Chinna Saroja, Golu and Death
Written by Dilip Muralidaran on September 27, 2009 – 7:28 pm -Death is a great equalizer. I do not have great memories of everyone i’ve met in life but some people stood out. They stood out because they were the different ones. Some called them weird, some called them unfortunate and some called them fools. I call them victims of culture based off religious ideologies. The example i will present is a fantastic specimen.
When you live in a Brahmin community you are never short of women named “Saroja” around you. Its one of those famous brahmin names along with “Baby”. Chinna Saroja (Chinna means Little in tamil) was a famous character from my childhood days. She and her husband were a unique couple. I guess i think his name was Kutti Raman (Kutti means small in tamil) but i really don’t remember it that well. Her husband was the silent one like teller in the Penn and Teller show. Chinna saroja ran the show pretty much and her husband nodded, always.
Chinna Saroja and her Husband were distant relatives. They were quite rich, or rather used to be. They had it all. You can imagine them to be one of the differently rich landlord Brahmin family types. They had business, they had acres of land, farms and pretty much everything going for them in life with the exception of children. They did everything they could in this world to have children. Every doctor money could buy and every type of medication.
Of course, they did perform every pooja for all the hindu gods in the text books and off the text books. I say off the text books because a nun and a father in the lourdes church conned them and made some money claiming jesus was a hindu god and he could help with child birth. So did a gentleman from the venus mosque claim some islamic fairy to be lord ayyappans daughter and made a quick buck. My grandfather put an end to these things with the help of a few other people and of course the cops and i will reserve that incident for another very long blog post. Nevertheless, they had no children.
Saroja and her husband adopted. I really love it now to think of the fact that they were liberal enough to go to an orphanage and adopt a random child. Folks from my community / family pestered them to adopt a “Brahmin” child so that i is not subject to the thought processes of a “non brahmin” child. Many a poor family had even tried to sell them a child one could not raise due to poverty. Nevertheless, they adopted a “non brahmin” child, not one but five. The children were happy. Of course they adopted into the ways of a brahmin family system as well. They were vegetarians, spoke the brahmin accent of tamil and one could hardly recognize them if not told.
Once the children grew up they returned the favour. They drugged their parents and made them write off all the property they had to these five adopted children. With mother-loads of money in their wallet the children split and fled in different directions except one. He lived in the same house as their parents brought them up. This son was the kindest of all. He did not throw the parents on the streets like one would expect. He made them household servants instead. They did all the cooking, washing and cleaning and in return were fed 3 square meals a day, without any pay or benefits.
Saroja reminds me not because of her painful state of life but because how she made merry for everyone by making fun of herself. Every year during Golu, she would go around homes in town visiting the Golu setup. As customary as it is, she would sing. Everyone loved it, not because she was fantastic a singer but she was horrible a singer yet nothing or no one stopped her. I explicitly remember the same song she sang year after year. It went something like…
“Gundu Saroja, Baby Saroja, Kulla Saroja, Chinna Saroja…”
Those were the chorus lines. It basically meant “Fatty Saroja, Childlike Saroja, Short Saroja, Small Saroja”, it was a tamil song. Her own composition, apparently. You cannot forget that face because it resembled exactly like that of this Chettichi doll in this image. Unlike today’s women even in their late 60’s, back then women did not shave, they did not use lazer or wax their lips, skin etc., Turmeric was the only option used on the face to prevent hair growth. The yellow of turmeric made her mild moustache stand out blonde and it would look so funny we kids exploded into laughter the moment we saw her. All the kids would gather around in my house from our street when she comes over for Golu.
She would take the small amount of money, the blouse bit (clothing to stitch a blouse) and the fruits and other things that were given when you visit ones house for Golu. Saroja lived her life for Golu, if you asked me. She had her moments, and it was clearly meant for those famous lines of her multi platinum local number sung at Golu, every year.
She passed away one fine day in sleep. Her husband was even more broke when she was no more. He came one fine day and said he was starving and his daughter in law feeds him no more. My aunt and my mother used to take pity on him and feed him lunch everyday. He would sit at the verandah and eat food out of a banana leaf. The hunger of a man 80 odd year old man who has not eaten for a whole day will show. I felt bad for him.
One fine day he came and he presented a neat “Pallanguzhi” instrument made of teak wood. It was a famous game back then before ludo and trump cards defeated old board games. He wanted to sell it and my aunt brought it for Rs. 20 from him. That was the last we saw of him. A few days later we heard he died during sleep on the pavements, right outside his house. Thaththa (Grandpa) went to the burial ground and offered his “vaaykkarisi” (dropping grains of rice on the dead persons mouth before setting on fire) before he was cremated.
I don’t believe in celebrating religious festivals or practices. I somehow was reminded of Chinna Saroja looking at the doll in my house Golu today. I think i will change my mind and make an exception. I will celebrate Saroja, her husband and their life history. I hope there are other people who remember them today. I really hope…
Tags: Bhommai, Chettiar, Chettichi, childhood, Golu, Kolu, Real Life Story, short story, tragedy
Posted in daily life, happenings, india, personal, short story | 2 Comments »
The Last Bite
Written by Dilip Muralidaran on September 9, 2009 – 8:12 pm -
Cousins are one of the best things that have ever happened to me in life. Not having much of personal friends during childhood cousins were everything to me. When time passed and we all graduated out of college, thanks to Caste Based Reservations, the highly intellectual gold medal scoring, school topper ranking cousins of mine never managed to find college admissions in India on merit. Thanks to this deep shit system, simply because we were born into a caste that is deemed forward by the government, discrimination was our fate despite the hard work. So one by one all of them stepped out of India and got admitted in universities with almost 100% scholarships just as they deserved, in the USA.
While this was good for them, I felt quite messed up in a way, only I can explain. I hardly passed math exams and the ones I topped were science, computers and English. Rest all was below average scores, not that im ashamed of it but this meant there is no way I could go abroad to study graduation school, so I stayed put, away from cousins whom were now not with me.
It was at this time I finally finished college, started working and brought a digital camera. Primary purpose -> take pictures of events back home to email it to cousins in the USA. This kind of knit the broken gap and made me and my NRI half bloods in the USA happy. Not for long though, since a known traitor in the family stole that camera on a family occasion. As i always do, I decided to prove this bugger wrong. I googled for specs blindly and brought 2.5 times as expensive a camera as I had before to let him know that nothing would stop me, not a petty thief. Now that I had a bazooka in hand while I merely needed a pen knife, I started experimenting, when I met this gentleman on flickr by accident. He taught me several things and the story started.
While I was on an office day out I had these pretty girls who were a part of the Event Management group pose for me fun. Suddenly, this bubbly character comes from nowhere and I don’t even remember how it all started but hey, we were shooting now. What happened afterward’s is something this set will clearly explain in detail while taking you through a crash course in the history of Shan & Dilip’s photography adventures.
It all seems like yesterday when this little kitten meowed at your feet and you picked it up but then time flies so fast, like all good things this must come to an end too. As she leaves for Dubai to move up and live with her hubby I think this will be another system restore point to the window of my life, only thing is this restore point is merely a marker and not a functionality (apologies to Apple fanboy’s). I feel sad, I will be losing a wonderful friend. I feel depressed that the best model I could ever shoot in life is not gonna be around no more. I mean it when I say it, give me all the babes of Hollywood and Bollywood and all the money for it. I may like it all but I doubt if it would bring the same fun and frolic it brings driving down to ECR with Shan, holding on to dear life while she whizzes through like Schumacher and thank the heavens for seat belts and brakes (if she had ever used them) and start shooting in the middle of the road at random places.
Through all of that in the worst & best of times, birthdays, layoffs, celebrations, random useless time pass, a wedding I guess there is much more for me here to celebrate than feel selfishly sad about. Like I always say, thank you is not for friends. So I will say "love ya loads" and yes, now there is a calendar to keep a count on when this kitty takes a vacation and comes visiting India. Meow!
Tags: flickr, friend, Photography, Poonai Rascal, Shan, story
Posted in daily life, flickr, friends, personal | 2 Comments »