Growing up in Salem.....

It seems a distant memory. When someone asks me which is my hometown, I almost say Chennai. Not surprising, considering that I've lived 28 years in Chennai and 18 years in Salem. Born in Salem - a rather small town that has steadfastly remained small except for the few multiplexes that have sprung up incongruously here and there and a couple of ghastly 'shopping complexes' that are all the rage among youngsters.

  

But it is still a charming town that refuses to grow into a city, where the farthest place can be reached in 15 minutes, where everyone knows everyone else living there, where going to the cinema on Sundays is still a ritual followed by many families, where textiles and money lending are thriving businesses and every affluent family owns a Bungalow in Yercaud - considered the most exotic week-end get-away!

My grand-father was an entrepreneur who started a hotel in Salem- 'Vilwadhri Bhavan' – known for its excellent filter coffee, sadha dosa and vegetarian meals. We are all even now known as ‘Vilwadhri children’ long after the hotel was wound up and razed down giving way to a hideous building now housing a huge textile showroom.

 We lived in an old house as one large unwieldy family...... my grand-parents, parents with all five of us children, an aunt who remained a spinster and therefore stayed  with us and my grand-mother’s step-mother.  As if this was not enough, my mother’s parents and her brother’s family also lived close by and dropped in at all times. My aunt from Coimbatore would land up with her children ( 4 of them!) every week-end. Another aunt who lived in Calcutta  boarded the Howrah express the day her kids started their summer vacation and came to Chennai from where a car  picked them up and brought them to Salem.  And she would leave children in tow just in time for them to get back to school after 2 months. So our entire summer break was spent with all our cousins all the time.  And there were random visitors and guests who dropped in at all times of the day and felt at home in our house.

And did we have our own rooms? Unheard of! It was a typical old-fashioned house with many small rooms that hardly served any purpose. There was one ‘dressing room’ that had 4 Godrej cupboards and a dressing table with a mirror over which all of us fought for space. The women kept their clothes here. The men had rooms upstairs which was almost entirely their domain. But there were no attached toilets. We had 2 toilets in the backyard – both Indian style with absolutely no trace of comfort, leave alone luxury! Come to think of it, none of us could stay there a minute more than was absolutely essential!

  The backyard was open to sky and was where all the cleaning, washing, bathing ( in one small space with a rickety old door and a boiler for hot water that was heated with cow dung and fire-wood) took place. The backyard was also my grandmother and her step mother’s favourite spot as they sat leisurely on the floor and cut vegetables, cleaned rice/ grains, churned butter milk and kept a watchful eye over all the activities of the house.

It was an orthodox, conservative home steeped in tradition, rituals and every conceivable inconvenience.  Nevertheless, it was a happy home. I am not sure what my mother went through caring for such a large tribe, but for us children, there was never a dull moment!

My Grandmother was undoubtedly the Matriarch – she ran the house, controlled everything and everyone with her booming voice that could be heard in every corner of the house including the terrace. She would ostensibly pray all morning- with her book of Sanskrit scriptures and a japa mala in her right hand with its beads rolling to keep count of whatever she was chanting.  But she was watching over all of us all the time – giving instructions to the servants, chiding us for taking too long in front of the mirror ( 2 minutes was considered too long!), ensuring that all of us left home in time for school and the cooking, cleaning and washing went on without a hitch!

My father had his own set of prayers in the puja room with my mother fussing over his needs. None of us could touch  grandmother or mother in the mornings as they wore clothes that were washed and dried separately to ensure their ‘purity’ and if that terrible accident (of touching) happened, they would rush to have another bath before they proceeded with their chores!

 And God forbid when I got my periods...I was banished from the house, had to eat in the backyard or upstairs, wash my clothes myself and generally be a spectacle for all visitors who knew my ‘cycle’ better than I did! And much against my grandmother’s wishes, I went to a convent run by a Christian missionary wearing a uniform of blue skirt and white shirt with a blue tie, white socks and shoes. She hated our uniform as much as she hated the nuns who ran the school. Simply because there were no holidays for all Brahmin festivals and we girls were taken to church for Mass and funerals of old nuns and were even punished for talking in Tamil! And she hated the fact that all my friends were either  Sindhis, Punjabis or Marwadis......not a single Tam Brahm girl from a good family!

By the way, I was protected, molly-coddled and chaperoned all the time. Our driver who was more an odd jobs man and a personal secretary to my Grandmother would cause me immense embarrassment by accompanying me to the bus stop at our street corner from where 4 girls from our neighbourhood boarded our school bus. He hung around while we waited for the bus to arrive and left only after I got in and settled down in my seat! Same story in the evening when I alighted.....he would wait to hover behind me as I walked the great distance along with my friends that took exactly 3 minutes! After much tantrum throwing and quarrelling, ably supported by my Dad, I was granted a cycle that I could ride to Paattu class in the next street. But no, I could not ride my cycle alone....too risky....so our good old driver would ride his cycle behind mine and ensure that none of the road -side Romeos got any fresh ideas!  For safety reasons, the Dance teacher came home almost everyday and stayed way too long and a Veena teacher was hired to come home thrice a week.

With so many inhabitants, the house was certainly noisy at any given point with  half a dozen people chattering, cackling or arguing over family matters and gossip. So when we had to study, we would be packed off to the terrace. There we paced up and down books in hand with a rare sense of purpose, waving to neighbours in the adjoining terraces, looking down at the street and listening to film songs being played in the distant background.

 My father was clueless about which class we went to or how we fared in school. The report card was signed with a flourish, without wasting time scrutinising our marks or the class teacher’s remarks! I don’t remember coming back from school without having a few visitors in the drawing room sitting with my father sipping our famous coffee of which there was an unending supply all through the day. Worse, one of the old uncles would always exclaim ‘is this Dharma kutty?? How you have grown!! Do you remember me??’ and in a hurry to go in I would mumble ‘ yes’....but the uncle persisted ‘ so, tell me....who am I’.....tricky!!!  Jobless uncles!!

But those were simple days...with no TV to distract us, no video games to claim our attention and certainly no computer or internet to hook us on! We were one big gang of friends living in the same street and looked forward to playing every evening for a couple of hours until it got dark. Then we were summoned into our respective homes to study, eat and sleep. Despite all the chaos that went around us, we were disciplined without being pampered or spoilt. We got new clothes twice a year and ate out rarely. Going to a movie was a special treat. But we were happy and never complained of boredom.

I wonder if our children today can ever imagine a life without their own rooms, where they lock themselves up for hours with their laptops, i pods and i pads, their cell phones always buzzing with calls and messages, their face book accounts agog with happenings.... yet they seem far from happy!