Back to Miranda Junction..
Life has its own, unique, way of bringing up memories. It’s lovely when it does. Catching up with an old chum at a get-together. Revisiting the classrooms where you studied as a kid. Flipping through the yellowing pages in your old diary. Brushing the sticky dust off the framed old photographs on the wall.
But it’s even better when the whole thing strikes you unexpectedly. It did strike me so, a couple of weeks back, on an unassuming Saturday afternoon. I was driving home, back from office when I got caught up in a traffic redirection on the way, as some minister had come visiting.
BACK TO MIRANDA JUNCTION
Slamming the brakes down hard, I cursed the biker who edged in front of me. If not for him, I would have escaped from being re-directed by the policeman at right angles to my planned route. Not being particularly good at remembering by-lanes and criss-cross roads, I lost my way within half an hour.
Without trying to salvage the situation, I just drove aimlessly through some less congested roads. Half an hour had gone by, when I spotted a very familiar board, with black bold letters, engraved in a bright yellow background. The board read ‘Miranda Junction’.
Around twenty years back, Dad, Mom, Sis and me, huddled together in an autorickshaw, staring at the back of the lorry which carried our furniture and belongings, had passed the same yellow board. We were shifting to our newly rented house in Miranda Junction then.
As a six year old, the name ‘Miranda Junction’ had struck me as quite strange. As a child, you get certain impressions when you hear certain names, and the name Miranda occurred to me as the name of a very iron-willed, hard-hearted matriarch. I was a silent, shy kid, and never used to ask too many questions, and immediately assumed that the place was named after an imaginary matriarch, Miranda. Right then, I had spotted a lady stepping out of a Contessa which was parked by the roadside. She had tight set jaws, lips drawn in a thin line and an astonishingly bald head, with a few remaining strands of pepper-and-chalk colored hair tied up in a bun at the back.
I had then found my Miranda.
The road splits into two, to the right and to the left, around the board. On the right corner, there stands Mathew’s shop. The shop has some name, but in spite of it being written in big letters on a board on the asbestos roof, the shop has always been called ‘Mathew’s shop’ – it sold everything from pencils to cigarettes. Mathew was a hunchbacked, frail old man, and I remember him always smiling and chatty, squeezing lemons into juice while his sullen-faced son would collect the money from customers and hand them the change.
The shop was still the same, except that the same old asbestos roof was replaced and the old grey name board was repainted in bright blue. Mathew was still smiling, but from a framed photograph on the wall. His now-grown-up sullen faced son had taken his place and was handing out the juice. A small boy stood at the cash desk, collecting the money. He was probably Mathew’s grandson, I couldn’t be sure.
As I lit a cigarette and sipped my lime-juice (was my first drink from the shop, Dad used to be pretty circumspect about the quality of water used there), I remembered how I had come here to buy a shaving blade for Dad. We had just bought the T.V then, and I had seen advertisements (getting a plastic ball free with a Horlicks pet jar, and name slips free with children’s magazines). During those days, Dad always used to buy me a grey colored eraser of the brand ‘Camel’ which would leave an irritating mark on the notebook whenever I scrubbed with it. I badly wanted to get a white, good-looking ‘Plasto’ eraser which then used to come with a translucent orange colored cover on it. It was right there in the shop and I got a quick idea.
Along with the blade, I bought the eraser for a rupee and made up a story that the eraser came free with the blade and that I had lost a rupee on the way. No one had bought my story and I was so ashamed and frustrated that I threw away the eraser as far and high as I could. The eraser landed on the TV antenna on the terrace of a house nearby, with a clink, evoking puzzled looks from the house folks, who were putting their clothes out to dry.
Recalling all these, I was smiling to myself and was handing the money to Mathew’s supposed ‘grandson’, when I spotted a heavyset lady, crossing the road, staring intently at me. I recollected her in a flash. Her extremely fat arms had always been a constant source of awe and wonder for me, while I was a kid, as I had never seen such gigantic forearms on anyone. So did she, though she was overawed by how much I had grown. She was Aunt Lucy, our next door neighbor.
There are vivid memories of Aunt Lucy. She used to wear her political inclinations on her sleeve, so much so that, her dog, a cute white Pomeranian, was called Adwani. Adwani was the first dog to chase me, and he did such a good job of scaring me, that I became a dog-fearing young chap quite before I became a god-fearing one.
And I can never forget the tasty dosas she used to cook for me, while I used to wait at her home, playing with her son Sabu, till my Mom reached home from office.
We had known Sabu for around two years, when we came to know from Aunt Lucy one day, that Sabu was just his pet name and his real name was Nelson, it came as a total shocker to me and my sis . I still remember the two of us, stunned and enlightened with this sensational information, discussing this in hushed tones and staring at ‘Sabu alias Nelson’ as if we had seen a Martian in our bath-tubs.
Aunt Lucy was also the one who solved the Miranda mystery for me. Once I saw my bald, contessa-owning Miranda talking to her at the grocer’s. I asked her about the lady, and came to know that her name wasn’t Miranda (It was Alice) and the Miranda’s were a pompous and generous Anglo-Indian family which had stayed at this place long back and the place had come to be known after them.
She crossed the road, walked up to me and took me home. By the time I had filled myself with her dosas which were as tasty as ever, I was quite abreast with all the latest news at Miranda Junction – Alice had passed away, so had Adwani; Nelson alias Sabu was in Qatar, working for a Pharmaceutical company; and that the kid in Mathew’s shop was his grandson indeed.
And as I stood at her doorstep, bidding good-bye to Aunt Lucy, carrying a bunch of regards to all at home from her, I couldn’t help thanking the nosey biker for setting me up on this cute little trip to our old Miranda Junction.
Tags: Flashback, Memories, Talking-Points
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Rahul…its nostalgic…especially the petti kada, and ‘njaranga vellam’ part…again, similiar theme, you curse one guy in the beggining and it turns out to be a boon…similiar to your first post where an action in the first had an unforeseen negative reaction, here it has positive one… :-)
Can you do one favour…If you are in Kerala..check out ‘Madhya Venal’, when you get time and let us know how is it, if its good, put up a nice review too… I am in bangalore and cannot see it for some time… looks like a good film…its in Kanoos, Ernakulam and Dhanya, Trivandrum…
Ram sir.. :D I didnt intend at all to give that karmic-redemption angle.. Just was meant to be a little, nostalgic post..
Nyways thanks for reading,
Wrk permitting..will go for Madhyavenal :(
Its very nice…”grey colored eraser” irritating,
“dog-fearing young chap” words made me remember my childhood. Very nice story. keep it up.
I used to be fond of the “white, good-looking ‘Plasto’ eraser which then used to come with a translucent orange colored cover on it” myself.In fact this ‘Plasto’ belonged to the Nataraj brand.Quite a nostalgic post – could relate to this very well.
@pradeep — thanks mate for the comment..
@Sethu chettan — thanks chetta.. Now i recollect that it was Nataraj Plasto indeed.. :D :D
What has do this with cinema?
Anyway Rahul as usual good article.
@cinemausher: funny you should say so, because I was visualizing everything Rahul had written. And though I am in a habit of contemplating visuals as an escape from dreariness, this time it was pulled out of me.
@Rahul: this is beautiful. Nostalgic and gentle, it gives me similar thoughts on a house I grew up in Delhi, the long driveway, playing cricket every saturday afternoon, jumping over the gates and going for a swim with all the other kids in that area at 0600 hours, the first time I planted a tree and then going beserk, planted 88 trees (was in Delhi 2 weeks ago and went to that house, it looks like Glenwwod forest. All 88 trees are up and shading) and the really hot lady next door and her obnoxiously hot daughter (she ate chillies with her porridge. For breakfast! ), I could go on…
What I mean as I ramble is that this article is lyrical and sublime. The ‘ I became a dog-fearing young chap quite before I became a god-fearing one’ is so associative in its witticism and candor.
I came to check your stuff out of curiosity, given your largesse of praise to my post. With a bit of a swagger!! I walk away chastised, nostalgic and a fan.
Great imagery.
@RRJV,
my simple question was, how this was related to movies.
In Rahul’s first post itself, i had mentioned that he has great writing skills,if you can visualise then it is an indication of how good rahul writes.
But i strongly feel this could have been posted in his personal blog.
@Cinemausher — Yes Ji..I agree
.. I did wonder whether this shud hav been on jst my personal blog, but I went on with my submission because, I have seen a few posts here( mainly by Sreehari which weren’t about cinema. All his posts were so good, so enriching and frankly speaking, that was what drew me first into PFC).
Cinema is just an extension of our imagination, a visual media which sets off your thoughts.. So maybe this too could be classified as something which would set ur thought-train running.. Surely my next two posts are going to be related to Cinema,
, sincerely hope you would like it. Thanks for the good remarks, and more thanks for your frank judgement..
And @ RRJV — I am immensely honored by your comment – as any upcoming writer would be taste of positive review :D
Thanks a hundred, for the postive comments, It would drive me on ahead!!
The hot lady and the chilli-hot daughter–write a post on it :D it sounds vry humoros, just as your article on KI did :D
@rrjv again, thanks for the comment on the ‘dog/god fearing’.. its my personal favorite