I was in the middle of composing Part-3 of the article, “The Philosophy of Bollywood Song” to introduce yet another favorite song of mine when a piece of crushing news reached me this morning. Please allow me to introduce one of my mother’s favorite songs:
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of my mother is a common trait we both shared: how lost a person can often be in the little or big task he/she is taking care of. She was always alone and lost in the little little or big big chores that she was needed to do while raising a family. The whole house would be quiet except for certain sounds from some corner or the other and I could guess which precise job she was busy with. The next thing that comes to my mind is her smile. Pure. Like milk. Or a lamb that gazes at you calmly no matter how long you may stand in front of it hoping for a different reaction. Or a sheet of white paper you pull out of a new bundle. Like she had nothing to offer the world except calm, deep and intense love. The third thing is how much she loved applying ‘bindi’, the sacred dot, the size of a dime, on her forehead. While all the women in the country enjoyed the convenience of ‘stick-on bindis’ in endless colors and glitter, she loved her old-fashioned liquid ‘sindoor’ in deep red. I used to sit next to the big mirror as a 4-year-old kid, and watch her apply it between 4PM and 5PM, after her shower, just before Father would return from work. One smooth round stroke with that tiny brush and it’s a perfect circle. Perfect, perfect, perfect circle. You could’ve measured the diameter in any direction. I would giggle. And she would give that little triumphant smile. And I would lunge for the glistening circle in deep red. And she would turn her head away with the smile getting bigger, and her hand drawing me tightly into her lap. And she would bend to envelop me in a hug. And I would try to slither out of her grip because she was crushing me and I couldn’t breathe.
Named after the ‘sacred snake’ around Lord Shiva’s neck, she was the eldest of seven children born into an orthodox family in Basavanagudi, an old neighborhood in Bengaluru, India, a few minutes’ walk from Lalbagh, ‘Red Garden’ that she loved and eventually got married atop a hillock in. Two of her brothers became priests at the Basavanagudi temple. “I wouldn’t wish *that* fate to anyone,” she would say every time I said I would go spend a day with them and she could pick her boy up in the evening. I simply loved the aromas in their temple kitchen. If I ever went missing, they knew which boiling cauldron they could find me standing transfixed next to. Her mother, sporting a bigger ‘dot’, the size of a quarter, was always busy running the big household. And Grandfather was busy manufacturing and selling electric motors. He was the first industry disruptor hopeful I ever met even before the expression came into use. He hated the big boys. He loved the small-scale industries. Each motor was handmade in the backyard workshop. I can still feel the touch and weight of endless spools of reddish orange copper wire that his little team would wind with hand, the smell of the green paint that would go on the outer shell, the polished steel shaft in the center that would appear like it’s not rotating at all while it was spinning at hundreds of RPM, the shiny ball-bearings that I was allowed to play with on the floor, the texture of the industrial lubricant, and finally, the sound of each motor revving like an obedient student answering roll call when tested. And off he would go with dozens of motors loaded onto his red tractor, traveling across Karnataka, and selling directly to farmers who couldn’t afford name brand motors for pumping water, and offering free repairs to any equipment they owned. What I didn’t get to know till my teens was that it was Mother, not any of her four brothers, who used to accompany him on the tractor, after having dropped out of her middle school, and learnt accountancy in-house. “She was to succeed him” the younger priest uncle said, “each of us six siblings was too spoiled to even go to the bank to deposit a check, let alone winding the copper wire or running a company.” Then she met my father. Families came together to get them married although it annoyed every holy relic in town. And she moved to my father’s state to learn a new language and start a family. Kirloskar, one of the big fish, acquired Grandfather’s concern for cheap after his death, she told me years later.
“Never, never ever say ‘short’,” Father told me, “‘diminutive’ is the word”. Mother was a diminutive figure at 4 feet something to his 6 feet plus frame. He was dark, what Mother insisted people call ‘chocolate brown’. She was the shade of a wheat field kissed by golden sun rays. And with that deep red dot on her forehead, she looked more like a deity. People would stare at the pair when they stepped out for a walk or a dinner. The couple looked funny to some. “I could’ve passed off for his daughter,” she told me, “I was so short”. “Diminutive, ma,” I would correct her, “and you are still short.” She would erupt in laughter. If there is one thing I learnt from Father, it was how to make her laugh. “I am so very glad you grew tall,” she declared years later while cooking ‘upma,’ a South Indian breakfast I loved her recipe of. “Was I big baby when I was born?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied from the kitchen, “ five feet tall.” A minute’s silence later comes a tip on air: “Hold hands, if you ever think you might look funny walking with someone. Everyone will shut up.” It was my turn to laugh. The closest resemblance of her vibe I could ever notice in films was Michelle Williams in the opening scene of Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz”.
She cried when Father decided to send me to a boarding school at 6. My brother was already a senior there. Father was adamant. He wanted just one thing: that his children grow up as far away as possible from the unhealthy social conditioning no child in the country was immune to. She paused her argument with Father and rushed into their bedroom wiping off her tears when she noticed me entering the hall. They never wanted me to face the hard facts of life they were dealing with, or witness any of their arguments. Father managed to get her hide even the cancer he was diagnosed with years later and until he breathed his last, while I was still in the boarding school. “We would rather you focused on your studies” was their common refrain. Their ‘Gayatri mantra’. Together with my brother’s untimely death two weeks after Father’s, and her own father’s demise a year earlier in his biplane crash, she could never fully recover for the rest of her life. A veil descended on the chirpy face. The bird lost its song. Brother, a gifted painter, was going through his teenage rebellion, and was also fascinated with speed. He was testing a new motorcycle he had acquired after graduating from our boarding school. A cousin was on the pillion. I wasn’t allowed in the mortuary. Only to the funerals. Mother took a word from me before I was sent back to school that very night, “Never ever drive anything that has a motor inside.” I kept my word. Never learnt to drive. And always managed to hide from her my love for Royal Enfield motorcycles and the technical glitch in the promise. “Don’t drive,” she said, not “Don’t ride.” The silver Bullet Electra that I started exploring the length and breadth of India on, soon after leaving school myself, became my trusted lieutenant and 3AM friend. I came of age on that horse.
She loved sewing. She used to sit for hours on her Singer machine to stitch uniforms for my brother and me using the fabric the boarding school approved, in addition to surprising her gang of housewife friends, and their daughters with colorful outfits they could never let go for years. But what she loved the most was embroidering the initials of her sons behind the collars of their school shirts so they wouldn’t be lost when we would wash and hang them on common rope lines that would have dozens of exact-looking uniforms of other students. I never lost a shirt. And she kept all of Brother’s till her last day. I don’t know much about her own wardrobe preferences but she never wore anything except saris by the time I was born. “Trying a sari after having fallen in love with a succession of fashions is like your gladiator guy reaching the Colosseum,” she told me years later, referring to the Russel Crowe film I had introduced her to, “you are warmly enveloped by what you were born for, and it’s the greatest sight, and you would never want to walk out of that spot alive, and you just grin and grin and grin.” She loved everything silk. With a soft corner for Mysore silk. Mysore silk in her wardrobe and Mysore Sandal in the shower. And jasmines. Father religiously brought her a bunch every evening. She also had the ‘night-blooming jasmine’ planted in the backyard despite it not being a true jasmine. The kind of plant that neighbors complained attracted snakes with the promise of a mating night -so bewitching was its scent. And black soil, a particular variety that she occasionally demanded I bring from ‘her’ Lalbagh garden store in 20kg bags for her little garden hundreds of miles away. And the local newspaper. She had started reading just to learn Father’s first language as a young bride, fell into the habit, and before he knew it, was reading the whole newspaper, section after section, before it was time for lunch. With practically half a gallon of black coffee she made for herself in the morning having found its way into her veins. Stunningly enough, I never, not even once, saw her hands shaking. That and jar lids. She could open any jar in the world. Some stubborn ones would go from Father in one room to her in another, with me carrying them held tightly against my little chest, and seconds later, I would return to Father with the jar against my little chest and the lid in my hand. We men never discussed that mystery. Her other talents included lying on a reed mat, acting dead for an hour in the terrace, in the afternoon sun, after she showered and washed her long hair with homemade ‘shikakaay’ paste, in such a completely frozen position that I would want to go downstairs to check if time stopped moving. But I wouldn’t be able to get up. Her fingers, you see, would be probing through the little crop of hair on my head constantly, even if she herself seemed fast asleep. I would feel like a little bird, a sparrow, lying next to her big body, and staring into the blue sky. I would flap my wings.
Post office staff loved her. She would never let a mailman/mailwoman who knocked on the door to return to his/her bicycle without sitting and finishing eating the food she insisted they have. There was always food in the kitchen. And there were always tired postal workers knocking on the door. Father used to leave home for weeks on work sometimes. And she always received letters. She never shared one with me. Except for the final paragraph in each letter that usually was about me, which she would read out aloud without letting me peep in. “Don’t eat sugar in the kitchen when Mother goes for her shower,” she would improvise. Years later, years after Father passed away, when I was visiting her from Delhi after hiding my motorcycle at a friend’s place in a different neighborhood, my fingers moved under the pillow in my sleep and felt a dozen folded letters in old-smelling envelopes, for her re-reading probably, and I couldn’t help picking one to open, and in storms she, and snatches them all from me. How she heard the little sound of paper from the kitchen, I could never know. I understood her displeasure, however. I never, after all, never ever shared with her what was happening in my own personal life. She never got to hear a single name from my mouth. She knew nothing, absolutely nothing about me ‘out there’. And the reason was too silly. I never was seeing anyone. All I ever had, and in abundant supply, was a series of crushes that I would do nothing about. And during those rare visits home, for 3 or 5 days in a year or two, without a notice or an explanation, when I was absolutely feeling low but didn’t want her to know anything about anything, when I would tell her I was ‘just passing through’ and ‘stopped by’ to enjoy her ‘wonderful cooking’, her face would light up. And she would ask me to list all the dishes I would like to have for the next 5 days. And she would be busy in the kitchen, and I would be lying in her bed without saying a word for hours as the sun shone through the window. And I would get this sudden feeling she could sense my secrets through the air. And I would start feeling uncomfortable and tell her I decided to cut my visit short, and start packing my backpack. And I would hear from the kitchen, “A bird may love a fish, signore, but where would they live?” She loved mimicking Drew Barrymore. Lips and all. And I would go to the kitchen door and shrug my shoulders in the “WTF?!’ gesture, without using the words. She would gaze at me quietly and turn back to her cooking with an apologetic look. I would go back into the living room to resume packing. And, a minute later, I would hear from the kitchen, only the first half of the sentence this time, “A bird may love a fish, signore”. And I would stop packing. For her cooking -for real this time. She knew her spices. They talked when we didn’t. I always left home a pound heavier and a lot lighter.
She could read and write basic English but always needed subtitles turned on for movies. And she preferred reading Indian translations of Jane Austen novels to trying the original texts. “The world doesn’t *get* Jane Austen. She is an extremely *loud* person *inside*. Only Indian actors can bring out the *anger* in her stories.” She was in love with one particular Tamil film, a decent but highly melodramatic adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility”, and she was heartbroken it didn’t perform so well at the box-office. One of her favorite songs that I wanted to write about is from that film, “Kandukondain, Kandukondain” (“I Realized, I Realized”) called “Yenna Solla Pogirai” (“What Would You Say?”). But I decided to let go of it in the last minute in favor of another favorite song of hers from another favorite film of hers. You see, she was crazy about this film star called Nagarjuna. They both shared a part of their names — named after the same ‘sacred snake’ around Lord Shiva’s neck. But the snake was the last thing either cared about. She, you see, secretly loved non-conformists who would storm into a scene and disrupt an industry. She was the daughter of one. And my father was never one. He was just a good man who made everyone happy. She too looked the same, the sweet human, devoted wife, loving mother, but inside, she was all fire, a volcano that somehow learnt how not to even fume. So, on those rare occasions when she read about some young and brash person or other coming in and disrupting the status quo, she adored him/her. In an extremely loud country known for a dozen different film industries but one monotonous escapist fantasy passing for cinema, expecting an experimental film was radical for anyone in her childhood. Soon she got married and stopped even caring for anything outside the little home she was building with Father. Then this film came and hit her hard, her priest brother told me one day, teasingly. “Geetanjali” (1989) / “A Tribute of Songs”. She went crazy for the actor. It puzzled Father no end. She would play the film’s songs back-to-back all day, every day, for months. Even neighbors started complaining, the priest brother laughed. I played the film immediately to check what the fuss was all about. In the lead role was Nagarjuna, the young son of an aging actor who had just returned from America after his graduation, and was trying to break into the industry, and was failing repeatedly, except when he would accept a potboiler script that he he hated. Then he watches a neo-realistic domestic drama directed by another outlier: the story of a young woman, newly married to a good man she had never met before, who was being expected to forget another good man she always loved but wasn’t allowed to marry. Our struggling actor immediately goes to Chennai and camps in a nearby hotel to meet Mani Ratnam, the budding director, outside his residence every morning when he would step out for his morning jog, and beg him to write and direct a ‘good’ film featuring him in the lead. And the result was “Geetanjali” (1989), the trendsetter that helped them both carve a niche for themselves in the industry. Very unique story for its times. The protagonist is not at all like the gravity-defying Bollywood/Tollywood/Kollywood hero. An ordinary reckless young man who gets into a car accident minutes after his graduation party, right at the start of the film, and realizes, during routine medical checkups, he has cancer, and not many days to live. “The Fault in Our Stars” before John Green wrote the book between making YouTube videos. But this is the mother of all “Fault in our Stars”s. I strongly suspect both writers were inspired by Erich Segal’s screenplay and later-day novel, “Love Story” (1970). And our budding director takes it one step further. With his cancer confirmed, and not wanting to spend his final days accepting sympathy from all and sundry, our lead moves to a remote hill station to live quietly. And feel sorry for himself in private. Enter the heroine. Chirpy like a bird. Hell-raising like a bat. And a mouth that just doesn’t stop blabbering. Irritating as hell. After a run in, they start hating each other, and would keep inventing a trick a day to pull deadly pranks on each other. And fall in love in the process. And that’s when he discovers she too is fighting a terminal disease and has only a few months to live. And, wait for it, no, he hasn’t told her about his own cancer and impending death. What happens later is the rest of the story. The film ran houseful for months in the orthodox neighborhood they lived in. More than 70% box office receipts coming from women folks. She watched it a dozen times. Girls went crazy for the guy. The Robert Pattinson of their generation. Poet in the throngs of death who can sing!! And kiss!! A full song featuring a 3-minute-long ‘lip-to-lip’ kiss and without a censor cut. It was unheard of for the times she grew up in. She literally married the guy in her heart. Every single song from the film was a blockbuster and a timeless classic today. Please allow me to introduce to you one of her favorites from among all the songs in the film, which were all her favorites. She passed away in her sleep, on a quiet night, in the late summer of 2023 in India, not to cancer as she might’ve hoped, like her beloved husband had years earlier, but to her own personal decision to stop eating, because she simply didn’t want to live any longer. And like always, and like her late husband too would have wished, she managed to get everyone around to not let a gloomy news such as that reach my ears until this morning, because, “We would rather you focussed on what you love doing where you are.”
I vividly remember my final conversation with her before I left India. “I might not be able to come see you again, ma,” I whispered as I clasped her fingers while sitting next to her on the front porch steps. She knew that by that time, of course. She was quiet for a minute, tightened the clasp the next, and said, “Devullaku kopam teppinchaav”. You angered Gods. I offered no reply. A minute’s silence later I got up. She didn’t. I sat back. We just sat there quietly. Day was about to break. The journey couldn’t be played around with. Must go. It was also the festival of Ganesha, Lord Shiva’s son, the god of letters and remover of obstacles. Eons since we both had stopped caring about such things. I wanted to hug before leaving. But it didn’t seem appropriate. No son ever leaves a mother behind for good. Hugging would be lying. Neither me stalling would make her happy. Duty. Dharma. I knew why they sent me to that boarding school. I moved closer and placed my hand around her shoulder. We just sat in silence. And saw the sun rise. “Time ku thinu,” she said. Don’t neglect eating. That was her way of saying goodbye.
Everyone from the post office cried at the funeral, her brother’s son texted me. “It was crazy. Postal trucks everywhere.” Apparently she never stopped feeding them.
Vermilion red and mustard yellow were her favorite colors. She never understood blues. And never, not even once, wore black in her entire life. Another mystery we men never discussed at home.
Aamani paadavey hayiga
Mugavaipoku ee vela
Aamani = Spring season (Nature)
paadavey = sing
hayiga = merrily
Mugavaipoku = Don’t turn mute
ee = this
vela = time/hour
>> Dear Spring (Mother Nature), please keep singing. Don’t turn silent. Not now. Not at this hour.
Raleti poola ragalatho
Puseti poola gandhalatho
Raleti = Falling
poola = of flowers
ragalatho = with the tunes
Puseti = blooming
poola = of flowers
gandhalatho = with the scents of
>> Taking the tunes from the falling flowers and the scent from the blooming buds.
Manchu taaki koyila,
Mounam aina velala
Manchu = Snow
taaki = at the touch of
koyila = koel = songbird
Mounam = Silence
aina = becoming/turning
velala = at the time/hour
>> In this hour when even the songbird turned silent upon the arrival of a cold breeze.
// It’s an ordeal. The hour is wretched. The cold has arrived. Fate pushed my life into its abrupt winter for no fault of mine. Even the songbird went silent, dear Mother Nature. If not you, who would sing now?! Please take the tunes from the falling flowers. And inspiration from the blooming buds’ scent. And sing. Sing now. Go silent on me not. Not now. Not at this hour in my life //
Vayassulo vasanthame
Ushassula jwalinchaga
Vayassulo = In youth
vasanthame = the season of spring
Ushassula = Like the sun
jwalinchaga = burning
>>The spring-like youth I am in is burning like the sun
Manassulo nirashale
Rachinchele mareechika
Manassulo = In heart
niraashale = hopelessness
Rachincheley = penning
mareechika = mirage
>> The pessimism that my heart has turned into is penning mirages.
// Dear Mother (Nature), can’t you see this contradiction in front of your eyes? On one hand the warm blood in my body is burning like the sun and saying I am in the season of spring. And on the other, the hopelessness building inside my heart is saying it’s all a mirage, and that the winter has arrived at my doorstep //
Padaala na yeda
swaraala sampada
Taraala na katha
kshanalade kada
Gathinchupovu
gaadha nenani
Padaala = Of words
naa = mine
yeda = heart
swaraala = of tunes
sampada = wealth
Taraala = Of generations
naa = mine
katha = story
kshanaladey = of a fraction of a second
kada = isn’t it?
Gathinchupovu = One that is going to end
gaadha = story
nenani = that I am
// It may be so my heart is full of words and emotions, it may be so it is brimming with a wealth of tunes for those words, but isn’t it also plain evident that, despite the story that I am becoming will be for generations to come, my life itself is turning out to be too fleeting?! //
Sukhalatho pikalatho
Dhwaninchina madhudayam
Divi bhuvi, kalaa nijam
Sprusinchina mahodayam
Sukhalatho = With parrots
pikalatho = with koels / songbirds
Dhwaninchina = Came to life with the sounds of
madhudayam = honey-like daybreak
Divi = Heaven
bhuvi = earth
kalaa = dream
nijam = reality
Sprusinchina = touched
mahodayam = great daybreak
// A great day has risen from slumber with the chirping of parrots and songbirds. So sweet is the morning that it erased the boundaries between heaven and earth as well as dream and reality //
Maro prapanchame
marintha cheruvai
Nivaali korina
ugaadi velalo
Gathinchipovu
gaadha nenani
Maro = A different (new)
prapanchame = world
marintha = a bit more
cheruvai = has come close
Nivaali = Dedication
korina = wished
ugaadi = ‘Ugaadi’ = The festival, the first day of the Telugu calendar year
velalo = in such a time
Gathinchipovu = One that is coming to an end
gaadha = story
nenani = that I am
// A promising day has just brought to my doorstep a brand new world. And it asked me for a dedication (of a song) from me, it’s the Ugadi, the first day of my promised life on the promised land, after all. And, how fair is it that, despite all the signs saying otherwise, my life is, in fact, becoming the story that, as you too can witness, is coming to an abrupt end, and for no fault of mine?! //
Aamani paadave hayiga,
mugavaipoku ee vela
// It’s a calamity. I can’t sing now. Not in this state of mind. Not after being robbed of my own life. Not even the songbirds are willing to sing in this hour of unfairness. So, please sing. Please sing, Mother Nature. You always knew how to borrow a tune from the falling flowers and how to concoct a song from the scents of the blooming buds. Please sing. Don’t turn silent on me like the rest of the world. Not now. Not at this hour in my life. Let me down not. //
“Aamani Padavey Haayigaa”
(“Sing Merrily, My Mother Nature”)
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This article is part of the 4-song series,
“The Philosophy of Bollywood Song”.
Song#1 is here.
Song#2 is here.
Song#4 to be uploaded next week.
Printer-friendly Version of this article is here.
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From the Same Author:
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The Philosophy of Bollywood Song
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Quotes from “What Makes One Beautiful”
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