For a beautiful soul...

Today is my paternal grandmother’s (a.k.a Patti’s) first death anniversary. Surprisingly I still miss her with the same intensity and force I had last year. So, today I dedicate this post as an ode to the beautiful soul who in her own way defined what I am today:

Her life:

• Eldest of the three daughters.
• Was apparently very smart and got a double-promotion from the third standard to the fifth standard decades ago. (According to her it was an achievement worth a Bharat ratna and unfailingly recited it at the drop of a hat.)
• Lived in Bombay for a while after her father passed away.
• Got married early and lost her hearing ability even before she was 20.
• Brought up five naughty kids of which my dad was arguably her favorite and the naughtiest too.
• Lost two of her daughters (equally charming souls) to health ailments.
• Was diagnosed with terminal illness and battled her disease until the very end with such grit and determination that shocked even the doctors.

Favorite and oft repeated dialogues:

"This is the only treasure I have. Nobody treasures it anymore" -Making kolams (colored patterns) are a big thing in our family and if I refused to learn them, she would dramatically gather all of her kolam books and say this with flourish.)

"Don’t put mug inside bucket. Don’t touch plate with your left hand. Don’t leave your hair open. Don’t wear shoes inside house" - Her rules were extremely complex and difficult to master. You were not allowed to touch your plate with your left hand, but you could lick fingers and slurp the rasam. Talking when eating was a big no-no, but she could read her 'tughlak' (which is a popular Tamil political magazine). According to her, leaving the hair open made girls look seductive. Hello! I live in a place which has more buffaloes than men, and the possibility of somebody getting seduced by Ms. Frizzed Up Always, seems extremely remote.

"Noodles is bad for health." - She was an authority on classifying food items into edible and fatal. Fatal things including everything she did not like and did not know how to make.

"I know English, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil. Everybody should learn at least five languages" - Honestly, she knew only Tamil. I have my own doubts about her other claims because I have heard her speak butler English and Malayalam in front of others and wished I could melt right there.

“Nobody saves electricity” – This comes from a person who never switched off bathroom lights. When confronted she would say, “I am old. Don’t mistreat me”

“You wear it today. Tomorrow it will become a fashion” – When I lost my hair band and she wanted me to wear an extremely ugly looking scarf on my head as a substitute.

“You are useless. Without doubt you will end up grazing cows” –When I stoutly refused to go out with that scarf on my head. This dialogue was also used very frequently on everyone including her sons, daughters, son-in-laws, and grandchildren.

I could go on, but to keep it short, she was a remarkable woman. She was a combination of warmth, love, kindness, good, and bad. The gaping void she left can never possibly be filled. I miss her.

Movies and me!

This weekend was the most boring I had ever endured in a while. I was in no mood for studying and the internet was cranky. So by this cruel twist of fate I decided to watch some movies with my bro. We actually watched a mallu, tamil and a telgu movie in less than five hours :) And at the end of the session, I realized:

1. They all start with a hero-introduction song!
2. The hero and heroine quite literally fall in love. The hero falls on the leading lady and they have the tumbling down the stairs/river bed sequence (with ear-splitting la-la-la chorus), ending with a sloppy kiss. The heroine blushes and voila, they are in love. If I were her, I would have probably been busy nursing my fractured bones because that’s what would really happen if a dunce weighing a hundred kilos suddenly decides to plant himself upon damsels.
3. All the good, innocent girls are homely, wear saris and look gorgeous with their hair open. (I tried the hair-open-in-the-wind part once, but instead of flowing across my face in lovely waves, they decided to frizz up and it took ages to detangle my hair). Also, they bear all atrocities silently and the only testament to their suffering is their sari pallu. The bad girls are the ones in skimpy clothes wearing red lipstick.
4. All songs (even the sad ones where the heroine is angry with the hero or his mother/best friend/anybody who is shown for five seconds in the first scene kicks the bucket) are shot in foreign locales. They all have matching embarrassing dance steps. Also this cruel death brings more sympathy from the heroine and she forgives the hero by the end of the song.
5. The lead pair romance around trees happily and the next scene is predictably: hero's mischievous smile - a door closing - camera pans up to the moon. And we are left to decipher that they are up to something naughty!
6. Yes the inevitable scene: The heroine pukes and her parents are shocked. Her dad takes the dagger out and the mother and daughter fall at his feet. The dad actually walks until the door dragging the ladies at his feet like a pair of mops. Not even for a moment do they think that the puking could have been just indigestion.
7. Then at the door, he drops the dagger with a loud clang and sits down. The whole family now huddles and bawls. The dad after hitting his head a million times with his hands; comes up with a brilliant solution for the disgrace his daughter has brought to the family. Consume poison!
8. The next five minutes is spent on zooming in and out of the poison bottle. The background music is the sad version of the la-la-la song. Finally when they actually start drinking it, the hero breaks the door open and starts a monologue. He talks about suppression of women, and how they should be given equal opportunity for selecting their partner. And this was the same dude who admonished the bad girl for wearing clothes not befitting a woman! Hypocrisy!!!
9. Then there are villains who try to kidnap/molest the heroine. The bimbette only screams and the hero is so overcome with rage that he single-handedly kills a bunch of henchmen. The police arrive only at the end of the fight and promptly arrest the baddies. In one movie, a policeman actually congratulates the hero and says he would love to get him as a son-in-law. Even my bro who actually watches pretty intolerable movies, groaned at this!
10. The bloodied hero unties the heroine, who is very conveniently bound with ropes and looks into her eyes deeply. She nods to articulate that she is okay. He grabs and hugs her. The dad wipes his tears and everyone is happy once again. Tada! Movie over.

Never for a moment will I ever regret my disinterest in movies :)