Thangavathi and the curse of Pethammai

 

Disclaimer: I don’t want to be specific with the details because it’s the internet nevertheless the story is real with a few details altered to not to offend anyone specific.

Let's call her Thangammai. She might have been a centenarian if she were alive now — not someone from deep antiquity. To start with, she was born into a lap of luxury. She wasn’t the daughter of a colonial-era industrialist who owned sprawling bungalows in hill stations and had English governesses to oversee her education. But her parents owned vast amounts of land. They were locally affluent, at least.

Her mother was a beautiful, scheming, strategic lady. There’s little known about her father, but both parents adored their only daughter. Growing up, the parents were astonished to find their daughter’s hair — it was long for her age, thick and unmanageable. Perhaps it was due to their special care. They never bought oil from the market; they would rather extract coconut milk, to extract oil and then carefully massage her scalp with the pure oil. 

 Thangammai's family owned nearly all the land in the locality; it became impossible to find someone of their match. Her parents didn’t want her to move elsewhere or live out of sight. So the bridegroom was chosen from their neighbourhood — a family that had some land, enough to feed them.So,Thangammai was married off to a much older man at the age of eight (child marriages were a norm then). The marriage was consummated after she attained puberty.

The husband had hit the end of the rainbow. Their once-normal family became local celebrities because he had married an heiress. He would dress like a zamindar, I was told. “Very generous,” someone else said. But flattery poisoned his mind.

Thangammai was raised with a lot of love. No one ever showed her a hard face. Her parents brought her up in a shell, married her off to someone they believed would also keep her in comfort, and then passed away.

The mother of Thangammai willed away the land where her 2000-square-foot house stood to her distant relatives — at least that’s what they claimed. And the downfall began. The husband of Thangammai squandered little by little. He assumed there was always more. Land was sold to raise a sprawling house.

The house was a grandeur — only bronze was used for the handles. The wooden staircases were made of the finest quality wood. Paint was brought from faraway places. A lot of money was put into a house which now has a single occupant and no heir. A grand feast was held when his daughter attained puberty, and another piece of land was sold. Another for her wedding.

Don’t be lead to thinking he sold the land he inherited; all of the land I spoke of belonged to his wife. The dutiful wife would simply sign whenever he showed her a deed and would pocket the money only for wasteful expenditures. She is still held in high regard because she was the kind who never spoke back to her husband. She continued signing. The husband never bothered to document the lands properly, nor did he inform his wife of their possessions.

 It was harvest season. The husband came home after a tiring morning, lay down for a short nap, and never woke up. The widow was shattered. Her two children were young adults at that time, thankfully. Her daughter was married off in a lavish wedding, which cost them yet another piece of land.

The widow was finally in charge of her finances — but the sad part was that she was a grown child. She knew nothing of legalities, documents, investments, strategy, or bookkeeping. But she was a great cook, famously known for her podis (spice powders). She would command a swarm of women to grind flour for puttu, kollu podi (spiced horse gram powder), milagai podi (chutney powder), and every other condiment their cuisine called for. No one ever left her home hungry.

The norm then was that people who worked on their farms were to be offered food. Most landowners were less sincere — they would serve only gruel or fermented kanji with pickle. But when it came to her, she would offer them a heartfelt meal.

She had a huge kitchen, a backyard, and many many milch cows. People would thank her. She would lovingly serve snacks for the kids who accompanied her grandchildren. She was an expert at making adai (thick dosas made of unfermented lentil batter). The adais would ooze with cold-pressed gingelly and coconut oil procured from their fields.

But that was it. She had sold a fair share of land herself and abandoned the rest because the documents were stolen. Her son married the woman of his choice. Together they had four children. The daughter-in-law was the daughter of a wealthy father who had several children through two wives. The daughter-in-law squandered money too, trying to raise her children. She would buy two tins of formula milk (expensive even now) to feed her baby, who would vomit because he was overfed. The jobless husband followed his father’s path.

She (the widow) became diabetic; all her beauty and strength were gone. She still had some money left, but her daughter-in-law threw her out of her own house — the very house her husband had built for her, a 5000-square-foot mansion named Thangavathi. She never returned. A benevolent extended family offered her shelter, and she died there. Thankfully. 

She was born a heiress, raised children and grandchildren, donated generously — but there remains no photograph of her. None of her children or grandchildren inherited her looks.

Everyone had only good things to say about her — “She was kind,” “She was beautiful,” “Her hair was abnormally long and it caused the family’s downfall (???)”.

I asked someone who knew the family well, and they told me something interesting. The grandmother of Thangammai ,one Pethammai was unhappy with the choice of groom  because it was his family that had turned her husband in during a civil suit that caused his arrest. She cursed her granddaughter and her husband.

On the day of their marriage, she boiled a large pot of  green gram — an edible usually made during the sixteen-day death observance — which was considered a bad omen. She cursed her daughter (mother of Thangammai) and her granddaughter until her last breath.

Now, they can only talk about their glorious past. Pethammai was, after all, right about the groom of her granddaughter.