Sunday mornings with the Abrahams.

A typical Sunday morning for me as a child growing up would be best described as marginally chaotic. After what seemed like an extremely hectic week in elementary school, any reasonable 8 year old would want to spend their Sundays sleeping in and catching up on missed cartoons. Unfortunately, in our home, you weren’t always given that luxury. At precisely 7 in the morning, you would hear faint sounds of Chechi(sister) shouting from the other room in annoyance. It only meant one thing; Amma (mother)was making her rounds and waking everyone up for church. Now don’t get me wrong, I had nothing against going to church. It was just that you got one day out of the week to sleep in and I felt like I was being robbed of it. As Amma made her way to my room to wake me up, all I could do was negotiate for an extra 10 minutes of sleep. But after two rounds of said negotiations, Amma would play her trump card and turn off the fan, An efficient trick that never failed her. A trick that kickstarted the Sunday for everyone at the Abraham household.
A welcoming sight for all the groggy and grumpy faces at the breakfast table was the scrumptious spread that was prepared by Amma and Ammamma( grandmother). You had your pork sausages, bacon, toast, eggs prepared to your preference and not to forget the steaming hot appam and chicken stew. After a near-spiritual breakfast session, it was time to get ready and go to church.
By the time we eventually got to the church, there was never any space near the altar and we had to resort to the seats on the first floor which were unofficially reserved for families such as ours who were perpetually late. The service at church was always excruciatingly long and for a restless eight-year-old kid like myself, the two hours at church felt like an eternity. To ensure that we were on our best behaviours for those two hours, Amma struck a deal with Chechi and me and promised to take us to Eloor lending library after church.
Eloor lending library is a cultural institution in Kochi. With its 40 year history, It is one of the oldest private libraries in the city. Our family’s relationship with Eloor goes back to Ammamma, who was among the earlier members of the library. Going to Eloor library after church service became a ritual for us. Every week Amma allowed us to take two books; one comic book and one novel. Eloor library was where I was introduced to the iconic works of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie and Rick Riordan to name a few. After great contemplation and scrutiny, I’d pick my two books and we’d go home, already excited thinking of the books I would take next week.
I often look back and reminisce those ‘marginally chaotic’ Sundays. So much has changed since then. As the years went by and we grew older, the number of visits to church decreased and consequently, visits to Eloor library stopped as well. With the advancement of technology and adoption of social media into our day to day lives, the number of people who read books regularly has declined considerably and today, Eloor lending library is struggling to sustain their once thriving business.
“The only constant in life is change”
-Heraclitus
-Dipak
