Paati

I have always wanted a filmy paati. You know the type who will sing you songs with a hundred musicians playing in the background. Or like the type who would break into a dance at the slightest provocation. The type who would tell you stories that were about charmed almost unreal times. The type with whom you could share all those thoughts and fears that your mom would never understand. The type who would transfer all her love into powders that you use to cook or mithais soaked in ghee and always garnished with much affection.

Yes, I always wanted such a person in my life.

Of course, I had two of them. The real ones. And a number of others whom I adopted along the way – the next door neighbor paati, best friend's paati, the real paati’s sister, the other paati of my cousins. So on and so forth.

As a child, I used to feel a bit annoyed with the Tamil language where the – Dadi/ Nani distinction was not made unlike in Hindi. And to add to the confusion, both of my real paatis were named after two derivations of the goddess of wealth and prosperity. However, one began to refer to them as – Lakshmi Paati (the paternal grandmother) and Paati (the maternal grandmother).

Lakshmi Paati was a fascinating person like every paati out there. She was the mother of nine children and the grandmother to twenty-one grandchildren. All her daughters wanted to be like her. All her sons wanted their wives to be like her. All her daughters-in-law hoped to learn to cook like her.

She was the person who ruled the house and was the only one capable of belling the cat (the thata). There were many things that made her special. She was a great cook and made the whitest, thinnest and crispiest dosais. She sang Anamacharya Kirtanas wonderfully well. She was a puritan Tamilian at heart and would spend most of her evenings sitting in the backyard cleaning the rice and singing, Asai Mugam Marandu Poche. She was a bit of a romantic and had a special fondness for all things beautiful – music, homes, people, food, saris.

And she was also almost completely blind. A fact, which we grandchildren got to know only many years after her death, it shocked and amazed us at the same time.

I never had a very personal relationship with Lakshmi Paati. She was my vacation paati. She rarely visited us in the sleepy small towns that we lived in, because it was too hot or too cold. So we visited her. In between meeting the two dozen uncles, aunts and cousins, one had to take time out and spend with her. My conversations with her were usually minimal, because there were other cousins who were vying for her attention and I was anyway too shy. She was always faintly disappointed with me was the sense I got each time. What song did you learn recently, she would ask. I knew what would come next, that she would ask me to sing the said new song, and that petrified me. I was an awkward eight-year old. So I would tell her, Bhavayami Gopalabalam, which was exactly what I would have told her the previous year. I could see that she was disappointed.

Next year, I will sing her a song in Raagamallika and not this Yamunakalyanai types, that would impress her.

When I was ten, she died.

My maternal grandmother, after whom I could have been named and was not, was an anti-thesis of Lakshmi Paati. Widowed at a fairly young age and still having the responsibility of getting two of her daughters married and her son settled, was not obviously easy on anybody. To her and my maama’s credit, they managed to tide over the tough times and eventually came out strong.

But when you fight many battles, even if you win them, especially if you win them, it toughens you. And add to it that you live in Bombay, the city that almost demands that you get on with it.

Paati was no romantic. She was a hard woman. She would never talk very much. And she spent most of her day cooking, cleaning and rapidly knitting or making crochet stuff. She used to be faintly obsessive about it even. And so crochet bits found its way up into our homes as curtains, door-mats, table-cloth, cushion covers, bed-sheets and even our clothes. When you are seventeen, and live in Delhi, crochet patchwork kurtis hardly seemed like hi-fashion.

She was however a fantastic cook. Nobody (not even mom), make Chakrai Pongal and Adirasam the way she did. But she never would feed them to us. She would make these things, and transfer them into containers and the onus was on us to look for them.

I would discuss with my cousin R, why is Paati like this? Why is she not the fun and enthusiastic paati?

However, when I moved to Bombay and started working, I began to meet her more often. The first time, we really had granddaughter-grandma relationship. We shared a room at my maama’s house. Of course, it was not all hunky-dory. There were many reasons why we disagreed with each other. Like, what should be the ideal speed to set the fan to in the summer months, which was basically all year? And then there was her obsession to keep checking the time all through the night. She would hunt for her torch multiple times during the night and flash it on the clock on the wall. Inevitably, in her half-sleep state, she would first flash it on my face before her shaking hands could find the clock. And if that was not enough, she would make sure to violently wake me up at 5 am, so that I, who was sleeping on the floor, could sleep on the bed now, as the day had already started for her.

The list of things that annoyed her about me, were probably far more though. Like the fact that I would obsessively keep sending SMS’s and talking with my nocturnal friends. Or that when I had an early morning flight, I would switch on all the lights, at 4 am no less so that I could do my eye make-up properly. And don’t we all sleep the soundest just an hour before we actually wake up?!

In spite of these obvious differences, a kinship developed between the two of us. And even if her body did not allow her to break into a dance or to present her love in the guise of food, she began to talk to me – about her fears of living, about wicked doctors who never seemed to have gone to medical school, about her idyllic days as a child. Yes, finally I had a real paati.

Over the last couple of years, her health isn’t the same. She suffers from among many other things, the illness of old age. And every now and then, her condition worsens a bit. The doctor asks the family to be informed, but her natural survival instinct, make her come through.

The other day, my uncle called up to tell my mom that paati’s condition had worsened. As always, mom panics each time the phone has rung since.

It is very morbid, this waiting for death. But I know families like to plan around this sort of thing. If there is a very old grandparent, and a marriage coming up in the family, there is some plan on what if scenarios. Sometimes marriages are hastened so that the grandparent can have a completely fulfilled life.

Whatever happens and whenever that happens, I just hope that she goes with as little a suffering as possible. And even if she is not exactly a filmy paati, she is a very good real one.

I suppose, at some point one needs to realize that life neither imitates bad cinema or oversimplified fairy-tales.

Though sometimes when I look at my mom and my niece I wonder, will my mom ever be a filmy paati?