today I will write about my mother's elder sister ....she lives on a cashew and rubber estate ...that place is called Kotathala ...and is furthest from the main town in Kollam where my dad's ancestral house was ... a house where Even my dad loved to stay....usually he would stay for just a day in my maternal granny's house ....the minute he left for his mom's house ....my siblings would cry and get fever and my maternal granny would get upset ....ergo her fondness for me ...as from as young as 4 years of age ...I would stay alone with her in that ancestral home in the village with her and Never get bored or cry for my parents or siblings or trouble her either .... she and I got along very well ....we could sit quietly for hours and look at the fireflies in the yard and be content ...
my aunt who lives on the estate is my mom's immediate senior sibling ...seniority wise and the Most Helpful Being I have seen ...she helps everyone and anyone and is very kind .... her husband a contractor, would take me to their house from my maternal granny's house sometimes ....though a remote place and very dimly lit that place due to voltage in rural areas...I loved it ....specially cause my cousin sister who was two years older would lend me her georgette pavadas (long skirts worn in south India) and I would love walking around and tripping, wearing them ...and my glass bangles and running and fighting with my cousin brother who was two years younger than me and a very active political activist (later when I came to know that his paternal uncle was a communist naxal who was shot dead by the police...I thought I knew his political genes)...he would use his generous pocket money to buy ink and white cloth and make banners for some political party he belonged to ....when he was in the 7th grade ...his village folk wanted to make him a panchayat member!!!!
I also liked him coz he would put 'my enemy number one those days' my brother.. in place ....once when we went to their house ...I was 8 and my brother and the cousin were 6 ....my aunt gave my brother, my cousin's shirt to wear ....some time later I saw them both going up to the terrace ...tagged along and saw my brother getting Nadan Iddi ( countryside boxing) from his cousin for wearing his shirt without his permission ....and I was ohhhh boy oh boy ....soon we were all trooping down with my brother crying and loads of shenanigans happened ....
apart from cashews and mangoes and rice cultivation ...that is the house I saw what a nutmeg tree looked like, what a clove tree and a cinnamon tree looked like ...the entire place smelled soooo herbal and Awsum
however this cousin of mine ...his pet name is Kuttan led his entire brood of 3 siblings ...he had two elder sisters and one elder brother and he had such muscles at that age and he Never listened to anyone .... he taught me a few bad bad words in Malayalam and my aunt yelled at all of us about that !!!! she also would get mighty upset if we played cards in the house ....I could never understand why playing cards in the house was a bad omen ....my dad taught us to play rummy and a few other games in Pune....
Kuttan's favourite way to pass time before lunch was to take us and his brood of siblings and attack the neighbour's mango orchard ....according to him those mangoes were better ....whatever his dictates.. we obeyed ....the only problem ...he would not allow his second sister to accompany us ...and his sister would plead with him ....and I would take up for her ...however he would not listen and be rude to her .....finally when I put my foot down he would grudgingly agree ....and off we went to Steal .... me in my long skirt .....half way through stealing .....Bhammmm!!!! there was their neighbour running towards us screaming something we could not understand and we would get Orders to Runnnn ...from Kuttan of course....and all hell would break lose ....my brother would start crying and we would pull him and run ....once I fell and scrapped my knees and ouchhhh ....how that hurt ....however when we reached my aunt's home ......how aromatic those dark green mangoes with a tinge of red would be...his second sister would be given the duty to wash and cut and add chilly powder and salt to the mangoes and we would have a hearty feast of raw Stolen mangoes .... LOL
and post lunch we would go pick cashew fruit and go awwwwwww and ohhhh about how Unique it is ...then in the evening we would have a small outdoor fire and roast those grey stone like cashew kernels ...and eat the hot tasty cashew nuts straight from the fire after shelling them ...we siblings were always treated like Porcelain and my cousins got a ticking off if we hurt our fingers while roasting and shelling ....I dunno if it is those days of gorging on cashew nuts that I somehow can Never eat cashew nuts ...I just don't like them shelled ones ....
once when I had gone to Kerala alone after my 11th grade ....my aunt came to pick me up from my paternal uncle's house in Kollam and I remember my first encounter with a python during a trip when I was picking cashews with my cousin sister and brothers ....by then the eldest girl of their house was married and there were just three of them ...I was as usual in my cousin's long skirt made of georgette and leaning against the tree trunk of a cashew tree ... I was telling them something about my coming 3rd in college and how I had got a scholarship as they wanted to know how I had turned around as a student ...in school my mom was always going on about how bad a student I was ....we were talking and laughing when Kuttan's elder brother said ''Hush'' ''Listen !!!!!'' and sure enough I thought it weird that I could hear a sound like a heavy stream gushing towards us and I wondered how such a flash flood could occur in peak summer ....that area was called Bhootataan Mala aka Ghost Mountain and I was hmmm anything goes out here ...
in that moment my sister dragged me by my hand and all of them started Screaming and dragging me and running ...I said wait ....lemme tuck my skirt up and they went Ballistic specially my elder brother ...I waited pulled the skirt up from behind and tucked it in the front to make it pant like and then started running ....by now my elder brother was Wild with me and yelling on top of his voice to Runn .... ergo I thought maybe we are in the middle of an Earthquake for sure ....
when we reached their compound ...I turned around and asked him if he was Ok ...screaming like a Bansheee ....that is when they told me that was not water falling nor was it an earthquake ....that was the sound of a Python ...Yikessss !!!!!!!! I hate snakes and the thought of being chased by a huge snake felt ewwwwly yikes and yucky
that aunt's house and estate was awsum and I still remember playing in the drain water during the rains ...those drains were between the paddy fields and had small fish in them .... we hardly clicked snaps and the weird thing about snaps in a joint family was that ...we had to give them away ...ergo most of ...no nearly all my childhood snaps are with aunts and uncles and dunno who ....sigh ...
now my cousin Molly who would lend me her long skirts has a daughter who is doing her 3rd year of medicine in Russia !!! and it's more than 20years that I saw them ....
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