The family priest.

At the thread ceremony we attended on Wednesday last http://digbig.com/4ypqy I saw at close quarters the presiding priest. He looked like a benevolent version of the first family priest at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. http://digbig.com/4xyxy. Our first family priest, hailed from Telangana (now Andhra Pradesh and a hotbed of Maoists and Naxalites), just like the presiding priest at the thread ceremony. My mother http://digbig.com/4yppp used to call him Shambha (Samba?) Bhatji. So he must have been named Shambhu after Lord Shiva. He was quite a jolly fellow, though bald and fierce-looking. I can hear inside my head the refrain of a mantra that used to be chanted at the fairly frequent Laghurudra puja commissioned by my mother. “Padma hastey sugandhe, sugandhe, padma hastey” which has something to do with the floral aroma wafting from lotus hands, I reckon. There used to be several priests chanting the mantra. They were divided into two teams and after one team finished chanting a verse, the other team would take up the refrain and so on and so forth. It was quite an enjoyable performance. Shambha Bhatji stopped coming one fine day and was replaced by his younger brother, Balkrishna Bhatji who used to earlier accompany him from time to time. I remember Balkrishna Bhatji telling me with his eyes closed and after silent chanting of some mantra (I presume) that I would do well in the exam I was about to write. He was later on succeeded by his son Datta Bhatji who and, after him, his son used to also preside at the temple of the Mankar family deity, Maheshwari, in Navi Wadi. http://tinyurl.com/4grxkp. Neither he nor his son is attending the shrine now. I lost track of them a few years back.

My brush with the Nine Naths.

Reading the story of Guru Gugga of Bagar (Bikaner) in Veronica Ions’ Myths and Legends of India (Hamlyn, 1970) – in which Gorakhnath plays a prominent role – this afternoon reminded me of my mother http://tinyurl.com/6592m5 reading the Nath Kathas when I was seven or eight years old. The roots of the Shaivaite Nath Panth, associated with Hatha Yoga and the Sikh Guru Grantha, are traced back to Adinath or Lord Shiva or Mahadeva. Shri Machhindranath, considered an incarnation of the first of the Nine Narayanas mentioned in the Bhagavata was initiated into the path of self-realization by the great Adinath Himself. http://digbig.com/4ynnr. Machhindra lived when all power in socio-religious matters was in the hands of the followers of the ritualistic form of Vedic religion, the so-called Sanatanis. The Nath lineage starting with him had Gorakhnath, Adbanganath and Gahininath, the guru of Nivrittinath, who was the elder brother and guru of Dnyaneshwar. If memory serves, according to another version of the Nath legend, Shri Dattatraya, an incarnation of the Hindu trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, was its initiator and first teacher. I remember that we used to have a large framed picture of Shri Dattatraya in our puja room. The 20th Century proponents of the Nath teachings are supposed to be Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ranjit Maharaj and their guru, Siddharameshwar.

Saint on earth.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Sant Tukaram has always fascinated me. As a child, I saw V Shantaram's eponymous movie. I don't remember being too impressed by it at the time. My latter-day interest in Tukaram prompted me recently to read Mahipati's Tukaram, a part of his Bhaktalilamrita. Its English rendering by Dr Justin Edwards Abbott, an American scholar who lived in India in the early twentieth century and contributed to the development of Marathi literature in his own way, retains the flavour of the original. It reminded me of the pothis my mother used to read, Shivalilamrita being one of them, particularly the eleventh chapter on Mondays. I'm not sure if what I read is historically accurate. What struck me, though, was that Tukaram as an enlightened person insisted on possessing nothing. There are repeated instances in the story I read of Tukaram inviting brahmins, mendicants and poor people to "loot" his home. This reminded me of what I had written earlier: http://tinyurl.com/c4tw8y. In researching it, I had come across informed opinion that enlightenment ought to change a person for the better. Also, there is the Simony angle to the practice of sainthood, I reckon. Mahipati's account of Tukaram qua an avatar of Namdeo explicitly states that his protagonist was almost violently opposed to the Advaita way to enlightenment. He was all for bhakti. In other words, total devotion. This was a bit bewildering in that I could not imagine a gentle soul like him opposing any idea vigorously - especially if it had the sanction of the Vedas. The other puzzling bit is that, while all along Tukaram seems to be drifting away from his wife Avali who is cross with him for giving his total devotion to Vithoba and neglecting his family, at the time of his ascent to Vaikuntha, Vishnu's heavenly abode, he sends a message to her to join him. She, however, sends back a message that she is in the fifth month of pregnancy and cannot join him. How did it happen?

Milky ways.

In my childhood at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4, there used to be a milk seller across the street who styled himself as a "dairy". His delivery man or "bhaiyya" as he was addressed in those days climbed up to our third floor terrace flat twice a day carrying on his head a brass vessel with a lid. As soon as the door was opened by my mother or the family retainer, he would plonk down his burden and ladle out the specified quantity of milk using ¼-, ½- or 1-seer brass measures with U-shaped handles. Most afternoons, this would be done under my watchful eye with a bit of accompanying banter addressed mostly to me. The bhaiyya used to call me "baba" and talk in a Bambaiya patois mixing a bit of Hindi and Marathi. I'm talking of the days before I started to go to full-time school, mind you. I had no idea which part of India he hailed from and even if I had known it, I don't think it would have made a whit of a difference to our daily encounter, a pleasant part of my life then. The hisaab (calculation) of the total dues, recorded diligently in a little notebook by my mother, was tallied on the first of every month and promptly paid in cash. There is one rather gruesome image of the dairy that still haunts me. In the pre-Independence riots of 1947, I watched aghast from our terrace window one afternoon the driver of a hack victoria http://digbig.com/4xxcq coming from the 13th lane being stabbed. His body tumbled from the driver's perch on to the gate of the dairy. Later, after the police came and had the body removed, the hired help in the dairy was busy for a long time scrubbing away the blood stains. As time passed, the mode of milk supply to 233 Khetwadi Main Road changed. After Aarey Diary's arrival on the Mumbai scene in the early 50s, milk-selling booths mushroomed all over the city. The nearest one was bang opposite our dairy. A queue of squabbling milk buyers would form there twice a day early morning and just after noon, jostling one another, jockeying for a better place and creating quite a racket as is the wont of us Indians. Our dairy like many of its brethern could not withstand the Aarey onslaught for long . Soon, the family retainer had to stand in the queue at least once a day with the aluminum milk token in hand. The milk used to be supplied in glass bottles with quality differnces (whole, double toned, toned, etc.) indicated by the colour code of the foil crown. Much later, the bottles got replaced by plastic pouches. The milk cooker with a whistling siren entered my life sometime around then. http://digbig.com/4xxcp. As the milk supply improved, the milk token became redundant. You could just walk to any milk booth and walk away with as much milk as you wanted. You could even stand there and sip flavoured milk or lassi with a straw if you so desired. A couple of years back, when Amul, Nestlé and others started selling no-need-to-boil milk in Tetra Pak cartons, I switched to it with alacrity. The bhaiyya is now only a distant memory. So is the milk cooker.

Bad memories.

With all the "oust the outsiders" poison currently vitiating the atmosphere in Mumbai, I'm reminded of two sorry events from my childhood at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4. The first one took place toward the end of World War II. There was strict rationing in force. The rationing administrative office nearest to our house was at Muzzffarabad Hall (aka The People's Jinnah Hall), on the Grant Road Bridge close to Novelty Cinema http://digbig.com/4xwdb, within easy strolling distance from our house. My sister http://digbig.com/4xwdc used to work there. She had learned Urdu in her spare time before taking up the job. She was an ardent movie goer and used to buy and listen to all the latest 78 rpm discs of the hit songs from the movies. With hindsight, it seems likely that she was deeply affected by the passionate love stories she witnessed on the silver screen in the companionable twilight of the movie hall. Those were probably the days when Ratan starring Swarna Lata and featuring the hit song Ankhiyan Milake had just been released. On Saturdays, my sister's office used to close an hour and a half after noon and she would be home by 2 pm. One fateful Saturday afternoon, she did not turn up at her usual arrival time. My mother was frantic with worry. As soon as my father returned home, they had a whispered confab. Phone calls were made and enquiries too all over the city with our relatives and her friends. That night, I was woken up by the weeping of my father and mother. It scared and saddened me no end. I don't recall being particularly saddened by my sister's disappearance, though. This was because, except for surface cordiality, she was not at all fond of me. She must have viewed the late arrival of a male heir on the family scene http://digbig.com/4xwdf when she was already 18 as a threat to her prospects of inheritance. I was in awe of her, even a bit afraid too. Eventually, my sister was traced to my aunt's house in Nowroji Street. She had made this defiant move to declare her intention of marrying a Muslim colleague. I am not aware of what transpired when my parents went to fetch her. In a couple of days, she returned home and resigned her job. Broad-minded as my parents were, the shock of their daughter wanting to marry a Muslim must have been way too much for them to bear. The other sad event occured some time later, maybe in the early fifties. It concerned a cousin of mine from Khar who married a Hindu girl not of our caste. My uncle and, more particularly, my aunt http://digbig.com/4xwdg made it a point to ostracize him from the clan. Although, in their heart of hearts, my parents who were rather fond of the boy, did not want to do it, they had to follow suit. I do not think I was much bothered by all the fuss that was being made. I had never been much concerned with caste and creed right from the beginning. It perturbed me to hear much later that one of my professors in Sydenham College who was also a favourite Marathi author of mine disowned his daughter for marrying a Muslim and went to the extent of taking in her name a purificatory bath that an orthodox Hindu takes after returning home from the crematorium or the burning grounds. In short, he declared to the world that, in his eyes, she was dead and gone. Later on, though, I discovered that malicious rumour mongering had inspired this vicious canard. That, at least, is a good memory to treasure.

Operation Clean-up.

At 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4 when I was a child, the bathroom to the back of the house on the west side used to be reserved only for washing the cooking utensils. That time, coal was used for cooking and heating the bath water. http://digbig.com/4xrss. The coal ash was collected and stored. It was then used for scrubbing the cooking utensils. As my mother used to use grated coconut as well as coconut milk in the many delectable dishes she cooked, at least one coconut was cracked open every day. The fibre off the shell was used as the scrubbing pad or sponge. On the window ledge of the wash room, there used to stand a brass pot filled with ash and topped with a bit of the scrubbing fibre. I keep remembering me watching our family retainer scrubbing the pots and pans over his shoulder and sometimes offering to join him. I was never granted my wish. Little did I realise then that, some day in the far future, I would finally be granted my wish minus the coal ash cleaning powder and the coconut fibre scrubber. Instead, we would graduate up to Vim or Pril and plastic fibre scrub pads. In contrast, I have tumbled downhill from silver tongue cleaners to plastic or stainless steel ones over the same time span. http://digbig.com/4xrsy.

The bedroom shrine.

In a certain bedroom I recently happened to be in while on a sick visit, there is a compact wooden shrine just behind where I was sitting. In it, there were the pictures inter alia of (1) Rama, Sita and Hanuman; (2) Krishna playing his flute; (3) Ganesh; and (4) Lord Vishnu in his virat swaroop of which he spoke to Arjuna in Bhagvadgita. http://tinyurl.com/4tqt89. There was also a pindi with a abhisekh patra (water sprinkler) hanging over it. In addition, there were idols of a flute-playing Krishna, Ganesh and several other deities. The shrine took me back to the sitting room of a guru my mother used to visit for a while. http://tinyurl.com/6592m5.
He used to stay right on the sea face in the basement of a house up the Walkeshwar Road. His shrine in dark mahogony (if memory serves) too was cluttered with lots of pictures and idols. He sat in front of it chanting mantras and answering the queries of his devotees like my mother. From his balcony, you could see the whole of Marine Drive on your left and the Governor's House on your right. What I found most enchanting about the place was the fact that the Arabian Sea used to reach very close to the balcony at high tide. The sound of the waves ebbing and flowing had a soothing rhythm to it. The guru and most of his visitors seem completely oblivious to the beauty of the here and now, though. They were concerned more with what was going to happen in the future and what the portents predicted.

Gauri comes calling.

When I was a child growing up at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4 Gauri Pujan used to be an annual occurrence there. It was all celebrated in the spirit of a married daughter of the house coming, after a long absence, to visit her parents for just a couple of days. It was more a social and family occasion than a religious ritual. No priest officiated on the avaahan (arrival), pujan (worship) and visarjan (departure) days. It was the Lady of the House and other womenfolk who did all the honours. I remember my mother http://tinyurl.com/6592m5 and others like an aunt, a cousin, even Ujwal after our marriage collectively placing and arranging the Gauri idol on a huge teakwood bajot set against the west wall of the passageway that divided our terrace flat in half. They all kept mum while they were doing it for what reason I could never fathom. Gauri's special zari saree was stored in its own black tin trunk. Her ornaments were kept in a brass grill-work oblong container with a lid. In my childhood days, my aunt from Khar and her daughters used to come and stay with us for three days. So I, a lonely child most of the time left to my own devices, had some company for a change. Naturally, I used to look forward to Gauri's annual visit. On the second (pujan) day, in the evening, women guests would arrive for darshan and were given prashad (two saffron- and cardamon-flavoured pedhas wrapped in thin transluscent cellophane specially ordered from Damodar Mithaiwala on Grant Road opposite the Novelty Cinema http://tinyurl.com/6rdcnx) and haldi kunku on the visiting daughter's behalf. It was an almost all-women affair except for a few exceptions made for the immediate family and friends - quite a gala occasion at 233 Khetwadi Main Road as I remember. I was allowed to skip school on that day. For a few years, I even used to have a khelacha (play) Ganapati for ten days. It was a silver idol with its own simhasan (throne) and chhatri (umbrella) and its own set of miniature silver puja paraphernalia all purchased from Mhaskar and Company http://tinyurl.com/5jfwdt on Girgaum Road where my mother shopped regularly and even had a charge account. I remember that, on one occasion, I created a miniature zoo with miniature animals, trees and stuff all from our in-house toy collection. On another occasion, it was a toy train on a ghat with a station on one side and so forth. Our second-floor neighbours, an extended Gujarati family, used to worship two Ganapati idols for 5 days. We used to go there for the evening aarati and also hold our own. Gauri ceased calling at 233 Khetwadi Main Road only after the death of my mother. http://tinyurl.com/6592m5.

Bad boy.

That I was far from the ideal son to my parents is now apparent to me. In fact, my performance on that score was far below par, nay dismal. I must have been pretty self-absorbed, insensitive and indifferent child. Take my knowledge of my parents' antecedents, for instance. All I know about my father's father is the name, Keshav. From hearsay, I know that his son spent his early life in Navi Wadi http://tinyurl.com/5b97y5. But that's about it. About the parents of my mother http://tinyurl.com/6c2lsy, whose maiden name was Manak Ajinkya, I'm totally blank. Her elder brother who lived opposite Roxy Cinema http://tinyurl.com/4m58jq apparently brought her up and gave her away in marriage. Her second brother, a qualified physician, had migrated to Great Britain probably at around the time of World War I. (This too I came to know much later in life accidentally when my mother asked Manna, my college friend, who was sailing to London for higher studies to try and trace her brother's whereabouts. He could not.) The third brother lived in Gamdevi with his family. Her younger sister, married and with three children, lived in Nowroji Street in her own house http://tinyurl.com/44dzbz close to where I live now. My mother studied in the Kamlabai Girls' School situated in the same street, opposite my aunt's house. It seems she considered aborting me because she was going to have a child pretty late in life http://tinyurl.com/6hfxxx but was persuaded not to do so by her friend and physician. (Just think of the huge opportinity of writing an angst-splattered tale of "The man who almost never was" I've let slip through my fingers!) As I was the only son in the family, I was over-pampered http://tinyurl.com/5pctle. My mother was involved, at almost every Hindu religious feast, with some puja-paath or vrata. She used to recite every now and then Shivalilamrut (Tales of Lord Shiva's Miracles), particularly the 11th Adhyay (chapter). We used to have Laghurudra and Satyanarayan Puja every other month or oftener. On Shravan Mondays and Shivaratri, I used to accompany her to the Shiva Temple at Babulnath. On the Ram Navmi day, we used to visit twelve Shri Ram temples. http://tinyurl.com/5plowr. Vata Savitri, Gauri Pooja, Diwali ... you name it. She used to do it. She also used to go to an astrologer as well as a Guru for a while. I remember there was a lot of fuss and furore when I touched the feet of this Guru on my mother's instructions at my thread ceremony. I did not have any friends to talk of till the end of my high school days. So, I used to accompany my mother wherever she went in the evening. After I started going out with my friends, my mother took my desertion of her in her stride. She was always generous, nay magnanimous, about my trespasses and transgressions. Even in her last illness when she was suffering from blood cancer and died on 28 July 1962 in Bombay Hospital, it was Ujwal (of whom both my parents were very fond) who took care of her. I abdicated my responsibilty as usual, owing probably to a fault line in my character. This pattern of behaviour has been repetitive. I have abdicated my responsibility as husband and as father as well and repeatedly. Remorse has been my companion for quite a while. There comes to mind, however, what Aldous Huxley wrote in his Preface http://tinyurl.com/6ft3yg to the 1946 reprint of Brave New World:

"Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoiong. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."

So what amends should I be making?

At http://tinyurl.com/68wrzb (Aldous Huxley Recollected An Oral History page 83), Huxley's daughter-in-law/Matthew's wife, Ellen Hovde, recalls how both Aldous and Matthew refused to acknowledge that Maria Huxley, her mother-in-law, was dying of cancer. Maria who had watched over Aldous like a mother hen right from the day they were married found this denial very hard to take. On page 104, Theosophical Society's Sydney Field, a friend of the Huxleys, mentions the oft-quoted account of how Aldous read to his dying wife from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. After Maria's death, Aldous told his sister-in-law, Juliette Huxley, that Elieen Garrett, "a genuine medium", had contacted Maria who told her that she had been helped by what he had done for her in the dying moments. Was that how he made amends to her, I wonder?

The tongue cleaner.

I was born with a pure silver tongue cleaner in my mouth. http://tinyurl.com/5pctle. I could say this with utmost confidence and nary a hint of irony or hype. Yes, the very first tongue cleaner I remember using as a child at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4 was a baby-sized, horse shoe-shaped implement wrought in pure silver. Its tongue scraping surface was quite blunt. Both the handles had a cute ball-shaped knob. I think it was bought from Mhaskar and Company on Girgaum Road where my mother used to do a lot of shopping for clothes and silverware. The shop is no more like a lot of places from my childhood. A Central Bank of India branch has taken its place. (I have a Savings Bank account there.) Later on, as I grew up, I graduated in my high school days to strips of cheerful colour-spangled flexible plastic sold for 10 or 20 paise each. The wonderful thing about these flimsy little objects was that they had just enough sharpness to leave your tongue feeling properly scraped and clean without hurting it. Also, they broke ever so often so that you could treat yourself to a fresh new one every so often without feeling the pinch. Much later in life came the tongue cleaners made of stainless steel and copper. They seem to do their job okay as far as they go. As a child, I had heard from my mother that it was only hygiene-conscious folks like us who used tongue cleaners daily. If one went by the noisy and gurgling morning ablutions that one sometimes overhears in a public place, I guess they seem to be doing well for themselves without tongue cleaners. It was therefore quite an eye opener for me to read the pack copy of The Pureline Oralcare TONGUE CLEANER. http://tinyurl.com/6ekguk. Ujwal got it in a WalMart store in the US. Made from clear greem plastic, it looks like a dimunitive tennis racket with the guts missing. On the front of the pack where the tongue cleaner is embedded under a see-through plastic wrap, I read such wondrous stuff as:

Enjoy Fresh Breath (Thank you, Pureline Oralcare, for not using an exclamation mark. [!])

RECOMMENDED by DENTISTS & HYGIENISTS

QUICK & EASY TO USE

Promotes Fresh Breath

Improves Your Oral Hygiene

Removes Odor Causing Bacteria

Helps Prevent Periodontal Disease

From the back of the pack came further eye-popping revelations. Such as: "Scientific studies confirm that the primary cause of bad breath is odor-causing bacteria on the tongue. Primarily during sleep, the tongue accumulates this unpleasant plaque film, which is why fresh breath in difficult to maintain even after brushing your teeth. This bacteria can also lead to periodontal disease and other health problems."

The Directions for Use are equally clear and no-nonsense. "After brushing and flossing, rinse The Tongue Cleaner with fresh water. Extend your tongue fully. Place The Tongue Cleaner at the back of your tongue and pull forward while phsing doen GENTLY. Repeat if necessary. When finished, rinse thouroughly with warm water and keep clean for optimum oral hygiene."

If only instructions for software downloads and installation and digital devices were so crystal clear and easy to follow!

P.S.: Nary a mention of halitosis (a Listerine property since 1921), though. http://tinyurl.com/5ja46u.

On the terrace.

At 233 Khetwadi Main Road, we lived in a huge terrace flat. http://tinyurl.com/3wcmt2. The terrace in front was our cricket ground. http://tinyurl.com/4ot9wz. It was also where we anchored the poles of our Bush radio aerial. http://tinyurl.com/4ndw75. The tiny strip of a terrace on top of the flat was used mainly for flying fighter kites. http://tinyurl.com/52znpb. There were many more uses to which the terrace abutting the flat was put. Like drying stuff: home-made papad, just roasted seasamum seed before making the til ladoos, drying red chilli before grinding it on the hand-powered grinding stone http://tinyurl.com/3etyu7, making sun-dried pickles, you name it. As for me, I used to sail paper boats in the rain water streams that flowed all over it. I also used to park and drive my pedal powered cars and scooters there the year round. I don't remember ever riding a tricycle up there, though. I did have a rather natty light blue topless car with a dark blue trim all around it. After having weathered two or three monsoons, it acquired several rust spots all over it. Though I cannot swear on it, I have a feeling that the first car was replaced by a red roofless one. I remember being pushed around in my car as well as furiously pedalling it in all around the terrace, eyes screwed up in concentration. After the pedal cars, I also owned a couple of scooters. The scooter was a rectangular platform with a wheel at each end and a handle attached to the turnable front wheel. You planted your left foot on the platform, gripped the handle with both hands and propelled yourself around with your right foot. I used to play-act a script with some sort of a super-powered, caped character in it. The scooter played the supporting role of my super-fast vehicle. When I was 12, a Middle Eastern friend of my father's, Mr Kazrani I think his name was, gifted me with a sleek green Clyde semi-racer bicycle complete with wire breaks and a dynamo-powered head lamp. I learned to ride it on our terrace. Later on, after adding gears to it, I used to ride it on the Marine Drive and even take it up to the Hanging Gardens in the summer holidays. I learned to drive after age 18 on the second family car: a red Renault 4CV. http://tinyurl.com/4m58jq.

Talent and dramaturgy explode on the sea face.

14 April 1944 was the fateful day when SS Fort Stikine carrying a mixed cargo of cotton bales, gold, ammunition including around 1,400 tons of explosive caught fire and was destroyed in two giant blasts in the Victoria Dock of Bombay. The explosion scattered debris, sank surrounding ships and killed around 800 people. Later, in the summer of 1944, there was another equally gigantic explosion in the city. It was in the huge open air theatre specially built to host the ten-night festival of Marathi theatre on the gymkhana grounds between the Charni Road and Marine Lines railway stations on the sea face very close to where I live now. At that time, I was residing at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. In the company of my mother, I attended most of this feast of native dramaturgy specially mounted with a view to revive the Marathi theatre that had been in decline and decay for the past couple of decades. It was a huge and resoundning success and achieved its objective dramatically. Scuttlebutt has it that Prithviraj Kapoor happened to be in the packed house one night and was so moved by the absorption and adulation displayed by the audience that he was inspired to launch Prithvi Theatres to stage such hit Hindi plays as Gaddar, Deewar and Pathan in the early fifties at the Royal Opera House. I particularly recall seeing Othello aka Zunzarrao in Marathi starring Baburao Pendharkar, a leading Marathi film star then, as Othello and Jeevankala as Desdemona in the 1890 adoption by Govind Ballal Deval. Some of the other stage luminaries who participated, if memory serves, were Durga Khote, Balgandhrva, Nanasaheb Phatak, Jayamala Shiledar, Keshavrao Datey and the septuagenarian actor, Chintoba Gurav, who had been a part of the legendary Kirloskar Naatak Mandali when Annasaheb Kiroskar was alive. Those were the days of encore! galore and the play which would start at 9 p.m. would continue till 5 or 6 a.m. the next morning.

Music for the soul.

I stopped believing in the soul around the time I stopped believing in God of Big Things. My life theory then started hovering on random happenings and chance as the ultimate truth. I stopped visiting temples – something I had been doing all my life at 233 Khetwadi Main Road – not probably out of conviction but sheer habit. I remember visiting in my mother’s company twelve Shri Ram Temples on the Ram Navmi day at least three or four year running. I also used to accompany her on her Saturday visit to the Hanuman Temple on Picket Road near Crawford Market. These last few days, though, I suddenly found myself wondering about the probable existence of the human soul while listening to some really soul-stirring stuff. It has been a mishmash of Pandit Hariprasad Chourasia, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Ustad Allah Rakha and Zakir Hussain, I’m afraid, with a generous dash of Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Tschaikowsky, and Vivaldi as well as Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller – and, last but not the least, the incomparable but utterly underrated Geeta Dutt. Her slow number, Ja Ja Ja Bewafaa, from Aar Paar, is nothing short of beatific, for instance. So are her other numbers (Waqt Ne Kiya from Kaagaz Ke Phool, Naa Jao Saiyan and Piya Aiso Jiya Mein both from Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam) to mention just two examples from her heavenly repertoire. All this makes me wonder why she lies forgotten in the vault of Time while far lesser talent are revered. My guess is, she never had a good spin doctor posthumously or even while she was alive for that matter. More’s the pity.

Peter Pan is also Peter Piper?

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?"

Mother Goose could not have known of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911). She couldn’t have known of Pan’s talent for playing a mean tune on his Pan pipes, just like Pan of the Greek Mythology. So, the two Peters couldn’t possibly be one and the same person. Also, there’s the delectable evidence of P Piper’s fondness for pickled peppers. In P Pan’s Neverland, most meals were make-believe. So, there you are. If Mother Goose is to be taken at her word, though, her Peter too was as forgetful (he forgot where he left the pickled peppers, didn’t he?) as Barrie’s Peter. In fact, Peter Pan’s ability to forget was legendary. He forgot he had killed Hook after the deed. He even went on forgetting his annual spring cleaning date with Wendy Darling with impunity. There’s a Freudian angle to Barrie’s Peter that is both alluring and intriguing. Peter’s search for a mother for himself and the Lost Boys continued relentlessly although he hated all grown-ups including mothers especially. In his books, a mother was solely for insisting little boys go to bed at a decent hour, tucking them in, telling them bedtime stories, darning their socks, washing their dirty clothes, bandaging their cuts and bruises, giving them medicine, cooking their meals – even make-believe ones – and stuff like that. Even Hook and his pirates seriously discussed getting Wendy to play mother to the Jolly Roger crew. Peter and Wendy played father and mother to the Lost Boys who also had among their ranks Wendy’s younger brothers. And, so on. There’s a ‘Time must have a stop’ sub-theme running through the tale as well. Hook’s nemesis, the Tick-Tock Croc, is there to remind the reader that Time is chasing after each and every one of us as long as we live and breathe. (As a counterpoint, we must remember that the reason George Darling won Mary was because he took a taxi ahead of all her other suitors and proposed to her first – a worthy reward of his ability to save Time, get it?) Peter, the eternal boy, retained his original (milk/baby) teeth all along because he refused to grow up. The fountain of his eternal childhood probably sprang from his ability to forget and therefore not be a slave of Time. His emotions too were ambiguous. There’s an on-and-off sexual tension between him and Wendy, him and Tiger Lily and him and Tinker Bell which he is unable to identify as such because he is a child. His refusal to grow up is an indicator of his inability to take on grown-up responsibilities although as, the leader of the Lost Boys, he was already shouldering the burden of their welfare. That is why he lured Wendy and her brothers to Neverland in the first place, remember? However, when it came to long-term commitment, he was quite firm about not staying back with Wendy and the rest of the Lost Boys. The only commitment he made to Wendy – and sporadically kept – was to take her to Neverland once a year for ‘spring cleaning’ (clearing up the cobwebs of memories and other trivia accumulated over a year?). The Wikipedia article about Peter Pan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan mentions a Dr. Dan Kiley who coined the psychiatric term "Peter Pan syndrome" for his 1983 book on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan_syndrome to “describe an adult who is afraid of commitment and/or refuses to act his age. It is also sometimes used to positively describe an innocent, childlike approach to life.” (In the same vein, Wendy is the girl-woman who acts the role of mother.) Remember, ‘Pan’ (which at times means ‘all’ as in ‘pan-American’) is also a root of ‘panic’ (= sudden fear, especially in lonely places). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(mythology). All the while I was reading Peter Pan, the one melody I kept hearing in my mind was the Lawrence of Arabia theme. With good reason, I realised on reflection. Like Peter, Lawrence too recklessly refused to grow up and chased adventures. Like Peter too, he loved to ‘fly’ … on his mobike. Unlike Peter Pan, though, he wasn’t immortal. P.S.: One claim I find hilarious is Michael Jackson as Peter Pan http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/02/22/the_real_peter_pan/. Never mind the 2700-acre Neverland. Never mind the persistent rumour about Peter being androgenous. Never mind the dark hints that JM Barrie, like Lewis Carroll, was a pedophile. The MJ=PP ‘equation’ is too weird to be believed.

The family car.

The first Mankar family car, a maroon and black Wolseley Wasp http://www.users.bigpond.com/jimjarron/car_pictures_files/wolseley_wasp.jpg used to be parked in the porch in the front part of the compound of 233 Khetwadi Main Road when I was, I’m guessing, five or so. So, it must have been purchased a few years earlier. I remember going for long evening drives with my mother up the Walkeshwar Road to the Malabar Hill Gardens, down the Marine Drive to the Chowpatty Sea Face and sometimes as far away as Cuffe Parade where now the Taj President stands. There used to be a raised pedestrian promenade along the Cuffe Parade Sea Face very similar to what you can still find at the Worli Sea Face. The other outings included visits to my two maternal uncles, my mother’s sister, two of her friends and a couple of shops where my mother used to shop regularly for sarees and silverware. The elder uncle used to reside on the ground floor of the house still extant opposite the Roxy Cinema on the Queen’s Road within walking distance of Royal Opera House, the cinema theatre of choice for V Shantaram and Raj Kapoor, that also used to double as a playhouse for Prithviraj Kapoor’s stage plays. (By the way, I was born in the Roxy-facing flat on a rain-drenched Janmashtami midnight in August.) Somewhere around 1948, the Wolseley made way for a brand new red Renault 4CV. This French car had just come into the market http://www.geocities.com/richardirl/oandd.html and had the distinction of being one of the few cars to reach the 1 million production mark in Europe. It was reputed to be the French retort to the German Volkswagen Beetle. It seemed more like flattery to me because it resembled the latter quite a bit. (That’s how I probably got infected with the Beetle bug. One of my youthful ambitions was to possess one.) I learned driving on the Renault and turned out to be an atrocious learner. I could just barely start and steer the vehicle but was very slovenly at parking. I once got a ticket for turning left at the traffic signal near the Church Gate Station from no less an officer than the Deputy Police Commissioner of Bombay (this was probably in 1954 or 1955). That worthy was under the impression that there was a traffic signal there. Fortunately for me, it was a free turn. I got acquitted in the Esplanade Court near the Victoria Terminus with my father defending me. My brush with the law was responsible, I guess, for the police putting a proper traffic signal at the Church Gate junction immediately afterwards. My father sold off the Renault around 1960 when it became almost impossible to maintain. Genuine spare parts were hard to come by. Also, I suspect, my father was not doing so well by then. Although I had a job in 1960, my salary could not have paid for a month’s petrol bill. The third family car which I bought came much later in the early 1980s. It was from the very first batch of Maruti Suzukis, s green and air conditioned Maruti 800. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki. Ashu and Abhi used to chauffer us around in it all over Mumbai and sometimes to Pune. Of the two, Abhi was the car connoisseur and really knew how to look after it well. (He had learned it, I reckon, taking care of the grey Fiat which his granny owned.) The Maruti was sold off around 1987 when Abhi went to the US for higher studies. Since then, the Mankar family car happens to be whichever black and yellow cab, mostly Fiat, I hail to go wherever I’m going at the time.

The marrying kind.

Thank heaven for little girls
For little girls get bigger every day!
Thank heaven for little girls
They grow up in the most delightful way.

Remember Honoré (Maurice Chevalier), singing to Leslie Caron in Gigi (1958)? He saw in her just a little girl “growing up in the most delightful way” and not a budding courtesan-in-training. His nephew, the Parisian playboy, Gaston (Louis Jourdon), was more worldly. He saw a courtesan-in-training “growing up in the most delightful way” and wanted to become her first patron. Honoré’s viewpoint was paternal, or, more accurately, avuncular. He reminds me of a friend who did not want his daughter to get married “too soon”. She was working and enjoying it. He enjoyed his daughter’s delight in and success at her chosen profession. Then, as he told me the story, fate intervened. She went with her mother to take part in a puja. The very next day, the pujari (presiding priest), who moonlighted as a marriage broker and astrologer, brought for her a marriage proposal. It was an offer too good to refuse. She decided to chuck up her career and join the kitty party circuit. Her father wasn’t so sure. She was adamant, though. Wiser counsels and the Indian world view prevailed. What brought about the change in the heart of the father? He did not tell me. I didn’t probe. And, although no dowry had been demanded, I know he ended up paying plenty in kind and still continues to pay, the doting father that he is. Which brings to mind another story of four fathers who were taken to the cleaners by a multi-marrying deceiver. The story hit the headlines this morning. While I’m no Sherlock Holmes, the two wedding pictures printed with the report show brides all over whom is written the reason why their parents were anxious to marry them off without verifying the credentials of the bridegroom-to-be. They’re pathetic looking, flat-chested girls who would be a cause for worry for parents. The worst kind of deception, I reckon, is self-deception. Therein lies the unspoken woe of the father - and the mother - of the bride.

The Red Book.

I wish I could tell you with a straight face that I learned the story of The Ramayana from my father and mother or by listening to kirtans or by watching Ramleela. It simply won't be the truth. And, although I haven't sworn with my right hand on the Bhagwatgeeta that whatever I write here will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I just cannot bring myself to lie to you so early in the game. So, I shall stick to the truth. In the bottom part of a book cabinet in my childhood home in Khetwadi, there was lurking a 12" by 7" hardbound red volume. It was waiting for me to discover it, I guess. In this priceless tome was the story of The Ramayana retold in a series of four colour pictures (one on every glossy page, back to back) drawn by someone who seemed to have learned the craft at the feet of Raja Rammohan Roy. The story started with King Dashratha's Putrakameshti Yagna (the fire sacrifice for progeny) and ended with Rama, Laxman and Sita's return from vanavasa (banishment to the forest). I read it so often and handled it so roughly that my red book got tattered in a few years. I cannot recall where it finally vanished. (Maybe, Mother Earth opened up and swallowed it like she did Sita.) I wish I had the sense to handle it with kid gloves. Had I done so, Aditi, Avantika, Armaan and Anika could have enjoyed it as much as I did. I shudder to see them reading the atrociously illustrated and slovenly written Amar Chitra Katha comic books and have a secret Fahrenheit 451 fantasy about the monstrosities.

Aditi learns about ‘those days long past’ from Ujwal.

This post too is family lore gleaned from the replies Ujwal gave to her elder grand daughter for her Chicago school project.

Home & Family as a Child

1. Date of Birth: 10 August 1938.

2. Where lived, siblings: As a child, I lived in South Mumbai, Thakurdwar, a predominantly “Marathi” area at that time. No siblings.

3. Growing up, entertainment, books, games, etc.: Growing up wasn’t too bad. But I was lonely. Our games were simple. When it was too hot to play out or it was pouring, we played card games, checkers, carom. Other times, we played robber-and-police, running races and the like on our huge terrace. In the front yard, we played kabaddi (hu-tu-tu) and kho-kho. I read books in Marathi, my mother tongue, as well as comics, Enid Blyton and stories from Shakespeare and abridged versions of his plays in English.

4. Parents, family values/rules, own reaction, how they moulded me, etc.: My father was the Principal of a well-known school. My mother was a general physician who passed her medical examination in 1926 when hardly any women went in for professional training. Her colleagues were British and she the only Indian woman in the group. Discipline and punctuality were very important for my parents (One day she was scolded by her boss for being late for work by three minutes.). Work is worship. Duty is religion. Extending a helping hand to others should be a way of life. Such were the lessons in the art of living I learned from my parents. If my mother called out to me, I had to be in front of her before she finished pronouncing my name. Such was her demand for punctuality. I hated this. I would say, “Wait a second!” and would be angry with what I felt was an unreasonable and too finicky a demand. (In retrospect, though, I feel it has helped me so that I am able to finish my chores faster than most today and have time for other things while my friends are still toiling in the kitchen.) If I said I would be home by 7-30, I jolly well had to make sure it was 7-29 when I rang the doorbell and not 7-31. (I didn’t realise the importance of this rule until I had my own children and I started worrying about their coming home late. I never had to sit down and enumerate the rules to my children. Somehow, they sensed that respect for elders, value of hard work and being a caring-sharing person were important to me.) I belonged to a middle class family. So, spending money just for the sake of spending was a no-no in our house.

School and college

1. School: St. Teresa High School College(s): Sophia (till B.A.); St. Xavier’s College of Education (for B.Ed.)

2. Subjects: (School) English, French, History, Geography, General Science, Math. My favourite subject was English because it opened up a new world to me which otherwise would have remained unknown. (College) English Literature, French. (B.Ed.College) Apart from English and Marathi, I read Sociology and Psychology with special stress on Child Psychology.

3. Dating scene in college: Not a common phenomenon in my college days, though some of the ‘forward’ girls and boys did date with fairly stringent ‘dating protocol’ rigidly enforced by parents.

4. My parent’s view on dating and my reaction: Parents, mine included, generally frowned on dating. I did not dwell on it overmuch as I did not have a special boy friend.

5. My dating: After I started to date the person I eventually married, there was opposition from my mother although she knew his family well. She didn’t mind my marrying him but did not relish my being out with him late. A matinee or early evening movie show was okay: late night show, unthinkable. Although I was forced into telling lies at times, I didn’t resent her attitude as I felt that’s how moms were supposed to behave.

6. Friends’ dating and my feelings: Yes, a couple of my friends dated on the sly. I was not judgmental about their behaviour and even helped them as a friend is supposed to. On the whole, though, we usually moved in mixed groups rather than as couples on their own.

Music

7. Most popular, my choice: The most popular music when I was growing up was from Hindi films. In English teaching schools, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Pat Boone were top of the pop.

8. Impact on youth: Hindi film songs were a great hit with young people. They were sung at parties, picnics, school and college get-togethers. Some of the patriotic songs from films were also believed to have moved young folks into sacrificing their careers in the freedom struggle. With the elite among the youth, rock and roll which had just made a debut too held a certain amount of sway.

Clothing

9. Popular with college kids: In the circles I moved in, skirts and blouses, dresses and, to a small extent, salwar kameez. The hemlines had started to go up gradually.

10. How I dressed: Dresses, skirts and blouses.

11. Views on fashion: I was not very fashion-conscious. I dressed for comfort and what went with my somewhat generous figure.

Ideals

12. Ideals, goals, life-view in youth: Being a good human being was very important to me. Being a caring, sharing person aware of the needs of another human being mattered. I had no academic ambitions. Being a good daughter-in-law, a good wife and a good mother were my goals.

13. View on achievement of goals/ideals: I believe I am a caring, sharing, warm human being but what makes me most happy is how my children have turned out to be: helpful, hard working, sensitive and responsible family men. But I have not achieved my dream of owning a small house of my own by the sea.

Sports

14. Sports popular when I was in college: Cricket was all the rage even then. (Our college had an all-girls’ team – a rarity at that time.) Also popular were table tennis, carom and badminton.

15. What I played: Table tennis.

16. Anything else?: I would have loved to take up riding and swimming. But we didn’t belong to a club, so swimming was out and riding would have been too expensive to learn in Mumbai at that time.

Movies

17. Movies in my youth: Love stories and socials in Hindi with lots of songs. English: Martin and Lewis (comedies); Hitchcock; Doris Day/Gene Kelley (musicals).

18. How often seen: About twice a month.

19. Impact on youth: Hair styles and dresses set the fashion trends. Songs were hummed and hit parades on Radio Ceylon were popular. Not every second collegian wanted to be a Shammi Kapoor or a Dev Anand, though.

20. Favourite movie and why: “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (James Stewert and Doris Day) for Day’s rendering of “Que sera, sera”, apart from the inimitable Hitchcock touch.

Marriage

21. What kind of marriages? Love marriages acceptable: In the society I lived in, most marriages were arranged. Love marriages were acceptable and not uncommon. The trouble usually arose when people married out of their community (caste/sub-caste) or religion.

22. My marriage: Mine was a love match. I knew my husband-to-be for about five years but got engaged just a year before the wedding. I was allowed to go out with him but had a fairly strict ‘curfew’ (reporting home time).

23. Family resistance, own say: No resistance from my family about the person I chose to marry. Yes, I had a say in the matter.

Partition

1. How old: At the time of the War of Independence (1857), I was not born. When India was partitioned, I was nine.

2. Any memories? I remember my mother saying, “I wish you were born in happier times”, probably referring to the vivisection of the country and the violence accompanying it. I also faintly recall going out round the city in a truck to see the illuminated building on 15 August 1947.

3. Personally affected? No personal loss such as what the people in Punjab and Sind who had to leave their homes and migrate to India suffered.

4. Opinions, thoughts, feelings: My mother who had a lot of Muslim patients tried her best to keep on an even keel about them. But there were such strong ‘hate’ vibes in the air that they affected the children like me also. I was too young to really understand how and to whom to mete out the responsibility for the bad happenings all over India: the killings, the looting, the riots, the refugees. As I remember, we were deeply affected by all the talk going around us. Two people emerged as the principal villains: Jinah and Gandhi. (Though today I know that the latter had nothing to do with partition, I can never persuade myself to hail him as ‘Father of the Nation’.)

World War II

1. How old: One year old when it started and seven year old when it ended.

2. Personally affected?: Not really. Except from hearsay around the time the war was nearing its end, I felt that India had unnecessarily been dragged into it and that it was unfair to expect us to fight for Britain when we were fighting her for our independence. Also, vague memories of rationing and shortages again from what I remember my mother or neighbours saying about how it was tough to get this or that.

3. Pearl Harbor?: Too young then to really understand all the implications.

4. Hitler?: I was no fan of his, although I admired a compatriot of mine, Subash Chandra Bose, who fled to Germany hoping to raise a liberation force to free India. Also, I have heard in later life people saying that the Holocaust was a Jewish ‘invention’ perpetuated by Jewish-controlled Western media .

Recipe

1. Family recipe to share: The much celebrated Prawn Green Curry by Ujwal Mankar.

Ingredients:

One fresh coconut 15 medium sized prawns, shelled and de-veined. One small bunch of coriander leaves (cilantro). 2 long green chillies. 6 black pepper beads. 8 cloves of garlic. Juice of one medium sized lime. Salt to taste.

How to make

1. Grate the coconut. 2. Grind ¼ grated coconut along with the coriander leaves, chillies, black pepper and garlic in a mini-mixer to a smooth paste. 3. From the remaining grated coconut (3/4), extract thick juice (‘milk’). 4. Again, from the same coconut, extract thin juice (by adding water). 5. Mix the paste with the thin juice. Add salt. Bring to a slow boil in a wok. Add the prawns. 6. Let it all simmer for 7 to 8 minutes. 7. Add the thick coconut juice (milk), bring it to a quick boil for a minute and remove the wok from the stove. 8. After it cools down a bit, add the lemon juice. IMPORTANT: Never reheat the Prawn Green Curry – even if you have stored the leftovers in the ‘fridge. Serve after thawing thoroughly. NOTE: Fresh coconut may be substituted by tinned coconut extract.

2. Whose? Why special? Anyone else knows? Pass on to whom? This is a family recipe in the true sense because I learned it from my mother and my mother-in-law. It is special because both in its ingredients (coconut milk, coriander leaves – cilantro to you Yankees! and green – not red - chillies mainly) and its taste, you can get a glimpse and a feel of the kind of people we are: warm, hospitable, caring and sharing. No, nobody else knows how to make it. Yes, I would like to pass it to all my daughters: Nandini, Anita, Avantika ('Tika) and you.

A grand old pumpkin tale.

This morning, I peeled and ate about 20 pumpkin seeds. I had saved them for drying after salvaging them from a pumpkin slice Ujwal had used to make some vegetable soup on Saturday. It brought back memories of my childhood. My mother used to give them to me ready peeled with their green covering intact. Peeling is quite a chore. Even if the outer covering is completely dry, it’s still slippery. Holding the tiny seed in your finger and trying to break and remove it takes a lot of patience. My other memory about pumpkin seeds concerns the annual fair (jatra) in Navi Wadi (literally ‘New Street’) very close to where I stay now. We used to go to visit the temple of Maheshwari, our family deity (kula devta). They used to have sweetmeat shops there where you could buy pumpkin seeds in sugar covering. It was considered quite a treat then. I wonder if it’s still available. Or, considered a treat. I also remembered a story from my childhood. It was about a bouncing pumpkin that a crafty grandmother used to save herself from a tiger and a fox. By a strange coincidence, I read it just the other day in a book for children rewritten by the renowned Marathi writer, Pralhad Keshav Atre. Delectable!

The cuckoo flew over to the crow’s nest. To lay an egg or two.

For the last three years or so, the spring has been springing on my neighbourhood more chirping birds than in the past. It was like in my childhood when our house abutted a spacious garden populated by lots of chirpers and crooners. They used to hold a symphony every sunrise and sunset. Today I can hear the koel at dawn accompanied by what looks and sounds like a robin red breast and a chorus of parrots. These last three years, in fact, the koel has made it a habit of repeating her repertoire at all times of the day – which is uncharacteristic and a bit disturbing. My mother used to tell me that the dulcet-voiced koel sings to herald the coming of the rains. Surely, the monsoons aren’t about to break, are they? I came across a fascinating article on the koel at this website a while ago:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2003/04/22/stories/2003042200020100.htm. By the way, the koel or cuckoo is the avian world’s notorious “brood parasite”. She abdicates her parental responsibilities by laying eggs in Ma Crow’s nest forcing her do the rest of the hard work of hatching the eggs and feeding the chicks. Speak of birdbrains? Hah! http://www.wildlifeofindia.com/artcuckoo.htm.