ேநாரா ஸ்வீனி

Grandparents are pretty typical fixtures in Indian households.  My co-worker Jamuna’s mom came to live with her last year.  Jamuna’s husband works out of town during the week, so she really likes having her mom around.  Jamuna’s mom is a tiny old Tamil woman with thick white hair that she ties up in a loose bun.  She has a very endearing face creased with wrinkles, cheeks that sag a bit, and lips pursed as if she’s getting ready to say something.  She speaks to me in Tamil as if I can understand everything, and even though I can’t understand her whispery Tamil, I wobble my head at everything she says.  I call her Pati, which is the Tamil word for grandma.  

One day, Jamuna was a bit flustered and tired when she came to work.  She said that the day before, her mom had accidentally locked herself in the kitchen for five hours.  Pati was at home alone.  She went in the kitchen to get something and the door slammed shut.  Somehow there was no handle on the inside of the door and the door had swelled because of the humidity, so Pati was stuck.  She began to bang on the window and yell for the neighbors.  Hours later, some of the neighbors finally hear her.  They came to the window and tried to figure out what to do.  The window was too small and too high to crawl through.  The house was locked, so no one could come to the other side of the kitchen door.  Luckily, although the door didn’t have a handle, it did have a sort immovable knob.  Pati unwound her sari (saris are about 10 feet long), tied it to the knob, and handed the other end to the women at the window.  The women pulled hard, and after some time they were able to yank the door open from across the room.  Jamuna said her mom was very tired after such an eventful day.  I thought the story sounded like an urban legend, Tamil style.