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These last two years, my son, Arjun, has been showing a healthy (whatever that means!) interest in the opposite sex – and I have been privy to his elation as well as his heartbreaks…
We are very close – he often says I’m more like the older sister he never had than mother – I can nag, chivvy, mercilessly tease – or share a joke and even music I come across – this hip hop dance track Good Vibrations by Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch (featuring soul artiste Loleatta Holloway) that I saw on VH1’s Cardio Video is a recent example!
Only later did I realize that Marky Mark and Mark Wahlenberg are one and the same! What a turn-around now compared to his bad-boy adolescent years!
Anyway, back to sonny’s love life! Here’s a transcript of a year-old conversation:
Sonny: You know, X isn’t really my type…
X was Sonny’s first girlfriend.
Me: What do you mean?
Sonny: Well, er… (with a slightly embarrassed laugh) she’s too, um, well-endowed - and she’s short!
Me: Desperation shows.
Sonny: Mom!!!
Me: Er, what’s your type anyway?
Sonny: (dreamily) Slim, athletic…
Me: (innocently) Oh! Well, I suppose opposites do attract…
Sonny makes a thunderous leap in my direction, muttering threats – and gives chase when I quickly scoot into the next room. We then have a mock scuffle that ends in a hug!
I really enjoy this complex, caring, maddeningly irritating, talented teen…
© Sosha Srinivasan
I belatedly realized that there were a few categories that had been left out in the first post on Mallu Christian names…
The list continueth:
1. Phonetically translated from shortened English names (Elizabeth = Lizzy or Jessica = Jessie or Rosemary = Rosy) but then subsequently miss-spelled, e.g. Lissy or Licy (fortunately not Lousy!) I once came across a Wincy – kept me wondering if a miss-spelled Eensy weensy spider nursery rhyme was responsible! The reason is that the letter ‘z’ does not exist in Malayalam – the closest equivalents are ’s’ and ‘c’!
Male Mallus are not spared. I once met a ‘Reggie’ (or so I thought) and innocently asked him if his full name was Reginald – as in the Archie comics. he threw me a disgusted look and then spelled it out to dispel any doubt. “R-e-j-i : that’s my full first name.”
“Oh!” I replied, trying to be polite, “Ji like the Northies – with respect and all that jazz… ” I trailed off as he gave me a blank look!
2. Names that sound like noises – the most common from Kerala is Achu which sounds like a loud, too-late-to-check sneeze to me.
Tamil is not immune to similar tendencies – Kichu is extremely common diminutive of Krishna – I think that sounds like a politely suppressed sneeze! I once met a Bhooma and couldn’t help thinking her name sounded like a mini explosion!
Here is a post from Timofeyevich on some more amazing laugh-aloud examples of Tamil names!
© Sosha Srinivasan
The story with a WW2 twist that I recounted in my previous two posts got me reminiscing about a few others…
During my stint as a management trainee at a Chennai hotel in the early 1980s – yes, the very same one where I had to do a juggling act with three telephones at the front desk(!) – I got talking to Mrs. Fernando*, an Anglo-Indian (Eurasian) lady in her fifties who worked in the linen room. One day she sprang a huge surprise on me when she told me she was a survivor of Japanese prison camps in Singapore/ Malaya! She was very young at the time, around nine or ten years of age, and she remembered being force marched for several months between POW camps with her family – and surviving it all!
It really is amazing how you can meet people who have the strangest stories to tell.
Which brings me to three excellent books based on each author’s experiences in South East Asia during the war.
Empire of the Sun (also made into a riveting movie directed by Steven Spielberg) by J G Ballard.
A Town Like Alice (US title: The Legacy) by Nevil Shute.
*Name changed to protect the privacy of the individual concerned.
© Sosha Srinivasan
The story doesn’t end there.
Yohanan* stayed, thriving on the small kindnesses of the extended family, while Lukachen’s* wife cursed him every time she lay eyes on him – and treated him like a slave…
There he lived another ten years far from the land of his mother’s ancestors (Tamil Nadu) and even further from the land of his birth (Burma (Myanmar)), until Lukachen drew his last breath. The treatment he got from Lukachen’s widow only worsened until Lukachen’s youngest brother, who worked in Bombay (Mumbai) intervened. He arranged a job for Yohanan in the same city.
Yohanan, now a strapping young man, returned to our hometown every few years and his thoughts naturally turned to settling down. A young servant maid caught his eye, a fact not lost on the family. The wedding was arranged in due course and the couple moved to Bombay. After several years there, Yohanan landed a better-paid job in the UAE, where he lived and worked while his wife and three daughters stayed back in Mumbai, where they eventually bought a large, well-appointed apartment with his hard-earned money (something most Indians couldn’t even dream of in the 1970s and the 1980s).
Yohanan was well into his fifth decade when he was felled by a massive heart attack. His daughters, though, subsequently did very well for themselves and the last I heard were well settled in the United States…
Footnote: I am not sure how Appachen’s brother who went to Singapore fared during WW2. I know, though, that he decided to settle there and his family flourished in the years that followed. One of his grand-daughters married a Singaporean Chinese, and another, a Swiss guy. Other cousins of mine from the same side of the family (the “house name” is Ikareth) have married, variously, a Swede, an Iranian, and Americans of Indian and Pakistani origin. Thus our generation is truly an international melange.
*Name changed to protect the privacy of the individual concerned.
© Sosha Srinivasan
I spent quite a few summers at my maternal grandparents home in Kerala while growing up. Invariably there would be visitors – neighbors from across the hill or the next village dropping in for a leisurely chat and tea, and sometimes relatives on a round of visits during their vacation…
One such family was Yohanan’s* – only we didn’t know for sure whether we were blood relatives – or did we?
Once Yohanan and his family had left, Ammachy, my grandmother, filled me in on the history – and my jaw dropped and stayed that way for a long time – I’m not exaggerating.
It’s a story that is truly stranger than fiction – one of those amazing tales of not just adventure, but unimaginable hardship and heartbreak…
It all began in the 1930s when one of Appachen’s (my grandfather’s) dozen brothers (let’s call him Lukachen*) took off to seek his fortune in what was then colonial Burma (now Myanmar). He was followed closely by another brother who decided to try his luck in Singapore…
The Japanese conquest of Burma
But elation turned to consternation for, what was this? He had a young dark-skinned boy, not older than five, in tow!
Lukachen explained that he had traveled overland into Assam as part of a huge exodus of half a million strong Indians fleeing the Japanese invasion. The refugees died in their thousands of malaria, typhoid, dengue, infections, starvation, and gastrointestinal causes… It had taken him over a year to travel mostly on foot, down from Burma to our home state of Kerala in the deep south of peninsular India. He had joined a group of Tamil laborers traveling south when they were all stricken with cholera. Already weakened, the group, including the mother of the toddler, was decimated by the epidemic. Before she succumbed she had asked Lukachen, who had recovered from the diarrheal illness, to take responsibility for the child…
The only problem was that Lukachen’s wife – he had married shortly before leaving for Burma – wasn’t buying the story! It wasn’t helped by the fact that Lukachen refused to give up the child and put him in an orphanage… His wife then accused him of fathering the child… and our Kerala village buzzed with the scandal…
There was a family huddle and still Lukachen refused to back down. The child, by now named Yohanan*, stayed…
Did Lukachen actually father the child, or was it just that he took a promise made very seriously – or was it simply because he could not break a strong emotional bond he had formed with Yohanan on his long journey home? We never did find out…
*Name changed to protect the privacy of the individual concerned.
© Sosha Srinivasan
Indu Balachandran is a regular-but-sporadic contributor to The Hindu (which, by the way, has introduced a beautiful beta version at http://beta.thehindu.com/ – such an improvement on the original). I make it a point to read Indu’s offerings out loud to my son and they never fail to raise peals of laughter.
Here are links some of her earlier pieces:
- (S)hopping mad
- Lessons in Chenglish
- Oops Let Me Politically Correct That!
- Look what I picked up on my travels
Here is a passage from her latest article, Relatively speaking… on Tam Brahms (for the uninitiated that’s not an obscure composition by the famous German composer, but a short ‘n’ sweet way of referring to Tamil Brahmins!) describing a local relative introducing older kin to a visiting youngster:
“Do you know who this is? This is your Ambi mama who is Cheelu athai’s son-in-law Gopi’s cousin, who is married to Ramani athimber’s daughter, who is also the co-sister of Lavanya Aunty…”
Reminds me of older female relatives in our Syrian Christian community, of which my maternal grandmother, my Ammachy, reigned supreme! She’d start off real simple, but then lead us through this veritable maze of marriage and blood connections that became increasingly more labyrinthine by the minute. At the end of it, we’d have a glazed look in our eyes that would take ages to revert to normal…!
As kids, my cousin Mona (there is a link to her travel blog on my side bar) and I once travelled as front-seat passengers in a car with Ammachy and our respective mothers (who happen to be sisters) in the back seat.
There was a lull in their conversation and Mona grabbed the chance to liven things up a bit.
“Sosha! Don’t you know who I’m talking about?” she asked me loudly in Malayalam, nudging me in the ribs.
I looked at her blankly because we hadn’t been talking at all, merely watching the sights through the window.
“Our Benny mon from up-on-the-hill’s sister-in-law’s second cousin…”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, catching on as she gave me a broad wink and an even broader grin.
“… who married Pulimootil* Mathai’s daughter-in-law’s maternal uncle…” Mona finished with a small hiccup that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed giggle.
(*Pulimootil – a common “house name” that literally translates as “At the base of the tamarind tree”. Probably to differentiate between other Mathais from Plaamotil (at the base of the jackfruit tree), Maamootil (at the base of the mango tree) and Malamootil (at the base of the hillock)!
We turned our heads as casually as possible.
In the backseat Ammachy was now sitting bolt upright, listening keenly, eyes aglint, head tilted to one side – she was in her element. We could practically visualize tiny gear wheels whirring and clicking into place in her brain.
But she, the great exponent on Syrian Christian genealogy, couldn’t place who Mona was describing…
“Addhe aaraa?” she asked. “Who is that?”
[* Read Mona's comment here to fill in on what happened next - plus a couple of other details - which escaped my memory(!)]
The two of us burst into laughter… Mona had made it up and managed to fool her too! Sweet revenge!
It took Ammachy a few seconds to realize she was having her leg pulled, but then she – and Mona’s mom and mine too – joined in the laughter.
Ammachy lived to the ripe old age of 92. She was active and her mind was as sharp as ever until the end. No doubt all those mental gymnastics she put herself through regularly helped!
© Sosha Srinivasan
A few months later Mom began teaching Math at a local school. One evening she told us that Bysshe* had been admitted to the hospital for a procedure.
Bysshe was the eight-year-old son of – you guessed right – a couple of English teachers who worked with Mom and were avid admirers of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Of course no one quite knew the right way to pronounce the name, so he answered to “Bishi”, “Bissi” as well as “Bizzi”! Jay and I had met him and his parents, the Kamadevans (who were from South India, like us) when we had dropped by the school once. We found him to be endearing – scrawny and bespectacled with a ready, engaging grin.
We noticed that Mom had been trying to suppress a smile when she had told us. What was so funny about the Kamadevans’ son undergoing surgery? She told us.
Mrs Kamadevan had been busy in the kitchen the previous evening when blood-curdling screams rang out from the direction of their loo. She had dropped what she had been doing and run – only to be confronted by a hysterical, blubbering Bysshe, shivering in fear.
“What is it?” she had cried.
In reply, Bysshe could only point downwards with a trembling finger.
There, on the end of his pecker, was the head of a maggot, its body unmistakeably embedded, trying to crawl out of his skin.
Bysshe, it seemed, had hidden the fact that he had had a maddeningly itchy sore on an unmentionable place for several weeks. He was rushed to hospital where the creature was duly freed from his member.
It turned out that this was a common problem new expatriates faced in sub-Saharan Africa. The Tumbu fly (aka the Putzi, the mango or the skin maggot fly) has the habit of laying its eggs pretty much where it pleases, laundry on a line being a favorite. If you wore your clothes sun warmed off the clothesline you ran the risk of the eggs hatching and burrowing under your skin, only to crawl out later as a maggot – a horrifying, nightmarish experience as you can imagine…
The areas commonly affected are the arms, waist, back or bottom. Bysshe had been unlucky enough to have an unnameable appendage targeted.
The only way, short of drying your clothes indoors, was to iron both sides of all your garments.
Omari, it seemed, knew exactly what he was doing when he was ironing those undies…
© Sosha Srinivasan
NB: The Kamadevans eventually moved further south on the African continent where Bysshe later studied medicine. He now lives and works in the UK.
*All names have been changed to protect the identity of the individuals.
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