Village Story

Can you believe it when I say that we never ever got any pocket money from our parents? We used to have money only when we went to our grandparents' place during school vacation or when our relatives visited us.

For that one day we would feel like kings and queens! We would run around to the little shop at the corner to get a candy or would wait for the 'ice cream' bell. In those days there were no multinational branded ice candy but locally made 'ice fruits' or 'kuchi ice' which were nothing but frozen ice sticks with flavoured and coloured sugar syrup poured on them. They cost only five paise each. At the end of licking them we would be sticking out our numb tongues to show off the orange or pink colours that stuck them! If we could afford some more money we would get the richer kind of milk ice ('paal ice') which would have milk and cooked semilina or sago balls, to make them tastier. Of course we would keep licking them very very slowly to make them last longer. It was actually an art to lick to the last bit without making them fall off in chunks when they melted!

In our grandparents' place, a sleepy village on the banks of the River Cauvery, as I have already said elsewhere, you could not spend money even if you wished to. There were no shops nearby. We had to depend on the very rare appearances of various sweet vendors on bicycles or even on foot, once a week or so, taking their turns of business along all the small villages.

One man used to sell a kind of gooey sweet, very pink in colour which was rolled on the top of a sturdy pole in a bundle of ribbon-like sheets. When we handed over our small change he would unroll a small length and pull it to form a thin strip. He would then proceed to tie it around our wrists like watches. We would be happily showing off our 'wrist watches' before licking them off and smearing our entire face with pink coloured sticky sweet! I don't remember what it was called but the memory of having a longlasting candy lingers. (Later on, when we lived in Calcutta we saw the same type of candy being sold at the school gate! Of course, now being a hygiene-conscious-mother, I didn't buy them the 'wrist watch'. I was very surprised to see this rustic candy in a metro. It is a fact that you get all sorts of village goodies in Calcutta even now! Besides this wristwatch candy, I saw 'kodukka puli' also being sold in the Lake Market in South Calcutta.)

Then the small berry-like fruits 'Elandhapazham' would be sold, both as whole fruits or, as the season ends, made into small cake like pieces called elandha vadai, which can be preserved for sometime. When we swallowd the seeds inadvertentlt, while relishing these fruits, our uncles who made into a point to tease us would tell us that the seeds would grow into trees from inside our stomachs. I still remember a sleepless night worrying over whether my head would be sprouting leaves in the morning! I was three or four years old then. seeing my worried face my mother explained that nothing of the sort would happen and then proceeded to scold her brother-in-law (my uncle) for frightening us!

Our 'town' grandparents' place was no better in these respects. A slight improvement was the presence of a petty shop run by an old woman on the 'thinnai' (raised platform in the front of the house, used for socializing) of her house. This lady used to sell 'kamarkat'-the tough candy made of jaggery and coconut-made to last for a long time, elandhavadai etc., We needed only five paise to buy a candy here. Like Smiley had commented we could use even the 'ottai kalana' (the coin with a hole in the middle, released by the Bristish I think) in this shop, though the rest of India had started using the new 'paise'! My father used to comment that this street is a 'separate economy'! I remember his words even though I could hardly understand what it meant.