The Sentinel #19: The Grace of Stillness

Temples and Shadows.

Temple. Photo by Vigneshwar Rajkumar on Unsplash

Mostly I have been thinking about the quietness of change, as I have been reading Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World. Occasionally, I share essays of personal observations, similar to my very first post here on Moving Neighborhoods, as I work on upcoming operational posts. This seemed like that moment. - Senthil

What is a prized possession you carry that has little monetary value in the real world?

For me, it is a small blue hardcover edition of a Westminster dictionary, delicately wrapped in two layers of brown paper, adorned by faint circular traces of sandalwood paste on the front cover, a palimpsest of devotional memories. I almost never use the dictionary now, as I, like everyone else, look up the meaning of words online. However, its use had diminished even before the advent of online search.

What values does the book hold for me? I have to start at the very beginning.

—

When I was nine, I was frequently getting into trouble, influenced by some older teenagers in my ‘locality’. It all seems harmless in retrospect, but I was picking up street lingo at a rapid pace. Amma (my mother) who had loftier dreams for me, was worried. She was driven to despair when she learned that I had been making manjaa — a local version of kite-running — a process of crushing a fluorescent tubelight and delicately mixing it into a sticky paste over stove heat, to make sharp strings for kite fights. I remember it being fun but I ended up piercing my palm with glass pieces. More about the dangerous sport here.

Hence, it was decided that in the evenings after school hours ended, I would visit the home of a couple (S & D) who lived on the next street and stay there for an hour or two reading English newspapers and return home before dinner.

Amma had met S at the temple where she volunteered (making garlands, etc) and they had struck up a rapport as they both spoke fluent Telugu. My mother poured out all her troubles to her. S perhaps took pity and offered to watch over me for a couple of days in the week.

S & D were an old couple without children. Childlessness is almost never by choice in India, where having children is considered a divine blessing regardless of the religious faith. Their lives had already reached a point of childless stability, bordered by the boredom of quietness, which contrasted with the financial vicissitudes of families that played out loudly in our neighborhood streets.

They were a lower middle-class Telugu couple who lived within their humble means, in a neatly kept, tiny rental on the ground floor. The main reception room all doubled up as their bedroom. The hallway led to a tiny, poorly lit Indian kitchen. The furnishing was sparse: No TV, two armless wicker chairs, and a wide sitting bench.

D worked as a foreman at Southern Railway and had a rudimentary knowledge of English. He subscribed to The Hindu — despite the name, a left-leaning, but traditional, staid newspaper revered by English-aspiring Madras — which was an 8-column broadsheet then.

He neatly stacked the daily editions on one of the shelves in their concrete built-in cupboard, which also housed framed pictures of a plethora of Gods, carefully folded dhotis, shirts, saris, and rolled-up straw mats. She, like almost all women in our neighborhood, did not know English. When he came from work, he would get her colloquial weeklies that focused on spiritual topics.

—

Unable to resist the agreed-upon compulsion, I started showing up at their house every other day, with substantial reluctance. I would retrieve the unread editions of The Hindu from the shelf and leaf through the pages. Mostly I daydreamt. I sat cross-legged on the floor of the east-facing porch outside their door, leaning my back against the wall. I spent hours idly staring at the long shadows on empty lots and buildings — overhearing conversations in the air, and watching dragonflies against the dusk.

They would share their tea in a steel “tumbler”. Occasionally, on Fridays and festivals, they shared homemade snacks. She made delicious sweet pancakes (bobbatlu) and savory snacks (punugulu) — the likes of which I never had since.

First, I read only the sports and film sections, mostly tracking Madras movie theaters. I loved those names — Gaiety, Blue Diamond, Sapphire, Alankar, and pastiche of black and white posters of the films. Distant and delectable. Somewhere along the way, I had slowly started reading. When The Hindu started their Young World supplement geared towards children, they introduced a crossword section for kids. I learned the British-style cryptic crossword by starting with those mini-crosswords designed for children — and then over time also taught myself the rules for Bridge (poorly). I spent an inordinate amount of time, poring over the crosswords and struggling with the clues. Whenever I got stuck solving a crossword, I would borrow D’s dictionary. He had the habit of having the dictionary at hand and often looking up words whenever he read The Hindu. The dictionary was indeed a handy help for our limited vocabulary.

—

I went to their place regularly, a few days a week, all through my school years. The conversations were minimal, and they let me engage in my solitude, lost in the sips of tea and ships of thought.

After graduating from high school, I left for Bombay to go to college. When I went home for my semester breaks, I resumed my visits to their home. Before I departed for the United States for graduate studies, I went to bid them bye. D presented me with his dictionary. He mentioned that his eyesight was getting worse, and the book would anyway be more useful for me. He passed away before I visited India again.

Every time I visited India, I made it a point to visit S. Time shrivels our bodies, and erodes our strengths, slowly blurring faces in our distinct memories into the foggiest sepia tones. She had grown frailer, a shadow of her former self, had moved to another part of the city, and lived by herself in a small studio apartment. She no longer subscribed to The Hindu, but she still made those great delicacies. When I visited India in 2019, I did not go see her, as my travel schedule became hectic.

Amidst the grave covid tsunami, I learned that S passed away, cared for by her niece during her last days.

—

Repetition is a thief of awareness.

I had always thought that it was a part of my life in which nothing much happened, for all I did was spend many evening hours just reading newspapers and staring at dusk.

In fact, every day was the same from my end.

I now realize that I was an interlude in their quiet lives. I came into their life as a young nine-year-old, but as we repeated the mundane sameness of our days, they must have seen a sea change: they watched me grow, heard my voice break, and saw me become an awkward teenager who went off into the world.

I doubt that they knew the transformation they had on me. Their mere presence was the numinous grace of the temple tower, under which a wayfarer on his journey rests and seeks temporary solace.

Photo by Sanjeev Nagaraj on Unsplash

I called them Kovil Perimma and Kovil Perippa — sobriquets with deeper working-class kinship than the more common, and aspirational “auntie” and “uncle”. Kovil Perimma meant “elder sister of my mother, from the temple”. Kovil — literally, temple — signified where it all started.

I remembered them fondly as I recently opened the English dictionary and saw his name scribbled on the front page. I was then a boy in kite fights on the streets. Instead, I am here writing this note, in English.

Their lives are gone, but they made the future better, gently and gracefully, for another person. That’s all I can aspire for sometimes, to make another life slightly better.

Happy Mother’s Day!