PAINFUL PAATRAMS!!!
Oh! Does it sound perfect or what! It’s raining cats and dogs outside. I sit cuddled up in the ever so cozy sofa in hall, with a hot cuppa coffee by the side, ripping off bhutta with my pepsodent teeth, with one of Robert Fulghum’s best sellers…..
This is exactly what I was thinking of by the end of two whole hours of dish washing, with yet another lorry full of dishes to be washed!i was decked up in a thick cotton tee over which hugging me was one of dad’s polka dotted shirt(from the 80’s!), the thickest track pants I could find, a pair of socks, a bandana to cover my hair, and ofcourse my ghar ke chappal.
After meeting Yd in the evening, I came home and straight away started the job thinking I’ll spend I nice time with daddu (‘d’ as in dum maro dum) as it was only the two of us at home. Tuls (my ma) and vids in train coming back from Chennai. The costume was cold proof and the music on vh1 also kind of pepped me up! well….i washed each paatram (vessel in tamizh) with so much care and patience like it was the only vessel to be washed. But after a while I felt like I was doing it for a couple of hundreds of years. I convinced myself that it was because I had been standing in the same place for nearly an hour and so I granted myself a 5 minute break. I switched the computer on to find the internet not connected. I called “video ganga” and he sweetly said he’ll be there in five minutes. The known bakra that I am, I nodded and hung up to join hands with my scrubber.
While scrubbing and rinsing and fetching water from the balcony I thought of many nice things to stop myself from breaking down. I thought of the four yummmm men of Il Divo which made me hum Toni Braxton’s Unbreak my heart;I thought of sister’s idiosyncratic expletives-explosion in the terrorizing Hyderabadi traffic which takes me to all those instances when she would YELL out of her Rs.250 ka helmet something like, “oreeeiiii….neee yabbaa” to the dumb pedestrian oblivious to the road and to the fact that our bike’s breaks aren’t really reliable…and the day when we were on our way to mehdipatnam, the panic attack that she had when this scooter wallah right in front of us was driving at a speed of say 3 km/hr or so that made her scream “ scooter uncle MOOOOVE…fat aunty get off that scooter”well that was because the pillion rider (scooter aunty) was rather …ahem.. bonny?? Yeah “bonny”; I thought of how my mother blushes every time she was told she looked Sexy when asked if she looked good enough or not! I thought of how my civic’s sir used to pronounce love as lauuu…..and how we’d all prolong the ‘uuu” for another few seconds; I thought of how Ryan and I danced in front of the whole school, when I was Cinderella and he was my prince way back in third grade; The very thought of Cinderella brings a whirlpool of emotions into me reminding me of the pile of mess I had put mself into, by then!
Having gotten frustrated again I called and properly barked at he cable net guy for his indifference and irresponsibility and what not. Sigh…much better! Get back to work now!hmmm… man. I couldn’t stop thinking of Rani’s level of patience and stamina. Rani’s our petite ex-maid. My direct senior! That kutti taurean maid of ours had another 7-8 houses to her client list! I was so sick by then I thought I’d throw away the rest of the paatrams and tell my mother that our house was robbed that morning. But then I realized tuls was way to shaani to buy that coz I knew that she’d go, “no chor would be so dumb as to seal vessels that can take on only one adjective-obsolete”.
I sure considered the possibility of my house being haunted coz I felt strongly that there was someone who kept on adding more and more paatram in the unwashed pile. My pretty,cute, stubby fingers were being tortured beyond words. I was glad mom wasn’t home coz otherwise she would have definitely taunted me saying, “That’s why I say-‘kannu paattha, kayyi vela pannanum’.” (If eyes see, hands should work!! meaning-do it as and when you spot it). I knew what dad was going to come up with when I saw him enter the kitchen reluctantly! He started his disciplinarian discourse and I concluded it for him without his having to say, “ shuru madidha daasayya shankhka oodlikke!” …meaning-there goes daasayya with his shankhkha …to suggest something like crying in the wilderness!
With a kannadiga father and tamilian ma, you could get one helluva time trying to speak both ending up speaking tammada. I shoo away daddu in whatever language it is and curse my stars for this unfortunate day. I reminisced the previous day when daddu and I were having a blast watching baatliwallah. I was surprised he liked it coz he’s usually anti-sitcoms and all the related types of shows. I went on washing for another 397 years (or so it felt)!
This is exactly what I was thinking of by the end of two whole hours of dish washing, with yet another lorry full of dishes to be washed!i was decked up in a thick cotton tee over which hugging me was one of dad’s polka dotted shirt(from the 80’s!), the thickest track pants I could find, a pair of socks, a bandana to cover my hair, and ofcourse my ghar ke chappal.
After meeting Yd in the evening, I came home and straight away started the job thinking I’ll spend I nice time with daddu (‘d’ as in dum maro dum) as it was only the two of us at home. Tuls (my ma) and vids in train coming back from Chennai. The costume was cold proof and the music on vh1 also kind of pepped me up! well….i washed each paatram (vessel in tamizh) with so much care and patience like it was the only vessel to be washed. But after a while I felt like I was doing it for a couple of hundreds of years. I convinced myself that it was because I had been standing in the same place for nearly an hour and so I granted myself a 5 minute break. I switched the computer on to find the internet not connected. I called “video ganga” and he sweetly said he’ll be there in five minutes. The known bakra that I am, I nodded and hung up to join hands with my scrubber.
While scrubbing and rinsing and fetching water from the balcony I thought of many nice things to stop myself from breaking down. I thought of the four yummmm men of Il Divo which made me hum Toni Braxton’s Unbreak my heart;I thought of sister’s idiosyncratic expletives-explosion in the terrorizing Hyderabadi traffic which takes me to all those instances when she would YELL out of her Rs.250 ka helmet something like, “oreeeiiii….neee yabbaa” to the dumb pedestrian oblivious to the road and to the fact that our bike’s breaks aren’t really reliable…and the day when we were on our way to mehdipatnam, the panic attack that she had when this scooter wallah right in front of us was driving at a speed of say 3 km/hr or so that made her scream “ scooter uncle MOOOOVE…fat aunty get off that scooter”well that was because the pillion rider (scooter aunty) was rather …ahem.. bonny?? Yeah “bonny”; I thought of how my mother blushes every time she was told she looked Sexy when asked if she looked good enough or not! I thought of how my civic’s sir used to pronounce love as lauuu…..and how we’d all prolong the ‘uuu” for another few seconds; I thought of how Ryan and I danced in front of the whole school, when I was Cinderella and he was my prince way back in third grade; The very thought of Cinderella brings a whirlpool of emotions into me reminding me of the pile of mess I had put mself into, by then!
Having gotten frustrated again I called and properly barked at he cable net guy for his indifference and irresponsibility and what not. Sigh…much better! Get back to work now!hmmm… man. I couldn’t stop thinking of Rani’s level of patience and stamina. Rani’s our petite ex-maid. My direct senior! That kutti taurean maid of ours had another 7-8 houses to her client list! I was so sick by then I thought I’d throw away the rest of the paatrams and tell my mother that our house was robbed that morning. But then I realized tuls was way to shaani to buy that coz I knew that she’d go, “no chor would be so dumb as to seal vessels that can take on only one adjective-obsolete”.
I sure considered the possibility of my house being haunted coz I felt strongly that there was someone who kept on adding more and more paatram in the unwashed pile. My pretty,cute, stubby fingers were being tortured beyond words. I was glad mom wasn’t home coz otherwise she would have definitely taunted me saying, “That’s why I say-‘kannu paattha, kayyi vela pannanum’.” (If eyes see, hands should work!! meaning-do it as and when you spot it). I knew what dad was going to come up with when I saw him enter the kitchen reluctantly! He started his disciplinarian discourse and I concluded it for him without his having to say, “ shuru madidha daasayya shankhka oodlikke!” …meaning-there goes daasayya with his shankhkha …to suggest something like crying in the wilderness!
With a kannadiga father and tamilian ma, you could get one helluva time trying to speak both ending up speaking tammada. I shoo away daddu in whatever language it is and curse my stars for this unfortunate day. I reminisced the previous day when daddu and I were having a blast watching baatliwallah. I was surprised he liked it coz he’s usually anti-sitcoms and all the related types of shows. I went on washing for another 397 years (or so it felt)!
2 Comments:
Yd..u wont believe how unexplainably exhausted i was...i can not claim to have ever had such a painful day in the seventeen yrs that i have lived da!!
aha! what a thiruviLayaadal! I bow before the raconteur (or is it the raconteuress??.. never can be sure these days...)
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