Our vacations used to be 7 days shorter as it would take 3+ days travelling one way, this was until we found an opportunity to move closer to home. It was the summer of ‘93 that we decided to relocate to Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. My dad being a central government employee, that too the defense factory had limited choices on re-location. In fact, changing jobs was not a style then. There was a buzz among the south Indian gang about a bunch of job openings in Ordinance Factory Trichy. The primary driving factor was the proximity to our native place. Packing, relocating and settling down in a totally new place was quite a challenge. We as kids had established our base in Jabalpur, this change was not an easy option for us.

Apart from planning the logistics, there was a much bigger hurdle to change schools and align ourselves for the big move. I was peacefully studying in St.Gabriels Higher Secondary school from which I had to move to Kendriya Vidyalaya for a short few months before I could seek a transfer to my new school in Trichy. Getting into Kendriya Vidyalaya was not an easy task, I had to go through a month of rigorous training to be prepared for the entrance exam, I was glad that Imade it to the admission list. I found the transition as intimidating as of a zoo animal unwittingly set free in an unwelcoming rain forest. The school was co-ed and I was among beautiful looking free spirits. My class was quite notorious and were interested on exploring rather than learning, the class taught me the art of cutting theory classes for PT, exploring nature and setting new limits to annoy teachers. I still remember a girl from my class who had a crazy addiction to a 25 paisa sour snack named ‘Birchun’ made out of powdered jujube berries that was sold by a street vendor. Now the same thing is available on Amazon for 25$, I wish I had picked up the jujube powder business then. Since the school was in a military zone, street vendors were not permitted near schools. The boys used to show their chivalry by hunting down the local guy who used to sell the snacks. Apart from that seasonal things like raw mangoes, gooseberries, jamun and guava were also given as favors. That was my first lesson on how to be a girl magnet at school. Sadly, that information was very much geographical. It did teach me that best way to blend in was to understand & appreciate the local culture. Anyway I had to leave the school after 3 months before even I could make some advances.The truck that carried our furniture took almost 14 days to reach the destination, unlike what the google map currently shows as 29 hours travel. Of course the Google map for Indian roads is an extremely optimistic estimate of travel.

Annanagar Days

It was physically exhausting to travel about 1800Km by train only to find that the defense factory was another 30 Km away from the nearest town. The journey was more like travelling from city to a village. It was quite interesting to observe the social aspects of people around, they were very simple and chose to live a modest lifestyle. There was much lush green cover all over the place, however there was a predominant presence of bushes that were covered with long sharp white thorns that was symbolic of how nature had drawn a line on curious invaders. Each house had a small garden, there was a basket hanging on each gate which was meant for the milk vendor to drop the milk sachets. Even the milk bags had to say a story about the people living in the house. Apart from protecting the milk bags from the stray dogs and cats, there was an element of innovation in each one of them. Each house had a display of a fresh complex geometric pattern called ‘Kolam’ which was not only meant to bring auspiciousness but also increase the aesthetic value of the house entrance. It was blended into the tradition and almost a cultural identity for the ladies in the house to make the ‘Kolam’ as beautiful as possible. One could hear the distant music of All-India-Radio program or the morning hymns ,the fresh smell of filter coffee & pressure cooker whistles. Each home was managed like a well running institution blending well into its surrounding, the old men were interacting and talking about current affairs as the bread winners would start for office in their very simplistic bicycles. Life was happening in a very slow, steady and peaceful fashion.

Home away from Home

Our house was a standalone 2BHK house with a small garden, car porch and balcony. In Jabalpur, we used to stay in factory quarters that was a single building with 8 apartment units, we spent many years living on the first floor that getting on the ground floor was evolutionary. There was a guava plant that doubled up as a fence from the adjacent property and it grew alongside the peripheral walls. The idea of sitting on a tree and eating its fruit was quite exciting, it felt like mother nature was pampering & nurturing you. After school, I would climb the tree in search of any fruit that was ready for me, one of those fateful days when I was on the tree and had found a sweet fruit. I lied down on a branch with my back well rested and I heard a sudden splash of water that then stabilized as if there was a leaking tap. I tried looking around when I saw a lady from neighborhood house was ‘standing’ there near the fence attending to her nature call. I jumped down from the branch and ran inside my home.  For the first time, I was happy that I was on a tree and not under it. I could not get on the guava tree again for the fear of witnessing more paranormal activity or eating any more of that fruit. It appeared that the lady living next house was a vegetable vendor who had to be street smart, I guess all this was symbolic of her character hardening. On requesting, she was very kind to not repeat it at least on my side of the fence.

Apart from that one isolated incident, the house was very nice. It was located at an intersection with 4 houses surrounding it, in front of our house lived a Christian family, our adjacent neighbor was a Hindu Brahmin family and diagonally opposite to us was a Muslim family. We were soon very close with all of them. I was more excited about Christmas & Eid as I could enjoy all the delicacies at their home. For our own festivals I was tasked to go around distributing sweets on my tiny bicycle.

Making Friends the easy way

Thankfully there was no WhatsApp, YouTube or Pokemon during those days, so we had to wander outside the house to find friends. The first experience of meeting the kids around the corner was quite game changing. As soon as those guys understood that I am from North India & cannot handle the local language, they had a compulsive feeling to play a prank. They wrote 8808 on the ground and asked me to read it in Hindi , that too Individual numbers. When I read it, they all cracked up as if they were deprived of a joke for many years. I found out that it translated to a verb, but it was a disappointingly poor joke for a Jabalpuria kid who was trying to unsee & unlearn many things that he was exposed to at early age.  Of course, this was a land that held their conservative culture very high and the 8808 joke was the max upper limit of perverseness and bullying. I was able to find a bunch that was of my age-group, at that age we are more forgiving & compassionate for fellow kids. There were no grudges that anyone took with them.

I found that the kids were extremely competitive, had a variety of hobbies and took great interest in cultural arts. I remember a family of 4 kids who used to sit under the newly installed ‘sodium-vapor’ street light and prepare for the exams as their house was too hot and usage of monthly electricity was limited. It was impressive about how these kids used to buy rough sheets by kilo from the scrap market instead of costly notebooks  for their practice. Recycling everything was a simple rule that no one was ashamed about. I used to join them some days for study when I wanted to escape my mom’s monitoring. In our life, its extremely important to choose your company wisely, it does silently shape your outlook towards life.

The Tamil Imposition

During my stay and interaction, I figured out that Tamilians were allergic to Hindi language. I tried teaching the language to some of them & it was as if they were genetically programmed to reject anything distantly related to Hindi or any other foreign language. This however was a strong push for me to learn a new language. Being a Malayalee, my strength was to be open to learn anything new that was thrown my way. I was not biased towards any regional attributes.  Tamil is a beautiful language with various streams of its adoption in local, literary and modern usage disciplines. The beauty of this language is that it clearly conveys the intention, origin, personality and job traits of the person whom you are interacting with. Blending into that culture came quite naturally when I switched my music selection from Nadeem-Sharavan to AR Rahman. It was easy to erase my tapes and load them with songs from Kadhalan & Roja. Going the extra mile, Tamil was also the only language that I learnt to read by pattern matching that happened by staring at bus boards for too long, there was no other languages on public boards. It was impressive to see how they insisted that all places be translated to its real Tamil words. Like Ordnance Factory was translated to ‘Thuppaki Thozhilsalai’ which when written in Tamil was really long. But then there were two routes to that place and I was missing some of the buses due to another place called ‘Police Colony’ which was written as ‘Kavalar Kudiyirippu’ quite impossible to read. Among all the chaos was an order that kept the inhabitants of that state tied to their culture & values. It was working like a charm.

Lungi 2.0

A ‘lungi’ holds a very special place in the dress culture of south India. It is not only comfortably affordable dressing, but also a tool to express your presence and attitude. My experience with lungi came much ahead of our relocation, possibly it was a sign that I did not notice. It was during my 11^th year that I was severely affected by a stomach bug and this was the only dress that allowed split second transformation. For a reasonably fit human being, it takes about 2 seconds to wear or remove a lungi compared to about 40 seconds’ tops for a home pants which includes double checking of zippers, which was extremely important. A pre-requisite of that zipper etiquette was to have a standard English undergarment underneath, if otherwise not worn would prove to be quite lethal.

Statistically a lungi is about 200% more efficient. If I do my math right, a south Indian was saving an accumulated time of about 4-5 days every year because of simple dressing. In fact, I was personally convinced that all the hospital ward dressing must have been inspired by the ancient culture influences.

The Kerala lungi was a simple and yet elegant piece of rectangular cloth made from cotton. The gulf influence had a slight damage on its history when materials like polyester, rayon and silk lungis meant style & prosperity. It was a dumb thing to replace a cloth that had perfect grip with something that could easily slip off your waist. A lungi in Tamil Nadu was different from the one in Kerala, it had deep rooted connections to the traditional Japanese and Indonesian dress Sarong. I think it should be called as Lungi 2.0 for the common man. While the idea was to create a loop from the same rectangular cloth, It had solved the biggest problem of sleep: rollover :: missing: lungi. Personally, I could not deal with it but I liked how even the kids were quite comfortably wearing it and playing games like cricket. I have seen a Bermuda slide off fellow comrade’s waist, but never a loose lungi.

The Resiliency Pattern

A culture can establish resiliency to withstand the changes in social, economic and lifestyle upgrades only if there is a strong conservative foundation to it. The foundation for the culture goes deep rooted to the language, festivals and traditions. As the most repeated phrase goes “கல் தோன்றி மண் தோன்றா காலத்திற்கு முன் தோன்றிய மூத்தத் தமிழ்” which means the language existed even before sand and stones were formed on earth. While its extensively jingoistic, it does rightfully serve the purpose of keeping up the crux of the most ancient tradition and practices. The primitive clans that ruled the land : the cholas, cheerans, pandyans and pallavas greatly invested in enriching the  ancient art forms, literature and traditions that flourished many thousand years of changes. All this is at a risky crossroad of losing their relevance.

I would prefer to have the Tamil culture untouched, its a place that unconditionally welcomes everyone that comes there for any purpose. While I consider Trichy as my second home, I still miss Jabalpur. The social media has helped me connect to my old friends & thanks for a great WhatsApp group from my St.Gabriels friends.

This is not over .. there are a ton of other incidents, great friends that I made after we moved to Ordnance Factory quarters, thats going to be my next blog.