Hemantha Kalam - 65 "This day That year"

My parents truly wanted an independent life – independent of paying monthly house rentals, debts and loans and thus equated monthly instalments (EMIs). Having virtually started from scratch and zero money in my father’s pockets, it was not an easy dream to be realised.

They worked hard, practiced thrift and saved every paisa, they could. It was just the three of us at that time, as my siblings were not born yet.

Since 1965, my father was on the lookout for buying some empty plots affordable for him. Apartments were almost unknown then, in Chennai (then Madras). We visited Singaperumal Koil (where 2,400 sq ft of land or one ground was costing a mere Rs.40), then Pallavaram, at the foot of Tirusulam hills where one ground cost Rs.200 and in Saligramam where one ground of plot with a fruit bearing mango tree was costing Rs.3,000. Both Singaperumal Koil and Pallavaram plots were not considered as they were way too far for my school and my father almost settled to buy the Saligramam plot. This plot was owned by some eight family members who apparently had several differences of opinion on the disposal of the plot. Meantime, the Kodambakkam rail over bridge (ROB) was inaugurated and like magic, the rates of plots zoomed up and the plot owners said that they were not selling the plot.

Sometime during 1966, one of our close family friends, dear Devendranath uncle (since demised) came home and told my father that there was a new layout being made out, in a nice coconut grove, on the border between Vadapalani and Saligramam and the quality of land is good.

In those days, buying land for investment was hardly known to normal people. Every one saved desperately to own and construct a home in a plot. One Mr. Dharani Singh Gramani (since demised) had eleven and half acres of coconut grove with about 1,000 coconut trees and which was developed into a layout of 92 plots with each plot being a minimum of one ground. Each plot got anything between six to eight yielding coconut trees (out of those 1,000 trees, today you can hardly see trees in double digits in the entire colony - so much for civilisation and development). However, since the grove was grown for tapping toddy, it took about two years thence for yielding coconuts. Nice roads of a minimum 30 feet wide were allotted. One afternoon we went and saw the plot and my father liked to book a North-East corner plot. We got eight coconut trees for our share.

 

The layout was made and plots were sold by one RMC Traders whose office was located opposite to today’s Vadapalani Police Station. I distinctly remember our visiting the place and booking the plot by giving a token advance of some Rs.250 or so. This was sometime in the end of 1966.

Immediately, my father took us all to Hotel Udupi Ganesh Bhavan, a few meters away, which was actually a restaurant with some tables in a hall and some tables under the trees in the yard. We had some light snacks and coffee as a celebration.

Those days, that was the only restaurant in Vadapalani, after which another one could have been found only at Porur or Poondamalli. Because Vadapalani depot, about a kilo meter away from our plot, was being just constructed and all buses, except three, used to terminate at Vadapalani Murugan’s temple and return. From there, the nearby villages of Saligramam and Virugambakkam can be reached by only a single horse drawn vehicle called ‘Jutka’. Places like Valasaravakkam, Porur were from the other world. The three buses that went beyond Vadapalani were 17 B to Maangaadu, 63 to Poondamalli or Tiruverkadu (I don’t remember it for certain) and 88 to Kundrathur.

The next few months were occupied in putting together the rest of the money needed for the plot, getting it registered (those days the registration was done with utmost courtesy) and my father now started working towards saving and putting together money for a decent hut (cottage to say it respectfully) to be put up in the plot.

But when compared to the costs of a hut, which required regular maintenance and also taking the safety aspects into consideration, it was decided by my parents that they will build a simple home of two rooms with asbestos sheets for roof. They consulted Vaastu Sastra (the knowledge of which spilled over to me too and making me a bit proficient in the subject) and decided on where and how the house will be located and what the elevation facing would be (It was decided to be East facing). Then they approached late Ramchandra Rao Sajip (R. R. Sajip, since demised), a Konkani speaking architecture professor in Guindy Engineering College (I think) and asked for his advice. He was kind enough to design and make a plan for a simple two roomed house.

I think RMC Traders, who sold the plot to us suggested a contractor to undertake the construction for us. My father, though was not qualified, was a great materials manager and a resource person (I am a qualified materials manager and considered to be good at negotiations but to date, could never negotiate a single thing for my advantage). He has decided to go for second hand (used and removed from some dismantled house) teak doors and windows and after making a thorough search identified a supplier for four doors and for windows for the house.

The contractor was Mr. Krishnan (since demised) who actually graduated to be a contractor from being a mason. He used to ride a Jawa motorcycle and ever since, I always wanted to own and ride a Jawa motorcycle a desire for some reason or other I could not succeed in fulfilling, till date.

The construction work began and almost every evening, after my school closed, my mother and I used to walk from our home in T. Nagar to the bus stop which was called the ‘Maattu Aasupathri Stop’ (Animal Hospital stop near today’s Valluvar Kottam) and get one of the three buses that came first and which would drop us near AVM Film studios. From there, we used to walk on the Arunachalam Road (hardly eight or 10 feet wide road topped with asphalt/tar) and crossing the farms and mango groves of the film mogul L. V. Prasad we used to reach our plot. Except for a rare passing Jutka or a car to or from a film studio (there were three studios then but now only one is limping), the road was mostly uninhabited. But those village scenes were so beautiful when compared to the present day’s developed ugliness. People also have become more self centered and cunning compared to the naiveté and innocence of the villagers then.

We used to supervise the construction and for daily updates chat with Mr. Sengeni (since demised), whom we had temporarily hired for a monthly salary of Rs.40, and accommodated as a live-in Watchman to take care of the bricks, blue metal, sand and cement and later the woodwork and the steel to be used for the construction.

As I was involved in the construction of our house, right from the point of buying the plot till construction, I have had the total hands-on experience of house construction. I was just above 10 years of age then. This experience came in handy later, when my parents started expanding the house and I lent a hand right from digging foundations to buying raw material and supervising the daily construction etc.

Finally, the house was completed to a level where the insides and the front and backside of the exterior were plastered and white washed. On 15^th April, 1967, we had had our simple ‘gruha pravesam’ (house warming) celebrated. One of my grand uncles then remarked to my father that he (my father) was rather foolish to construct a house in such a wilderness and how that is going to adversely affect his son’s (mine) education and other prospects. True to his averment, living there became fun and risky too. There were quite a few snakes, no electricity for a year and I had to study in hurricane lantern’s light and so on (another blog on this later, perhaps).

After finishing some balance construction work, we occupied the house on the 30^th April, 1967 for good. After this, my parents never again had occasion to stay in any rented houses. Both my parents thus successfully fulfilled one of their major dreams.

When we were constructing, there were five or six houses in Kumaran Colony and just one house, neighbouring ours, in our own colony and we were the second to construct a house in the colony. The previous house here was constructed by late N. R. Rao who retired as a stenographer from a multinational publishing house in Chennai and constructed a two tenement house in his plot with his retirement money. They were originally from Triplicane in Chennai and all their relatives were there only. Since, we were to occupy our house on the 30^th April (1967) and they had a function to do on the 1^st May, they locked their house and went to Triplicane.

As scheduled, we arrived on 30^th April, in a truck carrying our meager household material that included a steel cupboard, a Philips table radio and a Kassel’s table fan, three foldable camp cots, bedding material and a few clothes. My father and mother sat in the cabin of the truck and I stood in the carriage space along with the packers and loaders. Though I was quite scared, while doing so, I enjoyed the drive too which was so novel. Now I lost count as to how many times I rode in trucks, in all formats, in my life so far. In fact, I learnt driving on a 6 tonner truck.

After settling down, we were tired and fell asleep. One most important thing was that as the layout was new and the nearest electric power pole was quite far, we didn’t have electricity. So we ate our supper quickly and being tired of packing and unpacking, slept off fast and sound.

The next morning, my mother woke up first, and looked around through the window and found our neighbour’s back door, looking on to our house was wide open. There was a tin box that was thrown open and many papers including documents and registration papers strewn around were flying about. My mother woke my father and asked him to check whether the old couple returned back and when my father wanted to enter their house through the gate he found the main door open with a broken lock and bolt. He could make out that the house was actually burgled.

When there is no power itself, there is no question of having a telephone in the vicinity. My father quickly finished his ablutions, had a cup of coffee and pedalled to the nearest police station, in Vadapalani. Meantime, a few people, passing by on the way to their work, in the nearby film studios, stopped to find what all the commotion was about.

A guy who was doing his morning ‘business’ in the fields, about half a kilometre away came and showed us a small metal alarm clock saying that as he squatted down to attend to his ‘business’, the alarm started ringing in the open field and he was startled, to say the least. It was hilarious and having imagined his plight I couldn’t hold back my laughter. Having seen some commotion yonder, he brought it to us to check what is happening.

During all this, my father reached the police station, only to be told by the police there that it is not their jurisdiction and asked my father to go to Maduravoyal police station. My father had to find his way about and got to Maduravoyal police station. There too, initially they were reluctant to take cognizance of such a ‘petty crime’ but when my father informed them for whom he was working (would be vice president of India), they relented and sent a constable with my father. The constable came and went around the house with my father tagging as a witness and found the house in turmoil with everything pulled apart including mattresses and pillows.

We did not know how to reach the old couple and conveyed the message to the gentleman’s office from where he retired from and sometime in the afternoon they came home. By evening we came to know that the damage was minimal with some small amount of cash and some petty material was lost. The old lady was smart enough to bundle all jewels and hide the bundle within the charcoal sack which the thief didn’t touch.

For a long time there was speculation that it must have been the work of some local fellow, who knew the old people’s movements well. But, to date, the case remains unsolved.

But, for us, it was a traumatic day. The happiness of coming to our own house vapourised, leaving my mother petrified and later she hardly left the house over a dozen occasions in all these 53 years of our staying in that home. She gave up shopping totally and never watched a movie in a theater thereafter. She stuck to good old home.

Over the years we developed the house and made many changes to what it is today. Yet, the dates of 30^th April and 1^st May became forever etched in our minds and lives.

So long until the next one! 

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic), Shukriya (Urdu), Bohoma Sthuthiyi (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai),Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea).

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India