"thaan enganne annu oru pattar kutti ayaedo?" used to be a dialogue that I used to hear many a time during my school going days. Most of the time I would hear this dialogue when my brother and cousins used to be tripping on variety of fishes for lunch, dinner etc and I used to run away from eating them. This definitely must be one of my earlier memories of Vijaymmavan. Druing his stay in Avadi, we used to take a long trip by bus to reach his house from where the place we used to stay during our (then called) Madras days. Many a time we would have to take 2 buses to reach Avadi and I always used to look forward to these trips.
Vijayammavan had a scooter - the very reliable lamberatta for a very long time. During our visit to Avadi, he would take us to the Army recreation centre (I think that is what it used to be called during those days) to watch a movie. It would often be the late night show. He would literally transport all of us on his scooter doing multiple trips from this centre to the place he used to stay. Many a time I have had the privilege to sit on a cushion and then on the carrier while making that last trip home. I used to feel proud as nobody else would be made to do that.
I remember a trip to see a tank - an army tank that was on public display in Chennai. When we reached this location, there was a huge crowd of people gathered around to see this massive vehicle. With Vijaymmavans authority, I (I dont remember if my brother too had come on this visit) remember going into the tank to see the inside of it. One of the army guys, showed me around the entire unit and I was really in awe. Vijaymmavan always wanted me to get into the IMA. He used to send me a lot of pictures/literature with regards to a life in the armed forces. But me being an very extra'ordinary' student could not accomplish them!!
I learnt to ride scooter - on the one and only lamberatta when I had gone to Delhi just after my 10th exams. Vijayammavan took me to one of the open grounds to teach me the basics of how to ride a scooter. During his working days, one of his assistants would come home on this scooter, pick me from home and take me to the ground to continue my training to ride the scooter. I also remember using the main road to get back home after I had learnt to ride the scooter quite decently with this assistant as my pillion rider. I was beyond happy to take the scooter into one of the main roads in Delhi.
The summer holidays, for me, my brother and amma, was always a trip to Tripunithura from Chennai. My cousins with Nalinichittamma would also come down to Tripunithura for the summer holidays. Vijaymmavan used to come occasionally for a few days during these summer holidays. He used to regale us with stories from his childhood and army days. One of them was about the very 1st radio in Kodungaloor - he was a native of this place. His house had the one and only radio in that area. Once when it broke down, they asked a line man (according to Vijayammavan this line man was the only person who knew about electricity in his area and hence the best person to repair the radio) to come and have a look on the now broken down radio and to see if he could get it back to a working condition. This line man would diligently open up the radio, remove all the parts, dust them, look at them etc and re-fix the radio with half the parts. The other half of the radio was only to increase the weight of the radio and had no use according to him. But, when he would switch the re fixed radio back, all the parts outside of the radio would start singing and no part inside the radio would!!
Vijaymmavan sense of humour was tremendous. When ever he told us anything - be it a story or anything, he would always lace it with humour. You could never ever have a conversation with him and not keep laughing in a very short time! His writings always had humour in them.
Another activity that was mandatory during his summer visits was to watch the movie "ormakkai". This was his all time favourite movie. I dont remember the number of times we have watched this movie in his company.
Many a summer later, I had gone to his house called Uttara in Tripunithura with my family. Not sure how it started but he started asking my 3 year old daughter at that time, whether she wanted to have chakkakuru (jackfruit seeds). Initially she kept saying no, but after a while, the moment Vijaymmavan used to ask if she wanted chakkakuru, she would protest saying "parayu muthachanode venda ennu" (tell grandfather that she dint want this). Once when I had called him up when he was admitted to the hospital, he asked my daughter if she wanted chakkakuru - and she ran off and hid herself under the chair! She kind of started calling him chakkakuru muthachan....
I will cherish all these memories of him for the rest of my life. 🙏🙏
2 comments:
Good ones.
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