SAPLINGS AS THAMBOOLAM

The thamboolam is a mandatory take home at all Indian festivals and ceremonies, at weddings especially. The thamboolam bag (made of plastic, cloth or some polyester fibre, rarely of paper) contains a coconut or grapefruit, a couple of betel leaves, a packet of betel nuts – all auspicious tokens.

I don’t know what others do, but when I come home with the thamboolam, I put away the betel nut packet to be passed on, throw away the betel leaves which have started wilting, and use the coconut to cook. The bag if sturdy enough, will be reused as a carrier bag, that is if one doesn’t mind being the publicity person for the caterer. I have often felt that the fancy bags are a waste - especially when I see the grandeur of the bags – so much money spent on things no one really wants.



Long before the advent of plastic, the thamboolam was packed in ordinary paper bags on which the bride and groom’s names were printed. As plastic came into vogue, thin bags were used. Little by little the bags grew in size and show…….

So I was heartened when I read this news. Mayor of Chennai M. Subramaniam introduced an innovative concept at the wedding of his son recently, one that can be emulated by all. He gave away as thamboolam 3000 saplings to his guests to take away and plant. This delighted all environmentalists and eco-conscious citizens – zero pollution, plus greening.

The saplings are all avenue trees, and he had made arrangements with a nursery for the saplings to be readied by the time of the wedding.

I loved it, and I am sure GVK, fellow blogger, who has been pushing for distribution of saplings on all possible occasions will too. Many of us can follow this trend.

KNITTING WITH MA

The fingers move deftly, and the clicking goes on rhythmically, while the ball of wool gets smaller, and beautiful creations drop from the needles.


This is my mother, who has been knitting for more than 60 years now. She loves it, and not even the heat of summer can keep her from handling the wool. She only had to hear of another great-grandchild on the way, than she arranged for wool to be sent from Delhi by my sister, and she started on a layette. And here it is.


My mother says that her first piece was for herself. As a new bride from Trivandrum in New Delhi, she was confident that she could face her first winter by knitting something for herself - she had after all learnt to knit in school. She says, “Babuji got me some wool in a budgie yellow shade, a pair of knitting needles, and a pattern in a magazine, and told me to start off. And that was my first knitted product – a blouse.” Though taken aback at first, she took it as a challenge and it turned out very well. The next one was for my father and after that – for me.

I must have been very young when she knitted sweaters for me first, for I spent my infancy and childhood in Delhi. And we all know what the winters there are like. I still remember the patterns of some of them. (That is me in 1949/50) My mother knitted for all three of us and for my father and herself.
After a few years spent in the south (read about it here), where we did not need any woollens at all, we came back to Delhi and then all of us needed sweaters. By then there were five of us. Maiji taught me also to knit, and we built up the basics for each of us. I could only do some plain knitting, but my skills also improved, and I could later on follow patterns from books. But with college and studies I could not do much. The collection of knitwear grew, and there was enough to keep us all warm.

Over the years, my youngest sister was the lucky beneficiary of my mother’s art. My mother made several items for her, so much so that Gowri became known as the daughter of the knitting lady among her friends’ mothers.

Apart from being a nimble knitter, my mother has evolved from being a pattern follower to a pattern creator – designer, if you will. I have really lost track of the number of sweaters, cardigans, layettes, scarves, shawls, ponchos (most of which are her own patterns) caps and mufflers, and even dresses (that is my niece wearing one of the pieces) she has designed and knitted. Fair Isle and cable patterns became child’s play to her. When I wore the poncho she knitted for me on my visit to my sons, the poncho was the in thing then, and I had inadvertently become ‘in’ too!


And here is my niece wearing a fair isle sweater created by Ma


Her creativity extends to an original too – the doll made totally with wool.

The doll is knitted and her clothes too. Scraps of wool make up the stuffing so that the doll is washable. Without exaggerating, I can say that she must have knitted at least a hundred of these for her grandchildren and great granddaughters, and as gifts to give to other little girls. Here the doll is resting on shawls knitted by my mother.


Maiji’s latest is making garlands of wool - some of them adorn the pictures of the deities in our pooja room. And I am certain she is already dreaming up something else.














P. S. Upon reading this good blog friend Brenda Bryant wrote this - it says everything about Maiji's kniting so beautifully! Do look at it.

THE SILK COTTON TREE

It is a sweet, touching story in Thamizh, albeit sad.

There was once a parrot which sat on a tree and watched its blossoms turn into shining green fruits. The parrot waited and waited for them to ripen to take its first bite from the fruits. Alas, the fruits never turned yellow or red, but dried into brown crisp pods, finally bursting and revealing inside – white inedible cotton.

This tree in the story is called the ‘ilavan’ tree and the cotton is called ‘ilavan panju’ – what I am told is the silk cotton. The unfruitful wait of the parrot gave rise to the phrase in Thamizh ‘ilavu katha kili’ – the parrot that waited in vain.

The tree is found abundantly in our neighbourhood – my brother-in-law next door has one in his compound. I had to cross one of these on the pavement, (no doubt planted at the same time as the one-day blooming tree outside our house) when I walked to work, and I watched it grow from a sapling to a young tree, though I did not realise then that it was the cotton tree. As it grew I noticed that its trunk and branches were green, and at first I imagined that someone might have painted them in that vivid shade. Later I realised as it grew higher that it is the natural colour of the tree.

Somehow I never saw the flowers – maybe I did not look carefully enough at the right time. The green pods are rather longish like bananas and shiny.


They dry on the tree, and fall off often bursting only upon falling.



Now is the time/season they start falling. People like this lady collect the pods, and remove the cotton. I asked her what she would do with it, and she said she was planning to stuff a pillow.

Sweet silk-cotton dreams.

TASTE OF SUMMER

I recently read that instead of moaning about the heat of summer, we should watch out for its delights and pleasures.
Though one may question this apparent oxymoron, when we look around there certainly are pleasing sights. The shade giving trees on the streets of Chennai are blooming, and are a visual treat.
The golden acacia has bloomed and now its brown pods stand silhouetted against the sky. And countless other trees, like the laburnum, with mauve and lavender flowers have bloomed and subsided. The Mayflower, or the flame of the forest, (gul mohur), true to its name sent out its first buds in May.

But mangoes are the taste of summer.

We have a few trees in our compound, all of which grew from the seeds thrown out after the children ate the juicy flesh. Each tree bears a different type of mango, and over the years we have learnt to distinguish their tastes and their varying uses. One of the trees, the oldest, has fruits which are not at all sour when green, and so can be eaten like a salad vegetable. We thought the fruit may not taste very sweet when ripe. But it turned out to be as sweet as it is pretty with its rosy tinge as it ripened.


The parrots love them, and get to them before we do. The appearance of this fruit is really a visual pleasure - a text book pictorial representation of a mango.

This is one of the oldest. Another old tree bears fruit that is dreadfully sour when green, and so is used for pickling, as it is not at all tasty when it ripens.


A latecomer tree was a surprise. Its green fruit is very sour, but turned out to be very delicious when ripened. Folks in the know say that the more sour it is when it is green, the sweeter it is when it is ripe. We plucked the mangoes and ripened them, and shared them with friends. They don’t look as big or attractive as the big ones in the market, but were definitely as tasty and sweet.


The mango season is almost over, but one tree is confused, pushing forth new blooms , even while there are biggish mangoes on its branches. This is the tree, whose branch collapsed and down it fell with a whole lot of unripe mangoes, unfortunately too young to be ripened. Surely it was not due to the weight of the young mangoes! We salvaged what we could and distributed them.

The ripening fruits on the trees are pounced on by the squirrels and birds alike, and knock them down. Some of them fall on our neighbour’s asbestos sheet covered shed, with big plonks. We have now got used to this thwack/squelch sound. Our neighpour’s tree, in return, sheds its fruit into our compound, but without any sound effects. Unfortunately the fruits crack when they fall, and cannot really be used.


The markets are flooded by ripe mangoes. I saw them being transported on our busy road on a bullock cart, and and a fish cart.

I loved the woman hitching a ride while her husband called out!

ONE-DAY-SUMMER-TREAT

It is all over. About three months of preparation,bit by bit, little by little, advancing to the final day – all just for one day, or maybe two, of glorious celebration.

I call it the one-day-kalyanam (wedding) tree. Its real name is unknown to me. If any of you can identify it, do please enlighten me. When it is in bloom, it looks like a pale golden haze from afar – the effect of leafless branches bearing the blossoms.



I noticed it first in 2006. A few years ago in one of its environment conscious moods, the city corporation had planted a seedling on the pavement outside our compound wall, (as well as other places on the street) which grew little by little, and became large enough to block the view from our first floor balcony, with its green leaves.

I was happy to see it grow, but was amazed one March to find that I could see right across the street. Where had the leaves gone? I worried that the tree might have started dying. But no, there appeared little dangling vines, bearing tight yellow buds, and waving in the breeze like streamers. I waited and watched, and watched, till one fine day in May it burst out in all its golden glory. I had almost missed the great blossoming. For about a couple of days the blossoms hung on the delicate vines, before falling on the ground and covering it with a fine gold dust. And then back to square one. The new leaves grew in a week, and I had to wait another year to see this glorious tree flowering.

This year I decided to record its blossoming, but I found that other trees inside our compound had decided to grow higher – the coconut palm had after 10 years suddenly decided to grow (that is another story), and so had the Asoka trees. Still I looked for the suitable gap between these and managed a few pictures.

March 12

April 1

April 17

May 5

May 13

May 16

May 25

Do click on the pictures for an enlarged view.

VOTED

One of the hottest days of summer today. I am glad we opted to go early to cast our votes for the Lok Sabha (General Parliamentary) election - before the sun got too strong, and the booths too crowded. My husband and I along with Maiji went to the Corporation School, our designated booth.

The whole procedure, smooth and quick, took less than twenty minutes, out of which it took me ten minutes just to look at all the candidates’ names to find my chosen one from the three Electronic Voting Machines - we had 44 candidates to choose from.

But the way the campaigns reached us, we did not know of any of the less prominent or independent candidates. Such parties which have their own TV channels could use their air time to telecast the road and public campaigns of their candidates. But others who used their own money, and did not have their own TV channels, had to perforce maintain a less aggressive profile comparatively.

It is a given that it will be one of the Dravida parties that will win in Tamilnadu, along with their ‘allies’, a kind of cooperative which lasts only as long as the elections last. We will know in a few days if the candidate we voted for (all three of us voted for different people) wins.

It was a good time to remember the late writer Sujatha, who was instrumental in the design and Development of the Electronic Voting Machine(EVM) during his days in BHEL.*

*That should be BEL for BHARAT ELECTRONICS LTD, as pointed out by Swarna. Thanks, Swarna.

A DATE WITH DEVAN

Charukesi, Gopulu, Mathi and Keshav

Every year on May 5, without fail the Devan Endowments celebrates Devan’s anniversary, with Charukesi the Managing Trustee at the helm. More about this here.

Devan was a leading humorist of the 1940s and 50s, and is still warmly remembered by readers and writers of Thamizh. His homespun humour and ready wit endeared him to generations of readers.

In the cool ambience of the air-conditioned Smt. Sivagami Pethachi auditorium, once again Charukesi honoured two members in the world of humour – cartoonists Keshav of The Hindu and Mathi of Dinamani. Legend Gopulu, illustrator and cartoonist par excellence, presented the awards.

Charukesi, told the audience after his welcome speech that the programme was to be a short one, to be followed by a short half hour play ‘Thozha’ by Eknath, presented by Kala Nilayam, and that everyone could go home in time for the current favourite serial on TV – Cho's 'Engey Brahamanan!'

That ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’ was proved that evening in the speeches that Gopulu, Keshav and Mathi made. It made me think that they are artists not only of the brush, but of the word, too.

Mathi spoke about the timelessness of Gopulu’s cartoons, which his nine year old son could enjoy even today.

Gopulu complimented Charukesi on his ability to don several avatars – writing humorous short stories, music reviews, and organising occasions like this. “He is a ‘theneey’”, said Gopulu. A most suitable epithet, for Charukesi is indeed as busy as a bee with his various activities.

Though we had to leave before the end of the play, I am sure those who did also got home before their favourite serial started.

Photograph: Courtesy R. Saravanan