From the Memory Box: Ponnozhukum Thodu – the stream where gold flows

Somewhere in the deep recesses of the human brain there are little memory boxes. The past is stored in them. Occasionally an invisible key opens them spontaneously. It could be a sound, a smell, a picture, a face that triggers the process.

Yesterday I thought of Ponnozhukum Thodu. Ponnozhukum means ‘(where) gold flows’ and thodu is stream. What turned on the kaleidoscope into the past was a photograph on the Kallivayalil Family website (http://www.kallivayalil.com/). That is Ammachi’s (mother’s) family. (See Oru Desathinte Amma.)

The picture shows a scene from the Ponnozhukum Thodu – rice fields, cattle grazing in the distance, an ancient structure that is called ‘madom’ in which the ground floor is storage space and above that is an old Kerala style hall.

Ammachi’s ancestral house, known as Konduparambil, is east facing, on a hillock. The view from there is beautiful. About a hundred meters from the house is the road which Ichachan (See: Remembering grandfather) had opened long ago to the public. After that are the rice fields.

A causeway links the road to the private bathing ghat with a thatched canopy at the thodu. Again a stretch of paddy fields. Beyond them were the hills, greenish to start with, slowly fading into a hazy blue in the distance and merging with the sky.

Summer holidays were customarily spent at mother’s house. That was the time for play and pranks and frolicking in the sparkling stream for hours on end. Some of the smooth pebbles and sand in the brook glitter like gold. That was how it got its name.

Later on, when I grew up, I came to know that the gleam was caused by manganese content. Sad end to a childhood myth. But it still remains Ponnozhukum Thodu, gold or not.

Thirty odd years back I took my two elder children to visit Emmachi (that is what we used to call grandmother). They wanted to bathe in the brook about which I had told them so much. Emmachi gave us thorth (native towels) and Pears Soap. For some reason it was always Pears Soap at mother’s house.

There was a warning as well from Emmachi: ‘Don’t let them spend too much time in the stream like you did. They are not used to this water.’ True. Bangalore where they were studying had no Ponnozhukum Thodu.

That was the last time I went to the stream. And the last time I saw Emmachi.

Ends.

Also see: Gold color chips and a golden hearted Lady

Of a mother and her daughter

Everybody knows what a sunset is. The ball of fire rises every morning in the East and disappears over the Western horizon in the evening. The Navajo Nation calls the sun Morning Boy. They even have a song about it. If I recall rightly, it narrates the Morning Boy waking up bright and shining at dawn and, tired after working hard through the day providing energy to the world, going to sleep at dusk.

Most people take sunset for granted. But there are a few who sit down and watch the evening sky with fascination. Some of them are poets no matter whether they write in the poetic form or in prose. They see the beauty around them, their minds wander to obscure corners of imagination which only they are aware of. They feel things about sunset that the others don’t. And out of their inner vision, sometimes, emerge pieces like Reflections of an Evening in Gowri Mohanakrishnan’s blog Seventh Chords.

Here are two examples from the post: "The light would fade slowly and grandly out of the sky, lingering until the clouds and trees were dark silhouettes….I sit alone now and the children who played in this garden when they were little have left home." Actually a fellow blogger, RAJI MUTHUKRISHNAN, has highlighted these in her comments on the post. Wish I could write with such ease and flow and meaning.

Now, who is Gowri Mohanakrishnan? All I know is that she is the daughter of Maiji, the 80-year-old blogger and a great-grandmother from Chennai, India. I mentioned her in my post Believe it or not - blogging at 107. Do visit her site Memories and Musings too. It is one of the very few blogs that I have bookmarked.

Thank you, mother and daughter, for providing us good reading material.

Ends.

Also see: No Red Sails in the Sunset