Chez Moi

Summertime in Chennai used to be the days of mangoes (raw and ripe) and vadams. Those were the days when the 3 weeks of kathiri veyyil were the only time the sun beat down on the good people mercilessly. Rest of the time, the folks of Chennai were just left to perspire freely and go about their daily business. But most of May was ruled by the dreaded kathiri and children were generally kept under lock and key.

These kathiri days were ideal for the maami past-time of making vadams and vathals. This laborious process would start around daybreak, with the biggest pressure cooker in the household given a spit and polish and put to use. Copious amount of raw materials, enough to make vathal and vadam for most of the population of the Western world, would be dumped into this cavernous vessel and cooked over a slow fire. Once the koozh reached the desired glutinous consistency, it would be hefted upstairs by the family Bheem-boy, after a significant portion was reserved for Tiffin.

After the initial prep, the paatis and maamis of the household would gather around the plastic sheet and start spinning koozh patterns on it. Kids of the family would be given the important jobs of weighting the sheets down with huge bricks, guarding the vathal from thieving crows and bringing back tasters of half-dried vathals on demand to various members of the family.

At the time of the following incident, I was a wee thing of three summers* and as such, was exempt from guard duty. While the women folk were hard at making vadam, I tried to break land speed records by going faster and faster around everything. My gran, the harbinger of doom, kept cautioning me to cease and desist. ‘Keezhe vizhundida pore dee!’ (mind you don’t take a toss) but of course I paid her no heed. Within a few minutes though, there was a loud yell and an almighty crash.

Deciding to step it up a notch, I tried to move faster but my delicate balance could not keep pace and I fell headlong into freshly laid vathal, just as Grandma Doom predicted. This concoction, laced heavily as it was with fresh green chilies, wasted no time in permeating into my epidermis and within a few moments, I was on fire. After running around like a headless chicken, I was grabbed forcefully and dunked in cold water repeatedly till I stopped shouting and the chillies stopped eating my flesh.

It was a while before I was present for the vathal making ceremony.

A few years later, sibling and I were dispatched to the Other Gran’s household for a small portion of summer. As we did not have much to do with ourselves, apart from twiddle thumbs, we generally tried to get out of these compulsory visits. But senior counsel prevailed and dispatched we were. This summer too was no exception. After exhausting the supply of books, we decided to explore the building block. As the children of the flats were playing downstairs, we went the opposite way. Other Gran, being not very au fait with the rules of kid-dom, repeatedly appealed to us to make friends with the children. But as the sibling and I were cool beyond comprehension, we would never demean ourselves by stooping to others’ levels and extend hands of friendship. Thus, we pottered about the joint by ourselves.

Once we finished examining minutely the perimeters of the terrace, we wondered what to do next. Playing tag was the next order of play. I was (and am) generally rubbish at all things sporty while the sibling excelled in most things. He proceeded to run like greased lighting while I huffed and puffed in the distance. Suddenly though, it seemed like he put on the breaks and started moving in slow motion. Even as I watched amazed, he proceeded to give the impression of walking under water. When I eventually reached him, I discovered the reason - brother had stepped on some old granny’s morning work of javvarisi vadam. The old dear might have well been the one we passed on our way upstairs as the steam was still rising on the ones sibling hadn’t stepped on. In trying to get out of his sticky mess, he proceeded to moonwalk all over the plastic sheet, unpeeling himself only after demolishing every single vadam.

This gag cracked us both speechless. After we had finished creasing ourselves, we proceeded downstairs, while sibling left huge javvarisi footprints on the stairs. It rather looked like Bigfoot made of koozh had made his way down. Narration of our mornings activities did not bring forth peals of laughter from the grandparents. Other Gran, modeled along the lines of Wooster’s Aunt Agatha, proceeded to chew bits off us. Our explanations of how the clear plastic with its blobs of goo was camouflaged against the dirty floor was to no avail.

She frogmarched us to the OAP neighbour’s house, to our lasting chagrin (and possibly scarring us for life!) and berated us soundly in front of that shocked lady. We thought the old dear was going to faint when she saw her morning’s work laid to waste thus. I can still hear her anguished splutters and the Other Gran’s outraged squawks.

It seems such a shame that the annual vathal season isn’t practiced with the former gusto anymore. A quintessential part of Chennai life, they provided us with hours of mirth and joy that no Playstation or amusement park could ever give.