Childhood Memories – A Tribute

Time has a way of breaking up our memory into fragments of miniscule pieces. Pieces so fragile and delicate that they get caught up in the winds of time and strewn along the pathway of life, and eventually forgotten. Trying to capture and preserve them within the confines of our mind becomes exceedingly impossible as time goes by, and slowly they begin to vanish for good… buried forever in the past…

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Coconut Oil.
Its thick, heavy aroma often takes me back to a time long gone. I see my grandmothers (for I was fortuate enough to have not just one, but both of them living with us) stirring away furiously at the stove until the rich white milk of the coconut bubbled and thickened into the deep bronze-coloured oil.

This was the oil used for the dreaded weekly oil bath. “It is good for you,” I was told, and given no further room to argue. Of course, they were right. You only need to scour the shelves of skin and hair care products today to understand its merits.

But as a child, this old-fashioned logic was lost on me. I hated the stuff, and I didn’t understand why I had to endure this horrible weekly ritual. How could something so greasy and foul-smelling be of any good to anyone?

Curry Leaves.
A whiff of its distinct fresh aroma is enough to bring back memories of achamma (literally translated to mean Dad-Mom – my dad’s mother. Well, technically his aunt, though she was more like a mother to him and his siblings) trudging across the patch of land behind our house to pluck the freshest leaves for the afternoon’s curry.

Chillies, Onions & Garlic.
Every once or twice a week, sun-dried chilies would be crushed and rolled into bright red paste using the ‘ammi kallu’, the traditional equivalent of a rolling pin and board.

It was also a routine every morning (for this was before I started going to kindergarten), to stand beside achamma as she chopped the onions and garlic for the day’s cooking, tears stinging my eyes. There was nothing better than sneaking up and stealing a ring or two of onion, right after they’d been cut. Its pungent taste shot up my 4-year-old nose and stabbed the back of my eyes until it teared. It sure as hell was worth it.

Then out would come the traditional pestle and mortar made of sturdy stone, with which she would pound away furiously, turning them into pulp. Sometimes she would even let me do the pounding, and boy, did I look forward to those days!

Neem Leaves.
I remember running from them. Running from my ammamma (my mother’s mother) who was holding a fistful of branches with those nasty-looking leaves, brandishing them like a sword poised and ready for battle.I ran as far as I could, which was restricted to the compound of my front porch and around my mother’s white Opal Cadet. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want that stuff touching my skin. The itching of the chicken-pox was driving me mad as it is, and those leaves definitely didn’t look like they were going to help at all!

But ammamma obviously had other ideas, and she didn’t seem like one to give up either. She too ran behind me with her robust frame, shouting to achamma for backup. Of course, it wasn’t long before they surrounded and captured me, kicking and screaming.

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Fragments of memories. Fragments, which by themselves hold no meaning; yet woven into the life of a child, mean the world.

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Early one morning as I was putting on my navy blue pinafore and getting ready for school, I realized ammamma was still in bed. I prodded her awake, laughing as she opened her eyes in exasperation because she had overslept. She jumped out of bed then, only to fall back onto the mattress with a thud. 

Again she tried, and again she fell back. Over and over she tried, and still the outcome was no different. She yelled for my parents and I vaguely remember them rushing into the room. The rest is a blur. I couldn’t understand what had happened, but as I watched from a safe distance, I knew something had changed.

It was my grandmother’s first encounter with stroke. The attack would leave her paralyzed on one side and unable to walk without the aid of a walker or cane. A cruel illness that would recur a few years later, robbing her of all mobility and rendering her bedridden until her very last day.

As a 7-year-old, there was nothing that stuck in my mind more firmly than the look on ammamma’s face and the terror in her voice, that very instant she realized that her limbs had ceased to function the way they should.

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An odd pair they were, my parents’ mothers. So different in appearance and temperament, but yet they got along so famously with each other.

Achamma was small-framed, barely reaching 5-feet in height. She was constantly on her feet and always as fit as a fiddle. If there ever was a day she was ill, we were never the wiser. She had never been to see a doctor, and was proud of it. My first memory of her being unwell or bending to the will of the “white-coated men” was when she was diagnosed with cataract in both eyes. Surgery seemed the only way for her to retain her sight, and I remember recognizing the look of frustration on her face as she resigned herself to the news.

She had had a hard life and it showed on her face. She had two fully-grown sons of her own back in India, but the only time she heard from them or received their letters, if she did at all, was when they needed money or some other form of aid. Yet, she lived for those letters. I remember the expectant look in her eyes every time she opened them, hoping that this time its contents would be different. Maybe this time they would write to tell her that they were doing well, and would be coming to see her, or ask her to go and see them. But they never did.

Ammamma on the other hand, had been through a much more fulfilling life. She had the advantage of being surrounded by her children, in-laws and grandchildren, all of whom were fond of her. She had moved in with my mother, her youngest daughter, more out of choice than necessity. A robust woman with flawless skin and a perfect set of teeth, ammamma was certainly not one to be stepped-on.She had left her family and her life in India when she got married in her early teens, to my grandfather who had been working as a clerk in a Malaysian rubber estate. Knowing no one else, she acclimatised to this new foreign land by picking up enough English and a spattering of Malay to carry on a decent conversation and get around in life.

Yes, a pair of polar opposites. So different from each other, yet bound together by a common understanding of shared loss and sacrifices. With my parents away at work most of the time, they had no one else to turn to for grown-up conversation except each other. They were each other’s companions and confidantes. One might even say they were kindred spirits.

So 1990 shouldn’t really have come as a surprise to us. But yet it did…

Achamma, fit as a fiddle, was stricken with pneumonia while staying over at my aunt’s place. I remember making our way late one night to see her lying downstairs at my dad’s sister’s house. I remember her frailty, and how aged she looked. It scared me to see her that way, but I masked it with indifference. A tool I had picked up early on in life, it would seem. It was the last time she would be conscious, but of course I didn’t know that then.

Now I wish I could remember her exact words to me. I know it was something along the lines of “Don’t trouble your parents”, and looking over to my mother – “She will be okay.” But I wish I could be sure.

The next time I saw her she had tubes running in and out of her feeble body. I remember thinking that she had never looked as small as she did then, surrounded by the stark white sheets and cold metallic machines. The nauseating smell of the hospital room was too much to bear and I ran out almost immediately looking for the nearest window.

A week after she had been admitted into hospital, achamma passed away, never having regained her consciousness. A painless death, they all said. But I remember wondering how they could have been so certain about what was going on inside her.

Her death was mourned by all, but none more so than ammamma, from the quiet confines of her bed. Her grit and will to live went up in flames that June, together with achamma. She went deeper and deeper into her shell after that.

Just six months later in October, ammamma, bed-ridden with stroke for more than four years, was reunited with her companion once again.

 

~ by .hh. on June 23, 2008.