MY PRE-SCHOOL YEARS - 7

As I mentioned earlier, ours was a large joint family. My pre-school days were spent at home all the time barring the occasional short visits to some relatives or other. So, to understand those days, I should make a more detailed sketch of my household; sort of family tree and how various people interacted there. One should remember that this was how as a child, I had interpreted these interactions. My interpretations could be probably inaccurate, incomplete or irrelevant in several contexts.

First, let us get the family tree right.

I did give a detailed account of Great Grandma earlier. Now let us get to others.

I had no much interaction with my Grandpa’s younger brother, as I used to see him rarely during those days. He would be mainly sitting out there in the portico and chewing pan after lunch. At that time, I never knew where his living quarter was. In the nights after dinner, I had seen him going out and he would come back in the morning directly to the bathing pond.

I had three grandmas. The eldest grandma, was not my father's mother, though my father was the eldest. Later, I came to know that she had a son elder to my father but had died very young. She used to give me, after the daily morning pooja, the small piece of jaggery which was the offering to God and I used to wait for her to call me 'Kunjoo..oo..' lovingly for giving it. Jaggery is sweet. But these pieces were further sweetened with love.

My own grandma, my father's mother, was more into worldly things like supervising the making of pickles every year, assisting and advising the young daughters in the art of cooking etc.

The younger grandma also, as I remember, was pretty efficient in housework and used to move about very fast. And would take lead in gathering all the children for meals, make sure that they take bath and generally keep an eye on us so that we don't get hurt. So, if I had a fight with my playing companions, it was always she who would look into the matter.

In fact her youngest son, was just about four years elder to me. We used to play together sometimes and fight when he doesn't want to play with ‘one so young like me who did't know anything’. Especially when I wanted to act grown up and wanted to play with him.

I will talk about him later when we come to the male members of my father's generation. Before that, let me talk about the other two grandmas.

These two grandmas, were married to the younger grandpa. Their lives were quite abnormal as one was perennially sick and the other was mentally challenged. I was not encouraged to talk about them whenever I asked anyone about it.

Let us now come to the next generation.

I had not talked earlier much about any of the male members of this generation. My father was the eldest. He did not go to school. But had basically learnt to read and write Malayalam and a little bit of mathematics for checking the family accounts.

His elder brother who died before I was born was the first to introduce some modern education in the family. He himself didn’t go to school, but he tried to educate his younger brothers. I understand that he also secretly contributed to the independence movement. He coaxed and helped two of my uncles to run away from home to study.

The stories I heard, were that when they came home during holidays they were not let into the house. Grandpa was very angry and with a lot of pleading by grandmas, they were allowed to stay in the outhouse and their food was served there.

I had five uncles; two from eldest grandma, one from my direct grandma and two from the youngest grandma.

As I said earlier, my youngest uncle, sometimes would play with me when he was not having any other companion. Many times, I would go with him and his companions when they went to temple pond to take bath. The perimeter of that pond would be about half a kilometer and the water was pretty deep. I was not allowed to bathe there except under supervision from my aunts. When my young uncle and his friends swam, dived from a sidewall of the bathing house, (built on one bank of the pond with proper granite steps and a tiled roof), or when they did numerous antics, I would stare in wonder and admiration.

By the time the turn to go to school came for my younger uncles, things had eased out a little. They were allowed to go to the local school, but only after all the traditional ceremonies of the making of a Nambudiri were over. (Upanayanam, Samavarthanam and a host of other small ceremonies in between). This meant they could start going to the school only at the age of almost 10 or 11.

Between the three grandmas my Grandpa had 10 daughters and my younger grandpa had three daughters and all of them were so dear to me and would shower their affections on me.

The Indian freedom struggle was at its peak and most probably my uncles took initiative and bought a dozen charkhas for spinning yarns. These were kept and operated on the second floor of the western wing, a huge hall where all my aunts used to sleep like in a dormitory.

Now that the male children had started going to school and learning, it was felt that my aunts also should learn to read and write, learn a bit of music and to operate charkhas and spin yarns etc. and that is how Malu teacher came in and I got pre-school education at home.