My Mother Had a Tail…!
That is true. The
tail was pure cotton white. Me and my
siblings loved this tail as it was a convenient towel for us to wipe our hands
whenever needed. Most of the mothers in
other houses also had tails. Those were
the times of old. Mothers in old Kerala
had different ways of dressing up. Mothers of different religions dressed up
differently. Among these, we loved our
mother’s tails the best for its convenience.
Life was simple and cool without
TV, Radio, Inter net, IPod and Lap tops. Most of the transport was by bullock
carts. Faster modes of travels were
rarely performed by the local folk. Fathers were busy finding out the daily bread
for their children. Mothers were busy keeping home and preparing food for the
children from time to time.
I was a little boy of six or seven at that time as I recall
now. Houses were small and in the
limited number of rooms, the smell of any recipe prepared in the kitchen wafted
in quickly. The most attractive was the
smell of pappads being fried in pure coconut oil. Such a smell pulled us children to the
kitchen where mother will be frying them and we conveniently appeared behind,
located the vessel in which she was putting the fried pappads, took one and
left. Mother always noticed this and
grimaced. At times she said “Ok, ok, you have it, but will get only less than
what you take now”. But she never
considered it while serving. She served
us all equally again. At times she
smilingly said while serving: “I really need not serve you again.” She endeared us all to her by that simple but
loving statement. Such actions repeated
at times with curries or other fried items which become irresistible to us
children. At those times, we have to
wash our hands and we are in a hurry to rush out to play. That is when ‘The
Mom’s tail’ became a convenience. We
wiped our hands on the tail and ran out to play out side.
The Christian mothers only had the tails as I noticed. Till the last ten years or so, I had seen
such mothers. But now the fashion in
dressing has caught up and mostly I see mothers have lost their tails and all
have shifted to sarees or other forms of dress.
Even some mothers now look like Dads in Men’s kind of ware. Their children won’t naturally get this
convenience. And some of the mothers
are not fully house bound as the mothers of old. Many new mothers move far and wide and at
times are away from their children which creates great love loss to such
kids.
In our times the mothers were always at home and we could
never think of a house without a mom waiting for us with some good food and
smiling face when we returned from school, college or office. They were a contented lot. Movements far and wide were less. Families were compact, earned less but lived
happily. It made us urge for more and
better facilities and we as children were encouraged to learn with all our
might. The schools by the Christian
sisters and monasteries all over Kerala really helped us upwards with the free
education for which those Catholic Sisters, Brothers and Fathers dedicated
themselves. Then there was the dedicated
teachers mostly and many of them considered any child in the class as their own
children. Such situation is fast
changing and education is slowly becoming a less dedicated area and profession.
We came running home from schools and as soon as we enter
the command generally is “first go and wash your hands and feet! That included
the face also. We did it quickly and
came running in to Mom for any kind of food available at home. That is when we wiped our hands and face on
her tail. She never prohibited us from
doing so which endeared us to her. These
things could happen in only lower middle or poor families. In richer families also our friends had
better looking mothers in same sort of dress very white and clean. And generally unsoiled. But their children (who are our friends) were
not allowed to wipe on their tails, lest their cloth tails are soiled. We had no such bar. Mom had her own way of duping us. She told us from time to time “Don’t do it,
that is the only ‘mundu’ . Don’t soil my
cloth by all of your wiping and sweeping(the long white cloth used by Christian
mothers of Kerala along with a white top called ‘kuppaayam’and another over
cover cloth called ‘neriyathu’ which is a very nice light white cloth), that is
my only Cloth which I have for Sunday Church.
But we always knew, that she had a fresh set of cloth in her mother’s
cloth box (‘mundum petti’) a special box of the mothers which were kept in most
simple Christian households).
Those were the times in which we enjoyed life a lot and were
much more happy with far less amenities.
Now, that happiness is gone along with those lovely parents. Now most of
the families are trying to rediscover that happiness again through other
endearing methods!
