SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
N J Ravi Chander
Our maternal grandfather M Dharmalingam gifting us a box of mithai every payday is enduring memory. We looked forward to this special day when he would draw his monthly pension, wheel down on his Hercules bicycle to his favourite sweetmeat shop in Bengaluru’s Shivajinagar area and arrive with packets of mithai. A canvas bag secured to the bicycle carrier would bear the goodies. Grandpa would unpack the mithai box and place it before the deities in the prayer room. It was his way of propitiating the gods!
The mouth-watering sweets would be distributed after a brief prayer and a few minutes of wait by when we little ones would have smacked our lips umpteen times, our eyes fixated on the mithai boxes. When we moved away from our grandpa’s residence in the 1960s into a new abode close to where he lived, he continued to pamper us with mithai on pension day. The monthly ritual continued with unerring regularity till his last days.
The mithai was shared and savoured among the family members. Some, like the rock-solid, circular Sohan Halwa, my mom’s favourite dessert, lingered on the tongue for a while before melting away. Besides, dividing the Sohan Halwa involved complicated geometry, but the mother ensured everybody got an equal measure. A scuffle would inevitably break out among the siblings to grab a sizeable chunk. We were also in a quandary whenever we sliced a mango fruit, with the brothers vying for the middle portion that held the seed. We always savoured those minor battles!
Another reason to cherish day one of the month was that grandpa would drop some shiny coins into our piggy bank. His shirt pocket always teemed with small change, and pension day would see him in a generous mood. He also rewarded us whenever we excelled in academics, and the more we scored, the better the monetary reward. Thatha, as we called him, would also delight us by pulling out the odd 25 paise coin - a sizeable amount back then - when he was jovial. We, however, seldom allowed the piggy bank to burst at the seams, cracking it open before it filled up, to treat ourselves to some delicious treats.
Those mithai rendezvous lasted until grandfather took ill because of a liver complication. His health gradually deteriorated, and he grew feeble. It disturbed us to see a World War II veteran reduced to a near vegetative state. His last days were excruciatingly painful as he moaned and struggled to breathe. On the afternoon of November 18, 1978, the inevitable happened - grandpa left us for his heavenly abode.
With all the searing pain and agony he had to endure during the final months, it was good he went. But I had the nagging guilt that I was not around when he bade goodbye. On his last journey, as the carriage wound its way through the MEG campus, the Sappers guns boomed in salute, acknowledging the efforts of a war hero.
Today, whenever I lay my tongue on a mouth-watering mithai, the old memories of grandpa bringing home a box of goodies come rushing. Those were not just mithai boxes but packets of love and affection. The mithai was the glue that bonded us for nearly two decades. With his passing, an era drew to a close!
