The dim light from a small bulb was no match before the fire from the earthen stove. Faces shone bright and they shone more because of laughter and smiles. I sat as a child in my ancestral home in a Himalayan village waiting for my turn to be served food.
It was a family function and as a practice all women had gathered in the big kitchen. Incidentally kitchen was bigger than all other rooms in the home. While many were rolling chapattis and laying them on a clean cloth on the floor, one cooked them fast on the stove and two served them hot to us. We sat on the cow dung-smeared floor in a row; they came near carrying a basket and served us the hot burped up rotis.
We kids never counted how much we ate and they never counted how much they gave.
Not even a single moment passed by while rolling rotis, cooking and serving when they did not crack a joke and burst into laughter, often clapping hands and patting each other. The jokes were very simple and the laughter very genuine. We as children were obviously easily prone to laughter.
House broke off and so was the family. Mud flat roof structures gave way to concrete ones and the culture of food that existed due to the togetherness of the clan no longer existed. The free-whirling talks around the fire at night, preparation of sleeping beds under the open sky and the start studded sky seen before the last yawn at bedtime had left our daily existence.
Agricultural practices also changed. No longer did I see huge piles of ripened harvested corn in the courtyard and never did I see all my uncles and aunties getting together to beat it with sticks to separate the seeds out. At the time I left my hometown for education not much of that agrarian culture remained.
Years later, recently when I travelled to a small town in Tamil Nadu in the south of the country and lived with a big Tamil family I experienced the same culture again — the culture of togetherness.
This time it was no Himalayan village. People dressed very differently and looked different too. The stove was not earthen and the language was unknown to me. Still I couldn’t prevent myself from joining the group that sat cutting vegetables and cracking jokes.
While tears rolled down cheeks cutting onions, laughter did not subside. All the while they did not stop gesturing with their fingers at me. Some moved their hands fast and some slow but tongues never lost their pace. I also laughed my belly out even if I did not know what I’m laughing for.
Vegetables for 20 people got cut in no time and the joy got converted into delicious food. It’s just that dal and saloona (side-dish in dogri) were replaced by sambar and poriyal and kheer had changed its name to pal-payasam. Idlis were served with the same love with which rotis were served and numbers or time was never counted.
Home looked like a playground again with many kids jumping and playing around. After a very long time I experienced my culture again in a completely different cultural setting. The joy of the human spirit is obviously not confined to places; my sojourn at a Tamil home proved that to me.