Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Amma jiiiiii ......Amma Ji.

If you happen to remember Amma Ji... she is our maid.
It's almost an year that she is working with us.

She is a very God fearing women and religiously visits the temples and the gurudwaras. There are a few beliefs that she dearly holds true and accepts those to be nothing less than the universal truths.(सर्वभौमिक  सत्य )

Those beliefs can not be(absolutely SHOULD not be) questioned by any one at all.
I ,in my utmost innocence somehow happened to stand opposed to her beliefs at a few moments.
What follows are 3 incidents when i had to face the wrath and fury of Amma Ji just for falsifying her universal Truths.

Summers 2010-  Delhi's heat was beating on us and we were almost embarrassed of asking for cold water from our neighours. Not that they refused anytime but still disturbing someone on a Saturday some 20-25 times is shamefully embarrassing in itself.  We (me and Suresh) decided to get a refrigerator the very same day. We got the cash and we had made our research on the Fridge that we wanted to take. We waited for the evening and just when we were about to leave  Amma Ji comes for preparing us our meals.

She complained a bit about the heat and told us something about the electricty cut that they had at their place.
She notices us getting ready and enquired about it.

We tell her that we are getting her a new refrigerator today and she now nomore needs to throw the old sabji or daal.
First expression was "Oh wow!!!! Great...."
Second was  "Oh noooo!!! You fools don't do that."
I asked her about the disapproving expression that she gave.

She said "Aaj mat lo."
Suresh "Kyun amma ji?"
Amma ji "Shaniwaar ko loha nahi lete."
(it was a hindi version of  -- "Bloody Freak  you don't buy freaking Iron on a freaking saturday.")

A moment of silence
and then it was our turn to express.
First Expression "Desperation,Frustration... all synonymous and very close to WTF."
Second expression "A look at each other followed by a I-give-up smile."

The look that she bore suggested that she was in no mood for a discussion and indeed shaniwaar ko loha nahi lete to nahi lete.
Amma Ji 1 We 0. :(

October 2010 - I was just back from office and Amma ji asks about what she should prepare for dinner. she checks the refrigerator - (The same one that we bought  on sunday.) for some vegetables. She tells me that for the next 9 days she won't be using Onion in our food.

On enquiring further she says that "Navratras have started and she doesn't touch Onions in navratras."
This was too much for me and i disagreed to that...may be i would have agreed to her some other day but not after her having her way in that refrigerator incident .
I got rebellious .... Fridge came on sunday and now onions will be used in Navratras.
(It was more of a childish stubbornness then a rational opposition.).

She agreed to it but said that now she needs to change her clothes when she gets back as she can not sit in a Aarti after touching those onions. Irritated i was but in that moment of irritation i tried to restore some rationality ,i asked her to do the Aarti before coming. She agreed to that.  I had my little moment of victory.

Amma Ji 1 We 1. :|

Whenever Amma ji gets angry with us she kind of goes quiet. Not that she will make the food any less tastier but she won't talk to us. You can feel the cold war type tension in the house.

 We were into the third navratra and she arrives for making  breakfast. I had forgot everything about the onions . She asks in her usual way "Beta ji kya banana hai?"
"Paranthe bana do aunty."

Amma ji "Aaloo to hain nahin...."
We had had this kind of discussion earlier also...

I forgot we were in the middle of navratras and i totally forgot we were in middle of a cold war.
I was shaving...and while shaving only ....i went to the kitchen....looked at the tokri and in the most casual and obvious tones suggested   "Aloo nahin hai to Pyaaz Ke Bana do".

She slowly turned towards me fuming.
She felt i was doing this on purpose.
I immediately made out that i have committed a sin and now i shall be punished. 
In all this tension i felt that she was almost about to slap me.

After a few tense moments and a cold silence between us. 
She comes out with this....
"Rab se daro beta ,thoda to daro. Paranthe to main bana deti hun....kam se kam Tuesday ko to Shave na kiya karo."

Amma ji 1000 We 0. :)

25 comments:

Shoaib said...

Ha Ha Ha :) :) :) :) cant stop laughing.... "Tuesday ko shave nahi kia karo..." WOW!!! heard this one for the very first time.... :) :D :D
Ammaji 10000000000000000 / All of Us 0, from my side.........

Aashish Nag said...

haha.. nice 1 sir.... amma ji sector 27 noida mein aake khana bana dnegi?? :P

Unknown said...

Nice one....While reading this blog I was imagining the scene. Its totally funny these days to believe in all these superstitions. But most often we follow these superstitions.

The most interesting subject is "Ammaa ji"...long live Ammaa ji :)

divya said...

good one :D

Shamail said...

Btw, she read this? Or does she know you wrote something like this? ;-)
:D

bansalmaddy said...

nice one! bhaii, i felt i was in your house and remembering the day i had paranthas with you made by ammaji!

Ruchika said...

good one sir :)

Unknown said...

Good one yaar....Daro Daro bhagwan se daro...Hahaha so many beliefs prevailing without Logic... I hv nvr understood atleast these days funda??? tue ko sar nahi dhona , thurs ko pati k kapde nahi dhone and wat not......etc etc ask ammaji!!

Anonymous said...

This Ammaji seems to be no less dominating than that TV character Ammaji(ask Jeevan to get the name of the show). ;)

Nicely written - entertaining - n crazy!

Saturday ko loha nahi laana finds an (unconvincing) explanation in Astrology. Iron is considered the metal associated with the Saturn, and there is a practice to donate iron to 'please' shani grah -- that's why Saturday ko mana karte hain (but, yes, I too question how a metal/stone is associated with a planet, even if Astrology is Mathematics, how this mapping came into picture). Incompetent reason.

The Onion thing is obvious - onion is the most common aphrodisiac, so conservative Hindu families stress on not eating onion at all, at least avoid in the sacred Navratras. Again, too insignificant to matter.

Nothing known (to me) for this Shave/Hair cut and even Nail-cutting thing .. but the 'prohibited' days are - Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday .. if anyone cares!

Retrograde customs :)

Unknown said...

Can't say Gaurav. I find such incidences n advices given to me often...n i m equally irritated frustrated rebellious sometimes...n sumtyms crazy. Bt wat i find later is tht they hv a point to say. V kno science, they hv faith. Wat science teaches us to call this faith as superstition...the faith will never ask us to call science in such derogatory manner.
I try to compare science n reason with faith..n prove the superiority of reason over faith..bt thn conclude that i gv it a partial analysis.
V hv been blindened by science fr nw..i feel so. V wr blindened by faith for centuries. But in this new dawn of science..i m of the view tht v mst nt get along wd reason w/o faith. Reason w/o faith is empty and faith w/o reason is blind.
I m nt tryng to prove/disapprove anythng..just to say tht reason is welcome..bt nt at the cost of faith. It may be better to hv rationality, bt still its gud to hv faith...evn if blind faith. It prevents us frm drying internally :)

Unknown said...

Ur blog ws a pleasure to read anyhw
U r lucky u hv such caring ammaji..n tht too in delhi!!!! :)

Gaurav Vashist said...

@Shoaib : :) Ammaji Wins anyday. but in all this madness she is a very caring one too. just love her for that.

@Ashish Nag - Bhai nahi aaengi...watever i may say i am real possesive about her. Wo Motinagar 7/28 chodd kar kahin nahin jaengi :P

@Jeevan - Yup Jeevan tu bhi to manta hai..but tere days kuch ulte hain...monday ko chicken nahi ???:)

@Divya - :D she is a rockstar.

@Shamail - she knows that i hate these things and somehow both of us have struck a balance between faith and rationality.

@Bansi - Yo bhai ...Paranthas are here forte.. :)

@Ruchi - Thanks :)

@Jyoti - I know yar...i somehow used to agree earlier ,now these things baffle me.

Gaurav Vashist said...

@Abhishek - thanks for bringing order to the madness.

Hmmm shaniwaar thing i would take it more of a placebo effect than for some rational mapping. Somehow for someone donating iron would have clicked and from there on it would have entered as a custom.

For the onion one i'll say that there have been a thousand things that were imposed on me and today when i realise that,i feel cheated..and that's why i think i have become a bit rebellious to anything that ends with "....aise hi hota hai ye to."

May be i agree after an explanation.:)


Nails and Shave and Hair cutting are totally a hygiene based thing and there can't be a day when hygiene is prohibited.

Baki Amma ji rocks as ever...Love her for whatever she does and the care that she shows for us.

Suresh said...

but there are only a subset of these beliefs that we find crap and don't want to follow...otherwise we all are superstitious in some way...

as we know

dukh me simran sab kare sukh me kare na koi...:)

bhagwan bhi tabhi yad aate hain when there is some tragedy in life otherwise we used to question this too that whether God exists or not...

Gaurav Vashist said...

@Vivek - Each one of us has a faith and that faith has a reason to it.
Ammaji's faith can't be questioned as that has helped her in someway or other in the last 75 years of her life.
Our's can't be questioned either as it is built on a totally different data set.

I think the kind of experiences(data sets) that you come across in your life define your faiths.
The thing to understand is not to be too harsh on some other person's faith and understand that he might not have got the same set of experience
and that accounts for a different definition of Faith.

The problem arises when i want my faith to be your faith.
Baki i don't think any faith is without reason
we all have our reasons.

Ya i know i am lucky as it's really a pain to get someone so considerate as Amma ji in Delhi.
and that's why i dnt mind buying a Fridge on sunday.

Gaurav Vashist said...

@Suresh - agree to whatever you say...
Faiths other than our's are superstitions and this is universally true.

Shagun said...

nice gaurav...i liked it :-)

Unknown said...

Haha...right right!! Any faith is not w/o reason..neither is any reason w/o faith. Perspectives!!
This is a very long discussion...v r 2 microscopic to solve these enigmas...i like readng ur writings fr the reflectivity :)

Gaurav Vashist said...

@Shagun Thanks Shagun...the author gets the most awaited critical acclaim. :P

@Vivek - Microscopic we may be...but that is only for the effort if we try to generalise this.

If we want to keep the faith/reason thing customized,i think we can do that. :D

Sunny said...

Nice one dude

agantuk said...

hahaa...lolzz..luvd it!!!!

Unknown said...

Samajh nhn aya tune kya kaha :D

Gaurav Vashist said...

hehe I meant this is such a complex topic of discussion that it'll be really difficult if we try and reach some generalized conclusion to it,

I think this is best left to the user and let him customize the definitions.

Tarun Goel said...

I missed it but it and it was great

summirajput said...

yes i believe in these things untill i remember them since tese are told to us at home.and at home these r must follow like no shaving & nail cutting on tuesday,washing clothes on thursday,