If the gharara is here, can the Bhopali be far behind?

It's because, my style icon, Shabana Azmi, Instagrammed herself in a gorgeous farshi gharara (and put to rest all doubts about its length and width by saying, 'The authentic classic gharara! Here’s My 2 bits worth... It needs to be free flowing on the thigh NOT tight. The joint must be 4 inches above the knee where the gota is put.'). It's because of a warm memory of the bachpan ka jamuni gharara that Khan auntie stitched and recently, one that Kahkashan had worn with aplomb to our school-group lunch; Archana to a Diwali party and the girl on Diwali and on Tiya's Haldi, that I am thinking of the Bhopali.

Also, my other beti, Saman was quoted on page3.

Arre, ek Bhopali nahi leke jaogi? Ek Bhopali joda to hona chahiye! Sameena looked at my wedding trousseau with dismay and then in her dramatic style began to tell me how at a recent wedding, some celebrity was wearing one – how the six-meter dupatta must go over the left shoulder to touch the heel of the right foot and the other end rest ‘lightly’ on the right arm. 
Imagining myself swathed in gossamer chiffon and brocade, we made our way through the crowded Chowk in Sheher (city market). The shopfronts on either side of the meandering lanes were stacked with bales and bales of silks, satins, velvets, brocades and soft muls that I couldn’t take my eyes off. But Sameena marched purposefully ahead, dragging me by the arm, saying not here, not here, every time I stopped to rest my eyes on some exquisite piece.

We finally came to a stop at a shop the size of a paan-shop. Chiffon (she asked for a specific variety) dikaiye, purple mein. In two seconds, she had decided and informed me, ye lenge. Then, she asked for brocade to go with it and the shopkeeper showed a few keeping the jamuni chiffon against those. She picked one – ye dijiye. At the kinnari wala next, even before I could feast my eyes on the mind-boggling variety of gota trims – edged with sequins and folded into phool-pattis, she picked a gota kinnari with yellow thread, and she informed me, ye best hai.  
The material got, we now walked through the galis of Ginnori to arrive at an aged wooden door embedded in a vast expanse of wall. She rapped the chain bolt loudly on the door and a teenaged girl opened it to let us inside. In the vast courtyard before us, several women were busy with chores and children ran weaving their way around adults, cots, buckets full of water, tubs full of washing, a matka here and a surahi there. The entire scene before us came to a standstill for a few seconds as everyone sensed visitors; a reed chick was lifted a crack with a cane stick for someone to peek at us from a darkened room. Quickly the interruption was acknowledged and the little girl twisting a curtain into a tight rope, put her legs around it and let it go, the two scallops of her shalwar touching the floor, she was swung in a slow whirl and the entire scene came alive again. Sameena hain, a woman remarked and a few of them greeted her cheerily and asked her family’s khair.
Sameena called out to a ‘Baaji’ and a lady in the far corner lifted her eyes from her sewing to look at us. ‘Inka Bhopali banana hai, samaan iss mein hai,’ she said and handed our shopping to a young girl in a short mul kurta and churidar. They shared some pleasantries and we came out.
But measurements? I asked her, surprised. Arre, she saw you, na? Sami replied.
The entire scene still plays vividly in my mind’s eye almost three decades after I left Bhopal. Every year, during spring cleaning, I take out my Bhopali joda and marvel at each neat pleat handstitched in place, every bit of the gota tacked beautifully, the six-metre dupatta chuna-hua (crinkled) by hand…

Sugar, sugar...

Just as she’s leaving for work, the girl digs this little box out of her bag and hands it to me saying, ‘Someone gave this to me for Sankranti’ and dashes out. I open it between morning chores and confusion and find nestled in a bed of roasted channa, sesame, coconut and peanuts, this little sugar pony. 

I leave it on the dining table. When the morning madness is over and I should get to my work desk too, I sit down to look at this translucent treasure.

How badly I had wanted these as a child and those that were brightly coloured – that sold all over the bazaar in mountains taller than me and blocked the footpaths. Mummy would pull me away if I lingered before one, amazed at the colours and shapes. We never buy these, can’t you see the flies and the dust, she would say. And the coloured ones? Tauba! Zehar – poison those colours are! 

Photo from www

So we walked around all the fun shops and to the sanitized Goyal Kirana Store in New Market where she spoke in Marathi with Goyal uncle who sat behind the jars of toffees and dry fruit of which I had my eyes stuck mostly to the rainbow coloured sweet saunf and flattened disks of stringed figs. I would rise on tiptoes in my red Bata sandals so Goyal Uncle could catch my eye and smile and hand me a little toffee from one of the jars. 

Photo from www

Sometimes, mummy bought me a seeti-wali lollipop and leaving me under the watchful eye of Goyal uncle, went to the bazaar inside.  I sat sucking the lollipop that coloured my lips pink but never whistled – only a minute spray of spit came out when I blew hard but no whistle, no toot. I watched the world go by – shoppers dragging crying children who cried louder when they saw me sitting with my shiny, pink lips, banging my Bata sandals on the little hard-board seat that had been carved out in a corner of that littlest shop.    

Photo from www

So we bought batashas only from Goyal Uncle who kept them stored in gunny bags and not in mountains on the floor where shoppers walked. On Diwali we offered those sedate-looking, round and hole-filled white batashas with kheel to the gods and then distributed it along with the mithais and namkeens to neighbours, visitors and the house helps. 

But in the give and take of Diwali plates, some bright and beautiful batashas would invariably sneak into our home and while Mummy was busy making polite talk with the bringer of the plate, I who kept a watchful eye for the poppy seed dusted anarsa and the coloured (the brighter, the better) batashas – hail happiness if there was a green house or a florescent pink bird - it would be quickly hid between the gathers of my frock and stolen away to the garden where I could suck on it to my heart’s content. 

Indian sweetmeat seller. Photograph from early 20th century. Caption reads: 'A Native Confectioner making Batasha (sweet meat)'.

Contributor: Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo

Rose cookies

It is the longest I’ve stayed away from that which will always be home - three and a half years. Bai opened one padlock, turned the key three times in another lock and I entered the home whose doors were seldom locked. Never when one came home. Everything was as it is, as it was. I did not turn to look at the empty chair where mummy sat. Always, for the past many years. I would enter and she would lean forward for my hug and I would each time be surprised at how little there was of her, how she was slowly shrinking in that corner chair – invisible if you didn’t know where to look for her but very much the vantage point for her to know what was going on in the house. Earlier, she had sat on the chair by the window, next to the phone and each time the gate opened with its distinct metal clank, she lifted the lace curtain to look out. Outside this window, she would have Bai place pots of seasonal flowers so she would always see those.

I entered the kitchen without looking around. I had my woolens to wash. Everything was in its place – the plates, the bowls, the pans all in their slots so permanent that one never had to think before reaching out for the slightly dented ande-wala pan, or the good peeler. I did not look at the pantry knowing it may be empty, a sight I did not want my memories to be overlapped with. Straightaway, I lifted the lid and tossed my clothes into the washing machine telling myself I knew exactly how to run it. At first, it didn’t start. This was my home, these were familiar things, I cannot forget, I chided myself. The water inlet was turned off, of course. I watched my sweaters take half-spins as the familiar, soft whirr wafted through the silent house. 

I had to show Bai the carton I wanted and we entered my parents’ bedroom. Except for the disconcerting stillness, there was nothing amiss. In the corner, where the two cupboards met, stood Papa’s chair. It wasn’t supposed to be there. It was always in the Study and later in a corner of the drawing-room. In this unreachable, unsittable corner, it meant disuse. It meant it would not be used anymore. Nothing here was meant for use anymore. All the memories of that chair, of the father bent over books, and papers and typewriters on a table yet never too busy to be interrupted to be dropped to a friend’s place, to sample my first dum aloo, to take me swimming or to the French class. I came out before Bai turned to look and did not go into the other room that had once belonged to me.

I went again the next day to find the carton with my things. My school report cards, greeting cards, the Cherry Chimes, the school dairies were all in there as was the big book of knitting that I will never be able to decode but reading which mummy knitted for us sweater after sweater in soft wool with complicated cables patterns. We packed what I wanted and left.

I went back. To Mummy’s cupboard. I told myself it was to look if there may be something of mine there – the school badge maybe – Blue House. But there was only a neat row of her well-worn, soft sarees. All familiar – in which she had sat reading the newspaper by the window, her long white hair braided into a low bun; which she wore to go saree shopping for me; which she wore to make the murrabba, the mattris, the kadhi, the kachoris, the achaars and in which she stood looking as I left, my sobs swelling in my throat till we turned the corner and she could see me no more. I touched the still sarees lightly. Then I gripped them with both my hands and buried my head into them, sniffing hard, praying that I smell her, praying that as I reach through the soft material I will find her soft body and touch her one last time.

The two days I had were full but I could not go back after three and a half years without meeting the Mehras across the road and the Grewals at the far end of the lane. The Mehra kids grew up calling her Naniji like the other grandchildren and with the Grewals, the ties go deep and back many decades. We have kept in touch over Facebook and phone so there was a bridge over the memories where we met and talked of the present – work, families, this one and that.

I finally gathered enough courage to walk to Masih auntie’s house a short distance from mummy’s. I didn’t realize I was coming after so long that I had to ask a passing child where she lived. Auntie took time opening the door and looked at me surprised. The familiar gold hoops still hung at the very edge of her elongated ear lobes and the cheeks had gone more hollow. She shuffled on her feet and we sat side by side on the sofa. The house was dark, the tube light in the hall had conked off. She was apologetic, ‘So many times I have called the electrician but they don’t come.’ Then she began talking of ‘teri ma’. 

She was there when I was born in March, in the hospital rocking me on her lap while correcting exam papers, she tells me. She got me a black shift dress with sequins on the front for the song I loved to sing – badan pe sitare. This she doesn’t have to tell me. This is family folklore. She and mummy baked the most fragrant and moist cakes in the big oven with the red door that was the size of a doll house and was kept on the gas flame for baking. They measured each ingredient holding it up on a scale, a real tarazu, against eggs. They discussed knitting patterns and mummy went to make her perfect, each-grain separate, khila-khila pulao when Masih auntie gave parties. Yet, they never called each other by their first names. Mummy always called her Mrs Masih and she called her, Mrs Tripathi.

So she sat on the sofa next to me talking about Mummy. There was nothing else to talk about. A raw, pulsating wound that time will not heal lay exposed between us. She was not wearing her hearing aid so I could not speak. She talked about the wonderful days with teri ma. She pointed to, behind me at the table where she has kept Mummy’s framed photo. I did not turn to look. She said she walks up to our house daily and misses teri ma.

I had steeled myself for this homecoming for three and a half years. I don’t easily cry in front of others. I did not cry when I saw the photos of my parents hanging in the closed house, nor when I found the refrigerator switched on as it had been for the last three and a half years, or when the washing machine ran just like it had done mummy’s clothes yesterday, nor when I did not see the madhumalti with its fragrant bunches of pink and white hugging the pillar on the porch, or when I woke up in the bedroom upstairs and saw in the pale morning light the harshingar that I would look at from my bedroom downstairs, standing on tiptoes to reach the windows to make me feel at home. And here I was, tears rolling down my face so silent, so easy that it seemed wrong to wipe them away. I hoped that in the failing light she would not notice but thankfully she only said, tu mat ro. Like the entire loss was hers to bear, like she had to free me of the grief so I could go away again while she walked up to our house to look at it from outside, never walking in pushing the front door open and letting herself inside, to sit through mummy’s silence or her chiding – why don’t you wear your hearing aid? And why won’t your sugar be high, you ate two burfees yesterday… and then eat a meal together.

Nursing a cold, I woke up this morning craving comfort and ate the two last rose cookies before the absurdity of eating cookies first thing in the morning could begin to gnaw. A cast iron cookie mould must lie somewhere in the unused kitchen of my mother’s house. Rose cookies she and Masih auntie made when we were children. I must have watched fascinated as the flower shaped mould was dipped into the sweet batter first and then gently eased into a kadhai brimming with hot oil. The kadhai would have soon filled up with flowers swimming on the oil, flowers the size of our palms. 

PS: I wrote this after I came back from Bhopal and did not think Masih auntie would follow Mummy so soon. Today, February 6, 2017, Masih aunty left us to be with her favourite people above. 

*Friends in small places: Amroodwala

Lights dance if you look at them with your eyes crinkled. I did that a lot. Long, straight lamppost lights would begin to run like confused pinwheels. He eyes crinkled like that when he smiled, which he did a lot - the amroodwala who came in the afternoon pushing his hand-card up the hill where we lived.

Only Mummy called him by his name, we called him ‘amroodwala’ in winter and ‘kelewala’ in summer. For the bananas we had to be sent out grudgingly but when he got the guavas, we ran out at the sound of his, ‘amdoodwalaaa’ to claim the best, the ones that were red inside. The red always reminded me of monkeys. Although our visitors were the ashen-faced, long-tailed langoors that raided the garden; jumped on the terrace and if one of us was careless to leave the terrace doors open, came down the stairs into the dining room to polish off any food left on the table.

So Amroodwala would hold one guava in his fingers like a cricket ball, half-turn it and say, yeh! this one’s red inside. His word was enough. Sometimes he was mistaken and the next day on being told so, he would promptly pick two and say, this one for yesterday and this for today. That’s so generous, I always thought.

The little secret has to be that the red amroods didn’t taste any better. It was just the thrill of discovering a red inside, a chance at luck. And luck, well, it was with the others who were allowed the red masala that he gave on paper – neatly folded into a square. Some could even have the guava ‘made’ by him. Parental warnings rang in our heads as he picked one (unwashed warning) and ran his knife (germs, rust warning) once at the centre and then across – taking care not to cut through to the bottom so the slices flowered open like the tin toy that sold on railway stations – the one which when you pressed the tiller, opened four tin petals to reveal a dancing girl inside. He then sprinkled the guava petals with the red masala (dirty hands, fly-sat masala warning) and handed it to the lucky ones while I carried mind inside to be washed in clean water. I would try and replicate his magic by trying not to cut it all the way to the bottom which I eventually always did; mixing red chill powder with salt to get his red that I never did. Tomorrow is another day, a carefree mind would say. An older one now knows that yesterday wasn’t. 

*The title 'Friends in small places' is from the Ruskin Bond collection that is 'inspired by people who have left a lasting impression on him'. 

Pictures: Shibani Mehta, Chandni Chowk, Delhi 6

*Friends in small places: Allaudin

Taak-tak, taak-tak... the afternoon sound in the quiet college lobby comes from the post office. If I step in, I will find the lanky Allaudin bent over stacks of letters, thumping the stamp in his hand first on the ink pad and then on the letters one by one. He will then proceed to toss them into the sorting frame. 

I can smell the place now – of new paper and post office glue. Later in the afternoon, Allaudin can be seen making the rounds of the campus on his old Atlas bicycle dropping off our letters from his worn canvas bag. He doesn’t drop all in the letter boxes but stops when he sees someone whose letters he knows are in his bag -  I see him tilt his bike and rest his right leg on the road to stop. 

The climb to our house is steep, he must get down and walk his cycle. I spot him and run, ‘Allaudin Uncle, hamara letter hai?’ ‘Papa ka hai’, he hands me a clutch of Inland letters, postcards, envelopes and newsletters – they come every day. I look for stamps.  I wait for the SPAN magazine to look at the glossy pictures first and then read some. Sometimes there are letters addressed to me, ‘Miss’ they say. Once as I waited to buy stamps, the men at the counters were talking of Allaudin, of his Ramzaan rozas. It was the first time I had heard of someone going without water the entire day. I craned my neck and stood on toes to look at Allaudin sitting inside. Taak-tak, taak-tak...his hands were stamping the letters.  

Today, October 9 is World Post Day.


*The title, ‘Friends in small places’ is from a Ruskin Bond collection ‘inspired by people who have left a lasting impression on him’. 

Renoir, Rembrandt, Roerich and how not to die

We have art in order not to die from the truth – Nietzsche

Too much art talk in my head these days. First, the Girl presented me with a watering can on Mother’s Day - a cute, pint-sized, pink watering can that does not water and my sister remarked, ‘Now you’re a girl with a watering can!’

It struck me how easy it is for my elder sisters to delve into memories and come up with stuff my memory seems to have fogged away (half of it I don't know anyway). But since the mention, it kept running into my head – the watering can, the girl, the blue dress, the frizzy blond hair – the painting my friends came to look at when we were the age of the girl in the painting. 

Renoir’s, A Girl with a Watering Can

It also has to do with reading Donna Tartt’s, The Goldfinch – a baby elephant of a book – at one go, it was so demandingly unputdownable and all the while thinking: how Papa would have loved this!

It’s strange how one grows up with things around them that emerge so achingly significant only when they’re all gone. Some famous paintings were on the walls of our home forever. Papa had brought prints of many that he fancied as a student in Amreeka. 

I have spent hours looking at this Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens by Albert Pinkham Ryder. There was so much mystery in this scene. There was also a story that he told, it awed us but I couldn’t remember it.  I spun my own tales – these were washerwomen washing clothes and themselves in a forest river unaware of the man approaching them on horseback (they must be chattering over the big wind that seems to sway the trees). The real story, here. 

Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We?Where Are We Going? was a bit of a haw, haw back then :)

And then there was Rembrandt’s Aristotle with the bust of Homer, which was lost to dampness in later years. The only addition that was made to these was one self-portrait by Amrita Sher-gil.

I learnt of art, literature and history like it was never taught during my evening walks with Papa. We had moved to town and walks were through a slum where men sat on their haunches in circles; scruffy-nosed, naked-bottomed kids ran whacking worn two-wheeler tyres; skipping over cow dung and worse, we came to the urban Lego houses with young boys and girls leaning over gates; pressure cooker whistles and lone old men on culvert puliyas. We walked, Papa talked. I listened, sometimes got lost in mine own thoughts and forgot to. 

When through the bend in the street we came to the main road, and to a particular white house with a neat mehndi hedge, I sensed a slowing of his step, a slight turn of head – just so. Nothing so obvious I could ask.

Then one day to give way to a passing bus, we were stalled right in front of the white house. He said urgently, ‘Look at the painting’. Through the open window, I saw the abstract on the wall – a scarlet sun. Whether it was the yellow evening glow inside the house or its seemingly calm isolation from the  noisy, crowded road right across – it was surreal – the entire setting. 

When I moved to Delhi, Papa would take me to the National Gallery of Modern Art. Sometimes I was reluctant because I had other stuff to do that he thought little of. But there I discovered Roerich and his Himalayas. It was in Bangalore that I first heard of the Tataguni Estate and declared that I would be there the day it opens to public. And on that most beautiful October Sunday, when most wonderfully, we had Mummy with us, we rode down to the beautiful world of Devika Rani and Svetoslav Roerich. 

Here’s news report from then and pictures of our visit.

Times of India, Oct 2004: BANGALORE: The gloom is lifting. But for the Roerichs' pet dogs which no one kept track of, the 468-acre Tataguni Estate has been restored almost to its old glory, even as it was thrown open to the public on Sunday to mark the centenary of Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich.

The house and studio have been renovated; Roerich's 1948 Chevrolet restored to running condition and painted a spanking blue. The linolae factory is functional again and swans preen themselves in the re-done lake. The only shadow on the centenary celebrations, which was launched at the estate, was the pending Supreme Court judgment on the Karnataka government decision to acquire the Roerich Estate.

A trip down memory lane

My Allahabad story here and on the travel blog.

A woman has no escape ~ Daphne du Maurier

My Boss was very cross. Cross with me for no reason at all. It was my first job – a sub-editor with a daily. Straight out of college and still under the protection of parents, whose evening tea would wait for me to return home from work. I worked the afternoon shift 12 to 5 for the inside page – National –relatively less significant. 

If you didn’t know, a newspaper office is like a large classroom – only more noisy and disorderly. We sat on both sides of large tables – groups together, editing what the various news agencies sent. Every once in a bit, the Boss would point a finger at one of us and say, ‘You go’ and obediently, mid-sentence, making then-than, it’s- it is, the pointed-at would get up and go into the Printer Room to gather the spool of paper the machine was constantly  dispensing – quite like a toilet paper roll running on the floor. Each news item was then torn and randomly handed to us by the Boss. I got the boringest, the least important, the ones that were fillers and at the end of the day would have to be discarded or I would have to go around to snooty men on Business or Sports desks and ask if they had any use of it – like selling news was my job too.  I didn’t mind.

We sat and ‘subbed’ – copy edited with pencil – each news item, then gave it a headline and presented it to the Boss. The Boss looked at our work disdainfully, made some random corrections wearing an annoyed expression, letting off some sighs and uffs. I didn’t mind.

The Boss made me sit across the table from the rest, facing the large sunlit windows that stung my eyes. I didn’t mind.

On the Boss’ particularly bad days, at five when I would be about to leave, I would be told, ‘You!’ ‘Stay back and get the pasting done. No mistakes!’ I stayed behind waiting for the paan-chewing Paster uncle to make an appearance. Slowly, like the chewing of his paan, he pasted headline after headline, news items under headlines. That done, one had to accompany Paster Uncle to the Chief Editor for approval. It would be past tea and close to dinner time when I reached home. I didn’t mind.

I didn’t mind nothing because I was doing what I wanted to; Papa looked at the paper each morning and his face beamed with pride when I pointed out the headlines I had written; and the Chief Editor encouraged me to write short pieces, by-line and all, and soon I had a column. I did not mind anything because one day he had called me inside his cabin and in front of his visitors, said, ‘Your piece on Coleridge was brilliant!’

Did I tell you my Boss was a woman? As women bosses go, women have a tough time dealing with them. Kind of teenage romances these are – dealing with quicksilver, irrational moods, unfounded jealousy that is not professional alone.

The Boss became cross-er when the Chief Editor’s praise wafted out of his cabin, when he started to walk up to thump me on the back right at our National table that sat my Boss, a bearded, kurta-ed young man who had lost his fingers in an accident in the press and was sent to the news desk, some floating people like the whimsical, college girl who came for five days a month including the payday and poor me who sat wiping her sunshine tears all day.

Papa said I needed to give her more respect. Call her ‘ma’am’, he was categorical.

Unwillingly, I ‘ma’am-ed’ her and we became close in a problem-sharing way. The Boss had married an already married man and was facing hell from his family and the man, her husband lived off her earnings. I, poor little lapin, growing up secure in a close-knit family, knowing nothing of the wild, bad ways of the world, asked my Boss, dear lady, to go back to her home in Bombay to be with her parents and siblings, the protectors from all things evil. That is when I heard the most heartbreaking thing ever. My Boss, the cross, ignoring-me lady, said with more disdain than she had for me, ‘Do you think the exploitation there is less?’ 

*Picture from the Internet. 

The Flying Chair

These days the course I’m writing is for very small children – classes I to V – teaching and practicing English language and grammar through simple stories and rhymes in a fun, interactive way. I couldn’t help sharing the story I loved as a kid, my Papa’s story of the flying chair, the उड़ने वाली कुर्सी.

The memory takes me back to the room where it was spun – each night, a new adventure.

In his book and paper smelling first floor room that opened into a small balcony over our lush garden, along the window, sat the big mez with three typewriters – two bulky ones, one of those Hindi and the sleek portable, Remington which he mostly used. The big table was strewn with big, open books and papers and under those lay wonderful childhood attractions – the paperweights, the hourglass in-cased in glass along with a sea horse and shells, a stopwatch, a small handheld slide magnifier, seals and boxes of photo slides. 

Papa's chair looked a lot like this.

Office chairs had not invaded homes (nor offices) – no swivel, no recliners. Ergonomics?  The word wasn’t invented. Straight-backed, no nonsense, good lumber support, if you slouched, it hurt so if you were stiff from sitting, you got up and walked some. The chair in question was a carved armchair with a cane-woven back and seat. A cushion on the seat, and two when I sat on it. I can still feel the smoothness of its arms when in make believe, I sat on it typing important imaginary things on the typewriter.

There was a single cot in the room and at night I would climb into it next to Papa (mornings, I magically woke up in my own bed), under the ubiquitous mosquito net. Then the story would begin. The story of the flying chair. The magical chair. I imagined the one in the room spouting wings and taking Papa over Kamla Park and the Bada Talaab, the lake. He would describe the chair covered in red velvet and I would feel its softness and mossy texture. When he sat on it and asked the chair to fly, I felt the lightness in the head like on being airborne when a Ferris wheel takes off the ground. Papa-on-the-flying-chair would do good deeds like saving people from robbers and helping those in need but he would do a lot of naughty and fun things too like whisking off ice-cream from someone’s hand; chance meetings with my friends and school tormentors who seemed comic in the situations he created. 

May every childhood be blessed with such wonderment and memories to last a lifetime...

In the final analysis...

छोटी बाते, छोटी, छोटी बातों की हैं यादे बड़ी...

When I was still a casement tunic-ed, long-plaited, school-girl, Bua, Papa’s only sister passed away during the festival of Diwali. I don’t remember if it was on the same day or before. A kind of silence fell over the household for the short while that my parents must have reminisced or planned things. Then, Papa asked me to come along to the market to buy some things.  Just as we were starting back, I saw my best friend with her cousins having ice creams standing in the colonnaded New Market, laughing and enjoying themselves. On seeing me, she called out cheerily and when I hesitated, Papa waved back to her equally cheerily. I was awkward. I rushed to tell her that my Bua had passed away. She tried to change her expression of merriment into something more appropriate. Just as we left, very gently, Papa said, “You needn't have told them. They were so happy.”

That Diwali evening, I was tentative. I had been so looking forward to wearing my new clothes, I still remember the soft, white muslin of the gypsy skirt, each of its layers lace-trimmed and the pink flower-print top. I don’t know how it was conveyed but it was conveyed to us that we could wear the new clothes and go out with friends, only, there would be no fire crackers or lighting at home. All evening I saw Papa receiving guests, accepting their wishes, wishing them back. I saw him sitting on that chair in the yellow light of the drawing room of a dark house with no Diwali diyas or fairy lights. Bua was his only sister. How he must have wrestled with his grief so it did not mar the joy of others. 

It was an invaluable lesson.

Why should we wear our sorrow like a veil that must not slip from our heads? It is two months since Mummy passed on. And I have not mourned her as the world would wish me to. Life has to go on. For her sake. For everything that made her happy, and proud. I have celebrated her in my own way. Keeping the kitchen fires burning, for one. Till two days before she went to hospital, Mummy was, as usual, animatedly discussing recipes, watching Food-Food as on a loop all day. I have made more pastas, pulaos, cakes and curries in the last two months than in two years. It has been therapeutic. 

We've remembered all the wonderful things she did and was and we’ve had haircuts, shopped, eaten out, watched movies, had people over, visited friends, facebooked, liked and lol-ed. I still reach out for the phone several times a day to call her. Mornings feel strange without her familiar voice on phone – everything from what was had for breakfast to what some friend wore or did not, was discussed (for mum clothes shopping came a close second, after cooking). My greatest champion, Mummy was always there for me as for all of us, in sickness and in our littlest accomplishments. 

Whenever the going gets tough, magically, a friend or relative calls or visits. They have us in their thoughts. Feels wonderful and I am grateful for this support. Yet why do I hold it against those that did not call/visit/ write? This, I still have to learn. Then I see Papa, squinting an eye and tilting his head in a ‘let it go’. I’ll try.

What women want!

“Come, let’s go,” said Papa one afternoon and I, nine-ish or littler, tagged along, like I always did. The grave air about him told me we were going for something not very pleasant but I didn’t ask, like I never did. Papa was more ‘show’ than ‘tell’. 

We stopped near the Polytechnic College boy’s hostel. It was on the way to our home atop Shyamala Hills.  There were tea shacks at the crossroads. We waited a little distance away. Suddenly, Papa asking me to ‘stay’ there, rushed to the tea shacks. My elder sister who used to get down from bus there on her way back from college had also materialized on the scene. Next, I saw Papa holding a boy’s hand. There was some action, some words spoken, some onlookers and then Papa and sister came back to collect me and we all went home.

A matter of (eve) teasing, ched-chad was thus settled.

Growing up in a small town, we girls, kind of knew how to ‘deal’ with boys. With silence. Ignore, keep a low profile, don’t go to crowded places, don’t go to secluded places, don’t draw attention to you, don’t wear what fellow Bhopalies wouldn’t…

Predators came as the afternoon uncle to push the swing and by and by had you sit on his lap; the grey-haired gentleman who floored you with his impeccable English, his world tours, then stooped down; the men servants who could be trusted with the house keys but not with the girls of the house.

We wore skirts that had to be four-inches above the knee in the girls’ school but as soon as we joined a co-educational college, were required to cover up -- wear a salwar-kameez-dupatta. I was stepping out in a pair of jeans one evening, when Papa quietly said that he was no longer strong enough to go out and fight people. I went back in and changed.

Like most other girls in the city, I rode a two-wheeler to college. One evening, returning after dark from my French class, a group of men in a car waylaid me. Quick thinking and a quicker bike saved me but before I could say sacré bleu a question mark attached itself next to my French classes till a male classmate offered to accompany me back home every day -- he on his bike, I on mine. Every time he bunked class, I had to too. In it together, like conjoined twins.

Next stop -- Delhi. Danger stared dangerously, daringly on Dilli dil walon ki roads. On the way to work one morning, I was waiting for an auto. One stopped and I got in. When I told him where I wanted to go, he said, “I’m not going there. I just picked you because I like you.” Too scared to react, I let him take me where he left me and then told my friend. “Didn’t you slap him?” he asked angrily. Less angry, he asked, “Have you no sense? What stopped you from getting down?”

Fear? Embarrassment? What?

Red Line buses were a different planet – a free for all, groping, pinching, touching neighbourhood where desperate men let their wild fantasies loose. The details are too graphic for this space. Reckless driving was a minor crime. Reporting it did not, as a rule, call attention to the complainant. But it did. A few days after I reported a Red Line bus, registration number et all, for reckless driving in a letter to editor, it made headline news. The Police arrested the driver and were at my door to take my statement and proceed with the case.

Suddenly, I became the perpetrator of the misdeed, the villain of the piece, peace-pincher, trouble architect, the disrupter of life’s steady goings on.

What was the need? Why couldn't I keep my big mouth shut? Did I not know what the driver-kind can do?  Had I thought of my little girl? What if they kidnap her? Someone could just  throw acid on my face and disappear and everything would be OVER.

Now I knew real fear. I withdrew. The Police was angry with me. I was angry with me too. But I was a woman first. Anger I could live with. A small price to pay for not being violated. A woman, so like a traffic law.

So what has changed in four decades for me? Little. On the way back from the airport, alone in a cab (the Airport Taxi at that), I was again a petrified, little girl not knowing what to do when mid way (the 60-km stretch takes one and a half hours) the cabbie first seemed to lean back and relax, then lifted his pants to his knees and above. He stretched himself, rubbed his ankles, patted his thighs. Terrifyingly intimidated, I told myself, dirty is in the eyes of the beholder; that my fear was unfounded and he innocent, only uncouth.

I muttered a weak, “Why don’t you drive properly?” Everyone knows what cabbies say to that. I called husband and code-worded my fear. He asked me to get off. Get off? In the middle of nowhere? Stand on the highway with my bags and beg some auto to go my way? And what to tell this guy? How to not create a scene, feel helpless and mouth the dirty? I sat put.

Women are a broad spectrum group. I’m neither among those that’ll be happy with women’s day free manicures, show window’s amazing ingenuity in reflecting pink through next-to-nothing clothing or hassling men to make anniversaries/women’s day/valentine’s day special; nor among the coin-size bindi-ed, handloom sari-ed, Arnab Goswami-silencing ones. I am not a woman of extraordinary courage and I’m in majority. We’re the ones that are walking through life on an Alert mode forever.

So I welcome the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2013 passed in the Lok Sabha earlier in March. It makes acid throwing, stalking, trafficking, employing a trafficked person, voyeurism (making videos) punishable offences. A policeman who does not take a rape complaint also faces jail now.

The 24x7 news channels hyperventilated and singularly dismissed the new bill on the only two issues it did not address.

I don’t understand marital rape. It plain amounts to domestic violence, sexual abuse. It is explained as women forced to have sex by their husband, ex-husbands, partners. The latter two are categories of ‘marital’? Preeti Jain crying ‘rape’? Secondly, we cannot make laws on statistics alone. Tomorrow, in a more equal society, will there be husband-rape? Or will a man have to suffer in silence because of his macho image? Spousal rape makes little sense because one doesn't just keep living with a rapist.  

The lowering of age of consensual sex… I was ‘hmm…’ about this till I read this, “a 17 year old who is a victim of sexual offense committed by another 17 year old will be treated as an adult victim/witness while the perpetrator will be tried as a child under the Juvenile Justice Act.” (Tulir - Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse). And of course, it has been pointed out that victims of rape in this 16-18 age-group would be coerced to admit it was consensual.

Protesting sisters and (their) bhai-logs in armbands, please take a rest and READ the amendment. Do not trust the Shankar Breathless Mahadevanesque newschannels to give you everything on a pink platter. If you then need a new cause, here’s one I found, Wiki tells: “In Taiwan, International Women's Day is marked by the annual release of a government survey on women's waist sizes, accompanied by warnings that weight gain can pose a hazard to women's health.”  Don’t you smell political conspiracy, hidden agenda, and vote-bank politics behind our government’s blatant disregard of this crucial step towards women’s safety?