A SAUDADE FOR MY OORU

A good time with grandparents in the ancestral home during vacation, mouth-watering food, carefree strolls, and the colourful candies, seep in to become our fondest memories. Here is a story that gives a form to these intangible recollections

- NITIKA KRISHNA

"CHILLU Chillu nu ice tha paati! Seekron seekron..." "Kudukren da, kudukren! Oru nimisham...' وو 

I'd gleefully cup my palms high above my head as paati placed in them a tiny kinnam full of ice cubes. And then I'd go chug, chug, chug, like a steam engine, past the puja room and all the way to the balcony. Unabashedly, I'd squat on the soodu floor, tossing the ice from one kai to the other.

Until all the ice had melted, embracing a tile or two - only then would I wipe the sweat off my forehead and heed thatha's calls to come inside and play.

This was every summer morning in thatha-paati's Chennai veedu, before I would temper-tantrum my way back to Bengaluru, just in time for school. Huff and puff! Why did Silicon Valley have to make an employee of my father? I hated leaving the soodana Chennai. Ironically, something about my porandha ooru was just so warm and fuzzy... 

O Chennai, I owe to you an ode for the chinna chinna aasai-filled childhood summers you gave so many of us from across India and the globe! O my porandha ooru, let me tell everyone how I blissfully spent those simmering days with you, thatha and paati...

They lived in Anna Nagar, just a few hundred metres from St. Luke's Church or the "periya white church" as I'd christened it. Holding paati's hand, I'd walk past it most evenings before assuming the esteemed role of her assistant at fruit shops, departmental stores and markets all in the hope that I'd covet a candy or two. But into my Bakasura belly would go not just candies and ice-creams but gobsmackingly oily victims such as dosais, idlis, vadais and idiyappams from Adyar Ananda Bhavan and Murugan Idli. Some evenings, we'd go to Anna Nagar Tower park, where I would prance around like a little frog - until the sight of canoodling couples would make me squeeze my eyes shut. Warily I'd open them, only to see paati laughing.Something so lovely about grandparents laughing, iliya?