Growing up, I did not get to spend as much time with extended family. There was the usual familial disputes between my mother's side and my father's side. When the disputes ebbed, I would sneak over to see my grandparents and aunts. When the disputes fell, they would occasionally visit us and I could more freely visit them. As for my mother's extended family, they lived far away in other cities in India and I very rarely got to see them. So you could say I grew up in a rather lean family environment, just my immediate family. I don't remember many "functions" as we refer to birthday parties and such. As a matter of fact, I don't remember any get togethers save for the rare event usually a festival, when by some miracle, a lot of the family members somehow gathered at one place.
My aunt on my father's side, the youngest of four kids, always greeted me with, "மருமஹனே !!". That translates to "Hey, Son-in-law !!". Because my Dad had me in his early 20s, she was only about a dozen years or so older than me. So it was unlikely that I would ever marry a future daughter of hers. She knew that. But for her, that greeting was a term of endearment and she would hail me with enthusiasm. And I understood that and would respond with, "என் அருமை அத்தையே !!". That translates to "Oh, my beloved Aunt !!". We used to sneak out to the movies, play பல்லாங்குழி at her house and walk to the market together. There was not much else to do in Madurai in the late 80s. Traffic was nowhere near today's density. There were no high rise buildings. Madurai city was more of a town. The days were a bit cooler, less noisier and less dustier. We only had Ambassador and Fiat cars on the road.
Around the turn of the 90s, my beloved aunt passed away. I was maybe 15 then. She was probably in her mid-to-late 20s. I feel bad that I do not remember her birthday or year of passing. I am a bit hesitant to ask my other aunts or Dad.. don't want to stir sad memories for them. Apparently on that fateful day.. it was a suicide threat on her part that ended up as a horrible accident with her engulfed in flames. She died two days later at the Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai. I did go see her. After 30 years, I still remember the exact words and her pleading voice upon seeing me arrive by her bedside, "Kobi, கொஞ்சம் தண்ணி கொடுப்பா". There was no need for her to be so.. so.. polite. But I understand now that she must have asked everyone around her first.. and was hoping I would finally get her some water. But I had been specifically told upon entering the ward to not give her water. I don't remember my response to my aunt and this is maddening to me today.
Did I try to soothe her with my 15 year old wisdom that it was best she not drink any water? Or did I slowly back out of there instead? Was she heartbroken with my response and eventual departure from the ward? In a country where fairer skin is blatantly favored over darker skin, what did she feel about her chances in society once she recovered and had to get around with burnt skin? How much pain was she in those 48 hours or so between the accident and her last breath? My grandfather, goodness rest his soul, in his haste to put out the flames, had thrown a bucketful of water on her. I didn't see any IV. So no morphine drip. Was she given painkiller injections? I have seen how carefully burn victims are kept in special beds, provided oxygen, painkillers, etc. in western hospitals. Back then, my aunt was in a crowded ward strewn with patients all over the place. Some were on the floor. Some were on cots. Their visitors were milling around. My aunt was sitting up on a cot with no mattress, I think. Did she reach out to hold my hands? I think she might have! What did she see in my eyes? Horror? Pity? Concern? Was she wearing some sort of clothing? I remember her torso was all.. dark. So she was at least partly nude then.. in front of everyone? Or were her original clothing still sticking to her? The patient next to her and their family were staring at us with stricken eyes. My aunt's condition and appearance was a traumatic experience to them as well.
I don't remember how I made my way back home. I am pretty sure I was at the hospital for only about five minutes or so. Probably my Mom and another aunt who were with my dying aunt told me to leave. I like to think that they stayed with her throughout the ordeal in hospital. I could have stayed up until her last breath. Her favorite nephew. I remember being back home with another cousin and do not recall much until the next day or so. That following day, the day of my aunt's death (or was it the day after?), my Dad and brother arrived by train from the northern part of India where my Dad had been working for a couple of years. My brother had been living with him for a few months at that point. Was my aunt's body held in some dark, fricking morgue while waiting for my Dad to arrive? Everyone, except me and my cousin, went to a place called Thathaneri to cremate my aunt's already burnt husk. Why were we left behind? Did I not want to go? I googled Thathaneri recently and came across a few recent pictures. I was aghast at the appearance of the place. I have been to American funeral homes and seen the elegance and sheltered process in place. But looking at pictures of Thathaneri, I was besides myself with grief. Is this the place where everyone turned their backs and walked away from my beloved aunt's ashes? Her ashes would have dispersed in the wind or washed away under the rain over the weeks.
The reader might think that I just remembered my aunt.. in the winter of 2022 after not having thought of her for 30 years. I did not completely forget her. I would remember her every time I visited Madurai over the years and drove on certain streets that my aunt lived with my grandparents. My other aunts, her older sisters, had married and lived in their own homes either in Madurai or Virudunagar. But my youngest aunt and my grandparents lived in, usually, a two-room "house" not more than 200 sq. ft in one of the streets near where I lived. And the roof would be one of those aluminum roofs. No air-conditioning. Nothing. Can you imagine how hot such a place might have got in the height of summer? This is because they were completely reliant on my Dad for their living. I think my Dad could only afford to rent such a small house for them. I remember three such small houses and two bigger houses -- indicating my Dad's growing prosperity -- near my house that they lived in over a period of seven years or so. No idea why they moved so frequently. The best part was they did not have any furniture. No beds. No sofa. No TV. Nothing. So my aunt would not have had to do any heavy lifting every time they moved house. I am hoping that the most she would have had to lift is when my grandmother probably told her to go to a grocery store to get rice and some essential, gave her a "koodai" (small basket) or "manja pie" (cheap yellow cloth bag) and sent her on her way. I can imagine my aunt putting on her worn sandals and trudging over to the local store under a blazing sun. And only a few years later, I would get on my first flight to leave the country. Getting on an aircraft would not even have been a remote possibility to her. I don't ever remember having seen her in a car or two-wheeler. When we needed to go farther out in the city, we took a hand-operated rickshaw and very rarely an auto-rickshaw. Did she think of herself as living in perpetual hardship and crave a more comfortable, permanent home? But I remember her as only a genial person.. up until that last day.
My grandfather could only afford to educate my Dad and his eldest daughter. The other two aunts might have got to 10th grade or so.. my youngest aunt possibly even not that. She could read and I remember when she visited our house one early morning all dolled up. She promptly sat in a chair cross-legged and started reading a magazine. Kumutham or Ananda Vikatan? I can't remember. But I am not sure of her writing abilities. How did she spend her evenings with her parents? My grandfather was adamant that young people should be home by sunset. Remember there was no TV at home and it was usually a two-room house comprising of a kitchen and living area, where everyone lounged, slept and ate. There would have been an outhouse for bathing and toilet. How did they deal with mosquitoes on those rainy days? I hate to think that she had no job prospects and was entirely reliant on others for basic necessities. Today, there are makeup channels on YouTube where "influencers" titter over nuances. But my aunt had access only to talcum powder for her cheeks, ink -- not writing ink -- for her eyebrows and coconut oil for her hair. She probably wore cheap bangles and such bought at "fancy" stores. Did she ever experience the joys of wearing jewellery or an expensive saree? What was her favorite food? What was her favorite movie or song?
Did she ever experience the joys of being intimate with a lover? Probably not. This saddens me to a great deal. She was waiting to get married off and it was actually the topic of her own marriage, etc. which somehow led to her self-immolation. I am vague on the details myself and do not want to speculate. I don't remember her having any friends close to her age that she could confide in and just talk freely. There were a couple of young women in her last years. A Kutty Nafisa, who I thought was pretty hot but that I met only a couple of times. There was also Jayashree, the daughter of one of our landlords. So I knew her pretty well. She had a habit of wearing male-oriented clothes like lungi and shirt. She also had a habit of wrapping her pigtails around the periphery of her scalp. Think of one of those Greek Goddesses or Egyptian queens with pretty serpents whipping about over their heads. We were lower middle class and, with my Dad's then recent career prospects, on our way to becoming middle class. You could say Jayashree was already middle class. Given her appearance and vibe and mannerisms, my aunt probably felt she would not get another interesting friend like hers. She might have developed an infatuation with Jayashree. When Jayashree became engaged as part of an arranged marriage, my aunt took it pretty hard. The thought of losing a long-time friend combined with her own uncertain situation from recent years shifting from one house to another and just following my grandparents around.. must have led to a great amount of angst. Remember she did not have anyone to confide in. And while our elders were honest and hard-working, they were severely handicapped when it comes to communication, preemptive or otherwise. They simply followed societal rules and did not know better. I am not blaming them for what happened. But I keep thinking about how my aunt's life might have flourished if the people around her had been a bit more sensitive to her feelings.. and just sat down calmly and listened to her. But since I was not privy to every discussion that might happened, I will speculate no further.
The year after my aunt's death, I got a Kinetic Honda as I turned 16 or 17. I had also started reading non-academic books voraciously. Then there was the excitement of high school.. and the typical gossip that came with that experience: this boy being talked in "connection" with that girl, etc. My Dad had got a job in the US by then. Between my books and figuring out my own little thoughts, I did not miss him as much. Three years passed and by the time I emigrated to the US for college, my aunt had passed completely from my memory. I don't know why I did not think of her. Had I involuntarily suppressed memories of her? Maybe only a trained psychologist can answer that. But I would like to think that I had suppressed my memories as a means of coping with the immense loss of my favorite aunt. Unfortunately, suppressing memories also means that I have now forgotten a lot of my interactions with her.
Quite a few of my friends had lost family and parents in 2021 to COVID. John Meadows, one of my idols, passed away and that hit me hard. One of my closest friends from my childhood lost his big puppy, which devastated him. He actually remembered a couple of things about my aunt.. one of them was going to the Kamal Hassan movie Vetrivela as a group. I was happy to hear about his memories, however vague they might have been. I was tempted to reach out to all my other friends to see if they remembered anything about my aunt. Then I decided against it as that would be out of character for me. Anyway, all these occurrences of 2021 somehow suddenly triggered memories of my aunt and a massive amount of grief in December 2021. I took two days off work because I could not focus my thoughts. Then I decided to write this post. You can call it a tribute. I wanted to write this as a way of expressing myself and getting out any suppressed feelings once and for all.
What if she had not passed on but survived that ordeal.. or never had had that ordeal in the first place? My aunt and I likely would have been all over the length and breadth of Madurai on my Kinetic Honda. How can I say that? Because I gave a lot of people rides on my scooter. I took my Mom shopping. I dropped off the mothers of my friends at their home after they had finished visiting with my Mom. I transported neighbors to important appointments, etc. And I would have enjoyed attending her wedding, riding my scooter around to run any needed errands as we prepared for the wedding. And I would have visited her own eventual family every time I visited India. And something tells me that I would have been prepared to bring her to the US had I even got a whiff that she was not happy in her marriage. She might not have wanted to emigrate. But I would have ensured that she knew she had options. I cannot tell if any of her meager possessions are still preserved deep in my family's aging dressers in Madurai and Virudunagar. But I would have made sure she was comfortable living with me. I would have helped her learn to drive. I am not into volunteering. But I do pretty well 1-on-1 and have mentored a few people over the years. Those things just happened naturally as people tend to gravitate to me. So, I would have attempted to get my aunt started on a skill of her choosing.. and I would have worked with her on it too with a goal of seeing her become financially independent. One of my friends helped put his wife through college and she is now a nurse and financially independent. So why couldn't I have done the same for my aunt? My own flesh and blood.
