A Tribute to Nagalakshmi Sankaran
Dear Jana & Kav,
“How about one more dosai?”
That would be Amma’s question every time she made dosai for me. Unequivocally, dosai tops the list of all the dishes she made for me. It is only appropriate that I begin this letter with a mention of that dish. She would not take no for an answer. I would have to eat that one last dosai, even if I was I already full. Keeping me well fed was one of her life goals. However, this was not something that she reserved especially for me. Truth be told, she would offer that one additional dosai to anyone she was feeding. I should, therefore, modify my earlier assertion. Keeping everyone well fed was Amma’s goal in life.
I would try to game her system by telling her that I was done one dosai before I was really done. It did not make a difference. Whether she saw through my strategy or not, I wouldn’t be able to tell. Not anymore. For, she is no more in this world to confirm or deny if she saw through my strategy or not. She left us on Christmas eve this year. In Hindu faith, we say she attained Vaikunda Prapthi or Shivaloka Prapthi, depending on whether it is Vishnu or Shiva who you worship. So, much of what you guys are going to read in this letter is somewhat of a conjecture; my impressions and thoughts about my Amma; your Patti.
Let me pick up from where I left of in the dinner table… yes, even after I had given in to her wishes and had that last dosai, she would not let me off the hook. She would then appear with one more dosai in a plate, saying that particular one was especially nice and crispy, just the way I like and suggest that I eat it. To be truthful, it was really not a suggestion; it is the kind of overbearing pressure only my Amma can wield under the guise of affection.
Perhaps, that is not the best way to look at it. The more I reflect on this situation, it is clear to me that she enjoyed having the last word on whether I was “full” or not. When she suggests something, it is more than a suggestion. Traffic lights in Indian roads are a suggestion; not Amma’s insistence on having one more dosai; or one more dosai after the last one.
Amma had perfected the art of gaming the system to achieve her end goals. She had perfected the knack of getting her way, no matter how the odds were stacked against her; no matter who the adversary was. Some would call this attribute determination. To an extent, it may be true. To me, it was more artful manipulation than determination. It was a characteristic that invariably ensured she achieved her end goal.
Let me illustrate what I mean with an example. Let us say she had decided that she should be visiting us in the USA, even though the tedious journey is not well suited for an eighty-year-old. At every opportunity she got, she would mention something along the lines of “Savithri Mami had come to see me. She said that I should go to the USA. The flights are way more comfortable these days. Her son is taking her with him the next time he is visiting Chennai. When are you coming next?”
The only thing that held her back in India was her dutiful commitment to care for Appa during his last years. Once relieved of that responsibility in 2009, no one could stop her from visiting the USA. Not the daunting 30-hour journey; not the fact that she was strictly monolingual and could barely sign her name in English; not even the US Consulate officer in charge of giving her visa. I will come back to her signing her name at a later point in time in this letter.
She made four trips to the USA in her eighties. In one of the trips, a colleague of mine, Sathesh, accompanied her on the return trip to India. They had a stopover in Singapore’s lively and colorful Changi airport. My friend never tires of telling me how, after a brief respite, she got ready and asked him if they could go for a stroll in the airport for some sightseeing. Sathesh was tired from the long-haul San Francisco – Singapore lap and would have preferred to rest his weary bones… not Amma. Take one guess if Sathesh managed to convince her that it was better to rest after such a long flight for an eighty-year-old person.
Sathesh did not stand a chance against her that day. Amma had an endless supply of energy even in her eighties. I know not of another person who could match her spirited zestfulness; not even a two-year-old toddler.
You would think that after visiting USA four times, after undergoing a serious cardiac procedure soon after the COVID epidemic, well into her nineties, she would have outgrown her desire of traveling to the USA. That is something one would expect from a reasonable person. Now, Amma was many things, but reasonable is not an adjective that I would use to describe her. That adjective did not fit her when she was in her prime, when she was ruling her roost with an iron fist in Madurai, nor later in life when she was dependent on her older son, your Ramani Periappa. In a recent WhatsApp video call, with her inimitable contrived laughter to broach a topic for which she already knew the answer would be in the negative, she mentioned casually how she could undertake one last trip to California from Bangalore if she gets wheel chair assistance during travel. Mind you, she was just about mobile, would huff and puff after taking ten steps when she made that comment. Apparently, she must have met another “Savithri mami” in Bangalore! 😊
Amma standing by Cliff Dr., Santa Cruz, 2016
I do not want to imply Amma was always unreasonable. Rather, she was vividly imaginative, relentless in her pursuit, no matter what her object of desire was. Coupled with her endless supply of energy, she could easily wear people down. Not just mortal beings… even celestial beings. I bet she drove Yama, the Hindu God of Death to his wits end with her desire to live. For a fact, I know that she defied Lord Yama at least half a dozen times, including couple of instances during the last 40 days of her life. I have often wondered how could this be… and the only explanation I could come up with was that she had some kind of divine blessing and protection that defied even death.
There was the time when she walked into an open sump – an underground water storage tank whose cover was inadvertently left open – and fell more than 5 ft. into that water tank in the wee hours of a rainy morning in Chennai – and walked out nary a scratch on her. Or the time when she missed her step and rolled over a flight of concrete steps in Bangalore. She was eighty-eight or eighty-nine when this happened. A week later, she walked out of Apollo hospital with nothing but a couple of minor bruises to show from a fall that would’ve taken the life of any eighty-year-old.
Or the time in 1979, when we were shifting from Madurai to Madras (as it was known then, before being christened Chennai.) A steel almirah somehow fell on her, pinning her down. I can still picture her lying hapless under the weight of the steel almirah. Your Thatha (he was 67 then) instinctively reacted with some harsh words before going to her help. His words still ring in my ears. “வெண்ணெய் திரளும்போது இப்படி தாழியை ஒடச்சிட்டுயேடி!” Translated literally, that means, “You have broken the pot in which the curd was churning, just as it was transforming into butter,” but I am sure you get the figurative meaning of that lamentation. Miraculously, your resilient Patti somehow walked out of the mishap unscathed.
The steel almirah incident happened before she became a Sathya Sai Baba devotee. While she was always a God fearing, devout person, her unwavering allegiance to Sathya Sai Baba happened much later, possibly in the 1990s. I may be incorrect about this.
You probably remember the life-size Sathya Sai Baba picture that used to hang in the living room of our Aditya Flats home in Kodambakkam. Do you recall how viboothi and honey would materialize from that picture? And that how we all would prostrate before your Thatha and Patti with the Sai Baba picture in the background before we left for the airport on our way back to California after our India trips? They would take the viboothi directly from the picture and apply it on our forehead.
I cannot give you a rational explanation of how viboothi and honey could materialize from that picture. But your Patti, with her unshakeable faith in Him, she simply accepted the miracle as a blessing Baba bestowed on us.
Since the turn of the century, when they started living in Aditya Flats, it was not just the Sathya Sai Baba picture that was larger than life; your Patti elevated herself to a different plane within the Sai Baba Samithi in Kodambakkam neighborhood. She was revered and respected by everyone in the Samithi; she would not miss a single Thursday Bhajan event; our home might have been small, but her heart was big – she hosted many Bhajans at our small home.
Amma volunteering at a Samithi event
That’s a photo of her volunteering at a Samithi event. She managed to blend three of her unique strengths / beliefs –her faith in Sathya Sai Baba, her ardent desire to feed others, and her excellent culinary skills – into one seamless entity during the time she was actively involved in the Samithi. Narayana Seva, or feeding the poor, was something she consistently did. Those who got to eat her food would be floored by how tasty the dishes were. If she could not cook herself, she would make monetary contributions for Narayana Seva. If there is one thing you want to do in memory of your Patti, feed the poor.
Amma's Signature
Amma did not have proper education. I believe she went to an elementary school in her village, Magizhancheri, for couple of years. Try pronouncing Magizhancheri – the name has the unique Tamil sound “ழ” (“zh”) that is a tongue twister for many people. She barely learnt how to read and write in Tamil. Her lifelong regret was that she never had proper education. She eventually learned how to sign her name in English, rather than use her thumb print. For someone who did not know the language or the alphabet, she did it by etching the pattern of her signature to memory. She would carefully recall and “print” her signature. You can make out that she was all focused the way she would curl her tongue over her upper lips, and slowly trace the outline of the image she had in memory that corresponded to her signature. She would then look at me to confirm if she had done it correctly. I would see the overextended ‘K’ and the blended ‘mi’ in the end, but nod that it was good enough. She did it through sheer will and determination. It is akin to you and I having to learn to sign our name in Mandarin or Cantonese. The signature you see is the last one she signed in a blank check. I can see how age and an unsteady hand had made the already one-of-a-kind signature even more for challenging for a bank teller to accept as authentic.
Try curling your lips over your upper lips – if you are able to fold the lips well and almost touch the tip of your nose, you have the gene responsible for this uniqueness from your Patti.
Before I move away from Magizhancheri, I must tell you how your Patti got the name Nagalakshmi. She lost her mother when she was very young. She did not have any memory of her own mother – I believe your Patti was barely two years old when she lost her mother. She had not yet been given a proper name. They just used to call her பாப்பா (“Paappa”). One day, for some reason, she had been decked with a gold necklace and bangles while she was playing at home. At that time, there was some street vendor selling something that caught her attention. She started following the vendor and walked out of the house, all decked up in gold jewelry. When her folks realized she was missing, they tracked her wandering down the street, dragged her back home, gave her a thrashing and tied her up to a granite stone block called உரல் (“Ural.”) Ural was used to pound grains to powder with உலுக்கை (“Ulukkai”) those days. After tying her to the ural, they had left your Patti to her own devices. When she was tied up to the ural, a cobra approached her. Paappa had reached out and tried to pet the cobra. Folks in the household were shocked and scared at the sight of a snake next to your Patti and prayed to the cobra to spare her. The cobra slithered away without harming your Patti. From that time, she was known as Nagalakshmi, combining the name of the Serpent God (Naga) with that of the Goddess of wealth and prosperity (Lakshmi).
Since I have taken you back in time, I will also introduce you to ஆட்டுக்கல் (“Aattukkal”). Also made of granite stone, Ural and Aattukkal would adorn the backyard of village homes, the latter primarily being used for making idly or dosai batter. Don’t you think it is fascinating that your Patti, hailing from a small village, ended her journey in Bangalore, the Information Technology capital of India?
Your Patti must have been quite good looking when she was young. She was fair skinned and had a favorable bias towards fair skinned people. Do not hold it against her. She was from a different era with a different upbringing. Her bias towards whiteness was so pronounced that when I went shopping for vegetables, she would instruct me to pick and choose vegetables that are light colored. Even if it was purple eggplant that I was buying!
“நன்னா வெள்ளையா இருக்கற காய்கறியா வாங்கிண்டு வா,” was her standing instruction to me.
I am sure you know about beauty creams women use to lighten their skin color. Your Patti could have been a model for Fair & Lovely even in her sixties. Fair & Lovely facial beauty cream was a staple in her dressing kit, occupying an exalted position next only to the defining symbol of marriage in Hindu women, the red pottu or bindi.
Energetic, with a zest for life, living and eating, she was extraordinarily hard working with an attention to detail and cleanliness that bordered on OCD. Heck, who am I trying to fool… she decidedly had OCD; except it was the benign kind. She would do what she needed to do until she was satisfied, without seeking any other person’s help. I call it benign because she would not lose her temper, or shout at anyone if things weren’t the way she liked it. She would just go about correcting the flaw so that things were perfect. This is a trait she has passed on to both her sons, albeit to a differing degree on the benign to belligerent scale.
You must have wondered how come I never made a mention of what an amazing cook she was. I felt it was overkill to belabor that point. She was a gifted cook who could simply do no wrong. Every meal, every dish she cooked would earn six points on a five-point scale. My favorite ones were the different kinds of rasam she made, especially the one she called “soup rasam.” More than her sambar, I loved the different types of kootu she made, especially “mochai kootu.” Roti and sabji are north Indian dishes. Yet, my first taste of those north Indian dishes was the Tam Brahm version of “chappathi” and “urulai kizhangu kootu” that she used to make. To me, the simple chapathi / poori & alu sabji that Amma made qualifies as comfort food. Arisi upma, specifically made as “pidi kozhakkattai,” urulai kizhangu & seppan kizhangu curry, dosai / adai & milagai podi, and pagarkai (bitter gourd) pitlai ought to round out my tier one favorite dishes.
She also knew that she was an outstanding cook. Should she happen to eat someone else’s cooking, she gauged how good it was against her own cooking. More often than not, this led only to disappointment, laying the basis for a significant character flaw in your Patti. She was never able to genuinely appreciate and acknowledge the efforts of others, especially when it came to cooking. This characteristic became more and more pronounced as she grew older and relinquished control of her kingdom, the kitchen. To exact a praise from her, the dish had to taste exactly as she would have made it. I remember two cooks who assisted Bhuvana Periamma during the last few years. The one in Chennai, Parvati, was set in her ways and could barely earn a word of praise from your Patti. The other one in Bangalore, Kumari, was very amenable and learned to cook from your Patti. While not earning kudos, Kumari’s cooking would at least pass Patti’s muster on most days.
Ever inquisitive, she had thousands of questions for me… and anyone else for that matter. She maintained her mental acumen until the very end. Save for the final 24 hours, she was in complete control of her faculties, even though her body was failing her.
I could go on and on about your Patti. I haven’t even broached the topics of how she loved bringing up children… not just her own, but her grandchildren, as well as any unsuspecting neighbor’s kids! Or make deals with Gods on behalf of others (me, for instance) and insist that we fulfill those promises. Or bargain the heck out of every vendor from whom she bought anything… be it vegetables or a saree. Or how she loved collecting sarees and jewelry. Or…
It would have to be a book if I really explore every aspect of her. I may yet do it another day. For now, I will try to wrap up my thoughts and reflections from the past 13 days.
Your Patti was a force of nature. Incredibly strong willed, she led a full life on her terms, even though she lost her mother when she was barely two; and was married to your Thatha as a 2nd wife, charged with caring for two children from his previous marriage when she was just 18 years old. She was a perfectionist, relentless, and energetic with nary a lazy bone in her body. She was the ultimate optimist, determined, and had a way of achieving her desires by any means available to her. She would charm everyone with her excellent cooking and extraordinary hospitality. She was intense in her love of her sons, sometimes to the point of suffocation.
More than anything, she had unshakeable faith in the Divine. The form the Divinity took may have changed over the years, but the intensity of her faith never wavered. If anything, when she became an ardent devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, the magnitude of her faith grew manifold.
She is not with us anymore. But I have no doubt that her blessings are with us all – not just her children and grandchildren, of whom she was particularly fond of, but her extended family members and her innumerable friends and acquaintances too.
It felt surreal when I made a telephone call couple of days ago and not hear my Amma’s voice; or hear her complaint that I have been remiss in calling her regularly.
I will miss her.
Love,
Appa
January 2026