Standing on an Apple Box Read online

  I sometimes do feel a little guilty about getting married and leaving home at twenty-two. She was younger and it would have helped to have an elder sister around. Instead, I jumped headlong into married life and all that it entails. She is much more emotional than I am and it took her some time to get used to my absence, though I do feel it made her stronger.

  From a very young age, Soundarya was ambitious. She knew exactly what she wanted. While I wanted to marry and ‘settle down’, she wanted to become an entrepreneur. My choices have always been pretty conventional, whereas hers are bold. She went to Australia and learned graphic design much before it became a rage. When she got an opportunity to work with my father, she cast him in a role that no other artist in India had been cast in before. I saw the fighter in her during the process of making Kochadaiyaan. It was the first of its kind in India and getting it off the ground was very difficult, involving new technology, software and equipment. Recreating the ideas that were revolutionary on paper into reality, that too in the motion capture format, was immensely challenging. I knew very little of the technology and saw the struggle only from the sidelines. She was doing something very different, but it was way ahead of its time. Amma was a huge pillar of support during those trying times. In fact I see a lot of Amma in Soundarya. There were several occasions when she could have shelved the work and walked away, but she saw it through and I admire her for that.

  Though we both tell stories with our movies, mine tend to be raw, based in reality, and minimalist. My sister’s canvas is larger than life and visually dramatic. And now, when we are collaborating on projects, it’s both interesting and challenging. There is a comfort level and understanding which comes with being family, a certain informality that helps the creative process. We also know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and know how to work with, or around, them. At the same time, there are some lines that have to be drawn when it comes to doing any work in a professional environment and those lines are tougher to define when it comes to family.

  Where our differences allow us to create a perfect balance is in our children’s lives. Between us, we are now mothers to three boys who create pandemonium whenever they are together. Soundarya is a control freak when it comes to parenting. I am a stickler in certain matters but give a lot more freedom to the boys and between us we manage to create some semblance of discipline, much to Amma’s amusement. Soundarya’s son, Ved, the youngest among the boys, is the one who rules us all right now. His word is command.

  Life hasn’t always been easy, as it never is, but it has been a huge comfort to have a sister to share the experience. There is so much expected of us and there is only so much we can do, and I am thankful for the fact that there is one other person who understands this as well as I do. Mittu and I have lived with the limelight, the pressures and the challenges and come out of it stronger and closer.

  Bangalore Days

  The best part of my childhood was spent with my maternal grandparents. This is not in any way meant to put my parents down, but anybody who has had loving grandparents knows how special they can be. If parents are a sustaining meal, grandparents are the much looked forward to dessert!

  My grandparents were a perfect mix of the traditional and the modern. They loved visiting temples and they loved their evening get-togethers with friends coming over for drinks, dinner and a rousing game of checkers. They were staunch Brahmin vegetarians, but they enjoyed their buns and cakes made with eggs. They enjoyed music and movies. Both loved a good argument and laughed at the silliest of jokes cracked by the other. Grandmother was the agony aunt of the street. Women on their way to office would stop by for a scoop of her famous bisibele bath to perk up their lunchboxes. Three of her friends would inevitably turn up after their siesta for coffee and murukku. Teachers and even nuns from my school, which was just across the street, came in sometimes to say hello. I even remember a teenaged boy from a street away complaining about the constant arguments he had with his mother over late nights out while my grandmother served him snacks. In short, my grandmother had a way with people. Including me.

  One of her friends was a shopkeeper with a fancy store that was famous in our area. I would pester her to take me there and ask for almost everything in the shop and somehow come back home with just a candy, yet not be upset in any way. My grandparents were happy with their simple life and enjoyed what they had to the fullest. I am not saying they had perfect lives (although I hope they did) but that they never showed anything but grace and zest for life when I was around.

  I wish we as parents could do things as effortlessly as they seemed to. I have seen children exposed to the bitterness of the adults around them and wondered what scars it would leave. I have seen adults who still grapple with issues from their childhood.

  Since my school in Bangalore was just across the road from home, I would occasionally walk over with my grandmother. She was a bold woman who could strike up a conversation with anybody. She admired women who worked outside the home, and would point them out to me. Women who had a sense of their own worth and did not depend on the men around them for it. Though she lent a sympathetic ear to just about everybody, she had no time for women who felt sorry for themselves or complained without doing anything about it. I remember her telling a particularly whiny woman to ‘buck up, stand on your feet and stop sitting around crying about things that you cannot change’.

  We used to travel to Chennai quite often and once we saw a lady pilot. My grandmother went on and on throughout the flight about how wonderful she looked and what a great example she was for young girls like me. She didn’t stop there; she wondered aloud how I would look in a pilot’s uniform. Once, we watched a movie about a daring woman lawyer, portrayed by one of the leading actresses of the day. She immediately started talking about how happy she would be if someday, I were to become a lawyer and argue a case and win people’s hearts. This happened every time she saw a woman who had a career other than that of a homemaker. I got used to it and over time realized that she was drilling it into me for a reason. Her daughters, despite their liberal upbringing, had ended up choosing not to work. I think she missed seeing her daughters becoming successful in their own right in a profession she admired, like law or medicine. In her own generation, it had been next to impossible. So she directed her wishes towards me. She would speak about how one day I would find the zeal and the willpower to prove myself, to become an independent woman who could stand strong on her own, yet care for her loved ones. About how she would burst with pride when she saw me in that position. As I grew a little older, I was very attracted to the law as a profession. Fuelled by movies and myths, I would daydream about arguing brilliantly in court while my grandmother looked on proudly. I would imagine the judge’s reaction, the cruel opposition lawyer, and the poor accused woman. I guess I was of a directorial bent even then, though my head was filled with every movie cliché in the book.

  My grandfather was a fountain of information and I would ask him a hundred questions about being a lawyer. The ochre red structure of the High Court fuelled my imagination even further. I spoke about it nonstop and my grandmother would beam with happiness. I think she was already imagining me in a lawyer’s robe. Little did I know how much pain these childish ambitions would cause me someday.

  When I was around nine, I came back to Madras. The move was heart-wrenching. I loved Bangalore and living with my grandparents. The apartment, the morning walks, the crowd of friends. Appa and Amma would visit very often, and I visited them, but my anchor was in Bangalore.

  Sometime before the move, my grandfather had started explaining to me how big a star Appa was. I used to watch his movies with my grandmother and the next time I saw him, we would discuss it avidly. My grandfather later told me these ‘avid discussions’ usually involved me explaining the whole movie to him from my perspective and him listening in amused silence. He also told me that the day my parents left, I would be strangely sad. I didn’t want to leave Bangalore, but at the
same time, I did not want them to leave. It was a weird emotion. I would cry as they left, but at the same time, refuse their offer of taking me home with them. I was one confused kid!

  It was a movie of Appa’s that changed things around. I do not recall which one, but it had a scene where the villain dramatically stabs him. I was old enough to know movies are not real, but this scene affected me like no other. I burst out crying. My grandmother recalls that I wanted to talk to Appa immediately and wouldn’t stop crying until he spoke to me over the phone and consoled me. That night I had nightmares. I mumbled for Appa in my sleep. My grandparents were greatly disturbed by my behaviour.

  When I was first brought to them, it was because of concerns about my mother’s health. She couldn’t take care of two children by herself after my sister was born and deal with her health issues at the same time. My grandparents were more than happy to look after me. By then all their children had flown the coop and they were lonely in their empty nest, so I was a welcome relief.

  Even after Amma recovered, I continued to stay with them since both of us were happy with the arrangement. This incident, though, made them feel selfish. They felt they were keeping me away from my parents and it was something I would regret later. A week went by and my grandfather was so distraught that he didn’t go to work for the entire duration. Finally they realized that they had to let me go. Arrangements were made for me to leave for Chennai and live with my parents.

  I didn’t realize the significance of that last trip. It was a usual Chennai visit for me. They knew I would make a fuss, so they behaved as they normally did.

  I was left at home and though my grandparents came to visit very frequently, it was not the same. I was used to being the centre of attention, but now I had to deal with an entirely new and busy household. I had a room to myself at my grandparents’, now I had to share with my sister. A new school, new friends, and a new routine. My parents were very happy to have me back. Amma was constantly smiling and Appa loved coming home to both his daughters. I slowly realized this was for the best, but I never forgot the love my grandparents had for me. My love for everything related to law was also their legacy, though it would come to haunt me later in my life. But that is another story for another chapter.

  The Law of Losses

  The move from Bangalore to Madras was traumatic. I cried every day. My grandparents would come rushing over and even stay for a while, but they refused to take me back. Appa was doing around five movies a year and that meant extended periods away from home. Amma had to divide her time between my sister and me. She couldn’t let me go back. I now understand how much she must have hated sending me away and how my choice of staying with my grandparents must have hurt the very core of her being. She tried her best, and one of the ways she got my mind off things was by allowing me to join classes that would keep me busy. I joined veena, tennis, classical dancing and music classes. I settled in after a few months and started enjoying the new activities and the new school. The only thing that didn’t change was my ambition to become a lawyer. I even dressed up as one for the school fancy-dress competition.

  Towards the end of my middle-school, Amma started a school called Ashram. She had always been interested in teaching. When my sister and I came home from school, she would review the day’s work and teach us using a small blackboard with a line drawn in the middle. One side was for me and one for my sister, which my sister would forget immediately and end up confusing with my work, which would finally result in her having to do hers afresh. Amma’s methods were always fun, with easy shortcuts to remember dates, concepts, etc. She never liked the idea of rote learning and encouraged us to learn at our own pace and reproduce material as we had understood it. The ranking system also upset her. She believed that giving grades was better for children and that each child was unique. I think she realized the lack of good schools at that point and decided to start one herself, where these theories could be put into practice.

  Ashram became one of the best-known schools in the city, but back then there was a lot of confusion as to whether I should join the new school or stay in the prestigious school that I was already studying in. Finally it was decided that my sister and I would move. How would it appear if the children of the founder did not study in the school? Another adjustment period was in store for me.

  The school started off small, with the intention of evolving a different way of learning. It was a revolutionary idea at a time when people were scrambling around for admission to conventional schools and trying to make their children either doctors or engineers. I was in the first batch and the school grew with me. From a school with thirty students in each class, I moved to a batch of twenty students in all. My life turned into a tiny circle of school and home, both overseen by my mother. People assume that I had it easy, but it was just the opposite. Amma made sure that my sister and I weren’t treated any different from the other students. In fact we were expected to be model students and behave perfectly. The teachers also made sure they didn’t say or do anything that could be misconstrued as favouritism. Not only that, they would talk about every move we made to Amma. I wouldn’t call it a complete loss of privacy, but it came close to that. She thought it was best for us and after a while I got used to it. There was one lovely, soft-spoken teacher who stood out. She taught us English and I studied hard for her lessons and scored well. I hated science, even though Ashram had a policy of teaching through application. Being the first batch at any school has its disadvantages and advantages and I still wonder what it would have been like, had I remained in my previous school. As they say, the grass is always greener on the other side.

  Amma was always overprotective of us. I think circumstances made her so. The fact that I had been away from her for the initial part of my childhood may have contributed to the possessiveness. She once told Appa that she would look for grooms for us, who would agree to stay with the girl’s parents. Appa laughed at that. I still had ambitions of being a lawyer; everybody would encourage me except Amma, who would remain silent whenever the topic came up.

  As school drew to a close, I started preparations for the law entrance exams and to apply to colleges across the country. Amma was against it. She wanted me to stay at home. She tried talking me out of it, but I was adamant. Arguments and rows became very common. One night, as I was studying, she came and sat next to me, watching me. I found it very odd and asked her what the matter was. She said she would like to sit with me for some time. I nodded my head in agreement and soon realized it was comforting to be around my mother without fighting or trying to win an argument. Then, after a while, she softly asked me if she could speak. I nodded again. She said, ‘I do not want you to leave town to study anywhere else in India or abroad. I prefer to be safe than sorry. I have a responsibility to your father to bring you up safely and I don’t think I can do that when you are not with me. We will find out if there is any way you can study from home or if I can extend the school to include higher education too.’ She then told me not to bother my father about any of this, and left.

  I must admit I didn’t understand her point of view at all. So many of her own friends had sent their children abroad to study and seemed proud of their ambitions. But my mother didn’t want me to leave the nest at all. I wanted to ask Appa to intervene, but was confused by her instruction to not talk to him about it. For those of you who do not understand my hesitation, you have to remember that Appa was unbelievably busy during our childhood and the responsibility of bringing us up lay with my mother. When we were children, Amma instructed us carefully before letting us speak with Appa. She wanted his rare evenings at home to be stress free. I am sure she meant well. She didn’t want Appa to hurt us by word or deed if we got boisterous. (Which we did very often at other times.) This doesn’t mean he was always tense and grumpy and needed his wife to police the children. He was always pleasant at home and Amma’s insistence on good manners ensured that we had quality time with him.

  A few days la
ter Amma and I reached a compromise. I would write one entrance exam for a reputed law school that had limited seats and if I got through, we would take it from there. I went to a good college close to home for six months while studying for the exams. She was sure I wouldn’t get through; I was determined to do my best. I wrote the exam and I got through. I was over the moon. My dreams were finally coming true. I told Appa, who was very happy for me, though I think he didn’t actually know what I had gone through or the magnitude of what I had achieved. Amma hugged me when I gave her the news and I waited to hear what she had to say.

  When she did speak, it was like someone had stabbed me in the gut. It was a residential collage, she said, so it would be impossible for me to go. She had talked to a few people to see if I could be exempted from staying on campus, but it was in vain. I told Appa how much it meant to me, I wanted him to enquire about the place, to see that it was a big deal and also to prove that it was safe. He did, and tried to convince Amma, but she wouldn’t budge. Her daughter could not stay by herself, away from the family, however reputed the school was.

  I stopped going to college and sat at home. If I wasn’t going to be a lawyer, I didn’t want to study any more. Amma, in her own way, tried to make amends. She ran from pillar to post and somehow managed to get permission to start a diploma course in her own institution. The system isn’t easy and a lot of protocol, not to mention investment, is involved, but she managed to do it all and also brought in the best teachers she could find.