Welcome to the firepit, Mike

I got to the airport and stood alongside others who were awaiting the arrival of their loved ones. The forlorn looking grey-haired dads caught my eyes. Could they all be waiting for their respective daughters? Or are entire broods of family members going to greet them?

After an hour or so, I spotted Mike. I grabbed an Uber immediately—I didn’t want to hang out in the smog a second longer than I had to. We hugged and kissed, it had been a month and change since I last saw him, and I missed him.

We had a day to ourselves in Kochi before heading to Kayamkulam for two days. I took Mike to the new CBH. For the longest time, he wasn’t a biriyani guy, but then he started getting Deep’s frozen biryanis to change up his microwaveable meals and started acquiring a taste for it. He had also become a bit of a rice snob, looking down on all rice that wasn’t basmati. But CBH’s biryani isn’t made of basmati, instead it is made of a short-grained rice called kaima rice. The biriyani is all the better for it and we dug in.

In the evening, we went to a place for momos. Momos had made a relatively late entry into Kerala. Unlike Delhi, we don't have a sizeable northeastern community, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Turned out the food wasn’t great, even though the restaurant was run by Tibetans. I tucked away the experience as a clear example of push entrepreneurship, migrants/refugees running a momo business because it is all they can do.

We made our way to Kayamkulam the next day, with a butterfly trapped in the car for the whole ride. The drive was painful. We zigzagged our way through inroads, and then once we were on the highway, bumped along the muddy Alappuzha road which was being widened.

At home, Scottie seemed unruly. While playing with him, I usually carry a stick with me so that I can guard myself against his jumps. But this time, he did not respect the stick—he leapt and crunched through it as if he was cleaning off a chicken bone, and as he got close to my hand, I had no option, but to let go. He pounced at me with his filthy paws and strode off, looking wild. I figured he was pissed at me for having disappeared, and so I coaxed him into his favorite spot by the verandah and pet him with a firm hand. He was temporarily consoled, but still somewhat dissatisfied. He seemed, in fact, like a doggo version of Evil Aunt—so full of love and so full of resentment. 

I did not visit Evil Aunt in TVM this time and over the phone, Amma patiently gave her a detailed explanation of the troubles that prevented the visit, before handing her over to me. She spoke of the indignities of old age and harped on the past, almost giving me a mini-biography, which I didn't mind at all. I like listening to these stories, I like to get as vivid a picture of my loved ones' individual evolutions as possible.

Later, Mike and I walked over to Chittappa’s house. We sat down with the fam, and after a few minutes of strained conversation in English, the fam and I abandoned Mike and reverted to Malayalam. The language barrier is particularly odd because Kunjamma is a retired English teacher, who speaks fluently and with a fine accent, but her English freezes up when she has to communicate with Mike.

We visited Chech the next day, who is one of the few people Mike wanted to see on his trip to Kerala. Instantly (and I don’t know how these things happen) there is a gender division with the men in the drawing room and the women in the dining room. Chech’s mil, as obnoxious as always, hadn’t a pleasant thing to say. Has he learned any Malayalam? she asked as she has done so on every visit, and this time I asked if she had learned any English. She showed me random pics of some relative who is married to a white woman and their newborn. Got the mother’s color, she noted.

In the drawing room, the nephew struggled to sit still and eventually gave into his restlessness and paced around the 8 X 8 room. Mike and the brother-in-law talked sports and I saw Acha sitting there, unable to contribute to the conversation, and trying to make sense of what was happening. Welcome to my world, Acha, I thought. Later he commented to Mike, I never knew he was so into sports!

After browsing through my niece’s paintings, I went over to the men’s side and we talked about their coming to the US. My invitation was as half-hearted as my brother-in-law’s response of visiting while scouting universities in the future for the nephew was vacuous.

Back home, I got packing and noticed mold on both our suitcases. I contained my irritation in front of Amma, after all we were leaving Kayamkulam the next day (it flared up once they were in bed, and Mike, at his sensible best, forsook his sleep and calmed me down). At 9:30pm Acha was sent off on the errand of acquiring rubbing alcohol and I left it to Amma to clear the luggage of mold.