Chittis - Sambu and Sita - two years back when we visited Tirumurthi Hills.
The chittis today don't look so good; they appear too aged for two years. Sambu chitti went through a bad patch,healthwise, during last month's visit to Chennai for her grandson Karthick's wedding. She is now back on her feet following a series of energising,and expensive,injections.
Sita chitti says she has multiple health complaints, some of which could be psychosomantic. She rarely stirs out of the house; has even stopped going to the nearby Ayappan temple. She lives on her own, in the company of jaded photos of the late chittappa and that of her only son Balu. She keeps telling me Balu would have been my age (70) now had he been alive. He died a schoolboy, drowning in a temple pond at Thirukkadaiyur, where his father P S Raman was then posted railway station master. He too faced an accidental death, after retirement,in a road mishap in Pollachi.
A plaque on chiiti's door front still bears the name of her late husband.
Speaking of which, we still retain the name-plate of my father V Gopalan at the door-front of my mother's house.Folks of her generation revere their husbands so much that my mother still would not utter my father's name,out of respect, even after his death.The thing about the Pollachi family is that they made us feel very welcomed; they were particularly pleased to host Bhagya. The pleasure was mutual.For Bhagya has a certain affinity with Sambu chitti; they act like friends, trading jokes and pulling other's legs. Bhagya terms Sambu chitti as our family's Vairamuthu, for her flair for verses. Sambu chitti has been published in some Tamil journals. She has been a great one for composing lyrics for special family events and setting her compositions to popular film tunes of the day.Bhagya told Sambu chitti that she still sings some of chitti's evergreen numbers to humour her grand children Saranya and Gautham in New Delhi.
Sambu chitti's son Babu joins in, to listen in on Sambu-Bhagya's banter as they peel vegetable for the morning sambar. 
Bhagya,like Sambu chitti, has a way of livening up things with her conversational skill. On the evening we reached Pollachi Babu and his school-going son Raghav had a later-than-usual meal to be able to give Bhagya company, and there chat session continued long after their meal.The adaai they are having was prepared by Babu's spouse Jayashree.
She appears to enjoy the proceedings so much that Jayashree had to control herself so as not to break into a gafffaw at something Bhagya said to her. Jayashree cooks as well as she sings. Her proficeincy as a vocalist has earned her the post of a teacher at the government music college in Coimbatore. Jayashree commutes 45 km to work from Pollachi every morning.
Speaking of cooking skills, Sambu chitti's daughter Usha is equally well endowed. She rustled up a tasty snack of pakora for us, within a 20-minute notice, when we dropped in at her Machinnampatti house on the Pollachi outskirts.After years of struggle to raise their two sons - Manikandan and Balaji - through school Usha and her husband Chandran are now settled into a semi-retired life. Manikandan is an engineer with Essar's oil refinery in Jamnagar.Usha recalled how Manikandan studied for his engineering course, putting up with whatever privacy was available in their one-room family acommodation in Salem.
In comparison, younger brother Balaji, pursuing B Sc in computer science, has a room for himself at their Machinnampati house. The progress made by this hardworking family has been so commendable that it would have made Chandran's father proud,had he been alive to see his grandsons doing so well in their studies.Their grandpa Sarmanna had spent his life-time slogging for pittance in small-town restaurants and coffee-houses.
Balaji's other grand-father and my chittappa Padmanabhan has reasons to be proud of a uniformly good performance of all his grand children.
Raghav, who is closest to chittappa, is doing Plus-1 at Bharatiya Vidhya Bhaven high schoool. He is well-versed in computer useage, considering that his parents had put off getting broadband connection till relatively recently.I can claim to be among those instrumental in persuading Babu to go in for Internet connection because I believe that the benefits of the Internet for discerning youngsters such as Raghav, far outweighs possible risks of too much exposure to the Net.
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