Part 1 is here.
So began the next stage of her adventure. She bought this house and her family joined her once she received possession. My uncle was still in college then and he came to Bombay and joined XIth in one of the colleges close to home. My mother obviously funded his education all through college. One of the big advantages of the house was that it was much closer to work and so travelling to work for her became much easier. Money was still fairly tight as she had her house loan to pay off, along with all the other household expenditure. Yet the big difference now was that they had a secure roof over their head and the means to have regular meals.
Slowly but surely, my grandmother started prodding her about marriage. By this time, she was fairly well known back in the village where she came from and also within our community and so there were no dearth of proposals. One of the big problems was that my grandparents did not know anybody in our community living in Bombay and so anyone agreeing to the match would have to move to Bombay. Such a move was a bit tricky in those times because it meant breaking away from tradition, in a society where the girl traditionally went to live with the boy. So though from a work opportunity point of view, it was more attractive, from a cultural point of view, it was hard getting someone to agree to those terms.
They found my dad’s proposal through some common friends. To his credit, my father, a commerce graduate left his tiny little village and came to Bombay after they were married without a job in hand. Again it may not be a big deal now, but in those times it certainly was. He came to Bombay to live with my mother, her parents and brother in the house that she owned. I certainly don’t know his reasons to date – my father is not the sort of person who will talk about such things and I certainly don’t have the skill to elicit such information from him. He came, settled down and soon found a job in a bank, which matched his education quite closely. He walked to work, could come home for lunch everyday and had quite a peaceful life. He got quite close to my uncle, but never liked my grandparents very much from the start. He always thought that my grandparents were very lazy and that they were taking advantage of my mother.
Anyway life continued and my uncle joined a 2-year bachelor’s course in Science, quite disappointed that he had not managed to get into medicine. However, after finishing an year, he decided to apply for medicine again and managed to get through this time. My mother was very supportive of his decision, paid for his medical degree and pretty much let him do whatever he pleased.
My sister was born in the midst of my uncle’s medical degree and became his favourite niece, which she is to this day. Because my grandparents lived with my mother, she worked almost through the end. Maternity leave was not so generous during those days and so my mother had to go back to work quite soon after. Fortunately, she had a good support system at home.
After finishing off his medical degree, my uncle worked as a lecturer in one of the medical colleges in Bombay for about an year or so. One of his friends told him about doctor’s jobs in the UK, applied for one and got one. My uncle left for UK in December 1976, with my mother paying a substantial part of his airfare, visa fees etc. He regularly came back for visits and my mother started looking around for a match for him too. Not once did he protest, but went along with it and saw a lot of girls, always finding some excuse. In spite of this, my mother persevered and arranged for him to meet girls every year that he came down. Guess he had a good reason, if only he had told my mother about it.
My brother and I were born (in that order) after my uncle left for the UK. My father wasn’t too happy with my birth, at the fact that it was another girl and a dark one at that !! Just after my brother was born, my parents moved to the campus where my mother worked. I think this was one of the best decisions they ever made. The colony (at least in those days, not any more) was green, spacious, serene, calm, peaceful and was the perfect place to grow up for us children. Our school was a stone’s throw away from our house, we had great friends growing up and it was just such a protective, unspoilt perfect environment.
I will never forget that day on a summer evening when I came back home after playing downstairs to find my grandparents and mother crying in the presence of two ladies whom I had not met before and a child at home. There was a sense of urgency in my mother’s voice as she asked me to go and look for my brother and sister, who were playing downstairs and bring them home. Just as I was about to leave, my grandma told me that my mama had married without our knowledge and I remember asking if my uncle had married both of them !!
We later found out that my uncle had married my aunt before he left for the UK, without saying a word to anybody at home. My aunt had even visited my house just before she left for the UK to join my uncle as a friend of my uncle’s, offering to carry foodstuffs and other knick-knacks for him, without anybody at home suspecting anything. What I found disturbing then and still do is the fact that not only did my uncle not have the decency to confide in my mother or tell her soon after the wedding, he only told them after my cousin was born (a good 6 years after his wedding and over an year after my cousin’s birth). I don’t think my mother has ever forgiven my uncle for not giving her a chance and rightly so too. My mother is fairly liberal and modern and I am positive that she would have spoken to my grandparents about it to convince them. My uncle was probably paranoid that the family would not accept my aunt because she was a Christian, but then he never gave my mother a chance. Don’t get me wrong – my aunt is a wonderful lady, gets on very well with the family but my uncle showed his spineless self then and I don’t think my mother can ever forget that episode (and rightly so too), though she has definitely forgiven him. My father, on the other hand, never forgave my uncle and their relationship went from them being really close to one of formality.
Yet the thing which strikes me most is the difference in attitudes which can manifest in people irrespective of the same circumstances, upbringing, and parenting. My mother talks about her bad days, yet she never feels sorry for herself or her situation. She takes courage from the fact that she has overcome all that to be where she is now. But my uncle, on the other hand, constantly moans about how he had just 2 pairs of shirts and 2 trousers during his childhood and how he never had enough money. He never loses a chance to talk about it to anyone willing to listen. And almost as if to make up for it, he buys clothes like there is no tomorrow. At last count, he had more than 35 unused shirts in his wardrobe, yet he cannot stop buying. It has almost become an addiction. He moans and moans about how overworked he is and how underpaid he is, which is a big joke considering that he is a GP in this country (who have such a sweet deal that I cannot believe that he is complaining). That’s just two examples – I can give millions more.
More in the next post.
Showing posts with label Parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parents. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 March 2008
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Happy Mother's day
Phew !! This is my 100th post. And I want to use this special milestone to write about my mother, who has been the single biggest influence in my life so far.
I have been meaning to write a post about my mother on this blog for nearly a year now. I wanted to write something for her for Mother’s day last year but never got around to doing it. I do hope that I can get around to finishing this in time for this year’s Mothers day. (not too bad considering I am just 4 days late).
Like every child who thinks that their mother is THE best, I am no different. I think that my mother is an incredible woman, has endured immense hardship and a very large part of who I am today is because of her. I have always viewed her as an absolutely amazing and spirited woman. When a friend recently pointed out that she thought that there was something remarkable about my mother after meeting her for just a few hours, I was pleasantly surprised and secretly thrilled to bits.
My mother is one of those women who had quite a hard childhood. My maternal grandfather, though educated was not cut-out for keeping a steady job and had extended periods of unemployment during his working life. My maternal grandmother was a house-wife and unfortunately was not very worldly-wise or street-smart, so their combination was a potentially lethal one. My mother and her younger sibling – my uncle who I have written about here – were the ones who bore the brunt of such a life. The family often went without food, in spite of having rich relatives who refused to help them. My mother frequently studied under street lamps as they did not have electricity in their house.
My mother was an exceptional student all through school and survived pretty much on scholarships. She often ‘earned’ enough to pay her tuition fees and buy food for her family.
My grandmother was quite liberal in allowing her to study, considering they lived in a small town in the south of India, where girls attending school beyond Std X was quite uncommon. But my grandmother was a strange mix of being liberal and traditional at the same time – she was one of those women who practically lived in the temple and did not do much around the house (which was a big deal, considering she was the sole parent around). So in addition to her studies, my mother looked after the house too – cleaning and cooking for her family from a young age. She used to tell us that she used to wake up really early in the morning, finish off her cooking and then walk an hour to school. In spite of this, she excelled at school and consistently topped her school. She even got double-promotions twice, which means she finished high school two years earlier than she should have.
My mother told me that many a times they had only a single meal to eat and she can remember so many nights when the family had to go to bed hungry. That’s probably one of the main reasons why my mother used to get really really annoyed with us siblings if we wasted any food. Considering that she never shouted or hit us ever for anything else, it has stayed with us and to this day, I try my best to not waste food.
She went to college to study physics and was probably one of the few women in the community to so do. Some of the village bigwigs sponsored her college education and she won a scholarship too, so they had food to keep them going, even though it was a hard life. After finishing college with an integrated masters degree in physics, she started teaching in a small college in Kerala. I don’t know to this day (and neither does my mother !) why she applied for a job in Bombay, in spite of already having a job. In any case, she applied for a training position with one of the most reputed scientific institutions (and probably still is) in the country at the time and was accepted. She joined the second batch of trainees and left for Bombay alone at the young age of 19.
This journey of hers has to be put into context to comprehend the enormity of it all. She was a young, unmarried woman, about to live all alone in a big city away from her family, still fairly poor, unsure of where she would live – yet she undertook that journey. My mother tells me that her employer did not have any suitable accommodation for women at that time and so she stayed in a women’s hostel, about an hour away from work, which in itself presented problems related to travel etc. She somehow survived those difficult years, having to fight her own battles within the hostel too.
The warden of her hostel was a horrible woman and she had some weird rules for running the place. One instance which she often told us about was a fire in her hostel one night. All the girls ran out of their rooms to run to safety, only to discover that the warden had locked them in. She apparently did this every night, but since the girls were probably too scared to venture out on their own at nights anyway, they did not discover this until the fateful night. My mother then called the fire department to tell them about this and probably because they were next to a police station or pure providence, the fire engine arrived on time, managing to rescue all the girls unharmed. Things probably got a little better for them after that incident, but I don’t think my mother ever got over her loneliness during that time. She did not have any family around, just family friends whom she had heard about (because they were from the same community) and in them she found some great company. She remembers them very fondly even today; they welcomed her into their small, overcrowded home and always treated her very nicely. Our family, including me and my siblings are still quite close to them and always make it a point to visit them when we are home.
Considering this was the late 50s, my mother’s colleagues were not used to have a woman in their midst either. So they hardly ever spoke to her and were unsure of how to treat her. Yet she persevered, made an effort to speak to them and slowly but surely made slow progress. They eventually started talking to her more, became her friends for life, stood by her in some really tough times and gave her some great advice.
My grandmother and uncle, in the meantime were still living in Kerala, managing on the money my mother regularly sent them. But there was not much point in running two separate households and also my mother felt quite lonely living on her own. So my grandmother and uncle decided to come to Bombay with my grandfather joining them whenever he was not touring. Obviously because my mother was living in a women’s hostel, her family could not live with her and so she started house-hunting. My mother tells me that nobody in Bombay was willing to rent out a house/flat to a single lady at that time and no amount of telling them that she was to be joined by her mother soon would convince them. In the meantime, one of her colleagues was buying a housing society house and he casually mentioned to my mother that she should buy one too. When my mother told them that she did not have any savings to pay for the deposit, her colleague was the one who lent her the money. And so it came to be that my mother – a single, young, unmarried (which was a big thing in those days), village-girl who had never stayed, let alone owned, in a single house during her childhood days without the fear of being kicked out due to the rental payments being overdue, bought her own house in Bombay in the early 60s. I think her colleagues really gave her some sound advice then and my parents still live in that house today.
This is just part 1. I have many more parts to write, but it’s incredibly difficult for me to write these because it takes a lot out of me. I will do so slowly though. Happy Mother’s Day, mum.
I have been meaning to write a post about my mother on this blog for nearly a year now. I wanted to write something for her for Mother’s day last year but never got around to doing it. I do hope that I can get around to finishing this in time for this year’s Mothers day. (not too bad considering I am just 4 days late).
Like every child who thinks that their mother is THE best, I am no different. I think that my mother is an incredible woman, has endured immense hardship and a very large part of who I am today is because of her. I have always viewed her as an absolutely amazing and spirited woman. When a friend recently pointed out that she thought that there was something remarkable about my mother after meeting her for just a few hours, I was pleasantly surprised and secretly thrilled to bits.
My mother is one of those women who had quite a hard childhood. My maternal grandfather, though educated was not cut-out for keeping a steady job and had extended periods of unemployment during his working life. My maternal grandmother was a house-wife and unfortunately was not very worldly-wise or street-smart, so their combination was a potentially lethal one. My mother and her younger sibling – my uncle who I have written about here – were the ones who bore the brunt of such a life. The family often went without food, in spite of having rich relatives who refused to help them. My mother frequently studied under street lamps as they did not have electricity in their house.
My mother was an exceptional student all through school and survived pretty much on scholarships. She often ‘earned’ enough to pay her tuition fees and buy food for her family.
My grandmother was quite liberal in allowing her to study, considering they lived in a small town in the south of India, where girls attending school beyond Std X was quite uncommon. But my grandmother was a strange mix of being liberal and traditional at the same time – she was one of those women who practically lived in the temple and did not do much around the house (which was a big deal, considering she was the sole parent around). So in addition to her studies, my mother looked after the house too – cleaning and cooking for her family from a young age. She used to tell us that she used to wake up really early in the morning, finish off her cooking and then walk an hour to school. In spite of this, she excelled at school and consistently topped her school. She even got double-promotions twice, which means she finished high school two years earlier than she should have.
My mother told me that many a times they had only a single meal to eat and she can remember so many nights when the family had to go to bed hungry. That’s probably one of the main reasons why my mother used to get really really annoyed with us siblings if we wasted any food. Considering that she never shouted or hit us ever for anything else, it has stayed with us and to this day, I try my best to not waste food.
She went to college to study physics and was probably one of the few women in the community to so do. Some of the village bigwigs sponsored her college education and she won a scholarship too, so they had food to keep them going, even though it was a hard life. After finishing college with an integrated masters degree in physics, she started teaching in a small college in Kerala. I don’t know to this day (and neither does my mother !) why she applied for a job in Bombay, in spite of already having a job. In any case, she applied for a training position with one of the most reputed scientific institutions (and probably still is) in the country at the time and was accepted. She joined the second batch of trainees and left for Bombay alone at the young age of 19.
This journey of hers has to be put into context to comprehend the enormity of it all. She was a young, unmarried woman, about to live all alone in a big city away from her family, still fairly poor, unsure of where she would live – yet she undertook that journey. My mother tells me that her employer did not have any suitable accommodation for women at that time and so she stayed in a women’s hostel, about an hour away from work, which in itself presented problems related to travel etc. She somehow survived those difficult years, having to fight her own battles within the hostel too.
The warden of her hostel was a horrible woman and she had some weird rules for running the place. One instance which she often told us about was a fire in her hostel one night. All the girls ran out of their rooms to run to safety, only to discover that the warden had locked them in. She apparently did this every night, but since the girls were probably too scared to venture out on their own at nights anyway, they did not discover this until the fateful night. My mother then called the fire department to tell them about this and probably because they were next to a police station or pure providence, the fire engine arrived on time, managing to rescue all the girls unharmed. Things probably got a little better for them after that incident, but I don’t think my mother ever got over her loneliness during that time. She did not have any family around, just family friends whom she had heard about (because they were from the same community) and in them she found some great company. She remembers them very fondly even today; they welcomed her into their small, overcrowded home and always treated her very nicely. Our family, including me and my siblings are still quite close to them and always make it a point to visit them when we are home.
Considering this was the late 50s, my mother’s colleagues were not used to have a woman in their midst either. So they hardly ever spoke to her and were unsure of how to treat her. Yet she persevered, made an effort to speak to them and slowly but surely made slow progress. They eventually started talking to her more, became her friends for life, stood by her in some really tough times and gave her some great advice.
My grandmother and uncle, in the meantime were still living in Kerala, managing on the money my mother regularly sent them. But there was not much point in running two separate households and also my mother felt quite lonely living on her own. So my grandmother and uncle decided to come to Bombay with my grandfather joining them whenever he was not touring. Obviously because my mother was living in a women’s hostel, her family could not live with her and so she started house-hunting. My mother tells me that nobody in Bombay was willing to rent out a house/flat to a single lady at that time and no amount of telling them that she was to be joined by her mother soon would convince them. In the meantime, one of her colleagues was buying a housing society house and he casually mentioned to my mother that she should buy one too. When my mother told them that she did not have any savings to pay for the deposit, her colleague was the one who lent her the money. And so it came to be that my mother – a single, young, unmarried (which was a big thing in those days), village-girl who had never stayed, let alone owned, in a single house during her childhood days without the fear of being kicked out due to the rental payments being overdue, bought her own house in Bombay in the early 60s. I think her colleagues really gave her some sound advice then and my parents still live in that house today.
This is just part 1. I have many more parts to write, but it’s incredibly difficult for me to write these because it takes a lot out of me. I will do so slowly though. Happy Mother’s Day, mum.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Cambridge visit, expectations..
It is so hard not to have expectations for one’s own child. Before I was a mother, I always determined that I would not have any expectations for my child. I grew up in a household where my parents let us do our own thing and did not pressurise us to have a career or study a professional course. This was a big deal, specially because we lived in a township where there was incredible peer pressure. In our colony, if you were not a doctor, engineer or a lawyer, you were a nobody. A commerce degree was bad, but God forbid, you did an arts course – you might as well just move away from the colony, as you would be ostracized!! Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but I am not joking when I say that an arts degree was really looked down upon. There were hierarchies of importance within the coveted professional categories too – so for instance a degree from a government college was held in much more esteem than say a private college degree. Parents were constantly pushing their children to perform – I remember many friends of mine had deadlines on when they had to return home in the evenings – to study and were admonished if they came second in class or lost out on a single mark in say mathematics. Me and my siblings never had any of these constraints. In fact, my full-time working mother secretly hoped that my sister and I would join a non-professional degree, join a bank or the public sector, get married and well, you get the picture. My mother was quite excited when my sister announced that she wanted to do an arts degree, when she was 15. My mother’s colleagues thought that my mother was nuts to not push her daughter to study and thought that the fate which awaited her after an arts degree was voluntary suicide. So when my sister changed her mind at the nth moment and decided to become a doctor, she was quite disappointed !!
Yet when we visited Cambridge over the weekend, I could not help but think how lovely it would be if my daughter studied there. There I said it. I have already set an expectation in my head for her to do well, even before she has started school or for that matter, started speaking. Calculus is actually worse than me. He was saying that she should do her PhD from Cambridge when we visited the city last time, when I was pregnant !!! That he would be happy with whatever she does, as long as she has a PhD in Mathematics from Cambridge !! Beat that for expectation ! How wonderful it would be if she attended one of the world’s oldest universities, studied in the same college as one of India’s brightest mathematicians – Ramanujan. I know that there are hundreds of other famous alumni of Cambridge, but this name is fresh in my memory as I have recently finished reading ‘The Man who knew Infinity’.
Our visit to Cambridge was brilliant. I love the city – its cobbled streets steeped in history, its grandiose buildings and just the feeling of being in the precinct of such a great institution of knowledge. We went this time, mainly for the benefit of my parents. My parents loved the place – since my mother has also recently finished reading Ramanujan, she was reliving the events from the book where he mentions Cambridge. We could not help but ponder over how difficult his life must have been all those years ago in this strange land. Obviously my mother being my mother, her primary concern was how Ramanujan managed with food, being a vegetarian !!
The weather was brilliant too – warm, yet not too warm. We went to as many of the tourist destinations as we could manage to go with a baby – Kings College, Trinity College, Trinity Street, walked along the River Cam. The last time we visited the city, I was heavily pregnant and was hobbling along, but at least my daughter was quiet. This time along, I could walk more easily yet for some strange reason the little one kept screaming on the streets of Cambridge !!
I leave you an image of the Great Court in Trinity College, where the film Chariots of Fire was filmed.
Yet when we visited Cambridge over the weekend, I could not help but think how lovely it would be if my daughter studied there. There I said it. I have already set an expectation in my head for her to do well, even before she has started school or for that matter, started speaking. Calculus is actually worse than me. He was saying that she should do her PhD from Cambridge when we visited the city last time, when I was pregnant !!! That he would be happy with whatever she does, as long as she has a PhD in Mathematics from Cambridge !! Beat that for expectation ! How wonderful it would be if she attended one of the world’s oldest universities, studied in the same college as one of India’s brightest mathematicians – Ramanujan. I know that there are hundreds of other famous alumni of Cambridge, but this name is fresh in my memory as I have recently finished reading ‘The Man who knew Infinity’.
Our visit to Cambridge was brilliant. I love the city – its cobbled streets steeped in history, its grandiose buildings and just the feeling of being in the precinct of such a great institution of knowledge. We went this time, mainly for the benefit of my parents. My parents loved the place – since my mother has also recently finished reading Ramanujan, she was reliving the events from the book where he mentions Cambridge. We could not help but ponder over how difficult his life must have been all those years ago in this strange land. Obviously my mother being my mother, her primary concern was how Ramanujan managed with food, being a vegetarian !!
The weather was brilliant too – warm, yet not too warm. We went to as many of the tourist destinations as we could manage to go with a baby – Kings College, Trinity College, Trinity Street, walked along the River Cam. The last time we visited the city, I was heavily pregnant and was hobbling along, but at least my daughter was quiet. This time along, I could walk more easily yet for some strange reason the little one kept screaming on the streets of Cambridge !!
I leave you an image of the Great Court in Trinity College, where the film Chariots of Fire was filmed.
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Partings..
'Har mulaqat ka anjaam
judaai kyu hain.
Ab to har vaqt yahi baat
satati hai hame..."
Shahryar could not have said it any better and Talat Aziz sang this song so beautfully, making it one of my all-time favourites. My parents are leaving for India around mid-October and there is less than 40 days for them to go now. The countdown to their leaving has begun and there is already a sinking feeling in my heart. I am going to miss them so much - coming home to a wonderful reception, lovely home-cooked hot food, not having to worry about the little one for a second the time that I am away, so many little things, just having my mother's touch in so many ways around me. They are going to miss the little one too - from being practically their full-time carers to go back to an empty house is not going to be easy on them. The only thing which keeps me going is the fact that they are planning to come back around summer next year. It is at times like these, that our decision to leave our motherland behind and come and settle down in this country hits home the hardest.
judaai kyu hain.
Ab to har vaqt yahi baat
satati hai hame..."
Shahryar could not have said it any better and Talat Aziz sang this song so beautfully, making it one of my all-time favourites. My parents are leaving for India around mid-October and there is less than 40 days for them to go now. The countdown to their leaving has begun and there is already a sinking feeling in my heart. I am going to miss them so much - coming home to a wonderful reception, lovely home-cooked hot food, not having to worry about the little one for a second the time that I am away, so many little things, just having my mother's touch in so many ways around me. They are going to miss the little one too - from being practically their full-time carers to go back to an empty house is not going to be easy on them. The only thing which keeps me going is the fact that they are planning to come back around summer next year. It is at times like these, that our decision to leave our motherland behind and come and settle down in this country hits home the hardest.
Thursday, 30 August 2007
Southall
We fulfilled one of my mother’s dreams this last weekend – going to Southall !!!!!! Yes, it was a dream of hers !! All her working life, her colleagues have talked about the place after their visits to the UK. We tried telling her that its similar to Wembley, East Ham and if you have seen one of them, you have seen them all, but that did not deter her at all !!
Southall goes back a long way in her mind. When she visited the UK in 1992, my uncle refused to take her there saying that no sane person goes to Southall !! (I was not living in the UK then!). No amount of convincing on my mother’s part worked and she had to go back to India without visiting Southall, which was a sacrilege as far as she was concerned. When she came to visit us in 2001, she fractured her arm and so was not too keen to venture out much. So from the time she has been in London this year, she has been asking us to take her there. And this weekend we did. As expected, after seeing the place, she was quite disappointed and kept saying she could not understand what the fuss was all about !!!
Leaving with you some photos of the yummy chaat we had there, which makes any trip to Southall worthwhile as far as I am concerned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
