Etched in time and memory !
( Click on the picture to get a clearer and bigger view )
There are a lot of pictures that you capture that stay in your minds for ever.
They say a picture can create a whole story. I love this picture for this one fact. This picture is a picture of my cousin in kitchen of a traditional Mangalore Home.
There are a lot of things I love this picture for -
I love the picture for the heart felt, unabashed smile of my cousin. Have you ever noticed how simple people in the village are? Go to a village, and you will feel the love that the villagers bestow on you - pure, unconditional love that is filled with awe for people coming in from the cities. For them I guess people from the city symbolize someone who has gone out there, struggled through the hardships of life and stabilized himself for the benefit of the people back home. Their joy of preparing the village delicacies and feeding you is unparalleled.
I love the picture for the candid display of a typical mangalorian village kitchen. Notice the logs of wood that is used to make the fire to cook food. Among the various tasks that a mangalorian village home has, one of the tasks is to collect wood from the forests near by to light the stove. Lighting the woods and keeping it alive is a skill in itself. Every male and female in a village home has typically mastered this task. Also if you see carefully you will see that my cousin is sitting on a bigger log of wood. Notice the big round utensil on which the food is made. Typically rice is cooked in this village. People in a village are typically subjected to hard physical work – mostly related to some task in the farm, or taking the cows in the cowshed out to graze. Huge quantity of rice is usually used to feed the tired and hungry villagers for both the meals of the day.
I love this picture for the way in which my cousin is holding the cat. Cats and Dogs are an integral part of any mangalorian home. Cats litter and so do dogs - which mean that any house will not only have cats and dogs - but also kittens and puppies as part of the family. The kittens and puppies form a delightful companion for any young kid in the family. Dogs stay outside the house and Cats run about freely inside. As kids, we would love to run after the kittens, lift them pinching the skin of its neck (that’s the way the mother cat holds them - is what my mom had told me then), keep it in our lap and cuddle and pat it. This cousin of mine, used to sleep with the cat she is holding.
One picture and so many memories - Ancestral homes are such beautiful places to be!
4 comments:
Beautiful picture and a heartfelt description. I envy you the luxury of having an ancestral home to go to. Our community in particular, who have lost our ancestral villages to Pakistan, feel torn from our roots. When you sent the link to the photos, you friend took of his ancestral home in Kashmir in ruins, I could feel his ache and identify with it.
I compensated somewhat by getting the chance to visit and stay in villages of Gujarat when Bapu was still alive. And I will agree that village folk are simple, sincere and hardworking. They really put into practice "Atithi devo bhava".
Dear Veena,
That was a good description of Manglorean kitchen.
I agree that the simplicity found in village folks is refreshing. But I feel that sometimes people from villages can be very crude and insensitive too. That probably comes from less exposure to literacy or media which makes them cling to dogmas and superstitions.
Life is full of contradictions, Neel. Lack of education and lack of exposure to the rest of the world makes village folk more narrow minded and rigid in their thinking. On the other hand, they are loving, simple and honest too. I am obviously making a generalization here. I don't mean ALL villagers are like that but the majority of them are. In the US, the hard-working, honest rural people who open their homes and hearts much more easily than urban people are also the same ones with the 'red-neck' mentality who took the longest to adjust to the equality of blacks and still the most racist. What can I say? The human race is inconsistent :)
>> Life is full of contradictions, Neel.
I was thinking on how should I reply to Neel's comment, when you replied back.. And the reply couldnt have been more accurate.
Shruti, I knew this post would create the longing in you that you have mentioned here.. :)
Both, I would love to take you guys to both my ancestral homes.. Both of them are unique and beautiful and have a very strong personality.
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