Wednesday, April 25, 2012

PAPAs and AAYAs

Mom, her elder sis and younger sis are 3 super intertwined sisters, as close as closest can get. They call each other papa, even in their 50s – 60s. Chinna papa, nadu papa and akka. In fact, my periyamma, is one of those maternal overarching loving souls, who is the binding factor, across generations, cutting across all mundane familial relationship barriers. Everyone feels so very loved and cared in her presence. Everyone calms down, at her one facial expression. Universal mother she is. And periyamma addresses us aayah, a term commonly used to address elderly housemaid, or grandmother in some regions.

Out of home…Papa, immediately, brings to my memory my school song, Odi vilayaadu papa… kutti papa, for the baby inside the tummy… papa for the little bundle of cherubic delight, papa… the caring jumping naughty angel. And again the usual hindi papa. The dad or the little girl.

But, within family, they are my triple moms. So one fine day, I wanted to go to kollimalai. I snoozed the alarm, and decided, I won’t go. Then at 11:30, I decided, I would go and then mom and I boarded the last bus to Kollimalai from Namakkal a little after 2 pm. While we were waiting in Namakkal busstand, a fruit seller, called out very loudly ‘come here papa’ and I burst out laughing, when mom rushed to the fruit seller, asking what was the matter. The fruitseller said, he was addressing some other smaller girl – papa and he would not call an elderly white cotton haired lady a papa, even if her name was papa.
Yes’day, I met a person, who introduced himself as X from PAPA team (Pricing and Product Analytics team. Papa! I thought about periyamma and revealed all my 32 :-)