MY  ADOPTED   GRANDFATHER   AND  ME                                                                                  Part I
A Short Story... By Ravi Anbil  

When my baby  sister matriculated from toddling to walking, the first word she uttered was 'maymay'  upon seeing the goat often summoned at mealtime so she would, after much  fussing, eat the dollops of boiled rice and lentils my mother hand-fed her. The  goat had a black face with white ears and red eyes. It would bleat happily after  chewing on banana peels I offered as part of the ritual. Soon we all started  calling the goat Maymay. I was actually fond of that goat, watching its mouth  revolve as it chewed. Besides having droopy ears, Maymay also had two floppy  earlobe-like things dangling from its neck which the girl next door told me were  udders only to be corrected by my father who said that udders were located  between hind legs. So I neither knew what those dangling things were nor the  function they served. However, they felt like felt when I felt them.

In those  days, having animals as house pets was an unfamiliar concept in South India. The  few cats and dogs in the neighborhood were all stray. My grandmother would toss  a broom at a stealthy cat for trying to steal milk from the kitchen, swearing at  it in Sanskrit. I had no idea what those Sanskrit words meant although I had a  feeling that if you cursed in a holy language you didn't have to wash your mouth  afterwards. The only animals sacred in my grandmother's books were cows, monkeys  and elephants, none of which would conveniently fit into a shoe box to be hidden  under my cot, so Maymay was the closest I ever came to in having a pet.

It was then I  turned eight on February 29, 1956--a leap year boy, as my father would proudly  remark. I stopped sharing in his enthusiasm after learning that, unlike most  children, I had to wait four years to have another birthday party. What a  calamity, I thought! My father was likewise proud of having named me Bharath,  which was a synonym for India, since I was born after India's independence from  the British. What he failed to realize was that many other parents had felt  equally patriotic around that time which caused a basketful of my classmates to  yell" Present!" in unison whenever the teacher took attendance looking for  Bharath. "If you threw five stones into the school, you are sure to hit one  Bharath," my namesakes would complain. What a calamity, I thought!

We lived in  Madurai, a small town in those days. Our house was on the corner of Tank and  Market streets--a single-story brick and mortar dwelling which had a narrow  staircase on the outside that led up to an open terrace where wet clothes hung  on wires, and chilli peppers, turmeric roots and other condiments dried on the  floor. From the terrace one could see the Plymouth dealership across the road,  the police station adjacent, the market square to the right with an assortment  of shops and hotels. The terrace was also the place to fly kites on windy days.  Thatched or slatted roofs of neighboring houses ran crisscross. At times an  itinerant cat would jump from one roof to another with no sign of nervousness.  On many a hot summer night we would assemble as a family on the terrace, have a  late supper in the glow of a petromax lamp and sleep on flaxen mats gazing at  the winking galaxy.





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