Veranda Tales-Closets full of clothes
Storytelling has been an integral part of my life since childhood. I grew up listening to stories during the hot summer evenings and nights with my cousins. Mothers and grandmothers would gather all of us children for story time. It was usually pitch dark except for a very faint light coming from the flickering candle. Power cuts were as frequent as the hot and humid summer days. We all spread out on a cool concrete floor or bamboo mats on the veranda intently listening to fascinating stories about kings, queens, princes, princesses, and peasants alike. Stories about love, life, families, and people entertained and taught us life skills. These stories transported us to distant worlds, strange yet familiar. Often the same story told by two people sounded different as storytellers added new twists and turns adding their personal style and flair to the stories.
Storytelling wasn’t limited to summer evenings and bedtime. I was surrounded by adults who didn’t pass up an opportunity to share their wisdom using the art of storytelling. These rich vibrant oral traditions include songs, poems, stories, and సామెతలు (Sametalu are proverbs in Telugu). Men and women sing songs as they work in the fields, grinding grains and spices and doing other daily chores at their homes. Stories are often used to teach important life lessons, interpersonal skills, and survival skills. These stories and the time spent listening to them made our lives richer leaving an impression on me. This series is all about reliving those memories as I share these stories.
కోకలు వెయ్యి ఉన్నా, కట్టుకొనేది ఒకటే (kokalu veyyi unna, kattukonedi okate)
When I was growing up, all my clothes fit on a small shelf in a large cement color metal Godrej beeruva (cabinet) that went with us when we moved. It stood 6.5 feet tall, 4.5 feet wide, and about 2 feet deep with 4 shelves and a safety locker taking up one whole shelf in the middle. Each one of us in our family of four had a shelf with our name on it in the beeruva. అమ్మ (Amma is mother in Telugu) managed my clothes when I was younger. As I got older I learned to take care of my clothes by myself. I arranged my పావడాలు (pavadalu are full length skirts in Telugu), చోళి (choli is blouse in Telugu), and underclothing in this small space in tall stacks spanning the shelf. The shelf never overflowed with clothes. I would take a పావడా (paavadaa), a matching long చోళి (choli) out from the top of their respective stacks every morning to wear. Washed clothes went to the bottom of the stacks so they can be rotated. I didn't need very many clothes until the end of 10th grade. The schools I attended required students to wear uniforms. I had just two sets of uniforms. I would wear one set while the second was in the laundry for washing. చాకలి (Chaakali is washerman or woman in Telugu) came to our house every day to wash dirty clothes and hang them on clotheslines for drying in the Sun.
Uniforms offered amazing simplicity to my life. I didn't have to stand in front of the shelf thinking about what to wear Monday through Friday during the school year. When Saturday rolled around I would simply pull out my favorite పావడా (paavadaa), a matching long చోళి (choli) I had been waiting to wear to school all week long. I attended school six days a week from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening with an hour of lunch break from noon to 1 PM. అమ్మ (Amma) is a good seamstress and stitched all our clothes at home. Every year she stitched new clothes for major festivals and birthdays. I had one or two favorite పావడా (paavadaa), a matching long చోళి (choli) each year to wear on Saturdays until my 10th grade.
There was no equivalent of Sunday best in our house. I grew up in a Hindu family. We weren't super religious. అమ్మ (Amma) or నాన్న (Nanna) did పూజ (pooja) everyday in the morning. The best part of పూజ (pooja) was the tender flesh and sweet water from the కొబ్బరి కాయ (kobbari kaaya is coconut in Telugu) offered during పూజ (pooja). కొబ్బరి కాయ (kobbari kaaya) gets smashed just hard enough on a concrete floor or a small rock during the పూజ (pooja) to be able to drain the water first before breaking it into two halves. In some houses I lived in, we had a separate పూజ (pooja) room or an area where there was enough space in front of the deities to sit comfortably on a పీట (peeta is a low wooden floor stool in Telugu) and still have some room to break the coconut on the floor. In some houses we had our పూజ (pooja) space on a shelf in a built in wall closet with or without doors. We stood in front of it to perform పూజ (pooja). We would use a small rock to break the కొబ్బరి కాయ (kobbari kaaya). Then there was మంగళ ఆరతి (mangala aarti), a offering of light lit from burning camphor in a special aarati plate. The మంగళ ఆరతి (mangala aarti) plate would be circled in front of the deities and then offered to the rest to take in the blessed light. I would warm my hands on the heat from the మంగళ ఆరతి (mangala aarti) and place warm hands on my face. Sunday was no different and it was the same as all others.
During summer holidays, I would go back to my time tested rotation of clothes all through my school years. During my 11th and 12th grades, there was no uniform requirement. I could wear anything my heart desired from the selection clothing I had. During that time, my favorite clothing became my lucky clothing to wear on my tough subject examination days as a lucky charm. During my 11th and 12th grades, I had a cyan colored silk పావడా (paavadaa) that saw me through all my math, physics, chemistry tests and the engineering entrance exams. Where would I be without it?
I have never been big on clothing and dressing up. I clean up well when an occasion calls for it. I prioritize comfort and practicality in my choice of clothing and shoes. I have a closet I share with my spouse now to keep my clothes. I have to admit my closet has more clothes than I need and I keep buying more. Buying books and shirts is one of my vices. I come back from a trip with a new book and on occasion a new shirt.
On a recent trip to India, I was walking to my gate at the airport and stopped in front of a store selling beautiful కుర్తాలు (kurtalu are Indian tunics). I couldn’t help walking into the store and walking out with two కుర్తాలు (kurtalu) and then had to run all the way to my gate having lost time in the process.
“కోకలు వెయ్యి ఉన్నా, కట్టుకొనేది (kokalu veyyi unna, kattukonedi okate)” sameta means, “even though there are thousand sarees, you wear only one”. When I hear this sameta, I think about my closet and long for those simpler days of my youth when I had just a handful of clothing. This sameta offers a message about a simpler life with fewer possessions and cautions us against amassing things. I am training myself to get rid of clothes before buying new ones. I also have the habit of hanging on to clothing I like. I keep wearing them until they can no longer be worn. I share this trait with my mother.
When I visit her, I help her with cleaning her closets, arranging clothes, snacks, utensils, and other items in her room. The goal is removing clutter so she can walk around her room safely without tripping and falling. She finds it difficult to get rid of old sarees and other items just like I do. She no longer has the physical ability to clean out her closets and throw out things she doesn't need. She waits for my visits to get help with rearranging her room. She saves plastic and glass containers and bottles. I go through things in her room asking, “Do you really need five bottles? Can we get rid of a few?”. We negotiate and come up with a decision. A successful outcome is getting rid of one out of the five bottles. Similar negotiations take place about plastic and paper bags, sarees, underclothing, and other things. There are times I bag up things only to come back to find them back in the closet. I am amused to see how my mother is so similar to my kids in this respect. I have to negotiate with my kids the same way about giving away books and toys they have outgrown. I boxed up books and toys to give away once and that box is still in the closet after my son won the round of negotiation.
Someday I will achieve my goal of a simpler life with a handful of clothes and wall to wall shelves of books. I have piles of books everywhere in the house. I usually read one or two books in parallel. It drives my one and only insane. He has taken to buying bookshelves to stay a step ahead of the books that keep finding their way into our home. This sameta applies to books as well, “Even though there are a thousand books, you read only one at a time”, however, I have a hard time accepting it. One can never have enough of the precious books.
