మడి నన్ను తాకకు : నన్ను తాకాడు బట్టలు విప్పమను

There are many intriguing aspects of childhood which take many years to be resolved.....some basic doubts which never ever get cleared....some may sound very elementary...but needed serious ..Newtonian type of investigations...I was as such an intriguing character(in the eyes of my elders)..who was always intrigued by simple things of life.....

Growing up in a huge house hold as part of a joint family was fun....at least as it seems to me now..many decades later....but in those days it was intriguing.....i wondered why ..many a times....but i never got a satisfactory answer.....one reason perhaps could be that in a nuclear family , one could have at the best a sister or a brother and then a yawning gap ...between the kids and the parents....not a gap exactly a chasm ....or an abyss .

In a joint family in which i had the fortune of growing up with my two less than dozen uncles and aunts....the range was quite wide....the youngest uncle himself being barely five years elder to me........ for one who is my father's youngest brother i often found him to be a friend most times ....a competitor some times and once a while when things were hot ..he would turn a 'Brutus' and give me up to the elders ...when accusing fingers of blame were pointed at him for pranks played by me.....we had aunts and uncles each quite methodically sequenced ranging from an year to two....all in all a nice bunch......

If living in a joint family was itself interesting in many ways .....being raised in an orthodox Brahmin's family was yet another aspect which made the whole experience wholesome and subject to frequent Newtonian investigations.....
I am blessed (or otherwise) with a sharp memory .... something that amazes me...some snaps of childhood memories when I narrate to my mother she would say "no way you could remember that ..you were just two years old".....either i must have have had good memory or must be figments of my imagination...but i do have bits and pieces of what happened from my earliest days.......
there was this intriguing thing about my mom and grand ma......in the morning we would all wake up to my moms ...melodious voice singing ...(a fantastic experience that i cherish to this day) ...there after our customary breakfast of left overs of previous day....generally rice mixed with gongoora ....aavakaya pickle...followed by a good bath for me....and then she would disappear in to the bath room ....as i would be playing with my aunts....I preferred them to my uncles....for the simple reason.. each time i bumped in to an uncle...he would ask me to recite the multiplication tables ....aunts were that way better....nice to look at in their colorful half Sarees... and long black plaited hairs......also I realised they were easier prey for my antics.

So my mom when she came out from the bath...would always appear in wet Saree..water dripping all over and lock her self up to change in to dry clothes...something i used to wonder why...for one who always insisted that i was wiped dry with a towel after a bath... she would always emerge completely dripping....there after ...there was this inexplicable CURFEW on me....something that i never understood for many years........I wasn't allowed to touch my mom..... since I was used to playing hide and seek , and touch me if you can type of games with my aunts...i took it for granted that my mom was playing this game too. As i tried to touch her she would squirm and run away from me.....and me trying to catch her whenever she came out of kitchen....this game i used to play..often....initially as a toddler ....i could never succeed to catch up with my mom...but as my muscles got stronger...i was becoming a real threat...so just about when i was about to touch my mom....i would be whisked away by soft hands of an aunt or lifted by the scruff of my neck literally by gruff hands of an uncle.....but that enigma remained why i couldn't touch her.....after few hours when my grandma was served food ...my mom would have done here Pooja...which was highlighted by the sequential distribution of prasadam.....I seemed to have again gained my libertyof touching her.....for then when i chased her she wouldn't run..but instead take me into her arms..and kiss me...she seemed to have been some how been "switched off" from something...this thing continued.
Soon enough a few more years were added to me....అండ్ from a bubbly young kissable baby boy I turned out being labeled as a brat...a veritable villain troubling my mom....during the hours of curfew which i explained before ..one day i caught up with my mom ..and touched her....my vigilant granny ..who was always there to watch the proceedings..shouted ...he touched you .. he touched ...for the first time the smile was gone from my moms face....she went in to the bath room again to reemerge fully dripping in a wet Saree and changed her clothes...this time around I was quite sternly told not to touch my mom ..else i would be beaten black and blue...a fearful warning from my unfriendly Granny...she shouted at me మీఅమ్మ ..మడి కట్టు కుంది ముట్టు కోకు . I was told in plain English that i was forbidden to touch my ..mom as she was in madi...some thing that i never ever understood for many years...that whatever the reasons assigned ..why she must bathe again if i touched her once....of course the brat i was I never gave up..i troubled my mom any number of times ..by touching her.....most times i got away as i scooted but some times i got the beating of my life from my grandmother or an angry uncle who felt i was troubling her....

As if this wasn't enough....each of my aunts would peculiarly play out at least as it seemed to me then, a once in a month game..with us all.... once a while they would indicate to my mom that something happened to them and they would for next three days seem to be in a quarantine of sorts...they could neither touch anyone nor allowed to be touched.....this they did for three precise days a count of which they kept qute vocally..(ocassionally my dad would ask how many dasy passed ..first ..or second or third day)....then again..the little naughty fellow I was again....would come out with all questions..mostly...uncomfortable to them...again no satisfactory answer was ever given for this quarantine....in all my endeavours to play this game of touching them......i realised the end result was different....this time I would be at the receiving end. Each time i touched my aunt or mom when they were in this enigmatic quarantine...I was hunted like never before by that person....put under a running tap of cold bath...deprived of my clothes...and sent walking back in my birthday suit.......a quite an unpleasant experience from the touching game when i played with my mom when she was in...madi.....this was pay back time it seemed....if by any chance if i was i touched somebody else before i was caught they seemed to suffer from the same fate....it was some kind of a relay..if they were kids of my age they were chased down ...if they were elders they quietly volunteered to go take a bath and changed clothes...when all this drama took place ...the chief conductor of who was touched and who took a bath was my granny....i realised at times when i touched and they were not observed by the granny ...our actions were connived..as if nothing happened.....at timeswhen my aunts or mom were quarantined ..my aunts would shout at me...నన్ను తాకకు రా నేను బయట ఉన్నా ....I for one never realised what this whole intriguing thing was all about ..of ..madi and this strange quarantine that these young ladies were put to.....OCCASIONALLY THE NEWTON IN ME WOULD ASK THOUGH WHY MY GRAND MA WAS NOT SUBJECTED TO THIS MONTHLY QUARANTINE... which i prayed for vainly....