A Sunday in Sobha Palladian !!

Its Sunday!

And its 9.30 AM and I am on schedule.

In my balcony, hanging out our clothes to dry.

And I have not seen a single soul so far.

No bustle or even a hint of the usual hectic typical weekday mornings.

I did not hear the little one stomping noisily as she runs ahead of her dad on her way to the School bus. Nor the sound of one little sister cycling along with her mom to leave her didi at the gate. Did not hear the clear ringing voice of that 6 year old boy talking to his grand mom is ‘spasht’ tamil!

I did not see Achachan (grand-dad in Malayalam) carrying his grandson in his left arm and leading his granddaughter with his right forefinger up to the front gate. And no animated discussion by older kids on the small patch of grass opposite our right corner bedroom window.

Nor did I see parents in groups of two’s and three’s, walking back and occasionally stopping by the fountain to exchange a few bits of news before they get back to their hectic schedule for the day!!

No Fly, No Crow, No Nothing – Eee, Kakka Illai (as the tamils will say)

The only sign of life – the silent, electric, green, farm fresh vegetable cart (all eco-friendly and organic - mind it!)

All peace and quiet. So calm and serene. Like Shantivan - a wonderful atmosphere well worth the crores we payed to Sobha.

What did the kids do on a Sunday morning???

My data is badly outdated, but I guess most of them are still sleeping.

And now I see Hari coming near the fountain with a few kids. The SP cricket coaching session is about to start!!

When I was 8, my Sundays were packed. 

Dad had bought an old second hand Lambretta scooter and she was a B&%$! Her crankiness cranked up a couple of notches every time her engine got cranked. The daily routine was for me was to give her a couple of kicks to prime her engine and get the petrol flow started. Then dad would give a few more powerful kicks and she roared to life fumigating the entire place with white exhaust fumes. Sorry no Euro4 or Bharat Stage 4 standards nor feather touch start buttons then.

Come Sunday and our Lambretta was the princess in a beauty parlour! All the four of us rushed out to wash and clean her.

I went with a bucket full of water. My next in line sister closely followed me with a mug full of frothy shampoo, then majli (the middle one) with yellow Waxpol car polish tin and chataki with dad’s torn banian and a large piece of mom’s saree.

Chatak = Ozhaakku  = a small unit of measure.

And we went about with the enthusiasm and energy levels of a newly promoted call center team lead.

Splashed and shampooed Lambretta, cleaned and dried her, splashed water under the footboard to dislodge those gobar lumps and lovingly polished her!  With great care and dedication no less than that of that pious Bhattachar who washes and adorns the Ganapathi idol  every sankata-hara-chaturthi day at the entrance of  CT Street!!

We did not put sandal paste or Kumkum on her- that was reserved for Ayudha Puja on the 13^th day of Dussehra.

25 years later, I found myself doing the same thing – this time with my second hand Fiat 1100 car and ably assisted by my 5-year-old   daughter.

Those days, people owning cars were an elite lot.

Passionate & loving, they were expert mechanics who cared & nurtured their car religiously every Sunday. Every car whether it was a brand-new black Ambassador or the old veteran Standard-10 station wagon, each one needed attention weekly – fill up radiator water, top up engine oil, clean battery leads on top, clean air filter, grease all joints and door hinges and finally tune up the engine.

Engine tuning was a fine art requiring immense patience, expertise and concentration – keeping one ear dangerously close the hot engine as you precisely turn the screws of the inlet gas and air nozzles alternately to ensure you get that perfect purr!!

Sunday mornings, you could not walk a couple of blocks around Mylapore or Mandeville or Malleshwaram, without noticing a middle-aged mama bending over the front of his beloved car – with his seni-bald head lost under the open bonnet and his white veshti covered butt jutting up on top of the radiator!

Groups of car owners would also surprisingly form within seconds to discuss the intricacies of car maintenance, mileages and expert opinions on nearby service stations & mechanics. (sadly, today WhatsApp has taken away that personal touch and passion)

I am sure today’s flash mobs had their origin somewhere here! 

And all such activities had to finish before 11AM Sharp.

11AM on the dot, Sunday mornings, All India froze.

Every TV anywhere in India tuned into Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and later to Yash Chopra’s Mahabharat.  

And  The Earth Stood Still !!

And while Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) managed to freeze the world by a couple of minutes, Ramanand Sagar & Yash Chopra froze our part of the world by full 60 minutes!!

And they did it each successive Sunday for 180 weeks in a row !!!

And needless to say…

Our Gods, even inside our small TV screens are much more powerful than the imported Aliens from Outer Space !!!

Krish..

When I was young…

Remember Cliff Richard’s Bachelor Boy hit number  When I was young my father said ??

I take you back to the early 60’s when I was young, but not yet 16.

And that was 56 years back.

I was nowhere like any of the current generation young school going kids I see in Sobha Palladian!

And I honestly wonder how today’s kids are so sober, well mannered, polite and even courteous to each other! The other day Jayanthi heard a chubby one say, ‘Thank you A… for coming out to play with me ‘. I thought that was delightfully cute & wonderfully civil.

It’s been 20 months since I moved in, and I have not seen a single fist fight, no rough and tumble fights either.  Things ae perfect here!  Like Ram Rajya.

Back then in my time, things were different. We were not civil to each other, to say the least.  A week without a fight or a tussle was a miracle. And we looked spoilt for a good fight. Our personality reflected our mindset.  Our hairstyle displayed our attitude.

 The local mohalla (community) bully had a dry brown mop on is head. The tall & tough one had long hair covering his ears (a raging fashion then – angry Amitabh Bachhan style).

Mine was an unruly but    well-oiled bush where each hair had an attitude of its own defying any comb or grooming. My mom had tried everything – from the popular Colgate castoroil hair oil, a red viscous liquid that took ages to flow thru the small opening to the pungent Dabur’s Brahmi Amla Kesh Tel. No success.

Thank God she did not try Simmi instant hair fixer – the sweet smelling gooey, sticky liquid that our neighbourhood Sardarji family used.

Vir ji and his sons used to tame their Simmi oiled beard under a white strip of cloth that covered their chin and cheeks and tied into a knot on top of their head.

A haircut by 65-year-old Munna  was only good for two weeks. Munna was our Mohalla’s well regarded nayee  – a full time barber and a  part time match maker. The second business has been seriously hit by aggressive on-line matrimonial sites and most nayees have switched to real estate business nowadays.

We played hard and lived dangerously. Never saw a swimming pool and I cannot remember when or how I learnt swimming. Probably jumped in to the huge well near our house in Vellore and thankfully did not get drowned. 

And our spare time was spent in real life 3D - not the VR/AR type but really real.  (AR/VR = Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality).

 We lived and played on the ground, roof tops, treetops, jumping thru old tractor tyre hanging from the mango tree branch, swinging from its branches & enjoying and exploiting all the three degrees of freedom!!

Wish God had created a few more.

And we got hurt, and sometimes real bad.

Back to Sobha Palladian!

Injuries are rare here.

I have seen only one girl with a hand in a sling so far in last 20 months. An excellent record for SP safety and security measures. 

We also have a dozen dogs & cats.

We had one unfortunate case of a dog bite. But not a single cat scratch reported so far.

Hats off and a big thank you to all the pet lovers for being so responsible. (Dog Poo is a different challenge though)

My time??

Injuries were a plenty! The bigger the injury, the more proudly we boasted about it!!

And each of our injury uniquely betrayed one of our forbidden activities!

 Broken arm/leg or finger meant a fall from guava tree (they have very smooth & slippery branches).

Deep scratches and chaffed calves /forearm meant a painful slide from the mango or litchi tree trunk (rough and chipped barks).  Scratches all over the face and forearms came from climbing up and down the ber tree(the thorny wild berry one). 

Cuts on eyebrow, bleeding nose or split lips meant a health fist fight with a worthy adversary.

Twisted wrists/ankles & Purple swellings (karu-raththam in tamil) on forehead or limbs certified us being chased by the mango/litchi baag’s (grove) bad-tempered maali (gardener cum guard) resulting in some of us jumping off from the compound wall .

Torn pant seats and shirt tails also indicated the same activity, but with the bad-tempered maali being replaced by his equally bad-tempered mongrel caching up on us real close!!

And some very sober activities also got us hurt..

Like riding our dad’s bicycle right into the backside of a fat buffalo that occupied most of the narrow unlit road on a winter evening and getting our front teeth knocked out.

Like getting deep cuts on our fingers while trying to slice raw mangoes with a shaving blade.

Like the many other bruises that one gets while chasing a ‘kati-patang’ through the narrow streets, rooftops and jumping fences.

And what is more interesting to note is that both boys and girls of our age sported equal number of similar injuries. We all payed rough and with no gender bias at all!

And remember Babli, the alfa-male in our gang? She always sported two mean ones at any point in time!

All in All, our life then was exciting to say the least and I am glad I am still alive and in one piece to tell you the story.

Krish..

My early childhood was spent in two quaint little towns – Dehra Dun up in the North and Vellore down South. At a time when we did not have TVs, Smart phones, PCs and Malls and Mc Donalds!!