Dusshera Debacle

We were living in Malleswaram where dusshera was celebrated by inviting each other for “arishina kumkuma”, the ordeal where women get in and out of houses of all and sundry. (known and unknown).

We as children used to accompany our moms like herds of sheep just for the sake of “charpu” which some kanjoos aunties used to give us.

Here I must tell you the items which come under the category of charpu.

1. Gugguri or sundal ( made out of various dhals)
2. Very tiny(minute to be precise) elakki balehannu which had turned black, presumably the ones which they got the previous day
3. Kobbari sakkare which consists of more sugar ( bought from ration shop) than kobbari
4. Shrunken mosambi which has turned into the size of lemon( reserved for youngsters like us)
5. Shankarpoli ( I don’t understand why it has been named thus. poor shankars)
6. One aunty had even passed off unbreakable mysorepaks as charpu

We were also given the responsibility of inviting aunties who lived far and wide.

My sister and I proceeded on one such journey along with our neighbor’s son Ramu (she had no daughters). After inviting everyone, we were returning along with our booty and our last destination was our Hindi teacher. Since we were very tired, we kept all our valuable collections in one place and sat down. In a nano second, the teacher did something which was unpardonable in our eyes. She took all the charpus inside thinking that we had brought those things for her. (Even today I am still surprised at her dumb brain. How can she ever think that those assorted charpus along with the accompaniments of beetle leaves, beetle nuts etc can be hers?). Though she said that there was no necessity for us to bring all these items, her hands were busy emptying our baskets/butti wire bag to be precise (we had three of them mind you. No sharing, we had decided)

Though we were very upset, we could not do anything as she was our teacher. But Ramu started crying and told us that since she was our teacher and not his, he would go and get back his share. It took us a lot of time to convince and console him.

After that Ramu broke the partnership of our joint venture and joined hands with someone else who was strong enough to not let go of the booty.

We on our part decided not to take any chances and kept our baskets with collections as close to us as possible when we visited prospective invitees.

Now Ramu might be getting a two or maybe three baskets full of the booties but nothing like the old days. Where are you now Ramu?

Singing of songs was another ordeal which one had to undergo when one visits people. We could hear devotional songs/ thyagaraja krithi/purandara/kanaka or some random dasas’ kritis from neighboring houses, though I had a vague feeling that no one listened to the singer however good she was.( anyway the songs were meant for the gods, not for the ladies).

One aunty had this habit of singing the same song in all the houses for I don’t know how many years but if you calculate roughly it comes to 6750 times (9 daysX50 housesX15 years). 15 years is my guess but I don’t know how long she had been singing it before that.

All said and done, we enjoyed our childhood days irrespective of the minuses and plusses.