Chapter Nine
More Memories from My Childhood
Amma had been a very strict disciplinarian when the older boys were young. Though Achan was still around, Amma kept them on a tight leash. She was very young then and as a new mother she had trained them to be afraid of her. A mere stern look from her would keep them in control. By the time it came to make us girls toe the line, she would often threaten to beat us and would reach for the ‘eerkal’ or the fine stick made from the centre of the coconut leaf but never really needed to use it.
Sharada Chechi had passed away a year after I was born. I have heard Amma say that Sharada Chechi was a very assertive child and would often imitate Amma scolding the children. There were times when I cried as a baby that Amma would ask her to pick me up and comfort me. Sharada Chechi would retort, “Let her cry if you don’t have time to pick her up. I didn’t give birth to her so why should I tend to her?” Sharada chechi was just five, when she died. Amma was extremely upset but didn’t have the time to grieve. A husband, four children, cows, temple work, eye treatments, farming - all things that kept her far too occupied to think about her sorrow. And then she went on to have three more children. With the family size increasing, Achan started helping her in the kitchen. He took over the preparation of breakfast and tea for the children in the morning. So, at night Amma would clean and prepare the kitchen to make it easy for Achan to work in it the next morning.
Amma had a fixed morning routine. She would bathe and head to the puja room where people would have already lined up for eye treatments. Achan would feed the kids, have breakfast and then bring Amma a glass of coffee to where she was busy dispensing eye medication. Amma’s training for this had come from the Kalarcode Warriem where Kochu Parvathy’s unmarried sister now carried on the family’s tradition of making Ayurvedic eye medication. Amma had often assisted her aunt in this while growing up. These medicines routinely arrived home in the belief that Amma had healing hands and in good faith Amma would treat people in need. A portion of the little cash revenue generated from these treatments would be sent back to Kalarcode as a token for the medicines. A large part of the payment for the treatment, however, was in kind and the general instruction to people was to leave their offerings on a ‘vazha ela’, or banana leaf kept on the verandah. Amma did this on purpose. She would not leave the room till all the patients were treated so she would not know who had paid and what kind of payment had been made, thus ensuring that she always treated everyone equally. Achan used to tease her saying that till her treatment was over she would forget hunger and thirst.
People would come daily for treatment from the village and sometimes even from neighbouring villages. The villagers too believed that Amma had ‘kai punyam’ or healing hands. One of Amma’s most esteemed clients was the film actor, Kottarakara Sreedharan Nair. We all waited eagerly for his visits not just because he was famous but it also meant that some money came into our home. Without exception it was only after all her patients were treated that Amma would enter the kitchen. If the boys were getting late for school, Achan would help with the first round of cooking. Amma and Achan co-existed in complete harmony with no disputes and our home atmosphere was calm and free of anger. With Achan’s passing away, this cozy feeling became only a fond memory.
My older brothers loved school and their enthusiasm was infectious. They were often quoted as being ideal brothers and cited as role models in the village for other children to follow. They went to school together unlike me and Chechi. I continued to walk to school with my faithful friend, Pankajakshi till high school when she moved away from the village and I then chose to walk to school on my own.
Pankajakshi’s father passed away around the time that we had finished middle school. Her father’s brother had settled down with his family in another village five miles away. Since his children were studying in high school there, he invited Pankajakshi to stay there with them. This meant she came back to the village only on the weekends. Interestingly, because her uncle would come and look in on the family occasionally after her father’s death, there was an underlying tension about what the villagers would say about his visits. So, the aunt herself suggested to her husband to gift Pankajakshi’s mother the symbolic waistcloth or ‘mundu’ and accept her as a wife. This marriage resulted in a son and Pankajakshi now had a new and larger family.
When Pankajakshi came back on the weekends she shared stories about her new school and I’d try and give her some news as well. I was the class monitor and would help the teachers and so I could only give her tales of the teachers. I hardly knew what was happening in the life of other girls in the class. I tried consciously to stay clear of this kind of gossip and spent my time learning poems by heart and singing aloud regardless of where I was. It was common to see me busy in temple work and lost in song. If I found a song that I liked, I would source the lyrics and learn them well. I would really have liked to study singing but that wasn’t possible.
One afternoon when I was around 15 years old, Subhadra and I were alone at home. I sent my little sister, to clean and wipe the ‘thara pulli’ of the temple. This was the floor of the room where the food was prepared for the deities. It was cleaned and sanctified after every meal was prepared. To do this, water had to be drawn from the well in the temple. Subhadra had shut the main door to the temple very lightly but didn’t lock it and had started work. Since Amma was not at home and we also had to clean the house, I set down to cleaning each room. First, I cleaned the main house and then when I reached the ‘chavadi’, I could hear the sound of legs kicking against water. For a moment I thought that it might be from the pond, but an inner voice rushed me to the temple with the broom still in my hand. I pushed the door open and I realised with horror that the sound was from inside the well in the temple. It had to be Subhadra; I just knew it. I called out to her and told her to please keep afloat. “Chechi will save you,” I yelled. I ran to the Warriem, all the while calling out to Lord Krishna for help. I gathered the bucket and rope from the well at home and ran back. When I reached the temple, I saw Chellappan Pillai and called out to him to help me. He was visibly scared and said, “I’ll go to the upper temple and send someone who can descend into the well.” I refused to listen. “I won’t ask you to get into the well. Just come and stand there with me. Just hold the rope, I can’t do it alone. I don’t know how long she has already been in the water. Just hold on to the rope, that’s all I ask. Any delay will mean losing her.” We rushed back to the well, where I mounted its wall and called out to Subhadra coaxing her not to worry and to just do as I say. “Let the bucket fill with water and hold on to the rope when the bucket is full. I’ll pull you out, my child.” As I called out to her, I kept my voice steady and my words as soothing as possible. “Please hold tight with both hands and I’ll pull you up.” I asked Chellappan to walk backwards slowly and hold on with all his strength. His holding the rope gave it enough tautness to ensure I would not fall in when she pulled at the rope. The inner walls of the well were jagged and sharp and when I pulled Subhadra out, her fingers and feet were sopping, chapped and bleeding. When she was pulled out, soaked and scared, her wet clothes clinging to her body, I told Chellapan Pillai that he could leave, adding that that I would manage from here. Subhadra needed to be dried, covered and warmed.
While all this was happening, Amma was on her way back from Mannady. News travels fast and bad news faster, and so despite the absence of any kind of electronic media, Amma heard the news that a child from the Warriem had fallen in the well, but she wasn’t told that the child had been rescued. Amma cried all the way home but when she reached home, Subhadra was already dried and warm and having had some black coffee after the adventure, she had fallen fast asleep. Amma of course was delighted. She praised me for my bravery and presence of mind, and I felt doubly blessed to have saved my sister’s life and to see the joy my action had brought to my mother. For some days after that Subhadra was still tired, though none the worse from her accident. Amma felt that she must still be traumatised from the experience and so Amma got a talisman blessed and tied it around Subhadra’s hand. When this incident happened, Subhadra was in middle school, my younger brother Achu had just joined high school and I was in the SSC. Chechi was by then married and gone.