Their faces are maps of time, etched with the deep lines of love and laughter. Their presence is constant, like the ceiling fan that spins above every summer memory. Take a moment to picture our grandparents: our grandmothers, draped in soft cotton saris that carry with them the scent of a gentle, familiar soap — a fragrance forever tied to the memory of drifting off to sleep on their laps. And then our grandfathers who move about in lungis and baniyans worn with pride, or crisp pants paired with t-shirts that always look freshly pressed.
But beyond the food they feed us with — hot dosais dripping with ghee, and bowls of rasam and mutton soup that heal even the worst fevers — and the love they show us, lies another magic. One we often overlook.
Grandparents are often master performers, the best singers of age-old rhymes and tellers of tales. With just their voice and expressions, they can transport a child into worlds filled with talking animals and mischievous gods. With the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, established by the late Pope Francis, falling on Sunday, July 27, let’s take a look at how our thathas and paatis are still winning as YouTube jingles and Cocomelon animations fight for children’s attention.
“Every child is very different. While it is easy to engage my elder child and grab their attention, it is very different with my second child, who would rather ask Alexa to play music and dance to it. To engage her is a challenge,” says Vinu, a homemaker, adding that this is where grandparents come into the picture.
Bhuvaneshwari (64), Vinu’s mother-in-law, says, she opts for songs and rhymes that have either an action to do or a way to play while singing. “I play the game called ‘oru kodam thanni oothi’ where I interlock my hands with my elder grandchild and make the younger one sing along and run; first under our hands and then around us. She would run, and the game would eventually tire her out,” she says. This song-and-play game is a popular way to teach children numbers — from one to ten or more — while maintaining a light and joyful mood. It’s just one among the many playful traditions where learning slips in quietly alongside laughter. And this, of course, is only the beginning. Grandparents have a few more tricks up their sleeves.
Divya, another homemaker, says that while narrating stories or singing songs, grandparents tend to personalise it to grab children’s attention. She illustrates an example, “While narrating the age-old textbook story of the crow that stole paati’s vadai, my children’s grandmother would say, ‘Remember the vadai I made that day and you enjoyed it? Just like this paati, another paati was making vadais and a kaka stole it…’ This quickly grabs their attention because they can visualise and connect immediately. They also start asking questions attentively.”
Lakshmi (85), a homemaker who takes care of her grandchildren at home, corroborates and recalls how a specific kozhukattai story she told her grandchildren was always rich with imagination. The characters in the story were brought to life using the names of family members. “It’s about the naughtiest child in the household who sneaks off with a kozhukattai (a sweet) and replaces it with a rat, disrupting the count and leaving another child short of their share,” she explains. “When the mischief is discovered and the naughty one is punished, another child steps in with kindness and suggests everyone share their sweets with the culprit. Every time the story was told, each grandchild wanted to play the role of the compassionate one and they would always pin the ‘naughty’ label on a sibling,” she adds.
Even while singing songs, grandparents admit to switching the names of little girls and boys with those of their grandchild. “That acts as a hook,” Lakshmi reasons.
Rhymes and reasons
Apart from adding a personal spin to tales and rhymes, several Tamil stories narrated by grandparents seem to have catchy songs and sounds — at least four to five lines — that make children demand the story be repeated to them time and again. “The kozhukattai story, for instance, has a song that goes, ‘Amma amma kozhukattai ku kannu undo di?’ (‘Mom, does a kozhukattai have eyes?’) And then goes on to ask if it has ears, nose, mouth, and a tail,” Lakshmi says. Another story, famous among grandparents, of a street vendor indulging in bartering, has the song, ‘Vaalu poi kathi vandhudhu, dum dum dum,’ (translates to: losing a tail for a knife) explaining each barter exchange.
Jaya (66), a domestic worker, also shares a specific story she often tells her grandchildren that features sounds designed to attract them. “It is the story of a kulla (a short guy) who gets bullied by dogs, chickens, and more such animals,” she says. The dog in the story, for instance, would bully him by saying “Bow bow kulla, bow bow kulla,” repeated rhythmically, followed by a chicken that would say, “Kokkarako kulla, kokkarako kulla.”
Even if all these strategies go to waste, one aspect carries its own magic, believes K Ramesh (75), a retired employee and grandfather. Amid English rhymes, songs, and lullabies, one in the mother tongue carries enough weight to soothe and captivate a child, he says, adding, “Nothing compares to singing or narrating in one’s mother tongue. When we start singing old rhymes in our language, the children understand it instantly, and that is mesmerising enough to knock them into a deep slumber.”
Jaya agrees. “I sing Araro Ariraro… athai adithalo, maman adithano… and immediately it tends to calm my grandchildren and slowly puts them to bed,” she says, adding “That is the power of conveying things in our language.”
A song for every task
From putting the child to sleep, to teaching them the names of trees and their respective fruits’ names, and helping them understand the process of making food items, most things are done with utmost creativity, as grandparents confess to having a song for almost every task. The Tamil hit ‘dosa amma dosa’ is the reason children from a young age know that two main ingredients — rice and urad dal — are used to make dosa batter, argues Kamala (90), who is now a great-grandmother. To explain the importance of the Banyan tree, India’s national tree, there is Kiya kiya Kuruvi, another Tamil rhyme, Kamala informs.
Divya also adds how her children’s great-grandmother, named Meenakshi (87), sings songs while performing tasks. Meenakshi sings, “Patta patta manjal, arachu vecha manjal, paati aracha manjal…” Explaining the ingredients in the turmeric paste and who made it while gently rubbing it on a baby during a bath can, in many ways, fit today’s parents’ techniques of parenting, such as gentle parenting, grandparents argue, since their every action is announced.
Like seasoned doctors with cures for every ailment, our grandparents always have a story ready to explain any natural occurrence. Their logic, however, leans more toward the whimsical side than the scientific. Jaya says that there is a story that her grandmother told her to explain why one can’t touch the sky, and admits to repeating that story to her grandkids.
The story goes, an old lady was selling ropes that she would carry on a basket atop her head. But because of recurring losses, the old lady would buy the biggest basket there was, stock many ropes, and walk road after road, selling them. After an hour, her basket would hit the sky and be knocked down by it, resulting in all the ropes flying away. “The old and poor lady then cursed the sky and said that it will never touch another thing. ‘Yeni vechu erinalum ettadha edathuku poganum’ (even if one attempts to climb a ladder, they shouldn’t be able to reach you) was the curse, and since then, the sky has been out of reach,” she says.
Lakshmi adds to this list. She once referred to the sap oozing out from plants’ stems as the plant’s tears. “My grandson was breaking away too many stems of a plant that had sap in it. When he asked me what the white milk that oozed out was, I simply justified it as the plant’s tears because he was wrecking my garden,” she laughs while explaining. Lakshmi, however, argues that she was merely repeating this logic that was told to her when she was younger by an elderly woman. The trick, however, put an end to her grandson’s mess in her garden, she admits with guilt.
Grandparents can spin magic with words, make them into songs or stories that leave a lasting memory, and pass on a lesson or two. Many, like Lakshmi, are even writing down these songs and stories, including those that slip past the logic of biology and physics, in an attempt to keep these oral traditions alive, hoping to continue to entertain in the absence of pixels and algorithms.
Top picks from grandparents
Kiya kiya kuruvi
Araro Ariraro
Thenna marathula yeradha
Nila nila oodi va
Kola kolaya mundirikai
Oru kodam thanni
Elai vechu,
soru pottu…