evidence—my mom’s repertoire of typical phrases that not many people use in everyday Tamil nowadays; the muffler that soothed many a fevered brow and that stayed with my parents for almost 40 years; my favorite Tamil movie songs whose lyrics I remember with brilliant clarity even after 15 years; and the group of writers/directors/actors/artists who shaped my sensibilities.
Now, one of my favorite writers is dead.
Classmate of Abdul Kalam, developer of the Electronic Voting Machine, versatile writer/script writer, a man who brought in a new epoch in Tamil popular literature, opinion leader—Wikipedia and Hindu Online eulogize him.
Sujatha was all that and a lot more. Laugh-out-loud wit, breezy style, complex plots, layered narrative, and forays into his interest areas of archeology, astrophysics, biotechnology, carnatic music, Tamil literature, and sociology—his works are a treat to read.
I used to fantasize about his lawyer duo Ganesh-Vasanth, the yin and yang of logic-science-justice and bawdy jokes-adjustable ethics; I fell in love with his smart-alecky robotic dog Gino; I was enthralled by his description of certain street acts that were performed in colonial India during the 1850s; I was moved to tears by his complete understanding of being a woman in Eppothum Penn (which some claim is similar to the work of Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex); I was fanatic about his Tamil version of Agent 007, Vikram…
He introduced holograms, sex, value crisis, RAW, occult, folktates, iambic pentameter, and Mexican laundress joke to me. He opened up the world for me, gave it to me in simple language, wrapped it up in his zany sense of humor. He inspired me to write.
Oh Sujatha!
Preeti: “You are such a philistine! And a sexist! You know, women can do everything that men can do!”
Vikram: “I can pee on a wall standing up. Can you?”
P.P.S: Looks like it is a pan-Asian diaspora story--this home inside oneself and not something tangible outside. The following article by Pico Iyer took my breath away by the sheer synchronicity of thoughts. Thanks R for sending it to me!
http://www.time.com/time/asia/2003/journey/story.html
And I couldn’t find my friends. Not a single one.
I sometimes wonder whether I had imagined it all. The big gang, hide-and-seek games in a cocoa grove, radio performances, ramparts of the ancient temple ruins, and lily ponds around school.
“School? Oh I hated school—don’t have any pleasant memories,” said one gang member when I met her in Chennai briefly, 10 years ago.
The Orkut community on my neighborhood has no familiar faces. Maybe I never existed there.
Or maybe I was always a visitor, an amusing outsider. “Gosh, your Malayalam has such a strong Tamil accent! You’ll never get it right!”
Being an outsider—oh, I do it well.
“Do us a favor—don’t even attempt to speak in Hindi! Your accent is atrocious!”
“You know how Tamilians spell moon? Yem-wo-yet another wo-yen!”
“Oh God, don’t be stupid! Don’t you know Torrance is very unsafe? Don’t go walking alone like you do back home!”
“How come you are staying here? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a South Indian locality?”
“It’s a Toronto Bengali Drama Club picnic. I know they are all complete strangers and you will not understand a word of what we speak, but you’ll have us! Do come along!”
Strange places all. The entire world.
“Madam, aayiye madam! Beautiful sarees madam!” touts hail me from shops in my hometown.
“Meenakshi very powerful Goddess, madam. Do archanai madam!” they sell my own God to me.
And dammit, where are my old friends?
“Remember you used to organize tennicoit matches for me and my friends?” I ask my sister.
“Really? I don’t remember,” she answers me.
“Remember you used to tell me about Mark Tully and what a good friend of India he is? I bought you a book by him,” I tell my dad.
“I don’t know Mark Tully and I have never told you about him!” he insists.
Where are my old friends who can endorse at least some memories?
As brain cells die, as friends disappear as if they never existed, as I wander like a nomad, the place I belong to has become mythical, held together by a few snatches of tangible evidence—my mom’s repertoire of typical phrases that not many people use in everyday Tamil nowadays; the muffler that soothed many a fevered brow and that stayed with my parents for almost 40 years; my favorite Tamil movie songs whose lyrics I remember with brilliant clarity even after 15 years; and the group of writers/directors/actors/artists who shaped my sensibilities.
Now, one of my favorite writers is dead.
Classmate of Abdul Kalam, developer of the Electronic Voting Machine, versatile writer/script writer, a man who brought in a new epoch in Tamil popular literature, opinion leader—Wikipedia and Hindu Online eulogize him.
Sujatha was all that and a lot more. Laugh-out-loud wit, breezy style, complex plots, layered narrative, and forays into his interest areas of archeology, astrophysics, biotechnology, carnatic music, Tamil literature, and sociology—his works are a treat to read.
I used to fantasize about his lawyer duo Ganesh-Vasanth, the yin and yang of logic-science-justice and bawdy jokes-adjustable ethics; I fell in love with his smart-alecky robotic dog Gino; I was enthralled by his description of certain street acts that were performed in colonial India during the 1850s; I was moved to tears by his complete understanding of being a woman in Eppothum Penn (which some claim is similar to the work of Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex); I was fanatic about his Tamil version of Agent 007, Vikram…
He introduced holograms, sex, value crisis, RAW, occult, folktates, iambic pentameter, and Mexican laundress joke to me. He opened up the world for me, gave it to me in simple language, wrapped it up in his zany sense of humor. He inspired me to write.
Oh Sujatha!
Preeti: “You are such a philistine! And a sexist! You know, women can do everything that men can do!”
Vikram: “I can pee on a wall standing up. Can you?”
P.P.S: Looks like it is a pan-Asian diaspora story--this home inside oneself and not something tangible outside. The following article by Pico Iyer took my breath away by the sheer synchronicity of thoughts. Thanks R for sending it to me!
http://www.time.com/time/asia/2003/journey/story.html
Comments
Now things are not all that bleak I guess. Thankfully, we have memory for retaining our sense of the self. Individual memory is fallible, but, thankfully again, we have a social memory, perhaps not in a city like Bombay. But in smaller towns like Chennai or Kolkata I hope there is still a body politic and civil, which able to articulate the self-image of its memebers and help the members contextualise themselves.
For an individual bereft of such social support structure the best thing to do is to read and write. Read about the favourite period in teh past and write one's own experiences for posterity. That way you'll remember yourself and people will remember you. Look at À la recherche du temps perdu.
One more name dropping: Bergson. This time I'll let Wiki do the talking. This is from the entry on Durantion.
In An Introduction to Metaphysics, Bergson presents three images of the Duration to acquaint the reader with the idea. The first is that of two spools, one unrolling to represent the continuous flow of ageing as one feels oneself moving toward the end of their life span, the other a thread rolling into a ball to represent the continuous growth of memory as a person's past follows them. Indeed, for Bergson, consciousness equals memory.
PS: Apologies for the long comment and may I link your blog to mine?
It is clear that you are not familiar with the reality of the Tam Bram community. I recently attended a cousin's wedding in Chennai. Young people below the age of 35 would've numbered perhaps around 25. The rest of the crowd was made up by 60+ people, left behind in great comfort and great loneliness by their NRI kids. They sat together, reminisced about the good old days and ended looking more old and haggard, totally defeated by the march of time. It was depressing, to say the least.
There ain't no body politic to contextualize us in India anymore.
Another friend, in response to this post, lamented that she lost a big part of her memories when her mom passed away recently. Now she has nobody to complete partially remembered anecdotes...
Nice quote, although I don't agree with it - I am a great here-and-nower...
I have my own rant about the TamBram community to add to yours.
As a clan, we go out of our way to avoid helping our kith and kin.
How I wish I was born a Marwari!!!
ps: I was one of the few +35 -60 at that wedding.