Tales of evening

I spend time with amma in the evenings. Morning nurse leaves by six pm and the night nurse is not due till 8 pm. I try and make it a point to be there with amma and appa at that time. Last 5 weeks have been very difficult with appa not keeping well. There is pretty little that I could do to help appa, so I took it on myself to make amma feel lighter and relaxed.

These are the stuff I have tried.
 I have a very very old 'anchor stich kit' three fourths completed. It must be atleast three decades old and sitting in a cupboard.(You see, I have been systematically cleaning and organising and fishing out all unwanted things from cupboards last few week. More about it in another post) I fished it out and take it with me and do the cross stich patterns. Amma is a great one for embroidery and nothing pleases her more than to do it herself or now that she is not able to do it, to watch somebody do it.She keeps saying, this room has become a needlework room!

Amma usually has her pet Tv programmes.All Bhakti channels and she is upto date on which slokam comes in which channel on what date and time. So it helps that both of us sit and chant vishnu sahasranamam on saturday, hanuman chalisa on thursdays, lakshmi ashtothram on fridays. It also helps that I have effectively taken amma away from peering into all tiny tiny bound sloka books continuously keep muttering to herself. We bring some music and livelines and jollies into the sloka recitation. We also watch some carnatic music programmes and that sets her to reminise about the song, some historical tit bit about the song and the sabha and singer who sang this song, long time ago/We also get into singing some song which she remembers by the way.

Today she was remembering about radio ceylon and her favourite song when she was in school. Do aankhen baara haath and another song of ashok kumar, rel ghadi rel ghadi.She also remembers how she will wait for the most popular song of the week, to check if her choice is also the popuilar choice. This set her off on remembering her classmates and how some of them went to college and one became a teacher and another a doctor. She remembered how her school final marks were very good and her elder brother used to tell her that neither he nor any of his friends and their younger siblings have ever been able to score more marks than her." collar tooki vutundu irupen" is what he used to tell her.

Yesterday she told me she is keen on watching 'thillana mohanambal' which was relayed by sun tv. We saw it from the first frame and I found more fun and enjoyment seeing her animated and excited face, than what I found on the screen. This movie is anyday my favourite too, it is a classic and eminently watchable any number of times. But this time it was special as I could have amma's company and her genuine interest in watching every scene.

Of course we ghupshup about the day's events or what we read in the tamil hindu paper. Today was nammalwar of organic farming fame.It is his birthday today and a very nice piece about his life and passion was featured in the newspaper. Amma was saying she had written down nammalwar's email and wanted to reach out to him to congratulate him on what he was doing. But did not get around to doing it. I was telling her, he had come to the Hindu office many a time, and when I read about it I would immediately want to meet him. But never did it.

I also get some repair work done. It amazes me that even though I keep giving the same salwar suit the tailors manage to make it as per their wish. So there are a whole lot of dresses which needs some alteration or the other. They are too small to take the trouble to take it to an 'alteration tailor'.They have been piling up and cause mild irritation every time I wear them.So I put it in a bag and take it with me when I go to amma's house in the evenings. It is so comforting and companiable to have amma sit quietly and in one place(it is a miracle) and I am sewing away or removing the seems or whatever.

All in all I feel relaxed and I am able to transmit that to amma and she is also able to unwind in these stressful days. Time well spent together.