Nani ma was this sweet 4 feet10 inches lady with a religious bent of mind. Though she died a suhagan* she preferred to always be in a crisp white cotton saree with a thin colourful border. A feisty lady at the helm of the family affairs, she was my savior & my guide.
Now what did an old lady & an 8 year old have in common, you might ask. Loads! We seemed to be a part of the same cell n therefore connected at every level. Be it savoring chai* at a drop of a hat, chanting mantras*, picking flowers for the daily puja* or plain having a smoke.
When Nani had been in her prime…she suffered from gastric inconveniences. Someone suggested the hukka!* So hukka it was!
Every morning’s conversation thus started with the same note to her man servant Baiju.
Baijua….where the hell is my hukka?
Baiju : Maiji*…coming in a jiffy. The damn coals are wet from last night & just not ready for combustion.
Haven’t I told you so many times to keep the coal in the store room?
Baiju : The store rooms so far away on the other side of the earth Maiji. There’s so much to do in the mornings.
You good for nothing! Stop arguing & get the work done for once!
Nani’s world orbited round the hukka. Her moods were inversely proportionate to the glowing charcoal that sizzled as she puffed mouthfuls of tobacco that passed thru a compartment filled with water making gurgling noises before reaching the puffer.
She carried on like this for a couple of years & as the Baijus & Parmesars left for greener pastures she was sometimes left to fend for her hukka all by herself. Then in one of those rare enlightening fits, Nani decided that she had enough of the hukka. She needed to trash it & take up the beedi!*
Thus started a romance with the beedi that lasted for the next 3 decades. Others came n went but Nani & her beedi stuck a long standing partnership till the very end of her mortal existence.
My earliest recollection of Nani is when I was crying for something & she said if I stopped crying…she would let me have a puff. Now that must have been a real incentive coz I did stop crying & she did pass me the beedi.
It was our own lil secret & became her impugned weapon to charm me out of straining my vocal cords. Everyone would applaud her on her baby sitting skills as we would indulgently exchange knowing looks.
It was in the summer of 1977 that I stumbled upon a secret of immense betrayal. Nani had been sharing the reverent beedi not only with me but Bhaiya* & my younger cousin as well. I was shattered by the knowledge that I was not the chosen one.
I sulked on this for days. But because I had a compromising bent of mind, I dissuaded myself to understand the pressure of responsibility on Nani to keep all her grand twits in good humour.
Deep within me knew who the favorite actually was. After all, she did allow me to touch her puja utensils & shared the morning chai with me. It was another story altogether that the two dimwits (Bahia n the younger clown) were fast asleep when the chai was served.
The numbskulls aka boys would get up around the time our shadows were the shortest n the birds were roosting sleepily on the kadam* branches overcome by the external energy that made the temperature rise.
Most of the days, Nani’s match stick reserves would deplete & she would invariably ask one of us to run n light the beedi from the burning fire in the bhansaghar*. And then the jostling to be the chosen one to light the beedi would start. Might is right would take over & many a fight unto death would erupt only to end in a simmering time-please for our dear Nani’s sake!
The duds were physically strong but that’s where it ended. The art of inhaling smoke from the mouth & exhaling it through the nostrils was patented by yours truly. This won me the respect that I legitimately deserved.
I held seminars clubbed with live demo’s to pass on the wisdom that I had so naturally acquired. But the chaps had to live up to their names…NUMB SKULLS!!!
The summer ended & so did our vacation. Back to the grind…school…manners….discipline…yada yada round the clock!
As we grew up….the natural instincts to embrace the beedi got superseded with righteousness. Our parents were responsible for muddling up our brains with all things nice.
As for Nani ma….she remained the smoking Joe right till her demise in the year 1986. I remember her funeral rites. The Hindu’s offer the stuff that is dear to the departed soul to the Brahmin who’s presiding over the rituals. The beedi was right on top of that list.
*Beedi – tobacco wrapped in leaf from the kendu plant. It’s the indian version of a
cigarette & habituated by the rural folks.
*Nani Ma – maternal grand mother
*Saree - a nine yard long cloth that is wrapped around the body in different styles depending on the region one belongs to.
*Suhagan - A married women. The married ladies always wore colorful clothes leaving the whites to be donned by the widows.
*Chai – Tea
*Mantras – Hindu prayers generally in Sanskrit
*Hukka - a water pipe widely used decades ago by the upper class. The tobacco is
burnt by charcoal. The produced smoke passes through water at the base of the
hukka and a long tube before it is inhaled.
* Maiji – A respectful term to address the lady head of the family.
*Bhaiya – elder brother
*Puja – Religious rituals by the Hindu’s
*Kadam – a type of tall thick foliaged tree bearing sweet n sour kadam fruits that have
a tender prickly skin & turns orange when ripe.
*Bhansaghar – kitchen
Copyright © BuntysBanter 2007
