Snakes, Poochees and Rubber Slippers

'Rohini, the children should wear closed shoes when we go to the farm this evening', said Appa to Amma on a sunday afternoon before we went on our usual sunday evening picnic to the farm.

'It has been raining a lot over the last few days in Valanad and Devachelpuram, and I saw lots of snake skins in the farm yesterday' said appa to all of us who were lying near him on the bed.

'Appa, if it has been raining, will we also find lots of pattu poochees'? I asked my father.

During the rainy season when we walked on the red mud in the farm, and everything was green and the air had a strong smell of tulasi leaves, we knew it was time for us to collect Pattu Poochees. Pattu Poochees are the most beautiful and harmless insects I have ever seen. They were so easy to spot because of their bright red colour. They felt like velvet and were round in shape.

'Anjali, I found 12 pattu poochees' said Anjana who was having a competition with me. We had several little empty match boxes and filled each match box with pattu poochees and stuffed them into our pockets while we walked through the farm. Later, we would carefully take them out and put them into more comfortable jars and take them home.

While we were walking through the farm that day, I remembered what Appa had told us about wearing closed shoes. I watched what everyone wore on their feet carefully and noticed that Appa himself only wore rubber slippers. My father was most comfortable in rubber slippers and nothing could stop him from wearing rubber slippers to the farm. Not even the snakes.

It was half past six in the evening, and we were almost finished with our walk when we spotted something move close to Anjana. It was that time in the evening when it was just getting dark, when the birds started settling down on branches to get ready to rest, when the crickets began to make night noises, when the peacocks began to cry, when the rabbits came out of their burrows and when the Easels flew around the tube light for warmth near the small farm shed.

'Don't move' said Appa to Anjana, who was almost ready to cry and run at the same time. 'He's a viper' Appa said after looking at the black markings on his back. 'He won't do anything if you don't move' said Appa again. Anjana was crying by now and was terrified. Appa knew that it was dangerous and knew that Anjana could not stand in the same place for too long. In a matter of a second he took one large step and put his left leg right below the head of the viper and kept it there till Anjana and Amma ran to the farm shed. I stayed to watch. Appa then bent over and replaced his foot which was below the viper's head with his right hand, and lifted the snake up. He caught the other end of the snake with his other hand to prevent it from moving around. After examining it a little longer he let it off, back into its habitat, back to where it's family might have been. He believed snakes were good for the environment, they were a natural pesticide in the farm. They would atleast control the little pests that destroyed a large amount of the fruit and coconut crop every year.

That night on our drive home, Appa told us how happy the snake might be, back with it's sisters and brothers and parents.

He never taught us that snakes were bad or ever encouraged anybody to kill them. Infact, as children we developed an almost normal sort of affinity towards them and even had Sand Boa's (non poisonous snakes that live in the sand) as pets at home!

Kalurni Feast and Veppalodai

Veppalodai and Kalurni are two adjoining villages a little outside the 'Big' town of Thoothukudi. For the people who lived in Veppalodai or Kalurni, Thoothukudi was and still is a big town, a place where you could buy all that you required to run a household; you could even get ice cream and chocolate there.

My great grandfather who lived in Colombo many many years ago decided to come to India because he wanted to avoid the big fight that was going to take place between the Sinhalese and the Tamils a few years later. Out of all the places he could have gone to in India, he decided to settle down in Thoothukudi and start a modest business there. He bought land in Veppalodai and developed that land into salt pans. The salt produced would then be taken to Sri Lanka on boats and be sold there. For many years later this was the practice till the next generation came into power; salt was then sold to places in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The people of Veppalodai and Kalurni were mostly of christian religion and wanted a church to be built. One of the strongest reasons why they built the church was to protect the saltpans from the ocean. There might have been a strong fear of a Tsunami that could destroy the village and the salt pans. Ever since the church was built, the people of Veppalodai and Kalurni celebrate the 'Kalurni Feast' every year in October. The church has gained so much popularity over the years, that now people from many other villages come to pray in the 'Kalurni' church during the feast time. The people believe that the church even protected them from the recent Tsunami that happened in 2005. Considering that most of the east coast of India was demolished people believed that the 'Kalurni' church protected them.

Pretty much everything revolved around Veppalodai for my family. It was where we entertained guests, where food was plenty and where we could have all the fun in the world. As children we would walk on tall heaps of salt and feel like we were walking on snow capped mountains because of the white colur of salt. When the sun would get a little less harsh my father would take us to the beach and allow us to swim right into the ocean; atleast 100 metres into the sea. This was also where we used to be educated on the various sea creatures; from poisonous sting rays to harmless hermit crabs; from sharp barnacles to blunt star shells; from coral reefs to sea sponges. Sometimes, when we found a sea sponge we would all lie around it and observe miniature crabs, lobsters and prawns trying to find a safe place in the sponge to hide in.

The Kalurni feast, was a time when the whole family would get together in Veppalodai. It was also a time when the favourite dishes of the local people were prepared. It was a time when goats were sarificed and mutton biryani was made in every home in Veppalodai. The food that was cooked for us would include, 'kodal curry', 'rethum sundal', 'pastal curry', 'virunthu chor', etc...I'm not going to explain what each of these dishes entail. For those of you who understand tamil, you might have an idea of what all these words mean. After mass and a heavy meal we would all sleep in the afternoon and then go for a sea bath in the evening. After our sea bath, a lorry carrying fresh water would come to the beach and my cousins and I would have a joint bath, called the community water fall bath. We would all get into our father's 'lungis' after the bath because of the lack of clean clothes we would have carried with us; Somehow, we would all manage to wet all our clean clothes in the sea. Our mother's would tie the lungi for us around our neck and we would all feel like shepherds. After a last game of hide and seek, when the last drop of energy was drained out of every one us we would go home and fall asleep on matresses that were laid out in a row in the long corridor of the Veppalodai house.

Rope Climbing

"Amma I have blisters on my hands" I said to my mother, after a rope climbing session with my father outside my house.

Amma looked at my small red blistered hands and put them under a tap of cold running water.

"So... how far up the neem tree did you get today?" asked amma. I said "I made it to the top of the tree". Amma warned me when I was 6 that my hands would become rough if i continued to climb ropes.

By 13, I was a classified tom boy. My friends in school on several occasions told me that I should have been born a boy. My father was extremely proud of the fact that he had made me tough, tough enough to whack anyone who tried to remotely act funny with his little girl.

"Amma I have the roughest hands in my class" I said to to my mother after a game of hand comparing we had in school. "I told you your hands would get rough a long time ago didn't I?, There's nothing wrong with rough hands though; Infact I think it's a good thing that you don't have soft hands; Tell me how many children in your class can play basketball like you?"

Although I was a little sad that I didn't have feminine hands, I was happy that I was not like the "others" who compared nail colour, hair or clothes. I was different. And my parents encouraged it.