Rambling in West Mambalam (2) … with Janaki Venkataraman

There’s a livelihood, for everyone here

(Continued from last fortnight)

Listen to the story of Sudha and Ravi. “They say that Chennai is a place that gives a livelihood to anyone who comes there. I don’t know about the rest of Chennai . I know that it is entirely true of West Mambalam,” says Sudha Ravi. She is a slim, pale-skinned, sweet-faced woman in her early fifties, perhaps. She should know what she is talking about. When her husband, Ravi, and she came to West Mambalam twenty years ago, with their two little children, they had practically no money. ”But the amount of help we got here to help us get set up in life, was something amazing!” she recalls.

West Mambalam’s Ravi (standing) seen along with his team organising a remembrance pooja.

Ravi, whose given name is Nijamanthakan (solidly Vaishnavite but also, obviously, quite a mouthful), nods in agreement with his wife. We are seated in the front room of his work place, a small two-storey house in that dusty lane near Srinivasa Theatre. Ravi is an agent for conducting Hindu rites of passage, particularly funerals. If someone dies in a South Chennai Brahmin family, the odds are that the family’s priest will call Ravi to take over the conducting of the trickiest part of the proceedings, the actual funeral rites leading up to the disposal of the body. This includes getting the priests who actually do the rites for the corpse, accompanying the mourners to the crematorium and conducting pre- and post-cremation rites there. This is a job that requires both compassion and detachment, clockwork precision and the ability to skilfully guide the bereaved family through the darkest rites of the event.

Ravi also helps out with the 13-day funerary rites that follow, including providing the required cooks and priests. Apart from this Ravi, and his outfit provide the space and the infrastructure to conduct annual obsequies for families that can’t find the space or the time to do them at home. Even as we chat, a car draws up outside and a couple of smartly dressed, obviously upper class women step gingerly into Ravi’s front room. “The shrardham is being conducted at the back,” Ravi informs them and they navigate their way across the crowded room to the doorway leading to the interior. Smoke, smelling of dung cakes and ghee, wafts out of the doorway, mixed with cooking smells from upstairs. On the patchy wall behind Ravi’s head are pasted numerous lithos and photos of the late actor, Sivaji Ganesan. ”He was the best,” Ravi says.”No one can match his acting. I have seen every single one of his films!”(Ravi is also a big fan of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and recently had a big homam performed for her to regain her health).

Ravi has a network of dedicated priests, cooks and workers helping him and is clearly far ahead of the competition in this field. He has, in fact, been so successful that he is now able to donate his services, free of charge, to truly needy, families. He has helped so many bereaved families in this manner that he has won several awards from social welfare organisations. But that is now.

“Before coming to Chennai, we lived in a small village in North Arcot,” Sudha tells me. “Although our family had land, the income from it had dwindled. Although both of us had B.A degrees, he in History and I in economics, our degrees didn’t get us any jobs. He has phenomenal memory, never forgets a phone number or a name, but that didn’t get us employment either. We went to the Vishnu temple in the village every day and prayed to Chakrathazhvar and Hanuman for guidance and help. But for a long time the gods didn’t seem to hear us,” Sudha smiles a little.
Then, in 1995, a childhood friend of Ravi’s who had gone to Madras and was now a successful priest, invited him to come to West Mambalam. “I am sure you will find a job,” he had said. Easier said than done. “He was the first person to help us,” Sudha continues. “He gave us the courage to leave the village. As my sister lived here we moved in with her for some months. But as my husband had not studied the Vedas, he could not be a priest and that was the only decent job to be found here at that time.”

“One day, when I didn’t have a paisa on me, another priest asked me if I could be a pall bearer at a funeral he was conducting. It would fetch me Rs.75. I jumped at the chance. For the next ten days , I worked as a pall bearer for a number of funerals and at the end of it had the princely sum of Rs.750 in my hands! It doesn’t seem like much now. But it was a decent income at that time,” Ravi continues.

Sudha nods. “It is not difficult even today to manage the day’s cooking on ten or twenty rupees a day, here in Mambalam. Here, people understand the needs of the poor. It is probably the only place in Chennai where, even today, you can get seasoning and condiments in one rupee packets at all grocers. The packet is enough to season a day’s -cooking.”

Sudha gets misty-eyed when she talks about how she managed to find a school for her two children. “Soon after we arrived here, I walked into the Princi-pal’s room in the nearby Kuma-ran Matriculation School and told her that I had absolutely no money right then to educate my son and daughter. ‘But I want badly to educate them and I know we will soon start earning enough money,’ I told her. The principal said she needed a day to think about it. The next day, she told me, ‘For the first year, we will pay the fees for your children and exempt them from wearing uniforms. We will also provide all the books. But from the second year you have to pay like everyone else.’ I nearly hugged her for joy! We were easily able to pay the fees from the next year. But if the principal had not admitted them that year, my children would have lost so much education!”

“It just goes on and on, the kindness and help we received from people,” Ravi adds. “Priests took me along to help them out with various things in the functions they conducted and this brought in some money. Women cooks put Sudha in touch with families that needed cooking to be done for obsequies and other functions. Then one day we decided to start this venture. Since we knew so much about funerals and obsequies, we networked and got together a band of committed priests and cooks and undertook to conduct these rites as a package.” There has been no looking back since then. Their children have finished college and found lucrative jobs in other cities. “My daughter, who is married and lives in Hyderabad, calls us event managers!” laughs Sudha.

Now the couple seem to be paying back. No one who comes to their door seeking a job, an opportunity or even simply a meal is turned back. “We usually find them a place to live, give them contacts and also provide enough cooking amenities so that they can do catering from their own homes. Or we absorb them here.” Sitting cross-legged on the floor are several middle-aged women and priests, all waiting for the calls to come for their services. “They are my friends, my family,” Sudha says. “We work together, go out together and comfort each other in times of trouble. One thing I have learned on this job is never to fear death or its suddenness. It could happen to us anytime. Till then it is good to know that you are helping someone.”

Sudha’s observation clearly describes the spirit or oeuvre of West Mambalam – live and help others live.

(To be continued)

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