Chapter Five
Life as a Single Mother
After Achan’s passing, Amma was faced with the task of bringing up her seven children all by herself. Radha, the youngest was only two at this time. Already my parents had been facing hard times financially. There was virtually no source of income for the family but at least they had had each other. Achan had been a loving and supportive partner and the strength they derived from each other had helped them to weather the storms in their life. Now Amma felt bereft and abandoned and knew that she would have to manage completely on her own. It was like standing at the edge of an abyss and staring at the frightening reality of the lonely life ahead of her as a widow with several little mouths to feed. Crying and calling out to God seemed to her as the only options left.
In her own mind Amma had reached a dead end. She later confessed that the intense sorrow of losing her husband had made her consider the option of joining him on the burning pyre. This would end once and for all the pain and the agony of losing her significant other. Her mind was fraught with despair. Then amid the darkness that filled her thoughts, realization slowly seeped through that her children needed her. They could not fend for themselves and she would not render them hapless orphans. The thought of her children helped her hold on to her sanity and keep herself alive. The next step was to figure out how she would feed her large family.
Thankfully in those days, villages operated like a large family unit. Achan’s passing on was considered to be a loss for the entire village and the villagers all rallied around. The authorities of the Krishna Swami temple were informed about Achan’s demise the next morning. Up until then, the payment to the Warriem for service to the temple used to be four portions of rice. As soon as the owner of the temple was informed, he immediately increased this to eight portions. He also made provision for day time meals for the children and took upon himself the payment of fees for the eldest child in the closest English medium school.
The most unexpected quarter, from which support and strength came, was from the children themselves. The two older boys told Amma they’d do whatever she asked them to do. They also offered to pound paddy for the temple, even though this would mean waking up at 5 AM. They would do the tough, physically tiring part of pounding and get things to a stage of readiness where Amma could add the finishing touches. Amma was now beginning to be convinced that she could, albeit with some difficulty, keep the family going. Kochettan, Amma recounted later, had told her that with all of them together, they could do it. Both boys transferred themselves back to the local English school to be available for the family and give Amma a hand with the chores at home.
Pounding of paddy was a job that the temple usually had to pay someone to do. The Warriem’s offer to do it for them as part of our service, would save the temple some money. For us this had several additional benefits because after the grain was cleaned for the offering in the temple, the rest of the paddy would be available to us. The system would now work like this. The family would clean the paddy and store the cleaned rice at home. Every day, the offering of eight portions of rice would be sent across in a clean ‘vellodu urli’ or a bronze vessel to be cooked in the temple kitchen by the ‘pujari’ or priest. This would be offered to Lord Krishna and then returned to the Warriem. This was what would constitute our daily meal. We were soon to learn that Amma could work wonders with the discarded parts of the paddy. The grainy husk would be used to make organic tooth powder or ‘umikeri’, with which we cleaned our teeth. The powder of the husk would be used in different meal preparations like ‘thavidu appam’ or rice crepes made of bran, the finer particles of grain were used to make ‘upma’ for our breakfast and the coarser bran was used as cattle fodder.
Looking after the needs of the temple was hardly a one-person job. The entire Warriem participated. The little children were allotted the less demanding jobs like collecting flowers, making garlands, cleaning the temple lamps and washing the ‘puja’ vessels that were used for worship. The kitchen area of the temple also had to be cleaned. Making garlands for the worship and other such services brought Amma a token salary but it was the daily eight portions of rice that was our main sustenance. The local grocers offered to give us all the regular home-use supplies on loan and it was agreed that this money would be repaid when the two young men of the house got jobs after completing their high school education.
Both my older brothers, Vallyettan and Kochettan, the men of the house now, had no plans to wait to grow up to do their bit. They started growing vegetables for our consumption and we soon had a thriving vegetable garden. ‘Chembu’ or taro, tapioca, yam, and root vegetables like ‘kaachil’ and ‘kezhangu’, ladies’ fingers, brinjals, beans and other vegetables that could be picked every day, grew in our backyard. Creepers like ashgourd, pumpkin, bottle gourd and the local cucumber or ‘vellarikka’ were grown in the small patch of land. Drumsticks, papaya, and banana were also grown. The boys learnt to grow ginger and turmeric and the roots and leaves of these plants would go into our cooking. My brothers took it upon themselves to get maximum yield from the land and would work in the field before and after school. Rice was the only crop that we couldn’t grow because we didn’t have a sufficient stretch of land to do so. The existing trees on our land were harvested in the correct seasons for tamarind, mangoes, jackfruit, betel nut, and coconut. These were our cash crops and brought in some money to the house. This was especially true of coconut, which would routinely be harvested by the local grocers who would buy them in lots. This money also went towards repaying the loans that were being extended to us.
Most people in those days would eat rice as the main meal with a vegetable as a side dish. In our home, the reverse became the norm. We ate a lot of vegetables with tiny portions of rice. Since we grew coconut at home, this would be added to our meals to make tasty snacks and to garnish the vegetable dishes that we ate. Little did we know back then that our meals were wholesome and healthy. For us, the lack of adequate portions of rice on our plates simply served as a daily reminder of the hunger and hardships of growing up without a father to provide for and watch over us.