Tag: memories

Buddies

On By Indu PatikkalIn Best Friends, Blessing, celebrate, Friends, growing up, Happiness, life, Random thoughts, WomanLeave a comment

This is one of my favourite stories. I was standing at the intersection of Gandhari Amman Kovil Rd and MG Road in Trivandrum. A tall girl stood there with her father. We had just attended a training class together. She wore a brown striped salwar, handbag on her shoulder and books in her hand. Her grizzly hair was tied back and she looked at me with suspicion. Her father asked me if I was looking for a roommate. I said yes. He suggested we look for a place to stay, together. I looked at her and thought, why not? I had no idea who this girl was.

Either the same day or the next, another girl from the training class asked us, if she could join us. She was a short, round faced girl. She wore a salwar with a dupatta neatly folded on one shoulder. She wore glasses and pretty much looked like a mirror image of me. She had the widest smile on her face and spoke faster than either of us.

We said yes. Again, we didn’t know her, except her name.

We found an agent, a short, stout guy who rode a TVS moped of the early 2000. I don’t remember how we found him. He wore a hat, probably to hide his baldness and glasses which he kept pushing up on his nose. He spoke like he was going to take us to the moon. We tagged along with him to find accomodation in the then unknown city of Trivandrum. The tall girl I met had an Ericsson mobile that looked like a modern day big remote. This mobile was to become our communication channel with our parents in the near future, for which she even charged us a fee. So coming back to the stout man with the hat, we set up appointments with him after the training session for the day, and hopped into an autorickshaw to see the place he had found for us. The short girl knew the in and out of Trivandrum, so it was relatively easier than I thought.

During these trips, we learnt a little more about each other. The tall girl had graduated from MES College Kuttipuram and the short one from Jain Engineering College in Chennai. We made many trips with the stout guy with the hat, to various nooks and corners of Trivandrum until one day, he took us to Pattoor. This was the first floor of a beautiful house which the owner was willing to rent. A one bedroom accomodation with a kitchen and bath. It was a luxurious setting. There was a PCO booth nearby to make STD (Standard Trunk Dialling, in case you thought something else) calls. The landlady was nice and liked us instantly. We paid the stout guy with the hat his commission and sent him away. The next day we moved our belongings to the Pattoor house and embarked on a beautiful journey of friendship, laughter and a million memories.

It has been eighteen years since we moved in together – three girls who didn’t even know the other existed till then, one from Bangalore, one from Kozhikode and one from Chennai. I cannot help but think, that this is destiny. Our paths were meant to cross and our lives meant to mingle with each other. We grew from naive (this is the short girl’s favourite word) twenty two year old young girls’ to mothers of children ranging from five to fourteen. It feels like a lifetime, and yet like yesterday when we were huddled in the autorickshaw following the stout guy with the hat, on his TVS, to the nooks and corners of Trivandrum.

May our conversations never be silent!! Love you girls, always and forever!!

xoxoxo

 

Reunion

On By Indu PatikkalIn celebrate, Friends, Illusions of a dream, life, life lessons, opinion, Random thoughts, realizations, TranquilityLeave a comment

Small talks

Little laughters

Shot size bantering

Is all there is

Is all there will be

Crossing paths

Like two cars passing by

Short-lived acquaintances

They come and go

And there are plenty

Starting with small talks

Ending with small talks

These are loose threads

From another lifetime

This I am sure if

For

Each life

Is a reunion

Of the souls..

Nuts and bolts

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

I found this box in my mother’s bag. My mother passed a year ago and while goinggoing through her bag found this box which was once packaged with nuts served on domestic indigo flights. On one of my travels many years ago, probably from trivandrum to bangalore, I had bought this box of nuts for my parents. 

It’s contents span a lifetime and attributed to people she holds dear to her heart. 

There is a passport size phot of my brother in Bishop Cottons uniform. The struggle she went through to get him an admission at bishop cottons is something best forgotten. She paid a donation of 5000 rupees way back in 1989, at her own intuition and will so that my brother would get the best education possible.

The passport photo of me was taken for my engineering college admission, in 1995. Getting me into MIT, Manipal was a big step for her. Payment seat with a fees of 40,000 rupees per year. I can only imagine the jitters she must have had thinking of this colossal amount she had to make every year along with my brothers bishop cottons fees. I got the last computer science payment seat that year. Was she worried about sending me away from her nest, I don’t know, I was engrossed in getting that last seat. 

The picture of her and a boy, is before her marriage. She had come to bangalore to help her sister take care of her son, my cousin, Manoj. He remained her first child always. This was probably 1972..

The next picture is of her, Manoj and his younger brother Babu.. she learnt her first lessons of motherhood from them. They were very dear to her. 

The dice is something I got for her when she came to visit my family in the US, and we went to Las Vegas. Oh! How much fun she had at the slot machines.  By then my elder son was born and this memento says “Grandma’s casino, Las Vegas”.

The kushtex fabrics book is her phone and address book, her link to the world. This was a complimentary gift from a company whose fabrics my uncle and aunt sold in wholesale at Bangalore.

Then her bank card, hospital cards and some papers.  She has carried these with her for innumerable years, adding to the collection over the years. These little things mattered to her. Today she carries them in her heart, overseeing each one of us, visiting us, assuring us that she is here, somewhere around us.
Lots of love, to the woman, because of whom, I am, who I am..

Going home…

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

The last time this big Bird took me home, the cold body of my mother lay in an ice box, waiting for my brother and me. Her soul gone. The warmth of her embrace now cold from the ice. Her smile faded, forever. I was dreading the journey. I didn’t know myself for the moment and the hours afterward I see her. It was the worst day of my life.
It has been a year. During this one year she visited me a few times. I felt her presence as my husband, children and I reunited after my son’s week long summer camp. I felt her smiling beside me as I plucked the first vegetable from my garden. I felt her each time I cooked her recipe. I felt her as I sewed my first handbag. I have felt her, more powerful than ever.
This time I am going to help free her soul, so they say. It maybe a ritual, but maybe it will bring closure to the mourning. I don’t know, once again, how I will feel. But, maybe it will help me get over the grieving and celebrate her life. I will continue to feel her presence, I know, till my last breath. She will be there with me, holding my hand when I am weak, rejoicing with me at my successes, watching over me and keeping me blessed.
I dread going home, for the first time. It’s the first time, that I will be going home without my mother. It’s not that thought that I am dreading. When I open her cupboard, will I catch her smell? Will it feel like she is there, yet not there? I don’t know. Another uncertain period of life, where I don’t know myself.
I miss you Ma, today and everyday for the years to come. I wish I could hug you, just once more.