My great grand father used to roam around the grass lands of Tamil Nadu with his 1000+ goats and sheep – exactly like the protagonist in Paulo Coelho`s book ‘The Alchemist`. I am not making this up.
The only difference between The Alchemist`s protagonist and my great grand father was that ….my old man traveled in a huge group of his family and relatives.
Times were good…back then the air was clean and sex was dirty (did George Burns say this?). Being a roamer, my great grand father and his family would sleep in a ‘Kudil`. In Tamil ‘Kudil` is the term given to a semi-circular contraption that you carry around to live in. Since there was no pollution and the biggest threat in the grass lands were snakes…life was a breeze for my great grand father and his family.
This is how a Kudil looks:
His son (that`s my grand father) didn`t like the traveling job and decided to settle down in a then prosperous village called ‘Maangudi`. ‘Maangudi` when broken up meant ‘an abode of deers`. Though, now the village is dry and its inhabitants are suffering due to lack of rains…back then it was a lush green village.
My grand father built a 300 square feet house first. It had mud walls, and low doors. Narrow wooden poles held up the thatched roof. Most of the time was spent outside the house – both the afternoon siesta and the night sleep was on the verandah. My guess is…the 300 square meters was used only for the intimate moments – which anyway lasted only 60 seconds. After all, men have been known to pull a fast one on the women for ages. If you know what I mean.
In effect, they enjoyed the benefits of nature and never felt the need for…what Rekha and I bought this weekend.
My father, who quit farming as a youngster, took wings in 1969. He joined the Indian Army and in the 32 years of his service (can you believe that he kept a single job for 32 years? I will have at least 20 jobs in that many years!) rraveled to different parts of the country. Just that he wasn`t herding goats & sheep as he traveled.
He was given huge houses to stay in. Since I was a kid back then……I would say the houses allotted to my father were at least 20,000 square feet big…it took me half a day to crawl from one wall to another.
There always would be a garden, and a few trees in each house allotted…which meant summers were spent in the shade. When we had to stay inside the house…the Engineer in my father would come up with an idea, which was left to us to implement.
Most Sundays were spent with the family of five bundled in one cot…with a thin, wet bed sheet on top of the mosquito net railings. This ensured a cool breeze from the fan. The only problem: Being the eldest, it was my job to wet the bed sheet every half hour in a bucket of water kept beside the cot…and then spread it on the railings again. In effect, I was my family`s air conditioner from 1985 to 1990.
After my father retired, and we moved back to Madurai…I was too old to be an air conditioner and too young to buy one for my room.
There were occasional air conditioner related disappointments – a visit to a friend`s place, an A/C advertisement, an old A/C in the junk shop….anything and everything related to A/Cs was disappointing. Probably because my father didn`t believe in A/Cs. He was of the opinion that if God wanted us to have A/Cs he would have attached one on our bums.
Which good son doesn`t have his father as a role model? I too grew up hating A/Cs and people who used A/Cs. It helped that A/Cs cost a lot and back then the disposable incomes weren`t huge either – the time when Dr Manmohan Singh hadn`t opened up the Indian Economy and five figure salaries were manna from heaven.
And then I got married. Every time Rekha suggested that we buy an A/C, I would say: “Why? My great grandfathers slept in the open…let us open the bedroom`s window. Maybe even leave the door open.”
After four years of marriage my wife Rekha decided not to take it anymore. So when I repeated the above statement, last Friday, she said: “Well, in that case…go sleep with your grand fathers.”
And on Sunday, we bought a cheap LG AC.
Moral of the story: When it is the right time to buy consumer durables, grand fathers can`t do a thing.
Other Funny Reads
# Entering a new house
# Of what could have been….
# Getting locked inside somebody`s washroom
# A south Indian family in North Indian winter
# CBI arrests Joe King; detains him for questioning
16 replies on “Guess what we bought this weekend”
Okay, let me try putting the same argument in front of my folks. In your case, it was 4 yrs, let me see how much is it in mine!
Ohh and btw. Congrats for the new A/C 🙂
congrats for the Ac…but yeh blog kuch khaas nahin that..not a good ending….stil ok ok. type…like Luna moped
Jams, methinks Rekha has just got back with another instalment of dowry from your in-law’s place.
ha haa.. interesting.. congrats for the AC. atlast u hv understud tht grandfathers cant not help n all the ways…
Hmm.. a new AC? Okay spit it out, Jammy who really bought it?:D
Rekha, I know it was Jammy who did it…
“After all, men have been known to pull a fast one on the women for ages. ” – Classic OuchMyToe style.. 🙂
LOL! But isn’t it a wee bit too late for ACs? Summer’s almost over.
[…] summer roasts us all over in its last few weeks, Jamshed V Rajan thinks back to how the generations before him beat the heat. Most Sundays were spent with the family of five bundled in one cot…with a thin, wet bed sheet on […]
sir .. we have even switched off fans in Gurgaon these days… and you are buying ac…. seems weather God is not happy with the timing of your blog 🙂
One of the features that attracted me to this blog and to subsequently subscribe as well was your sense of humour, especially the ones you made on yourself.
However, that said, taking potshots on your fore-fathers or ancestors is really cheap and crude humour in my opinion. Not only is this against our culture, it is simply W-R-O-N-G.
I have decided to keep this subscription on for a few more days, beacause everyone deserves a 2nd chance, otherwise i will end it.
One less may not make much of a difference, but it could a start…
wow, just wow!
so, just detailing the way we lived our lives is disrespectful. Go find cave and dont ever come out of it. Oh wait, your cave is your own friggin head
That was interesting & finally you won. Hats off to you! Old is never a gold.
i wonder what our old…fore fathers would invent or say if they should live to see the advancement of technology???
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