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Prem Panicker

And I guess that is why I am writing this. Because I have been relieving those days, those moments, those rituals, for two months and more now. And with each fresh reliving, the same question pops into my mind. And I realise that I don't know the answer…

What, exactly, is this thing called "roots"?

What is this that makes you shed, in an instant, the veneer of 'sophistication' acquired over 30-odd years, to revert to the ways of your ancestors?

I was born in Calicut. And spent my first eight years under the wings of my grandparents -- my own natural parents being too busy with their respective careers to have much time to bring up a baby.

My grandparents were traditional as they come. And so, during that early childhood, I imbibed -- along with fish curry and rice cooked in earthen pots and ripe mangoes and jackfruit-pulp pudding -- the myths and legends of my land, the rites and rituals of my religion.

And then I turned eight. And my parents figured that I was now old enough, and grown enough, not to need "looking after".

So they took me away to Madras and enrolled me in convent schools and, later, in one of the best colleges.

And I learnt to read -- novels hidden within the pages of my textbooks -- and to write -- love letters to whichever girl occupied my fancy at the time.

In time, I also learnt to play cricket, and to play the drums. And to smoke pot… to waltz and jive and to tango…

My environment, I guess, was making me over in its own image.

And what image was that? During moments of introspection -- self deception, I realise now, would be a better phrase -- I guess I would have defined it as that of an educated, sophisticated, 'with-it' type, spouting the latest slang with facile ease and preferring grunge to conventional attire and feeling altogether a very 'superior' being indeed.

All the more so after I left the comparatively staid environs of Madras and migrated to Bombay -- the cosmopolis that, for millions of Indians, remains the city of the golden dream.

It's a funny place, Bombay. A place of gods and gold and of famine and filth.

A place where a little Ganpati temple stands cheek by jowl with a state of the art disco.

A place that boasts the most expensive real estate in Asia -- and also the most number of homeless waifs.

Where you dine in five star luxury and where, outside, beggars fight stray dogs for the scraps.

Where, just the other day, I saw a man struggling to pull a handcart, the wheels of which had been stuck in a pothole on the road… a cart piled high with boxes of computers.

A place that houses Malayalis and Tamils and Andhraites and Kannadigas and Gujaratis and Sindhis and Parsis and UP bhaiyyas and Bihari babus and oh yes, I was forgetting, a few Maharashtrians as well.

A melting pot that collects all the cultures of India, churns it all up and ends up without an identifiable, definable culture, ethos, of its own.

For nine years now, I have been happily ensconced in that Bombay. And, till early in the morning of March 17, I considered myself a child of that city… with its blood in my veins, its veneer of sophisticated slickness serving me for clothing…

And then, that morning, there was a knock on the door. My cousin had arrived, with word of my father's death. Four hours later, I was in Calicut, prostrate before the corpse of a man who I had seen, in his lifetime, as the antithesis of everything I was.

When I ran into the courtyard of my ancestral home that day and raced into the inner room where my father's corpse had been laid out, I was wearing jeans and a denim shirt.

Minutes later, I had shed those clothes and got into the traditional white dhoti.

And with it, I had shed -- though I didn't know it then -- every veneer of city-slickness I had so meticulously acquired.

I had become the product of a traditional Nair tharavad (household).

Today, when I get dressed for work, pulling on my jeans and my shirt… when I sit before a state-of-the-art computer and work on that latest buzzword, the Internet, it is with a sneaking sense of discomfort. A sense of doing something, being something, that is alien…

And then I go home again… shower… and change into a crisp white dhoti… and suddenly, I am 'me' -- this rediscovered 'me' -- again.

And for the first time in the day, I feel comfortable. At ease.

How did this happen?

How did I change, from what I thought I was to what I know I am?

What mysterious alchemy, operating on me as I lay, prostrate and teary--eyed before my father's corpse, sloughed away that painstakingly acquired veneer and returned me to my roots? To my heritage?

Like I said, I don't know.

So much for that omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent entity, the "columnist".

But then again, maybe you know?

A lot of you who are reading this are people who have left your native land to make a life for yourself on alien turf.

For you, a MacDonald's burger is food, a masala dosa is exotica.

You are used to doing 10 laps of the swimming pool than to having a pre-dawn bath in a temple tank.

To driving down multi-lane expressways than to strolling leisurely through a sun-drenched, windswept paddy field.

And yet, somewhere within you, I presume, is the call of your roots.

So talk to me. Tell me -- what precisely are these 'roots' that, despite your conscious efforts to break away, keep you anchored to a past, to a tradition and culture, you didn't even consciously realise you were part of?

Maybe, in your experiences, I will find my answers… the answers to questions that have stayed with me these two months and more… the clue to what makes me, me…

Illustrations: Pramod                                                        Back