Part 2 of my life in Wadi

Thursdays in Wadi were what were called bazaar days. There were relatively more vendors in the bazaar area and everyone invariably went to the bazaar on Thursdays to buy weekly rations of vegetables. Things were cheap. I remember we could buy upto a dozen good ripe mangoes for a rupee. We at home were in the habit of drinking water which was boiled with a spoonful of cumin seeds in it. Also coffee was regularly consumed. There was what was called a store in wadi. This was a sort of a grocery shop run by the ACC wadi and was also initially located in a TRT. I would every alternate day be asked to go to the store to get 100 grams of coffee powder(what was called Jayanthi coffee) and 50 grams of cumin seeds and occasionally 50 grams of coconut oil. The bill would come to something like 2.15 rupees. There was a man called muralidhar who had a limp and who wrote out the bills and collected money at the store. This muralidhar often wrote out a bill for jayanthi coffee, jeera and coconut oil whenever he saw me. This was for some time a cause for acute embarrassment to me because this Muralidhar wrote out the bill for me before even I could say anything since that was what I always bought.

We did not have refrigerators those days. As the temperatures soared during summers, we used to need ice cubes to be put into water or lime juice or the then new fangled synthetic flavoured powder called Rasna which had just come into the market. We young ones were sent the houses of those who were fortunate enough to have refrigerators to collect ice cubes. Those who gave us ice cubes, often behaved in a superior fashion, but tradition demanded that they give us ice cubes. So we young ones went with stainless steel containers to collect ice cubes. Mostly we returned with ice cubes, which were soon consumed.

The school which Mrs. Saldanha started, about which I had mentioned in an earlier post was taken over by Christian Missionaries of the Saint Anne soon. Wadi soon became a parish. There came one Father Antony, who was a Malayali from Moncombu in Kerala. With him as a patron a group of nuns arrived from Kerala and Tamil Nadu and took over the School in Irani Building from Mrs. Saldanha. It is not clear whether Mrs Saldanha was upset or relieved about this development but soon, the school came to be known as St. Ambrose Covent School. One Sr. Mary Jane was the first headmistress. A Roman Catholic Church also came up in Wadi, near the Irani Building. Father Antony, being a Malayali Christian was a middle aged kind man, who had equal affinities for malayalis as well as Christians. We being partly Malayalis, and my mothers maternal grandparents being from Moncombu, Father Antony soon became a family friend. Thangi was his spiritual equal and since Father Antony knew enough Hinduism and Thangi knew enough Christianity, there were no ego clashes. He was an occasional visitor to our house and loved the Adai and dosai that my mother used to make. His proximity to the family also made me a favoured student of the nuns at St. Ambrose Convent.

TO BE CONTINUED