How our perception changes with time!

I almost muttered that word in exquisite joy..
"Hurrah.." When I landed in Chennai this afternoon...

The dusty roads and the unkempt crowd, the packed trains and the thug auto-wallahs- all of which nauseated mightily- looked suddenly pleasant.. I even liked the weather....which was cool and breezy..

XXX

It's Grandpa's (Nanaji) death anniversary today. And I just delighted myself with Annapurna's mouth-watering fishes..... No, I hadn't yielded to temptation. It was a slip-back.

Nanu had passed away barely months after I was born. He died ABANDONED.

Not that there wasn't anybody around. Nani, mama, mami, mousis all surrounded him like bees surround the jaggery.

But that one person who he loved the most, and in whom lay his very perception of life, was missing. My mom.

She had just left my dad, and hence, she would not be allowed to meet her dying father. Uncles and aunts had all sided with dad, making petty efforts that he won my custody. I still do not know, whether it was the lure of money my dad might have assured, or sibling rivalry at its worst.

Mumma, the Goddess avatar that she is, could have easily silenced them all...But the effort, that one exchange of a verbal duel, might have cost Nanu his life.

Nani was unaware of it all. Her letters, that she would write to my mumma, explaining how critical her father was, and how sorely he longed to see her, never reached her.

The servant was bribed.

They didnt even tell her he was dead. Mom learnt it from others. Rushed to her mother's place to find the body was already taken for cremation.

She afforded a last glimpse of him only at the Samsaan. In a daredevilry that brought her lot of disrepute. An upper cast Hindu woman, that too from an elite family, would not be seen in ghat those days. That was late 1980s. People were hide-bound by convention (Ain't they still?). But who cares when you need to bid adieu to your father. For one last time.

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Will the Goddess put things magically in place tommorow?
I hope, I pray, I protest- that She does.

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Habit truly enlaces us its way. Just three months at home, and I've been speaking Hindi in Chennai.

First it was the Auto-driver. "Eggmore ka kitna loge?"
He, although baffled, sensed it yet. "75 longa" Or, may be it was "Loeinga."

"You Pig.. 75 hota hai yahan se," I muttered in my mind.
50 anna, I copied the Chennai accent.

The Deal was done.

Now at the internet parlour, I tell this man, "Ek ghanta extend kar do." He looks at me. With an expression that suggested: Jab tere ko malum mujhe Hindi nahi aata, tu Hindi kyoun bola.

"I'd like this extened by an hour," I corrected myself.

XXX