Amma's coconuts

[sarit11]

Thus we started a new life. To clear all our debts, my mother sold the tea-shop and our house and we moved into the house of this old couple. It was not a big house. It was a rather old-fashioned one. We were given a small room beside the kitchen to live in. The old couple seemed to be good people. Parvathiamma was initially a little reserved with my mother. But when she saw that my mother was a good-natured and hard-working woman, she became quite attached to her. The old woman was the talkative type, but she was ill most of the time and so my mother had to take good care of her. Vasu, on the other hand, was a quiet man. He hardly opened his mouth in the house. Since he had been a college-teacher, I would often take his help with my lessons. He would help me usually, but sometimes, if he was not feeling like it, he would shoo we away. The old couple did not have many visitors in their house, therefore they valued our company very much. One frequent visitor to the house was a man called Raghu. He lived in a nearby village and came to the house once or twice a week to do odd jobs. He was a tall and stout fellow with a very dark complexion. He liked to talk and chew betel. The old man and woman rarely allowed him to enter the house. Whenever he came, he was given a number of tasks like chopping fire-wood, digging the ground around the coconut trees, mending the roof, so on and so forth. He was punctual most of the time, and when he was not punctual the old woman would scold him. He seemed like a friendly person to me. I liked to watch him work and he seemed to like to talk with me. He would tell me about his village, the festivals there, his wife and his many quarrels with her. My mother also liked to talk with him. She one day told him our story, about my father and our little tea-shop. He was a good listener and he listened to her as he chopped wood. He addressed my mother as “chechi”, meaning, and elder sister.