I Cannot Remember How We Started Sharing Pottus, It Seems Now that We Always Did
These shops were the domain of women — where we did not mind bumping into unknown women customers, whose opinion was unasked but accepted.
In a childhood marred by passive-aggressiveness and subtle bullying, this pottu exchange gave me an equal footing.
by Lakshmi Krishnakumar N.
ONE OF THE ESSENTIAL RITUALS of an urban Indian childhood was the meeting of cousins during the summer vacations. In my case, all or most of the extended family descended like the heavy monsoon clouds that loomed on the horizon, upon my grandparents’ house in small-town Kerala. However, for most of my early childhood, I had only one other female cousin; this meant, only one other female contemporary whose fashion impositions on me came with the approval seal given by aunts looking fondly at what must have seemed like two sisters playing. Most of our pictures from the 1990s or early 2000s show us — two girls, almost of similar heights, in similar clothes bought for us by our grandmother — wearing plastic bangles, obnoxious beaded earrings, and the ubiquitous pottu — the mark between our eyebrows, which varied from a simple dot of kajal or an elaborately designed sticker. Looking back, these pottus — bindis for the Hindi-speaking population — formed the undercurrents of my relationship with many of my girl cousins and friends. Behind this seemingly simple piece of accessorising lay complex networks and systems of exchange that, though seemingly trivial, was the issue of much consternation for pre-teen girls in my family. This is a small account of the pottu gang of my childhood.
While the origins of the use of the bindi can be, and has been theorised, as a part of the Hindu philosophical and spiritual practices, none of it was of any consequence for the above-mentioned gang which mostly consisted of just me and my cousin, with occasional guest appearances by second cousins and friends. The pottus were the focus of this gang, and every vacation, in addition to the shopping trips to buy fragile white strips of sticker bindis to the nights that we sat on a bed, with our tiny vanity-kits open and sharing comparing each other’s stashes, we would spend hours looking at the designs on the foreheads of the actresses whose photographs adorned the glossy pages of the Malayalam women’s magazines that were littered around the house.
Most of the pottus that we indulged in were the plastic sticker ones. The plain round red or black ones were deemed too simple to be considered in these transactions. What we preferred were the intricate, elaborately designed bindis, most of them in little vertical swirls, and which usually came in multiple colours in the same packet. Some had a matte-feeling to them, some came with a glossy finish, some were just coloured bits of plastic or rubber, some were embellished with tiny rhinestones or miniscule beads; but each was respected and admired in its own right. Only one kind of pottus failed to be graced by our foreheads , the ones which were already falling off from the packets when we bought them — this pointed to weak adhesive; if it doesn’t stick on the packet, it will not stick on our foreheads. This was our only driving yardstick for quality. The age of skin-friendly adhesive hadn’t dawned upon us yet.
Most of the pottus were bought at tiny ‘fancy’ stores in the main shopping streets of Kozhikode. Unlike much of our outings where we were under the supervision of uncles, these afternoon trips to buy clothes or accessories were a solely women and children affair. Rather than depending on someone to drive us, we would take an auto-rickshaw, go to the shops, and spend hours away from the bragging and complaining of the men in the family — men whom we all loved very much, but from whom it was necessary to escape every so often. The afternoon would be spent poring over cloth materials, cheap plastic containers, or occasionally, in a gold jewellery shop. Summers were the times to do this. The two of us — my cousin and I — would wait for the final trip to the ‘fancy’ stores, shops that had glass counters with heavy rings and necklaces glimmering behind them, stores that smelt of beauty creams. Apart from the young men who half flirtatiously slipped bangles on to the wrists of pretty, teenage girls, these shops were the domain of women — where we did not mind bumping into another customer, or where one’s choice of a earring would be vetted by another lady, whose opinion was unasked but accepted with a smile, nevertheless.
Rather than depending on someone to drive us, we would take an auto-rickshaw, go to the shops, and spend hours away from the bragging and complaining of the men in the family — men whom we all loved very much, but from whom it was necessary to escape every so often.
Into this amazing women-only space, two young girls would walk, pull out packets of bindis, compare the prices and the designs, and ask our mothers to pay out of our pocket-money for them. This was treasure. This was repeated in the annual summer carnival too — after the rides and the food, we would come back home at night, beaming with the secret knowledge that when the adults opened their bags or purses, we would be handed out brown paper bags with packets of pottu in them.
Once the procuring was done, the sharing started. I cannot remember how we started to share pottus, but it seems now that we always did. The process was pretty simple — we’d sit on a bed with the pottu packets scattered around us; after the careful inspection of each design and each colour, we would start pulling out individual pottus and sticking them on other packets. This would continue till we each got the same number of pottus and the similar representations of colour. If one particular design could not be shared evenly, we would compensate it with another design. There was always fairness. In a childhood that seems in retrospect marked by passive-aggressiveness and subtle bullying, this pottu exchange seems to be a field which gave me an equal footing. I got an equal say in the choice of pottus, I got an equal share in the final allotment. Even when other girls were involved in this, all of us had the same rights as each other — insignificant now, but in a childhood landscape of easy taunts and unfairness, this was what ensured that I learnt that the world has scope for justice and equity; these are merely withheld by those who benefit from the withholding.
As I grew up, this networking around pottus dismantled, invisibly breaking down into the rubble of other shattered pre-teen souvenirs like fairy tale books and Barbie dolls. When I was 14, with a spurt in the hormones dictating spiritual interests, I started experimenting with reading the Gita and wearing kumkumam instead of the sticker pottus. Even in the conservative Hindu neighbourhood of Chennai that I was growing up in, this was considered weird. This was soon replaced by an interest in atheism and the subsequent changes in my fashion choices. The pottu now figures in my life — when I wear a sari — in the form of the plain round black ones, the very same ones that I had deemed ‘too amma-like’ when I was a child.
So why pottu? Why did we not trade or engage in the same manner with, say, bangles or earrings? I think there were many reasons — the pottu packets were cheap enough for us to afford in multiples; the very form of it ensured that we could share it easily, and it was easy enough for us to carry around with each trip.
Sometime last year, while cleaning out my cupboards, I found a little sequined purse with a broken zipper. Inside it were the final remnants of a bond that I formed with my female cousins during our childhood summer vacations, when we would bathe in huge plastic tubs under a mango tree or try to sell flowers to passers-by. Later we drifted, each to her own group of friends, and academic and career choices. In the midst of all the drama of growing up, somewhere inside a cupboard, a few packets of discoloured, long sticker bindis waited to be discovered and to remind their owner of what they represented two decades ago — a summer ritual which ensured a temporary equality in the face of family hierarchies, and the celebration of a relationship unmarred by grown-up opinions and interventions.
Lakshmi Krishnakumar is trained in sociology, but her interests straddle the worlds of literature, art, medical anthropology, and sociology. Currently taking a break from full-time research, she now teaches sociology for undergraduate students of law. She blogs at Their Relevant Dragonfly.