A Rummy Blend

My father always said "In Rome live as Romans live”. His work and travel in Merchant Navy took him to almost 70% of the countries around the world. Whenever he came back or his letters came (Yeah! the snail mail) they had some beautiful story, some rich experience, some lesson worth learning but for me they were like fairy tales from another world. I was more interested in ‘foreign’ shoes, watches, gadgets, apparels etcetra etcetra, “baki gyaan ki kami to hai nahi..mil hi jata hai kahi na kahi kabhi na kabhi😉” (that’s the beauty of being in an Indian Family 😋). The learnings were backseat but somethings stayed (hafta mention in case he reads it! ), this idiom being one of the few.

We Indians, by default, have some auto mode set since birth and tend to have faith and belief in luck & rebirth. Karma as they say! We, rather Indian subcontinent, is the land of staunch belief in keeping the beliefs. As per Naadi Shastra astrologer in Vaitheeshwaran Koil, I was ‘destined’ to be here since I had few unfulfilled tasks or complete somebody else's before Moksha hits me! Duh! So my Karma, through a voluntarily opted social service fellowship, brought me to a village in Tamil Nadu for the project, ‘Awareness of Conservation of Sacred Groves through Religious Connotation’.

Sadayampatti, a place where I’ll have experience of a lifetime and build relations which won’t have name and current birth relations but made out of just deeds & feelings perhaps old birth, as they say. A small village with few hundreds of population, having castes of Konnars, Pandaram, Ambalaar and around the same number of temples. A village woven with various sets of beliefs & driven by the same, an averagely plus minus 10% BPL area (as per the parameters that decide the so called development).

Me and my fellow, Lekshmi being from city stood out of the crowd for all the obvious reasons. I, being a North Indian, have very different features, physique, skin, eating habits, accent, way of dressing & so on whereas Lekshmi, although from neighboring state Kerela, still had half of the differences. Just spending a few days here & knowing we have almost a year to go, we thought of jumping on the ship my father always kept afloat “In Rome live as Romans live”. Cannot change the physical features, but at least can try being one of them?!

The attire of a typical Tamil Ponnu (Tamil girl) in the village, mandatorily shall have churidaar/ saree, a bindi, bangles, chain, kolusu (Anklet), earrings, dupatta and gajra/ rose flower in a neatly oiled plait. Both of us determined to look like one of them dressed almost like that, except for oil and neat hairdo (I’m afraid no one who takes step haircut in life can do that. Ever! )

Just an act of trying to blend in them, the way they dress up & eat, made them happy. Somebody from Velinadu (foreign land) going that much out of comfort zone to be one among them was welcomed with lots of praise and fun. Learning to speak, read and write was icing on the cake for they were impressed (so was I of myself even though I don’t understand after reading what actually is the word..whew!). We both were pretty happy and kind of patted our backs for being able to blend ourselves this much.

Days went by with such little but one of it’s kind of adventures, each time. It was just another hot & deserted afternoon, winds in Aadi Maasam (Tamil month) blowing at around 50mph at least, with most of the villagers resting for that hour of the day. Returning from the day’s task, we both went to a nearby shop across our ‘home’ to buy stuff. Akka asked about my health, for I fell from the Scooty for the record third time (just to be clear, I am still learning and I did not know the bicycle as well, so it's a big deal. No!?), got broken here and there every now & then. After being assured I’m better now, she said: “If you keep falling like this what will your parents think about us? We, Tamizihan, cannot take care of you!"

It was about state’s & a village’s respect and dignity so she insisted on me not driving the vehicle (Yea! the confidence that I can fall again was kinda earned and self explanatory).   I told that since out of the two of us only I learnt driving so I'll be doubly careful which she, certainly, did not buy but nodded. We had a string of talks from kids to water problem; sarees discount to fruits cost; my place to the problem of the current cut (that’s how electricity is referred here); from bus route to our projects on Oorni (Local Drinking Water Bodies) and Sacred Groves (Temple Forests).

After a while, we gathered all stuff & were paying... innocently, ignorantly and honestly, paavam as they call here she asked,”Do you belong to a very poor family?” Period.

We both too confused to react stood with dumbfounded expressions.

She continued “You usually wear the same set of clothes almost every day and then dress up like that.”

We had no reply except for the expressions we had already given so we smiled to her and came back to our room quietly. Reaching back we looked at each other from top to bottom and then there was a burst of laughter for quite a while. Guess we managed to blend even though it was a rummy blend!

Now, I got a question to my dad … ‘How much percentage I should be “In Rome live as Romans live” so that Romans think if not one of them, I'm just trying to be one of them.'? 

P.S- We still dress the same and enjoy being that.. It’s so effortless :) and fellowship officials, plz take note😈