Caged in a matchbox apartment, I pine for the pyol

In our village, doors of our houses are opened in the morning and closed only in the night when the last family member wants to go to bed. However, in flats, doors are opened only for the limited purpose of allowing individuals to get in or go out. On other occasions, it is always closed and only doormats welcome the visitors. When I wanted to keep the entrance door of our flat open during the day, I was advised against it as it intrudes into the privacy of fellow flat dweller as our living room starts in the entrance itself. I now obey the dictates of society.

When I recall the matter, the t hinnai (in Tamil or pyol) in our house provided the necessary ind ependence as well as privacy. In fact, thinnai was our drawing room and our sofa, where the guests were asked to sit. If the visitor was my father's acquaintance, he only will come out of the house and chat with the guest. Others will say vaanga (Please come in ) and will continue to do their normal work without bothering about the guest. Occasionally, coffee used to be offered to him if he came at coffee time.

The

thinnai was also used by me to chat with my classmates who came for discussion about our lessons. It was also used as a table for doing homework in which case we used to stand on the street and complete the work. Our parents seldom used to bother about our presence except occasional enquiries about my classmate's family members.

The

thinnai was also the place where my mother used to sit and get her buttermilk from the moreaachi (buttermilk women) or negotiate the prices of vegetables with vendors who were bringing them as headloads or in bicycles. And it is in the thinnai she used to gossip with her neighbours without crossing the borders and without which her day was not complete. As people sitting in thinnai were watching everybody including strangers (to them) who were walking in the street, no intruder with criminal intent could afford to venture into the homes.

As our house was a two-room tenement with a kitchen and a living-cum-bedroom, I and my younger brother converted the thinnai into a bed as the neem tree in front of our house provided AC comfort. My neighbourhood boys will occupy their thinnais and we used to chat in nights about everything that invariably included information about films and their heroes. Such chats, if extended beyond tolerable hours, would get reprimands from our respective mothers who used to shout at us for disturbing their sleep with our noises. My father used to join us in thinnai bedroom if guests came; in which case, the men will sleep in the thinnai as well as that of that of our neighbours.

During festivities like Deepavali, we can watch the lighting of firecrackers from the comfort of our

thinnai at the cost of others or vice versa. I used a

dana kampi a cheaper method of cracking and creating sounds. It was an L shaped iron instrument in which there was a cavity at the lower end. We used to fill raw gun powder in the cavity and close the same with the other end and hit the gunpowder end at the

thinnai wall and enjoy the sound. Of course the

dana kam pi model was banned later for security reasons.

If chapparam , a mini chariot in which the local temple deity or a photograph of Lord Nataraja used to be carried by four persons who used two big logs for the purpose, was scheduled to visit our street for different festivals, we used to wait in the thinnai for the chapparam . When it enters our street, we would alert our mother and others to come out to enable us to worship the visiting deity offering coconut, bananas, betel leaves, arecanut, camphor, agar bathi and flowers.

Now in a flat, I cannot take these liberties. Even if I want to squat in the floor, my neighbours may call me nuts.

(The writer's email is: muthu.pe@gmail.com)