What Vidya would never be able to give Siddhi..

I am not attempting a lengthy and boring study of comparison of generations or the degeneration of values over these. This is more of a mother in me, trying to look at my childhood and find how much of it my daughter would ever get to experience. Ofcourse, she would have a lot more of some other stuff, I am sure, like a computer by the time she is in her primary classes, doll houses or robots, whichever she prefers, a car to take her to school, parents who can speak English, and so on. But looking back at the me of 7 or 8 years of age, which my daughter would take another 6 years to reach, I feel sorry for her.

With the festival season of Onam coming nearer, a day in the town tells me a lot. I find flowers being sold in shops and the crowd infront of each of these reveals that I am not the only person who currently owns a bare courtyard, devoid of even a single plant. Every tiny wisp of grass gets rudely pull out, the moment it pops its head out.

ThiruOnam, the big day, is preceded by 10 days of enthusiasm for the youngsters which gradually permeates into the elders too. A major part of it is making the pookkalam (floral patterns on the floor) The day before the first of these 10 days, the Atham day, my grandmother goes to some house which owns a cow. This process is for fetching cow dung for the next 10 days. Flowers are never laid bare on the courtyard soil. A bed of cow dung is made on each of these 10 days to provide the base for the pookkalam. My mother would puke at the sight of cow dung. I often wondered how she managed as a child! I had no such reservations though. I could scoop the dung with my bare hands and happily smear it on the soil bed even after a few days when the cow dung starts housing worms and such similar species! The first 2 days are actually uninteresting as the tradition says that only white flowers are allowed, and ofcourse, you don't have much variety or volume in that particular segment! The excitement builds up on day 3 when the lesser species of colored flowers(reservation among flowers too!!) are allowed entry into the pookkalam! I would get up at 5 in the morning and wake my lazy brother. We would together go to our neighbor's house first. Now, its not that we didn't have any flowers in my house, sure we did. but this particular neighbor owns an enviable collection of all kinds of flowers imaginable. Getting up early is to ward off competition. Almost all the kids in that locality greatly depend on this particular source for their pookkalams. We really didn't need a competition as there was more than sufficient for all of us. At the end of almost 30 minutes of jumping, plucking, arguing, bartering and sharing, we stare at those flowers high above us that we can't reach, gawk sadly and come back to our houses. I have never been creative when it comes to patterns. My brother was the boss in that. I would arrange the flowers as he commands and at the end of an hour, our pookkalam would be ready. The next step is to pull out my father from behind his newspaper, mother and grandmother from the kitchen and proudly display our masterpiece of the day. This momentum builds and explodes on the 10th day when we prepare up to 5 such pookkalams.

That was the past, a past that even some of my friends here would not believe I ever had. The past when we sit in our school bus and stare at the pookkalams laid infront of every single house on the way with jealousy or pride, when Onam was a life of 10 days that we would spend one year, waiting to live.

At the age of 17, I went away from home for my graduate studies. My brother didn't have the interest, time or motivation to take the tradition of pookkalam forward. But still, I made up for it in the last few days, when my vacation would start. In the 2nd year of my graduation, a snake visited our courtyard. It was of a poisonous variety and everyone suggested that the reason behind this visit was that our courtyard was too cluttered with plants. The next time I came home, my beautiful yard was all bare and without soil. It was paved with concrete blocks. After a few years, the neighbor, who was the source of the flowers sold her property and went away. The new owners cut her plants away and built a house.

Life went on as I moved to Mysore and then to Bangalore. The visits to Kerala were rare, Onam was a day of TV programs and good food and life was not the same anymore.

After Siddhi came to our life and we moved back to Kerala, I was joyous. I knew that a child would make a lot of difference to the festivals. They were always more interested and excited about these celebrations as compared to elders. Last year, during Onam, Siddhi was 3 months old. Though she would hardly notice it, I wanted to make a pookkalam for her. I sent Rajeev out on the day before Onam to buy some flowers. He came back with an insignificantly small polythene kit which contained flowers worth Rs 150/-. We made a tiny pookkalam on our sit-out and took photographs in the memory of Siddhi's first Onam.

After a few years, some day, Siddhi would come and remind me that it is Atham again and that she wants to make a pookkalam. With two enormous cars parked, where would I find her some space in our courtyard, safe enough to make a pookkalam that would not be over-run by these cars? Where will I get some cow dung from and even if I do get it, how would I smear it on the concrete? Would I be able to afford to buy her flowers as she wants on all the 10 days? When my daughter asks me why I took all those festive joys of my childhood away from her, what should I tell her?