Shri Ram Jayam

Lakshmi was writing Shri Ram Jayam in her 6x8 cardboard bound book in which she had drawn vertical lines using a pencil and scale. She wrote Shri Ram jayam every morning. She could smell the Sambar and Rasam in the kitchen and the vendekai curry. After she had written the Shri Ram jayam she kept the book away in her Godrej with her Silk sarees.

"Kumar, Bharat has not yet said when he is coming this year." Lakshmi, complained to her second son.
"Hmmm", replied Kumar looking at his mother, " It is too late to call him now ma, in the evening we will make the ISD call ok."
"No hurry Kumar. I know the kids look forward to Bharat's coming every year, we can wait till Saturday and then talk.", said Lakshmi.
"Here have the paanagam prasadam", said Lakshmi as she offered Kumar a glass of the brown drink.

Lakshmi was extremely proud of herself right now, they would talk to Bharat, her fourth son who was in America on Saturday, by making the call on a weekend they would save money and she would get more time to convince him to come and stay for a longer time.

Kumar smiled at his mom, she was 65 years old and she wouldn't ever say that she missed her son or needed him. She had five sons and she tried to spend time with all of them, each of them them were special to her in a different way. Poor Bharat he was so far away. Kumar hoped that whatever Bharat was doing kept him very happy. He knew he couldn't be happy without talking to his mother at least once a week.

That summer Bharat and his family came for 6 weeks just as Lakshmi wanted. She had a great time coordinating activities for all her children. She believed she was the glue that held them together. They were good boys they didn't fight with each other. She had done a great job raising them. Lakshmi had motivated her boys to study.They had nothing but the education she had provided them. Now they each had their own house, car etc and all their children were going to english medium schools. She had sent only two of her sons to english medium schools.

After Bharat's trip she wrote in her diary that she had gifted him 1000Rs for his birthday on August 3rd. It was important to keep note of all expenses, it kept her mind alert.

A week before Bharat had come she had found a mistake in her Bank of India passbook. Lakshmi had called her brother Selvan, who worked at the bank, and told him there was a mistake on the entry made on May 3rd.
"Sister you are becoming old the bank cannot be wrong", said Selvan.
Lakshmi pushed her glasses up and scowled at him, she took her diary, check receipts and the passbook and explained to him. Selvan couldn't believe it, at 65 his sister had detected a mistake by the bank.
"Ok ok I will fix it ", he mumbled.

Five years later Lakshmi died in her sleep. Bharat flew in from America and the five brothers together performed her last rites. The following summer Bharat came again with his family and the brothers had a good summer break planned. Shortly after Bharat came they decided to open Lakshmi's Godrej and sort through some of her stuff.

The five men and their wives were surprised and teary eyed to find a complete shelf of diaries and little cardboard books. In the diaries Lakshmi had documented all her expenses for the last 20 years, the son's wedding expenses, money spent on buying sweets for her siblings, dakshina to the pundit. All the cardboard books had Shri Ram Jayam written in them, from end to end, on all pages but the outer cover of the book.