MY FAVORITE MORNINGS

I feel good now. I am on my way to the coffee store round the corner. I like to scamper along kicking the dust up to watch the specks catch the early morning rays. Just like the flies that scatter when the cow, lazing by the garbage drum by the bend, carelessly lashes its tail on its back. The morning air is always fresh. I take in lung-fuls of fresh air and stop to trip the few dew drops on the thick light green leaves of the weeds that grow freely all over my street. Of course, I have to be careful not to snap the stems – I think the whitish liquid that pours out of it is poisonous!

Most people are still stirring on their mats or cots I suppose; for their Aavin milk packets are still at the threshold. Though it seems to be carelessly thrown in like ‘The Hindu’, which flies in from the newspaper boy’s cycle, I know the milk-lady would have bent her knee just so slight and lurched sideways to reach the doorstep and place the milk packet as she would have a baby. If the packet ruptured, she will not get paid. The milk needs to be picked up quickly or it will curdle in the heat. It always got hot sooner or later in Chennai.

Some of the ladies were up, sweeping out their front porches, working up an undersized dense storm that tactfully picked up dust and deposited them a tad ahead; just to be picked up again and nudged forward. Before long I knew they would find themselves in the neighbour’s front yard or the dusty sidewalks; a daily ritual of community dust sharing. It made me chuckle to see some of the college boys who were polishing their motorcycles with an obsessive splattering of love, shielding their vehicles from the duststorms their mother’s raised.

It is too early for the coconut water peddlers and much too soon for the vegetable sellers who are careful not to come into the streets until after the school kids have left, lest the ladies not pay much attention to them. There is hardly anyone walking by. Very few stores are open this early in the morning. The Barber shop always is, as many men walk in to get a shave. My cousin baby had his first haircut there a few weeks ago. It is I who takes care of him every day when atthai goes to work. So he loves me and would only sit on my lap while his hair was being cut.

A little further down the barber shop lies the coffee store. It is my job to go fetch the right coffee from the store every Wednesday and Sunday. Though my favourite time is when I give my gurgling baby his baths, going out to buy coffee is really fun. It would have been good to come along with my older cousins but atthai will not bother them. Unlike me, they need to go to school.

I love the coffee store. I can smell it even before I can see it, after the second left turn. Here the coffee grains are roasted and ground every morning for each customer according to her wishes. Mani mama scoops out the still warm dark roasted beans out of the cooling plate and funnels it into the grinder. Thirty minutes earlier and I would have been able to see him pick out the grade of beans we pay for; dull green and unglamorous, coffee beans look quite sorry until you roast them. Then they are shiny black and ready to release the magic in them.

“Not ready for school yet, still in your petticoat?!” observed Mani mama and I guilty flattened out the frizzes in my hair. Here I was straight out of bed, shabby. The ribbons snaking down my two plaits clinged to just a strand or two. “I don’t go to school anymore but I brushed my teeth” I defended as I handed in the exact rupees and change for the coffee. Mani mama nodded as he remembered I had dropped out of school. I do not know why he sighed. A lot of people sigh a lot these days when they see me. Since atthai’s family moved into my house.

I love holding the warm coffee powder to my chest. The sun has steadily risen promising a typically hot Chennai day. The milk packets have been cleared out from the landings of most houses in the fifteen minutes I had gone. Predictably and yet miraculous to me, the street which had reluctantly stirred from its slumber has galvanised into action. The cow had moved on to the next garbage pile. The newspapers no longer on the ground, are now held up, folded in one hand while the men read them over their coffees in shiny stainless steel cups. Swept out house fronts now were wet from the customary wash they got, which was a heavy sprinkling of water to dampen the ground. They were also covered with kolams - some drawn by very skilled women and others merely to get the job done. If the kolams are drawn and the men are drinking their coffee, it can mean only one thing. I am late.

When I get home, Atthai is screeching louder than the milk boiler. She grabs the warm bundle from my arms and shoves me into the room where my cousins are still sleeping. “Go wake them up”, she screams, “they need to go to school and make something of themselves. Not be a gone-case like you; good for nothing like your dad used to be. How I took care of him when he was young; no sister would do what I did. Now, three kids and a job and I am stuck with you too. Only God knows what I go through!”

She complains a lot. But I mostly want to cry only when she scolds my dear appa.

My parents went out one day and came back to be cremated. Ever since, I only get to go out to buy coffee powder. At those times, I hope that before I am back, by some miracle, amma will be leaning over the balcony looking for me to get back and appa will be readying the scooter to drop me off at school.