Come Summer 😎, we'd leave Bombay just after the final examinations, and return back just in time for the start of another academic year 🤓. On a few instances, as soon as the bell 🔔 for the last paper went off, my dad would be at the school gate to to pick me up and we'd be rushing off to catch the train 🚃 from Kurla St. While in one particular case, I recall, my dad even sought permission from the principal 👩🏽🏫 to allow me to skip the very last exam (which was one of those extra courses whose scores did not decide whether one was being promoted to the next grade 🤷🏽♀️)… So going to Ooru (which loosely translates to "hometown") was a big deal atleast for my family 😅.
Once in Udupi, our first stop 🚏 would usually be to my mum's parents' place - Kondadi (Kondada in tulu language loosely translates to “affectionate”, and as a child I wondered 🤔 if that is why this place was called so, for I always felt that affection 🥰 from the house, the place, my grandparents)...
My dad would have preferred for us 👨👩👧👧 (especially me, who always asked to be left behind at my grandparents' place 👵🏼🧓🏽) to spend more time with his folks instead, who lived in another village called 'Kemthoor' , which was about 20kms away (it doesn't seem far at all now, but it seemed quite a distance when I was little 😓. I guess everything has a tendency to seem bigger in proportions when you are little 🤔). My dad's place hustled and bustled with all family members (extended family can be really big and noisy! 🤪) gathered over the Summer break - a tonne of events and plans and fun! 🥳 Although I enjoyed spending time with my paternal cousins, for most parts, I preferred the quiet, comfortable life with my grandparents anyday over the hullabaloo and gala. 😇
Now, to describe Kondadi, I would have to go through a logical sequence of explanation so that you get the picture right! (or atleast about close 🤓). Imagine a remote village in the middle of a forest. Well, there are several such villages in coastal Karnataka that are surrounded by forest. 🌳 Was this one really in the middle of a forest? Partially maybe, but it was clearly inhabited and domesticated many long years before me. Was it really remote? Well, there was no public transport for one (🚌 buses did not ply on the interior road although one could occasionally hitch a ride 🛺). The nearest bus-stop was about 3kms away (which again, does not seem a lot now 😑, but in the sweltering summer heat and humidity of the coastal region and the uneven terrain, that was mostly uphill - depending on which way you were headed 🤪 - seemed like a pretty long and exhausting walk for the younger me 😓). But, electricity 🔌 had already reached here and the groundwork for telecommunication 📡 was laid out too. So maybe it was not so remote but seemed remote in comparison to my dad's place, and undoubtedly it was remote in comparison to Bombay… This village had just one shop back in the early 90s - Vasu-na-angadi, meaning "Vasu's shop" (you must've guessed it, 'Vasu' was the shop owner's name) - that had the basic necessities : local colas and ice candies (which were a must to survive the heat! 🥵) , a variety of snacks ('shankarpali', 'kara kadi chakli', 'masala kadlebije' were some of my favourites), chocolates and candies, the infamous Mangalorean sweet bread (something I always wondered about as a kid 🤔, why the bread in Mangalore was awfully sweet 😖, and why did Bombay's popular sandwich bread - Wibs or Wonderloaf didn't make it's way here... However, I later developed a taste for the Mangalore bread 😋, thanks to my grandfather who was so fond of it that he had to have it along with breakfast and tea each morning, and with milk after dinner every night! 😅). Vasu also had a Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) booth where we could place long distance calls. He introduced more products and facilities as the years went by… There was (still is) a Shiva temple and also a Devi temple. These were some of the spaces where the village folks congregated. Amongst other spaces were the 'Naga bana' (a place of worshipping the Snake God - which was in the forest, I'm pretty sure 🥸) and ofcourse, eachothers' homes… Here everybody knew everybody 🙋🏽♀️🙋🏽♂️. Kondadi was a cliché of a village 🙃.
Sunday afternoons were reserved for matinee movies 🎞. The neighbours would gather at my grandparents' house and all the kids would huddle and watch 📺. The movies were followed by rounds of tea and biscuits or snacks ☕️🍪 brought in by my grandmum, who rarely stayed put in one place during the day... My cousins and peers from Bombay would complain if their trip to their Ooru was longer than a couple weeks. But I always looked forward to spending more time here, in Kondadi 🥰. It was my great escape, my comfort zone. A place where I could lose myself in books all day long 📖 or craft making 🧶, listening to the 80s and 90s Bollywood and Kannada songs 🎶, walking in the fields 🌾, talking to the cattles 🐄🐂 and the house dogs 🐕🐕, picking 'karande' 🫐 from the gudde (which translates to "hill"), playing with the kids from the neighbourhood , accompanying my grandfather to Vasu's shop and back, accompanying my grandmother to the temple or to the neighbours or to the town...
It was a simple life that I could never tire of. For a very long time in my life, I never really understood what "boring" meant or how anyone could be bored 🤔. There was always something to do 😀, and even in the nothingness there was peace 😇. Being an introvert, living in a joint family in Bombay, I would find an escape from the chaos of the routine life. But here in Kondadi, I found peace in quiet solitude 😌. I loved the slow life. For me it was an experience in how life could be lived, that solitary isn't necessarily lonely, that I do not need much to be content 🙃😇…
🐓 I remember my grandparents would wake up really early, just as the rooster crowed at break of dawn 🌅, while I would curse the rooster 😣 and turn in my 'pajai'. They were farmers 👩🏽🌾👨🏼🌾 and had to get to the field before the sun was overhead ☀️. They had people to help with the fields, the cattles, the patch of forested area behind the house, but they were both very hands on, they both toiled hard, alongside the farm helpers. My grandmother commanded, delegated and supervised the helpers 👵🏼. She was bossy, yes, but well-respected in the village community. Infact everybody knew me as Vanajakker na pulli, which translates to 'Vanaja' (my grandmum's name) - akka/akker (meaning elder sister, which is often used in Tulu and other alike South-Indian languages, out of respect to a woman older than you) - pulli (meaning grand daughter). So in short, granddaughter of Vanaja. Although I may not have fully appreciated it in my formative years, I do now, and I feel proud to be her granddaughter 😌. She was a fearless woman that I have known. She always stood her ground. She was feisty and unapologetically blunt, but she was a kind and caring grandmother to me. What strikes me now as most impressive was that although she did not go to school or receive any formal education, she was very good at accounting and sharp witted. She was a 'bawse' 😎.
My grand father, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. He toiled, he rested, he was a good listener to helpers and all alike 🧓🏽. He liked to keep the balance. He stayed composed for most parts. He took care of the dogs 🐕🐕 and he loved the cats and would feed the kitties that would gather under his table while he sat to eat 🐈🐈⬛ (my grandmum hated them cats 😠, and I grew up hating cats as I found them to be stealthy 😾. But I've come such a long way from there, I love them now and find that I can learn some valuable life lessons from them, maybe we all can 😸😇). My fond memories with my grandfather are starting the Sunday mornings watching Ramanand Sagar's Shri Krishna at about 8am (or maybe it was 9am 🤔), followed by some cartoons or Malgudi Days (❔- I don't quite recall the order of the shows 🤷🏽♀️) and later by BR Chopra's Mahabharath around noon… Walking to Vasu's shop in the evenings to pick up colas, ice candies, snacks and bread 😋! My granddad was a quiet person who mostly kept his company. But, he pampered me. He would climb the coconut tree or have one of the farm helps to climb the tree 🌴 to get me fresh tender coconut - bonda 😃! He would teach me how to roast a gonku-beeje and get it out of it's shell (those were the yummiest roasted "cashewnuts" I've ever had 😋). He would pluck the 'pejakai', 'gujje', 'kukku, 'peru', 'par'nd', and sometimes even pineapple that grew in our backyard. My grandparents lived in an abundant land and my grandfather wanted me to try all the good things!😋🥰 He was aloof in someways, he did not talk a lot. But he was very caring nonetheless and was always very protective of me (sometimes to the annoyance or defiance of the (mis)adventurous little me 🤪).
In 2008, my grandfather crossed over to the other realm. A lot has changed since. These changes are usually not sudden, but as you look back upon it from a vantage point, of what was and what is, you cannot help but notice the vast gap 😢. My grandmother's health had deteriorated slowly since then. She moved to the cities upon the request of her children so they could look after her. It is saddening to see her battle with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, to seeing that staunch, independent person now completely dependent on her children, her caregivers… I SEE her, but I don't see HER anymore 😔.
And over all these years, I buried Kondadi and the memories of my time spent there, unknowingly with a resolve, like I did not miss it at all, like it was just another place… Something that I tend to do when I put the past behind and move on with life 😶. But today, past midnight (and now morning) of a cold 22nd day of February, 2022, I felt this tug, and I had to pen this down... ✍🏽
Places have a personality, a vibe, an air that maybe so unique to it 🥲. Sometimes just thinking about a place may bring up a memory, a familiar smell, the sounds 🙂… I've also felt that people make the place what it might be. They bring in their energy, their vibe to the place. So it is then, I think, an amalgam of the vibes of the place and that of the people that colour an experience one might have 🙃.
For a huge part of my life thus far, I did not want my mum or her siblings to give up Kondadi - the land where they grew up, where their kids grew up and spent their Summers, where four generations (atleast) have lived, have built memories… I always looked forward to going back 🥲, to settling down there, for even until mid-2020. Perhaps it was a romantic idea, of holding onto a familiar place, of a comfort zone, of memories with my grandparents…
I do not know when, but I turned a leaf. Kondadi to me was living with my grandparents. The quietness, the adventures of walking through the fields and uneven, slippery terrain, occasionally crossing across the stream of water with the neighbourhood kids, barely balancing on a single log of wood (which was meant to be used as a walking bridge when the stream below was full with the rain water 🌧), trying to get all the kids to do an archeological (Indiana Jones' kinda 🤠👻) dig of a village holy stone that had been placed ages ago, playing badminton 🏸 and other active games, stringing together 'mallige poo' garland , reading fiction like Arabian nights (the kids version ofcourse😉) Enid Blyton's The Famous Five, Hardy Boys, The Adventures of Tintin among others, sometimes even the Oxford dictionary and Wren & Martin just because… 🤓 Kondadi will always be my happy place 😊. And although I may not ever visit it in person, if I just closed my eyes, and listened carefully to the sounds and pick up a familiar smell from my memory chambers, 😌 I will be back in that remote village in the forest that you might have read about... 🙃
