Blogs 10, 11 and 12 (merged) - Malanjhkhand memories

Malanjhkhand was a small town in Madhya Pradesh (MP), central India, where my maternal grandparents lived for several years. My grandfather, tatagaru, as we called him worked at the town’s only hospital as a lab technician. I think most of the town comprised of employees of a mining initiative called the Hindustan copper project. I am not even sure if the HCP still exists, but I know that Malanjhkhand still does.

So, every summer vacation of my early childhood, my mother would take me and my younger sister to Malanjhkhand and we would spend 1.5-2 months there. Back in the 90s, summer vacations were that long!

The vacation would kick-start with a long train journey, mostly on the Tamil Nadu express, from Madras (now Chennai) to Nagpur. At Nagpur, my tatagaru would eagerly wait for us at the station. Before proceeding to the bus station to catch a bus to our next destination, Balaghat, we would first eat at what I called ‘the hut hotel’. To this day, none of us remember the actual name of the hotel but I gave it the hut name due to its roof made of coconut tree leaves, which gave it a hut-like appearance. From Balaghat, we would catch another bus and finally arrive at Malanjhkhand.

I often wonder how my mother had the patience to do this long journey especially with two kids! But, like every mother she had her tricks to keep us engaged. Especially, in the train she would put mehendi (henna) on our hands and then we would be forced to sit at one place quietly for a few hours, waiting for it to dry and my mother would happily read her magazines: Griha Shobha or women’s era purchased at the Higginbotham’s book stall in Madras central station.

Also, in those days it was common to meet new people on the train, our co-passengers, befriend them and have deep conversations about various philosophies in life! Remember this was an age were there were no mobiles or tablets, and people were very friendly. Sometimes, we would make such amazing friends that we would exchange addresses, so we could write letters to each other and continue the friendship by being ‘pen-friends’! One would get so much information about various places, backgrounds, cultures, habits and recipes too from these pen friends.

Anyway, Malanjhkhand was a very different place compared to Chennai, where I was growing up. When you live in the city, we had access to cable tv (I think it came into being in late 90s), and were watching channels like Zee Tv, whereas my grandparents back in Malanjhkhand had only DD. Nonetheless, DD also had some interesting shows for kids: Jungle book (with its ‘chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai’ title track, Ramayan and Mahabharat (for the entire family), ‘Potli baba ki kahaaniyan’ (not sure how many remember this show but I think it was Naseeruddin Shah dressed up as ‘potli baba’ and fishing our a new story every Sunday from his ‘potli’ (bag), and of course Chandrakanta (which I was not allowed to watch, no idea why!). Later, when my grandmother, ammamma, did get a cable connection, she would religiously watch Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazana, taking down notes vigorously as the chef explained a recipe and then make it for us!

The day would begin with tatagaru waking me up before he left to the hospital, and then I would go and take bath. It was compulsory in his house that every day we all had bath and were ready to have breakfast by 7 – 7.30 am, no excuses whatsoever! Then, I would be allowed to meet my friend S at her house (or mine) and we would play. S’s father worked for HCP and her mother was a teacher and so S had the additional duty of taking care of her younger sister, who tagged along with us wherever we went. Of course, all these girls’ friends in their area became my friends too, but unfortunately, I do not remember anybody’s names ☹

In my entire life, I have celebrated Holi only once, and that was with S and her friends. All of us worked together to collect ‘chanda’ (funds), gather firewood to make Holika and then did Holika-dahan 😊. The next day, we chased each other in the street, spraying water colors using a pichkari or applying gulaal (the powder). Some boys came with cow dung and we ran away to save our lives! It was the most fun I have ever had celebrating any festival ever!

S’s mother was a wonderful cook and made such unique dishes like papaya sabji, orange and green pooris! First time she gave me papaya sabji and told me it was pumpkin since she knew I did not like papaya. I ate it assuming it was pumpkin and although it tasted different, it tasted good. Finally, she told me it was papaya! She would somehow put carrots/spinach (maybe boil and make into a paste) into Poori batter and so the pooris would become orange or green in color and along with the plain ones, we would feel very patriotic eating them as they had the colors of the Indian flag!

S and I played a variety of games like board games, hide and seek etc., sometimes we would walk to the hospital or a huge park called Pragati park or even climb a hillock (it was a small town). We would walk/climb/sit and talk nonstop. I remember S would ask me a lot of questions about Madras (Chennai) 😊. Since my sister was a baby at that time, she would stay back home with my mother.

Meanwhile at home, my mother and ammamma would (apart from the routine cooking), make various snacks from the scratch. Ammamma would cut potato into thin slices and dry them on the terrace along with other types of papad, and then fry a small batch of them everyday for me, to have during lunch or dinner 😊 She would also made what she called ‘namkeen’, a small diamond shaped crunchy-spicy snack, that we would have with afternoon tea.

My grandpa would come home for lunch, and post lunch everyone would sleep for 1-2 hr, and then have tea with some home-made snacks. After tea, my grandpa would again go back to work and come home around 6pm.

For additional income, my grandparents took tuitions for high school children in the area.  My tatagaru had painted one wall in the living room black and used it as a black-board. He also had 15-20 folding chairs for his students to sit. First, my ammamma’s students would come for English tuitions for an hour, followed by my tatagaru’s students who came for Biology lessons. Sometimes, I would also sit with them and listen to the lessons; although I did not understand much I enjoyed the way they took the classes. Also, most of the bhaiyyas and didis would play with me. One of them was a very warm bhaiyya, whom I still have a lot of respect and love for, as he would always pamper me. I remember when I met him in 2010 after a long gap in Delhi, he couldn’t believe that I was so grown up!

Usually, during my ammamma’s classes, my tatagaru took me for a long walk daily. There was a point called ‘zero point’ in the town (I think it was the external boundary of the town, where the town ended, and highway started but I am not sure). It would take us 30 min to walk to ‘zero point’ and then another half hour to walk back. First, we would go to ‘Jain dukaan’, a provision store owned by ‘Jain uncle’, where my tatagaru bought me a pack of Frooti (remember the original green carton with red and white straw?) and a small pack of cashew nuts. We were such regular customers that Jain uncle would keep our items ready even before we reached there 😊

After collecting my bribe to walk, we would proceed walking to zero point and to make our walk interesting, my tatagaru would always narrate a story! He was such a good narrator and would animatedly say the dialogues of each character. He started with short stories and since I was very interested and would ask him for more, we graduated to epics like Mahabharat, Ramayana, Krishna’s stories and even novels like Tom Sawyer, Tale of two cities, Oliver Twist etc. Every evening would be a one-hour episode, first 5 minutes I had to tell him the recap of what he narrated the previous day and then he would continue and the last 5-10 min, he would patiently answer my questions and doubts about the day’s episode. He would also suddenly ask me a random question in the story so far, and so I had to be attentive and give him the right answer. Only then he would proceed! But I do not think I ever gave him the wrong answer, such was my level of interest in listening to his stories!

An unexpected heart-attack forced my grandpa into a voluntary retirement and permanent move back to Chennai and so we were never able to visit Malanjhkhand again after 1997. But, I will continue to have fond memories of the place and the people forever 😊