by Vani Viswanathan
Six-year-old Seenu snuggled up to his 85-year-old grandmother. “Paati, naan Seenu!” he clarified to his deaf and nearly-blind grandmother. Her skin hung in folds down her chin. And her arms. Seenu played with the loose skin hanging at her arms. She leaned towards him, smelling vaguely of old age and betel nut. How she could still manage to eat betel nut at this age, with her few remaining teeth, Seenu wondered.
Seenu had paid much attention to her over the last two days, since he had come over to his maama’s place for his summer holidays. She seemed to be chewing something all the time. ‘Chhup, chhup,’ the sound came, from her mouth. She slurped when she had anything liquid. Rasam. Buttermilk. Coffee. He was fascinated. He tried slurping the next time he had to drink leftover rasam off his plate.
He was also amused that someone this ancient still liked and disliked things, because he heard his maami say ‘The old hag still likes her payasam.’ Maybe that was a bad thing, he thought, making a mental note.
Nevertheless, she was the oldest person he knew. And there was a special thrill he felt in watching this old ‘hag’ eat something she liked, because she broke into a smile that made his heart full in a way no favourite treat of his could.
Seenu pulled out a golden foil from his shirt pocket. He removed the foil and felt the chocolate underneath. It was soft, partially melted in the stinging heat. He edged closer to his grandmother’s ear, and said ‘Paati, chocolate indhaango!’ and put the two pieces in her moist palm.
She looked at him quizzically through her thick spectacle lens. He pointed to her palm that had the chocolate. She realised there were chocolate pieces there, and put them in her mouth.
Seenu’s heart swelled as she opened her nearly-toothless mouth in a wide, beatific smile.
“I’m telling you, the baby did it!” he said. She didn’t seem convinced. They’d spent the last hour trying to get the baby to chortle like she’d done when he sang ‘Chiku Buku Rayile’ – neither could fathom why the baby had found that hilarious. Now, as they cried themselves hoarse trying to sing the song, the baby stared at them nonchalantly, wondering what all the fuss was about.
He was disappointed. He’d had a day alone with the baby after really long. He’d been bored out of his wits, and felt a surge of pity for her, for she’d had to do this all day for the last seven months. When the song played on TV, he’d hummed along, and he hadn’t even realised that it was the baby who had chortled until he looked around to see from where the weird sound was periodically coming.
He’d been witness to something the baby had done the first time, and she couldn’t see it. Cosmic conspiracy, he thought.
Later that night, as she changed out of her sari into a nightie and he lay outside in the other room, she cooed “Rukkumani, Rukkumani, akkam pakkam enna sattham…” to the baby. The baby chortled wildly.
“Our secret, ok?” she said, and pulled the baby close to her.
Rinki had a wide grin plastered on to her face, her head thrown back. It was a grin her friends knew too well – it struck when she was down half a pint.
She slowly unknotted her extremely-curly hair that was held up high with a clutch and began to make jerky movements with her shoulders, in tune with the beat. Soon, the curly-haired head began to sway this way and that. Her friends watched her, amused, and began to egg her on. One of them, down a good many puffs from his pipe stuffed with nefarious herbs, found her curly hair bobbing about hilarious. He called her ‘Einstein,’ and started guffawing, thinking he’d said something very funny. The other fairly sober people paid no attention to his remark. But Rinki had heard. She laughed, even as she continued swaying, swinging her arms about. She laughed some more, the pitch slowly rising. Soon, it turned eerie, with her screeching continuously, pausing only for seconds to catch her breath. She then bent over, picked up her bottle of beer, shrieking all along, and gulped from it as the rest cheered on, asking her to down what was left in the bottle. They all hurrahed. Rinki stopped suddenly, and crumpled to the ground, beer coming out of her nose.
Vani Viswanathan is often lost in her world of books and A R Rahman, churning out lines in her head or humming a song. Her world is one of frivolity, optimism, quietude and general chilled-ness, where there is always place for outbursts of laughter, bouts of silence, chocolate, ice cream and lots of books and endless iTunes playlists from all over the world. She is now a CSR communications consultant, and has been blogging at http://chennaigalwrites.blogspot.com since 2005.
Pic by https://www.flickr.com/photos/
