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When I was in Cuttack till three years ago, my grandfather got bananas for us all the time. By the dozen no less. After he had stocked half of the grocery cupboard with the fruit, he would call upon his able grandsons to partake of his gift. He expected ravenous appetites in us. We disappointed.

It was something of a horrific routine. Every morning, I would wake up to Ba (we call him Ba) calling out to us as he laboriously stacked the bunches in the cupboard. He is over eighty, yet his voice is both loud and high-pitched. It never fails to shock me out of sleep.

“Eat bananas,” he would effectively make his case. I usually had one or two choice retorts to counter this. I either lied, “I already have,” or dared him to give me a reason, “Why should I?”

Nothing worked. The first retort always got, “Have one more,” and the second one earned me elaborate lessons on the benefits of a banana a day. “It has iron. It will build your bones…”

My steadfast discipline (involving not going near the cupboard and avoiding eye-contact with Ba) came to naught when his eager pitch got the better of other, more vulnerable members of the household.

My mother or my aunt would enter my cousin’s room (where I sometimes sought shelter) and ask, “Why can’t you just eat one banana? How would it hurt you?” They didn’t get it. It was not about bananas. It was about the principle.

“You should eat a banana,” the cousin would tell me.

“I don’t want to. Why don’t you eat them if you are so worried?”

“I ate one yesterday,” he would make his point. He is into effective mutual solutions. By working together, we could get rid of the bananas once and for all. But I found the reasons less than motivational. Give in? Never.

But I can’t blame the aunt and the mother. All they ever worried about was shelf space in the grocery cupboard. Ba brought in fresh bunches even before the dozen from the day before were half over. Indeed, I found them spending afternoons unhappily chewing on the cursed fruit, having lost all hopes of help from the cousin and me.

One morning I woke up to Chuda Kadali for breakfast. My face fell. But I couldn’t help appreciating the ingenuity of it all. Chuda Kadali is flattened rice, sugar-water, and bananas, all squished into a gooey-looking and somewhat tasty paste.

Resigned, I picked up my bowl of prison grovel. Then thought ‘what the heck’ and started moving in the general direction of my grandfather’s room. I had to make some effort to make sure he was within range (somehow, he is never within range, and still manages to keep everyone within his range).

He saw me eating and asked, “What are you eating?”

I showed him and he was happy. Next day, he got more bananas.

I am in Cuttack right now on vacation, here to (among other things) attend a friend’s wedding. Gems like this come back when one least expects them to.

Posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and filed under personal.

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