Peer Sahib for lunch

“Ootakke Peer Sahib untu.”  (We’re having Peer Sahib for lunch), squeaked the timid Sumangala, my grandmother’s long suffering cook from Udupi, as I walked into the kitchen.  “Wha..?” I asked.  She took in a deep breath, closed her eyes and looked like she was about to pass out.  This of course, was no cause for concern as it was her normal way of starting a new paragraph.

“Peer Sahib”, she said mournfully.  “Chapatiya mele tamta, seeju, ella haaki bishi-bishi maadi koduvudhu, gottillavo?”  (Tomato and cheese on a chapatti). 

Ah.  That. “Yes, please!”  I told her.  My super cool grandmother had been talking about making pizza for a couple of days and yay!  She’d finally gotten around to doing it!  Hers was the best recipe in the whole world.  All the quirky things she did to her ingredients made the pizza even better.  She’d grind up tomatoes and onions in the mixie and stir them about in a buttered wok with a bucket of cream and lots of love and affection.  She’d then hand mushrooms, capsicum,  carrots, cauliflower and anything else she could find to the waiting Sumangala who’d sigh and dip them in bisneeru (hot water) for exactly a minute.  “It’s called blawn-ching dahling”, she told me once when I asked her if she was crazy.  “Gets the raw taste out of them da raja.”  Mhaha. 

A generous smear of the sauce went on the pizza base (bought fresh from Vijaya Bakery), three tons of veggies went on top, and finally the piece de resistance:  Good old fashioned Nilgiri’s cheddar.  About three cows’ worth. 

On the verge of collapse, two such pizza towers would be placed gingerly in granny’s aluminium dabba oven that Sumangala would sighingly dust out and place on top of the gas stove.  My brother and I would stake claims on the pizzas we wanted.  The top one would get all melty and yum, while the bottom one would turn black at the bottom and go crrrunchh when you bit into it.  We wanted both, so granny dearest would dispatch us off to the dining table, where we sat twiddling our thumbs impatiently until the pizza arrived. Through granny’s good offices, we’d each receive one half of both pizzas: two quarters burnt at the bottom and two quarters melty on the top.  We’d shriek with joy and tuck in. 

When granny wasn’t making pizza, we’d drag her off to the best pizza place in town then – Casa Picola.  Just the sight of the menu with all those names: Tia, Maria, Julia, The God Mother…, would drive us insane. Uff. The twitchy-nosed French proprietrix would pause by each table to make sure things were okay, while my brother and I steadfastly ignored everything else but the pizzas in front of us. 

But this was in Bangalore on our summer holidays.  Back in Malluland nobody had ever heard of pizza.  “Nge?”  (Eh?), said the shopkeeper when my mother asked for pizza base.  “Illa.” (Well m’dear lady, we’ve run out of stock, but let me place an order with Harrods London, with whom I have a running account with and procure some for you.  It might arrive next month by container ship fresh from London), he said, when we described it. 

Crestfallen, Mommie dearest decided to make do with what Trivandrum could offer then.  She marched into Milma Dairy and asked for cheddar cheese.  “Cheese illa butter unde”, (Ah cheese.  Cheese, you say?  That lovely thing that was invented in a Bactrian camel’s intestine?  Hmmm… Chweeeeezzze.  Käse.  Fromage.   Somebody stop me), said the man at the counter.  We got the message and left.  We finally found some at Jayaram bakery.  Good old best-in-the-world Amul.  

Back home, Amma followed granny’s recipe to the tee.  Err, except for the blanching, the cream, the tomatoes, the asparagus, mushrooms and cheddar cheese that is.  She’d learnt from Mrs. Krishnamurthy next door that a pressure cooker with sand in it does the same thing as a dabba oven on a stove.  “Yaaay”, we said, and ran to the Guptas’ garden next door, where a pile of sand had been freshly delivered to construct a toilet for Anandavalli, their maid.  We rushed back home, sand in hand, to find that Amma had managed to make a white naan like thing out of maida and was piling it up with tomato puree and oooh…! onions.  She then grated the Amul on the top and after a quick prayer to Melkote Selvanarayana, put a layer of sand at the bottom of the pressure cooker, placed the pizza gingerly on top of it on a plate, and closed the lid. 

Amma had to throw away the pressure cooker after that.  “Aiyo, yenk irkra problems onna renda?” (Wo to be in Ingilaand, drrrrinnnking Ingiliss beerr), she asked Melkote Selvanarayana, as she scraped the melted bakelite handles of the cooker off the stove top and retrieved the incinerated pizza from inside. 

We bought a Bajaj round oven after that.  It would heat everything up nicely to about 40 degrees, but do nothing about melting the cheese on top.  “It’s the cheese, not the oven da kanna”, she’d say as pizza after lukewarm pizza emerged out of the oven with intact layers of grated Amul on the top.  We even tried paneer, which, aside from refusing to melt, also tasted like imported pencil erasers without the pineapple flavour. 

Granny’s dabba oven retired in the early 90s, as did our Bajaj round, after a decade of absolute uselessness.  We now a have fancy microwave-cum-convection-oven-cum-dishwasher-cum-three-piece-orchestra-cum-massage-lady that sadly does nothing for me or the pizza.  And as for Pidsa Hut- Gidsa Hut with all their cheese-filled crusts, oregano-girigano, jalapeno-gilapeno and what not, I have only this to say:  

Fbbthbbp. Give me my melty- crunchy, granny-made Peer Sahib any day. 

The Mane Man

“Chumma irikkadei!” (Shut up, you!) he growled, as he dragged a blunt razor across the back of my neck. I was six and petrified. Nicknamed “Kandan The Barbarian” by all who knew him, this guy was known to draw blood at the slightest provocation. “Aaaan. Mindaathe iri.” (Not a word!) He said ominously, and went away to sharpen the razor on a rubber tube he’d tied to the window for the purpose.

I whimpered and looked at my brother, trussed up similarly in a white sheet next to me, and prayed for our mother to appear miraculously and save us. A few more snips and scrapes later, his work was done. I tried my best not wince as the blunt blade sliced into the side of my neck, but he wasn’t impressed. “Poda!” (Get out!) he roared, as we paid up and ran for our lives. For if anyone took the old adage: “Fashion is pain” seriously, it was this man: Manikandan, our not-so-friendly neighbourhood barber.

After several tear-filled entreaties to our parents to spare us the torture of Manikandan’s rusty blade, our parents finally agreed to take us to a slightly more upmarket barbershop a few km away. My brother discovered the joys of the 80s bouffant there. It swayed like the fronds of a coconut tree as he towered a good foot and a half over his classmates. I, however, decided to stick with my Beatles-Goes-To-Pulayanarkotta hairstyle all through my childhood.

And thus I remained right until college, when a rather nasty bump into a lamp post made me realize that hair flopped over the eyes wasn’t a great idea in the era of electicity. I was all set to get a rad new 90s Bangalore cut that would give me the Hollywood edge that I’d always dreamt of. However, the 8 rupees that I paid Jagganath Reddy of Up To Date Hair Style, Vyalikaval, didn’t quite seem to do the trick. He’d grab a clump of my head, shake his head and say “Yenri, hing ide nim koodhlu?” (You sure that's hair?) He’d then call his assorted baavas, maavagarus and thammudus sitting around to come have a look at it. I’d close my eyes tight and pretend to die.

At one point, I’d had enough. I sent Jagannath Reddy an I Hate You card one September, and grew my mop out until it threatened to engulf the Sankey Tank. When my strangulated family pleaded for mercy, I took it to the best salon in town at the time – Spratt on Magrath Road. The proprietrix looked down her nose at it and said “Relaxer, maximum strength. Now.” to her waiting assistant. Four hours later, after much grunting and groaning, as assistant after exhausted assistant relaxed and flat ironed my hair, I emerged looking like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. The Spratt lady took one look and burst out laughing. In my face. “I’m sorry, but it looks hilarious. Hahahahahaha. That will be one thousand five hundred, thanks and do come back.” I covered my face with a towel and ran to La Bamba to buy myself a very large hat.

I did everything to my hair to get it to look like Zulfi Syed and anyone else who had long hair those days, but could never get it to look the way I wanted it to. The sweet Srilankan girls at Squeeze on Lavelle Road had a go at it a couple of times, and would send me home looking like professor Snape from Harry Potter. The bearded, bejewelled stylist at Bounce told me to wash it with yoghurt. Couldn't bring myself to do it. I even had an Australian woman cut it when I was in Melbourne. “You’ve got quite a thatch up there mite”, she mumbled, grunting as her tiny little scissors tried in vain to snip through it.

Two years and a depleted bank balance later, I gave up. It was back to the barber shop for me. I now share a special relationship with Muniraju of Royal Men’s Beauty, Bhashyam Circle. When he grabs a clump of my hair and says “Yenri idhu?” I smile benevolently. When he says, “Ayyo sariyag maintrence maadbekri koodhalge. Shamf-geemf ella hachi condeesn nal itkobeku.” (Ever heard of product?), I gurgle. And finally when he says, “Shaarta, frighta?” (Short or spiked?) I say “Nimge gothallaa..” (You know it best, dude) and lie back and enjoy.

The mountain cake-shop

It was 5 in the evening. Our grandfather had left us at the cake shop while he went to get tickets for The 36th Chamber of Shaolin at Rex, next door. My brother and I were ravenous. Cakes of every shape and colour beckoned at us from glass cabinets all around. Goodie shelves were stacked sky-high with pastries, patties, puffs and pies. Our only hope of getting anywhere close to the counters was to crawl under the legs of the crowds that thronged them. After a couple of slithers, twists and crawls, we finally managed. We stood on tiptoe and reached as high up as we could, waving wildly to attract the attention of the surly attendant. She paid us no heed, choosing instead to scowl at all the others that had managed to reach the front of the counter.

In sheer desperation, my brother yanked at the hem of a skirt near his head. A chalky voice neighed down at us from above: "Eh, look two littl'uns. What y'all want my darlings?" it said. "D..d..danish pastry."said my brother. "Two", I added, holding my fingers up at a smiling, heavily made up face. "'Ere, give dese two sweet'earts danish pastry neh." said the large woman to the surly attendant. The attendant reluctantly slapped two drippy, treacly treats on the counter and returned our change. "Go siddown dere 'n' eat." she said, pointing to an unoccupied table. "Y'all came 'lone eh?" "No, our grandfather's gone to the theatre to buy tickets." we chimed in chorus. "Ooh, holidayzuh?" she said, and turned back to continue haggling with the attendant, while my brother and I ran to the table slavering over our spoils.

This is my earliest memory of Nilgiri's - the most celebrated cake shop in South India. They'd been around over seventy five years before I arrived on the scene, and still stand strong and proud today. New cakeshops have come and gone, some with arguably better fare than their old world competitor. None, however, have been able to replicate their unbeatable always-been-there flavour, that seems to have ingrained itself irreversibly into our palates.

By the 1940s, Nilgiri's had moved down from their mountain abode into a little shop on Brigade Road stocked with homemade English goods. When they started their booming fancy cakes business in the '50s, everybody in Bangalore ordered from them. For every function, a cake more special than the previous one would be delivered fresh from Nilgiri's. For a wedding reception, my grandparents ordered a cake shaped in the form of an entire stage. For Pongal (yes we are incurably cantonment), they ordered a sugarcane shaped one. My mother's birthday cake was in the shape of a house, my uncle's was like an aeroplane, and the crowning glory was a rich Vat 69 bottle cake specially ordered for my great grandfather's birthday.

Nilgiri's, though hugely popular by the '60s, was still a friendly little shop. My mother remembers an incident from back then, when she arrived by auto on Brigade Road and realized she'd left her purse back home as usual. She hesitated only for a moment before deciding what to do. After admonishing the auto driver for not bowing low enough, she adjusted pin no. 112 in her bouffant hairstyle, batted her mascara'ed eyes and told him to wait by the side of the road, so as not to inconvenience the 8 vehicles that plied on it daily. Looking steadfastly away from the risqué poster at the Opera theatre, she took 347 mini-steps across the pavement (on account of her double wrapped saree), and stood at the Nilgiri's counter, knotting and unknotting her pallu worriedly. "What happened ma?" asked Mr Chenniappan, the kindly proprietor. The young mutter, amidst heaving bosoms, fluttering eyelids, and helpless looks cast hither and thither, explained her predicament. Without a moment's hesitation, Mr Chenniyappan emptied a bag full of 1 paisa coins onto the counter and said, "Take as much as you want ma". She counted out 100 coins, the staggering fare from Malleswaram to Brigade road, and gave them to the waiting driver, who was standing with his palms folded over his head and one leg crossed over the other, waiting for his fare in a meditative trance. He accepted the money with another low stately bow and sputtered away, humming the latest Sivaji hit.

But that was then. By the time I was tall enough to reach the top of the pastry counter, things had changed. The sweet little mountain-bakery had been replaced by Nilgiri's Supermarket, the biggest shop I had ever seen. You could get everything you'd ever read in an Enid Blyton there. Marzipans, gingerbread, licorice, cheeses, marshmallows, jellybeans, asparagus, easter eggs- everything. And at the cake shop below: pastries, puffs, pies, minces, pizzas, tarts, eclairs, macaroons- and of course, those slurpily delicious Danish pastries. The counters were operated by a bevy of Tamil women, all equally surly, and if my grandmother was to be believed, "hired directly from Nimhans, I tell you." They looked straight through you, said "No" just on a whim, and in the unlikelihood of their taking mercy on you, made you acutely aware of how privileged you were to be getting something from them. Nevertheless, the crowds surged on through the '90s and midway through my college years. Nilgiri's cakes were, after all, the cheapest and loveliest to be found.

Upper Crust, the restaurant started by the Nilgiri's heir-apparent, did roaring business, especially with the college crowd. People from my college, strategically situated in the heart of the city, would be the first to bunk class and appear there for a quick bite (and sometimes a long drawn out date) before a movie. The cafe-restaurant was also the perfect place to meet after a long day at work. When they started serving Chettinad cuisine, our joy knew no bounds. Unfortunately, the cafe went into decline in the 2000s thanks to family feud, and closed down a couple of years ago. Die hard Nilgiri's buffs like me grew sadder as the stacked shelves in the bakery grew lighter and lighter with every passing year.

Last week, an enthusiastic classmate and I decided to organize a college reunion at the Nilgiri's cake shop. We felt it was the perfect place to renew old aquaintances, and perhaps bid fond farewell to our old favourite hang out. As we waked down the stairs to the basement cake shop, a pleasant oniony aroma hit us. It was the all-too-familiar smell of Nilgiri's baking. The cake shop under its new management had been given a face lift. There was air conditioning, modern furniture, elegant lighting and even a children's play area. Nilgiri's' slightly anachronistic trademark pastries and cakes stood proudly in their shelves once again. The surly staff now smiled waterily at the customers, as they laboriously keyed bills into their new cash machines. The food, in true Nilgiri's style, was cheap, pleasant and satisfying.

As for the reunion, the less said about being the only singleton among 10 ageing classmates - spouses and children in tow, the better.

Robinson Clueless

“OK boys, time to pack up. We’re leaving”, announced the (then) youngish Mutter. We were going to relocate to a township in Andhra, to join Appa who had transferred there. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but in dear old Trivandrum. I'd miss my lovely school, the paddy fields, the gurgling canals, the beautiful Kovalam beach, and the army of kids in my heptalingual colony so much! I kicked up a row, threw tantrums and refused to move. After a while, when I realized nobody was paying any attention, I gave up. Several farewell dinners, filled autograph books and walks around the neighbourhood later, it was time to leave for good.

The parents had done a recon expedition a few months before, to check things out before our actual move. The house was smallish but the garden was huge, they said. I would love the wild life, the migratory birds and school, they said. Ah well, I thought. If I couldn't cut it, I could always run back and live with the Guptas next door, where I could play with the kids all day and live in aloo-kachoried splendour for the rest of my life, I thought.

Our new home was located in a township carved out of a 50 sq km forested island. It was surrounded by the gigantic Pulicat lake on three sides and the Bay of Bengal on the east. The journey itself was quite spectacular. We travelled to Madras and drove 100km to a small town at the edge of the Pulicat Lake. Beyond it was 16 miles of nothing. Just a straight road across the lake's tidal bed. At the end of the road was the township. The road now entered a pair of formidable gates manned by tough looking CISF jawans. The jawans stiffened, saluted smartly and let us through. Coming from communist Kerala, where people wouldn't even give the Maharaja of Travancore the time of day, this was quite startling. In the three years that I lived there, I could never quite get used to it. I'd always cower in the back seat when the jawans jumped to attention as we passed them.

The housing colony was spic and span - and slightly neglected, in the way only a central government township can be. Our home, the first in a line of several identical quarters, had scrubby jungle on two sides, and overlooked the colony on the other two. Poker-straight roads criss-crossed the colony. It had a school, a hospital, a guest house and two modest shopping centers. All houses had been issued the same plants by the horticulture department: Chickoo, sitaphal, guava and pomegranate. Those, the horticulture dept had decided, were the only species that could survive the sandy soil and the harsh coastal heat. They were right. Inspite of our best efforts, nothing else did, except the odd jasmine and a couple of Allamanda and Moonbeam plants.

At the other end of the housing colony was school. Sprawled over a few acres, with small quadrangles between classrooms, it housed all the children of the township. Coming from a fairly progressive school in Trivandrum, the strange rules of this school took me quite by surprise. There was a drill for everything. Students marched out of class into assembly every day, listened to the principal and marched straight back into their classrooms. Girls and boys sat on either side of a wide aisle, across which they exchanged notes and the ocasional fleeting glance. The kids had hardly any interaction with the outside world, and had evolved a culture of their own. Even the language they spoke was a strange pidgin English, strung together in Telugu idiom:
"What ra rey, haircut naat doingaa? Bush like looking it is."
"Shettup ra. Your grandmother squirrel catching my son."

A second pair of security gates led from the housing colony to the scientific installations dotted across hundreds of hectares of jungle. The jungle itself was like nothing I had seen before. Short thorny shrubs covered a sandy forest bed. Jamoon and palymyrah trees poked out through the shrubbery, and exploded in a torrent of berries every autumn. The only sources of water for all the jungle's resident feral cows, jackals and birds, were large marshy ponds called vaagus, that served as oases in the otherwise unforgiving landscape.

Occasionally, we would spot a tribal dwelling - an igloo shaped hut that you needed to crawl to enter. The few tribal settlements that inhabited the island before the government took over, were left alone. The government offered to build them better houses, but the tribals refused, choosing instead to live in the same way that they had done for thousands of years.

The feral cows on the island were quite a phenomenon by themselves. They were probably brought into the island centuries ago by nomadic tribes, and left to fend for themselves after they moved away. Some of the residents of the colony had managed to tame a few cows into coming to their homes every evening. The cows would agree to be milked in exchange for the day's leftovers. After being fed and milked, they'd swish their tails and amble peacefully back into the jungle, only to come back to the same houses the next evening. Definitely the most symbiotic human-animal relationship I had ever seen!

We would sometimes drive through the jungle, out to the pristine beaches on the other side of the island : A 50km coastline untouched by habitation. It was odd to see the sun rise over the sea here, unlike in the west coast where we were used to seeing it dive into the sea in the evening. We would gather seashells by the bucketful and toss them back on the beach, not knowing what to do with them. Tortoises nested on the quiet beaches during the season: major happy times for the few tribal settlements by the sea.

The sea itself was rough and unbatheable. Cyclonic storms would ravage the coastline periodically, causing massive destruction to everything in their path. The housing colony was situated as far inland as possible to avoid being wrecked by them, though a massive cyclone in 1984 almost managed to wipe it out.

Every month or so, we would cross the Pulicat lake to get to the mainland for shopping, tuition classes, or just for a break from the monotony of the colony. The Pulicat lake, dry and lifeless during summer, would come to life after the rains in October. Thousands of migratory birds would fly in from places as far as Poland, to roost on the lake bed. Crossing the dreaded 16km 'road to nowhere' (as Mutter delicately put it) would now be a treat. Acres of pink plumed flamingoes would plod through the floodwaters, patiently dredging the lakebed for crill. Pelicans would flap around clumsily, their beaks filled with fish. Painted storks, dabchicks, spotted ducks, cormorants, pond herons, and a myriad other birds would descend in flocks all over the lake and cover it in a carpet of pinks, browns, yellows and blues. Truly a spectacular sight.

After three years on the beautiful island, it was time to move again. And this time, to the youngish Mutter's home turf, good old Bangytown! While we were on the island, we felt cloistered, cut-off, and deprived of company. When we moved though, it wasn't without a tinge of regret. It was a tranquil, calm and spectacularly beautiful existence, that taught us much. For one, it made me the compulsive tree-hugger that I am today. I got to experience first hand, what most others can only see on tv, or in a glossy Salim Ali bird book. My botanical knowledge quintupled in three years.

And even today, if I can rattle off scientific names at a 100kmph in a heavy Telugu accent, it is because of my three years on the beautiful island of Sriharikota.

*Cartoon: Yentraa babu is the Telugu equivalent of 'What's up dude'.

Get up the goose!

"Yaendhukka da, pasangala!.
Get up the goose!
Get up the goose!
Madras vandhaaaaach!!"


My brother and I would clamber out of the upper berth and look sleepily out of the train window at the inky black night outside.
"Where, pa?" we'd ask him.
"Another hour", he'd announce cheerfully.


Appa is never last minute. He wouldn't let us be last minute either. Everything had to be prepared for, hours and sometimes days beforehand. If you were travelling, you had to call the station the previous night to make sure it was still standing. If your train left at 6, he'd shoo you off to the station at 3. You'd also need to call the station at 20 minute intervals all day to make sure the train was on time. And if you had to get off a train, you needed to be all packed and near the door at least an hour before your stop. Even if it was the last one. The perfect father for a head-in-the-clouds son like.. err my brother.

So, within minutes of getting up the goose (nobody except Appa knew what that meant), our bedrolls and suitcases would be packed and ready. Amma would be up and combing her hair out. Other passengers would stir grumpily in their sleep as Appa turned on lights and opened windows. My brother and I would be squashed up by the window under a towel. The soporific whirring of the train fans would make us drift in and out of sleep, as the sky slowly lightened outside.

The closer we got to Madras, the slower the train would crawl. Tired perhaps, after the 18 hour run from Trivandrum.

Our immediate surroundings would undergo several miraculous transformations overnight. For one, there was no "Chaaya chaayeyyyy" anymore - just "Kaapi kaapeeeeyum". Station names in the comforting Malayalam jalebi-script now looked noodly and recti-linear, written in Tamil. The passengers who chatted non-stop in Malayalam until Coimbatore, would now speak in heavily accented Tamil. We were nearing Madiraashi after all :

"Ende berthle neriya bet-becks irundhadhakkum. Urakkame varalai " (Lots of bedbugs in my berth. Just couldnt sleep.)

But most strangely, a peculiar scent would waft in through the windows of the compartment. As the train crawled slowly on, it would intensify from a mildly unpleasant odour into an all-enveloping, mind numbing stench. "Ahhh.." my father would sigh in pleasure, inhaling deeply. For if there is one true sign that heralds the arrival of Chennai, it is the magnificently overpowering sulphurous pong of the Basin Bridge station. A heady mixture of rotten eggs, chemicals, sewage, fish, sea and ripe guava.

"Madras waasne", my mother, the Bangalore girl would say, and smile affectionately at Appa.
"Aama, illai? Gubbbbu. Ackack. Na-na", he'd say to us, forgetting that his children were now capable of coherent articulate sentences.
"Hngello, hngello, hngow aagre you?" "Fngine Thngank you.", my brother and I would chant, holding our noses.

Appa's sundakkai-vendakkai "Tamil dictation" lessons had not really prepared us for real world Tamil. We could read the script haltingly, but couldnt make any sense out of anything we read.
"Ka-zhi-ip-pi-da-im", we'd chant, stringing the Tamil letters together painstakingly, from the signs we read.
"Pa, pa, what does it mean?" we'd ask him excitedly.
"It means... kakkoosu", Appa would say, with a wink to our shocked mother.
"Cheeeeeeeeeee" we'd scream in chorus, and read the next sign.
"Pae-ch-in Pi-ri-t-j" (Basin Bridge) "Pa, see, see, spelling mistake." we'd say excitedly.
"No." My father would reply. "Appadi thaan ezhuthanum." (thats how you write it), and proceed to explain how the difference between "pa" and "ba", "sa" and "cha" in written Tamil is contextual.
"But whyyyyyyy?" we'd persist.
"Becaaaaaa....use", and after a dramatic pause: "..one day, Appushastry and Kuppushastry went to Kalahasthri. There they met a kuppai thotti mesthri...."
The peals of laughter that followed would put an end to any further exploraitons into the matter.

Madras Central would loom up at us through the deep indigo of early dawn. But as the old Tamil saying goes: "Before you see the elephant, you can hear its bells". The odours of Madras Central would waft into the compartment about 42 seconds before the train pulled in. Karuvade (dried fish) in gunny sacks all along the platform were the culprits this time. Smelling karuvade for the first time is like exactly like being smacked hard on the face by Hemalatha Miss for hashing an exam. It's that physical.

After the initial shock, my brother and I would look around Central Station in wonder. It was the biggest station we had ever seen. The tracks actually stopped inside station and trains parked there overnight. The roof soared high, high above us. Big posters loomed up everywhere. Announcements in a strange Tamil that that nobody spoke in real life, would pipe up from nowhere.
"... onpathu mani pathinainthu nimidathirkku purappattu chellum..."
"Wha...? Pa, pa, what's she saying?"
"She is saying, nee romba asadu, naan unna udanna vandhu odhaikkaporaen" (She's saying youre very naughty and I am instantly coming to beat you up)"

Straight ahead, G chittappa would be waiting for us near Higginbothams, smiling his G chittappa smile. We'd run across the platform, jumping over sleeping passengers, side-stepping trolleys, gunny sacks, surly porters and paper-sellers and latch ourselves onto him. After an hour's journey through the big, beautiful, sweltering city of Madras, with the widest roads I'd ever seen, we'd be in Thatha's house...

...where Pati's fragrant rasam, an army of cousins, A. chitti's godrej almirah full of Archie comics, and a whole month of fun awaited us.

Of Kunjavvas and soLLe kaatas

Growing up all over the south has made me a victim of complete and utter linguistic chaos. I speak Malayalam when I mean to speak Telugu. I confuse random people in Malleswaram by breaking into Nellore Telugu when I need one kg bendekaai. I perplex priests in Kottayam by asking them where the college hostel is, in Bangalore Kannada.

My parents are Tamilian, though my mother's family has been in Karnataka since the 11th century. Probably for the weather. My father, having moved out of Madras in the 60s, speaks Tamil like an orthodox Kumbhakonam vaadiyar. So no help there. Plus, my dad had a transferable job which made us relocate to Kerala and Andhra during my childhood. I spent my wonder years swearing at my brother in Trivandrum gutter-malayalam, and my teens up a jamoon tree in Nellore, from where I conducted several conversations with passing cows in villager-Telugu. Resultantly, I murder all these languages with the ease of a college canteen chef.

My zealous quest for a South Indian Esperanto, has however, made me stumble on many charming crossover languages, spoken by small cut-off communities that migrated centuries ago from one linguistic region to another, each with it's own little nuances. This post is about them. For my sanity alone, Ive grouped them by crossover-category, with example crossover sentences, as follows:

Tamil-Kannada crossovers
Widely spoken all over Karnataka. Ancient tamil words, completely out of use in mainstream Tamil, are combined with contemporary Kannada idiom, resulting in a machine-gun-like, super-efficient, hilarious set of languages that are a riot to listen to.

Mandyam Iyengar Tamil: "Vaaron, vaaron. Coffee utkolreera?" "Anne ma, ippo thaa theerthamaadyoot vandhe." "Innu sheth podhle utkore."
(Do come, respected person. Would you partake of some coffee? Nay, mother, I just suffused myself in hot water. I shall partake of some in a while)
Hebbar Iyengar Tamil: "Kitki ella muchyoodu pa, sheegron." "Inge solle kaaton jaasthi ikkarna."
(Close all the windows quickly. We have a mosquito menace)
Bangalore Iyer Tamil: "Yennango, tiffin acha?" "Hoonungo." (Well, did you have your tiffin? Yes.)
Bangalore Cantonment Tamil: "Masth bejaan male vandhitkeedhu love-raj. 'Naathk ivlo vardhne therley." (It's raining a lot. Don't know why)

Telugu-Kannada crossovers:
The settling of Shettys and several other sub-castes from Andhra in Bangalore, saw the evolution of a peculiar brand of Kannada-Telugu, that has the melifluousness of Telugu combined with the cadences of Kannada.
"Em bava, mayintki vachnara ninna?" "Hoon ra, nee intlo naa beegam-chei marchpoi vachesthi." "Oh adh meedh beegum-cheina bava, adhe yevrdhani alochna cheskon undmi ."
("Hey brother in law, did you come home yesterday?" "Yes. I had left my keys behind." "Oh were they yours? I was wondering whose they were.")

Kannada-Marathi crossovers:
Spoken extensively in the Hubli-Dharwad and Gulbarga area. Completely the territory of the legendary Thoppai Mama. Kindly oblige :)
Aye bai, parghihann esht kotti? (Hey lady how much are those sweet-tart peppercorn-like fruit that contain large pips?)

Kannada-Konkani crossovers
Spoken in Karkala, Mangalore and its environs. Almost perfect Konkani, but a completely Kannada numeric system. Originally evolved to confuse family members from the Konkani diaspora about the ages of their female children.

Malayalam-Konkani crossovers (Konngani)
Mostly malayalam, except for a few key Konkani words
"Genabadhy Bhattarey, enganey undu? Ithra divasam veetilaayirunno?" "Nakko Nakko, njaan Kodihaaluvare poyathaa."
("Mr Ganapathy Bhat, how are you? Were you home all these days?" "No,no. I was in Mangalore")

Tamil-Malayalam crossovers (or Talayalam)
Another significant branch, with a large section hailing from Palghat. Other large populations exist in Trivandrum, Nagercoil and Trichur.

Trivandrum: "Kuzhandhaai, paal ambudum kudichutaaya. Bhesh, bhesh. Naalikku choakLayyte kondu vaaarein kaettiya?" (Child, did you drink all your milk? Very good. I'll bring you a chocolate tomorrow.)
Nagarcoil: "Enna chechi, unga veettile cabLe TV vandhittaa?" (Yo sista, did you just get cable?)
Trichur: "Ee ende pennnnil innnngu theeeeeeeraaRaayi. Ramaswamy maamayindeduththu ichchiri medichondu vaadi." (Mostly malayalam) (My pen is out of ink. get some from Ramaswamy mama)
Palghat: "Ennadi Kamalai, yedhukku indha neraththulai choarukku oda-oda resaththa vittu nanna chappitindirukaai?" "Yaen maami pandhrendu aachallo." "Aiyo Illai dee, paththumaNi aakkum. Enna, un cLoakku sariya nadakkalaiya?"
("Hey kamala what sort of time is this to eat rice and runny rasam?" "But maami, it's 12 after all." "No dee, it's ten. Isn't your clock working?")

And finally: The South Indian Esperantos..

Kodava takk: A charmingly perfect Kannada-Tamil-Malayalam crossover,with a sprinkling of Telugu (debatable). Spoken by people in Coorg, a border district in Karnataka.
"Kaveri kunjavva, engane ulliraa? Undit aacha?" "Oh gauji madiyand ullo." "NingaLa kandittu naaku bhari khushi aachi."
("Aunty kaveri, how are you? Did you eat?" "Oh I'm in great spirits." "I am very happy to see you."

Sanketi: This wonderful quadruple-crossover language is spoken by Sanketi Brahmins, orginally from Shenkottah in Kerala, but now settled in Bangalore and Mysore. The language seamlessly blends in Tamil grammar with Kannada and Malayalam phrases, and throws in a small sprinkling of Telugu words and case-endings. The language is not spoken outside the community, so I never had a chance to learn it properly. I will, however, attempt to write a conversation that I overheard a long time ago. Corrections are welcome:
"Ay Harsha, Raju koowde. Attathle rotti vechikkrani. Vandh sawda cholle." "Raju paai yerinji orangikyund ikraani." "Aiyo, orangikyund irundhaa yendhirpi vaaNaa. Yendhpinne neegl rend perko kalyanathe kurichi vivaramuga chollrani."
("Hey Harsha, call Raju. I've kept some roti on the shelf, tell him to come and eat it." "Raju is fast asleep on a mat on the floor." "Oh if he's asleep then don't wake him. When he's up, I'll tell you both in detail about the wedding.")

So, yeah. Now you know why I'm like this only.

The hops

Part of my mixed up childhood involved growing up in the capital of Gods Own Country. I'm not sure what exactly was in those vitamin tablets that my parents kept feeding us during our childhood, but most of what I remember of growing up in Trivandrum now seems like some sort of surreal dream.

We lived opposite a wooden Devi (mother goddess) temple set in a grassy plot of land under a brooding peepul tree. The temple was called Idiyadikkodu (temple of booms and crashes). You could buy and set off crackers there for good luck. Boom! Crash! Luck! Fun! Needless to say my Bangalore mother would never let us near them.

I was petrified of the fierce temple priest who would scream "Daaaaaaaaaai!! Samayam ethrayaayi?" (Hey you! Whats the time?) at my brother and I whenever he saw us. My brother, the owner of the only watch in the neighbourhood would faithfully say "Naalu mani" (4 o'clock) , which was invariably the time at which the priest caught us. And all the kids around would laugh at his slight jesuit-school accent. My brother was a good head taller than everybody so he took it with a pinch of salt. I was a lot smaller and would titter nervously and make a mental note never to go near the temple during the priest's dinnertime.

But importantly, Idiyadikkodu, among many other temples dotting the countryside, was the favourite destination of the possessed. I would watch in fascination as people (usually female ) would be brought in shaking all over and and muttering incoherently, while the priest would attempt to exorcise them. A few hours later, the shaking and quivering would stop and the possessee would go home cheerfully. It never struck me as odd. I guess to a child, nothing really is odd. People would speak casually everyday about it like they were discussing the flu or a ear infection:

Yentharappi, kandittu kore devasam aayallee? (Trivandrum malayalam: Been a while since I saw you, child)
Aan shariya. Njaayaraazhchayeennu thullaan thudangiyathaa. (Thats right, I started hopping since Sunday)
Oh, appikku thullalu pidichaa? Kshethrathi pwaayillee? (Oh did child get the hops? Did you go to the temple?)
Aan innale pwaayi, ippa ellaan shari aayi (Yes, I went yesterday, now it's ok)

Most temples and traditional Kerala houses also housed the mysterious sarpakkaavu (snake cove) - A shady corner of the garden filled with eerie stone snake figurines. A lamp would be brought out of the house every evening and placed there for the serpent gods. Rat snakes (cheras) being quite common in Trivandrum gardens, you would almost always find one coiled up somewhere near the sarpakkavu. I was never very sure if that was a coincidence or whether snakes could actually sense the security and protection that the sarpakkavu offered them.

The devi kshetrams and sarpakkavus are just two out of many, many really bizarre things that are a part of every day life in Kerala. I've seen and heard about hosts of practices, rituals and phenomena that absolutely boggle the rational mind, but seem perfectly normal to a Keralite.

While its all very well to ooh and ah about mysterious Kerala and hope that her secrets are never fully discovered, here's my issue: While on the one hand Kerala has this dubious reputation of being the centre of the dark arts of wizardry, superstition and the surreal, it also has a contrasting image of being one of the most enlightened states in India. Long before all the rest of them started clamouring for infrastructure, the socialist government in kerala had already put in roads, hospitals, schools, and small scale industy units in every remote region in the state. I rode buses and trains in Kerala watching normal people sitting opposite me read Naom Chomsky and books on Differential Calculus. But many of the same people would talk cheerfully about Gaiian social systems and the benefits of an exorcism at the chotanikkara bhagavathy temple, in the same breath.

I don't know if it's even right to reconcile these two contrasting images. Maybe Kerala does have more spirits per square inch waiting to get into people's heads. Perhaps Kerala's muggy dark weather does indeed provide the perfect foil for ectoplasmic manifestations.

Or is all the mumbo jumbo just an old fashioned excuse to go nuts for a while, as my rationalist momma would say? I honestly don't know. I do know though, that as a kid, I always secretly hoped that I'd get possessed some day too, just so I could participate in conversations with the neighbour.

A tribute to Kabir from God's own country

Would Kabir ever have thought that children all over India would learn his brilliant dohas in school, and recite them in every conceivable accent?

I discovered the beauty of Kabir through my ever-pregnant Rajamma miss in school in Kerala. This selection of my favourite dohas in my best accent, is my contribution to the great man, with compliments from malluland.

Thooguh meim zab sumiran gare, Suguh meein gare na goy
Suguh mein jyo sumiran gare, dhuguh kaahego hoy?
(Meaning: Venne sadeh evverybody remember Goade, you know. Venne haapi, if remember goadeh, then why you will be saade?)
दुःख में सब सुमिरन करे , सुख में करे न कोय
सुख में जो सुमिरन करे , दुःख काहे कोई होय?

Kal karnya dho aajuh gar, Aajuh gare so abuh
Palumeein barlaiy hovegee, Behuri garoge kabuh?
(Meaning: Aye Joji, staaandup boi. Tomoarrow vaat you do, today you can do, you know. Sometimes flood-eh vill come then vaat you will do?)
कल करना सो आज कर, आज करे सो अब
पल में परलय होवेगी, बहुरि करोगे कब?

Burya jo degan mime chela, Burya na deega goy
Jyo dil degha apunyaa, mujhusaa burya na goy
(Meaning: You going see baad-uh thing. Butt-eh naththting you can see. Then you looke oawn haeart-uh. Evverthing is baad inside oNly. )
बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न दीखा कोय
जो दिल देखा अपना, मुझसा बुरा न कोय

Thinaga kabahum na nindiye, Jyo paayana thara hoy
Kabahum giri aanginu paraiiy, peeru ghaneru hoy
(Meaning: Don'd igginoarre Thinaga. Thinaga means eerkille - smaaLeh stickeh you know. SuddanLy TijoKutty ville be vaalking oan rod-eh and it will getteh inside eye and paining like anydhing.)
तिनका कबहूँ न निन्दिये, जो पायन तर होय
कबहूँ गिरी आँखिन परई, पीर घनेरू होय

Saanju berabar thaba nehim, Joottu berabar paab
Jaage hirdai saanja ho, thaage hirdhai aab
(Meaning: Aye boiys-eh, keep quietteh. Like trrootheh, there is no penance-eh. Like Lies-eh there is no sinn-eh. Aye Mahendralal, heard? This is foar you oNLy. Venn-eh heart is troothfuLL, in that-eh heartoNNLy Goad will come, you know.)
सांच बराबर तप नहीं, झूठ बराबर पाप
जाके हिरदय सांच हो, ताके हिरदय आप

Luckily, Rajamma miss was a lot better at explaining kabir dohas than pronouncing them, and thats why he is my favourite poet of all time.

PS: Pls forgive Hindi spellings. Combined effect of an ornery blogspot transliterator and 15 years of disuse.