There is a purple coloured blanket at home with a pink border on it. It is made out of a madisaar pudavai that I wanted to hold onto forever. It still has a faint smell of paati, its a mixture of vibuthi and her cooking and for a second I can almost feel her skin.
When she used to sit down with her afternoon coffee, she would always be telling me stories of herself, the family etc. That was probably my moral science book.Being a fifth standard pass, but having learnt immensely from the world, she would appropriately use sophisticated english in her stories. From her stories, I had great respect for just two kinds of people in this world. One, people who "pulled their life back together". Its not a big deal if you have your life planned out, you had great parenting and you did amazing well in school from grade one. But it is if you had gotten into drugs, cheated on your wife, ran away from home, shrunken responsibilities, but at the end of the day managed to pull your life back together, and do great. The other, are "self-made" people. She would raise her thumb up, bring her lower lip up and say that about someone. My heart would swell up with pride for that person. This category of people probably attracted me the most and I probably married one too.
Well there are probably a hundred and one things paati had taught me, this is not to list all that. Its just to re-iterate that I think only two things matters in life. One, to be non-judgemental, and the other to work hard in continuously shaping yourself. I am glad I atleast know these things.
