Standing on an Apple Box Read online

  Once I got married, I discovered that my husband enjoyed his coffee the way I did. Black. He did add sugar though. Surprisingly we had never gotten around to having a coffee together during our courtship and he had no clue about my coffee addiction. During some conversation about coffee, it was my mother-in-law who told me how he came to like it black. Apparently his grandmother used to give them black coffee when they were kids and though all his siblings got over the habit and started adding milk when they grew up, he continued having his black. I was taken aback. I couldn’t of course criticize her mother-in-law in front of her and I did not know the circumstances, but as soon as I could, I asked my husband why his grandmother gave black coffee to little children. I remembered how much flak my own grandmother got for putting a hint of coffee into my milk. Dhanush then told me that his grandmother had a bunch of kids to feed and no way to afford milk on a daily basis, so she would mix sugar in watery coffee that had a tinge of milk and give it to them. As he grew up, the quantity of milk reduced and black coffee became a habit. Listening to him, I was struck by the two extremely diverse ways in which we had both come to like our coffee black.

  I have tried to reduce my intake of coffee and to add milk whenever I can; my husband continues to take his black. Amma hasn’t changed her six-tumbler habit and Appa still loves his coffee strong and hot. My children don’t drink coffee at all, but once in while I add a dollop to their milk from the filter from my childhood that has come down to me from my grandmother.

  Festivals

  Unity in diversity has taken a beating in recent times, but what most people forget is that living in India is unique because of the variety of cultures one gets to experience. The film fraternity, in particular, is known for its celebration of diversity, but something similar is also visible in homes across the country. Take my example. I was born into a Hindu family and for the first nine years of my life lived with my Brahmin grandparents, who sent me to a convent school in Bangalore run by Christian nuns. A typical morning for me involved getting ready and then walking into the puja room where my grandfather would be worshipping Lord Ganesha, Hanuman and Durga. There was a little brass bell that I would ring as he did the aarti with camphor flames and towering brass multi-tiered lamps.

  The school was right across the road from my grandparents’ home and on most days, my grandmother would stand on the balcony and watch, a prayer on her lips, until I disappeared into the school building. Then it was time for morning prayers at the school, where sometimes the younger kids were taken to the chapel. I don’t remember feeling any sense of confusion. I just grew up with a healthy balance of Jesus and Hanuman.

  I remember my grandmother making vada, murukku and tea for the teachers who often came to visit after school, not that I got any brownie points for that—in fact they went to great lengths to ensure they weren’t in any way partial to me. My grandmother’s chakkara pongal was also a great hit among my classmates from other communities. I, for my part, loved to taste the variety of snacks that other kids brought to school. Christmas was also a fun time; my grandmother and I would put up a tree and decorate it. A red star would be hung in the balcony and lit at night. Presents waited for me under the tree on Christmas morning.

  The mix of cultures did not end there. Like many others from Madras, I was taken to the local dargah to be prayed over whenever I had a nightmare or was unwell. When I returned to Madras, I was admitted to a Hindu school, but Christmas was celebrated at home with great fervour. There was a spruce tree in our garden that would be beautifully decked up and on Christmas Eve we would drive from church to church, starting at the magnificent Santhome Basilica, admiring the beautiful lights, decorations and the strains of Christmas carols that sweetened the air. We would buy balloons and Santa Claus masks from roadside vendors and play with them well into the night. I still remember visiting a temple at that time, outside which a woman stood selling flowers. In her stall was a small Christmas tree decorated with flowers, with a small oil lamp flickering at its feet.

  Eid was also something I looked forward to, mostly for the yummy biriyani, I must admit. One of Appa’s friends used to send over a box of piping-hot biriyani every Eid for Appa. He knew my mother, sister and I were vegetarians, so he would send a vegetarian version as well. And he hasn’t forgotten me even after I moved into my husband’s house. Two generous portions of vegetable biryani are sent for Dhanush and me every year.

  Appa’s deep sense of spirituality also had a great influence on me. Although the rituals and cuisines were the chief attraction at the festivals, he never forgot to remind us of the underlying meaning of these. The sacrifice that is celebrated at the end of Ramzan, the message of love at Christmas and the triumph of good that is enacted at most Hindu festivals.

  Amma, on the other hand, loved Janmashtami. It was her favourite god’s birthday and was celebrated over three days. People came over for bhajans and puja. Little feet were drawn in rice batter and the marble idols of Krishna and Radha, which are my mother’s pride and joy, were bathed and garlanded. She still offers prayers to them every day. When I moved into a home of my own, I wanted to continue celebrating these festivals so that my sons could also grow up understanding the beauty of different religions and communities. And I do take them to temples, churches and dargahs, even if they consider it a tad boring, more for my own peace of mind.

  Choices

  Even before the term ‘foodie’ became famous, or should I say infamous, I was in love with eating. Mealtimes during my childhood were special. We were lucky to have a string of wonderful cooks and each meal had a minimum of four to five dishes. That luck seems to have run out now. Good cooks are hard to find. My cook’s whims and fancies plus the stress of diplomatically directing her to prepare better meals sometimes scare me more than directing a full-length film!

  Although I loved variety when it came to food, Appa would help himself to only one dish, irrespective of the number of dishes placed before him. Due to the unreliable work timings that the film industry has, most of his meals were packed and sent from home. The few times he managed to make time from his hectic shooting schedule to have a meal with the family, he would carefully choose one dish and enjoy it thoroughly. I noticed this even when we went out to eat. He would have breads or rice with one accompanying dish and that was it. Rotis or rice with one curry, biriyani with raita, noodles with chicken… you get the picture. No nibbling on starters, no sampling of appetizers, no dipping into more than one side dish. Even the second helping would be the same simple choice as the first. As one who firmly believes that variety is the spice of life, particularly when it comes to food, I found this extremely difficult to understand.

  As ever, Appa had a simple and practical reason for his actions. In his childhood, meals were for sustenance and not for pleasure. You ate what was placed in front of you and were thankful for it. There were many going hungry around you. The woman—mother or aunt—in charge of the kitchen decided the meal and the portion, which was always meagre due to the large number of mouths to feed. And obviously there wasn’t any variety. It was unheard of, for parents to ask their child what they wanted to eat or for a child to demand a particular dish. These were joint families with a limited budget and it just wasn’t feasible.

  Imagine placing the current generation of kids in this scenario. It would teach them a thing or two about wanting and wasting.

  Anyway, after a while, when he could afford it, Appa starting eating a variety of things, wanting to sample everything that he couldn’t in his childhood. I can imagine it even without having suffered a deprived childhood; I sometimes go crazy when it comes to food and it’s just not me—I have seen the best of human beings turn into animals when hungry. I believe there is even an urban slang for it: being ‘hangry’.

  Well, as everyone knows, Appa is different. He is constantly growing and in a few years, he had had enough of the variety and the excess. Old tastes took centre stage again.

  Variety can become confus
ing. In your haste to taste everything, you often miss out on enjoying what you truly like. By the time you have decided what you actually want, you are full. Or you are full before you have tasted everything and are left wondering whether the rest of it is better than what you have already had. Your taste buds grow jaded with the assault of flavours in that one meal and often give up. So actually sticking to one dish at every meal ensures that you enjoy every element that dish has to offer. Your stomach and your taste buds are not overwhelmed. You can gauge what you have eaten, how much you have eaten, and whether it was good for you (especially in these times, when counting calories is uppermost in everyone’s mind). There is an innate satisfaction in the whole process.

  I was quite young at that point and was still enamoured by the newness of things and the urge to try everything, so had a hard time understanding him. But of late, I have realized that Appa’s philosophy towards food can be applied to life itself.

  Variety has become almost a curse in the modern world. Just try ordering a normal coffee in a coffee shop. We are involuntarily teaching our kids that there is something better around every corner and in that process, they forget to appreciate the present. Instead, we should be telling them, make a choice and stick to it. Understand the value of what you possess. Life will always throw more at you. Know what to pick and what will make you happy in the long run. Be it food, family, love, career or even cranky cooks!

  On a more practical note, I hope to incorporate health and simple cooking into my sons’ mealtimes. What you eat when you are young defines your taste for a lifetime. (This is based on scientific research, mind you.) And that power is in my hands now as a mother. It is tough as hell, when pizzas, fried chicken and tons of addictive sugary foods compete for your children’s attention, but I try my best to make them appreciate and understand the soul of food, rather than its fleeting pleasures.

  Radio Ga Ga

  If you grew up in the 1980s in India, radio would have been a huge part of your life. Cassette players and LPs were restricted to the affluent households. Television was yet to make inroads. The kids would hear it in the background while the mother moved around the kitchen, making breakfast and packing lunch. Old melodies would play on it while they got ready for school in the morning. It would play in the autos, cars and even cycle-rickshaws as they travelled to and from school. It was the background music in the evenings as they went for tuitions or to the playground. From news to sports commentary, film music to classical, everything was covered. If you were born in the seventies or early eighties, you are lucky to have been able to experience the best of the previous generation as well as the newer technological advances, from radio to cassette players to Walkmans, CD players and iPods, streaming and more.

  The radio influenced tastes in music and what started out as favourites then continue to dominate the current playlist for most people. Radio, I think, was instrumental in promoting film music and, happily, it is still around. Piped through speakers in malls, heard in cars during traffic jams, on phones, in teashops. From the singular All India Radio, it’s now a bevy of stations broadcasting everything from regional music to talk shows.

  I grew up never listening to the radio because my mother never listened to it. We had a huge tape recorder that was given pride of place next to the puja space in the living room. We weren’t allowed to touch it. Amma would play the ‘Vishnu Suprabhatham’ every morning. It was the background score to my waking up and getting ready for school. The gadget would then go silent till the evening when bhajans or the ‘Vishnu Sahasranamam’ would play. I would walk in from my dance or tennis lessons, shower and sit down to do my homework, and it would be playing throughout. When we were young, Amma would teach us how to write with the help of a blackboard. The bhajans are the musical score for that memory.

  Our car didn’t have any cassette decks installed and the radio was never played when we travelled in it. Strange as it may sound, I had no idea what a radio was until much later in life.

  I was learning the veena during my school days and was once invited to play at the All India Radio station in Madras. I had no idea what the place was about. I got there and was ushered into a small recording studio. When I finished playing, I asked my teacher when I could listen to it. She told me it would play on the radio at a particular time the next day. I told her I didn’t have a radio at home. She stared at me and asked me to repeat what I had just said. I said again, I don’t have a radio at home. Finally, looking extremely puzzled, she asked me to tell my mother what she had said and left it at that. I came home and repeated the instruction to my mother, who didn’t bat an eyelid and said okay. I asked her if we had a radio and she pointed to the huge tape recorder I wasn’t allowed to touch. ‘That has a radio too.’

  I asked her how it was operated and the next day, she showed me the buttons and dials that we fiddled with until the veena recital came on. The students’ names were announced and the strains of the veena came through. Everyone gathered around to hear it, family and staff. At the end there was a round of applause from everyone, though I now realize that most of them were unlikely to have enjoyed it very much, compared to the peppy film songs they were used to hearing. All I was thinking of at that point was how I could learn to operate the radio. I tried the next morning, but there were too many buttons and dials. Disappointed, I decided it was a stupid gadget.

  A few years later, Amma started practising yoga. She would bring the yoga mat to the living room early in the evening and do her asanas while music played lightly in the background. Oddly, she played Abba and the Beatles. Some days it was Roxette. Weekends also saw the tape recorder spewing out these seventies staples. I grew up listening to them and became strangely attached to the music. ‘Hey Jude’ is a favourite track to this day. I also have a faint memory of the radio in my friend’s house. She had a cook from Chettinad who used to play it in the kitchen. Their dining table was also in the kitchen and when we sat down to eat, the radio would be a lively accompaniment.

  Ironically, film songs didn’t enter my life until much later, not until I had reached my teens. Not even my father’s movie scores. My mother had very different ideas about bringing us up (many of my childhood friends would use the word ‘weird’). I can barely remember watching movies or even television when I was young. There were three TVs at home. A large Dyanora in my father’s room, one in my parent’s bedroom, and a smaller one in the living room for those working in the house to watch during their free time. I was only allowed to watch specific programmes and nothing during the week. Tamil films based on mythology or ‘clean’ black-and-white comedies. English classics like The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady were staples. They still remain my favourites. As I grew up and listened to more film music, I became a big A.R. Rahman fan. He was a sensation then, and went on to win an Oscar, making us very proud.

  I married a man who grew up listening only to the radio. Television was a luxury his family couldn’t afford for a long time. The radio was also my mother-in-law’s companion when the children were at school and her husband at work. It made her tedious day seem a little less so. Dhanush was an ardent fan of Illayaraja sir’s music. He knew every song, every lyric and every background score that the maestro had created. Whenever he asked me whether I had heard a particular song, I would shake my head in embarrassment. He was shocked that despite being a part of the film community, I hadn’t heard so many of the legend’s compositions. I told him I knew Illayaraja sir and referred to him as ‘uncle’ but had not heard much of his music. I had spent so many lovely Navaratri evenings at his place and even accompanied Appa for music sittings. His son and I would play in the room while he was busy creating hit songs.

  Dhanush was very amused and urged me to listen better. That was when I discovered Illayaraja sir’s music and fell in love with it. One of my favourite songs is ‘Panivizhum Malarvanam’ (from the movie Ninaivellam Nithya). Dhanush also reintroduced me to the radio and we soon became inseparable. It accompanies me on the
morning school commute, at the gym, and when I am stuck in endless traffic.

  I also discovered a renewed interest in Tamil film music and, thankfully, can now hold my own in a conversation with my husband on that subject.

  Childhood Friends

  You don’t need to be a celebrity child to know the dangers of having the wrong friends or the pleasures of a good one. As kids, my mother surrounded my sister and me with people she trusted, so that nobody could take advantage of us. It may seem weird to a normal person, but think back—didn’t your parents censor your budding friendships, making sure the kids you spent time with had ‘respectable’ parents or were well behaved? My mother did the same, with a little extra focus. And thanks to her, my childhood friends have come to define my idea of friendship.

  My sister is the one who collects friends wherever she goes; I am an extreme introvert, to the point of coming off as a snob. I am comfortable being alone and can never initiate a conversation or, for that matter, continue one with a stranger. That doesn’t mean I don’t have friends, I have had a number of them and they run the entire spectrum. I can’t name most them, of course, but I am sure many of you can relate to these descriptions. I hope my friends and acquaintances aren’t mortified by my metaphors, but this is how I’ve often categorized them in my head.

  Water on a lotus leaf—Touch and go without leaving any memories.

  Cats and dogs—Always fighting but connected by a strange bond and get along irrespective of traditional enmity.

  Flower and butterfly—The flower gives, the butterfly takes and flies away.

  The ocean—Vast, deep and forever, unconditional.

  The project friendships—Last as long as the project, the employment together, the holiday together, etc.