Chapter 1: Milk

In many ways, I suppose, it all begins with milk. The Creator in the Ksheerasagaram. The first thing a newborn tastes. The gleaming, steaming richness in the copper-bottom paathram on the stove, all set for making a fresh tumbler of filter coffee as the Suprabhatam wafts through the courtyard at dawn. 

1980s, Madurai, Tamil Nadu. The family collects milk each morning in glass bottles at the booth. Everyone does. They wash their bottles and bring them back for the next day’s milk. They each get a hole punched through a monthly paper ticket for a tally. 

To them, this creased, semi-transparent, inside-out Aavin packet is from the future. But why was it preserved, pressed away between thick folders of papers, to be found years later? No one knows. 

Blue cow and her calf
Stamped, packeted in plastic
Turned all inside out.

Chapter 2: Oblique

‘Vandi enga kalambarthu?’ Where’s the vehicle off to?

In this family, they never ask someone who’s stepping out of the house (it’s usually the men who leave and return as they please) where they’re headed. They’re not supposed to, lest the purpose gets jinxed and the trip goes sideways. The grandchildren, who’ll appear a little later in this tale, will overcome their dependence on this direct expression of curiosity through a great deal of chiding. The women skirt the taboo expertly; they ask instead: where’s the vehicle going?

Shree Angalamman Corporation. Ramesh Motor Pumps (watermark). The handwriting is undecipherable, but the vehicle has definitely gone to purchase these mysterious hardware things for the sum of 2035 rupees on 13th February (year obscure).

Chapter 3: So where’s this Vandi going?

During the pandemic, my Amma and Uncle bring home bags full of my grandfather’s important documents from the village that were stashed away in his desk amidst countless bills, wedding invites and railway tickets. They irritably shred everything they deem to be trash, while I sit with them and amass as much as I can of the treasure. Thus springs Project Kuppai, and the journey of investigating and curating these torn scraps as relics of a lived lifetime.

This particular trip takes a closer look at scraps that are records evidencing a transaction of materials that have long since passed from being. Often, these records are no more than simple pieces of paper, repurposed, twice-folded and carried in the shirt pocket. Occasionally, they’re an elaborate exercise in resource planning spread across register pages, complete with columns drawn with ‘scales’ and a treat of unrepeatable cursive handwritten Tamizh. Each time, they are remnants of a family’s history that paint a portrait of an era’s patterns of home-making, food-making, errand-running and celebrating, and of aspirations. On several bills, tiny gods grace the corners.

Sri Ann-

Arumugam-

56-A, Thandaraampattu Road

Credit Bill CASH

Supermarket purchase bill from 2000. Marie biscuits, white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, white soya beans, Annapurana Atta 1 KG and Nul (thread) Big. All of this for Rs. 74.50. Stamped with red ink.The footer reads, Vaazhga Valamudan (Live with prosperity), Thank You Visit Again, your smile is our best return.

Chapter 4: Milk, extended

Persistences abound. Things form, unform and transform. The old cotton saree becomes a thooli—a cradle of cloth—and then a carpet for rice vadaams to dry in the blazing summer sun. Milk turns to curd turns to buttermilk turns to butter turns to ghee. The entire house smells of vettelai, betel leaves as they are fried in this ghee. The neii now carries the tingling undertaste of vettelai, and the children clamour to munch on the crispy vettalai leaves soaking with neii.

Chapter 5: Kitchen Lists

This page, stained and yellowing, was likely torn from little notepads printed by brands, like Sanmar Financial, in this case. On the left, quantities of items in grams, kilograms and kattu (bundle, like for greens).

Overleaf, the list continues: Beans — 8 kg. Pudalangaai (Snake Gourd) — Senai (Elephant foot yam). Sembu (Taro root). Pooshanikkaai Periyathu. Mihasiriyathu. Parangikkaai. Vaazhakkaai. Avarai.

Vendai (ladies finger). Kudai Milagaai (Capsicum). Thengaai Pe. Thangaai Chi. Pa. Milagaai (Gr. Chillies). Pa. Pattani (Gr. Peas).

The different handwritings on these pages make me wonder if my mother and aunt also wrote things down as my grandma bustled around the kitchen and counted off each ingredient out loud. 

My paati still writes such lists for my thatha. When he gets back from his trip to the grocery store (and the bank, and the post office, and the temple, and the landline office…) she sits at the dining table, cross-checking and meticulously putting a tick mark beside every item successfully procured.

Chapter 6: Kalyaanam

Three children three weddings gold-filigree silk sarees in seventy different shades bustling in all directions thick fragrant garlands hang from each doorway relatives greet each other skirting children zipping about the tubelit halls echoing with a steady sweaty crowded chatter as the nadaswaram belts out traditional tunes broad bright green plantain leaves laid out in rows on gleaming metal tables with the serving teams moving fast as lighting yelling instructions and conveying directions with whips of their head as people sit down be be served their payasams and rice and appalams and varieties of karamadhu while the hosts rush breathlessly about making sure everyone is comfortable and the food is satisfactory of course of course it’s pramaadham, it’s delicious thank you we will see you around please enjoy please eatwellwillseeyousoonokayokay

Isakki amman thunai (Under Goddess Isakki amman’s protection)
Order Form
Veyuthu Kanthaperumaal enra (?)
NATARAJA VILAS
Pushpa Vyabaram (Flower Business)

2001, my aunt’s wedding. The form shows which flowers and which garlands were ordered for the various ceremonies under various headings with tick marks and quantities recorded beside items like 

perumaal maalai (god’s garland)
maappillai maalai (groom’s garland)
kadamba sendu (burflower)      }
malli sendu (jasmine)                 }  7 rolls
mullai sendu (jasmine)               }

Remnants of a table listing ingredients, quantities and prices in preparation for a wedding feast

It turns out that one of these lists was a copy of the other. My mother (who graciously dictated all these scraps to me) cries out, you’re making me read the same things over and over!

National (…cake) (possibly a tricolour sweet)
Rava Laddu (semolina laddu)
Manoppu (a type of murukku)
Omapodi (yellow sev)
Idli
Kuzhambu (sambar)
Jaangiri (sweet)

Scandalised by the impostrous presence of the idli among sweets when read out loud, my parents try and speculate what this might have been a list for—perhaps a special ritual combination for the groom?

Chapter 7: Worship

Ambika suttamaana karpooram (Ambika pure camphor)

Sri M Flower Merchant’s card or catalogue with a pillaiyar with seven lamps in the corner

The divine scent of camphor aflame and the clanging of a thin metal aarathi bell are inseparable in my memory. Other times, an animated chant to remove the evil eye accompanies the blazing tablet of karpooram, which is placed on a flat metal spoon and circled around one’s head. Garlands of jasmine and roses with long stems adorn the shrine of the gods at home, while printed gods grace the corners of bills, catalogues and business cards.

Chapter 8: Kids and Spices

When the grandchildren are little, they are fondly nicknamed molagu, kadugu, kasakasa—black pepper, mustard seed, poppy seed—in size order. Little round, naughty things that roll about untrammelled. 

Do not let the innocuous kitchen lists fool you—the memorised phonetic litany of spices that rolled off tongues and lent kids cute monikers often served other non-culinary purposes. The black pepper seeds were boiled in sesame oil along with powdered turmeric to give babies oiled head baths that would improve our immunity—weekly events that proved loud, torturous, and long-winding for everyone involved. 

And yet, on the nights our noses were stuffy with cold, the comforting warmth of tingling golden turmeric-and-black pepper milk would soothe us to instant sleep.

In Tamil, the pulli (dot) removes the inherent vowel from any consonant—and as seen in the last two items, some write it as dots, and some as little circles. I’m not sure what is listed, but I do love the sincere decimal points and the double zeroes at the end of each price figure.

Again: the attendant dashes after the prices, ensuring that no additional digit can be added, has my heart.

These days, the family does something novel and, to the unbiased observer, hilarious. The grandma grabs the long, curled-up thermal paper bill from the supermarket and straightens it out on the tabletop. The daughter grabs her phone and opens the Amazon app. They then compare the prices of every pulse and every vegetable on both, going back and forth in a breakneck exchange that might, to the uninitiated, sound just as bewildering as Morse code.

Chapter 10: Return

(Medica)l Reports. Medicine Prescriptions. (Medi)cal Bills.

Ticked items on a likely more recent paper. 

Milagu 
Seerakam
Venthayam
Javvarisi
Mundhiri (Cashew)
Draakshai
(Ba)dam

In this family, one doesn’t say, I’m leaving. One says, poittu varen. I’ll go and come back. 

Things went back to normal after the pandemic, and we still visit Paati and Thatha in our hometown. They still make grocery lists and to-do lists and tick off each accomplishment. Thatha still brings home and leaves present-day bills on his desk to collect dust and the enchanting gravity of time. Mother still rails at them for keeping these odds and ends lying around. I still grab any and all quirky-looking receipts I can lay my hands on, trying to preserve that which is perishable for posterity (or, at least, a bit longer than its shelf life).

Why? they ask me. What sense does it make? they laugh, shaking their heads.

And yet, when we leave, we all use this beautiful, senseless innate oxymoron: coming.

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Jayasri Sridhar is a filmmaker, designer and writer based in Bangalore. Having studied Film and Video Communication from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, she is presently setting up her own multidisciplinary studio. In her creative practice, she explores diverse themes including language, gender, ecology and more-than-human perspectives. She’s also an avid reader and Hindustani classical musician who loves collaboration, gardening, learning and travelling.