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I have a strong feeling that I am a mutant. Not the Ninja variety. No, the kind of being who is one of a kind. Being the last sibling does not help either. My mother just gave up by the time I was made, I think. You see I was the token girl who was needed to fulfill her duties after three boys. So, she had run through the gamut of good wishes and blessings of the good fairies by the time I arrived on the scene.

My siblings are the repositories of varied talents. One brother is good at languages, understands philosophers and can sell sand to the Arabs. The next one can recognize any raga, open up assorted range of machines, put it together beautifully and have it running like a dream even after a few parts have been left out while reassembling. The apple of my mother's eye can sing, dance, play different kinds of competitive sport, crack PJ's and yet make money.

I didn't fit the mould. Music was one of those talents that is a prerequisite for marriage in South India. A master was found who managed to barely instill the basic seven notes before he discovered other nightingales in the family, including my mother, and diplomatically shifted his interests forthwith. Another teacher, a neighbour, placed my fingers on a veena and said play. One wheeze, two coughs and a bout of pneumonia put paid to my ambitions to play a musical instrument. The final attempt at making me musically savvy ended in my Bhagavathar declaring that I had only the qualities of a rigid stick, incapable of trilling or rolling my voice to emit sounds in the correct pitch. I ended my singing career with a back seat in a chorus Bhajan that I attended, once in a blue moon, with my Preceptor declaring the day of my attendance as a comic interlude to their serious singing classes.

Next it was dancing. The chance came up when our neighbour's daughters were packed of three times a week to learn from a master nonpareil, the twists and twirls of Kathak. My lessons were soon over when I came home with a torn ligament in my ankles after a go at one of those interminable pirouettes. A few years later, learning Barathanatyam from a Sindhi teacher, I was discovered to have two left legs and a neck stiffened with Spondylosis. The teacher, of course, greatly benefited from my mother's expertise, translation and interpretation of the Tamil Padams that added luster to her informed performances. A long summer holiday, just after my high school exams, my mother decided I should be suitably occupied and packed me off to sewing classes. I started with a child's underpants. The cloth was bought. Lace, elastic, sewing thread, thimble, needles, scale, inch tape, tailor's chalk and carbon paper, tracing wheel, sheets of brown paper, pinking shears and two scissors of different sizes were all placed in a suitable plastic box. A long one-side rule notebook and a jazzy bag to carry all this paraphernalia to the classes was purchased. The classes were held twice a week and the fallout were the lovely table cloth on my mom's dining table, the Formica on my study table gouged beyond repair with my attacks with the various sewing implements and meters of cloth that refused to take the shape of a baby's underpants. Not for want of my trying, mind you, but this was a stitch that saved none. It was just that the summer was too short for me to learn how to sew. The only benefit of these classes was that my grandmother got herself a lovely long notebook to write her Sri Rama Jayam, the family an inch tape to measure and monitor the heights of the siblings and my brothers inherited the scissors to make kites, cut their toe nails etc.

My mother was not one to give up. So began an onslaught of skills to learn, things to do. Crochet, knitting, tatting, embroidery, cross stitch, Sindhi stitch, needle point-the list was endless. Flower arrangement and Origami were the last ditch efforts to make me suitably equipped to face the wide world of in-law-dom. In all, this the only thing I managed to learn was the bus routes to various parts of Mumbai and the by lanes of Kaboothar Khana, the market for raw supplies for craft aspirants.

I must say that my brothers were more successful in teaching me stuff. One wallop on my back gave me the balance and confidence to ride a bike. A few dents, yells and threats of boiling oil later I was in a position to put on the handbrake in the face of an oncoming heavy vehicle while pretending to drive a car. Fuses, nail and screwdriver skills were imparted with a few clouts on my head. Violent perhaps, but definitely more successful as teachers.

My husband entered the scene and willy-nilly I had to cook. With my wonderful inborn talents it took me months to get the salt content more or else right. Sambhar ended up looking like rasam and boiled rice was fit to stick cinema posters. Mysorepaks needed pile drivers to pulverise and gulab jamuns looked like fossil fuel, aka coal. Chapathis took on interesting contours and curves and my idlis were terrific implements to shoo away stray crows and dogs. Chilli, tamarind and masala became creative condiments acquiring new and unidentifiable tastes and flavours. Today my husband eats boiled vegetables, kichdi and plain dal that I have managed to perfect over the years. Any polite compliments from visitors are redirected to him with the explanation that my skills are entirely due to him. By his dining chair criticism, I mean.

Finally, what I learnt from my father was the use of words--hey, not the four letter ones. He was the one who equipped me with the deadly weapons of dictionary and thesaurus. Apropos language, I was introduced to the facility and appropriateness of the choice of a string of multiple adjectives and adverbs that embellished and added colour, verbosity and bombast to my already acquired ability to (ab)use vocabulary in the art of managing to convey very little through an intricate composition of high sounding, alliterative, compound sentences. I am sure you can recognize my expertise, though my word processor is going berserk underlining words and sentences in various hues, whatever my attempts to key in 'ignore'. My computer skills. Ah, that's another story for another day.

Credits

• Editing : Reeta Sinha