A Tribute......to some special people!

In one of my earlier posts I had recounted a few of the innumerable, wonderful, experiences of my young days which are etched deeply in my mind. The bonds of togetherness with the family forged during those formative years continue to this day and bring to me a sense of security and harmony. But this was made possible by the presence of all the people around me who helped to shape and build my character and persona either by directly advising and admonishing or by setting examples....these were the people who became my teachers in the school of life and their experiences made me discern between good and bad, right and wrong....I emulated some traits and shunned the others and grew up to be a confident adult. Most of them are still around me, the strong guiding forces of my life, but some of them have passed away leaving behind fond memories and examples that help me to survive even today.
Here I am going to briefly put down my impressions of just a few of them......

My Mother...

The strongest influence in my life has been that of my mother....a simple loving and caring housewife with a strong sense of duty, who earned the respect and admiration of everyone she came in contact with. Even though I lived with her for only eleven years of my life I learned enough in that short time to set my goals and future course of action.

She was a skilled needlewoman and would copy the latest designs of dresses for me which she saw in magazines or show windows which she thought were too expensive to buy. She knitted with an amazing speed and made sweaters for each and every member of the family to be gifted on Diwali....I have yet to meet a relative , far or near , who did not possess an article hand made by her! Despite her poor eyesight, she would embroider beautifully, by hand as well as machine...and even learned to weave cloth on the loom. She subscribed to woman’s magazines to keep informed about the latest designs, and maintained notebooks to copy patterns.

She had barely started initiating me in these crafts when she passed away, but had generated sufficient interest in me, so that I would pour over her notebooks and magazines to learn all that she used to do. By the time I grew up I could easily follow instructions from books and learn almost any craft. I learned to stitch, knit, crochet, tat and embroider. In fact I never needed to say “I don’t know how to do this”...because I knew that whatever I wanted to learn I could find in some book. It was truly an amazing legacy she left behind for me, her collection of magazines and notebooks, which gave in me the confidence that made me feel that....... “I Can Do Anything”!!

She wanted to give her children the best of everything...when my father got transferred to Delhi, she spent hours helping me with my studies so that I would be able to clear my entrance test for one of the best schools. She enrolled me in music and dance classes and would accompany me to the class and wait outside till the session was over, to bring me back home. Although her plans for me were aborted due to her untimely demise, I did get from her the guidelines which I later followed for my own children and which in turn my sister Sujata pursued too for her daughters. I am sure she would have been proud of the way her grandchildren have shaped up.

I remember her caring not only for her husband and children but also family and friends, helping out with service, cash and kind where ever possible, and manage a decent standard of living within the constraints of my father’s govt. salary. She welcomed visitors and relatives with due respect and judged each person fairly, irrespective of her relationship to them. My mother brought my fathers family closer and helped to foster bonds that remain till today.

She was a patriot and knitted socks and sweaters for our soldiers during the Indo China war of 1962 and even donated a part of her gold ornaments to the National Defence fund. She shared the love of Cricket with my Father and sat glued to the radio to hear the commentary when ever there was a match, diligently making notes of the scores to inform dad when he called up from office! I still have some of them with me. She played some badminton too for the exercise.

What ever I did not know about her I gathered from the conversations of our relatives who never seem to stop talking about her. She made each and every person she came in contact with feel special and is easily the most reverently remembered person in our entire family, even four decades after her demise. Each of them takes special pleasure in describing how close he or she was to her and the bonds they shared.

It is true that mothers are always role models for their daughters, and each mom tries to give the best to her child. But I do feel that my Mom was special because she had so little time in which she gave so much of herself that it has lasted me a lifetime, and passed on through me to my daughter.


My Grandparents

They were simple, straightforward, honest and down to earth village folk who unhesitatingly wound up their establishment and came to keep house for their bereaved son and look after his two daughters aged eleven and two. It must have been a major upheaval for them at their age, coming to live in an officer’s colony from their rural background without any one of their own kind for company and the responsibility of looking after two young girls. But they took their duties seriously and dedicated their lives to looking after this family and all their efforts were directed towards making their son’s life as hassle free and comfortable as possible.

Babaji was a very intelligent and farsighted person and carefully managed dad’s finances, and assumed full responsibility for running the household, shopping for groceries and other daily requirements. No work was too lowly for him and no company too high. He could work in the garden with the servants as well as sit with dad’s colleagues and their wives who came to visit us and talk with them.

In his free time during the day he would read the newspaper and also Hindu legends and mythology. He even helped to translate his Guru’s version of The Geeta from urdu to hindi. He was a big moral support for my father, always telling him not to worry for anything....”everything will be fine son” he would say.

We never needed an alarm to wake us up in the mornings. Unfailingly at daybreak we would be jolted up from our slumber by the bhajans and hymns he used to sing with gusto and full devotion. Even though at that time we used to get annoyed at having our sleep disturbed, I do feel that those words of goodness pouring into our ears at that tender age left a lasting impact on our minds. I still remember so many of them, and a kind of replay often comes unbidden to me and has a calming effect when I am too excited or disturbed!!
Bedtime of course was story time and he regaled us with stories from the Bhagwat, Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Each morning he would carry my bag to the school bus stop and be waiting there unfailingly every afternoon to fetch me back home. He helped me with my maths problems which I translated for him in hindi, and also assisted me in making charts and models and school projects.

When I learned to operate my mom’s sewing machine, he would sit with me ,cut up old bed sheets and draw straight lines on the fabric for me to practice stitching on. He even helped me with the cutting and making up of skirts and tops for myself and my sister since he had some knowledge of tailoring from time spent with some tailors in his native place.

He knew plenty about cooking too, though my granny always said that his interference spoiled her dishes...:).At breakfast time he would sit in front of our coal fired oven and make lovely crisp golden toasts for us and served them with butter and jam.

He looked after my sister with equal zest and gave her a daily massage and bath and pampered her as a mother. Despite the fact that he was from an older generation I found him more modern and accommodating than many people who were much younger to him. He was fond of playing cards and had a good sense of humor and also a quick temper which thankfully was never targeted at us....

My grandmother uncomplainingly took charge of the household chores. She cooked, cleaned and washed up, not in the least bothered if the servants and maids were on leave. Without a penny to her name, she never had any demands....her only desire being to please everyone in the only way she knew how.....by feeding them. No one ever went hungry from our house, be it a guest, relative or servant. She was always ready to rustle up a meal or a snack at any time of the day or night. She zealously guarded my mother’s kitchen not letting even a spoon out of her sight. Somehow she had the idea that mom would be unhappy if her things were lost or damaged.
And together these two lovely people made our house a home for us.....

My Nana and Nani

The thought of my maternal grandparents conjures up visions of life in a huge mansion in Muzaffaranagar, a small town of Uttar Pradesh......as a child I used to love going there. Even today I can visualize the large fore court with servant’s quarters on one side and garages for cars and a cowshed on the other. The imposing double storied house had a wide front verandah bordered by flower beds and tall black granite pillars at the entrance, to support the roof. The grape vine clinging to those pillars gave a warm and welcoming look to the house. The small bunches of grapes hanging there used to really fascinate me.

Access to the interior of the house was through a broad gallery, one half of which housed the staircase to the upper floor and a part of the other half was used to park the dozen odd bicycles used by the boys of the house. Inside again there was a verandah and central courtyard surrounded by the living rooms and other utilities.

Here they lived with their family comprising of two daughters and six sons, and the spouses and children of those who were by then married. A man with a great sense of family duty, Nanaji had given his eldest daughter and second son for adoption to his childless elder brother. He also offered a home to four young children of his younger brother, since they had lost both their parents in a fatal road accident.

It was a thus a house full of people, life and laughter. At that time it was too, a house of plenty.

It must have been quite a job to manage such a large household.....and I remember a flurry of activity going on at all times...in winters we could see ladies coming in to help thread the newly washed and filled quilts to hold the cotton in place, in summer there would be piles of raw mangoes to be peeled cut and grated for making yummy pickles and chutneys. I have not found anyone who could better mango chutney than my Nani!!

No description of my visits to Nanaji’s house can be complete without mention of Pandit Kashyap who lived opposite our place. We fondly called him “churan wale nanaji”since he had an Ayurvedic medicine shop and had a collection of tasty digestive churans and pills which he would give to us children every morning.....the early birds would bag the maximum booty. So all of us would vie with each other to be the first to wake up and rush to him. There sitting on his verandah we would count the pigeons perched on top of our house and finally when we were all assembled , the bottles and tins would be opened for distribution. Later after a bath we would again go to see him at prayer and performing havan. It was at his place that I got my first lessons at the chanting of Gayatri Mantra.

My Nanaji was treated with deference by one and all..... in the mornings he would sit in the inner courtyard and issue instructions and assign daily duties to everyone and attend to their problems and requirements, while my Nani, would organize meals for the family with the help of the servants and ladies of the house. He had a great regard and affection for my father, and we were always given a warm and special welcome in his home. Till now I have not forgotten the taste of those crisp jalebis soaked in hot milk which we were served for breakfast, with spicy kachories and samosas...

I think that I was quite in awe of Nanaji at that time.....but in retrospect I feel that he was a simple self made man. An Engineering graduate from University of Roorkee, he left his govt. job to start his own civil construction company which earned prosperity and a good reputation in a short span of time. A generous hearted person he was never shy of spending money. On the golden jubilee of his graduation, he hired a bus to bring his batch mates home, and threw a grand party for them. If one of his grandchildren would ask for a pair of shoe or a dress, he would have all the kids present there driven to the store to buy whatever they wanted.

A great stickler for punctuality, he followed his watch meticulously, never deviating from his schedule even by a minute. He had a small diet and ate slowly, chewing each mouthful thirty two times because he said it was good for digestion.

He was very impressed with the quality of English taught in Delhi schools, since the standard of English in UP was quite poor in comparison, and he used to carry my letters to him in his pocket so that he could show them proudly to his friends. Sometimes he would tell us stories too, the favourite one being “The Count of Monte Cristo”

One by one other members of the family too joined his business but probably he was not able to bring the much needed discipline and professionalism to the company, and gradually the whole thing started to crumble under the weight of the whims of the partners. To his sorrow he saw the decline of the empire he had created, in his own life time and lost control over the business and family. He developed Parkinson’s disease and passed away soon after.

My Nani lived for quite a few years after him and I was saddened to see the grand old lady with her delicately embroidered sarees and a huge bunch of keys at her waist, fade away to being a non identity in her last years......

Life can be really harsh!!!

That house has been sold off long since and nothing there is recognizable any more.....but I can never pass that way without a feeling of regret.

One big relief however is that their basic goodness and hard work paid off in the achievements of their grandchildren who have come up in life as successful individuals.


My Father and Mother In Law

The most selfless unassuming, undemanding and non interfering couple I have ever come across in my life. They were almost of my grandparent’s generation, since my husband was the youngest of their brood of ten........ two daughters and eight sons.

It was my misfortune that I could not get to know Ammaji well, since she passed away just a couple of years after our marriage. Vipin was posted in Bhusawal at that time and we did not have any access to telephones during those days, so the only interaction we had was when we visited them at Amroha. A gentle lady with a benign, smiling face, she had a word of appreciation for everyone. Although she did not keep very good health during those last years, she always expressed concern for the comfort and well being of her daughters in law.

Vipin says that in her prime she was a very efficient housewife and a good cook. She would stitch clothes, knit, spin yarn from cotton and even weaved small carpets. A social and a compassionate person, she had many friends who visited her often and asked her for guidance and advice. She used to organize Teej festival for ladies, complete with swings strung from trees and distributed sweets. She welcomed relatives and took care of their children who came to study at Amroha from nearby villages.

Lalaji, as my father in law was known, had seen many ups and downs in his life. As a young boy he had to go to a nearby town called Hapur to look after the khadi business of his brother in law who was a freedom fighter and had been sent to jail. Later he returned home and in the early thirties he started his own khadi textile business. The business grew and their cloth was sent to far flung areas in the east and west and also exported to Sri Lanka. Eventually he came to be known as Khadderwale....After the partition the business started declining since most of the cloth used to be sent to what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh and subsequently closed down in 1967.

He faced his hard times stoically, and still welcomed each and every person to his home as was the family tradition. He made no demands at all on his sons who were well placed in high positions. He was fond of cooking and would make nice pakoras for all of us when we gathered there. There was always a stock of seasonal fruits in the house and he would himself peel and cut them for us.

He had earned a great name in his town and was honoured as the most respected elder of Amroha, who had provided a good education to his sons and daughters in those difficult times. He passed away at the ripe age of eighty six and is survived by a large well to do family that continues to uphold his ideals and value system.

My Buas

My two buas were totally unlike in appearance as well as in nature. One was fair, tall and outgoing whereas the other was short, dark and quiet. But both of them had one common trait.....they both idolized their brother, and, with their spouses, did everything in their power to bring happiness and comfort in my father’s life!

They treated me and my sister as their own daughters and were there whenever we needed them.....whether it was to comfort us in sickness or to celebrate our small achievements. Their arrival was always a treat for us as they would bring home made delicious sweets and snacks for us. At home they would cook our favourite dishes, wash and clean our hair, organize our clothes and spring cleaned the house. They brought fun and laughter to our rather somber lives and we enjoyed the company of their children when they could visit us.

They came for our weddings and worked untiringly to make the events successful. I would see them work through the night planning the details, packing gifts and organizing sweets and other materials so that there would be no hitch at any time. They came to see us through our deliveries and showered motherly care on us when we needed it most. They guided us so we could take care of our infants and gave us tips and home remedies which helped us to tend to the kids daily problems.

After their children were settled both the couples and papa would go off on holidays and it was fun to see their childlike excitement while they prepared for the trip. Their return was even more eagerly awaited and we looked forward to the time when we would get together and hear the tales of their vacations....thinking of those hilarious sessions of friendly leg pulling and teasing still makes me smile.

What blessings they were indeed!!

They brought the feminine influence in our lives which we would have otherwise missed, and together with the efforts of the rest the family they proved that any tragedy however insurmountable it may seem, can be overcome by togetherness and due concern for each other.
They both left us a bit too early leaving a void which will remain always. But they showed us how a relationship between brothers and sisters should be........a relationship without egos, returns and expectations. A relationship where the well being and happiness of each other is of primary concern!!

God bless the souls of all these wonderful people.