Sunday, May 27, 2007

Where Is The Mid-day Moon?


I have been pleading with my husband to take me to a movie,,since...one and half months..(yeah...that long)...,You see,..he promised to take me to see one atleast once in a month in a fit of magnanimity when anasuya went away for her M.S.and i found myself quite alone and twiddling my thumbs......Now he is whiling away with lame excuses...It is admirable...the ingenuity with which finds reasons to justify himself..." let"s go on week days,..sundays and saturdays are too crowded"..." On week days ofcource he has his work and could not free himself....Ofcource, i don"t grumble..Those days are over...passe.... when one felt really enthused to watch a movie,..for fun..for it"s own sake...for the excitement it offered...for the pleasure of watching our favourite stars and directors.....for satisfying our own creative faculties with critical observations....Nowadays we watch films just to kill time...

Yeah...those were the days....As kids we waited for the big day...since ours was not a very much film going family,,,we had to wait for some big occasions like the coming of relatives or term holidays to gather courage to ask dad"s permission or until the elders themselves felt like having a day out to go for a movie...or conspire with the aunts and cousins to beef up our pleas.... And what a commotion on that day.... One wanted to watch everything from the beginning..and i used to feel very bad if i missed any portion of it..

When arunathai and Nirmala took charge, there used to be so much hullabaloo....no less suspense ridden than the movies themselves....The permission from those great authorities above,.. always came in at the last minute...there was the worry over whether we could get rickshaws in time...It seemed as if all of the rickshaw men were in league just to keep us from going to the theater..Either none would come forth or there were simply none on road to be called for...which till then looked like to be crawling with them...or those that we did get, asked exorbitant fares...My wily aunts...bless them....they wont be cowed down...they packed in as many of us as they can and beat the rickshaw wallas at their own game and saved on the extra vehicle...

Then there was the other great worry over whether we can get tickets....We could.. thank god..and there is ample time too before the show could begin...Next step is the selection the seats..( they were not the A/c halls of today, you see ).one searched for seats that had fans over them and the usual haggling over who should sit where...Invariably there are going to be taller people at the front rows and one had to strain ,peep,bend at impossible angles to watch the film,,...and it goes to our credit that we did all that with a degree of commitment ,never found otherwise for anything else...

Then started the mandatory "edukondala swami'ekkaadunnavayya" and next,"namo venkatesa'namo thirumalesa"...I have never seen any theater in andhra pradesh those days which started the show without those two songs....We lost ourselves in pleasurable anticipation.....First the lights would be dimmed and switched off...The screen would come alive with a picture of lord Venkateswara, ANDHRULA AARADHYA DIVAM,as they say....next came a big cross mark admonishing the viewers to keep silent...other warnings not to put our legs up in the rows in front...not to smoke....and at the very next instant came a slide of beedi katta ,recommending us to always smoke THAAPI BEEDIS...THIS THEATER IS SERVICED BY so and so firm....

Then,in those days there used to be a compulsory screening of INDIAN NEWS REEL...I can still rember the tune and voice of the back screen anchor who spoke telugu in a singsong hindi accent...When Gandhi or Nehru were shown in the news the viewers spontaneously broke in to an applause,clapping....ooooooh.....People still respected those leaders...

Next followed three hours of unmitigated entertainment....Usually it started with a devotional song during which the heroine or the matron ,sat before her pooja place and belted out the song ,gathering the entire family ,and characters got introduced..If not so, then at least at the end the film, the heroine sings it ...mostly calling upon gods to protect her MANGALYAM or to prove her virtue to suspecting husband and in-laws....The usual elaborate fight sequences,which i found distasteful,but my brothers enjoyed immensely....One or two catchy cabaret numbers ( a jyothilakshmi song was must) were there too to pep up the spirits of menfolk..and i cried buckets seeing the hardships the lead pair went through.....at the wiles of Suryakantham,as she teased the hapless heroine....at the scheming RAJANALA or Satyanarayana as they plotted to eliminate the hero...

The best kind of entertainment came from the folk fiction...where the heroes hopped about sporting unbelievably tight stretch pants like the medieval French, and loose rajastani tunics and short modern day crops of curly hair wigs......You will never have a clue to which race they belonged...definitely not Indian....The heroines sailed in wearing the weirdest of dresses, glittering ornaments and looked like Christmas trees..There were magic wands,hair raising adventures..rib tickling comedies,amazing feats ( as advertised )...yes..desi forms of Harry Potters and mummies...Viewers returned fully satisfied having gone through all the nine exciting emotions...

These folk fictions are best seen in touring talkies...I had seen my share of touring talkies as dad got posted to various godforsaken places in the state...Most of them had at least two of theb touring talkies to their credit..and the fun of it was just memorable...Once the hero,in raptures of love, was singing "where is the mid day moon?"obviously ,he meant the heroine...".Pagati poota chandra binbam kanipinchenu,edi?edi?"..Just then the the sheets over the theater roof sailed away in a gust of unusual wind and moon broke out smiling through.... All of the viewers burst into spontaneous laughter..

At the end of it all, there used to be jana gana mana while the tricolor fluttered on the screen and some,. nay, in fact most of the people slipped out...Dad never approved of this,so we stood up and came out only after the anthem.. with beaming faces and hungry stomaches ,..and for two days ,went remembering the scenes...Why not?..After all.movies were the only entertainment for us...No television,no parks or public places that one can visit...

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Maharshi And The Murugan





Lately i have been reading RAMANASRAMA LEKHALU, a detailed treatise on Ramana Maharshi and it was such a joy....Exciting and at the same time strangely soothing...i found myself riding on a wave of bliss....only there is no ebb to this one...,


To be sure, Ramana was no stranger in the sense ,that it was not as if i have heard of him for the first time....When i was a child of ten, i caught hold of RAMANASRAMA LEKHALU,and with the naivete that comes at such an age , thought i could understand it and read it through...( To think that since i knew ABCD,i could read anything..:).The other day,during a discussion with one of my cousins a mention of this book was made.Both she and me are now at a stage and age of semi retirement,having discharged our responsibilities...and i told her that i read it long back...in my fifth class....She was surprised and with a new look of reverence on her face enquired "oh''now..did you?."..."yes.." i told her.."i remember having read how he made a drink out of the gruel brought by a poor farmer,how he made cups out of used up coconut shells,how he narrated the recipe on making a chutney of raw mangoes and bitter gourd"....She split her sides on hearing this...

Well..but ofcource i was aware of his philosophy, about his introspection of WHO AM I?, and his greatness..Had heard of him and knew HERE is pure gold..,but this is the first time i was reading of him in detail...and what a legend?...

But , this post is not about my eulogies of him...He does not need any credentials, that too from me..It is about one significant fact, a strong belief of his followers, that he was an incarnation of lord Subrahmanya ...Many citations have been made in the book in this regard,....Many instances of his followers experiencing his oneness with the lord...Though the maharshi himself was never said to have admitted to this or for that matter , to any other god either...It seems he scrupulously avoided being made a godhead and vehemently opposed to poojas or rituals performed to his person...It is only to some close devotees and at rare instances,that he allowed sharing this confidence...He was once heard to have muttered ANGE SWAMI INGE VANDHIRIKKAR..to someone who thought of making a trip to Thiruthani...

I know it is a confusing task to define god and delineate multiple gods out of the eternal one...yet,still,it is a widely held belief that he takes on many forms and avataars...Personally, i myself don"t have any problem in believing it...After all, if you believe there is only one ,---- matter,energy,or god or some other thing---and it can become supernovas,galaxies,stars,planets,water,fire,fish,animal,subbarao and kanaka rao and tom, dick and harry,..it could easily become Ram,Krishna,siva and subrahmanya also..

Having read this allusion of maharshi to the lord,i was struck by this similarity in appearance in both the forms...The same standing up figure, staff in hand...the loin cloth..and the smiling face aglow with the fire of knowledge...After all,HE was GURUGUHA...isn"t he? a teacher..The only difference being maharshi was an old man while the lord murugan was a boy...

It is interesting to observe how different forms of gods come to be venerated....Sai baba"s form is invariably worshipped as an old man..Never in his youthful figure......Krishna"s upasana roopam is as a crawling child stealing butter...Shiva is worshipped as a symbol of fertility,not as an image..while skanda is always a boy...There might be a reason, a charm ,behind these appearances...or else why would they draw multitudes of people to them spell bound?..It was said,Sai baba cautioned a painter as he tried to capture him on canvas,to be careful in drawing his portrait as,---in his own words--Hum galli galli mein me rehnewale hai----And i sincerely believe there is a DEVA RAHASYAM too behind maharshi"s attire...

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Padma

Padma was no girl..and for a long time i wondered why he was given a girl"s name....or whether i heard right.....It only struck my tube light brain very much later that his real name might have been padmanabham..or ..padmakar...or padmabhushan...and padma might be a pet name...I still am not sure....

I don"t remember when i saw him for the first time....As kids, we--meaning my sisters and bro and cousins-- used to visit grandpa in Bandar,,,and knew Padma was always there...In the opposite house....It was a big, handsome one storied house, standing amidst a neatly kept front yard...A beautiful NOORU VARAHALU, and RAMABANAM trees used to bloom profusely,..one at the portico and one at the side gates..There might have been one or two mandatory (for a coastal town) coconuts too... I don"t particularly remember...

Padma always sat on a bench in the front veranda closed on three sides....except in too hot days of summer...placid and silent....sometimes he was seen helping his mother in her chores...Always dressed in khaki half pants like a school boy..In fact i have never seen him in anything else...Nothing really seemed to be wrong with him at the first glance...He was already a quite grown up man when we were kids... Of medium height, and well built,perhaps he walked with a clumsy gait....Could not talk properly, i think that was the trouble with him,..and on second thoughts,he would appear slow....It is no wonder,i feel since a proverb goes in Bandar that it is a town with a temple in every street and an odd cap at every house...With me in our house and Padma at the opposite one i thought we fitted the bill rather admirably...

As we, kids ran around energetically ,up and down the stairs,we used to catch sight of him, from our balcony...and it seemed a shame to us,that he should be sitting about so silent instead of playing....Somehow , with the unerring instinct of a child we recognized the kid in him...Standing in the balcony we gestured to him ,often inviting him to join in...But he never was allowed to go outside and we could not go inside, since his family somehow never were too familiar. He stayed with a widowed mother and a brother. There was little interaction with the neighbours , limited only to attending just important functions like a marriage... though ,a married daughter of the family would come in once or twice for women"s parties...

Our communication with Padma was restricted to gestures only...Here from the balcony, we saluted...Padma took his time to reciprocate...He would watch us for sometime and slowly saluted...Then we would do a namasthe...He would namasthe..we would wave and he would wave...Then we went away laughing..Padma never seemed as if he ever laughed or even enjoyed being with us.....He continued to sit or potter about as calmly as before...This ritual would follow every time we saw him,though we had to be a bit surreptitious about it...For,we knew with an uncanny knack of survival, ,that before a childlike padma,even we kids would be at a disadvantage,if the elders mistook us and suspected we were teasing him...

For years,this peculiar kind of friendship went on with us and Padma.. just these greetings..nothing more ,nothing less..He seemed to have become a fixture ,synonymous with Bandar...Every time we got down from the rickshaws in front of our house,we looked for him,and he was always there,..placidly sitting on his bench...When i was in bandar for my high schooling, it was a part of my routine to wave(furtively) to him daily as i left for school..He waved back,or at times just watched ....

I grew up , went away from Bandar,did my college,got married and every time i went there Padma recognized and acknowledged the greeting,,as usual..slowly after a thorough inspection...But in course of time, my trips too became rare and the last time i stood and waved from the balcony,,Padma strangely kept staring at me without any response...It was as if he did not recognize me...I waved , gestured and repeatedly asked him if he was okay....He blankly kept staring at me and i had to give up and leave,as he still kept staring me with a unfathomable look...

Sometime later i heard that he passed away and was no more....I still keep remembering him and wonder how and why i do it...

Friday, May 4, 2007

pelli chupulu -confessions of a confused housewife


PELLI CHUPULU... the occassion when a prospective bridegroom comes to visit the prospective bride.-.Peculiar to Indians themselves....I mean, in Islamic countries there is no prior meeting concept,while in most christian countries,arranged matches are rare or not like ours at least....-..Is the most important event in a girl"s life,and is as joyous and happy, as depicted in our films, though the scale of grandeur may vary widely.....at least when it goes on to succeed..

I have attended so many of them,....of my numerous cousins,relatives,even one of my aunt"s.....i remember that quite distinctly......all of us kids,who happened to be no more than 7 or 8 yrs were unceremoniuosly shooed out of the house..(what could they do? we were too many and too noisy.)...to wait at the parapets of the opposite house till the guests went home....we sat there watching the lighted windows, gnashing teeth,muttering invectives, and fretted at having been kept out of all the fun.we were let in at the fag end of the party...to be introduced to the guests.. and as had been tutored, we tried hard to be polite, saying our namasthes, for which fine behaviour, we were later given badaam kheer and kaju as consolation gifts...Then we went and watched the bride as she preened around in a beautiful hakoba sari.(lent by another aunt) and wondered how our aunt who used to be so casual always, and ran around with two plaits,and long skirts (she was just sixteen) got transformed to be so pretty and demure...

In fact, that is the best part for a girl ...The making up ..A woman would love nothing more than getting decked up, and a great deal of preparation went into it, .with all the ladies of the house gathering round the bride-to-be and offering suggessions.....If it is not a large family, then all the neighbourhood aunties and the inevitable friends helped....A hot debate ensues on the mode of the make up...With some argueing in favour of letting hair loose and the MOD look ,saying MEN would like it ,while some prefer the sarees and jhumkis as safe bet and pleasing to both the boy and his parents...After all sari is the most beautiful attire..A girl looks like a girl in saris.... This is ofcource an unending topic....

Next comes the tough question of deciding which color suits the girl best...light shades or dark?...All the clothes would be pulled out of closets and critically inspected.....Alas, nothing really seems satisfactory.....If the occassion is an anticipated one,ofcource everything is prepared beforehand well in advance...But in case it is an unexpected one with little time, like my own...Then all hell is let loose.Girls go into a tizzy and tire just by thinking of it.


In our house the norm was white saris..mostly.......Somebody said,Mother(jillellamudi) made the girls in her tutelage,wear white for these occassions ..so we too wore white... and I still carry this conviction..White does look so soothing and beautiful...

Then there are the welcoming formalities...Believeing in the adage that FIRST IMPRESSION IS THE BEST IMPRESSION, both families put on their best show,as they get to know each other,retracing the backlinks,exchanging family histories, and all the while sizing up each other....
.There are the watchful aunts and cousins who can accurately predict which way the meeting is going on just by looking at the girl and boy...one of mine, used to brag she can draw the cardiograph of the boy much better than any cardiologist....she says a smitten groom would bloom like a flower in the rain and it shows in his face. He becomes all animated and starts talking dime a dozen..In the other case, he retreats in to a shell and answers in monosyllables...I don"t think she is quite accurate there.I have heard an exasperated mother complaining that her son goes all bubbly and chirpy with every family he saw and on return said he never liked them at all...

Yeah..I have seen and heard of so many of these quite enjoyable meetings and some not so enjoyable.The most bizarre ones i attended was one of our distant relations....I really don"t know why,i, a chit of a girl at that time,have been invited to it...We were seated in a veranda of the bride"s house ,very much in the open and everyone of their neighbours,front, back,this side, that side had a royal view and view they did....The poor boy and girl had a most uneasy time and i felt sorry for them...

The funniest one i have heard was of my granny and grandpa in 1916...she was not even ten,when gotten up from her bed, a only child of her parents,wore a little skirt and a VELVET COAT for the occassion and was asked to read from a nursery text book -to test her intellectual skills-.While the groom was sixteen,still grappling with his s.s.l.c.,and it was already a second marriage for him..His first wife, a neighbour"s girl succumbed to typhoid,even before coming to her marital home as a girl of 11 or may be 12...It was said grandpa really mourned for her. He gave every child of his ,her nametag,and till his death,performed her annual ceremonies ,all for a girl who died just three months after the wedding......Who says romance is not for us,normal human beings..And how enduring was that wedded love? Coming back to my own granny,i really wonder what my grandpa thought about it..I mean,there is a vast difference between 10 and 16 than between, say,20 and 26...But they had a successful marriage, had seven kids,and led a happy life till he lost her too in his late fifties...

Predictably,our films have made most of this event and some of the most hilarious scenes figured around it. Can anybody forget the pellichupulu ,shot in one sole song sequence in MAVICHIGURU?..sculpted by a sensitive director like s.v.Krishnareddy,it was a lesson in filmmaking..Another memorable one was in SAMSARAM OKA CHADARANGAM,,where three generations of women of the house end up singing the same song at individual meetings..And the entire film PELLI SANDADI? PELLI PUSTAKAM?...


So, we have become sort of pro at organising and participating these meets, and i waited for the day when i could proudly present my daughter in white chiffon ( i was even on the point of ordering one)and jhumkis that it came as a bit of let down for me,..when we could not be present at our own daughter"s pellichupulu....She was in u.s ,at a dormitory...no supportive aunts and cousins to cheer her ...The groom turned up in his three fourths and the girl received him in her jeans.