Got change?

This happened in the same trip where three families travelled together. When we vacated the hotel room we found out that the advance paid had far exceeded the hotel bill. All had taken our seats in the vehicle while my brother-in-law stayed back to settle the bill.


The owner of the small town lodge had gone out and only his assistant was at the cash register which contained hardly any cash. This was not one of the computerised lobby of a big hotel in a posh city. All accounts had been written down in a notebook and all receipts were written out. So the assistant at the reception table said that he had phoned his employer who would arrive within the hour to give us back the two hundred bucks he owed us. But we were in a hurry to set on our return journey and all were thinking of ways and means to solve this problem.
When the assistant was asked if he could borrow cash from the neighbouring grocery shop, he did so and found that they too did not have the two hundred bucks but only a five hundred bill. No change!

One of the family party looked at the shop on the other side and started , perhaps these people might have the change...' It was a barber shop (Hair stylists in big cities) and my husband said promptly,



'Where is he going to find so much money early in the day, he might only offer to shave (mottai) four heads free of charge and collect the two hundred bucks from the lodge owner when he comes back!"



All broke out laughing! The driver who had been observing all the cracks made by the passengers throughout the journey almost rolled on the floor laughing and said between spasms of laughter. "Sir I might have to get admitted in the hospital by the time I drop you all back, just because of stomach ache resulting from the non-stop laughter!"

Eating out!

We used to travel quite a lot when we were small. Every two or three years my father got transferred and so we had to pack and move to the new place. Besides these travels we used to go to our native place almost for every school holiday. Added to these travels, my parents, especially my mother, loved travelling and took us on trips to new places for sightseeing every other year, as described elsewhere.

After my childhood, the same pattern repeated albeit in a grander scale as my husband and I were moving between states rather than districts. Our family covered the sightseeing tours offered in the faraway places in the last year before we moved to a new place. In between we had to make a long trip to visit our native state for weddings in the family or celebrating festivals together.

In all these trips, one aspect of the travel has changed through the years. My mother used to take a stove and flour in the car boot, to make wheat, ragi or rice dosa. This way we were assured of hygienic meals wherever we put up for the night.

For the first day of our journey we used to equip ourselves with lots of rice and pickles. Tamarind rice always won hands down in my mom's list as it could keep even for two days. Idlis with milagai podi was the favoured choice for breakfast or dinner that day.  She used to pack a bundle of dried banana leaves to serve them on for the numerous members of our large family. Two ground sheets were packed for us to sit in the shade of a tree on the roadside in case we hadn't reached our destination before mealtime. At that time I used to complain about the cold idlis, the wrinkled dry leaf that served as plate and the ants that tried to crawl on to our picnic sheet. In retrospect I realize we were following a 'green' way of life with disposable organic packing materials!

The hotels we ate in served food on green banana leaves, used only once and readily disposable as wandering cattle 'recycled' them as their food at the back door ofthe hotel! We trusted enough to drink the water they served. Maybe pollution was not a problem back then! In fact till we moved to Chennai we never boiled drinking water, using 'thetankottai' to get clear water from river water.

By the time I got married, the travel meals consisted of food packets prepared for the three meals of the 24 hours journey by the loving relatives in whose house we were staying. I can never forget how my mother-in-law got up at 4 o' clock in the morning to make parcels of idlis for breakfast to eat on the train and packets of lemon rice, curd rice, potato curry and pickles for lunch! She really spoiled us daughter-in-laws by behaving more like a mother to all of us:-)

Sometime during this period the Indian trains served hygienic albeit tasteless food from their pantry cars. This prompted us to tell orrelatives not to go to the troule of preparing meals for our train journeys. But we did miss the tasty home food as we ate the insipid train food!

Nowadays, hygienic  and tasty food is available in the motels and inns on the roadside and packaged drinking water is everywhere. The train food has improved cosiderably too. The idea of eating only home made food has given way to eating out as often as possible even when we are not travelling. What a sea change in a few decades!  Already ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat food packets are available in all the grocery stores. At this rate in another few decades there would be no home cooked food at all and the only people who cook their own meals would be health freaks who like to eat only 'fresh' food!

Dog's years?

When my relative turned forty her husband presented her with a gold chain.
When he heard about it my husband quipped, ' naarpathu vayasile naai gunam'*so a chain is a very appropriate gift!'

* It is an idiom in Tamil meaning, At forty man's character resembles that of a dog, with barks and bites an everyday occurence.

TLC for Teeth!

I was getting the breakfast ready and peeped out of the kitchen to see if the family was ready to have hot dosas as they don't eat cold ones.I saw my husband brushing his teeth and turned away saying,'Oh, you are brushing your teeth?'He spat out the foam and started saying something. I waited to hear what important info that couldn't wait till he finished brushing.He said,'No, I am just caressing them one by one!'

Sports Day at Antsville!

One day I was drawing the anti-ant chalk pesticide along the sides of the wall in the living room and said to my husband,
'I keep drawing these lines (Lakshman Rekha brand pesticide chalk stick) but the ants keep crossing them!'
My husband said,
'Maybe they think you are holding a hurdles race and drawn the lines for them to jump across!'

From the mouth of babes....

My daughters have picked up/inherited sarcastic wit from their father. As a result they would reply to some of my questions in a roundabout way which simply wouldn't reach my brain and I would take them too literally for their comfort. Then they would be forced to translate the same into a straight statement which is maddening for them!
Once when my elder daughter was in elementary school I was packing her lunch. She asked me to pack some halwah (Sweet) brought by her uncle on his visit the previous day. I asked her, "Why?"
She replied, 'See you have packed Idlis for my lunch. If I mix it with the Halwah and make a paste of it for lunch it tastes divine!'
Taking her literally, I replied innocently, "Oh, I see. This is a new dish I have never tried out myself. Should try it sometime." And proceeded with packing some halwah.
My daughter stood there silently for a few minutes overcoming the dumb reaction to her sarcasm and then burst out to say, "Mummy, I just said that to tell you 'what a question, I just want the halwah as a snack for the rescess!"
I replied, "Then why didn't you just say so?"
By this time she had started laughing: "And please don't try out the 'new dish!' "
My co-sisters (other daughter-in-laws in my husband's fsamily-he has three more brothers besides his only sister-all of whom are masters in this art of sarcastic wit, thanks to the genes passed on by my late father-in-law!) would discuss this aspect of our daily exchanges in our families and we would have a hilarious time recollecting the happenings at each one of our homes which would have the same tone to them. Juxtaposed with a very literal mind, the sarcasm often fails to have the desired effect! This way we outsiders act as a buffer zone for their wit which would have otherwise become too sharp for comfort in their interaction with society at large. So we say to ourselves modestly, in defence of our being very slow on the uptake of their wit:-)

Armour against sarcasm!

The tendency to express anything sarcastically sometimes backfires. To understand any clever remark that has a figurative meaning you need an audience that has a modicum of intelligence. Which is unfortunately missing in a section of the population at least. This has led to many a hilarious situation in our daily lives among the general public apart from the setting of our family.Once we were travelling to Kumbakonam via Chidambaram, the temple town. We had stopped at a small hotel in the town to have our lunch. The waiter spread out washed banana leaves which serve as disposable plates in South India. He then kept stainless steel glasses for water to drink, before everyone seated. Unfortunately he had skipped my husband's place and gone back to bring the water jug. He then proceeded to pour water into each tumbler.When he came to my husband's place, my husband asked him "Where is my water?"The waiter blinked to see that there was no glass in his place and being the dumb person he was,said:"Where should I pour the water?"My husband replied angrily,"Pour it on my head!"Whereupon this man actually started to tilt the jug above my husband's head and I stopped him just in time saying,"He is angry and so he said like that! Don't you realize that? Just bring a glass and serve the water!"The man muttered something about why we should not have said so in the first place and went inside to do that.The minute he turned his back, I promptly burst out laughing thinking of what might have happened, had I not stopped the waiter. My husband also thought of the same thing and seeing me laughing joined us grinning.Lesson learnt: You should use your sarcasm only where it would pierce the brain and prick, not where it hardly makes a dent-for dumbness makes a mighty armour against sarcasm!