Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Letter to a mom.

Slum City Mumbai
CIRCA 18th February 2004
On this Planet


Dear Mom,

I awoke with a dream still fresh in my mind, staring at the mirror, saw a long jowled face, my fathers nose and eyes, a moustache with a preponderance of gray and a thinning crop, when did it turn gray from the jet black I had all my adult life, where have the years gone by!!

It is difficult to comprehend that I will be completing five and a half decades in this planet!! It has been one hell of a roller coaster ride; Serendip Ceylon, Negombo, Colombo, Payannur, Quilandy, Tellicherry, Calicut, Bombay, Jakarta, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad and finally full circle back to Mumbai!!

My mind drifts and wanders, and in the dim lights, I can visualize my father, but then he too fades away… If only I could steal one final moment, and feel his strong hands lift me in the air…., I get younger as I grow older, a sort of “pre-mature” old age.

When I reflect back most of my life has been a struggle, to emancipate myself, that is to liberate myself, from the prison of life!! And then suddenly now I realize that life is coming to an end..!!

It is difficult to pen down the span of my life; it seems as if I have used a number of lives in the course of my journey on earth!! Yet it is forever unfathomable and inexhaustible to relate! But I would like to dwell on some limited fragments of life!

The fifties from five to ten were the best years of my life, I remember 221, Baseline road, it was dear to me, and all my companions were Ceylonese, and I acquired their carefree spirit. How vividly I remember going to the “Holiday on Ice” show by Donovan Andrew, Galle face hotel & beach, Greenlands hotel, Metropole, Kinkini’s ballet classes the long drive and holidays to Nuwaraeliya & Kandy in the Peugeot 203, and of course the race course!

It seems astounding how full of life we were, despite Dad’s periodic breaks from employment, life was one long celebration; Wesak, X’mas, New year, Diwali, the Turkey Dinners, the cinnamon cakes, Maliban, Huntley & Palmer, Peek- freans biscuits, roast chestnuts, rice pudding (kiri baath), seeni sambol, Holland cheese, cream puffs, marsh mallows wine, caviar and cod-roe!! We were well cared for and nourished and had a happy, healthy time till we shifted to India; the pendulum swings violently from nourishment to hunger! Your courage to accept the extremes, the ebb and flow of riches is exemplary. Some of the memories are slowly fading from my mind!


During school at Calicut, I remember the delicious, Biryani from ‘Lucky’ and the gas stove sputtering at Kottapuram and Kanchi (rice gruel) Life was either a feast or famine! Later after College in Sultan’s Battery, I returned to Quilandy and led, a roving, shiftless, vagabond life, living recklessly, and rebelliously till I moved to Bombay.

Like a blast from the past, Appuma’s letter charts a flashback of those provocative years, Ottappalam, Kothakurssi Road, Vappala, The Nalukettu, an indigo swept sky, gaunt trees, by the side the river (Bharatappuzha) quietly flowing, so quiet and slowly that one hardly notices its silent, unobtrusive course; and along the banks, the trees lean heavily and when the wind blows it is filled with a rustling murmur, that will shed a few silver tears, as the water swirls by. The Angamallai mountain range which we used to scale, with its silence supreme, that marked many a tryst with Malu!!

The old Pattambi road, the shops with its wooden slats drawn in the twilight setting sun, ancient macadam trail with the hills gently girding it; The dark skinned farm hand Chathan and his flame torch (Choottu) too ugly for anyone but his dog to love, living in a “time warp” all reflect a forgotten world, memories suffocate me; No one to whom I can communicate, a fraction of my feelings…..

The adrenaline high of falling in love with Malu, who made me feel like a man, not a bum. Where she was concerned I made an ass of myself, leaving behind a welter of crisscrossed tracks, a groping, confused state, like a fowl scouring the ground for food. She opened my eyes, and gave me a new impetus to my life as well as direction. I would never be the same afterwards.

After so many years, I can recount the most painful events, almost joyously! The early meanderings through the labyrinth of life!! West hill, the heady aroma of dal, stew and bread. I don’t have memories of Kallai but I can well imagine it, like a trail of bread crumbs…….;

The Menon menagerie, always bright and merry in the face of adversity and uncertainty!! The exuberance we exuded even while leading lives of ‘quiet desperation’. It always seemed astounding, how full of life we were despite the calamities, the uncertainties and vicissitudes of life.

When I first arrived in Bombay, I was a little disoriented, the skyscrapers, the grim skyline, the teeming city, the sad faces of the mill workers, the swank restaurants, the money so hard to get, the swell cars, the beautiful clothes, the efficient businessmen, the exotic sexy girls, the Hindi movies & film stars, the noise, the daily grind, the electric trains, the vacuity and sterility.



I will always be indebted to Valsan for providing me a home in (Parel), when I was cut off from family and friends for the first time in life.

It was in Bombay that I actually “grew up” to the cruel world.

There were many like me with no money. I would sit for hours in an Irani café, sipping tea and bun muska, stay the whole evening, no one would throw you out, finally you leave when you get fed up and walk down Fort, Fountain to Marine Drive, where people and couples met and spent hours together. Traversing back via Lalbaugh to Parel I saw the aggregation of misery, in the chawls and slums, men poor everywhere, exploited by state and society, mute and invisible to the tourist, but sought for their vote banks.

Many a time have I stopped on the road looking up at the towering apartments, when a demure young woman would lean out of the window to hang clothes to dry, with a coy glance down below, startling the pigeons who twitter crazily while the sun plays on the sill!

Here I was in the seventies dominated by my Aristocratic lineage, keeping a certain distance from my friends, seeing them from above! Watching them as one does fish in an aquarium and finding irony in their routines and social spawning.

“I had no home, no money, no resources, no hope, yet I was the happiest man on earth”!

I had fled the confines of Kerala and now with a gang of mixed Bombayities led a Bohemian life; enjoying the seedy joys and getting addicted to drink. An isolated intellectual and a man of the crowd, onward the quest for spirit in a materialistic world.

It was in Hyderabad that I still consider as the richest period in my life. I was a member of the prestigious Secunderabad club and had innumerable friends and acquaintances, from all over India. It was here that Tanuja (Baby) shed her adolescence skin and entered the first phase of adulthood and got her independent views and street savvieness under my tutelage. It was here that the brood and clan used to re-congregate during sabbaticals, it was here that we regurgitated phoenix like from the ashes of anonymity, it was here that you sobbed uncontrollably when Kinkini ran away to Calicut and married. I felt like a Messiah, that brought the flock to the stockade, fulfilled a mission that seemed impossible a few years ago and then;

One flew east
One flew west
One flew over
The cuckoo’s nest!!

It all comes back to me now balanced on the “edge of time”!!! Like the lives of other kith who tucked away everything for the morrow, let life slip by and tomorrow never came!! Time is the psychological enemy of man!

I owe a lot to you; I would never have accomplished the little I did, if not for your tacit support and understanding, the mirror of our relationship of constant conflict and struggle! You must now feel relieved, your burden has been lifted, you can enjoy the meditative calm, and the freedom has come at a high cost.

As I stand on my balcony sipping my rum, I strain myself amidst the raucous laughter of Ravi Badko and Ucho to reach out and capture the quintessential mood of those wonderful years, which seem to be melting away forever. Being with you drums up in me, an exhilarating ambience, you are the only genuine thing I have in this world. Write; communicate when you get the impulse!! As ever Vinu

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