Namma Kamalamma and Valentine’s day

Myself Kamalamma from Kunjibettu, Karnataka.

What to tell you people! Today I am going to the market and all streets and shops are red in colour. Our vegetable shop is also looking like one gift shop. Balloons and ribbons and red hearts are hanging in between onions and bananas and other vegetables. And vegetable seller is wearing bright red lungi. I am asking him, oho what special today Anna, your birthday or what? And he is full shocked. He is saying, Ayyo Kamalamma, how you are forgetting today is festival of Vallen ….. Vallan….. Then I am saying oho it is festival of Vallinathan, Lord Muruga is it? His assistant is saying, what Madam, not Vallinathan, today is Valentine’s festival.

Kamalamma and the striped pyjamas

Myself Kamalamma from Kunjibettu, Karnataka.

What to tell you people? In our house, we will soon celebrate one year of the Mister working from home. Maybe I will make him anniversary cake and write, Oho you are still here, on it!

No no, I am not complaining…. Only issue Kamalamma is having with this situation is, when to clean office area in the home? That day there is online meeting going on it seems. How I am to know? I am going behind the Mister’s laptop with broom and mop and Boss is calling his wife and saying, see everyone is allowing maid inside the house, only you are not allowing and making me to do all housework.

Kamalamma writes an open letter to Kamal Hassan

Dear Mr. Kamalhassan,

Myself Kamalamma, from Kunjibettu, Karnataka.

What to tell you Sir, everyday it is the Mister who is bringing newspaper from doormat to inside first thing in the morning and then reading every word like it is the Bhagwad Gita.

I am reading it afterward with my breakfast. Then I am balancing one plate idli sambar on my knees and with one hand I am eating and with other I am trying to turn the pages. All this is too much circus, so 90% of the times I am spilling something on newspaper and whichever world leader is there in newspaper photo is tasting my dish of the day.

Kamalamma and New Year’s eve

Myself Kamalamma, from Kunjibettu Karnataka.

Today I am looking at the calendar and quickly jumping back shouting Aiyyo! The Mister is asking if pet lizard which is always hiding behind calendar is coming out to look at Kamalamma or what? But it is not lizard which is making me to jump like baby kangaroo. It is the date!

Mom and the butter chaklis!

In my school days, I had one major grouse against my mother. There were many more, but this one was top o’ the list. I always thought she had an easy life with nothing to do all day, except loll around the house eating chaklis or any of the other snacks {that she herself had made incidentally}; while I had to, not only sweat it out at school, but come home and do homework AND swat for exams too! Life is so not fair, I used to think.

Since I’m in such an unexplainably confessional mood today, I might as well tell you that I would sometimes hide those chaklis before stepping out of the house on a school morning, so she couldn’t indulge herself behind my back!

Funnily enough, even today, she still makes those delightful, trademark butter chaklis of hers and waits for us to help ourselves before she tastes them.

At 80, my mom is a bundle of energy and enthusiasm and game for pretty much anything; pressing dozens of chaklis being the least of them.