Cheeru muthachi

MATHU -2

“Are you done? Or should I enter the lion’s den alone?”

Achu was looking at them with an irritated look. But it didn’t faze Mathu at all. Instead her face lit up.

“Kammalootty!! I didn’t see you there. Look at you! You are almost a grown man.”

Janu was a bit surprised by someone calling her brother kammalootty. Kammal was a term people used to respectfully call the men of her caste while edalamma was used for the women. Janu never heard them used for children. They were always called by their name. Mathu just suffixed it with kutty which means child to make the term kammalootty which was both endearing and respectful.

‘Who is this woman?’ She wondered.

Just then Mathu turned to her like she was only noticing her now. 

"Isn’t this Janu!! How much you have grown up! You were only a little duckling the last time I saw you. Do you remember me?”

Behind her Achu snorted. “Well it’s not like you expected us to halt our growth for the past seven years.” He muttered.

The woman was looking at her with such expectancy that Janu felt awkward to answer in negative outright. So she just smiled. The time reference her brother made seemed to stir some memory in her which slipped through her fingers when she reached for it. Seven years... Seven years ago was the last time she was here; when her grandmother died. But she was only four years old at that time, Ammu two and Achu seven and half. And her mother was pregnant with Vasu.