1998.
How harmonious and stately life is when everyone sits down to lunch or dinner at the same time. It can be very simple. At purasawalkam it is not fancy, but plain. There is a table in a corner of the living room. Punctually at 8 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon and either 7:30 or 8 in the evening - everyone sits down to a meal.
The boys sit in a row on the floor. Mr. K. sometimes eats in the kitchen. Hot things come out of the kitchen. I've had food like this before, but meals never had this kind of elegance and stateliness to them. This is new and wonderful.
Mrs. M. makes the best idlis. Breakfast is my favourite meal. But even before breakfast there is coffee. Early in the morning, I get up, at six or six thirty. And I sit on the terrace in my folding canvas chair, listening to my walkman, playing over the discs of the previous day's lesson. That's when it really sinks in. Only when I re-listen to a lesson do I understand all the mistakes. Early in the morning there are birds that go flapping across the sky. Purasawalkam is a busy area but at that hour it feels so serene. I can see trees everywhere. How different from SF. But then I like my SF life very much as well.
Early in the morning when I am sitting the air that has a slight chill to it, Mrs. M. brings me up a tumbler of fresh hot coffee. As always, my conversation with all family members is stiff and formal. I always say the same predictable thing: "how is your health?" and make 1 or 2 sentences of conversation.
These tiny little luxuries. In SF, I live alone, and go down to the cafe at the corner and stand in line for my morning coffee. No one brings me anything and I am fine and wouldn't have it any other way. But this is luxury. All this attention.
At mealtime I feel as thought I am at a court. So many different ages. From 80 to to 40 to 20s to teens to little children aged 2. The entire spectrum. It seems so courtly: these grand retinues, overflowing everywhere. And the children and the young people despite their high spirits and desire to laugh at everything behaving with such propriety. No that's the wrong word, it sounds too prim and narrowminded. I mean natural good-manners. They may not have much money, they may not even have jobs, but when they all sit down to dinner I feel they behave with such class and dignity ... there is just a wonderful sense of correctness and propriety to everything. I like this formality. It is so elegant.
