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The Fragrance of a Jasmine

 

Summer is the time jasmines (malle in Telugu) flood the flower markets in South India. It is a busy and prosperous time for the flower merchants in every town and city and these beautiful, fragrant flowers adorn every occasion in every home. Malle has an important place in Telugu weddings. They are used for garlands of the bride and groom, to decorate wedding altars, and, not to forget, for the bride’s poola jada (plait adorned with flowers). I know many of my friends who got married during the months of April/May, daring the sweltering heat of summer, just to have loads of malle for their wedding.

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                                  My mom Savitri a few days after her wedding (1962)

A few days back I was going through my childhood pictures and my daughters were fascinated with pictures of my sister and me with a poola jada and dressed in traditional attire of pattu parikini (a Kanjeevaram long skirt and a blouse worn by girls on festive occasions). It was almost a ritual during summers to get a flowered plait done at least once. Every summer, my mom would set a date for us to get the poola jada done using the malle flowers that were abundantly available in the market. The program involved meticulous planning and my mom took it very seriously. One particular variety called boddu malle was very popularly used for the poola jada. My brother would be sent to the local flower market in Vijayawada to meet one particular vendor for the ‘best’ boddu malle buds for that perfect jada. He would buy a couple of kilos of them early in the morning. Then my mom would inform a lady who was a distant relative, who specialised in the art of making poola jada. The lady would arrive post lunch and then the important task would start. She was treated with utmost respect and everybody in the house danced attendance around her serving her coffee and snacks and generally keeping her happy.

If you ever harboured a fascination to have a poola jada made for your hair, one absolutely essential criteria was to have long, thick hair – ‘long’ because the poola jada would not look good on short hair; ‘thick’ because if you had thin hair, you would end up with a terrible headache owing to the weight of the poola jada. For those who had neither of these, a hair extension was used to make the plait look longer and thicker, with several knots and elastic bands all along the plait to keep it in tact. Today, as a matter of convenience, ready-made poola jadas are used for brides and flower vendors take orders even a few days before the wedding.

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Posing her best, my sister Aparna (circa 1983)

 

The making of poola jada involved several hours of patience and concentration. First our long hair was neatly plaited till the end which was then adorned with a hair accessory called jada kucchulu (an accessory used to enhance the beauty of the plait). Each malle bud was selected with care and with the help of a white thread, the buds were made into garlands. These garlands, made in different lengths, were then sewed into the plait right from the top of the head and along the length of the plait, carefully tucking away the flowers into beautiful designs. Sometimes other varieties of flowers in different hues like roses and kanakāmbara were used along with malle for added beauty. The lady would take a couple of hours for each of us which meant the entire episode went till 7:00 in the night.

The activity didn’t end there. After the poola jadas were made, my mom would make us wear the traditional pattu parikinis and the gold jewellery while my dad or grandfather would get ready excitedly with their camera, ready to capture the moment. I remember my sister and me grumbling all along for the silliness of the situation. The only fun part of it all was the fuss the elders made around us. We were suddenly treated with a lot of importance and we were fed dinner by my mom or an aunt, narrating a story or two to divert our attention from the discomfort. Bedtime was an agony with capital ‘A’. Lying down on the bed, with the poola jada carefully placed to the side, we spent the rest of the night in just one single position and invariably woke up in the morning with a stiff neck and bleary eyes from lack of sleep. The poola jada lasted the entire day and we would have a dreadful time taking bath and generally going around with the heavy thing following us everywhere.

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Me, super amused with my attire (circa 1983)

                                            

I remember a couple of weeks before school closed for summer, some girls in the school would come with poola jada and school uniform to go with it!!! It was a common sight in school during the pre-summer-days and teachers didn’t mind girls coming with mehendi designs on their hands, heavy silver anklets over their school shoes or flowers in their hair along with black ribbons.  It was a sight to behold!!

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Ready-made poola jadaas (image courtesy: Valli, my friend from Vijayawada)

I must confess here that my sister and I never actually craved to be part of these occasions since it would only mean two days of discomfort. We would just find ourselves in the middle of one every year, because the fun and amusement derived from these gatherings were purely for the adults, who absolutely enjoyed such occasional digressions from their routine life. But over the years, the nostalgic person that I am, I find the experience really unique and a significant part of growing up, carrying with it the essences of the bygone days.

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Once Upon a Summer Day

Māvichiguru tinagānē…koyila palikena…”

(Soon as she eats the tender buds of mango, the koel sings…)

The famous Telugu song of yester years stirs my soul. I lay languidly on the couch, entranced by the effect the song has on me. I drift dreamily into the idyllic days of my childhood…summertime. Though I hail from one of the hottest places in India, Vijayawada, I don’t have any memories of discomfort because of the heat. With the temperatures hovering between 45 – 49 degrees, it was pretty easy to succumb to a heat stroke. Sans ACs, sans cold drinks in the refrigerator, the summer vacation would pass amidst fun, frolic and two months of absolute bliss. But thankfully my granny always had a vessel full of buttermilk ready and we kids were encouraged to drink a lot of it. It was that part of our lives when we were living in our ancestral house, the headquarters of our family network. We would look forward with almost a painful impatience for the annual exams to get over and the vacation to start.

Watching the mango trees in our yard go through their seasonal changes was fascinating. The fragrance of the flowers in full bloom assured us that summer was ‘just round the corner’. The heady essence of the flowers in the air would leave us pining for summer holidays. The flowers finally gave way to tiny buds of green tender mangoes for which we fought with equal fervour along with the greedy parrots and the ‘innocent’ squirrels. The elders’ repeated warnings against eating the tender mangoes, seldom had any effect on our strong determination to eat them. These episodes were soon followed by sore throat sand coughs and would temporarily make us ‘repent’ our stubbornness. But a couple of days in bed, we would be up again, back to collecting tender mangoes fallen under the trees.

The rising temperature also brought with it the most eagerly-awaited summer activity – making pickles. My fondest memory was of the sheer excitement of the family members voluntarily involving in the process of pickle making. My grandmother, the head of the family (and the keeper of the secret family pickle recipes), would make a few quick calls to the local grocer for the required spices (chilli, mustard, fenugreek). While the men were involved in the more laborious activities of plucking the mangoes, washing and skilfully cutting them into surprisingly similar sizes, the women got busy with the drying,grinding, measuring and mixing of the spices with the cut mangoes and oil with precision. And finally it was time to taste. First the fresh pickle was mixed with the right amount of hot, steaming rice, with a generous amount of ghee added to it. The rice was then blended uniformly taking care that each grain of rice is well coated with the red pickle before it was ready for tasting. We would feel amused watching the adults judge each mouthful with a groan or grunt and comical expressions of rolling up their half-open eyes or twisting their mouths 360 degrees before they proclaimed whether their effort was successful or not.

While the grown-ups were busy with the seasonal activities of making pickles, papads and desiccated vegetables, we kids would make cunning plots to steal salted mango pieces from the terrace, where they were laid out on transparent plastic sheets for drying. A couple of successful attempts would increase our greed for more and one of us would fall prey to the ire of the cook or my grandmother. But much to our delight, after a few ‘scolds’ from both the women, we would end up getting a handful of mango pieces as a double treat.Years later my grandmother confessed proudly that the joy of making pickles wouldn’t have been as memorable if there were no mischievous children pestering her all the time.

Summer vacation brought home a bunch of cousins from other parts of the country. There was a silent understanding between the boys’ gang and the girls’ group to stay away from each other’s mischief. While the boys tried hard to ignore the girls, they would finally give in to our jollier and more entertaining activities that we indulged in with our constant innovative games.One popular pastime was to whip up interesting ‘recipes’ in our miniature cooking set (we had a box-full of these). We would make plans even before the start of the vacation to collect a little money and stock up on ingredients such as honey and phutana dal while sugar, rice, and dal were supplied reluctantly by my mom. And the magical ingredient to anything we whipped up were the good old baby mangoes. The boys, noticing that playing with us was more profitable, would be eager to help us and sometimes were employed to steal stuff from the kitchen for our ‘gourmet’ cooking. The result of all this excitement was when we had to taste our concoction. While most times we ended up with a fabulously tasty preparation, on the rare occasions when the cooking indeed went horribly wrong, we would each try to desperately gulp down the retch that threatened to spill out.

Sleeping on the terrace was another exciting part of the vacation. With the floor of the terrace heated up during the day enough to fry an egg, in the evening we would try to cool it down with buckets of water poured on the floor.The hot ground steamed with the touch of cool water and soon, with a few more buckets of water, the floor was ready to be used for our post-dinner activities. Dinner at 7:00 was soon followed by setting the stage for our mini-theatre. The older kids in the gang always got to choose the themes and plots of our plays. Then they would carefully decide who would play which character. With a few last minute alterations, we were ready with our parts and so went the evening amidst squeals of laughter and excitement.

Now far far away from those times, summer still tickles me with the same eagerness and pleasure it always did. With two daughters at home, the excitement that summer vacation brings with it has not changed at all. Our pretend plays and fun times with cousins are now replaced by my kids’ summer camps, sleep overs with friends and a constant stream of summer parties; I relive the moments of my childhood with the same childish fervour.

As I gaze out of the window enjoying the cacophony of the squirrels,koels and the chattering parrots perched on a thick branch of a mango tree, I couldn’t  help notice a quick mischievous wink by the koel, singing what I thought was

“Gunnamaamidi kommameeda…” (On the branch of a ripe mango tree…a popular and old Telugu film song)