GH(29)

Before I go into the  busy mode, let me tell you about my new friend Anne Zela  Konwar. Assamese. Why do you never have any South Indian friends, studying as you are in a mixed school? Well let me tell you ,I did have an Andhra classmate . She had a sister in our school too. They would never eat lunch with us. Where do you think we would find them ?. The sister would be standing watch while my class mate would be running from pine tree to pine tree singing a Telugu film song. I know we SI s have a weakness for movies . But to make a spectacle of yourself  like some heroine in the Swiss alps.I dare not be seen hobnobbing  with her. Any way they left within a year. 

              Well Anne is  of another species altogether. The type that  become doctors or IAS officers. Her house is just there where our  road bifurcates . Her father is some govt. official. She studies in Loreto but is not the stuck up kind. More than all that she is the one who introduces  me to Georgette Heyer. Purists like my father may laugh even at Jane Austen . I will stand by G H. I like her humour and wit , her old English and her world of Lords and Ladies.  Maybe not literature as such but close enough. 

                   Appa sees something else about that household and tries to implement the same in ours. Etiquette and table manners. He gets books from somewhere and we barbarians are to be civilised. We read the books do role play .Please ,Sorry, Thank you , may I  etc. Then comes cutlery and crockery usage. I have an open mind. One punjabi boy in class has told me, you madrasis lick your hands upto your elbows when you eat sambhar rice. Of course he was jealous of us , we were the bright ones in class. Let us learn this new style. Sunday we start practice. Sunday also happens  to be dosa day. Oh what a struggle with the knife and  fork  and our growing hunger. We get up from the table the earliest we can. Warrier our Malayalee cook gives us more dosas on the sly.  In later years  Appa would agree that our custom of eating  sitting on the floor and with our hands is the best. 

                    The Konwar family may have their airs and graces what they lack is a frisky dog like our Sally . Theirs is a lazy one who sleeps a lot. They lack something else too. A few potted plants pass for a garden there .Now you have already seen our glorious flower garden , it is time you came  to the back of our house to our vegetable garden and see for yourself what I am talking about. Almost a vegetable farm. It deserves special mention.