The Hindu Business Line : Home away from home

"I used to search the roads for a Malayali face when I first came to Dombivili from Alleppey. I desperately wanted to speak to a Malayali in Malayalam."

WHEN Amitabh Bachchan goes live on the Star TV Channel in Kaun Banega Crorepati Dwitiya, with his deep note dwelling a while on Dwitiya (Second), the Friday evening is made. It is the not the quiz, with its rather silly questions, but the delivery and style in Hindi by Amitabh which enchants and clamps one to a chair for an hour in front of the TV set. Most apply, one presumes, for the Kaun Banega Crorepati Dwitiya show to have a close look or chat with Amitabh, who is having a fine 2005. Mumbaikar's Hindi with its Tum and Chal phut (Get lost) does not bear the particular affection, which a human being born to a language carries. Only a citizen of Allahabad, like Amitabh, can provide the soft twirls to Hindi.

When Amitabh speaks (he should stop speaking in English though he does it well) he takes this writer to the years spent with a few Hindi teachers at Hindi High School (now Birla High School) in Calcutta (now Kolkata). My wife Rama has problems with Amitabh's Hindi but she does not mind as long as the cherished tone of Amitabh is on the air to hold her to the easy chair.

Amitabh loves Hindi and Urdu literature and is there for the viewers to see. He does not make an effort as Rama does not when she switches to Malayalam, being quite uncomfortable with Tamil. "I used to search the roads for a Malayali face when I first came to Dombivili from Alleppey (now Allapuzha). I desperately wanted to speak to a Malayali in Malayalam," she tells her grown up kids. They can sympathise with their mother's strong attachment for Kerala and everything about God's Own Country because they are happy only in Mumbai having been born and brought up in this city. They have no mother tongue; they have a mixed tongue of Marathi, Hindi and English. Mangalam, Manorama and Mathrubhumi weeklies are must weekly reads for my lady who is upset over not being able to get copies of Mathrubhumi Aashchapathippa (Mathrubhumi Weekly). She called up the editorial office of the magazine to be told that the July 26 rains had affected arrivals even as the explanation does not hold for Mangalam and Manorama.

As most of the stories in these magazines become TV serials on Asianet and Surya, Rama can predict scenes with ease. "You should now turn a director," her son tells her in jest. Give the lady half a chance and she will be watching some Malayalam channel with a giant-sized Mohanlal swinging from tree to tree chasing a 20-year-old girl. One morning while sipping coffee she told me that she plans to write a novel and had started on it. "It will be better than what you write," she added, and one took the jab sportingly.

Surprisingly, her sisters, Maithili and Mala, have no such craze for Kerala. "I have long forgotten Allapuzha," Mala told me a long time ago when one was on a visit to New Delhi. "New Delhi is my place and I am quite comfortable in this city," she added. But their brother, Hari, now working in a nationalised bank in Chennai, expands like a roasted papad when Kerala is mentioned. He is strong in Malayalam literature and if one is not wholly wrong, his favourite writer is M.T. Vasudevan Nair (affectionately called MT). Rama and Hari have read MT's novel, Rendam Muzham (Second chance), based on Bhima in Mahabharata, at least 10 times. When Rama has nothing to read she has a go at the book.

When the other day, my friend Vinod called me to say that he had brought a few Malayalam books for Rama, the 70-kg lady did a jig. "So now I will have some books to read," she said, as there is no Malayalam library in Borivili. When Krishna Kumar of The Week shifted back to Cochin (now Kochi), Rama congratulated him. "Enth oru bhagyam (What luck)," she told me. One can spot this trait in my friends Kurup and Vinod though it is absent in Veena, who prefers Las Vegas.

My uncle living at Khar Road is like Rama. At the age of 80, he has found a Malayali shop in Khar Road where he goes in the evening to read Malayalam dailies. For my uncle, there is no place better on earth than Kottarakara and its presiding deity, Lord Ganesha. When he lived for a time in Dombivili, he knew most Malayalis with a few originating in Kottarakara. Last week, one broached the idea of settling in Kerala with Rama. "Why not ask Hari and get a place in Alleppey. You may also like to spend some time in your hometown," one asked her. "I don't want to go anywhere. For me, Mumbai is everything. First, I had an Alleppey skin. Then I cast it off and have the skin of a Mumbaikar. There is nothing like Mumbai, Amitabh and our Borivili home." I have not yet been able to understand Rama.

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