Vizag Snippets 1

On the evening of 24 th of this October, we were on Godavari Express...comfortably ensconced,... and on our way to Visakhapatnam to attend a wedding of one of my husband"s cousin"s son.....Does it sound too complicated?:)..O.K......

And i was excited about going there....For long i have heard of the city.....from my uncle who studied for his law there at Andhra university,... about the beautiful locales the hostels were placed in ... his graphic accounts of how he stood at the balcony of his room 212, at sidhartha hostel, looking on the sea,....From the works of Rachakond Viswanatha Sastry, Puraanam Seetha....You could say i half expected to encounter Gedela Nookaraju, veera Bangari,discipline athayya , Rathalu and Rambabu freely roaming on the strets........And from other umpteen scenic locales that seemed to have caught the fancy of our various film Directors who never seem to get tired of the place.........For i have been seeing Vizag in films since my childhood...

Somehow it never came about for me to visit the place.....A bit ironic....Since the place is not too far off or in another state......Once i did go through it on my way to Vijayanagaram for another marriage..(seems like i go there only to attend weddings)....but then the only memory i had of it was just a hazy picture of a railway station....

The Godavari arrives early.....about six"o"clock and runs through a beautiful belt of greenery much before that....One is pleasantly surprised by the flower girls----who somehow seem to have gotten into the compartment---selling bunches of lovely KALUVAPOOLU as cheaply as 10 for five rupees....The wayside ponds were all filled with hundreds of them.....
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Surprisingly, the vizag station does not seem to be too big.....nor too modern....But once we got out and drove down, the city looked clean,...roads are wide and thankfully not clogged with traffic snarls.....and buildings, as usual, a curious mix of the old and new.....

One word is a must here on the lovely old worldish constructions of Vizag..My pet love....I just loved the stately, old K.G.H ,collectorate and university (though we have seen very little of it) ......When we (me n hubby)..got down in front of Hyma's apartment block-----she is my cousin---- and i stood transfixed, staring at a very old balconied house opposite her"s,Hyma went into giggles...." All of us in the family seem to have a kind of fetish for old houses" she said......" when last time Sandy came in, he even took photographs of the building"....

Some of those beautiful structures seemed to have been converted into either hotels or marriage halls or some kind of government quarters.........Good, we thought....At least they have been preserved this way and ugly multiplexes have not risen in their place......Though that day seems to be not too far off seeing the pace at which Vizag is expanding....

The grand Hawaa Mahal, wherein Nehru was said to have been stationed when he came down to Vizag to launch the famous JALAUSHA, is on the R.K beach road and Hyma"s house is just a line or two behind it and we could look down on it"s terraces from her balcony.... Even today it IS a lovely building....Hyma says it is her daily adda....she goes there everyday for her endless classes....art of living,kriya yoga, cookery and what not....

Another lovely little...little little granite building with two turrets..(it reminded me strongly of Lady Ampthill"s).. is converted into a Bar cum restaurant and back gardens and is called Sandy Lane....The back side view from it is excellent, Hyma certified....One could see the sea very closely from there...

The delightful sprawling , low roofed , lenghty granite bungalow...that featured in many a motion picture----rendu jadala seetha, swarnakamalam etc---is today Viswapriya function hall and is on the beach road too....... Another couple of buildings on the AAsilmet Junction that captured our fancy turned out to be the living quarters of joint collector.... Daresay there are many more such ones that i have not seen
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The twenty- fifth had been entirely devoted to attend the marriage ceremonies....That just meant we had nothing else to do than decking up in silks, sitting glued to our seats,gossiping and eating excessively, taking pleasant naps ...Advantages of being on the bridegroom"s party, i suppose....Then looked out for prospective marriagable youngsters.....To get them married off too..........Also, i discovered how comfortable it was to be just that much distant to the principals of the marriage party....and not having to run frantically for the thousand things the priest seems to perpetually call for......Just when you think you are perfectly prepared and relax,he is going to fox you utterly by asking for something you never imagined to be of any use.....sandalwood powder balls?.....ant-hill sand?.....juvvi leaves?...grinding stone?....Grinding stone ,of all the things ....My god...

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"It is a mistake to think that only punjabis and gujarathis have vivah sangeet,..sing and dance during weddings".....said the exuberant Mrs. Snehalatha Murali, an artiste with AIR Hyderabad...who formed a troupe with few other talented singers to give live concerts.... at marriages and other functions too ....That might be quite common, you might say,.. but here,her speciality is wedding music ..or pellipaatalu ...."we, in Andhra pradesh have a fund of rich heritage here in this regard, and the idea is to present them in a more attractive and updated way...."....she said....To do this, she and her fellow artists have dug out a number of wedding songs that went to rust ,..that were unable to stand the speed of modern day"s fast paced weddings,packaged them in newer, livelier tunes...


We had the good fortune to listen to one such concert at the wedding reception thrown by one our relatives on this last sunday of the october and must admit that it certainly was a highly entertaining and enjoyable affair...

The primadonna of the troupe,..Mrs.Snehalatha, her self was the life and soul of the concert and led with a breezy presence...The format was a kind of combination of mujra--- in the sense that the singers...(.there were five women, all clad in bright red-maroon embroidered chiffons and suitably ornamented for a wedding,... and a male singer.).. sang and acted out the lyrics with lovely facial expressions while sitting ---,....a bit of dramatics.. and ofcource music concert all rolled into one ......Enlivened by some easy, ched-chaad type of banter between the two marriage parties...---One boy proxied for the groom and a girl for the bride----....they had liberally interspersed the proceedings with some contemporary,on the spot witticisms ----like they said the groom and bride make as lovely a pair as Abhishek and Aishwarya and they need not lie today as they had to sometimes----.......While some of the rather raucous and loud humor that made up our yesteryear"s rustic folk"s cup of tea sometimes made you wince --like the mother of the bride presenting her with an appadala karra as a parting gift,...they certainly touched few chords too...I must admit i had to personally smile up my sleeve at the mother-in-law advising the new son-in-law to start learning to make coffee, since her precious daughter would not wake up so early.....coo.......I don"t really think Anasuya ever saw a sunrise in her life...


...The concert itself was a medley of mainly some old , very familiar pellipaatalu,--each one suited to the occasions of the wedding rituals,...from engagement to the arrangements,wedding dinner, down to Appaginthalu, ,..-----, few noted filmi wedding songs,..-----sreerasthu..subhamasthu from Pelli pustakam, the evergreen kotha pelli koothura rara , haayiga cheyi cheyiga,---- few annamacharya keerthanas..( for example , they broke into "Jagadapu chanavula jaajara" for the "buvvam banthi".....when the irrepressible Snehalatha sprang up from the dais to rig up a small impromptu kolatam with guests and the little kids....She even coaxed the neck deep busy mother of the groom to relax and sport with her for few moments...

They almost sang for three hours,...ably accompanied by a small orchestra of a mrudangam, kanjar, key-board,and some others and kept the audience spell bound to
the chairs throughout, even down to the mangalam when the sole male tenor rose to present it to Lord Srinivasa....It was a beautiful rendition... set to soulful kaanada, and devoid of accompaniments, the resonant human voice rang out like a bell in praise of the lord and strangely brought a lump to the throat... and once again i veered to the view that no instrument can ever match the emotive impact a human voice could cause.....Incidentally the boy was said to be the one who sang track for the hugely popular Maha prana deepam for Shankar Mahadevan, from Manjunatha.....

On the whole it was all very enjoyable and one felt, apt for a wedding....Better than gazal or band shows....Ofcource there were the few usual sound recording hiccups and a bit overcrowded hungry guests milling around.....But, ..yes...inspite of all that, a rather refined and renewed package of the old tradition.. ....

A Rocket Ride

1973,...APRIL...Jillellamudi....


It was a hot day,... usual in summertime and...Jillellamudi, in spite of the fields and the Drain ---(It is a canal and heaven knows why it is called DRAIN-)---- that flows down on it"s south, could be quite a hot place as everybody knows...Guntur districta... mazaaka?.......The big building on the south side of the village----jillellamudi,was a very, very small one, -----and it"s enclosure was bustling and busy with the preparations that were going on, to celebrate Mother"s up coming golden jubilee birthday.....For in few more days,...on the great day,there was going to be a feast and they were intending to feed 1 lakh people on the premises and surrounding fields.....Lorries bearing provisions and goods have been coming in regularly and shedding load...rice, pulses,oils,mirch, spices....


It all started rather casually....Everybody knew mother "s fifty-first birthday was coming on and as usual everybody had his or her own plans on how to celebrate the happy occasion...Somebody thought of conducting a Kavisammelanam....Another one thought of releasing a special souvenir...Someone proposed ordering a diamond-studded crown....Someone else talked about inviting great saints to convene a vedantha sabha.....Jillellamudi was not one of your methodical,well-knit, tightly run kind of establishment one sees as in the case of some other institutions....Nor was it a moneyed one either...Funds perennially flowed low...To say honestly...it was like a big family...A big middle class family,...with all it"s accompanying delights,faults, advantages, worries, ego-clashes, and splendid rallying in- time of -needs....And it ran just like that...A family function...Somebody plans, somebody chips in with timely help, somebody executes, somebody finds faults,.....Nobody quite knows how funds would come in or go out...They just do...In the end everything gets completed in time , just right and nothing ever gets stalled ...either for want of money or men...

When all these ideas were put before mother for her approval,she reacted in an unexpected ?..way.....These were all good plans, she said...----(ofcource, she never hurts anybody)---... But if it was all the same to them, she would rather spend the money in feeding her children...Infact, she said, it was a long cherished dream of hers to see 1 lakh people sitting together having dinner.... .. All those little kids gathering round mummy,bearing their little gifts realised once again what she really wants....and that was how all these preparations have come about and going on now....

It was nearing dusk when a brother was called upstairs, into mother"s penthouse on the third story, with urgent summons....A problem cropped up and needed his assistance....Vistharaakulu,...the leaf plates, we generally use for eating have to be procured urgently......As estimates go, 1 lakh people were expected to dine...that means at least two lakh plates...as usually two are used, placed one on top of one ...And ofcource you can not bring home just what the figures say without leaving a wider margin......You might need some for covering the items, some for reserves...Anyway, Jillellamudi was a constantly busy place with nithya anna prasadam..---(Mother never liked the word annadanam)-----.....people coming and going all the time...So, few extra would not go in vain....They have inquired with wholesale merchants at Vijayawada, Guntur and drew blank...No body was ready with that kind of supplies with them and at such a short notice......That left only one place to head for...Madras...

He was given few instructions...where to go in Madras, and few details about the transaction...He had to reach there in the morning at the earliest, finish the transaction and try to return the same day if possible...It took another few more hours before they could actually make some arrangements and he touched the feet, had kumkum and took leave of mother...

So, it thus came about , the man sat huddled in corner bench on the deserted Bapatla station----( the nearest railway station, seven miles from Jillellamudi, )-- platform at eleven or so in the night,... waiting and praying for a train to halt there....A group of devotees heading for Guntur dropped him at the railway station as per mother"s instruction and drove off... He wished they had taken him with them till Guntur or at least till Thenali....They are busier stations and may be he could catch a train from there....For Bapatla,..197 miles from Madras ,though situated on the busy Vijayawada-Madras line, is small station and no self-respecting express train worth it"s salt ever halted there in those days.....Nearly 30 years back....On that particular night even the friendly , ponderous Dakshin passed on before he could enter the station...

Time passed and the station clock chimed twelve...He sat there, fanning the desultory mosquito away...twiddling his thumbs, and wondering why mother bade him wait here,and how on earth he could ever reach Madras this way...Early morning?...looked like he would not be there for the mid-day itself.....


At about twelve, the station master went round the platforms checking and making sure his station remained free of unruly elements...He caught sight of the brother and enquired what train he was waiting for, and they fell talking.......When the brother said he had to go to Madras, the S.M. nodded his head ,.. said he heard of the golden jubilee plans,.. laughed outright at the prospect of his boarding a train for the night saying only the Circar express next morning would be his option,and went off with a cryptic.."may be you could go in sputnik"...The brother felt rather foolish and settled further on the bench more comfortably...

The time went past twelve- thirty....The station quietened down and was silent now...A small goods train rattled by on the loop lines and creaked to halt somewhere on the outer area of the station...A figure sped up from the stationmaster"s cabin and ran in..."come on...Board the Sputnik.."..The s.m hurried him on... The brother was in confusion and hastened alongside the S.M.... Sputnik was the name given to the goods train that carries live stock from Calcutta to Madras...Because, on account of it"s precious cargo, it was a common practice to give it a green signal all the way, at all stations and it completes it"s run in record time...

The brother boarded an open topped compartment full of grazing, mooing,bleating cudding,cattle ,and goats and reached Madras before the sun was up.....

Kudos To Koti

Sometime back, i sat with my family members watching, Zee telugu"s little champs,....A boy was singing "idele tharatharaala charitham" from "peddarikam" ...We were listening to it, all mesmerised...,when one of my sisters thoughtfully remarked "i never realised that Koti gave so many hits"...Koti,.. the composer of the number was sitting there in a judge"s seat,listening attentively,with a little smile playing on the lips....and eyes that lighted up with happiness.....One is actually surprised to find him ,looking so young on the telly and he comes across as a bluff, hearty , down-to earth person....I mean , we are hearing him from ages and the person turns out to be not too old...:)...not at all, sir,.....My husband even wondered idly why he did not take up acting....

The kids rendered many of his hits, some melodies, some dhammakedaar songs...A girl sang ""muddula jaanaki pelliki mabbula"...From Peddarikam"...woow...Another one broke into "roop thera mastaana",.."guvva gorinkatho"...Someone else rendered "priyathama priyathama"..."o navvu chalu."....Lovely melodies and foot tappers...One liked both the genres...I, particularly love his dhamaaka madhyamavathis in "mechanic alludu',..."bangaru bullodu" and the thunderous.."amma brahmadevudo" from "govinda govinda"...What range?.....and what pure dynamite music?....After hearing them, one strangely felt grateful to the creator of the music....For how happy did he make us all.........I and my daughter loved to listen to those blasted beats of his .._---pun intended----and would break into smiles whenever we thought we detected his father"s strains among them..."after all..it is "baabu sommu"...we would say...Who else has rights on it?....


......and then came the wonderment i wrote earlier....For, though casual, i think that remark of my sister"s sums up it rather neatly...Koti always remained on the peripheries or at the end of the critic"s list... He ..Was,..Is a busy music composer,...worked for top stars.,..top banners,gave thundering hits....but.. somehow, one never associated koti with serious music...or took his name when discussing it..in those haloed, reverential tones one reserves for some others....though he kept regaling us with one after one of his hits...and we kept crooning them....Perhaps because most of his earlier --or later films---were mainly big starrers and that meant mostly catchy numbers with a good deal of jhum jhum jhum orchestration....

My daughter, who self appointed her self as my teacher, in musicology---She thinks she is an authority on it----took pains to enlighten me on this little issue...She argues that koti has not evolved a distinct style of his own-----i mean, the hallmark progressions,notes, sangathis and touches ---- and that was his undoing.....I do not quite see her point.....What style?...As far as i can see, there are only three schools---or styles--- of music in telugu cinema...One was Rajeswara rao"s style..(koti"s father and guru)....Another was K.V. Mahadevan"s....Keeravani and others seem to follow it...But the difference between the two was not too great...Ilayaraja, ofcource was a later addition and gave completely different music....One is slightly mystified and also amused with this practice in film music...One wants and glorifies variety and breaking away from tradition...Whereas in classical music, you tend to emphasize on following PARAMPARA and think mighty well of it...

In my opinion, the real bane Koti had to suffer were the times he found himself in...He is preceded by stalwarts like his father, Mahadevan,Viswanathan....Trying to survive that inheritance is a daunting task in itself......Then he had to fight for his space in a world filled with Ilayarajas,..manisharmas, and Keeravanis and Rahmans...It was a fierce competition,..In the melee, i think, he might have got a little bruised but it is said competition eggs one to further efforts and true enough Koti peaked in his career with "hello brother"...."peddarikam"..."nuvvu naaku nachavu"..."nuvve kaavali"..."nuvve nuvve"..That was first class music...kudos to Koti....

As the missing pieces fall into place.....

Photo courtesy:SamiAR

Many times we get unnerved by the curious twists and turns that life takes and just can not figure out how and why certain incidences happen or do not happen...Like the missing piece of a jig-saw puzzle, these things keep nibbling at the brain at the oddest of times, while we vainly grope for answers... why did it happen this way?...I personally think that TIME--the greatest healer and leveller--alone can give a clue to some of those life"s riddles...

Einstein once said famously that "God does not play dice"...Another famous line goes that "God moves mysteriously"...May be HE does....and..we, the mere mortals do not often grasp the line he is taking ...Even if we set aside the concept of a God,.. Destiny,..that inexorable flow of events,is as much of a mystery as the Lord himself....and we realise the fact,sometimes only on hindsight..sometimes never in this life time and may be sometimes over a loooooooooooong string of births......But when we are fortunate enough to do that, it is indeed a breathtaking vision as we look back on the medley of events and see the exquisite pattern that emerges out of all that jumble,..designed by that master craftsman ...it makes sense,and finally we are at peace...


Photo courtesy:SamiAR

Sathy Balamani

Balamani is our (ex) servant Maid.....A lean, but strong, medium statured , energetic femme in her mid forties, with three grown up kids....And she is so vain of how she is still maintaining her slim figure....She stops in the middle of her sweeping , straightens up and asks me ---with a capricious look in her eyes which belies the doubt in her question---whether she had put on any weight recently...When i say no, her face splits into a happy grin and with a satisfied "everybody says so" she resumes her sweeping....

She was with me from the day we arrived in our own new flat at Tarnaka---some seventeen years ago---till recently,when ,unable to stand her frequent french leaves, i regretfully terminated her services....Yes...That was the only problem with her...She "d keep you waiting, jumping like mad and tearing at your hair at least twice in a week with her absences from work..."why cant she intimate me beforehand?".i wail and chide my self for not adhering to the golden advice my late mother-in-law gave me.."Employ only either unmarried girls or older women",..she used to say.."they are relatively freer and do not skip work often as the women in child bearing and rearing age do".....yeah...golden words...and brilliant HR principle...

But to be fair to Balamani,she would never make you regret her once she chugs in through the threshold banging the doors ...You 'll be reminded of a steam engine...All speed and sound...Yeah, i even believe she lets out smoke through her ears...You can hoard a big basket of dirty dishes or a tubful of soiled clothes...Balamani is not one to be intimidated by such mere trifles...She will go through them with a vengeance and before you can say Jack Robinson, she is all done and gone...As my husband once remarked wryly,"you go take a pee and she is gone already"..like that lord"s test we lost to England..with a 42 all out...Just don"t look too closely at the dishes...anyway you would put them under tap again no?

As i said before,Balamani is an adoring mother of three kids...and brought them up single-handedly,...well....almost...since her husband was a lion...I mean, he is one fine fellow who chose to live life like a lion...Those of you who see N.G.C. channel know how a lion lives...He lazes around all day ,grooming, scratching, sleeping and is usually the first one to devour the food his lionesses hunt and offer at his feet...Only this one is no lion...a pussy cat, you could say...A timid, nervous man unsure of him self,..just happy to relinquish the reins to a more capable partner...She thinks he has psychic problems while on one or two times i have seen him, he struck me as quite a normal guy,..may be just a bit laid back in attitude...He is a tailor by vocation...actually managed to make it a vacation,for he worked only occasionally and obviously became the biggest woe of his wife....As the kids grew up into their most crucial formative years, his career graph went exactly inversely proportional...

It is not as if her husband ever drank or had other bad habits, Balamani used to confide in me as she snatched few moments rest between her afternoon chores...That was the time she could take a little breather as all the men are out of the house and she could indulge in a bit of gossip with the mistresses...She would burst into peals of laughter and admitted SHE was the one who took a drop every now and then..You see, ..when there are marriages, functions, and other ocassions...Here she becomes virtuous and promised she would drop the habit soon, as her kids are growing up and what would a daughter-in-law is going say?...I nod my head and remember how my father---who as i said earlier liked to have his evening drink---felt himself to be in sympathetic league with her, and never forgot to tip her every time he visited us and admonished her to save money.......to buy a quarter and not to go for cheaper iuml...

She would relax ,during those afternoons, sit back and outlaid her plans for future, not caring whether i listened to or not...She has a nephew at her husband"s place and declared that she would, marry her daughter off to him with two cents of land they owned there....After all that boy is studying engineering and is a good catch...When her sons come up and start earning, she is going to build a small house in the small plot she acquired some time back...

So.... i watched her all through these years as both my child and her"s grew up along....as she struggled ,skimped and saved to bring up three kids on the meagre wages she brought in,in an expensive city like Hyderabad.. In a way, i think it is even quite heartening to know that still people at all levels can survive in this city...She would preserve even the smallest amounts of leftovers and carried them home...Some how always made sure that her kids are dressed in good enough clothes...Took on odd jobs to add to her income..Invested in what she called as CHittis...(chitfunds i suppose) and by juggling things here and there managed to have gas stoves, grinders, t.v.even few gold trinkets which she brought in proudly , to her workplace to be inspected by her mistresses,...,put her daughter through the high school and computer cources...and managed to place her sons (they were no good in studies) in fairly good vocations...And most importantly,brought them up to be good, obedient kids...

And all this while, her husband remained just a spectator...His contribution to either the family kitty, or at least an assertive role in the house hold affairs was just nill or at the most a very feeble one...He sits at one corner of the house or goes out on pleasant walks around the locality ...I daresay Balamani must have been in the habit of giving him a dressing down now and then and berated him regularly... Why not?...Nobody would respect anyone who does not discharge his duties..It is not just a matter of money either ..For I have seen so many people,who though would not earn single paise got oodles of respect from family members...Perhaps it has got to do with how much one cares for his or her wards and how strong and assertive they are in character...

On the other hand,she spent a fair amount of her money on him whenever he fell ill or went away sulking ..He does that some time...goes off just like that...Then she and her eldest son go searching after him.......I remember how she fell into a heap crying and calling upon the gods to come to her rescue and find him...huh...don"t i know it?....She skipped work for three days once to go to warangal to find him and on return skipped another day to pay her vows at the Balkampet yellamma temple...:)

I watch and wonder at this state of circumstances........O.k..May be it IS blashemous to take Balamani"s name in the same breath with the great pathivrathas...But i can say surely that she could be called as a fraction of those great women who knew the meaning of love...For only love can make a man or woman to forgive and overlook faults in others and not anything else...no amount of brainwashing or tutoring can do that...

Mothers Of Sons

May be i am not a competent person to write on this topic, having no son to speak of...but i have watched so many pairs of mothers and sons at close quarters and have the advantage of being an impartial observer..i daresay.. Anyway i am not going to be too essayistic about it...It is just that ,having reared a girl (who Had been an obedient girl)..all our lives me and husband do feel rather shaken after observing some of "em at work...:) and have come to the conclusion that mothers of boys make Brave hearts and make even great philosophers too..

This fact realised on us pretty soon the moment i saw my sister placidly going on with her combing when my husband gave a shout, ran after and brought back Parikshith who was just then precariously bending over the door of a running train---ostensibly to peep at the outside scenery--.. Parikshith was eight,my sister"s second son, and we were returning from our trip to Shirdi,...The train entered the Hyderabad limits and was running through a cemetery when this happened...Husband and i were badly rattled and went rather fussy over the whole thing while his parents---my sister and her husband--- were unruffled..As said earlier, my sister went on to comb her hair and her husband casually remarked that since we were already going through the cemetery,it would not take too much bother if anything untoward happened...




My sister says that unless you adopt that take-it-easy attitude you will not go too far and will end up a nervous wreck if you worried over every small thing the boys did...small thing?.....Yeah...small things...Once Kashyap..(her first son)..chose to go along with the lorries that were taking the ganesh idols to Hussain sagar for immersion and returned home at nine -thirty in the night...He said he saw an acquaintance who invited him to join in the fun....all for a lark..He was eleven or twelve and ofcource forgot to inform parents of his little absence beforehand...When asked how she bore with this, my sister said ofcource she worried but since there was nothing she could do, learned to take it in her stride...

The most tiresome thing,they told me, was the cooking...especially in their growing up years...You boil pots and pots of food and it does not show even an inch on their bodies and they still whine and complain they are not getting enough...You bring home a dozen plantains and they don't last two days...You start making dosais and you have to keep at it till your hands ache.....And..what about the connoisseurs among them,who prefer hotel foods.?.. Once i observed a cousin who was fumbling in her purse and exasperatedly muttering something about "five rupees...always wants five rupees"...Since she was just then sending her son to college i asked her whether he wanted that amount to have tiffin..."NO.."..she said.." i have to pay that to make him eat at home"...I could not stop laughing..Obviously ,in mathri prema, she wanted to give him home-made food and the fellow demands five RS to eat it...


Sons are going to teach you to be philosophical..My sisters and cousins informed me..They open up your eyes to the vagaries and varieties of life...For example,they said,if you have two sons it is almost certain that one will never go out of the house and one can never be found inside the house..In fact one mother told me that she felt like a station master...You have to constantly mount guard over who "s coming and who"s leaving....Again,one son has has troops of friends and one has no more than a few....Once i went to my sister"s house and saw that it was full of Kashyap"s friends lounging,eating,at the system....O.K..that was no surprise...But when i looked around Kash himself was missing...My sis informed me HE was at another friend"s house......




They...the mothers..live in a happy state of perpetual uncertainty...You never know what is going to happen the next minute..Do not even know what to expect at the dinner table..for the son may come in with a bunch of ravenously hungry friends any time and expect you to provide food at short notice...Or he would call up and say he was eating out and you"d better not lock the doors...He may suddenly drop out of a planned trip when you are all done and ready to call for the taxi...I know it happened...Hyma and family were on the verge of calling for a taxi to railway station ---to go to Thirupathi---- and Parikshith announced he could not make it...His friend called just then and said there would be classes...My sister did not bat an eyelid and with the ease of a HR manager passed on instructions.."O.K..take out your clothes from the separate suitcase ---(did she anticipate this?)---Stay at peddamma"s house"....Or he may put a silent bomb under your feet and say he is not liking his job at the moment and thinking of leaving it and yes ..in fact left it...

And all this when you are finally at peace,, thinking of finding a match for him... Yes..I knew a boy who came in with a grave face to complain to his mom one fine day that was just about it...he was fed up with his work, thinking of going for great open spaces and explore the world and the very next day informed her that he was now thinking of getting married to a girl he met online whom he had never seen...I did not know what she exactly said,but i salute the poor mother for having gone through the scares and lived to tell the tale......

The worst part,apparently was refereeing between the warring males of the family...and that includes the bigger boy--the father---Ofcource the sons never lift a finger in the day to day chores..(a norm these days).and usually the man of the house --poor fellow--does it all himself,with or without grumbling...But sometimes a situation comes when the interests clash and the mother becomes the punchbag...yeah....i can already hear voices saying..."she is no punchbag...Always sides with her sons".. I remember the plight of a cousin who had to oscillate between a son who insisted he was ill and needed her attention and her fifty -eight year old hubby who demanded she accompany him on tour...

As my cousin"s son said to his mother who was persuading him to study well and work harder.."it"s no use,.Janaki...Try to spend another hour before God.."...:)


The only little bonus in having sons, I have often observed is that the mothers of sons tend to dress well and neatly ,up to date with fashion......might be because they do not get to be reminded of their age with the presence of younger girls on the scene...I know...as all mothers of girls do too well.....and they do not have to carry baggage in journeys....,.

While this is all in good fun,one word here about the worries of the mothers would not be amiss...I would love to recount an experience of a sister ...She went to her son"s class teacher,concerned about his poor academic performance...The teacher apparently told her "madam,do not get worried..he can cope up anytime...but he is a good fellow and believe me...I "ve seen so many of them..count yourself lucky for that"... I think that about sums up what i want to say...

Another chief worry was about the relationships and the repurcussions that are going to affect them in their most crucial periods and struggling years...I saw a cousin of mine worrying over a possible relationship unfolding with a son of hers and tried to console her...She said she was "nt concerned over whether it comes off or not but was scared it might spoil his education...I mean...the world being as bad as it is, the vulnerable kids would get hurt a great deal more or as much as a girl too...

Let"s hope that no mother"s heart burns and the kids (boys and girls too) do not spoil their golden futures and may they all flourish..