N.

She was my sister's college friend. A fair-skinned Goan Hindu with delicately etched features, she wore her nearly auburn hair trimmed short in a bob and lived with her mother in a huge elegantly furnished apartment on Laburnum Road, off Hughes Road. Even in my child's eyes, she seemed to have a mysteriously wicked air about her. Her disappearance was equally mysterious, sudden and without a trace. But while she was still around, she was probably the best coiffed, the best groomed, the best dressed creature I had ever seen. She had a weakness, I guess, for bouncy georgette and chiffon 6-yard saris in pastel hues. Even in those days, she used to drape the sari quite low off her waist as is all the rage now. Whenever she visited 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4, I used to virtually devour her with my eyes. It didn't seem to bother her much. She chided me about it gently once or twice, though, almost as if it was all a big joke. She was my first childhood crush, I guess. The next one was a dumpy and dark English teacher in the first grade. I adored her for the way she taught me English. She was, I think, largely responsible for instilling the love of the language in me. http://digbig.com/4xqnp. The third one was another teacher, a fair and short damsel with sparkling eyes, who taught me in middle school. Almost every day, I used to watch her avidly from our terrace when she walked to and back from school.

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?

Sign of madness.

Ujwal has been telling me that her mother used to say talking to oneself was a first sign of madness. If that were so, I wonder, what about all the Marathi playwrights of yore who used to make their characters talk to themselves or in asides to facilitate plot development? I'm sure this device is used by writers elsewhere even now. I remember in my childhood reading what used to be called natyachhata in Marathi, usually one-page monologues that unfolded a complete story, usually ironical and humouous. In other words, it was a sort of a capsule sitcom. Diwakar (Shankar Kashinath Garge), the pioneer of this dramatic genre, used to work as a clerk in Baroda. Later, he became the headmaster of the Depressed Class Mission's primary school in Pune and, afterwards, worked as a teacher in Pune's well-renowned Nutan Marathi School. http://tinyurl.com/6mo27t. One of his pieces was called Pant Meley, Rao Chadhley (When Pant died, Rao got promoted) told the story of a head clerk's death, the promotion of one of his subordinates to his post and the subsequent change in the latter's attitude and behaviour. In another little masterpiece, Wordsworthche Phulapakharu (Wordsworth's butterfly), the poet's fan waxes eloquent about the little creature's beauty but doesn't hesitate to promptly burn a bug he catches. In Eka Natache Atma Natya (An actor's soliloquy), the protagonist talks about the tragedy of an actor's existence and kills himself by swallowing poison. Similarly, Phatato Patang (A kite gets torn) is the dirge by a tattered kite of which the career ends when it is literally soaring at its zenith. Diwakar was a friend of the poets Keshavasut, Madhav Julian and Yeshwant. I remember studying their poems in school. He was also a member of the well-known poetry circle, Ravi Kiran Mandala. Apparently, Diwakar, a keen student of English poetry, found inspiration for his new genre from Browning's poems. Diwakar was a master of spoken everyday Marathi. There was nothing artificial or stilted about his language. Perhaps, Tukaram's abhanga "Words are the only jewels I possess, words are the only clothes I wear, words are the only food that sustains my life, words are the only wealth I distribute among people" aply describes Diwakar's contribution to literature. (I wrote about Tukaram's abhanga earlier here: http://tinyurl.com/663s3c.)

Privileged, who me?

I have more than a sneaking suspicion that I saw myself as a member of the privileged class in my childhood. No, I did not know the exact phrase for the state I imagined myself to be in. The reasons for this self-delusion were simple. I was waited upon by a couple of servants, one of them an old family retainer. We had a car. http://tinyurl.com/4m58jq. Not many others we knew had one. We took an annual summer holiday either in Matheran or Mahabaleshwar. http://tinyurl.com/4wljxg. We also used to go occasionally to Pune, sometimes staying at the Morarjee Gokuldas Sanitarium opposite the Pune Railway Station and eating out at Dorabjee's and the Railway Restaurant managed by Brandons. http://digbig.com/4xsxf. Our train travel was by first or second class in a reserved coupé. We lived in a fairly spacious terrace flat at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4. I did not attend a posh school, though, like Ashu and Abhi. My first school was bottom of the barrel. The second one was fairly respectable. We ate and dressed well. We owned a gramaphone to play 78 rpm discs http://tinyurl.com/5t6cxx and a Bush radio http://tinyurl.com/4ndw75. I had plenty of toys to amuse myself with http://tinyurl.com/4grxkp. We went to see a fair number of movies and plays. The illusion of living a privileged life stayed with me till the time I joined the Forward Market Commission on a measly salary of Rs.400/- a month after doing my Master of Commerce by thesis. http://tinyurl.com/6cbkte; http://tinyurl.com/6qt87g. By and by, however, the scales fell from my eyes, as Pelham ("Plum") Grenville Wodehouse would have succinctly put it. What I should have realised is the so-called privileged status is ephemeral, like everything else in this world. Truman Capote would have most likely understood. http://tinyurl.com/64laor.

Avantika’s “Enf of the Year Speech”.

Avantika sent me her “Enf of the Year Speech” – at least, that was the subject line of her e-mail dated Friday, May 18, 2007 6:27 AM – that she said had been “enetred to a contest for the end of the year ceremony. Hopefully it will be selected”. I wrote back to her: ” Hi, Avantika. I liked your speech very much, warts and all. I'm intrigued by your use of a hyphen ('-') in place of a dash ('--') as parenthesis and you don't even insert a space on both sides of it. This is not criticism, just observation. I'm so impressed that I'm going to put it up on my blog. Watch for it. I may make a few explanatory comments. Excellent work.” I decided to reproduce it here – “warts and all” – not out of inertia or indifference but because I wanted to preserve it in all its spontaneity. I really felt proud when I read it. What it told me is that young Avantika is observant and aware of what’s going around her. She is capable of thinking cogently and of feeling intensely, When I was her age, I wasn’t even half as introspective or sensitive. In fact, I was quite a dumb kid. So, here it is ready or not, Avantika’s “Enf of the Year Speech”. [P.S.: If her teachers don’t select it as the winning entry, I would pity their lack of judgement and good sense. Her carelessness grammar is only a sign of her carefree exuberance, I guess. This is not the opinion of a besotted grandpa but a writer with an eye for great writing, believe you me.] By the way, Avantika’s school website is here: http://www.west-windsor-plainsboro.k12.nj.us/grover/index.html. Her previous appearance on this blog is here: http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/story-of-jubie-as-told-by-tika.html.


Imagine… When we were given this word to base our speech upon, I laughed it off thinking it would be a breeze, but when I sat down to write, I sure did prove myself wrong. As I was deep in thought, trying to muster my 3 years at Grover onto a piece of paper, I realized that there is no imaginable way to condense 3 eventful years into a mere 3 minutes. And now that these three years are coming to a close, we can only imagine what the future brings.

Well for those of you who didn’t already know this; we’re going to high school, and I think that we can all agree that many of us are feeling excited, sad, anxious, clueless, thrilled, relieved, and much more, all at one time. Though we will all be together as a class next year, there will always be much to miss. For starters, the most important thing we will be leaving behind-is our bubble, our sanctuary-our school! For most of us, Grover has been our home away from home, and the people here have become like family.

In the words of Oscar Wilde, “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one”, so I think the best way for us to appreciate our teachers, is to imagine to imagine ourselves without them. I don’t think any of our wild imaginations can imagine a day without Mr.Mayer’s constant leadership, and guidance. Let’s face it; the infamous “Mr.Mayer talks” will only be a memory for us. Imagine a school without Tino’s help, and friendship, and for those of you who are on 8B-imagine living without our teachers! Imagine going to class everyday and trying to survive without Ms.Kirkpatrick’s relentless nagging about due dates, Mr.Maskells alligator and brain dance, Mrs.Dailey’s funky hand motions, and Ms.Grooms story time. Mr.Coppola’s crazy personality or the amazing feeling of knowing that Mrs.Rathbun will always be there for us. I don’t think any of us want to even begin to imagine what middle school would have been without Ms.Gilchrist’s ability to listen, advise, and of course, fix jammed lockers! Who’s gonna help us open our locker now Ms.Gilchrist?

As we imagine our high school career, we begin to realize that our future has been shaped by our past at Grover. The lessons we learned here, academic, or social, will not be with us just for a year or two, but for the rest of our lives. Grover will always be a part of who we are, and what we eventually become. Our wonder years at grover have been the foundation of what will be the ultimate us. So, now it’s time to go on with our journey to complete the ultimate us. As Paul J Meyers said “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.” Similarly, our time at Grover has come to pass, and I don’t think any of us could have imagined that it would come so soon…And now that I have imagined what life will be without our teachers, let me ask you,our teachers to take a second and imagine what your life will be without us?

FAMOUS LAST WORDS: Just like a woman! Now Madame A laughingly tells me it was an unedited copy she sent me. And not a word of explanation why I had to be one of two recipients (the other being Aditi, her newly graduated didi) who was privileged to be given that honour!

Stop Press: From Avantika, Saturday, May 26, 2007 3:31 AM: "Hey dada, just wanted to let you know that I did get selected for the speech. I'll e-mail more later as i'm verry busy with packing for my Quebec trip. Love, Avantika" (Can you beat that?)

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.