My New Friend April 15, 2010
Today is Vishu, the Malayalam New Year. Yesterday, the streets were filled with newly- constructed vendor stands selling fruits and vegetables for offerings to the gods and special meals. They were also crowded with people, not only budding entrepreneurs, but also consumers eager to make their last-minute purchases before the celebrations officially began. The shops, too, were filled with people- even more than on a usual weekday night when after tea, many family members travel downtown to make purchases of food, clothing and other necessities before their late dinner. Amid the press of the people and the honking of the horns was a new sound, repetitive pops, like machine gun fire. The children had begun lighting their “crackers” early.
Shweta, my new 11-year-old friend, invited me to light crackers with her. Her father is out of town on business, so we women gathered to watch her, assisted by our ever-faithful driver Charles, as she carefully chose one after another combustible device to impress and delight me. First were the sparklers, similar to those in the States except for the matchstick handles on one variety. Then came the snakes, whose original form is an irregularly shaped pellet, not the miniature hockey puck variety I recalled from my days as a young pyrotechnical artist. Next were the fountains, shooting their blinding magnesium high into the trees above our heads, and followed by the spinners, equally impressive as they forced us spectators to scoot out of their random paths. And finally, the rope sparklers that Shweta swung around as they burned, sparking my fear that her long scarf would catch fire. Faithful Charles held it for her while keeping a close eye on her activities and then having some cracker fun of his own when she became bored with the rope.
If Shweta was disappointed to have to wait on her father’s return to light the bottle rockets and firecrackers, she didn’t show it. It was enough to have a new audience with a camera to share in her delight at ushering in the New Year.
Shweta, at 11, has been a delightful companion on our non-school-day outings. Earlier in the day, we drove for a couple of hours to visit a cousin in Ottapalum, the place where her mother was born and where the family still maintains extensive land holdings. We chatted along the way about our favorite movies and music. She told me how the students in the choir at school had modified the lyrics of a popular song from a Malayala film to perform for my sending off assembly and then sang a bit of the new version. But, too shy, she begged off reciting her rendition of “Anabel Lee” for the upcoming school competition.
Once we arrived and the tour of the home began, Shweta, bursting with energy that needed an outlet, led the way up the stairs and through door after locked door, abandoned since the owners’ children had married and moved away. Her mother declined the climb one more flight into the locked garret, teasing that rats probably lived there, but only a small lizard formerly content on the wall scurried away when confronted by daylight.
Outside, Shweta continued her scavenger hunt, finding a ripe jackfruit and coconuts to take back home from the countryside residence. As her mother reminisced about spending childhood days swimming in the man-made, stone-lined pond, and frolicking on the parapet that surrounded the house with her cousins during summer vacation, Shweta brought us tamarind, a long pod with sour fruit inside, and poked around the formerly cultivated garden.
Back inside, we enjoyed a delicious lunch of fried prawns, wet salad, chappati (like a grilled flour tortilla) and biriyani (chicken pilaf), payasam (runny rice pudding), and then it was time to sit and rest a bit.
As the adults visited in another room, Shweta and I ate bowls of butterscotch “ice creams” and talked about wedding rings, sports, and our favorite gems. Then, Maya announced that the fruits from the garden had been loaded into the car, so we were off again, winding further into the remote interior through small villages to the ancestral homestead of the family.
On this leg of the journey, my young friend began to get tired. Her long legs cannot stand much inactivity, and they were cramped into the front seat of the red compact Hyundai. Shweta began reading the signs on the roadside and practicing her English, which is quite good, punctuated with short phrases to her mother in Malayalam. After a half hour or so, by catching a few of the anglicized words and her tone, I could tell Shweta was becoming bored with our travel.
Soon, though, as we passed the rubber plantations and the roads became narrower and unpaved, our curiosity increased. Turning onto a tiny rust-colored dirt road, Charles inched the car along until we turned in through a gate and stopped. We had arrived at the ancestral home of Maya’s family, where a group of yet more cousins greeted us. We stood before an enormous blue structure, resembling a huge three-story house but as big as a barn. Behind it was the family’s temple, still used in the mornings and evenings. I could tell that Shweta couldn’t wait to go inside, but she politely waited.
A man removed the padlock and opened the double doors to reveal a long hallway. As is the custom, we removed our sandals and pressed ahead to a long room with a low ceiling. In one corner, a makeshift stage had been created, and the massive beams above had been decorated with white fringed paper streamers left over from a wedding. The female cousin, a university English teacher, indicated that we might go downstairs, so Shweta was off to the old-style kitchen with its slatted walls for ventilation and pit-style burners still in use when the extended family of over 400 members gathers.
On our way out, our hostess tried to open the short double doors high on the wall to reveal the access to the well outside. Maya quickly summoned Shweta to lift the wooden latch, as she was the only one tall enough to reach it. A quick peek into the deep well, and then she raced off to continue her exploration. Back on the main level, my young friend encouraged me to mount the ladder-stairs to go into the attic, and once I had agreed, we both scampered up the ladder to see what surprises awaited us. Disappointed that the vast space held only a few old chairs and a dirt floor, Shweta was back down the ladder in an instant, leaving me to carefully pick my way back down to the first floor.
Outside, it was a short walk down several sets of rust-colored steps and through the gate to the two old homes, part of fifteen homes in the compound. Our English teacher hostess had prepared jalebi, a piped sugary treat and lemon and ginger water for an afternoon snack. Finished, we skipped along the block stepping stones placed to protect the feet from the monsoon rains to get to the adjacent older home. Inside the second room, Shweta dared to sit on the hanging bed with me, after the old grandmother had been roused so that we might tour her 100-year-old residence.
Back outside and through the courtyard gate on the path, our walk down several flights of steps to the enormous pond delighted energetic Shweta. She searched the trees for signs of the little monkey pests that now torment the landowners with their quest for food and pointed out the little thieves shaking the limbs high in the trees above, mocking us as we made our way down the steep steps.
At the bottom of the hill, Shweta and I eagerly entered the temple-like structure built into the hillside and discovered a bathhouse that opened onto a stone-lined pond. It seems that in times of famine, the royal family who had lived in the oldest house, now razed, had employed the villagers in making the pond and bathhouse to keep them from starving. The cool water was inviting, but it was time for us to head home. With the assistance of a 12th Standard cousin, Charles had maneuvered the car down the hill and was ready to take us back to Palakkad, sparing us the climb back up the hillside.
As the car wound its way back through the villages, Shweta and I talked about Mountain Dew and Hannah Montana and mascara. We talked about freckled skin and sun-bleached hair and why having a fair complexion isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When we saw the teenagers setting off their crackers, our conversation turned to the events planned for the evening, and which crackers were the best and why. Soon, we were back in the city, and I was dropped off at my new home, Indraprastha Hotel, to take rest before Charles would come pick me up again at 7:30 and our New Year’s Eve cracker party would begin.
It was fun being a kid again for a day. What joys I would have missed without the company and perspective of my new friend Shweta.
