Filter Kappi & Family Drama

Diwali, Deebavali, Choti, Badi and everything in between In Delhi, Diwali came in shifts. We Tam-Brahms celebrated Naraka Chaturdasi before sunrise , while everyone around us celebrated Choti Diwali that evening and Badi Diwali the next day . As children, we found this arrangement highly satisfactory. Our Deepavali began at about three in the morning. There was coffee. Then an oil bath. Then new clothes. Then prayers. Then fireworks. The Tamil community had, as usual, found a way to make a festival more difficult than necessary. Delhi at three in the morning was otherwise a very quiet place. Our fireworks took care of that. We would wake up the neighbours, whether they wanted to participate in our Deepavali or not. Somewhere behind a closed window, someone was probably wondering why these Madrasis could not celebrate at a more reasonable hour. After the fireworks came Malai Mandir . Then we returned home for an elaborate three-course meal with vadai and payasam. By then, a child could ...

Avani Avittam and Raksha Bandhan — Two Festivals on same day In Delhi, August was the month when the city was still recovering from the monsoon and everyone seemed to have something tied around them. On one morning, we would see brothers walking around with coloured threads on their wrists, sisters carrying boxes of sweets, and families going about their business as though the day's important work had already been completed. We were dressed differently. The men wore silk veshti or pancha kacham, a shirt and angavastram. Vibhuti was put carefully on the forehead. Children were dressed up too, whether they understood why or not. We were on our way to celebrate Avani Avittam . Both festivals fell on the same day. Raksha Bandhan seemed to involve a coloured thread, some sweets and a promise from the brother to protect his sister. Avani Avittam involved a bath, silk clothes, a trip across South Delhi, a temple, several rituals and the changing of the poonal . As children, we did not nee...

  Malai Mandir — Where God Met the Community The name itself is indicative of a confused community as Malai in Tamil meant hill and Mandir in Hindi meat temple. The name came from the fusion of two languages.  Temple on top of the hill. New Year began early in our house. It began with a bath. This was unfortunate because it was usually January, and Delhi in January was not a place where a child wanted to take a bath voluntarily. The water was heated in a bucket with an immersion rod. We were warned not to touch the bucket while the rod was plugged in, which seemed to make the entire arrangement even more dangerous. After the bath came the new clothes. We were dressed carefully, given flowers and coconuts to carry, and taken to the bus stop. Our destination was Malai Mandir in R.K. Puram . The DTC bus was usually crowded, and by the time we reached the temple we were reasonably warm again. This was temporary. Malai Mandir was built on top of a granite hill, in the open, which m...

  The Tam-Brahm Wedding — Three Days of Everything A Tam-Brahm wedding was never just a wedding. It was a three-day event, beginning with Varadham and ending with Kattisa Koodai , somewhere between several ceremonies, hundreds of relatives, endless food and conversations that seemed to have nothing to do with the bride and groom. For us children, it was one of the great events of the year. You got new clothes. You ate. You ate again. You ran around the wedding hall with your cousins. And if you performed enough namaskarams , relatives would give you money. There was very little to dislike. The adults seemed to have more complicated reasons for attending. For the mamis, a wedding was also a fashion parade. Every mami arrived wearing a newly acquired Kanchipuram saree, preferably in a colour that nobody had seen her wear before. The saree was only the beginning. There would be a new gold necklace, matching earrings, bangles and, if circumstances permitted, an entire jewellery set. T...

  DTEA — The School of Our Lives In our part of Delhi, there was a school called DTEA. Nobody knew what the letters stood for, except perhaps the headmaster. It was enough to say, “I go to DTEA,” and everyone understood. It was the school for Tamil children. Every morning, in the winter, we would leave home looking like small versions of our parents. There would be a sweater, another sweater if the cold was particularly serious, and sometimes a muffler tied around the neck. Amma would stand at the door and say, “Take your sweater.” We were already wearing two. “Take the other one.” There was no point arguing. DTEA stood somewhere between our homes and the rest of the world. The first Tamil families who had come to Delhi had started these schools many years earlier. They had brought their language, their habits and, above all, their belief that children must study. By our time there were several DTEA schools scattered across Delhi. To the rest of the city, we were simply the childre...

  Filter Kaapi — A Matter of Faith In a Tam-Brahm household, some things were never to be questioned. God, gold and kaapi. God took care of the afterlife. Gold took care of the future. And filter kaapi took care of the morning. To a North Indian, coffee came from a bottle in the form of brown granules. For a Madrasi, this was not coffee. This was hot milk with evidence that coffee had once passed through the room. Filter coffee was something else. It was almost a religion. Every household had its own recipe, and naturally, every household believed its recipe was the correct one. In Delhi, coffee beans were not something you casually picked up at the grocery store. The government had decided that coffee was important enough to be regulated. You bought your beans from the Coffee Board outlet or from Kendriya Bhandar—the government store that we knew simply as the “Federal warehouse.” You could get almost everything at Rama Store. But not coffee beans. That would have been too conven...

  The Great Summer Pilgrimage Summer in Delhi meant only one thing. We were going to our parents hometown. Every year, as soon as school closed, the great migration began. Suitcases appeared from nowhere. Steel tiffin carriers were filled with enough food to feed a small battalion. Relatives were informed. Neighbours were told. And someone would produce the Indian Railways timetable, which was treated with the respect normally reserved for sacred texts. There were two great choices: GT Express or Tamil Nadu Express . They were both trains to Madras, but they represented two very different schools of thought. GT Express was the old-fashioned expedition. It felt like you were travelling across India because, in fact, you were travelling across India. You had time to settle into your berth, establish relationships with the family in the next compartment, identify the railway vendors and develop a detailed understanding of every major station between Delhi and Madras. Tamil Nadu Expre...