I was reading a small write-up by a friend colleague on the Mirabilis jalapa and it set me on a long trip backwards in time. I simply love this flower, and for simple reasons. I say this with nostalgia.
My paatti's tiny patch of garden in our native village turned into a riot of colours painted by the blooming Mirabilis jalapa or 'anthi mantharai' (அந்தி மந்தாரை) flowers as they call them in Tamil. 'Anthi' is dusk in Tamil and naturally, the flowers bloomed only at dusk. I would crush the flowers to dye my nails a shocking magenta. Sometimes, I would rub them on a teeny-weeny area of the perfectly whitewashed garden wall and watch it go pink with childish glee. The flowers, leaves and seeds were essential food items in my choppu vilaiyaattu (சொப்பு விளையாட்டு). The seeds looked just like black pepper, but slightly bigger in size. If only I had known then that the flowers were edible!
The stalks of the flowers were long and paatti would interweave
the stalks to make several colourful flower bunches. No, they weren't
supposed to be worn on your hair. So, chittappa would help me adorn the
calendar gods with the magenta and yellow bunches.
Calendar gods are an inseparable element of middle class Tamil households. One never bought calendars, you received them as a gift for your unswerving loyalty to the local naadar kadai or your area Bata shoe shop. One picture of each god in the Hindu pantheon adorned the wall like patchwork, not just in the puja room but in all spots where you could drive in a sturdy nail. The gods were depicted in hues ranging from mittai pink to parrot green to turmeric yellow, adding colour to otherwise mundane routines in the household.
When the walls were whitewashed around Pongal, the calendar gods might go missing from action for a few hours, but they will soon return to their spots and continue to bless the household with good health and longevity, and offer protection from imminent disaster. The emotional connect between the inmates and the calendar gods was deep and profound that they were handed down over the generations and were sort of a heirloom. Each year, one or more gods will join the already existing pantheon, but the walls never ran out of space for these divine guests of honour.
So, you can imagine my plight when I tried to revamp the home. It took the whole of my rational and logical mind to come up with the right kind of arguments.
That the calendar gods reside only on the walls of the living room and not the puja room does not mean that they will not be included in the family rituals. Whenever a puja is done, the camphor arathi will be done both to the gods in the puja room and the calendar gods. In some households, the calendar gods will be framed and deified in the puja room.
