Visitors to our house visit our Pooja room. As they enter, they see the majestic Oonjal- Malayalam word for “Swing”. At 7 feet long, 2 feet wide, 2 inches thick teakwood plank, held by 4 straight iron rods hanging on hooks, and firmly fixed to the ceiling, the Oonjal has been the pride of our family for decades now.
Sitting on the Oonjal, with feet barely touching the floor, a mild nudge makes it gently rock back and forth. It is also a storehouse of many memories. From 1947 and right till the 1990s, the Oonjal was housed in our village home in Ramanathapuram village in Palakkad. Located in a spacious hall measuring almost 25 feet by 15 feet, the Oonjal could rock back and forth as much as we wanted it to swing! My father used to have his afternoon snooze lying on it on Sundays, while one of us children or my mother would push it slowly. The Oonjal was also the abode for my father while advising us on various worldly matters, ranging from our studies to our careers, to mundane household stuff.
As a child, I have spent hours frolicking on the Oonjal with my siblings, sometimes swinging too fast with exhilarating shrieks of joy, only to be duly admonished by our mother to be mindful and careful! Those are unforgettable days, etched vividly in my memory.
Time moved on, we shifted from the village to cities and towns. When we decided we needed to part with the village home, leaving behind the Oonjal was not an option. So it moved with us, first to Kolkata, and now to our flat in Gurugram. The space constraints in a modern flat have meant that we have never been able to give the Oonjal its full freedom to move the way it did in that vast hall in our Palakkad home; and yet, it continues to fill me with peace and joy each time I sit on it.
Up and down we go, as the mild breeze surrounds us, it is that joy that I want to remember and share. In his classic Sanskrit play, Mâlavikâgnimitram, Kalidasa lyrically describes men and women enjoying the pleasures of the swing or doladhirahana: “unmindful of being thrown away from the swing”.
And in the words of the poet R.L. Stevenson: How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it is the most pleasant thing, Ever a child can do!
