The Chair / Class 12 State Board / Prose Chapter 5/ Tamil Explanation

Опубликовано: 22 Июнь 2025
на канале: English Abaca

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How could you call a house without a chair a home? So it struck all of us in the house the same time. This issue was immediately placed on the agenda for family discussion.

Just the day before we had a family friend visiting us. He was a sub-judge and as our luck would he have it, he came not dressed in veshti and shirt but fully suited and booted. All we had in our house was a three-legged stool, which was itself just three-fourth of a foot high. Our grandmother used to sit on it when she whipped curd. Since our grandmother was a little ‘broad at the bottom’ our grandfather had asked the carpenter to make it a little broader than usual.

For want of any alternative we had requested his good self to take his seat on this three-legged affair. The sub-judge himself was a little thick-set; that caused him to place one hand on the edge of the stool before setting himself down on it . The problem with the stool was that if the weight fell on it not in line with its three legs, it would topple. This we the youngsters of the house had experienced many a time, when we would climb on it silently to steal the Ghee kept in the pot hanging in the chain from the overhead hook. Just as all of us were opening our mouth to warn the sub-judge, he fell with a big thud on the floor and rolled over. I , my younger brother and my kid sister could not help bursting into laughter. We held our sides and ran to the back of the house. More than the spectacle, the predicament of the elders and sight of the them struggling to hold back caused us to laugh breathlessly. Even to this day, my sister would mimic the way the sub-judge walked in and tried to sit on the stool with his one hand pressing down on its edge.

When we finally stepped into the house after laughing ourselves out, neither the stool nor the sub-judge was there. Could he have taken the stool with himself? , asked my little sister very curiously.

After this incident it was immediately resolved that we should get a chair made for our home. The practical difficulty in carrying out this resolve arose from the fact that there was no carpenter in our village and even if there was one, there was no chair that we could model ours upon.

“We could buy one from the town”, suggested my Pethanna (elder brother).

“It would not be sturdy enough”, my father shot it down.

Our Aunt interjected to say that the village nearby had a very good carpenter whose skills even the ‘Governor’ was seen praising, whereupon my mother was seen sneering at her, especially on the second part of her statement.

However my father immediately sent for the carpenter and the discussion soon veered around the wood with which the chair was to be made.

“We have to get it done in teak wood, only then will it be sturdy and also light enough to lift and shift around”, said the grandmother sitting on the floor with running her over hands over her stretched legs as if to gently massage them; her favorite pose.

At this moment, my mother’s brother who could also be my sister’s father-in-law walked in. We called him Father-in-law as he had potential for complex and multiple relationships. Pethanna ran in and brought out the stool for him to sit which triggered peals of laughter all round.

Father-in-law had a particular spot where he chose to sit. He would not change that place for any reason. It was against a corner pillar close to the kitchen of the house. It was his custom to sit with his back to the pillar, untie his tuft of hair, give it and his head a rub, and tie it up again. He would look around himself after this rigmarole whereupon Pethanna would derisively comment that he saw no coins drop off (his tuft).

Thus the Father-in-law was butt of all our jokes but betrayed no emotion that he minded them one bit. Only when we went a little overboard, we would draw the ire of our mother along with her none-too-serious admonitions that generally ended with ‘you donkeys’.

As the Father-in-law took his favorite seat, mother would go scurrying into the kitchen.

Sooner she would bring him butter milk laced with asafoetida , her hand holding the silver tumbler in her characteristic style that father would mimic behind her back, not without some malice and spite. The asafoetida laced butter-milk would make our mouth water.

We always thought that Father-in-law came for this butter-milk in the pretext of visiting us. Such was its taste of the butter milk made from the milk of our cow ; besides it was our considered opinion that he was the stingiest person in the village.

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