An Easy Chair that Rocked

The photographs – all of them in black and white – lie carelessly scattered on the bed.  I love the process of sorting them out, a careful, time-consuming and entirely thankless task, but for the chance to live out a memory or two that would bring a smile, an involuntary nod or a shrug of nostalgia.

My eye catches the rather ordinary photograph of an elderly man – thin, with a clean, plebeian face and an unsmiling expression - sitting in his trademark easy chair in the portico. 

I rarely saw Ammamma otherwise.  He was always sitting there, by the three steps that led to the little living area at the stately family home in Palakad, Vrindavanam, his Mathrubhumi newspaper beside him and a cup of tea, wearing his trademark white mundu and a vest.  And, in my early teens, watching him sit right there for hours reading the paper and looking out yonder and over the rim of the paper, I used to wonder “Just what is he thinking?”

At meal time, he could be found at the head of the table in the dining room – a small table in front of the larger one being his right as a ‘karnor’ or family head - sipping his ‘kanji’ with a spoon and until he had begun his meal, we wouldn’t quite begin ours (though kids were generally excused).  A quiet, serious, stern man who spoke in grunts and monosyllables, my grand-uncle had a reputation for gruff, no-nonsense disapproval and an expression of ire – the eyes narrowed and focused, the lips pursed, the sometimes-rapid, hoarse, gravelly smoky voice – that could freeze the bone marrow and make the guilty wet his starched mundu. 

It was rumoured by those who knew him well that his bark was much worse than the bite, but he nevertheless frightened the wits out of all those around most often, astonishingly, by doing very little – a crisp few words perhaps or a scowl.   Everyone, including the many visitors to Vrindavanam, walked by him in deferential silence with the obligatory word or two exchanged, head bowed or at an angle that suggested submission.  Occasionally, relatives of his age and a couple of chosen nephews (my father included) sat beside him and had conversations – if you could call a few verbal telegrams a conversation - on issues that men of the 1970s spoke about: politics, farming and the weather, marriages, finances perhaps and renovation to the family home.

Ammamma managed the family’s agricultural fields in his younger days – now, alas, all gone -  marshalling a couple of trusted hands to his cause and, I am told, when he worked, his sternness set standards anew.  My cousin Jayan, who had a cheeky sense of humour, outstanding timing and an ability to make stories come alive, mimicked Ammamma with abandon at a safe distance eliciting much chuckles and laughter from all of us.  Yet, when in front of the patriarch, this worthy could be found crawling on his ample belly, like all of us, for he took no chances.   I learnt from another cousin the priceless titbit that Ammamma never used the toilet, but had a hole dug for him every evening that he could use the next morning.  Knowledge of such facts, I admit, are of little value in, say, new drug discovery, but I have a head (and an unhealthy fascination) for useless information. 

He (Ammamma, not my cousin) stayed a bachelor all his life, though, he did have an interest in his younger days in a pretty girl who lived not far away.  Apparently, her brother was to marry his sister – my great aunt – while he married her, and this fairy-tale-ish ending never did happen, much to his regret.  My aunt seems to recall his sentient oath to bachelorhood as a consequence and, in my mind’s eye, I can imagine the thunderous promise of Bhishma, as the earth shook, the wind took its breath in and the flowers thought it was wise to close shutters for the day. 

He had his spartan little room by the living area, but retreated there only to sleep, for much of the day would be spent in the portico.  If he had one weakness, it was for cigarettes – the brand ‘Scissors’ was his favourite and on one trip I pleaded with my cousin sister to collect a trunk load of used Scissors packets for me that I could then cart across the country back to Assam. He was much amused by my interest in this useless stuff and he let me know this by a miniscule lift of his upper lip and a twitch of a cheek muscle; this was the equivalent of today’s much-abused term LOL.  Indeed, the only occasion on which I actually saw him smiling was when the news was conveyed to him that I had asked around why Ammamma never smiled.  The women in the household found it femininely funny and my puerile impertinence on that day caused much flutter around the home. 

The women – my great grandma (Ammamma’s mother), my grandmother and grand aunt - spent much of their time in the vicinity of the kitchen and communicated with him in rich monosyllables and there were few men folk of his age (and stature) he could spend time with, so it must have been a lonely life as he sat there out in the portico waiting for Godot….and thinking.  As he aged, the lure of a city’s medical facility had no draw, for he represented a generation that refused to leave its roots.  One day, about thirty years or more ago, as illness took its toll, he left that easy chair for good.

As I put the photographs away, I remember the last time I visited Vrindavanam a couple of years ago.  It was a warm, humid day and, crossing the lovely little ‘padipara’ – the gate with a little roof – I walked briskly upto the front door and paused by the portico.  The chair and its occupant of course were missing, yet the setting had not changed a bit, for at Vrindavanam, nothing really changes.  In the heat of that day, my mind's eye could see the man in the easy chair, the torso lost behind the day's newspaper opened out in front, the elbows at rest on the easy chair.   I was tempted to whisper a ‘good morning Ammamma’, the usual acknowledgement that would be met by a brief look in my direction and a responding grunt, even as I would hurry up the steps into the safety of the home.  

And I wished I had asked that question to him once.  “All those days you spent out here on the portico….what were you thinking Ammamma?”