My divine grandma https://priaydarshini.blogspot.com/2021/12/blog-post.html

  

Presence

of my grandma made my childhood so beautiful, meaningful and has been studded with sweet happy memories. Every child is not blessed to enjoy childhood with grandparents but I had the great fortune to be with grandparents for several formative years. So many unique memories which made me what I am really today is all grateful thanks to my granny but I shall start with sharing  one usual day ..

Every morning we would wake up brush quickly and get ready wearing swimming suits and on top of it a warm sweater and keep swim caps in our hands and go reach the swimming pool by 5 a.m. Swimming pool was so near to my grandparents home it took us 5 mins to reach there. Grandpa took us—me and my brother who is 2 years my elder with him as I was 4 years and these memories are so etched in my memory that it makes me miss those days a lot. Grandpa had an ancient gramophone on it he would play subrabhatam sang so melodiously by M.S.Shubhalakshmi   --in it it said—His Masters voice and he would start the record and we set off to start our day. Hearing to suprabhatam was the sacred start of our day and we would swim to our hearts content and return after 30 minutes. After return we would get a good hot water bath at home and ready for us was one big glass of fresh milk –warm ,sweet and so delicious the milk –we enjoyed every drop and sat down to prayer ritual of grandpa—then chant with him Sanskrit slokas ---one for Ganapathi, one saraswati, one for hanuman and many more. By then kitchen the domain of granny would invite us with aroma floating from there to the puja room.

Soft hot iddli with coriander curry leaf coconut chetni with fresh home-made ghee would be not only entice us but also make us enjoy every bit of it. Ajji would make breakfast so good –even the memory is welcome even today. By 9 we all would have finished breakfast and grandpa would go off in his office jeep to visit the farmers.

Granny would then join us in our grand tour into her garden until noon. Her garden had plenty for us to wonder at including birds, insects, flowers, fruits. It was an informative entertainment which inculcated my first love for nature and education. She plucked flowers of varied hues and fragrance and we were taught how to pluck delicate flowers tenderly with care for the flowers, plants and nature around. The hand made basket would be full of fragrant colorful flowers and then granny would ask my anna to take it inside and bring back two more baskets to collect crossander flowers known as kankambara flowers of yellow, orange and red colours, then pluck jasmine of varies types also the white not so fragrant kakada, sevantige ,parijatha(coral jasmine) nandibatallu(crape jasmine) then while collecting flowers she would just tell us how and where all it is used and how beneficial. We had Botany, Zoology etc classes along with course on medicinal plants, cultivation, conservation and it was fun learning Today I recall how much knowledge I acquired in that young age. Education with no  fear nor stress was given with fee of love in abundance.

We collected 3 baskets of flowers of roses, hibiscus, special  leaves for puja and we would go inside from back door and drink a big glass of buttermilk made more tempting by addition of curry leaves, coriander and little bit of salt. So coming out again for collecting vegetables would be a lesson on why one needs to consume fresh home grown vegetables. Today people speak a lot about organic vegetables but my ajji made us learn it by living it. Vegetables would include drum stick  tender leaves (when ajji made ghee and when she boiled it –at the end she would add it to the last part of ghee and give it to us to --enjoy).Vegetables included single beans, double beans, yam, brinjal, peas, various leafy vegetables and the list goes no. We would collect seasonal vegetables and head for kitchen and in between ajji took us to feed the cows and check on how the cow shed was cleaned and cows taken good care off.

Taking care of the cows by feeding them lush green grass , few herbs, give a gentle massage to the cows and after they were bathed ,kept kunkum to their forehead and we saw all this learning how kind and loving we must be to our cows, cat, dog named ‘Buster’ –a cute brown dachshund with lovely black tips on the ear ends were our loving pet dog running around along with us. We had this pet dog for many years enriching our lives. It was always fed with love and tender care. I recall a incident of the relationship between buster and our cows. Once buster kept barking in front of our cow shed which was highly unlikely and  our cows were all inside their shed and no new comer was inside and when one of our servant went in to check the matter –he saw a  black long snake sliding out side of the cow shed and only after that our pet stopped barking. So Ajji was alarmed but quite happy of how our pet protected us.

Ajji would come inside and make ready for lunch. Usually a sambar with vegetables and tour dal  and once it  started boiling emitting appetizing aroma –she would cook beans curry or any such vegetable and to go along with it was rasam, pickes, freshly made curds and to add to all this we always had ghee and rice would be made some time just before we had lunch. The whole family of kids with grandpa would have lunch sitting cross legged in the big long dinning hall. We would  a prayer and have our lunch. Ajji would have lunch after we all had. She would make food for the servants who would come back from the fields bringing along with them the beautiful white majestic bullocks—Ramu—Bhimu. The bullocks were a great wonder for us to look at as they were very tall but very gentle and we would go hold their ropes tied around them. When the bullocks came home it would be past two and after they were washed and fed the servants would come from back door and sit for their lunch and Ajji  would keep big ragi balls –the size of a football and sambar to eat along with it .A deep well like it they would make in the ragi ball and Ajji would pour 4 tables spoons of castor oil into it and then they would eat making smaller balls. We as small children would wonder how a person could eat such big balls of ragi mudde followed by heaps of rice. So Ajji would send us off on some errand so that the people having meals would not feel embarrassed and then ajji would tell us –one must not see people when they are eating as they work for us and it is our duty to feed them well and one eats as per their requirement. It was a lesson I  learnt as to the work done ppl need to eat sufficiently. Ajji was very kind to all the servants who worked for us. I can recall she never raised her voice to scold them or criticize them.

Grandpa worked as an officer at the Mysugar Factory and as an officer he had been given the privilege of two full time workers, one part time maid , one dobhi who came twice a week. We had three cows –one Indian breed -red sindhi and two jersey cows, two bullocks as I have already written about. We had lots of birds—crows, sparrows, wood doves, mynah, cuckoos, woodpeckers kingfishers, wagtails, robbins—we watched them make nests, lay eggs, hatch young ones and take care of them. Garden visits were always exciting for us –it made us hungry for more knowledge ad better digestion. We had bee hives which would provide us honey and we learnt to keep away from them but we did they get bitten some times with bees and Ajji would use a tamato leaf and pull the bee sting and swelling would go away leaving a lesson and a small swelling. Grandpa would take us to the garden when he had holiday and we were taken near the big jackfruit tree which gave us plenty of fruits –as low as our heights and some grown in midsection also. We were very food of this tree as the fruit was very sweet and grandpa would take us near by the fruit and ask us to smell the fruit to check if it was ripe and some times would push our face gently into the fruit –which would tick into the thorny fruit then we would carry one big fruit into the house and grandpa would get his big kitchen knife and ask Ajji for a small cup of castor oil and he would smear it on to his palm and start taking out fruits and give us all to enjoy.