The World of Jayaram: AN UNEXPECTED HOLIDAY

My dad was a ‘pooja’ (Worshiping the God by lighting lamp, offering prayer, flowers, chanting mantras etc) oriented man. He was very punctual about it. I remember him spending long time in his ‘pooja’ room (in India, people used to keep a dedicated room for worship and keeps it very neat and clean and calls it a pooja room. (One can hardly see this in modern middle-class Indian homes; it is becoming just a pooja cupboard…the rich still have this choice). He might skip a meal or two but not his pooja. I don’t know what kind of prayer he was saying or what ‘mantra’ he used. But anyway, he was ‘crazy’ about his pooja.

There was one maternal uncle I ‘hated’, that time. A horrible man. He used to scold me. I thought ‘when I grow up, I will beat him’. This guy was the prominent figure in my mother’s family. Mom’s parents died early and she was brought up by some of her relatives. I don’t remember how this uncle is related to me (while writing this). My mom used to call him uncle and we called him ‘big uncle’ (valyammavan, in Malayalam- valya means big and ammavan means uncle).

‘Mom’s house’ memory is like this. There was her elder sister and her 5 children (my cousins), then this uncle. All of those cousins were married except two. One got married later and other remained unmarried (and died a couple of years back). I and my cousins had huge age gap since mom’s marriage was a late marriage. One of those cousins even had a son of my age. This big uncle was very fond of one of those cousin’s kids and never treated me and my sis well. Sometimes he even treated us like servants. Mom did not raise any voice. Not just mom, nobody in that house raised any voice against him.

My mom used to part her salary with this uncle (and her elder sister’s family too). May be coz, it was he who brought her up, at some point of time, though his character does not match with such a benign act. But later on, this became the main issue in my family. The usual happy day, the salary day, thus provided disquietude.

The story tells that this uncle requested my mom to vacate our rented house and live with them (now the rent too would come to him). Dad asked for a dedicated pooja room and he agreed to that. We moved. But that uncle cheated my parents. We even did not get a separate room to sleep. This ended up in a sort of altercation and my dad’s elder brother also got involved.

But the issue here was my father was a very soft type. He never quarrels with others. A solid believer in God. Never troubles others but helps them if possible. All he wanted was a pooja room and he did not even get a proper pooja place. There weren’t anybody in that house to support him, not even his own wife. This led him to a nervous breakdown. He could not even sleep. And finally, his eldest brother took him to a doc, who prescribed sleeping pills.

My dad had nobody to open his mind/heart. His own wife wasn’t a support to him. She did not understand him. And may be he also did not understand her. Since the root cause is my mom (through which this uncle came to our life), may be my dad developed a dislike in her. There stated a gap and may be each other’s imprudent acts widened it. Minor tremours kept on happening in their married life/our life, and started the quarrel days, till I came of age.

If dad is with me now, I could have told him where and what went wrong with him, what went wrong with his belief in God, what went wrong with his poojas. But he is not anymore. This is a great lesson for everyone who is in the path of worshiping God. And I am thankful to my dad for that great lesson.

NEVER ‘FEAR’ GOD. HE WILL NOT PUNISH YOU. HE IS YOUR FRIEND AND NOT FOE. HE LOVES YOU. GOD IS NOT THAT IMAGE OR IDOL; HE IS BEYOND THAT. HE IS NOT THERE TO TEST YOU. A SCHOOL TEACHER GIVES A TEST TO GET AN IDEA TO WHAT EXTEND THE STUDENT UNDERSTOOD. WITH GOD, HE KNOWS OUR LIMITATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. HE DOESN’T HAVE TO PUT A TEST FOR THAT PURPOSE. IF HE HAS TO, THEN HE IS NOT WORTH CALLING GOD…..

I became 5 years. My nursery was over and I was supposed to go to 1st standard/grade. But nobody cared for it. Thus I was left out with another uncle, my dad’s eldest brother. I liked him. He was a nice guy. His wife, my aunt too was very nice. And my family started living with them. Parents went for work and sister attended her class and I was left out in the house, for one whole year. Thus I lost one academic year and my class mates moved ahead of me. I did not do any study during this period but forced my sis to read out stories to me which she did not like. But I achieved this by complaining to my mom, uncle aunty etc.

I don’t clearly remember how I spent that one year. I used to eagerly wait for my mom to come back, that I still remember. My one set of cousins (dad’s younger brother's 5 children) used to come to that house, after school. Then my sister. We played. My uncle had farms and coconut grooves. I remember him taking me with him for plucking coconut. I enjoyed that coz, we traveled in his car and that was a privilege I got over my sister or other cousins. He used get me tender coconut and I loved it. He had 3 children but those cousins were very elder to me.

The Zoo is not that far from our place, it was just 3 Km away by road, which was walkable even for me. Those days, the sound pollution was less mainly coz of fewer vehicles. Thus I could hear the lions roar mostly during evenings.

Uncle had a dog. I played with him. One day there came a puppy and this dog chased it. I got angry and decided to kill the dog and gave him some seed that I thought would be poisonous. The dog did not eat and I forced it and the result was a serious bite. My dad was present on that day and he came running to beat me and not to help me, though the wound was deep and I was bleeding. My aunty and her servant came to rescue me from dad and they did some home treatment. Keeping a well heated coconut husk over the wound was part of it and that was horrible. Hoooo hooo… Nobody took me to any doc; nor did any doc came to me! The bite mark stayed there for more than 10 years.

That doesn’t mean that I did not like animals. I loved/love them. After that incident, we became friends again. And Later on, when we came as a tenant in that uncle’s one of the houses, this dog used to accompany me till our house. He was capable of giving us ‘shake hand’….Dear dog, I miss you!!!

There were some other dogs in our surroundings. Some used to quarrel with our dog. And I used to stone them. Thus one dog considered me as his enemy. He chased me a couple of times.

The strangest thing I remember during the stay in this house is a duck attacking me. Uncle had about 5-6 ducks and one among them declared war on me. It always chased me and tried to bite me. And I threw stones at it. No idea how this enemity started. To be precise, I don’t remember whether I started it first by stoning the duck or not. But in that case, I don’t see any motive in me doing so.

That house was surrounded by ample land and it had many things of interest. There was a well. There were mango trees, jack fruit trees, tapioca, chilly, guava, tamarind, rose, jasmine and many other flowers and plants (I don’t know their names in English). Then this ducks, hens and a dog. There weren’t any 'own' cats, but some cats used to come when my aunty cut fish. I remember one yellow and sort-of-white striped cat. Behind the compound wall there was a bushy area and I was told that there were Foxes. The uninvited guest who visited very frequently was yellow colored huge rat snakes.

Next year I too joined my mom’s school (Barton Hill Primary School). I studied in Malayalam medium. The usual trend was, kids from upper middle class (sometimes even from middle class, but not poor) used to study in English medium. That too those who study well. But if you are rich, even if you are not good at studies, you study in English medium. In my case, I was good at studies and my parents could afford it (the irony is there weren’t any additional expense since I studied in a government school). But still I studied in Malayalam medium. Among my relatives, in my generation, only one person studied in English medium, and that is my dad’s youngest brother’s eldest son.. I wished to study in English medium.

Sometimes we won’t get bus and we walked 5 km to reach the school (at the age of 6). I did not have any footwear, most of the time; if I lose one, it took long time to get a new one!. And many a times this ended up in my feet hitting some stones and getting wounded accidentally, coz mom used to drag me. Since she was a teacher, she had to be there in time. But most of the time, we reached there after the first bell !!! I had the ‘teacher’s son’ immunity so, most of the time I did not get any punishment for coming late, but sometimes I got.

I studied decently and I remember me coming out with a 10 out 10 in my slate

Slate

(a rectangle piece of baked clay, black in color and looked like a thick board, with a wooden frame, which was the main medium to write using a slate pencil; we used even Sea Urchin’s – pencil urchin-