Filter Kappi & Family Drama

Outside the Window: Delhi in the ’80s As we were growing up, Delhi was changing too. Some of those changes were exciting. Some were painful. And some were simply signs that the city, like the rest of India, was slowly moving into a different era. Looking back, I realize that much of my memory of the 1980s is about watching that change from the places where we lived. Sometimes literally from a window or terrace. Sometimes through a television screen. Sometimes from the street outside. We were growing up inside Delhi, but in many ways we were also watching Delhi grow up around us. The decade began with a celebration. In 1982, Delhi hosted the Asian Games. The city seemed to be preparing for a transformation. New stadiums appeared almost overnight—or at least it seemed that way to a schoolboy. There was the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Talkatora Stadium, the Indraprastha Stadium and the Asiad Village. And then there was Appu Ghar. Named after the Asian Games mascot, Appu the elephant, it was...

  Epilogue: The Journey Home As a seven-year-old, I had no idea what that train journey north meant. I didn't particularly care either. As long as I was with my parents and my sister, life was good. Delhi felt different when we arrived. The language was different, the food was different, the weather was different, and pretty much everything outside our little world seemed unfamiliar. But we created our own island. Within that island were our parents, our Tamil, our food, our traditions, our little community and, eventually, our friends. That island gave us the time to absorb the differences around us and, slowly, become part of the larger Delhi. And then, more than forty years later, it was time to leave. In 2017, my parents decided that Delhi's summers were becoming too harsh and the winters, with their increasingly terrible pollution, were no longer worth enduring. They decided to move back south to Chennai. I went to India to help them. The house had already been sold. We em...

  Going North I was in second grade and my sister was still in pre-K when we were told that Appa was getting a job in Delhi. At that age, Delhi meant very little to me. It was simply a place that existed somewhere far away, presumably in the same country. Appa was working for the Central Government in what was then called Defense Accounts, managing the books for the defense budget. It was one of those jobs where you were "posted" every few years to a different cantonment. Appa had already moved around a fair bit. He was posted in Pune when I was born and had subsequently moved to Chennai. Somehow, he had managed to stay in Chennai for six years. Six years was a long time in the world of Defense Accounts. Then came another move. Except this time, Appa wanted something different. He was beginning to worry about what all these transfers would do to our education. Education was the number one priority in our household, and moving children from one school to another every few year...

  Two Worlds Looking back, I realize that those summers gave us two completely different versions of the same place. Alancheri was almost untouched by modern life. The old house, the mud walls, the cows, the bulls, the fields, the well, the pump set, the bullock cart and the complete absence of electricity made it feel like we had travelled several generations back in time. Sirkazhi itself was different. There was electricity, running water, bicycles, electrical repair shops, radios, biogas and late-night rummy games. Yet both were worlds away from the Delhi in which we were growing up. Delhi was a melting pot—different languages, cultures, foods and people all thrown together into one large, slightly chaotic city. Sirkazhi was different. There was a comforting uniformity to it. And yet, even within those three miles, there were enormous differences. One world went to sleep with the sun. The other stayed awake until midnight playing rummy and eating roasted peanuts. As children, we...

Our Home — A Humble Abode When we first came to Delhi, we did not have a house. We had a portion of one. We rented a room with a small kitchen inside a Punjabi family’s flat. This was my first introduction to the fact that different families could live under the same roof and yet operate as if they belonged to different countries. The main house was always noisy. There was Sweety and Manu, and there were arguments, shouting, running and occasionally one of them coming flying past our doorway with a chappal following closely behind. I found this fascinating. In our portion of the house, things were much quieter. We had discipline. You never said no to Amma. If you did something she did not like, she did not shout. She simply told Appa. This was much worse. In the evening Appa would sit down and call me. I would sit opposite him. He would ask what had happened, why I had done it, whether I understood why it was wrong and what I planned to do differently next time. Nobody shouted. Nobody ...

Delhi on a plate..  Growing up in Delhi, we did not think much about food or culture. Food was food. Festivals were fun. If something tasted good or came with sweets, we were interested. The history behind it could wait. Only much later did we understand what made Delhi different. Delhi had been the seat of power for centuries. Every group that came to rule the city seemed to leave something behind. The Rajputs brought their traditions. The Mughals brought their food and festivities. The British brought theirs. Then came the Punjabis who moved to Delhi after Partition, Tibetans who made the city home, and, somewhere in this great migration, the Tamils arrived too. Each community brought its own food, festivals and habits. Delhi absorbed all of it. By the time we were growing up, the city had become a giant melting pot, though we certainly did not use that phrase as children. We simply ate our way through it. One thing we particularly loved was something that seemed uniquely Delhi t...

  Pongal versus Lohri In Delhi, we had two harvest festivals. There was Pongal, which was ours. And there was Lohri, which belonged to the Punjabis around us. Technically, both had something to do with harvests. Beyond that, they could not have been more different. Pongal came with prayers, rituals and several days of celebration. We prayed to the Sun God, thanked him for the harvest and then got down to the important part: making an elaborate meal. At the centre of it all was pongal , the sweet rice dish that gave the festival its name. Lohri seemed much more straightforward. There was a bonfire. There was singing. There was dancing. There were Popcorn, Peanuts, and Revdi, Sarson kaa saag and Makki di roti and my favorite use to be Pinni. And, most importantly, there was a bonfire. In the middle of a Delhi winter, standing around a fire in the evening while sparks flew into the dark sky seemed like an excellent way to celebrate anything. Our parents, naturally, approached Lohri wi...