5

City of Conquests

JAIPUR, 1957–58

After a long exile, we were finally home. Babu had had enough of a stuffy government college, and Amma had resigned from her job with the UP Social Welfare Department, with its relentless hours and multiple frustrations. She had been offered a position as the “founder-principal” of her former school—which was now the Shri Veer Balika Uccha Madhyamik Vidyalaya. The Shri Veer Balika Vidyalaya had existed since 1925, but it had only recently received accreditation as a full-fledged high school. Amma had originally been hired to guide it through its transition, and she was pleased to be back to celebrate its success. This was where I would continue my education.

We were reunited with the ageless Mangi bai, whose face had not lost its toothy grin ever since our arrival. My teary reunion with Poorna and the rest of Bai ki ma’s clan soon gave way to storytelling and laughter—accompanied, of course, by a welcome assortment of Rajasthani snacks. Everything seemed a little smaller, everyone was a little older, but the feeling of peaceful protection that I experienced in their midst was unchanged.

Didi, who was approaching her sixteenth birthday, enrolled in Maharani College for her undergraduate degree, studying Hindi literature—an obvious choice for Didi, who had always been fond of reading—and instrumental music, so that she could continue to study the sitar, which had been her passion for as long as I could remember. Now she was one of only two students in a class taught by Pandit Shashi Mohan Bhatt, a disciple of the renowned Pandit Ravi Shankar. To these she added economics, only because she needed a third subject, and there were very few to choose from at the college.

Not surprisingly, most of Didi’s childhood friends were already married. Even my friend Poorna was engaged to be married at the end of the year. Didi’s only remaining single friend was Jatan didi, the middle daughter of a wealthy jeweller. Her father much admired Amma, to the extent that he had defied the intense social pressure to marry his daughter off, sending her instead to college at Amma’s insistence. With her father’s protective support, Jatan didi had even continued her private lessons in Kathak dance, although she rarely performed in public, and only after Amma encouraged her to do so.

We initially moved back into our old rented accommodations around a shared courtyard, but Amma wanted some permanence this time around, as well as more privacy. Then trust managers told her about a house on their books that had been long empty, since it was believed to be haunted. Naturally, Amma wanted to see this house.

It was a two-and-a-half storey house wedged between two four-storey houses in a narrow bystreet, further dwarfed by the high rear walls of a sprawling Devi temple. The house was conveniently located only three streets away from the school where Amma worked and I studied, one street away from the bustling broad avenue of Johari Bazaar, and a short rickshaw ride away from Didi’s college.

Like other homes in Jaipur, the house was hidden from the street by a thick outer wall of stone, punctuated by small windows, wide enough for a head but not a torso. A narrow stone platform ran along the length of the front wall, about five feet above street level, in the middle of which was a chhatri, a decorative dome supported by slender pillars, that provided an elevated front entrance accessible from either side by short flights of steps. From this entranceway, a heavy wooden door opened onto a large courtyard surrounded by spacious halls with chunky sandstone flooring. The uniformly high ceilings were supported by stone pillars with lotus bases. Each corner of the ground floor had a small, enclosed room, no bigger than ten feet square.

An enclosed staircase on the right side of the building took you to the first floor, which had the characteristic overhanging balcony encircling the courtyard and another set of open halls with pillars. The only rooms with doors on this level were, again, the small ones in the corners. Despite the absence of real windows, the open courtyard and the lack of walls made the living areas very airy and bright. From this floor, another staircase led to a broad rooftop terrace. On the left side of the terrace were the crumbling remains of a large room, which ran the breadth of the house. On all three floors, the walls had once been covered with a smooth, lustrous lime plaster, which, now several centuries old, was falling away, revealing the underlying stone, a good two feet thick in many places. On the first floor, some of the lime-plaster flooring still shone like marble through the rubble, while in other places the base layer of lime mortar—mixed in the traditional way with slaked lime, a powder made from under-burnt bricks, sand, jaggery, fenugreek, and other organic additives—was now visible, cracked and crumbling from years of neglect.

Amma did some research at both the royal and municipal libraries to establish the history of the house, and several long-time residents of the neighbourhood confirmed her findings. As the ornamental chhatri at the entranceway suggested, the house had originally been a haveli, a stately home or mansion, meant for an official of the royal court. Rights to its occupancy had been granted to one of the many hereditary kotwals, rulers of local forts who evolved into senior police officials appointed by the Maharajahs of Jaipur. When the last kotwal died without an heir, a religious order had requested permission to use the house as a monastery for its small clutch of female ascetics. For several decades, the former mansion provided shelter to these sadhvis—young women seeking refuge from poverty in religion, older women hoping for salvation or relief from cruel social practices, and sundry other abandoned women who might have found some measure there of solace or camaraderie. The sadhvis had very limited contact with the outside world. A small well on one side of the courtyard meant that they had no need to venture forth even to draw water.

At the turn of the century, however, a scandal broke out when it was discovered that one of the nuns had not only become pregnant but was secretly raising her illegitimate child within the walls of the building. Soon after her sins were exposed, the dishonoured sadhvi jumped into the well with her infant. The remaining sadhvis were moved to a new location, and the trustees of the religious order that had been granted use of the house permanently sealed the well. Despite this effort to keep spirits from escaping, neighbours on all three sides of the house reported hearing sobs and sighs emanating from the depths of the empty courtyard, and, on moonless nights, the shape of a woman dressed in white could be seen on the rooftop terrace, rocking a baby in her arms.

Amma had no belief in ghosts, and she negotiated a deal with the religious trust to buy this house. The trustees were relieved to have the house off their books and hastily drew up the paperwork, which required Amma to pay in installments spread over several years. The contract even granted her permission to organize a public event to raise money for repairs and modifications.

I was not sure how to interpret the quietness of our father in the midst of the clamour of moving. Babu did not want to go back to teaching or college administration; that much was clear. There were many public and private educational institutions in the city, but Babu’s missionary zeal for education as a life-long quest for knowledge found little space in the regimented structure of classes, programs, degrees, affiliations, and administration.

Yet he was also not prepared to go back to his old job at the newspaper in Ajmer or Jaipur. He argued with Amma when she suggested it, insisting angrily that a newspaper was a sacrosanct part of the media that should be devoted to critical enquiry and public education. He was not prepared to reconcile his ideals with the demands of a publishing environment that predicated the survival of a newspaper on political patronage and commercial support.

They were at an impasse. In our temporary accommodations, Didi and I had been witnesses to many conversations in which Amma and Babu discussed the future, made and remade plans, and savoured being together after so long. Now the four of us sat quietly, Amma in the middle of her bed, Didi and I perched on opposite ends of it, the three of us facing Babu, who sat in Amma’s wooden chair. The four of us made a little rhombus of humans, joined together by a fragile hope.

Babu surveyed the gathering and then closed his eyes. His normally booming voice almost quiet, he spoke to Amma as if the two of them were alone. “Is this what we fought for, Prakash? Replacing the shackles of British rule with the chains of profit at any cost? This is not the swaraj that Gandhiji dreamt of. This is the colonization of greed.”

Didi and I looked at him in alarm. Could we be losing him again? I looked at Amma’s bowed head, silently beseeching her with my eyes. Please say something that will make him stay.

Amma raised her head, slowly looking from Didi to me. “We have to carry on for the sake of the girls. We could find a way to combine your passion and experience right here in Jaipur.”

Babu’s eyes were closed, but he appeared to be listening intently rather than preparing a rebuttal. Amma’s suggestion came out with a studied effortlessness. “What about starting your own newspaper? That way you would not have to work for anyone else. You could finally use your own vision and voice.”

Babu’s silence tested Didi’s and my ability to hold our breaths. I stole a glance toward Amma, whose eyes were fixed on the weave of the milky-white coverlet on the bed.

At long last Babu sighed. “Perhaps we could use the main floor of the new house for a printing press.”

Amma continued to gaze at the coverlet as Babu mentioned the bank account where the college had deposited his salary. He had had little use for this money, which would be well spent on starting a newspaper venture. At this, Amma opened a folder to show him a long list of tasks and materials required to fix the house. These repairs would need to be made not only before we could live in it but also before it could house a printing press. Babu told her to go ahead and do whatever was necessary.

I was still getting used to the deep timbre of Babu’s voice, which rang on in contained spaces long after he had left. My gaze followed him as he left the room, but I lingered with Amma and Didi. When Amma looked up from her reverie, the relief I felt was clearly reflected in her own tired but relaxed face.

Except for the bungalow in Lucknow, we had always lived in big houses with shared spaces. Whether we stayed in those houses for a few months or many years, however, Amma always insisted on putting matching curtains on all doors and windows. Like us, our houses were only allowed to wear khadi.

Amma was now spending all her spare time trying to find the right people to do the repairs and remodelling—craftsmen trained in traditional methods who would nonetheless be willing to work for a reasonable price. She had already rejected many of those recommended to her when she met wiry old Surajji and his crew, which consisted solely of his young nephew, Radhe bhaiya. Surajji had been raised as a proud sainik mali, born into an hereditary clan of gardeners and cultivators who trace their roots to Rajput warriors. Unfortunately, the crumbling feudal system and the inadequate land shared among his large family had forced him to look for more reliable sources of income, so he had moved to the city to learn a new trade and provide better opportunities for his three sons. His wife had cleaned houses for other people while Surajji became an apprentice stone mason.

They had sent all three sons to school where their brilliance shone. Their hard work earned them scholarships and, later, well-paying jobs. Now married and settled in their own homes, the sons were ashamed of their sunburnt father, his rural dialect, the smell of unrefined tobacco that followed him loyally, and his perpetually coarse hands. Surajji was grateful that his wife had died before the ungrateful sons severed their ties with him. He was training his young nephew in the craft that he had come to love, hoping to be able to pass on his knowledge and his skills, which were now considered slow and outmoded in this era when brick and cement buildings were sprouting up everywhere with reckless speed.

Amma was thrilled to have found a craftsman with traditional masonry and plastering skills. Babu loved his stories and spent hours talking to him in Marwari, sharing meals and tea with Surajji and Radhe bhaiya. Didi and I were exhilarated by Amma’s enthusiasm. We planned and discussed things with her as soon as she returned from work each day, only occasionally reduced to squabbling.

During this time of preparation and planning, one of the old sewing ladies came to Amma to present her son. He has just won a scholarship to study for a professional degree; her sewing, we learned, had supported her son’s education, despite the objections of her affluent family, who would rather have had her hidden in a dark corner and her son living on the unreliable charity of relatives. She thought her sewing days would be behind her soon, and she wanted to pay her debt of gratitude to Amma by stitching the curtains and bed linens for the new house. Amma declined this generous offer, pointing to Didi and me. We were old enough to test our own sewing skills and creativity. Besides, nobody would have the time to travel this summer because of the renovations. However, Amma did promise to contact her if we found ourselves running behind schedule.

And then there was the movie problem to solve. Amma did not want to sink all of her and Babu’s savings into the repair of a house that did not yet belong to us. Fortunately, one of the board members of the religious trust owned the most magnificent movie theatre in Jaipur, and he had offered to let Amma do a charity screening of a Hindi movie to raise money for the repairs. This, he insisted, was his way of expressing his appreciation to Amma for returning to teach a new generation of girls in his community, and he wanted to help Amma make Jaipur her permanent home. Amma respected Golchaji, but she disliked mainstream Hindi films, so the prospect of using one for her own financial benefit presented her with a moral dilemma. She had requested some time to think about his offer.

Since India achieved independence, the country’s rapidly growing movie industry had been churning out hundreds of commercial productions each year, including musicals. Even though some of these popular films were quite moralistic, with plots that focused attention on social issues, both Amma and Babu were deeply uncomfortable with most of these movies, which they regarded as frivolous, melodramatic, and too often preoccupied with romantic entanglements. I could count on the fingers of my two hands the number of films that Didi and I had seen—and these only after they had been carefully vetted not only by advisory panels responsible to the Board of Film Certification but then again by Amma. As Amma and Babu saw it, cinema should be a medium for public education, just like the newspapers, not a form of entertainment.

Besides their moral objections to cinematic storylines, our parents also had aesthetic objections to film music. Babu still followed the evening routine of singing bhajans to the accompaniment of his harmonium, but he could not stand the sound of a show tune, walking away from the offending noise as soon as he could. At home, if Didi or I let the sound of the radio travel outside our room, he would demand that we turn it off, his voice thundering to be heard above the music.

Amma was gentler in conveying her disapproval, but she was equally vehement. Our parents’ love of music had ensured that we were given music and dance lessons wherever we lived. The trouble was that they considered music to be a high art form that needed to be cultivated through disciplined practice and with due respect for traditions. Amma had often told us that her love for classical music stemmed from memories of her family hosting noted singers on special family occasions, and she had often rued the quality of what passed for music in the modern day.

As she debated whether to accept Golchaji’s offer, Amma complained to us about the very high pitch at which female recording artists were expected to sing, a style she blamed on the influence of European operas. Women’s voices should be low and melodious, she declared, not piercing and shrill.

“But you can’t just say that we should go back to the past,” Didi countered. “At least now everyone can enjoy music, not just a handful of rich patrons.” As she pointed out, until quite recently, professional musicians were mostly male, and they had few opportunities for reputable employment. And the situation was even worse for women. The only female performers were Nautch girls, who danced before the watching eyes of men, in the lavish homes of kings, nawabs, and zamindars, or the lowly devadasis who served in temples, singing and dancing to please the god.

Amma had to agree that the secularization of music and dance had brought performers out of temples, palaces, and mansions into a wider world. She was also willing to admit that the popularity of commercial film songs had contributed to the growth of music as a profession, making it possible for performers, especially women, to earn a living without sacrificing their respectability.

“So then what’s wrong with film music?” I asked.

“The pitch and the poetry are what’s wrong with film music,” said Babu, who had just walked into the room. “Music is the melodious expression of universal human emotions, not the shrill pitches of wailing banshees, devoid of either the refinement of classical music or the simplicity of folk music.”

“But I have read that film music is a bridge between folk and classical music,” I protested. “Even Gopi Krishna and Sitara Devi have performed in films.” I had never been permitted to see any of their movies, but I had once watched these two icons of classical Kathak dance give an electrifying performance that had lasted until the wee hours of the morning, and the experience was still fresh in my memory.

“Yes, but a bridge made up of what?” Babu roared his question. “The emphasis on pitch rather than tone, the clatter of instruments that drown out the melody, the substitution of rhymes for poetry?” He particularly objected to the unending refrains of personal love. To him they were not only crass but also a troubling sign of increasing individualism in Indian society.

Eventually, Amma did agree to screen a movie to raise money for the house repairs, but on two conditions: she would pick the movie to be screened, and the movie theatre would have to arrange to cut any scenes that she told them to cut. Golchaji was relieved by Amma’s decision and happily agreed to both conditions. Amma settled on the preachiest tearjerker released that year, minus a song sequence in which the dashing hero and the pining heroine looked like they might be about to kiss.

The ground floor of the house was the easiest to repair, as the solid sandstone floor needed nothing more than a good cleaning. Only the closed-up well site in the northern corner received a new cement floor and was walled off with a metal grill to create a space for storing the smaller machinery. Surajji and Radhe bhaiya did a good job of repairing the lime plaster on the wide walls, largely leaving the open floor plan unaltered.

The unobstructed space turned out to be ideal for the paraphernalia of printing that was invading the house—two gigantic German platen printing presses, a paper-ream cutting machine that weighed tons and lived like a monstrosity by itself in one of the rooms, machines for binding and perforating paper, and dozens of wooden stands with trays containing hundreds of pounds of various fonts in both Hindi and English. The ground floor also had an unpaved area right in the middle of the courtyard, twelve feet square, filled with fertile soil for growing hibiscus, roses, aromatic herbs, and other small bushes that thrived in the mix of sun and shade.

The first floor of the house was eminently livable after the open halls had been converted into rooms of various sizes. Except for Amma’s and Babu’s, all rooms on this floor opened onto the continuous balcony that overhung the courtyard below.

The southern side of this floor was an enclosed veranda open to the sky, lined with many potted plants, a large cement water tank for storing the water supplied by the municipality, and a small wooden screen that separated the laundry area in front of the tank from the rest of the patio. The west hall, which directly faced the staircase, was converted into a drawing room, complete with large wicker chairs and a divan. It was a spacious room, though awkwardly divided by an original pillar about one-third of the way in. Across from the ouside wall of this room, with its row of small windows, stood a series of three wide metal screens, covered in colourful curtains and strings of bead, which connected a row of pillars to create a new wall that now enclosed the room.

Amma chose as her bedroom a small room accessible from the drawing room, in the northwestern corner of the house. Only ten feet square, the room had just enough space for her mattress and a low munim desk. I inherited Amma’s large writing desk, since she was, increasingly, doing her reading and writing while reclining on bolsters, due to chronic pain in her legs and back.

The long hall in the north was divided into a spacious dining room, accessible from Amma’s room as well as from a wide door that opened onto the balcony, and a kitchen, with an L-shaped sandstone counter and deep cupboards. This still left room for a small storage area in the northeastern corner, separated by a wooden screen, for our trunks, steel almirahs, holdalls, and other such items. This neat little box-room was also very useful for keeping our clothes and linens organized, since there were few cupboards in the rest of the house.

Mangi bai had rebelled against the counter and the gas stove; she stuck with sitting on a low stool to cook, using either the portable coal-fired sigri burner or the wood-fired chulha out on the open first-floor veranda. She also grumbled about the kitchen cupboards, complaining that their extra depth and height made them hazards for children who might want to hide in them.

The large eastern hall yielded a big square room that Didi and I shared. It had enough space for our two divan beds along opposite walls, two desks, Didi’s sitar, my five-stringed tanpura, and an aisle. A large rug in the middle of the room separated our beds and belongings, but it was not the most effective barrier between our very different routines and temperaments. The door of our room was flanked by two large, elaborately carved jali inserts on the walls. Our room connected to Babu’s through two side-by-side doors, which could be latched closed from our side of the wall.

Babu’s long, cavernous, windowless room was in the southeastern corner of the floor. At the far end was a bench for his harmonium and a metal trunk containing no more than two sets of clothing, which he washed himself. Amma had to keep an eye on the contents of the trunk as well as the one pair of shoes that he owned, since he often gave these away to beggars and homeless people on the street, returning home without shoes or sometimes even without his kurta. His mattress-less wooden bed with its stone pillow was placed right in the middle of the room, flanked on one side by a desk that held neat stacks of paper and books and on the other side by a low wooden chowki. He liked to sit down there for his meals, rather than at the table in the dining room with us.

Surajji and Radhe bhaiya efficiently restored most of the walls and flooring, but they were unsure what to do about the large room, now in ruins, that had at some point been added on the rooftop terrace. Rather than waste time and money on efforts to rebuild it, Amma instructed them to replace it with a brick and cement structure, covered with a corrugated asbestos-cement roof, which was supposed to be much more temperature resistant than a metal roof. Much to Amma’s dismay, however, they left a series of small, narrow gaps all along the southern wall of the new room, designed to allow fresh air in. She protested that the gaps would give easy passage to the sandy dust of the desert, but Surajji pleaded the case for proper ventilation, even in a room that was intended to be a library. This was the first time there had been any friction between Amma and Surajji, and time and money were both at a premium, so Amma decided to ignore the library’s inadequacies for the time being—a decision with consequences none of us could imagine at the time.

Near the southwest corner of the library was a set of narrow double doors, each consisting of an acacia-wood frame with a solid panel of asbestos at the bottom and metal mesh at the top, which was covered by dark khadi curtains to keep the heat and dust out. A small desk and chair occupied one corner near the entrance, and a broad wooden bench was parked outside the room for basking in the cool winter sun or snoozing on summer nights. Aside from the desk and chair, the library held nothing but books, stacked on haphazard shelves along all the walls.

Amma had hired a carpenter to make some oversized bookshelves for this room, but Babu shooed the poor, protesting man away, while thundering at Amma for forgetting simple living and giving in to frivolities and pretence. Amma tried to argue that they had too many books in cloth bags and boxes, and far too few shelves that had survived their many moves. So Babu set about adding layers of bookshelves, improvised from discarded planks and lengths of slate propped up by brick or stone all along the walls of the library on the terrace.

Onto these makeshift shelves went Hindi books on history, philosophy, and music, as well as classic and modern literary texts from many parts of the world translated into Hindi or English, organized thematically all along the long northern wall. The top-most shelf on the short eastern wall was home to scores of Amma’s notebooks and diaries. Her collection of biographies, histories, and political treatises occupied all the middle shelves. Paper remains of her involvement in the freedom movement—files and folders containing old letters, telegrams, newspaper cuttings, and photographs—were stacked in the lowest reaches of this wall.

Babu hung a waterproof plastic sheet over the gaps in the long south wall, defeating Surajji’s object of providing ventilation. This wall then was lined with books from Babu’s inaccessible past: hundreds of volumes in Bengali, Marathi, Marwari, Gujarati, Sanskrit, French, German, and Russian, islands of foreign scripts in a sea of Devanagari.

Babu named his new printing business Vaishali Press, after the earliest-known republic in eastern India, founded in the sixth century BC. He then spread word among his former publishing colleagues that he was looking to hire a foreman for his press. The only qualification was that the candidate had to be Dalit or Muslim, since they had the hardest time finding jobs in Jaipur. Babu was prepared to train and employ someone without any experience. Thus the eighteen-year-old Shafi Muhammad, or Shafiji, entered our lives.

The oldest of eight siblings, Shafiji had dropped out of school after grade 5 to help his father, who owned a little shack where he kept fire going under two vats, dyeing cotton, silks, and wools in vibrant colours, following his ancestral profession. Already married and the father of a little boy, Shafiji wanted his children and younger siblings to go to school.

Despite his rudimentary reading and writing skills, he was an eager learner. Babu hired Shafiji as the only employee of the press with a monthly salary, teaching him the basics of composing and printing as well as book-keeping. Together they hired compositors on daily wages, depending on the volume of the work. Babu paid compositors the highest per-line wage in the city; thus every morning there was a group of men waiting for Shafiji to open the doors of the press.

Thanks to Amma’s and Babu’s long-standing associations and many acquaintances, the press got printing orders from local literary societies and regional educational institutions. Vaishali Press was one of only a few printing presses in Jaipur, although people in this wealthy city had a variety of publishing needs, from personal invitation cards to political pamphlets. Babu initially objected to printing anything but a newspaper, but relented when Amma pointed to the family needs of the many whom the press could potentially employ.

Shafiji always arrived on the dot of seven, just as Babu returned from his hours of yoga in Ram Niwas Park, hollering, “Rekhu, what’s for breakfast?” It did not matter to him that dear little “Rekhu” might be on her way to school on weekdays or that she might still be in bed on holidays—or that she never, ever made breakfast.

Amma settled into a gruelling schedule that took her from school to meetings to delegations to rallies, and still found time for her to teach prison inmates at the Central Jail twice a week and write in her diary every night. Every now and then, Amma got up at dawn to practice yoga and pranayama on the terrace, but her schedule of frequent late nights and early morning commitments got in the way of her routine. I could always tell when Amma had had a chance to practice yoga and pranayama by the brightness of her eyes and the fluidity of her movements that day. But her daughters’ pleas to slow down were dismissed. “These aches and pains are just the dharma of the human body. The body has to do its karma, I have to do mine.”

The rest of us developed our routines as well, as we settled into the new house. Mangi bai resumed her role as the trusty caretaker of the home and hearth. Didi and I enrolled once again in music and dance classes, rehearsing hard for the upcoming Independence Day celebrations at Jaipur’s stately Albert Hall Museum, with its domes and ornate arches. For many decades, the musuem had hosted private events for the Maharajas of Jaipur, and Didi, Jatan didi, and I, who had been asked to dance, were thrilled to be among the first to perform there as part of a public event.

A number of different political factions had been approaching Amma, asking her to run in local elections, but Amma firmly declined any invitation to compete for office in municipal or provincial elections. Her argument was that elected officials had little choice but to engage in political bartering, a necessity that would only be an obstacle in her work on social issues. Despite this skepticism, however, she continued to support the Congress Party.

Amma’s loyalty to Congress was an enormous bone of contention between my parents, especially after she agreed to serve as president of the Jaipur chapter of the party’s Women’s Wing. Babu often helped Amma to write petitions and speeches, but he erupted like Krakatoa any time a Congress official came to the house to meet with her. Refusing to emerge from his room, Babu would launch into a loud monologue in which he denounced all Congress associates as Gandhi’s murderers, foot soldiers of the Nehru empire, worshippers of power, sole cause of the misery of two whole nations, greed personified, looters, and so on. If Amma tried to calm him down, he would call her a traitor like the rest of them and storm out of the house. Awkward witnesses to Babu’s fiercest side, the visiting official would wait with Amma, who sat with her head lowered, until Babu’s private but nonetheless deafening explosions finally ran out of steam—although never before he had given his audience a guided tour of his rich vocabulary.

About a year after we returned, just before Independence Day in 1958, large-scale public protests erupted over the dissolution of the Jaipur bench of the Rajasthan High Court. In 1949, the state of Rajasthan had been formed from a patchwork of nineteen former princely states and one British province, but regional feudal powers still wielded substantial clout, and the evolving legislative and judicial institutions of the new state had to navigate deeply entrenched power structures. Originally, high courts existed in Bikaner, Jodhpur, Kota, and Udaipur, as well as in Jaipur, the largest city in the state, which, in 1949, became its capital. In order to consolidate the state’s judicial structure, but also to appease regional rivalries, Jodhpur was chosen as the principal seat of the Rajasthan High Court. The judicial benches in Bikaner, Kota, and Udaipur had been abolished in 1950, but the Jaipur bench—the busiest court in the state—had continued to operate. Now it, too, was being dissolved, a decision that provoked lawyers’ strikes and public demonstrations. When the police opened fire on a rally of striking lawyers, the whole city responded with a general strike, protest marches, and some violent conflicts with police.

All forty members of the municipal council resigned in protest, prompting the state government to dissolve other local boards, including one on which Amma served as an appointed member. Unruly public protests and police retaliation ensued, to which the state administration responded by declaring a curfew in parts of the city and closing all educational and public institutions. Babu’s view was that such disturbances were to be expected in the early days of a new nation, one in which some 560 princely states had formerly existed alongside British-controlled territories. Amma’s position was that the heavy-handed police action during these protests reminded her of colonial times, and she was determined to travel to Delhi with a delegation to petition the prime minister.

Amma returned exhausted and anxious from her meeting with Nehruji and his chief of staff, his daughter Indira Gandhi. He had rejected the petitioners’ request to have the dissolution of the High Court bench in Jaipur reconsidered. Amma was hopeful that she might have been able to appeal to Nehruji’s love of children by describing the police attacks with lathis and rubber bullets on groups of unarmed student protestors, but in the meantime, while she waited for him to take action, every relaxation of the curfew only led to further rioting and escalating tension between civilians and the police.

Just outside the narrow bylane in which our house stood, Amma was getting into a government car with the national flag on the hood. Seeing this, Didi and I ran to the Devi temple through the back entrance opposite our house and climbed to the terrace above its imposing entrance in Johri Bazaar. From there we could see a cavalcade of official cars with red beacons on them and one vintage Rolls-Royce that clearly bore the crest of the Maharaja (which depicted his heritage as a descendent of the sun god). We were less than half a mile from the Badi Choupad square, where Sukhadiaji, the chief minister, Nawab Luharuji and other members of the legislative assemble, and assorted other dignitaries were due to address the largest public rally either of us had ever seen.

The row of stone poles that ranged all along the length of the street, each crowned with an image of the sun god, was strung with loudspeakers. The curfew had been lifted that morning, for just a few hours, and the broad street and the narrow bylanes had been filling with people ever since. I was grateful to be able to watch what was going on from the safety of the temple terrace rather than from within the crush of people in the street. We could not quite see the faraway stage but hoped to be able to hear the speeches via the loudspeakers. People were pushing toward the stage in the square, chanting angry slogans, drowning out the sounds that came periodically from the loudspeakers. Clusters of curious children and veiled women had formed at windows and on terraces that overlooked Johri Bazaar.

Then I heard a strange roar above the din, audible in the spaces created by the chanting’s rise and fall. It was my Amma’s voice, passionately reminding the massive gathering of their civic duties, chiding them like errant children. I was filled with pride and a strange dread, as the restless mass of humanity began to take note of this intrusion. Amma’s voice grew clearer, because the slogans were no longer rising as one voice. She sternly commanded people to sit down wherever they were and listen to the remaining speech of the governor, Gurmukh Nihal Singhji. People listened to her and obeyed, as grown men do an overbearing mother.

For the next few minutes, nothing more than a low murmur from the crowd accompanied the sedate address of the governor. However, as soon as the next speaker took the mike, someone threw a shoe toward the stage, breaking the brief spell that Amma had cast. Pandemonium broke out. I could see that the part of the crowd closest to the stage was no longer sitting. They were on their feet now, held back from the stage by a battalion of the same paramilitary police that had been enforcing the curfew in Jaipur.

Amma’s voice rose again, the voice of the only woman in what looked like a planet of men. A number of well-respected residents of the Johari bazaar had bravely entered the melee by this time, and we could see them calming people down at our end of the street. The speeches could no longer go on, but Amma and the community elders between them did manage to disperse the agitated crowds and disentangle them from armed law enforcement, so close to the brink of another violent conflict.

JAIPUR, 1959

Jaipur was built on the edge of the Thar Desert, surrounded on three sides by the Aravalli Hills, the eroded stubs of an ancient range of fold mountains that extends southwest from Delhi across Rajasthan and into Gujarat. Seven imposing gates provided the only passage in and out of the walled city, which, for well over two centuries, had been home to centres of trade, the arts, and learning. Within the city walls, hundreds of thousands of people—royalty and commoners included—lived and worked together in the terracotta-pink, multi-storeyed residences that lined the broad avenues, linked by their terraces and courtyards. The overlapping living and working spaces served the needs of social life, of work, and of the numerous festivals that the city celebrated as one organism.

Amma remembered the royal splendour and the sense of open space of Jaipur in the 1930s, when it was home to less than half of the nearly four hundred thousand people who now lived here. She remembered the city gates being closed every night to keep wildlife at bay. A wilderness, arid but teeming with wildlife all the way up into the hills, had then surrounded the city. One of the few exceptions to this inhospitable landscape was the emerald greenery of Ram Niwas Garden, which jutted out of the walled city like a single arrow projecting into the future. The Albert Hall Museum sat in the middle of this luxuriant oasis, the most exquisite jewel of Rajputana architecture and, for us, the site of many memorable walks with Babu.

Since the end of British rule, however, the walls of the city had become unable to contain the surge of people headed to Jaipur. Desperate tides of humanity ravaged by colonization, refugees uprooted by the botched division of the subcontinent and impoverished farmers chasing the promise of a better life in the urban centres of the country came in waves, eventually forcing the city to expand into the harsh territory beyond its ornate high walls. The systematic containment of the city began rapidly to give way to mushrooming residential areas, called “colonies,” though named after one leader of the freedom movement or another. These observed neither the patterns of city planning nor the aesthetics of architecture that the city proudly preserved within its ancient walls.

Long before this chaotic development, a number of havelis and palaces, belonging to feudal lords, courtiers, and other beneficiaries of royal land grants, had been built outside the city walls; in fact, some of them predated the city by centuries. Land reforms enacted over the past decade had enabled the state to acquire some of this land in order to build housing for a rapidly growing population, so that islands of feudal splendour were now surrounded by a sea of haphazard colonies.

For Amma, there was much work to be done in this city, where, despite modern reforms, few middle-class women were seen in public spaces without purdah. Her incessant meetings, petitions, speeches, and committee work were all united by the single goal of women’s empowerment. Didi and I worried about Amma’s groans as she climbed the stairs, the swelling around her ankles, and her frequent headaches. But Amma refused to make any changes to her diet and relied on herbal self-medication, attributing her aches and pains to her irregular practice of yoga and pranayama.

Even at home, Amma worked toward women’s empowerment, as she often had to challenge the many lessons in womanly behaviour with which our numerous temporary guardians dutifully filled our heads. Amma was particularly upset whenever Didi and I were reminded about the impurity of the female body—its untouchability during menstruation and pregnancy. She always told us to ask questions rather than comply with injunctions on what to do and how to be. There was fire in her eyes whenever she talked about women’s issues; her speech grew slow and measured, laden with layers of meaning that sometimes became apparent only over time.

On occasion, the intensity of her gaze could warm my skin. “Do you remember that woman in the valley, who was worshipped for her power to summon Devi Mata?” I distinctly remembered the terrifying spectacle of a woman who rotated her head in impossible circles, thrashed her long, kohl-black hair in front of a crackling fire, emitted animal sounds from the depths of her lungs, and hoarsely chanted the name of the local goddess.

When a terrible nightmare woke me up that night, Amma gave us both a long lecture on hysteria and the suppression of women in society. I did not remember much of the content, but I did remember being thankful for Amma’s lecture, which had kept me from going back to sleep, back to the terrifying nightmare.

“Remember what happened after her trance was over?” We nodded, recalling the image of that same woman, her trance over, surrounded by gifts of food, clothing, and flowers and by prostrate villagers. People had come to seek her blessings and advice. The divine connection had catapulted her from being silent, invisible, and unequal to one who was feared and respected. The villagers would feed her and worship her, maybe even build a temple in her honour, as long as she showed evidence of being more than a mere woman. “For me,” concluded Amma, “this is an example of a woman trying to be her own person, rising above the social norms that force her into a sub-human existence.” Amma wanted us to understand and challenge these unjust norms, not with the unreliable crutch of divinity, but with the understanding and confidence we could gain through learning and education.

Since we had returned to Jaipur, Didi had received a number of marriage proposals, all of which Amma had refused to consider. She wanted Didi to earn at least a master’s degree and then pursue a career that would provide her with an income of her own. Didi had given many sitar recitals in the city on special occasions: at the Governor’s House, at some of her college functions, and at provincial youth festivals. She and I were also regularly invited to take part in classical dance recitals at receptions for visiting dignitaries. Didi and her friend Jatan didi would perform rhythmic Kathak compositions based on the legends of Krishna and Radha, while I gave solo performances of graceful Bharatnatyam, a dance form once confined to the temples of southern India. I was drawn to the emotional purity of Bharatnatyam, in which the emphasis falls on mood more than on storytelling.

Didi had grown to be very beautiful, with large, almond-shaped eyes, long, lustrous hair that was naturally wavy, and a petite but curvaceous frame. She carried herself like a princess at all times, her appearance was never less than immaculate, and she never forgot her manners for a moment. Didi was always soft-spoken, though sometimes a bit stiff.

I made a striking contrast to my elegant sister. At fourteen I was already taller than Didi but too skinny, and I liked to laugh too loudly, chatter too often, run up and down the stairs too much, and ride my bike everywhere. Without much encouragement, my straight hair had grown down to my hips, and I was content to have it knotted, braided, or tucked back, just as long as it didn’t get in my way. I was in my final year of high school, waiting impatiently for the tyranny of my drab school uniform and the all-day routine to be over.

I often asked to borrow items from Didi’s wardrobe, and she never hesitated to share them, albeit with repeated warnings to look after them carefully. Somehow, though, they always looked out of place on my darker-skinned, lanky body, which had a habit of colliding with lurking nails and unexpected corners. Whenever I sheepishly returned a scarf or shawl with a rip or a snag, Didi would exclaim that I must have thorns instead of bones in my body. Yet if I asked to borrow something again the very next day, she wouldn’t refuse, and the cycle would inevitably repeat itself.

Shafiji had planted a sickly looking jasmine plant right in the middle of the courtyard on the ground floor. At the time, the compositors laughed at the idea that this plant might survive the competition from the lush little shrubs around it to grow into a respectable bush. Still, Shafiji ignored all skepticism and dangled a rope from a nail on the outer wall of the library on the terrace, two floors above.

This arrangement looked ridiculously ambitious until the jasmine took the hint and started climbing the rope. Its top was beyond the first floor by the end of its first year. In its second year, Shafiji fashioned a network of metal wires between the east and west terraces that then supported the horizontal growth of this bush-turned-tree. We were all incredulous at the birds, butterflies, and other visitors that this green canopy brought into our courtyard, even in the middle of Jaipur’s sandstone jungle. Surrounded by walls and balconies, the jasmine made a beautiful contribution to the green tapestry that filled our home, enhancing the shrubs in the courtyard and the innumerable potted plants of champa, chameli, clematis, marigolds, roses, basil, coriander, curry leaves, lemongrass, and mint that filled every space in the house ever touched by sunlight.

Shafiji was also a rescuer of note, bringing sundry little creatures to us for care and nursing—an injured baby squirrel that had fallen from a tree, birds that had been entangled in razor-sharp threads during the kite-flying season, baby rabbits whose parents had been claimed by an animal or someone’s dinner pot. Babu and Amma never refused to accept any of these creatures, deputizing Didi and me to help with the nursing. The aim was always to release them into the vast green spaces of Ram Niwas Garden once they were strong enough, but the ones who took too long to heal often ended up living with us on a permanent basis. By this point we had a large cage in the veranda for a parrot that refused to fly away, a couple of rabbits with no survival skills, and a few visiting cats, from whom we had to protect the smaller creatures.

Babu’s experiment with a subscription-only newspaper, Praja Sandesh, “message of the people,” had taken off reasonably well. It generated continuous work, at any rate, though revenue was unreliable. Fortunately, because many of Amma and Babu’s former colleagues were involved with Hindi literary and educational institutions in Rajasthan, a steady flow of book-printing orders subsidized the newspaper and sustained the press’s staff.

Babu insisted on serving tea and snacks to anyone who dropped by the press, a practice that ensured frequent tea breaks for the staff. It also meant numerous trays of food and drinks travelling up and down every day, in addition to the steady stream of unannounced visitors to the family. So Mangi bai now had a helper—proud, loud, but efficient Kesar bai. She came every morning to sweep the main floor and wash clothes. Every evening, her demure daughter, Prem didi, arrived to do the dishes.

Mangi bai was very possessive of our brass-and-steel cooking pots, cleaning them to a shine with white coal-ash herself. She did not care much for non-metal utensils such as glass and ceramic; in her view these were impure—much like Kesar bai, who was from a caste of launderers. Amma had to have a long talk with Mangi bai about her loud objections to Kesar bai’s polluting presence, just as she had had to do when Mangi bai objected to Shafiji’s entering “her” kitchen. Mangi bai could not overrule Amma, but she never lost an opportunity to assert her higher status. The affable Shafiji cheerfully ignored all attempts at intimidation by the diminutive cook, but Kesar bai would sometimes rise to the bait, and the two would get into a sharp verbal duel.

What Mangi bai found most hard to adjust to, however, was Amma’s decision to employ an untouchable sweeper to dust and sweep the halls of the press and the two terraces. The sand of the Thar Desert invaded every public and private space in Jaipur, effortlessly defeating the high walls of the city. It had to be banished from the house as often as twice a day. Badami bai was a good-natured addition to our household whose normally smiling face beamed even more whenever Babu called out for someone to serve the sweeper a cup of tea. At such moments Mangi bai would grumble under her breath and comply only through an intermediary, even if it happened to be Shafiji. She refused to have any direct contact with Badami bai.

What with our classes, studies, and rehearsals, Didi and I had very little time to help at home, but we were not expected to, as Amma and Babu insisted that we use all our available time for reading, writing, and self-improvement. Even when he was sitting in his office downstairs, Babu seemed to know when we lingered too long in the kitchen after mealtimes. His loud remarks about burning our books in the chulha fire always sent us scurrying back to our desks.

At his own desk downstairs, Babu found much to write about in current events. At the time, the newspapers and radio were full of reports about the Tibetan uprising. Earlier in the year, Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, had fled Tibet and was granted asylum in India. Up until now Babu had been a staunch critic of Nehruji, condemning every one of his policies, but he agreed with his support of the Dalai Lama. However, he also worried about its consequences, and in his editorials for Praja Sandesh he speculated about the Chinese response, noting President Mao’s impatience to return China to its historic glory through the Great Leap Forward. Babu believed that Nehruji’s plans for catching India up to the modern world were no match for Chinese policies, which were driven by deep convictions about China’s rightful place in human history.

The editorials in Babu’s paper that commented on local and national politics were supplemented by commentaries on international events—the new Castro government in Cuba, the referendum in Switzerland that denied female suffrage in the same month that women voted in Nepal for the first time, the independence of Cyprus and Singapore, martial law in Laos, the senseless assassination of Ceylonese Prime Minister Bandaranaike, and the reforms of Nikita Khrushchev in the USSR after the Stalin era.

Babu had opinions on everything, and they were strongest when it came to Amma’s involvement in local politics. When several municipal councillors arrived at the house, hoping, once again, to persuade Amma to run for public election, Babu’s wrath was unbridled. He did not even wait for the delegation to leave before denouncing Amma for prostituting her social conscience for political glory, for selling her soul to devils who sacrificed ideals to expediency. Amma politely declined their request.

Kamala mausi was back in our lives, although the defiant sparkle in her eyes had dimmed. Even her mischievous laughter now rang hollow. Toward the end of our time in Lucknow, Kamala mausi’s daughter, Kanti didi, had finished college and then married a man whose family home was in Wardha. The marriage gave Amma the opportunity to take Didi and me on the long journey to her former home—the place where Didi was born. Wardha was the site of so many cherished memories, and Amma had revelled in the effusive welcomes we constantly received.

Amma had known the family of Kanti didi’s new husband during her Wardha days. Pratap bhaiya had been very young when his father, a well-respected political figure in Wardha, died unexpectedly. After being swindled out of their family’s share of the ancestral property, his mother had supported Pratap bhaiya’s education by publishing books of short stories, poetry, social commentary, and histories of women whose strength and influence had helped to shape the country’s history. Nevertheless, in an ironic testimony to the lingering power of caste, she had balked when her only son sought to marry a woman whose social rank differed from their own, and it had taken considerable effort on Pratap bhaiya’s part to persuade his mother to accept Kanti didi as her daughter-in-law. In honour of our long association with Pratap bhaiya’s family, we were invited to attend the wedding as guests of the groom, so in that role we welcomed Kanti didi into her new home as Kanti bhabhi.

With her daughter settled, Kamala mausi could no longer ignore the pleas of her brothers to move back to Lucknow, so she had spent her limited savings on a two-room addition to the terrace of the ancestral house and moved in—an arrangement that had worked reasonably well for everyone until her father’s death, just a few months ago. After that, things changed. Her sisters-in-law started objecting to her presence in ways both subtle and overt, while her brothers bore witness to her humiliation in silence. There were no open conflicts that she could confront in her customary direct way, just a nagging series of gestures and comments clearly intended to wound her. Angry and unhappy, Kamala mausi had tried to retreat into her high perch at the top the house, into her books.

Finally, realizing that she could not remain where she was if she hoped to preserve her self-respect, she had decided to move out, and she began to look for a teaching position in one of Lucknow’s many newly founded schools. However, her brothers got wind of her plans and insisted that she not move out of the house, since such a brazen action would disgrace the family. To Kamala mausi, this argument, while true enough, had been the last straw. Evidently, to safeguard family honour, she was expected to accept whatever abuse came her way, as if she were a servant rather than a member of that family.

She was too proud to ask her brothers to reimburse her for the money she had spent on the addition to the house—a request that, in any case, would doubtless have been refused. Until she could find a job, she was destitute. Kanti bhabhi and her husband had offered to take her in, but custom forbade a daughter’s parents from accepting even so much as a drink of water from their in-laws. In Kamala mausi’s eyes, such customs—designed to sever a married daughter’s relationship to the family of her birth—were long overdue to be discarded. But, while she was prepared to bring dishonour upon herself, she was not willing to expose her daughter’s new family to social scandal, nor did she wish to place her own independence at risk. She was here with us now because Amma was her last resort, and she hoped that her anonymity in Jaipur would allow her a new freedom. Her timing was perfect, Amma assured her: the school needed to hire a new Hindi teacher for senior classes. She asked Kamala mausi to apply.

When the school trustees received her job application, however, they were not as impressed as Amma had expected them to be, and her brow was more furrowed than usual when she returned from her meeting with them. The hiring committee was not in favour of hiring Kamala mausi because she was not from their region or their community. Neither was Amma, but when she pointed this out, one of the trustees magnanimously assured Amma that she had proved her worth and loyalty over the years. Kamala mausi’s qualifications and experience were much stronger than those of the other two applicants, but that did not sway the committee. It was only after Amma appealed to their sense of duty toward those who had fought for the independence of the country that the board finally agreed to offer Kamala mausi a one-year probationary appointment.

What bothered Amma most, though, was the infuriating remark she overheard on her way out of the meeting. The trustee who had been most antagonistic had mocked Kamala mausi’s contribution to the fight for freedom with the dismissive comment, “As though Gandhiji needed the help of these dim-witted creatures.”

Amma did not regret that she had confronted that sorry individual and given him a fiery lecture on the role that ordinary women had played, beginning long before Gandhiji became the leader of the movement. She had rattled off the long list of names of women who had, with her, participated in protest rallies and courted arrest during the civil disobedience movement. She questioned his notion that any political activist could function without the active support of mothers, wives, sisters, and other women in their families. Some men, she pointed out, had only served the nationalist cause after they were shamed into it by the women of their families.

Finding no support from other members of the board, the offending individual had made a hasty retreat, but Amma worried about the implications of this confrontation for Kamala mausi’s job prospects at the school.

Hearing this, Kamala mausi guffawed. “Haven’t you learned? Only men’s actions are worthy of being celebrated as achievements. A woman must be quiet about her own contributions. Otherwise she is arrogant and conceited.” Through another round of mirthless laughter she reminded Amma: “How many people really know what it meant for an ordinary woman to be thrown in those jails?”

This led to a passionate discussion of the harsh personal consequences faced by women who left the bounds of the sacred domestic threshold. We listened to the two of them recall how much harsher their lives had been, both inside and outside of jail, compared to the lives of women from prominent political families. Together they recalled the names of women they knew personally whose acts of resistance had never made it into local newspapers, even when a newspaper set out to publish painstakingly compiled lists of the acts of civil disobedience in their area. Amma attributed this neglect to the editors’ paternalistic wish to protect the identities of women political activists, but Kamala mausi drily asserted that women activists were considered unworthy of being named unless in association with a famous man. With a tired smile, she reminded Amma of the words of the revolutionary Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Aur bhi gum hain zamane mein mohabbat ke siva (“There are many kinds of pains in the world, not just the ones inflicted by our loved ones”).

Our storage room had ample space for Kamala mausi’s small trunk and her large cloth bag filled with books, and the divan in the drawing room became her temporary bed, but she refused to move in with us permanently. Instead, she decided to withdraw her application for the teaching position at Amma’s school and found both work and accommodations elsewhere. By the end of the year, this fiercely independent woman had joined the staff of a primary school just outside one of the city gates, run by a different business community. On her meagre salary she could only afford to rent a small room in a crowded neighbourhood just outside of Jaipur’s walls, a former refugee camp that had turned into a haphazard mix of shacks, shops, and houses of all shapes and sizes. She spent much of her time at our house during school holidays, in order to avoid the stifling heat of her rented room, which turned into an oven during the hot months, as well as to avoid the landlord’s family, who shunned her. But that was all the help she would accept.

JAIPUR, 1960

I was rather relieved to be finished with high school. No longer would I be obliged to live under a microscope as the daughter of the principal—or so I thought. But then came college. The Maharaja College for boys had been established in 1844, by Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II, but the Maharani Intermediate College for girls was established only a century later, by the glamourous world-travelling Maharaja and Maharani of Jaipur. The two colleges now occupied imposing Indo-Sarcenic buildings that stood directly opposite each other. The lecturers at Maharani College were part of a close-knit group of women who had known each other since the days when Maharani Gayatri Devi had first held meetings to plan for the expansion of women’s education in the city. Moreover, the principal of Maharani College—the redoubtable Mrs. Savitri Bhartiya, for whom education was nothing short of a mission—was close friends with Amma. So I still felt that I was under scrutiny.

I chose history, painting, and vocal music as my majors at Maharani College, the subjects that appealed to me most in the very limited selection of arts and science courses that girls were offered. Despite the familiar sense of surveillance, I enjoyed the delicious freedom of not having to wear a uniform and having fewer classes to attend in a day. It was also oddly liberating to step outside the world of the wealthy business communities that largely made up our social circle in Jaipur. The majority of the girls in my college came from families whose ancestry lay in other parts of the country—Bengal, Bihar, Himachal, Kashmir, Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh—and whose lives more closely reflected my own middle-class background.

Karuna was my new best friend and my opposite in more ways than one. A quiet mathematics and science student, Karuna came from a large, multi-generational family of cousins, uncles, and aunts who shared one large compound located at the other end of the walled city from ours. Their ancestors had come to Jaipur from Uttar Pradesh many generations ago as public record-keepers, administrators, royal scribes, and writers. Soon I was spending a lot of time at her house, sometimes long past my curfew-hour, until an irate Didi would phone to summon me home. But the easy conversations I could have with Karuna’s many family members, their enjoyment of popular music, and their adoration of my singing prowess all kept pulling me back.

By this point I had lost most of my school friends to early-onset matrimony, which changed their lives, and mine, irrevocably. Much to Amma’s satisfaction, Jatan didi got to finish her college degree before getting married and moving to Bombay. Poorna had been the first of my friends to get married, to a newly minted accountant, who had then moved with her to distant Bombay. She was quickly followed into marriage by Anita, who was from one illustrious family of jewellers and her new husband from another.

Their weddings were the most fun I had ever had. I loved getting to dress up and participate in the rituals and ceremonies that went on for days. Afterwards, since all my married friends had extended families in Jaipur, they often came to visit, especially during the numerous festivals that dot the Hindu and Jain calendars. Although I got to see them, however, we no longer got to spend much time talking. Even when they were in Jaipur to visit, they spent most of their time confined to their large households, the kitchens in particular, where the cooking fires were never out for long.

One of my school friends, Pramila, lasted nearly a full year of college before being married to the scion of one of the wealthiest families of the rich city of Jaipur. Soon after her lavish wedding, she caused an uproar by refusing to observe purdah. Her father-in-law was one of the trustees of Amma’s school, yet he was mystified to hear his new daughter-in-law pontificate against the segregation of women. Pramila was pressured to conform by both her parents and her in-laws, but she stood her ground, quoting Gandhiji’s challenge to all: “If you love peace, make injustice visible.” I was amazed at my friend’s outspoken revolt in a household where even my unmarried head felt the need to be bowed, if not covered.

At four o’clock on one misty morning, Pramila’s mother-in-law made the journey across three streets to our house. She walked shrouded from head to toe, protected from prying eyes by four women who held curtains up around her. Didi and I listened from the dining room to her bitter complaints about her daughter-in-law, whose head has been filled with such strange ideas by our mother that she shamelessly revealed her face in front of elders of the family.

Amma had many weapons in her arsenal, but she used the gentlest ones on this tortured woman. She repeated the history Didi and I had heard so often of the purdah system in the region and explained why it had become so prevalent in the business communities. Amma reminded her of sages, queens, and women warriors of India, such as Gargi, Laxmi Bai, Razia Sultan, and Keladi Chennamma, and then she spoke of modern women leaders such as Sarojini Naidu, Aruna Asaf Ali, and Indira Gandhi. In a voice that was calm but firm, Amma delivered all this information in Marwari, her visitor’s own language.

The shrouded lady left, dismayed and silent. Amma knew that this was not the end of the battle but the beginning of one, so she asked me to let Pramila know how proud she was of her courage. Amma always hoped that the sparks she nurtured in her school would catch and spread through the conservative business community of the city that her school mainly served. She found it so rewarding to open the eyes of the girls she taught to a world that was vast, exciting, and interconnected, so unlike the enclosed little spaces that now amounted to the whole world for most of my childhood friends.

Amma’s passion for education showed in everything she did those days, it seemed. Elections under the new procedure of the 1959 Municipal Act were going to be held soon, and once again, despite Babu’s continual insults and her own repeated refusal to get involved in local politics, Amma was facing pressure to run for office. Instead of giving in, she devoted her energy to working with Rajasthan’s Board of Education to revamp secondary education in the state.

Shankar chacha was coming to Jaipur with Suresh and Meera didi! I was ecstatic, and even Didi’s smiles were broader than usual. Our only disappointment was that Chachi had to stay behind in Bhagalpur to look after their daughter “Baby,” born just over a year ago, and our other younger cousins. Since moving back to Jaipur, we’d stayed connected to their lives only through Shankar chacha’s regular letters to Amma. We’d been excited when, in a recent letter, he’d mentioned his desire to visit Jaipur with Suresh and Meera didi, before they finished growing up and left home. And now we received a telegram, sent just before they were to set out on their three-day journey by train. The short notice gave us very little time to prepare for their arrival, but it also prevented Amma from finding an excuse to head off their visit.

Figuring out how to make room for three guests in our rather cramped household wasn’t easy. We decided that Shankar chacha could sleep on the divan in the drawing room, usually occupied by Kamala mausi. Didi and I gladly agreed to give up our divans to Kamala mausi and Suresh and to add a large mattress in the empty space in the middle of our room that the two of us could share with Meera didi. Didi was put in charge of planning meals, while I was the designated tour guide. We were in our room, happily chatting about the impending visit, when we heard Amma’s voice in Babu’s room next door, breaking the news to him. The smothering silence that followed was broken only by the sound of Babu’s heavy steps as he made his way out of the room and down the stairs and then by the sound of the main gate closing behind him.

Didi and I stared blankly at each other. Then Didi barged into Babu’s room through one of the connecting doors. “What’s his problem now? Aren’t they his family too?” she demanded.

“Yes.” Bitterness made Amma’s voice cold. “But they fulfil our emotional need for family, not his. What’s the point of getting angry? Besides, we have work to do.” With that, she turned and left, evidently heading for the kitchen, where Mangi bai was cleaning up for the night. We could hear their subdued conversation as Amma admonished her not to pick a fight with Kesar bai in front of the guests.

We had little choice but to try to recover our own excitement about the imminent arrival of our uncle and cousins. Didi drew up a menu for every meal of the week they would spend with us, featuring our favourite Rajasthani dishes, complemented by the simpler but spicier fare of eastern India. The easiest part was desserts, since Johri Bazaar was rightfully famous for its shops full of sweets.

Meanwhile, I planned our sightseeing tours. For the sake of historical sequence, I decided that we should start with an excursion to the fort and palace complex at Amer. The capital of the Kachwaha dynasty for nearly seven centuries, prior to the founding of Jaipur, Amer lies in the nearby Aravalli Hills, at the mouth of a rocky gorge. A steep climb up a serpentine cobblestone stairway leads to the palace, built of sandstone and marble, and its resplendent pavillions and courtyards, embellished with frescoes, sculptures, and precious stones and metals. The nearby forts of Nahargarh and Jaigarh, also perched high above Jaipur in the Aravalli Hills, offer panoramic views of the valley. Together these forts and palaces would make for a whole day of sightseeing.

But I was also determined to show off our beloved Jaipur itself—the “Pink City,” so called because, in honour of a visit from Prince Albert in 1876, most of the buildings were coated with a red-ochre paint. Some two and a half centuries ago, when increasing water scarcity had begun to affect the higher reaches of the Aravalli Hills, Maharaja Jai Singh II had decided to abandon his magnificent palace complex at Amer and move his capital into the valley below. Designed by the Maharaja’s chief architect, Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, Jaipur was a masterpiece of city planning, laid out in a grid pattern of nine large squares, in three rows of three, that together form a mandala—a diagram of the cosmos. I enjoyed imagining how I would introduce our guests to its bazaars, squares, hospitals, parks, palaces, and havelis and its neat rows of multi-storey houses lining broad, well-lit avenues and streets. We would certainly visit the centremost square, the site of the royal palace, around which cluster other opulent buildings lavishly decorated with latticed screens, ornamental domes, and graceful arches.

One place I really wasn’t sure I wanted to visit, despite its iconic status, was the Hawa Mahal, an ornate five-storey structure with an intricate façade consisting of rows of semi-hexagonal bays, each constructed of sandstone latticework and topped with a dome and finial. The latticework is punctuated by miniature windows, more than nine hundred in all, behind which the women of the royal household, suitably hidden from view, could peep out onto the world from their drab, sparsely furnished quarters.

However, the Hawa Mahal was part of the City Palace, where the Maharaja and Maharani still resided with their family and retainers, and I did want to take our guests there. I never tired of its glorious maze of gateways, gardens, courtyards, and audience halls or the way its many buildings, added over many generations, blended Rajput, Mughal, and European influences. I was especially keen on the City Palace Museum, which housed the most wonderful collection of ancient paintings and texts, textiles, carriages, and weaponry. We could spend a whole day there but for the magnetic pull of the observatory next door, Jantar Mantar—a collection of stone or marble structures that functioned as astronomical instruments. This was the only monument in the city where I would need the help of a tour guide to explain how these instruments were used to predict eclipses, to track the shifting position of stars, or to mark the passage of time. Our last stop in this complex would be the temple of Govind Devji, the protector deity of Jaipur, who sits, adorned with gold ornaments, on a silver throne in a temple made of sandstone and marble. At the back of the temple is Talkatora Lake, with its floating water lilies.

I could easily think of other temples, monuments, and palaces that we could visit, but I would just have to wait and see how well our guests could handle outings in the desert heat.

Shankar chacha had told us not to try to meet them at the railway station, since he couldn’t be sure whether the train would be on time. So we waited anxiously for the sound of a rickshaw or a tonga stopping at the edge of the street. Finally, after what seemed like forever, they arrived.

Suresh had grown to be taller than me, and Meera didi was shyer and quieter than when we last met, but, despite these changes, we quickly picked up from where we had left off three years before. Suresh had recently started college, and Meera didi was already several years in, so we chatted about our assorted studies. Shankar chacha engaged in his customary friendly banter with Amma, who had taken time off from her hectic schedule, and it was so nice to see her smile. And, to my delight, they all quickly fell in love with Jaipur.

Amma apologized repeatedly to our guests for Babu’s absence, and I fervently hoped that he would come home before their all too brief visit came to an end. But I knew that hoping was useless. True to form, Babu reappeared only after his brother, niece, and nephew had returned to Bhagalpur.

Amma, photographed in Wardha in 1941, around the time of her marriage to Babu. As so often, the faraway expression on her face is hard to read—a sober commitment to building a future, with a hint of past sorrows in her eyes.

Rajeshwar Narayan Sinha (Babu) as a young man. Born into a landowning family in Bihar, Babu abruptly left his ancestral home when he was barely in his mid-twenties, moving first to Patna and then vanishing into the revolutionary underground.

Shankareshwer Narayan Sinha, one of Babu’s two younger brothers, then in his early twenties. The fifth of six sons, Shankar chacha assumed responsibility for the family estate in Bhagalpur, which gradually dwindled in size during the land reforms following India’s independence. Although Babu was estranged from his family, his daughters loved their visits to their uncle in Bhagalpur, where they were embraced by the warmth of their kin.

Rekha, aged eight, in the hill station of Nainital, not far from the government training centre at Jeolikot for which Amma—then the deputy director of UP’s Social Welfare Department—was responsible. Many years later, Rekha acquired a puppy of her own, whom she named Neelu (“Blue”), for the sparkling colour of his eyes.

Rekha’s older sister, Abha (“Didi”), at the age of sixteen. Rekha often envied Didi’s beauty and poise, although she did not share her sister’s quiet determination to be a “normal” girl—Didi’s own way of rebelling against two decidedly atypical parents.

Didi, with her early object of passion—the sitar. Both daughters were given lessons in music and dance, but it was Didi who dedicated herself to the study of a single instrument, Her long hours of practice perhaps allowed her to escape into a private world, away from the emotional cacophony of her family.

Rekha (top left) and Didi (top right), in a family portrait taken in 1964 around the time of Didi’s marriage to Hamir Chand Choudhary. Following the wedding, Didi moved with “Jijaji” (“sister’s husband,” as Rekha called him) to his family’s opulent home near Dhar, in western Madhya Pradesh—some 600 kilometres distant from her friends and family in Jaipur.

Rekha in 1966, at the time of her graduation from the master’s program in music at the University of Rajasthan. Initially attracted to the study of painting, Rekha discovered herself increasingly drawn to classical Hindustani music, the field in which she ultimately earned her doctorate.

Bir Bahadur Prasad Sinha, at the age of twenty-nine—the man destined to become Rekha’s husband. At first, Amma refused to consider the match: “I would rather push my daughter into a well,” she declared, “than consider a marriage proposal from a zamindar family in Bihar.” She came around, however, once she realized that the proposed groom had firmly rejected the feudal attitudes that still prevailed in much of eastern India.

Rekha and her husband, whom she addressed as Sinha saheb, in their home in Dhanbad, not long after their marriage, in 1970. Located in the coal-mining districts of eastern Bihar, Dhanbad came as something of a shock to Surekha—the place where she faced the blunt force of traditional social hierarchies.

Amma with Rekha and her infant daughter (and author of this book). Although Amma lived to celebrate the birth of her first grandchild, she died of a heart attack the following year, at the age of only fifty-four.