mOthER's reCIpe

For me, It was one of the places where i thought i would never see a calendar..

Okay...its rite that the heads of my home are bankers, an that we have a huge roll of bank calendars at our store room throughout the year.But these still doesn’t measure up being a good reason to hang @ the work area near the back door entry.

Confoosed me yelled: "Ammo why the calendar here??"

"See it closely and try to find if theres something more in it.."

Phew..these bank calenders..they r dullest date indicators u will ever see...Its true tat a 100yr old PSU cant be a Pirelli..but still a bit of bright colours may not harm anyone...aaahh its tuf to change traditions..so better live with it..

i started lookin closer over the boring blue calendar..voila.. some bright red badly drawn round reynold circles..the month was December and there were 2 spots on the page..

"ammo..gotcha dots on some dates.."

"Eda Midukkaaa.." that was quite satisfying; mom atlast thought that there was something more than just vaccum inside ma cranium!! See the prev months too..

Loaded with the encouragement meted on my first discovery, i moved on to the previous pages..this time more dots..dot tally went this way: aug-6 sept-3 oct-2 nov-3 dec-2 till 30^th..

Amma wats the correlation..is it the days the milk didn’t come??

Allada.. Its my recipe of bringing discipline in kitchen??

Ehh??

"Da.. our shyamala was not the way she now is... (Mrs. Shyamala is ammas most trusted and beloved homemaid)..tre was a time (pre august) when she was regularly irregular @ our kitchen!! AWOL!! Tre was one month..hmmaugust or july..i dont clearly remember, she was on AWOL for a complete 12 days..another month of the pre aug era recorded AWOL of 8 days!!"

Why didn’t you change her then??

"da, she is highly capable and is real good. She had been of gr8 help when ammomma was ailing..so may seem unprincipled to push her out..Maybe she too knew tat and was taking full advantage of my softer side..i had communicated ma displeasure many a times..but she gives me the broadest of smile and gives her own set of perfect heart wrenching excuses.."

Salary cuts??

"Da another impossibility!! she earns so little that it would be the greatest crime to extract from her minimums.."

Then??

"One day, after deep thoughts, i decided to wrest control of this deepening crisis...i plainly said shyamala that her attendance is a big concern and i would start monitoring it  for a period of 3 months...If you return red (a count of ≥12 AWOLs a quarter) after the period, the fourth month u are free to find ur alternatives..
And without much halla bol introduced the calendar system...the calendar was hung just at her entry point...@ the kitchen work area...Whenever she doesn’t turn up, I mark a red circle for the day and refrains saying a word about it..After finding two red dots on two of her AWOLs she realised whats the funda of a nue calendar @ the kitchen..."

and then??

Thereafter shyamala was on a complete makeover...the dots started slowly drying up...

3 months on, the once maddeningly red shyamala turned sublimely green!!"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amma was euphoric!! she never xpected such an extraordinary upshot.. The idea worked!!...

The success made amma think hard against killing the scheme...and she thot why not persist 4 another 3 months.. So the system still runs with results much on expected lines!!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Ammo grt... quintessential gandhigiri! But Ammo, tell me, wat wud have happened if she was in red @ the end of the quarter??...”

“Don’t know abt that...but I was confident that calendar scheme can change things up...”

How??

“Cos, scare crows’ works most often!!”

All i could muster to say was...ammae saranam!!