Chapter Seven

Life at Home 

My education, of course, was interwoven with my life at home. After Achan’s death, we were left to face a hard life and knew that we had to manage with what we had. Despite the evident lack of even basic necessities at home, Amma taught us that having less money did not mean that life had to be less beautiful. We were brought up to live with enthusiasm and joy. She instilled in us the conviction that love for each other and an unwavering faith in God would tide us over every obstacle.  

Amma used to wake up at 4 AM every morning. It wasn’t easy to bring up and feed seven children. She would start her day by preparing a special ‘kaadi’ or a rich starch drink for the two or three milch cows of the house. She believed that milking them after feeding them this special, liquid preparation would yield more milk. This ‘kaadi’ was made of the starch got from washing the rice for the family. Many years later when money came into the house Amma would add ‘pinnakku’ (the leftovers of dry coconut which had been crushed for oil) and the powder of tamarind seeds into the ‘kaadi’. Amma would save the water and boil it with bran and then allow this mixture to cool. She would lovingly mix this with her hands to ensure that the temperature of the drink was right and then feed it to the cows. Only after that would she milk them. The entire produce would be placed in the ‘puja’ room in front of Lord Krishna and then she would go for a bath. When Achan was alive, part of his routine had been to step into the ‘puja’ room and take a small portion of milk to make tea for the children. By this time, we, the young children of the house would have gathered flowers and placed them in the ‘puja’ room. After her bath, Amma would head straight to the altar, pray and offer the flowers as worship to the Lord.

My job at home included collecting firewood for use in the kitchen stove. I also had to wash the ‘urli’ and fill it with rice and take it to the temple before the priest arrived. Then I’d go around the temple to collect fresh flowers for the worship. I’d collect red and yellow ‘Rajamalli’ or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, popularly known as the peacock flower and the otherwise rare yellow ‘Arali’ (Cascabela Thevetia) or the yellow Oleander which were available in plenty. On special days garlands of ‘Bilva’ leaves from the Indian Bael tree were made for Lord Shiva. On Lord Krishna’s special days, ‘Tulsi’ or Basil garlands would be made. A jasmine tree grew inside the temple and we would shake the trunk to collect its flowers. A black stone had been specially laid around the tree to keep these flowers from touching the ground when they fell, thus ensuring their ‘purity’ as offerings for worship. Garlands were strung from these for Lord Krishna and these were also offered as individual flowers in the temple. I’d collect the flowers, have a bath, string the garlands, hand them over to the priest at the temple and pray. Then having smeared sandalwood paste or ‘chandanam’ on my forehead, I would return to the Warriem and eat my breakfast, collect my lunch box and books and go to school. 

To get all my morning home chores done before I left for school, I’d usually get out of bed at 6 AM.  After Achan died, I know my sleep usually broke when Amma woke up at 4. I’d lie in bed and listen to her sing and pray and go about her morning chores. I felt that I was with her in spirit though I didn’t dare get up and join her. Instinctively I knew this was her time for herself and I didn’t want to get in her way. I’d leave for school between 9 and 9.30 every morning to reach there at 10. Chechi and I were in the same class, but she had her own set of friends and we chose not to walk to school together. I happily continued to walk to school with Pankajakshi. Chechi was rather grown up for the class and sat at the back of the class with her group of friends. She was well-built and preferred to sit with girls her size. 

Pankajakshi and I also made friends with a girl called Padmini from our class. She lived near the school, about 15 minutes away, and we would scamper to her house and eat our lunch with her. Padmini’s mother was a kind and welcoming woman. They were non-vegetarians and so while they shared some of their own food with Pankajakshi, I was only offered dishes like ‘payasam’ made on special occasions. Great care was taken not to give me anything that I could not consume as a vegetarian. Chechi however, would stay back at school and have her meals with her friends. They would sit and talk and gossip about the news of the world, the neighbourhood and their families till the bell rang to indicate that the lunch break was over. I’d sometimes join other groups during the lunch break if they were singing or playing but I kept away from groups that only talked or gossiped. If anyone needed me for any reason, I’d help, regardless of which group asked for help. I was happy to be the class monitor, organise cultural programmes and parties whenever the need arose. I was an affable and helpful young girl – active and very social. I enjoyed every moment of life at middle school. 

The journeys back from school were also fun. Both Pankajakshi and I had to help look after milch cows at home. This involved a lot of work. Some of us had to gather cow dung, a precious commodity for use in the home, clean the stables, bring back the cows from grazing, tether them, collect grass and restock the haystack. Pankajakshi and I, often picked grass on our way back from school, from fences that separated two plots of land. For me, this meant bonus time to finish my unending talks with Pankajakshi. While I truly loved going to school, I was grateful for the summer months as well, despite the school vacations. This time of the year brought mangoes and jackfruits with it and these fruits made up for the perpetual shortage of rice in our home. When our meals were thus supplemented, it meant we had greater energy and enthusiasm on those days and this joy could be heard in our daily prayers and ‘bhajans’ or devotional songs.  

What Amma could not give us in terms of food, she compensated for in love and affection. We lived in great harmony with each other. Waking up in the morning each person did the morning chores assigned to them without complaint or hesitation. Along with hard work, Amma believed it was necessary not only to pray, but to pray together. All children were expected to eat the ‘prasadam’ or offering from Amma’s prayers in the morning and after school everyone had to wash their hands and feet and assemble in the prayer or ‘puja’ room.  We would pray in the ‘puja’ room every evening till we heard the conch shells call from the temple. Then we would rush and be witness to the main worship there and then quickly get back to the ‘puja’ room at home to sit and pray till dinner time. We had a set number of things to chant, recite and sing. On ‘Ekadashi’, or the 11th day of the lunar cycle, we would sing additional and special Lord Krishna ‘bhajans’ or hymns, and on the 13th day of the moon or ‘Pradosham’, the ‘bhajans’ would be for Lord Shiva. After the prayers we would burn camphor and fill the room with its fumes and a small piece of jaggery would be given to us as ‘prasadam’. 

After the evening prayers the rice from the temple would arrive and this would be our supper. Our evening meals remained exactly the same for years on end. It was only after my older brothers started working that Amma could afford to supplement this simple fare. Till then, for most evenings four portions of rice would come from the temple. This would be put into a large dish and mixed with the curries left over from lunch and rolled into a ball the size of a fist, making an ‘urla’ for each child. Food was always shared proportionately. If for any reason we had more than this or what we considered a fuller meal, we children would chant our code MASUTRIBHA which was an acronym for ‘mathi aayi, sukham aayi, tripti aayi, bhangi aayi’ or that the meal was enough, comforting, satisfying and beautiful. On most days, the first person to finish supper would say ‘sutripa’ which implied that though we loved the food, we were still hungry. Amma would sometimes hear us and say that she knew we had not had enough. It was true. Most of the time, we just had a lot of hunger, stimulated taste buds and not enough food. Our stomachs didn’t fill quite as often as our eyes did. Eventually, hunger was something we learnt to live with.