Iron Man

No. Not referring to Robert Downey Jr.

I do iron a dress pant or kurti ever so often.  But last week I volunteered to iron two 10 feet wide circular table cloths for my daughter's school event.  The one hour literally broke my back and made me think of the iron men in my life.

The first iron man (iron wala or the 'isthri' guy) I knew was Sigaamani.  I remember him and his cart in the RBI quarters campus. There were been countless mornings before school when I would run to his cart with my crumpled white uniform shirt. Sigaamani would sprinkle some water on my shirt and proceed to smooth out the wrinkles.  I would watch as the water sizzled and the wrinkles on my shirt magically disappeared under the weight of the hot coal-filled iron box. I would walk home smelling the steam on my freshly pressed shirt. How he managed to iron garment after garment under the blazing Madras sun day after day, I will never know. Here I was nursing my sore back after just one hour.

When we moved into our new home, our new iron man whose name I don't know had a small hole in wall store at the end of our street.  My dad used to take the crumpled clothes in a bundle and bring them back in neat stacks, becoming very well acquainted with the iron man in the process. At some point we owned our own rust-orange colored iron box that I used to iron only the bottom twelve inches or so of my salwar (why iron the part that was going to be invisible under the kameez!) although a majority of my clothes were still made wrinkle-free by the iron man.

On the the evening of my wedding reception as I stood with my husband meeting and greeting friends and family, an elderly gentleman in a white shirt and dhoti walked towards us with a gift envelope. As he handed over the envelope to me, I was eager to introduce him to my husband but my memory completely failed me. I said to him - "I am sorry but I don't recognize you. Can you please tell me who you are?" He smiled shyly and said 'It's okay' and tried to walk away. But I was not one to let go easily and insisted that he tell me who he was. As he stood around looking trapped, my dad swooped in on the stage, put his arm around the man's shoulder and announced - "This here is my good friend". At that instance I remembered who he was and saw that his eyes were wet.

The last time I was in Chennai, I had the luxury of having my kurtis ironed by our iron man, the same one that my dad's gesture melted.

Mighty School Paati

We called our Grandma, "School Paati". I don't remember how exactly she got this name but I believe my cousins who had two grandmothers decided to call her this because she was a school teacher. She was my maternal grandmother, the only grandparent I knew all my life.
Born on August 2nd, 1927, my grandma was the oldest of eight siblings. She was the smartest kid in school. I've heard stories of her teacher sending someone home asking her to come to class if she ever missed a day of school. When she was all of 16 years old, she was married off to her mother's uncle whose wife had just passed away leaving behind two young children. Overnight, she turned from school girl to wife and mother. The two children, who probably could not come to call their young cousin, 'Amma' - mother called her 'Akka' - older sister,instead, which they did all her life.
For the next eleven years, she was a dutiful wife bearing four children of her own, when at her age of 27, she lost her husband. Left alone to face the world with her kids, she managed to keep afloat with the help of her parents and the complete support of her eldest (step)son, who took up a job. She pursued and completed her S.S.L.C, and with her tailoring skills, landed a teacher's job at a government school. She also did a lot of tailoring for family and friends on the side to supplement her income. She ran a tight ship and watched her children grow, excel in studies and the arts, land jobs, get married and settle down in life. She retired from her teaching career when I was about 12.
School Paati loved to read and listen to Carnatic music. She would read 'The Hindu' cover to cover and was on top on everyday happenings. She would make time to go to music concerts and had a pocket transistor glued to her ear when she could not. She spent hours everyday doing various Poojas and reciting Slokas from memory. With the advent of cable TV, she watched multiple serials,cooking shows, news and religious channels often toggling between two channels and watching two shows at the same time. When she could no longer sit for long at live concerts, she started to look for concerts and recitals that had live webcasts and watched them at home on the computer. She most recently learnt to listen to streaming music on the iPad. She was ever curious, eager to adapt to new ways even while religiously following traditions.
I've always envied her memory power. She remembered names of companies where her grandchildren worked, of her children's and grand children's co-workers, friends, in-laws and neighbors, of television actors and actresses, of singers, the songs they performed and the Raagas of those songs. I've listened to her recite, when she was in her sixties,  'The Inchcape Rock" by Robert Southey, a poem that she memorized in third grade. She was constantly thinking and planning for the future, be it dinner plans for the night, a distant cousin's wedding over the weekend or a grandchild's visit the next month. Her brain was for ever processing 'what if' situations, most of which resulted in 'I told you so's.
School Paati took all that life had thrown at her in her stride and showed life who was boss. She was 87 when she passed away last Sunday, sitting up on the sofa, having dressed up and eaten her lunch all by herself, just as she had wished for. If at half her age, I have a tenth of her courage, determination, resilience, curiosity and her most admired memory, I will consider myself gifted,
Rest in Peace, School Paati.