Happy 83rd Birthday Ammamma!

Amma - May you live to be a 100! You like cricket so much - it is only natural that you should score a century! Happy birthday from your daughters, grand daughters and all the people who love you and admire you! (edit note - when I read out this birthday message to Ammamma - she confessed that she woke up today after a dream in which Sehwag and Dravid were playing cricket in our house and that Dravid got out!! She is also fighting with me that I should remove the photographs and is a bit worried that her story is becoming long winded. I told her that since nobody has yet said it is boring, she shouldn't stop me from writing as much as I want to)

These are pictures of Ammamma shot by Preeti (Laasya) this month. Ammamma's hair is still so long! Imagine how it was when she was young! How does Ammamma know her correct age? She came to know about it when she had to go to the Tahsildar's office to ascertain it. She wanted to sell her land to her eldest brother, but it was not allowed by the Karanam (Village revenue officer) as she was a minor. She then got her correct date from the Tahsildar's office records as July 17th, 1926 and sold her 3/4 acre land in 1944. In her Matric, however, it was arbitrarily recorded as September 8th. {It is another thing that the sale resulted in Rs 800 only (as opposed to the expected Rs 1200) and Rs 600 of it was used to repay Tatayya's debts!}

It is interesting to note that Ammamma got her long hair after her Aunt (Mother's sister, whom we used to call as Pallekona Ammamma) and nobody else in the family had such a head of hair that was thick and long - an unusual combination. It is still is her hallmark.

I asked Ammamma some more details about her Mother. She says that she recorded most of what she remembered as she had her mother for only 10 years of her life. She does remember that her mother slogged hard around the house when she wasn't ill. She had a swollen abdomen and used to ail off and on. However, since there were so many siblings older to her, Ammamma remembers a happy and carefree childhood, always playing games and pranks and running small errands. She does once again remember her mother's partiality to her sons and her bias in feeding them ghee cooked delicacies and also double the quantity, and even here, singling out her first born son for more attention. She had a dear friend in the village named Rattamma, and once in a while, Ammamma had to run to Rattamma's house for her mother to give, take messages/food etc. It is indeed a strange coincidence that these two friends died on the same day.

Ammamma forbade buying of any more clothes for her. I was wondering what to buy for her. In Madhukar Shukla's (past colleague at ASCI, a social entrepreneurship crusader and professor at XLRI) post I read about the wonderful idea of gifting saplings for people, which is enduring, endearing and long lasting and also serves a green purpose. (Thanx Madhukar for the idea, as well as for reading my blog about Ammamma with interest). Great idea isn't it! Madhukar - you were the trigger that made me start this blog when you wrote those inspiring lines about your own Mother. You know, my friend Nayana (HR, Infosys) has started her own blog and another friend Sita (English lecturer) wants to start writing about her mother and grandmother, together with her daughter! So many people drawing inspiration from each other and more particularly paying respect to the people who lived in times that were both tough and exciting and gave us the gift of thinking and being sensitive.

Ammamma loves her potted plants and the trees down below - the first morning ritual is to look at her plants, stand by the branches of the neem tree in our balcony and revel in the breeze. She was delighted that we did not have to cut down any branches from the neem tree when we had to install the transformer this month. However, she was a bit annoyed with the neem tree today as it is toppling her pots because of the breeze. She also pruned the roses yesterday and the flowers are so beautiful. I will today get her saplings and we will plant them downstairs. I have asked Sweety (Shraavya) to get compost from her office (ICRISAT) and I will also get rose mix which Ammamma has been asking me for some time and I have been forgetting. And of course, a nice lightweight Jaipur razai - she feels the cold so much - she does not mind the heat at all and does not use even a cooler, but she is already swathed up in shawls and socks with the slightest cool breeze of the evasive monsoon. I hope for her sake and all our sake that the monsoon will finally come to Hyderabad and fulfill her her wish to see green all round.

Once again happy birthday Amma from all of us!