The Adventures of Kudmi Thatha and Other Stories

By Arun Hariharan

The Adventures of Kudmi Thatha and Other Stories takes you on a journey through the funny side of life. To be honest, if you ask me, I believe that in the long run, there is only one side – the funny side.
My children Lakshmi and Srihari are big believers in the funny side. Every time they come back from a perfectly serious event such as regular school-day or a music-concert, they get into fits of giggling and will regale anybody who is willing to listen with funny stories which everybody else seems to have missed. They taught me a thing or two about looking at the funny side.
A book like The Adventures of Kudmi Thatha and Other Stories is never really done. All characters and situations in this book are fictional, but any fictional writing is influenced by the author’s experiences and environment. Numerous have been the occasions when, just as I thought I was finally done writing the book, yet another memory of some long-forgotten hilarious situation would get re-kindled and I would tell myself, “I must add this to the book.” I am sure this will continue in future too. So, don’t be surprised if you find more funny stories in the next edition of Kudmi Thatha.
If you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it, my purpose in having written it will be served.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Oct 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9789388942348

Arun Hariharan

Arun Hariharan is a person with multiple interests. He is a globally recognized figure in the fields of Quality and Knowledge Management. He is the author of ‘Continuous Permanent Improvement’, ‘The Strategic Knowledge Management Handbook (both books published by the American Society for Quality), and ‘Humor in Quality’ (KDP). He has also written about 70 published papers and articles in leading international journals and magazines. Arun is the Founder and CEO of The CPi Coach (cpicoach.webs.com), a company that provides partnership, consulting and training in Business Excellence and related areas. He has held senior management positions in several large companies. Arun and his family are keen Sanskrit enthusiasts. Arun and his daughter Lakshmi teach Sanskrit as a free social service. Till now, they have taught more than a thousand people to speak in Sanskrit. Arun’s educational qualifications include M.S. and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. While his previous writings are in the genres of business and management, ‘The Adventures of Kudmi Thatha and Other Stories’ takes a look at the funny side of life.

Book preview

1 THE ADVENTURES OF

KUDMI THATHA

Kudmi Thatha was easily the happiest-go-luckiest character you ever came across. Thatha literally means grandfather in Tamil, but is also used to address any elderly man. Some people who knew Kudmi Thatha say that in his healthy 93 years of life, he never did a spot of work – well, at least not in the sense that most people understand work. He was a self-proclaimed astrologer, composer of stotras (hymns), poet, singer, drama artiste and traveler, all rolled into one – an all-rounder of sorts – though some wicked people called him a rolling stone.

Kudmi Thatha struck an unmistakable figure – six feet tall, dressed in a mundu (dhoti), jibba (kurta) and angavastram (upper cloth) – all of which used to be white once upon a time, and had clearly seen better days. A walking stick, an old-fashioned long umbrella with a wooden handle and a cloth bag slung over the shoulders completed his paraphernalia. He had no hair on his head, except for his trademark kudmi (tuft of hair at the back of the head). A forehead adorned with three horizontal white stripes of vibhuti (sacred ash) with spots of chandanam (sandalwood paste) and red kumkum completes the picture. It is a pity that Kudmi Thatha lived in the pre-smartphone era. If he were around today, people would be falling over each other to take selfies with him.

His wife would often chide him for his dirty clothes. When Kudmi Thatha would set off on a visit to a friend or relative’s place, she would tell him, "Don’t go dressed like Kuchelan [Kuchelan is another name for Lord Krishna’s childhood friend Sudama, who was extremely poor and couldn’t even afford good clothes]. Wear a clean mundu and jibba." But her admonitions would fall on deaf ears. Kudmi Thatha was convinced that people admired him for his magnetic personality, wisdom and charm, and not for his clothes.

Kudmi Thatha belonged to the school of thought that a rupee saved is a rupee earned. Once, he travelled on a local bus in Madras. When he got off at his destination the ticket checker asked to see his ticket. Faithful to the aforesaid maxim, Kudmi Thatha had purchased no ticket. In those days, the fare to his destination was ten paise. Kudmi Thatha vehemently argued, I had kept ten paise ready in my hand, waiting for the conductor to come to me and hand me my ticket, but he never came. It is the conductor’s fault. He even offered to give the ten paise to the ticket checker. Unfortunately, it was too late, and he was asked to pay a fine of ten rupees.

Kudmi Thatha had the last laugh, though. The other passengers and onlookers, as a small token of their appreciation for the wholesome entertainment that Kudmi Thatha had provided them, raised an on-the-spot subscription and paid off the fine.

When this news reached the ears of the upright and respected Mama Thatha (Kudmi Thatha’s brother-in-law in Madras), he (Mama Thatha) gave him a piece of his mind for bringing disgrace upon the family. However, to Kudmi Thatha, such admonitions were like water on the proverbial duck’s back.

On another occasion, Mama Thatha, after a visit to Bombay, was to board his train for Madras at Dadar station. Several relatives, including Kudmi Thatha accompanied Mama Thatha to see him off at Dadar station. Knowing Kudmi Thatha’s ways, Mama Thatha and some of the other relatives warned Kudmi Thatha that the Dadar-Madras train was for bonafide long distance passengers only, and local passengers were not permitted to travel in that train. Kudmi Thatha dutifully nodded his head. Some minutes later, it was time for the train to depart. The engine hooted and the train started chugging off. Suddenly, somebody noticed that Kudmi Thatha was no longer among the small group of relatives on the platform. Nor was he in the seat next to Mama Thatha in the train.

And then they spotted him. Kudmi Thatha was standing inside the train, at the door, waving good-bye to the see-offers. You see, the Madras train’s next stop was at Kalyan, near enough to Kudmi Thatha’s home at Dombivli. His logic was simple: why would anyone take the trouble of travelling in a crowded local train from Dadar to Dombivli, when one could travel comfortably on the Madras express train? Moreover, Kudmi Thatha genuinely believed that he was doing Mama Thatha a good turn by giving him his pleasant company till Kalyan. A little later, he saw the ticket-checker coming, but, for a seasoned veteran like Kudmi Thatha, this was no cause for panic. He merely ducked into the train’s toilet and stayed put there till the ticket-checker had moved on to the next compartment. He got a tongue lashing from Mama Thatha, but, needless to say, it had no effect whatsoever on Kudmi Thatha’s sunny outlook on life.

Talking of Mama Thatha, an incident involving him comes to mind. You won’t find a more upright and thorough gentleman than Mama Thatha (a sharp contrast from Kudmi Thatha). Mama Thatha was a genuine well-wisher of everyone – a man of principles, the likes of whom God seems to have stopped manufacturing nowadays. One day, Mama Thatha was returning home from his daily visit to the Ganapathy temple near his home at Besant Nagar in Madras. An autorickshaw was running at a slow pace and the driver was glancing left and right, evidently looking for somebody. He stopped the auto near Mama Thatha and asked, Sir, where is Chettiar’s house? He had been asked to pick somebody up from ‘Chettiar’s house’ at 9 a.m. Mama Thatha asked him for further details about their full name or address, but the man had no further information. Now ‘Chettiar’ is a fairly common name in Madras, like Sharma in Delhi or Banerjee in Calcutta. When the auto driver started to move away, Mama Thatha called him back and reprimanded him saying, "My dear fellow, your question is like going to Tirupati and asking for Mottai’s house?" [Mottai in Tamil means a bald person.] At Tirupati’s famous temple of Lord Balaji, many devotees get their heads tonsured. As a consequence, Tirupati is full of Mottais. Mama Thatha continued, Perhaps the people who called you need to urgently go to the airport or railway station, and must be waiting for you. They must be getting late. Who is responsible if they miss their flight or train? Shouldn’t you have taken the full name and address? The auto driver looked more and more sheepish with each sentence spoken by Mama Thatha. When Mama Thatha finished his sermon, the auto driver humbly apologized and fled. He was never seen in Besant Nagar again. Now let’s go back to the hero of this story – Kudmi Thatha. An unforgettable episode happened when they were looking for a suitable bride for Kudmi Thatha’s younger son. Several prospective girls’ families had been visited, but the wedding didn’t materialize for one reason or another. But Kudmi Thatha seemed least perturbed, and the reason was evident. The custom was for the boy’s family to visit the girl’s home so that the elders as well as the young people could meet and discuss matters. On such visits, the girl’s family extended customary hospitality which included mouth-watering snacks such as sweet kesari, bajji, sojji, bonda, vadai, etc. and the best quality South Indian filter coffee. Kudmi Thatha would enjoy the snacks and coffee. On one occasion, immediately after one such visit, Kudmi Thatha suggested that they visit another prospective bride’s family in the vicinity. His family members were shocked at the impropriety of this suggestion. His wife protested, But we have not even discussed our son’s opinion of the girl we just saw. Kudmi Thatha calmly replied, "What is the hurry? Let us have bajji sojji at the other place also, and we can discuss matters at leisure later."

On one such match-making expedition, the party included Kudmi Thatha, his wife, his elder son, daughter-in-law, his niece, and his younger son for whom they were seeking a bride. Except for the niece, both the other ladies were on the plump side. The three men were also fairly well-built six-footers. To save money, Kudmi Thatha wanted all six of them to travel in one autorickshaw (the normal capacity of an autorickshaw is three medium-built people). When the autorickshaw driver refused, Kudmi Thatha put his arm around the driver’s shoulder, took him aside, and tried to negotiate with him, saying, "Arre bhai, yeh chhota hai (hey brother, she is small in size), referring to his slightly-built niece. He conveniently ignored the fact that the remaining members of the party were far from chhota". Kudmi Thatha was nothing if not persistent.

One day, Kudmi Thatha decided to pay us one of his surprise visits. We were not home when Kudmi Thatha landed at our place. If Kudmi Thatha found a house locked, he didn’t think twice before planting himself at the neighbor’s house, regaling the neighbor with his conversation, gladly helping himself to coffee and snacks that the neighbor might offer out of courtesy. This is exactly what he did when he found our house locked. When we returned, a little boy from the neighbor’s family came running and announced, "A Vadhyar (priest) with a vadi (walking stick), kodai (umbrella) and a bag has come". From the boy’s apt description, we could immediately guess who the guest was, even before seeing him.

A visit by Kudmi Thatha was always a source of great entertainment, especially to us children. The only person who did not enjoy Kudmi Thatha’s visits to our home was our cat Chinnu. Chinnu’s favorite place in the house was the sofa, on which he would majestically sit or lazily stretch himself. When Kudmi Thatha entered our house, Chinnu would immediately jump off the sofa and dart into the bedroom. Kudmi Thatha would seat himself on the sofa and place his bag beside him. He would then take off his upper cloth and his jibba and spread them on the backrest of the sofa. Next, he would point to the ceiling fan and make a spinning motion with his finger, indicating that he would like the fan to be switched on. Kudmi Thatha’s visit would usually extend into the following day. As long as Kudmi Thatha was in the house, Chinnu would remain in his hiding place. But the moment Kudmi Thatha took his leave Chinnu would emerge from under the bed and come running to reclaim his sofa. He would disapprovingly sniff all over the sofa for a long time (perhaps he could smell traces of Kudmi Thatha’s ‘scent’ and obviously didn’t like it) before settling down.

There is an old custom in some parts of India of giving up some item of food following a pilgrimage to the holy city of Kashi (Varanasi). The spiritual purpose of this is to promote self-control. In reality however, it is common for people to try and cheat God by giving up something that they hate to eat anyway. This way, they kill two birds with one stone – they hope to earn punya (spiritual merit), and at the same time, gain a respectable excuse to avoid eating the hated stuff. True to tradition, Kudmi Thatha too had given up something after a pilgrimage to Kashi. In his case, the item given up was parikkai or bitter gourd. I suspect it is no mere coincidence that the poor parikkai is the preferred candidate of most people for this ‘self-sacrifice’. In Kudmi Thatha’s case, it wasn’t really a giving up, because he disliked the bitter vegetable and never used to eat it anyway, even before his pilgrimage to Kashi.

Once we had invited a number of guests to our house for a festival lunch. The lunch was served on banana leaves. The lunch menu included sweet payasam, vadai, several varieties of vegetable dishes, sambhar, rasam and curds. Kudmi Thatha loved a hearty meal. While enjoying his second helping of sambhar, he happened to overhear his wife (who was serving the sambhar) telling another guest, "Isn’t the parikkai sambhar heavenly? The next moment, all hell broke loose. Phoo, thoo, Kudmi Thatha started spitting out the contents of his mouth. Some people thought he had accidentally swallowed his dentures. Someone helpfully slapped his back hard to dislodge it from his throat. But presently they realized that the problem was something else. You stupid woman, Kudmi Thatha scolded his wife, don’t you know I have given up parikkai at Kashi? How dare you serve me parikkai? Now I will have to go back all the way to Kashi and give it up all over again!" In the hustle-bustle of the festival and the guests, the poor lady had forgotten about her husband’s vow to avoid parikkai.

Kudmi Thatha loved pappadam with his meals. However, at his home, it was only on rare occasions (such as when there were guests for lunch) that there would be pappadam. While having lunch with the guests, Kudmi Thatha would loudly press them to have more pappadam. Every time one of the guests agreed, Kudmi Thatha would quietly take a pappadam for himself too, ostensibly just to give the guest company.

Bombay’s local trains can be so crowded that at times, even to get a little space to stand can be a challenge, let alone getting a seat. Never one to be deterred by an adversity, Kudmi Thatha was not only a regular traveler on local trains, but usually managed to get a seat too. We could never figure out how he managed this, till an eye-witness who once happened to be on the same train as Kudmi Thatha discovered the secret. As mentioned earlier, one of Kudmi Thatha’s professions was drama artiste. And clearly, the witness acknowledged, he was no mean actor. This witness saw Kudmi Thatha standing in the train next to the seated passengers and shivering. Naturally, some of the passengers, seeing an elderly man visibly shivering, made concerned inquiries. Kudmi Thatha told them in a quivering voice that he had a high fever. Next moment, he was offered a seat. Perhaps the other passengers did not notice, but the eye-witness (who knew Kudmi Thatha’s ways) observed that Kudmi Thatha stopped shivering the moment he got a seat, and engaged in hearty conversation with his fellow passengers. Not only that, he even whole-heartedly joined in a game of cards that some passengers were playing.

Kudmi Thatha’s late father-in-law had been a station master with the railways. That was ages back, during the days when the British ruled India. Kudmi Thatha was of the firm conviction that this entitled him and his family and their future generations to free train travel for life. He wasn’t one of those who believed in purchasing a ticket before traveling. On a few occasions, when he was asked to show his ticket by the ticket-checker, he explained in a smattering of English to impress the official, Father-in-law station master!

There is no denying Kudmi Thatha’s popularity with the masses, but he also had a rather exalted opinion of his own popularity. According to him, I don’t know anybody, but everybody knows me. The slightest acquaintance – like the ones you make at a wedding with a thousand guests, where a perfect stranger, on being introduced by a common friend, casually remarks purely out of politeness that we must meet sometime – was sufficient for Kudmi Thatha to land up unannounced at the home of that stranger-no-longer to bestow the privilege of hosting him for coffee and snacks, followed by dinner. The visit usually would be extended into an overnight stay and breakfast the next morning. According to Kudmi Thatha, wherever he went, people who had heard about him (and who hadn’t?) were falling at his feet and begging him to grace their abodes with his visit.

Kudmi Thatha’s bag was full of dog-eared pages torn out of notebooks, with horoscopes of marriageable boys and girls. Kudmi Thatha fancied himself as a celebrated astrologer and matchmaking-consultant. During his travels, whenever he came across anybody with a son or daughter of marriageable age, he would ask them for their child’s jadagam (horoscope). Then he would proceed to dig into his bag to find a matching horoscope. He would spend a considerable amount of time muttering to himself and making complex mathematical calculations on a scrap of paper. The prospective bride or groom’s family, greatly impressed, would watch him with awe in pin-drop silence, afraid of disturbing the great astrologer. The lady of the house would place another tumbler of hot filter-coffee before him, taking care not to make the slightest noise as she set the tumbler down. Half-an-hour and two tumblers of coffee later, Kudmi Thatha would hand over a couple of horoscopes to them saying, These match very well with your child’s horoscope. The families are known to me. [in Kudmi Thatha’s opinion, the fact that a family was ‘known to him’ was ample testimony to their respectability and status in society]. Go ahead and fix the wedding – you have my blessings. The grateful parents would press Kudmi Thatha to stay for lunch, after which he would take his leave.

However, when the parents would contact the family recommended by Kudmi Thatha, more often than not, they would find that the young man or lady recommended by Kudmi Thatha was already happily married a year or two earlier and even had a baby now. You see, just as some people collect stamps or coins, Kudmi Thatha had a hobby of collecting horoscopes. Once a horoscope entered his collection, it usually stayed there. He never bothered to discard a horoscope once the person got married.

To be fair to Kudmi Thatha, in many cases, he had no way of even knowing when the status of a candidate, whose horoscope he carried in his bag, changed from ‘single’ to ‘married’ because, given his reputation as an astrologer, he received many horoscopes from far and wide from people he barely knew. Every once in a while, some lady who had been actively looking for a match for her daughter would have built up quite a collection of horoscopes of eligible bachelors. After a two-year long search, the girl would finally get married and the mother would be left with a sizeable collection of horoscopes of marriageable young men. The well-intentioned mother would think to herself, "By the grace of the Almighty, my daughter