Raniamma, the meenkari

 Raniamma sold Fish in Madras until her death, this morning. I had booked tickets for her to visit us on the 18th of October, since it was Purattasi and no business, my chitti (her daughter) thought they'd pay us a visit, it perhaps also to get away from the scorching heat of Madras.

I had promised her that I'll visit her in a month when she last visited us in May for a family function. When I picked up that morning from the station, I was exactly waiting at her compartment. She got down and held my hand like a baby, she found the metro ride amusing and said that she had not taken the metro in Chennai yet. 

The brash women who used to put a (necessary) fight at the shores of Kaasimedu and Ambattur meenkadai was Raniamma, the meenkari who held my hands along the platform to the metro. She spoke a lot this time, one of topics was to get married while she was alive and while she has the sight for it. I told her to find an alliance, a girl who sold Fish like her, she laughed at me and moved on. 

Raniamma used to have motion sickness while she travelled long distance. My memory of her in Bangalore was the image of a (very) puny (very) dark delicate body lying down after puking several times. She would momentarily snap back to the ongoing conversation around her when someone lamely blamed her for something and go back to the same posture after making her statement. But this fight is not a Kaasimedu equivalent, this was a typical mother's emotional black mail fights.  

She was old but on her legs selling fish until now.  I feel like I lost the only relationship in Chennai after her death she was the last living person from my grand parents generation. My father constantly told me, 'Raniamma romba nallavunga' avangala marakka koodadhu and would narrate a sequence from the past about a rough patch in his life, and about the love and respect they showered on him in his times of severe poverty. Since then he had immense respect to this family of Raniamma and her sisters until his death.

The only relative that would remind me of Chennai is Raniamma's house which ceased to exist today. I was wanting to write about her since long but this writing only came to pass with her death. 

Raniamma was not a godly women, her mother Paatu was. She wouldn't go to church when asked about that, she would sharply respond with "appo Vyabaram?" She would smirk away the "Kadavul Pathupparu" remark. She recollected with laughter the person who works in Radha theater in korattur regularly buys fish from her and insists that she once watch a movie there she ended with 'Kadaiya yaar di patuppanga'. I only wish that I sat with her and watched Mannadi Mannan the last time she came home but I rushed myself to work. 

I don't know who will look after the Kadai now that she's gone for good.