Buns and Corners

I used to sometimes tell Ammachi she is like a ‘konju’ (prawn/ shell fish) to tease her. I could tell that she did not really like it, just as she did not like being touched on her nose. I secretly agreed with her on the nose touching. It is a boundary that I also wouldn’t want crossed. But I called her ‘konju’, ’cause that’s how small she was, just like me. Unlike me though, with her bent back, for years she would carry huge vessels across the kitchen to serve us meals she prepared at dizzying speeds. I still remember the big red rice cooker that she had in her kitchen and the bottle of ‘uppilitta manga’. The gang of grandparents at Changanacherry used to gather regularly at each other’s houses to play cards (anbathiyaru/ 56). Ammachi with her big glasses while adept at the game used to also be quite sly while playing. She definitely did not like me calling her out on that!

My summers at Changanacherry were filled with Ammachi’s meals, walking with her to her siblings’ houses, Appoopan’s books, chambakka juice, ‘chakka’ freshly split open and watching the rain from the balcony. The house is a shell of a place without them in it and yet, it is so full of memories of them. Of ammachi scolding Appooppan, of cousins coming, the familiarity of people walking in calling ‘Aniyathiyammooo’ ’cause that’s how most people addressed her, of routines they followed and of stories that were shared. A kind of camaraderie that is rare and perhaps altogether extinct nowadays. She would write in her diary, the expenses, phone numbers, and amusingly enough steps to use her phone. Mind you, by the end she was quite the expert at using WhatsApp to send messages!

Now as she passed on, she took with her a slice of my childhood and left a hole in my heart that I now try to cram full of memories. Random bits of memories float in, the emergency lamp and the big torch she slept with, how she made us play ‘ittittapoyi’ with her trusty safety pin that she always had safely tucked into her gold chain. Most of all, it urges me to stop and take notice (achingly) of how much things have changed. While inevitable, they hurt no less. What more can we do but move on with an ‘Ammachi’ sized hole in our hearts.