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Amma’s Daughters: 1 Dislocations

Amma’s Daughters
1 Dislocations
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“1 Dislocations” in “Amma’s Daughters”

1

Dislocations

JAIPUR, 1953

Babu is attacking the side of a mountain with a heavy mace. He swings the long wooden club in a wide arc and smashes it down on the rock, shattering it into large pieces the same silver-grey colour as his hair. They cascade down the jagged slope, like thunder rolling across the sky. The next swing brings the head of the mace close to my face, and on it I now see Amma’s features. I wake up with a scream stuck in my throat.

Iopened my eyes to discover a high ceiling, stretching like a bone-white canopy above my mother’s single bed, so cool and soft. A brown and black cotton rug, woven by inmates of Jaipur’s central jail, where Amma taught classes in the evenings, was all that separated her overstuffed mattress from the sandstone floor. From where I lay I could see the stern, straight-backed wooden chair that sat before her teak writing desk, piled high as usual with papers and files. No mountain—only the two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, jammed with books, that flanked her desk, and the stout wrought-iron trunk in the corner, where Amma stored her clothes. On the window above the desk, the familiar batik curtains framed the world beyond in azure folds. But something felt different.

I craned my neck toward the open double doors, straining to hear any sound from the courtyard. Nothing—except the stillness of a summer afternoon when the breath of the earth shimmers in a hot haze. This almost eerie silence forced away the last traces of sleep, and with wakefulness came a vague recollection of last night—Babu’s muffled anger barely audible through the wooden panels of the door to Amma’s room, Didi and me hovering anxiously on the other side. Babu’s outbursts, especially when directed at Amma, always terrified us. Fully awake now, I wondered if my father had left us again.

I sat up, brushed the hair out of my eyes, and emerged from Amma’s cool room into the silent white heat of the courtyard. My steps took me across the courtyard and into Babu’s room at the other end. It was bigger than Amma’s but felt emptier, despite the infinitely larger number of books, overflowing more bookshelves than I could count, and his beloved harmonium. Unlike Amma, whose capacious desk always bore signs of activity, Babu wrote at a narrow wooden school desk with nothing more than an unused inkwell on it. The simple desk was paired with an equally plain wooden chair.

It was impossible to tell whether my father’s bare wooden bed had been slept in. It had only a square block of granite for a pillow and no mattress. The white khadi-cotton sheet, all that was allowed to cover the planks in the warmer months, was neatly folded at the foot. But then I noticed Babu’s indoor footwear, a pair of wooden khadau, tucked under the bed, while his shoes were missing. This was the only clue that he was not at home.

I turned away just in time to see Mangi bai hurry out of the kitchen from the other side of the courtyard. Her lined face stretched into a toothy smile as she approached, and I could tell that she had been looking for me. “You are up, my little one!” Amma’s trusty cook—or, as Amma liked to put it, our “home minister”—crouched down in front of me.

The arrested scream, the one that had lingered after my nightmare, now escaped my throat as a strangled cry, and the sound as it echoed in the empty courtyard startled me. I stumbled forward into Mangi bai’s wiry frame, almost knocking her over, but she stood up and steadied us both.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She smelled of freshly cooked rotis and beedi, the aroma of wood smoke and dough blending with that of the tobacco. “Are you hungry?”

I swallowed, determined to find speech. The rotis could wait. Unformed questions spat out, in a confused mixture of Marwari and Hindi. “Where is Didi? Did Babu take her for a walk without me? Why didn’t anyone wake me up?” But Mangi bai didn’t understand my verbal barrage, and I got no answers. I wanted to head next door, to Bai ki ma’s house, to find someone else, anyone else. But I knew I could not leave until Mangi bai had given me a wash, so I allowed her to lead me to the nearby brass mug and bucket and to soak me from head to toe. The water was unpleasantly warm, despite having been stored in a cement tank in the shade.

I didn’t cooperate. Secretly, I enjoyed this battle of wills with Mangi bai, only possible when Amma was not around to put me in line with a stern look and a reminder to act like a “big girl.” After the wash, Mangi bai had to hold me by one arm in order to dress me. She loosened her grip to reach for the jasmine hair oil and the wide-toothed comb, and I broke free, darting away, my wet hair snaking around my shoulders. I could hear her cursing as I darted out of our courtyard to head next door, but she did not chase me.

Bai ki ma’s courtyard was enclosed behind a wall that had massive double doors. The brass knockers and heavy wooden bolts jangled and creaked whenever the doors turned on their hinges. I leaned hard to push them open and then entered, only to discover Amma, who was sitting in a chair under an awning. Jain saheb, the head of the family, stood a few feet away from her. They had obviously been talking but had probably stopped when they heard the noise of the doors.

Wet grass curtains enclosed the halls that bordered the courtyard, keeping the inner rooms cool. I inhaled the sweet vetiver fragrance—like earth after a monsoon. On the other side of those certains, Jain saheb’s wife, Bai ki ma, and their oldest daughter, Bai, were probably busy as usual. I imagined them at work, tending to their endless housekeeping and child-rearing chores, their broad foreheads gently furrowed, the bangles on their wrists jingling melodiously, their petite frames bent, burdened by layers of clothing, children, and jewellery.

Bai already had a younger sister, Poorna, as well as two younger brothers, and Bai ki ma had recently given birth to another daughter, Nisha. The two sons, Ravi and Uday were enrolled at an all-boys school that served the business community of Jaipur, and they were already learning to help their father with the family jewellery business. My mother had managed to persuade Jain saheb that his daughters also needed an education, and so Bai, who was a few years older than my sister, Didi, was learning to read and write from a young man who visited their home several evenings a week. The two had to be separated by a curtain at all times, and the younger children helped by passing notebooks between them. Luckily for me, Jain saheb had decided to let his second daughter attend the girls’ school that my mother ran—the Shri Veer Balika Vidyalaya. Poorna was in my class, and she was my best friend.

I ran over to Amma and dived into her cozy lap. She didn’t push me off, but she chided me gently for being too big, seven-year-old that I was. Babu could still swing me onto his shoulders with one arm, I protested.

Amma responded with a frown: “Aren’t you forgetting something? What about greeting your elders?” There was no point arguing, so I slid down her lap and stepped over toward Jain saheb, then bowed low with my hands folded. He chuckled and bent down equally low, bringing his face level with my own.

The ritual complete, I turned again to Amma, who looked at me with the same sad smile I’d seen the night before. And then, suddenly, my world fell apart.

“We will be moving away soon,” she told me, “to a city called Lucknow. It’s a beautiful place, much like Jaipur, and you’ll like our new home there.”

“But we have a home here!” My voice was louder than I expected. I glared at her in disblief. “Where is this Lucknow?” The reply came: about 350 miles east of Jaipur.

“But what about Poorna?” I cried. “And Bai ki ma, and Anita, and Pramila, and . . .” Desperately, I listed all of the friends and aunties I could not live without. But Amma was unmoved. Didi had been told the news earlier in the day, she explained, and I would need to help with packing. Didi and Babu had already begun, she added.

I wanted to shout at her that neither of them was even at home, that they were probably out on a walk without me. I was angry with her for never going on these walks with us. And now she wanted to drag us hundreds of miles away from our home, our neighbours, our friends, and our school. Away from the secret grove of sandalwood trees in the Ram Niwas Garden, Babu’s favourite place to rest after our walks, and the sprawling lawns surrounding the majestic Albert Hall Museum.

I folded my arms across my chest and inhaled deeply, reaching for my most grown-up voice, but all that emerged were a few inarticulate sounds of protest. My mother remained still, patient, as I struggled for words. Finally, some part of what had been building up inside me burst out: “And who is going to run the school? Have you thought about that?” The one thing clear in my mind was that a new home in another city would also mean an entirely new school. My school was the centre of my world. “And is Mangi bai coming to this Lucknow with us? Is that why Babu was so angry last night?”

“This was his decision,” Amma said. “He has accepted a teaching position in Shillong, and I have taken a government job in Lucknow. So we have to move soon.” Her tone was firm.

“Rekha.” Bai ki ma’s voice startled me. From behind the curtains she called out once more: “Rekha, come here.”

When Amma was not around, Bai ki ma became our mother, spoiling Didi and me with stories, hugs, and our favourite foods. Invisible to the outside world, she was the one person who made Amma’s occasional absences bearable to me. I was taken aback now by her voice, which carried through the vetiver curtain. Obedient to her command, I removed my sandals and then climbed the one step up onto the cool marble floor of the hall.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the hall behind the curtains. Once they did, I was surprised to discover Didi sitting on the big swing there. She was leaning against Bai ki ma, whose face, as I could now see, glistened with tears. I watched them, perplexed, until Bai ki ma held out her arms to draw me into the circle of warmth.

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Nearly two weeks later, Didi and I were on the railway platform in Jaipur with Amma, waiting to board the overnight train to Lucknow, our luggage already safely stowed in our compartment by porters. Several of the school trustees and members of the board of education had come to the station to bid us farewell. Amma acknowledged kind words, good wishes, and sad faces with folded hands but few words. The red dot of kumkum on her forehead, applied in farewell blessings by the tearful aunties who had gathered earlier at Bai ki ma’s house, had cracked in many places under the strain of Amma’s worried frown. Poorna and I had exchanged our favourite dolls when I last saw her, and now her soft, fabric doll, neatly dressed in a salwar-kamiz, felt reassuringly solid in the crook of my arm. I had fought with both Mangi bai and Amma, who wanted to pack away the small figure. I kept thinking I could hear Babu call my name. Every now and then I even thought I could see his big head of closely cropped silver hair bobbing in the crowd. But it was never him.

Finally, the three of us climbed onto the train and settled into our compartment. The two large holdalls occupied most of one of the two upper berths, and the trunks were pushed under our two lower berths. Didi and Amma sat down next to each other on the lower berth, and I sat on the one opposite them, turned away from the receding faces in the window, studying the embroidered face of my new favourite doll. I looked up and out of the window only when the air changed from heavy and metallic to gusty and light as Jaipur’s densely crowded buildings gave way to a broad sandy landscape occasionally broken by green fields. Now that our journey was underway, I tried repeatedly to draw Amma and Didi’s attention to the many interesting things in our compartment. I checked out the mechanics of the folding table and then climbed into the empty upper berth and made faces at Didi, hoping to provoke a reaction. When she refused to rise to the bait, I ran out into the passage to count the number of compartments. I counted eight in a row. At either end of the passage, there were two toilets with sinks and two outside sinks with mirrors that were both too high for me to reach. Finally, Didi interrupted my running around and noisy chatter by coming out into the passage and grabbing my wrist. She pointed to the rather humourless-looking men who were trying to read newspapers in their quiet compartments as she dragged me back to our own. I reluctantly returned to my seat and then resumed my excited commentary, this time focused on the landscape speeding by outside the window. But even my love of train rides couldn’t draw Amma and Didi out of their silence. Soon the gathering dusk enveloped the vanishing countryside, which added to the general gloom in our little compartment.

Didi was only three and a half years older than I was, but she was often more serious-minded than some of the adults in my life. Although she was a little young, she insisted on always wearing a sari. She received many compliments, some wanted and some unwanted, for her large almond-shaped eyes, beautifully accented by heavy lids, her light skin and glowing complexion, and her elegant demeanour. She tamed her long wavy dark-brown hair into two dainty braids, the ends of which she twisted between her fingers when she was agitated. She was doing this now.

Didi’s saris weren’t as long and wide Amma’s, but they were in the same simple style, a white expanse of cotton bordered by colourful threads woven into a geometric or floral design. Amma threw the pallu of her sari carelessly over her head, but Didi pinned the long end of hers fashionably over her left shoulder.

I liked the idea of wearing a sari, but it got in the way of riding my bike. When I wasn’t wearing my school uniform of skirt and blouse, I preferred the loose trousers and long shirt of the salwar-kamiz. Normally, Didi laughed at my failed attempts to pin and knot the long dupatta out of my way. She said there wasn’t enough flesh on my body to hold my clothes in place.

I caught myself swinging my legs and cast a quick look at Amma, braced for disapproval. But behind her glasses with their pointed corners, Amma’s eyes were fixed on the fat book she’d been holding since the train left the station. Her long black hair, streaked with grey, tied as usual into a tight bun, was partially hidden under the pallu of her sari. Beside her on the seat was her khadi-cloth shoulder bag—her portable repository of books, writing pads, pencils and pens, change purse, handkerchief, and packet of salted and roasted nuts “just in case.” When she was not reading, as now, or writing, Amma was always hurrying somewhere or talking to someone in her firm, even voice. I felt Amma’s presence even when she was somewhere else, busy dealing with the needs of the hundreds of other people who also called her “Amma,” but sometimes I was not sure I knew her.

What a contrast she made with Babu! Clad in homespun dhoti and kurta, his six-foot-tall former body-builder frame exuded an air of superiority and authority. I was sure of his love when he was with us, but every one of his frequent, inexplicable absences from our lives still made me apprehensive while it lasted. When he was at home, Babu would sit poring over books for long periods of time, entirely quiet, until he suddenly decided to use his booming voice to dramatic effect. Perhaps he was compensating for his nearly deaf left ear. His sonorous oration made the folktales stories of the Panchatantra and the legends of the Mahabharata come alive. I could almost hear him now, reciting and then explaining a Sanskrit shloka:

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May all be happy, all be without disease;

May all behold the good, and none be sorrowful.

Babu’s resounding voice always made me wonder which god would ever dare ignore his invocation.

The surest way to make Babu read aloud was to sit in his lap when he was reading at his desk. Some evenings, when he was home, he would take up his harmonium, which he loved as much as his books. He played it ever so softly to accompany the words of Meera Bai’s devotional poems, written five hundred years before. When he sang, Babu closed his eyes and tilted his head to one side, his good ear slightly bent toward the harmonium. His deep bass voice became a murmur like a breeze haunting a deep valley, so unlike the clickety-clack of the train I was now on, passing through darkness that seemed like an unending tunnel. I missed Babu and his music now more than ever, and I wondered when we would see him again.

Amma read my mind better than the book in her lap. She looked up from it now to remind us of the many times that Babu hadn’t returned from work or his morning walk. Of how he would disappear for days on end, only to reappear with total nonchalance. Of the excuses she would make for his absences to his colleagues and our neighbours. Didi and I had always known better than to ask Amma for more than whatever excuse she was prepared to provide.

Amma also reminded us of the elation we always felt when he returned. She told us to hold on to that feeling until we saw him again. Unlike his work at the newspaper, which had allowed him little time off, his new job at the government college in Shillong came with regular holidays that he could spend with us if he chose. Babu was on another train at this very moment, also heading east, but he would go much farther than Lucknow. He would travel to the northeastern reaches of the Himalayas, to the abode of clouds.

Amma’s assurances about holidays made me feel better. She explained that Babu had been unhappy about the changes at the newspaper where he’d been working. It was losing sight of the ideals it once supported and becoming more and more commercial, which made him angry. They both thought that he might be happier teaching at a college, and Shillong was a lovely, quiet spot, nestled among rolling hills. But it was not a large city, and she hadn’t been able to find a suitable job there for herself. So, in the end, she had decided to accept a position in Lucknow—a long way from Shillong, but closer than Jaipur. Amma’s new job was with the government of Uttar Pradesh, in its Social Welfare Department, she said, and it would give her an opportunity for public service. It would also include lots of travelling to different parts of UP, and, in the summers, we would have a chance to travel with her and see all sorts of new places.

“Will Babu come with us?” I tried to read her face.

“I hope so.”

Amma fell silent again. I could see that her thoughts were elsewhere, as she gazed out the window into the darkness. So I asked her to tell us the story of our names, which always made me feel special. Amma dutifully repeated the familiar history, about how Didi was born on 14 November 1942, Nehruji’s birthday, in Mahatma Gandhi’s community at Wardha, almost five years before the struggle for independence finally bore fruit. When Gandhiji first saw her, he commented on her divine aura—ābhā in Sanskrit—which became her name.

My family moved to Jaipur three years later, and I was born soon after that, on 25 April 1946. Amma had accepted someone’s suggestion to call me Rekha—a rekhā is a line or a boundary—since it is customary to give names to girls that signify an ending, symbolically expressing that the parents do not want any more daughters. But when Babu learned of my name, he was very angry and immediately wanted to change it. Amma had pleaded with him, saying that I already recognized Rekha as my name. “In that case,” he had declared, “her name will be Surekha.” In Sanskrit, the prefix su- means “beautiful.”

This story usually made me feel special, but this time I realized that Babu had not been there when I was born—and perhaps not for a long time after. Amma read my thoughts again. “But we do manage well without him, don’t we, my little soldiers?”

Didi responded by leaning her head heavily against Amma’s shoulder. I left the doll on my seat and crossed the short distance between us to climb into my mother’s lap. The joy I felt in the rocking movement of the lumbering train was double now, as I inhaled the smell of jasmine, soap, and old furniture that always emanated from Amma.

I loved it when Amma called us her little soldiers. One day I had scraped my knee badly while at school. I had cried, not so much from the pain, but at the sight of the blood, and I had sobbed, “Amma, Amma,” as Verma Teacher cleaned the wound. She offered to take me to Amma’s office, but I shook my head vigorously. So Verma Teacher allowed me to sit with Didi in her class for the rest of the day. Then, in the evening, once we were all at home together, Amma touched my knee. In that moment she showed more pain on her face than I had felt when I got hurt. She left her hand on my knee, and it seemed to radiate a soothing heat that warmed and soothed me, and she called me her brave little soldier. Her comforting touch now was as calming as ever.

My eyelids drooping, I murmured, “Yes, we will be all right. Babu will be fine. The school will be fine, and Mangi bai will be all right, too.”

Mangi bai had wept when Amma told her we were moving to Lucknow. As far back as I could remember, Mangi bai had been a constant presence in our lives, efficiently bridging the gaps caused by Amma and Babu’s periodic absences. Amma had invited Mangi bai to come with us to Lucknow, but she had refused, insisting that her home was in Jaipur. I thought now of my visits to the dark little room in the farthest corner of her brother’s house that Mangi bai called her own. Sometimes Amma would scold Mangi bai for not standing up to her abusive relatives, who considered her inauspicious—a childless woman abandoned by her husband. Amma would grumble at Mangi bai’s “false sense of social decorum,” which forced her to return to that callous hearth at the end of each day, even when she could have stayed with us.

She had told Mangi bai that Lucknow could be a new beginning for her, as it would take her far from her family, who kept dipping into her savings. But Mangi bai had shaken her head and said she could not leave her home. Instead, she had helped us pack up our household, tears streaming down her cheeks.

As I snuggled into Amma’s shoulder, I thought of all the people and places this train was rushing away from. I already missed my school—my second home, and the centre of our daily routine. I remembered how we used to arrive at school before anyone else each morning, how we would greet the gardener, Maliji, as he tended the grounds. Then Didi and I would play or read in Amma’s office, while she marked the latest pile of assignments. I loved that time of day, when Amma’s sari was still crisp and the breeze still cool. I sighed and took another deep breath.

The train rocked me into sleep’s welcoming embrace, although the farewells of the day and the anxieties of our venture into the unknown soon leached into my dreams.

LUCKNOW, 1953

Amma looked and sounded right at home when we arrived in Lucknow just before noon. We had had a delicious breakfast of crisp vegetable bread cutlets and hot milky tea, after Amma and Didi had spent several minutes lifting me up to the sink in the passage to brush my teeth and wash my face. Even as we stepped down from the train, she was responding to greetings in a dialect that neither Didi nor I had ever heard. We were met by a small band of porters, led by a bespectacled man who introduced himself in Hindi as Deen Dayal Verma, Amma’s personal assistant. Somehow, amid all the confusion, the porters had managed to fetch our luggage, the contents of which would keep us going until the rest of our household belongings arrived. As we emerged from the station, another man rushed up to greet us. This turned out to be our driver, who directed us toward a large white car, simultaneously shouting orders at the porters to be careful with the luggage. Deen Dayalji declined Amma’s invitation to ride in the car with us; he said he would follow us on his bicycle.

I was mesmerized by the sight of the broad Gomti River, which flowed through this city of stately buildings, and by the magnificent walls and gateways enclosing lush gardens. The stonework on the buildings was as fine as exquisite embroidery. I pointed this stone embroidery out to Amma and then bit my tongue. But it was too late. Her history lesson began as the burly car rumbled through ancient cobbled avenues, turned down narrow streets, emerged abruptly into wide new roads.

Amma always said that if we treated history like a good friend, then it did not have to be a stern teacher. If any building sported a plaque, Amma and Babu made us read it. We were not allowed to forget what we read, and we were expected to ask questions to find out more. I had learned a long time ago that the surest way to please them was to collect historical information on our visits to Jaipur’s public library. Now Amma reeled off the lengthy history of this city and its exquisite buildings, explaining that Lucknow, now the capital of Uttar Pradesh, was once ruled by the Delhi Sultanate but had been absorbed into the Mughal Empire in the mid-sixteenth century, a legacy still visible in the poetic lines of the city’s Persian architecture. As Mughal power waned, Lucknow had become the capital of the princely state of Awadh and the home of a series of wealthy nawabs, under whom the city flourished.

I was distracted by the new sights and sounds, but I tried at first to force myself to listen carefully—I knew there could be questions later, especially about Lucknow’s recent history. The city was one of the sites of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when sepoys rose up against the British East India Company, and had continued to play a prominent role in the independence movement. I could tell from the shift in Amma’s tone of voice how important this story was to her. Thankfully, Amma did not seem to be paying attention to Didi and me, delivering her monologue as though she were lecturing to a class. Didi had long since stopped listening; she was too enthralled by the view from the car windows. I followed her lead and ignored Amma’s lecture in favour of the chaotic but captivating scenes unfolding along our route.

Finally we arrived at a tree-lined avenue of neatly kept gardens punctuated by white bungalows, and the history lesson was over, for the time being. “Here we are in Civil Lines,” Amma declared. She stressed the word “Civil” as though she were trying to blow out a small anise seed stuck in her teeth. It was clear in that moment that she found the name of our new community distasteful, although we did not then know the history of these enclaves built and named by the English, who seemed to consider themselves more “civil” than their Indian neighbours.

The car stopped in front of one of the bungalows, where an old man bowed deeply before opening the low wrought-iron gate for us to drive through. Despite his salt and pepper hair, Deen Dayalji managed to arrive just after us. He had ridden his bicycle with great agility, often darting into narrow lanes and re-emerging onto the main street just behind the car. Now leaning his bike against an enormous ashok tree, he caught sight of a man who was standing on the veranda with a tray of sherbet glasses. Deen Dayalji rushed toward the veranda, shouting instructions. We later learned that the wiry sherbet-man, clad in a dhoti-kurta and turban and, at this moment, perspiring in the humid heat of midsummer, was Ramu kaka, the cook. He had worked for many of the previous occupants of this government bungalow and hoped to be retained by Amma.

I took the glass of aromatic rose-syrup drink that Ramu kaka offered me and finished it in a few big gulps. Then I checked hastily to make sure that neither Amma nor Didi had witnessed my uncouth behaviour. Fortunately, Amma was busy talking to Deen Dayalji, who kept addressing her as “Sir” or “Saheb,” even though she told him to call her either Behenji or Mrs. Sinha. Babu’s name was Rajeshwar Narayan Sinha, but, back home, we’d never heard anyone call our mother “Mrs. Sinha.” Deen Dayalji looked very nervous, avoiding eye contact with my mother, choosing instead to look down at his bush shirt or his leather sandals. He smiled openly, though, when he caught my eye.

Didi, meanwhile, assumed ladylike airs, emptying her glass in dainty sips, not casting a single glance in my direction. Even though Didi’s sari was somewhat limp from the long train ride, she looked very elegant. Didi had spent several minutes in front of the little sink and mirror on the train, washing the sleep from her face, fixing her hair, and straightening the creases of her sari with a wet kerchief. Despite her many instructions, I had not cared to do anything beyond brushing my teeth and washing my face. I had even tussled with Didi a bit when she tried to tame my hair into a braid.

Now, however, I was acutely aware of my coarse, crumpled kurta. I wondered if Amma would find new “sewing ladies” in Lucknow. In Jaipur, Amma had sought out young widows, who were typically hidden away in the darkest corners of large family homes, often raising a couple of very young children. Whenever a sewing machine arrived—usually a donation coaxed from one of the many wealthy patrons of our school—Amma made sure that both Didi and I went along on her visit to the latest recipient. Amma would buy lengths of khadi fabric and teach each woman a few basic sewing skills, and sometimes Didi and I would have the honour of showing off how the machine worked. By way of a trial run, Amma would place an order for a kurta for me, reassuring the fledgling seamstress that it would fit as long as she made it loose and long. Then Amma would take me back to the sewing lady’s home to try on my new clothes, and, as often as not, I would discover myself clad in a shapeless sack with crooked seams that could have accommodated me and a couple of friends. While she helped me change, Amma would look at me sternly and pinch me if I squirmed. Her earnest-sounding praise of the garment drowned out my complaints.

I considered the kurta I was wearing now, one of my dwindling stock of “sewing-lady” garments. Perhaps the seamstresses in Lucknow would be more gifted.

The veranda swing was the size of a bed, with decorative wooden barriers on three sides. I sat down, idly swinging my legs. This unseemly behaviour caught Amma’s eye, but all she did was sit down next to me and take my hand. Then she called Didi over and instructed us both to follow Deen Dayalji because he was about to show all three of us the rest of the bungalow.

The bungalow was painted chalky-white inside and out. The large hall in the centre had two doors on each side and was big enough to serve as a living and dining room. There was even enough space for Amma’s writing desk under one of the windows that looked out onto the veranda. The house had wide windows with metal bars, too large for me to open or close on my own. It was all very different from Jaipur, where houses had small outer windows and doors, designed to keep the desert heat and sandstorms out. In Jaipur, buildings stood close to each other, not separated by fences and gardens, and each one was home to many families who shared the various courtyards and terraces. They were full of people and noise. Rooms faced inward, onto bustling courtyards, whereas our new house was an outward-facing, rectangular island.

Amma explained to us that bungalows like these had been built for colonial administrators on the outskirts of most major cities in India. I gathered from the tone of her voice that Amma did not care much for the austere seclusion of the bungalow. But this was where we were to live, so Amma asked Didi and me to choose one of the three bedrooms each, without fighting.

“But if Didi and I have our own rooms, then what about Babu?” I asked.

Amma looked strangely sad. “The two of you will just have to share a room when Babu comes to visit us.”

Ramu kaka was standing patiently at the far door that led to the small kitchen, waiting to ask about dinner. Amma told him to make whatever he had bought from the market that morning, as long as it was vegetarian. There was another building behind the bungalow, separated by a thicket of trees. “Servant quarters,” explained Deen Dayalji when he found me looking at it from the kitchen window. Amma said it would remain locked and empty, since Ramu kaka preferred to return at the end of each day to his family, who lived on a farm nearby.

Outside the bungalow, flowerbeds full of jasmine and hibiscus bordered the lawn, and the thick hedge that surrounded the grass in front of the house was broken up by flamboyant gulmohar trees. In the back garden, mango and guava trees separated the servant’s quarters from the bungalow.

I was happy to see that there were many nooks and crannies to explore but very aware that there was no Poorna to play with. Didi had already coldly declined my offer to play hide-and-seek. Instead she had grumpily asked Amma to find her a sitar tutor as soon as our belongings arrived from Jaipur, so she would not fall out of practice. Our new house was only sparsely furnished, and the rest of our belongings weren’t due to arrive for several weeks. Without Amma’s and Babu’s books, Babu’s harmonium, and Didi’s sitar, the sombre bungalow was far from feeling like home.

Soon the periwinkle sky turned inky black. Nightfall was quieter and darker in this house. In Jaipur, our ground-floor rooms off the courtyard had had the soothing company of light and activity from the stairwell that connected the upper two floors. I missed the ceaseless sound of the movement of strange and familiar people, of baby gurgles and wails, children’s games and fights, prayer songs and mantras, occasional theatrical outbursts both mock and earnest, water splashing from bucket baths, and kitchen noises of cutting, grinding, frying, stirring, and eating. The bungalow in Lucknow was almost eerie in its emptiness.

After dinner was served, Ramu kaka left for home, as did the chowkidar, Ram Bahadurji, who had been manning the gate, now locked for the night. Amma double-checked the heavy padlock and then asked Didi and me to join her on the swing in the veranda: she needed, she said, to meet with her cabinet. Babu, the president of our cabinet, was missing; however, Amma, the prime minister, had some things to discuss with her council of ministers. The three of us sat together in the dark, not moving, listening to the quiet.

Just as I began to wonder whether Amma and Didi were waiting for me to break the silence, which I considered my duty from time to time, a chorus of crickets started to chirp in the nearby hedges, and they were soon joined by the gleeful, throaty croaking of a frog in the farthest part of the garden. I liked frogs and had already noticed a couple of large green ones. The only frogs we had seen in Jaipur were the small brown toads that lived near lakes and reservoirs and sometimes strayed into our courtyard in the city during the monsoon season, so I decided to walk over to the boundary hedge to check on the source of the croaking. Amma anticipated and thwarted my movement with a firm hand on my wrist. “There might be a snake in the bushes.”

“But I like snakes too,” I protested, pouting.

Amma laughed, despite herself. “Instead of disturbing the creatures of night going about their business, sit down and pay attention. Tomorrow morning you will meet Kamala behenji, one of my freedom-fighter sisters. You have to call her Kamala mausi and be on your best behaviour. Her family home is here in Lucknow, and she has generously agreed to take care of the two of you in my absence.”

Didi and I were not happy to hear this mention of absence. “We just got here,” Didi pointed out. “And you are already planning to leave?”

Amma sighed. “This is why I was reluctant to take this position, but now that we are here, we will make it work, won’t we?”

I nodded automatically, as I always did in response to Amma’s orders, and Amma launched into a familiar account of Gandhiji’s dream that women would be able to live as respected members of society and of Nehruji’s recent welfare programs for women.

I had heard Amma explain to Jain saheb about the role of the newly constituted Social Welfare Departments in several of India’s larger states and about Nehruji’s vision for transforming the feudal elements of Indian society. I had long known that Amma admired Nehruji as much as Babu detested him. Babu thought he was a selfish man who couldn’t see beyond his personal political ambitions. I had heard Amma defend Nehruji’s plans to build factories and modernize India’s economy, and I had seen Babu storm out of the room in response.

So I knew most of the lecture that was to follow: two hundred years of colonization, the extensive drain of India’s wealth, and the ongoing battle for swaraj—the self-rule that Gandhiji had envisioned. But I dared not turn off my ears as Amma’s volume rose. “What has the country’s independence done for its women?” she asked, as if to demand an answer from the silent night. “We did all we could for the freedom of our country. We went to jail just like the men did.” Amma was seldom angry for long, except when she started talking about social injustices.

But now a note of hope smoothed the edge of outrage in her voice. “In my new job,” she explained, “I will design programs to train women in rural areas. These programs will give women another opportunity for swaraj, true independence, especially to women who are too poor even to have the stifling walls of a family home as a refuge.” She paused for a moment to look from Didi to me. We were listening. “But I need the help of my cabinet to do this difficult task.”

Amma had already warned us that her new job would involve setting up new offices and facilities in the Lucknow, Kanpur, and Jhansi divisions, which would require travel. Now she told us that every month she would be expected to spend three weeks in the regional training centres and touring the field, with only one week in the office in Lucknow.

“Only a week at home,” I mumbled.

“Yes, but during school holidays we can travel together. In the summer months, I will have to be at the training centre at Jeolikot, up in the mountains near Nainital. Won’t that be fun?” Amma drew us closer to her, but there was no sense of anticipation in her voice.

Despite the frogs’ best efforts to disturb it, silence crept over our cabinet meeting again. I wondered if Babu had left us because Amma now worked for Nehruji’s government. But I wasn’t sure how to ask her.

Babu would curse any Congress Party leader whom Amma referred to as her freedom-fighter brother or whose public work she tried to tell him about. His vehement dislike of Nehruji, our prime minister, extended to our president, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and his wife, with whom Amma was acquainted. Whenever Amma mentioned Dr. Prasadji, Babu would launch into a diatribe about a good man allowing himself to sit at the head of a table of thieves. Whenever Amma was summoned to Delhi to help the president’s wife host an event or celebrate a festival, Babu would tell her that she could do as she pleased, while denouncing her association with the couple, calling her another blind loyalist who had forgotten the reasons for the fight for freedom, a fight that was far from over.

Babu’s fiery pronouncements were always followed by a sullen, silent phase, during which Amma would make her case for attending a particular event or speaking engagement. Her lengthy explanations often ended in a measure of grudging reconciliation, with Babu helping her polish a speech or draw up an itinerary. But his outbursts of anger could be terrifying. In Jaipur, his powerful voice had resonated effortlessly through the walls and courtyards of our home, sometimes startling our neighbours even when he was speaking in normal tones. But when he raised his voice in anger, it was like a thunderclap. Although he mostly kept it contained, I knew that Babu’s anger ran deep. I had seen it whenever he read the newspaper or discussed politics and social issues with Amma. Sometimes I saw it even when it was invisible—when he didn’t come home for days on end.

I thought about this now. “Why is Babu so angry, Amma?”

“Your Babu wanted something different—not just independence but a total revolution. Now he has to work through his disillusionment after a lifetime of sacrifices, his own and those of the people he looked up to. But you must remember that your Babu loves both of you more than anything in this world.”

“He has a strange way of showing it,” Didi muttered.

Amma tried to placate her. “You know how he is—his anger is like a burst of camphor fire, hot but short, no ash left behind.”

But we all knew that fire burns, however brief it may be.

Images

The next morning, it was evident that Amma had not slept much. After unpacking the luggage that had come with us from Jaipur, she had worked most of the night to prepare for the first day of her new job. Before leaving, she also prepared us for Kamala mausi’s arrival, with a lecture on how even educated, middle-class women often struggled under the burden of oppressive customs and traditions.

As a young girl, Amma told us, Kamala mausi had been home-schooled to read and write both Hindi and English, and she had taken a special interest in literature from an early age. But her keen mind and her talent for writing poetry had not prevented her father from marrying her off at the age of twelve to a man in his early twenties, also from Lucknow, who was studying law.

By the time Kamala mausi was old enough to live with her husband in his family home, he had become very involved in the freedom struggle, abandoning his law practice. Her in-laws taunted her for her dark skin and stout body and made it clear that the only reason she had the privilege of being their daughter-in-law was the hefty dowry that her father had provided. But Kamala mausi managed to win the respect of her husband by helping him with his nationalist writings.

Then misfortune struck. Her husband was imprisoned for sedition and, while he was in jail, he developed pleurisy. When the news came that he had died, Kamala mausi was at her parents’ house delivering their first child. Her brothers went to her in-laws with gifts and news of a daughter’s arrival, only to be told that the young widow and her baby were no longer welcome in her husband’s family home. She had no choice but to remain in the household of her birth, but her brothers and their wives were not at all pleased to have a widow in their midst. She knew that they would not let her stay with them forever.

Amma had no time to waste on reminiscences—she had to report for her first day at work and then leave for Kanpur, which was two hours away by train. She had woken Didi and me up at dawn, with instructions to shower and get dressed. Nevertheless, we could tell that this personal history was urgently important, for, as Amma organized paperwork and finished packing for her trip, she talked incessantly about her freedom-fighter sister.

At the age of only twenty, Kamala mausi had found herself facing the prospect of moving all the way to Vrindavan, which had become something of a dumping ground for widows from the upper castes. There, she and her young daughter could look forward to living in a home where she would be given one meal a day and expected to earn the rest by singing on the streets. Empty of hope, she had considered killing herself. This was when she and Amma first met. At the time, Amma was living in the Mahila Ashram at Wardha, not far from the village of Sevagram, where Gandhiji had relocated his headquarters in 1936. Didi and I had often heard the story of the Mahila Ashram, which was officially founded early in 1933, just a few years before Amma arrived. It had evolved from the Mahila Seva Mandal, a centre dedicated to the social uplift of women, in part through education and vocational training, that one of Gandhi’s steadfast supporters, Jamnalalji Bajaj, had established at Wardha in 1924. It was through the network of freedom fighters, Amma now told us, that she had learned of Kamala mausi’s situation and had subsequently arranged for her to be invited to the Mahila Ashram.

Amma went on to explain that young women raised with middle-class values found it hard to leave the protection of their family home, however precarious that safety. But Kamala mausi had been brave enough to travel more than six hundred miles south, from Lucknow to Wardha, in order to start a new life for herself and her child. At Wardha, she continued her education, eventually taking teacher’s training and then working in a local school.

Now, fifteen years later, Kamala mausi’s daughter, Kanti, whom Amma remembered as a bright and sensitive girl who, like her mother, wrote moving poetry, had finished high school, and was now studying in Amravati, a city not far west of Wardha, at the HVP Mandal Degree College for Physical Education. Kamala mausi had recently returned to Lucknow to care for her father, who had had a stroke. Her family found her help useful, and they said they admired her perseverance.

In the long letters she had recently written to Amma, Kamala mausi had revealed that she was under tremendous pressure from her family to stay on in Lucknow, and she was considering using her savings to buy a small place near her family or perhaps to build a floor on the terrace of the family home. Her brothers were now insisting that she live with them, but Amma suspected that this insistence was driven more by worry about the propriety of a woman living alone than by any real fondness for their sister. Amma worried that Kamala mausi might be overwhelmed by her family’s acceptance: “I know the heady pull of home and the feeling of belonging,” she said. “But I do not trust people for whom kindness and respect are a matter of convenience.”

In any case, Kamala mausi was presently in Lucknow and, delighted to find out about Amma’s new job in the same city, she had offered to help set up our new household. Amma was grateful for the offer, she told us, but she also hoped that the distance from her family would allow Kamala mausi the chance to think carefully about her decision.

Kamala mausi arrived early, just as Ramu kaka finished making a breakfast of upma—a savoury semolina porridge made with cashews, ginger, cumin, mustard, and lemon juice—which he served with sweet milky chai, for Amma, and glasses of sweetened hot milk for Didi and me. But we rose from the table to greet the new arrival.

Wrapped in a white khadi sari, Kamala mausi’s large, dark caramel body loomed over Amma as she embraced her. Several inches taller than Amma, Kamala mausi looked down at the world with mirthful generosity. She wore an oblong streak of sandalwood on her forehead that matched the colour of the frames of her thick elliptical glasses. With an affectionate smile on her smooth, round face, she addressed Amma as her older sister, her badi behenji, even though Amma was actually a few months younger.

When Amma protested the undeserved honorific, Kamala mausi clasped her hands. “How can I call you anything other than my elder? You saved me and my daughter.”

Amma shook her head. “Nonsense,” she said. “You saved yourself, with your courage and hard work.”

Kamala mausi joined us at the breakfast table and we returned to our meal, this time in her company. Before she started in on her upma, however, she showered Didi and me with blessings and immediately launched into a story about the infant Didi in Wardha, merrily eating an orange in Gandhiji’s lap, dripping all over his pristine white dhoti.

To the relief of Didi, who had become quite a fastidious eater, Amma interrupted Kamala mausi’s cheerful account. “The tour orders were waiting for me when I reached Lucknow. I don’t know how long I will be gone. I will return home as soon as I have made sure that the girls can stay with me until their school starts.”

Kamala mausi was clearly annoyed with Amma’s superiors, who showed no concern for a woman with young children who had just moved from another city. But Amma dismissed her friend’s verbal volleys with a shrug. “You remember Acharya Jugal Kishorji from our Wardha days? Now he’s the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare for Uttar Pradesh. He wrote to congratulate me when he found out that I’d been offered this position. He also warned me that my performance would be watched closely by those who may be envious and will see me as a political appointment. There are many people who would like to see me fail. So I’m prepared for a rough start.” Amma paused, glancing from Didi to me. “I have experience handling whatever life throws at me, but the girls are still so young.”

Before any of us could say anything, however, Amma changed the mood with a proud smile. “Abha-Rekha are very self-sufficient and will not be any trouble. I wouldn’t hesitate to leave them by themselves if they knew people nearby. But, as you know, we arrived only yesterday.” She rose from the table to leave. “I’m very grateful that you can be here as we figure out our new life.”

Kamala mausi pointed to her suitcase to indicate that she was there to stay. “Badi behenji, do what you must and take however long it takes. Show them what a woman can do.”

Amma had a catch in her throat as she folded her hands together. “I will forever be in your debt.”

Didi and I rose from our seats to encircle Amma in a hug, stifling our farewell sobs. We held each other, just for a moment. Then Amma started issuing instructions about our behaviour and routine in her absence, and she was gone. The long summer that had begun in joyful Jaipur was about to end in lonely Lucknow.

Images

After Amma left, Kamala mausi introduced Didi and me to the Amir-ud-Daula public library. She had been quick to notice our interest in history, but she told us that literature came closer to the truth than most history books and steered us in a different direction at the library. She showed us Nirmala, by Munshi Premchand, a story about a young girl unhappily married to a much older man, and explained that modern poets and novelists often wrote about social issues and the struggle for independence. Real history was made up of the experiences of everyday people, she said, not just what kings, colonialists, and nationalist leaders thought and did, and she pointed us to Mere bachpan ke din, a childhood memoir by Mahadevi Verma, one of the foremost poets of the romanticist Chhayavaad movement in Hindi literature who also worked to promote women’s education and uplift. Kamala mausi drew up a summer reading list for each of us, containing everything from Hindi classics to recent novels that brought India’s independence movement to life, such as Maila aanchal, by Phanishwar Nath Renu, and Godan, also by Munshi Premchand. I particularly enjoyed the vivid, heroic poetry of Subhadra Kumari Chauhan and could recite from memory all eighteen stanzas of “Jhansi ki Rani,” her poem about Lakshmibai, the queen of Jhansi, who fought to defend her kingdom against the British. Although she was too polite to say so, Didi was less interested in political themes. She was delighted by Devaki Nandan Khatri’s magical romance Chandrakanta, written in the late nineteenth century, but she was also drawn to the idealism and humanism of poems by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, one of the founders of the Chhayavaad movement.

Kamala mausi was, if anything, even more regimented than Amma in organizing our days, but the rhythm she enforced on our daily routine did help to calm our anxiety about the new place and all the new people. Long hours spent reading ended with evening walks to public parks surrounded by high ornate walls or with cool strolls by the snaking Gomti River.

In this way, and with the kind attention of Kamala mausi and Ramu kaka, we got through the first week of waiting. When Amma finally arrived back at the bungalow, her sari looked as worn as she did, and much of her greying hair had escaped her tight bun, but she seemed oblivious to her dishevelment. We hugged tightly. She smelled of sweat and a pungent herbal soap. Seeing my wrinkled nose, she pushed me away with a chuckle. “There’s little time for a two-showers-per-day regimen when you’re out in the field.” And from that moment she could hardly stop smiling or talking.

The training centre where Amma worked was located in a small village called Narwal, some fifteen miles outside the city of Kanpur. There, nearly a hundred women from all over the state were receiving training as rural social workers. As UP’s deputy director of women’s welfare, Amma also supervised a total of fifteen district organizers, all women, who covered three of UP’s districts: Lucknow, Kanpur, and Jhansi. Each district organizer was in charge of fifteen village workers, also women, and each of these gram sevikas ran a welfare centre that served three or four villages. At these welfare centres, village women were taught basic literacy, as well as practical skills such as sewing, vegetable gardening, and preserving fruits, and they also received some general education, including health information. Amma was responsible for arranging seminars and training programs for the gram sevikas in both Narwal and Jeolikot, as well as for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the welfare centres in the fifteen districts.

After a detailed description of her activities in the training centre, she smiled proudly at her old friend. “Kamala behenji, if you thought you and I had a hard life, you should meet some of the women at the training centre. Their stories of the callous cruelty shown to them by their own families filled my heart with anger and pain. But the real story is the fighting spirit of these women. They survived, and they will return to the communities they came from to help make a better future for everyone. I feel so privileged to be working with such women.”

As Amma went on to describe what this better future would look like, Didi and I waited patiently to find out what lay ahead for us. Finally, Didi interrupted Amma’s monologue. “So how long are you going to be home this time?”

Amma glanced briefly at Didi and me but then, with a look of sudden embarrassment, turned her attention to Kamala mausi. “Arre haan! I almost forgot. Kamala behenji, did you get a chance to visit your father, or were you too busy with these two?”

“I can go to see him now. I’ll come back whenever you need me.”

Amma compared dates from her diary and the calendar. “I’ve worked out a schedule for the next month—until the schools open. The girls can travel with me for the next two weeks. We’ll return to Lucknow in time for our things to arrive from Jaipur and for the new school term for the girls. If you’re still available and willing, we would really appreciate your presence when my travel starts up again. I’ve also written to some of my freedom-fighter family in Lucknow to ask if they know a trustworthy older woman who needs full-time employment and who can live with us in the house.”

Amused by Amma’s efficiency, Kamala mausi said that she would be more than happy to come back in a few weeks. Didi seemed mollified by this exchange, and I could not wait to board a train again.

Amma then asked Kamala mausi whether she was planning to return to Wardha, despite her brothers’ insistence that she move back into the family home. “Don’t let them rush you into anything,” she advised her friend, with a wistful smile. “Take your time and use your clever mind, not your soft heart.”

Kamala mausi laughed her full-throated laughter, shaking her head. “Badi behenji, you still think of me as a wild-eyed doe with a young fawn to raise. I know why I’m no longer just a widow whose shadow pollutes: right now, my family finds me useful. I’ve even heard my older brother boast to others about my being a teacher and living in Gandhiji’s ashram—the same brother who was perfectly prepared to kick me out of my family home with an infant in my arms! Nor does it seem to matter to them that this infant is now in college, and her mother might not want to move to a city so very far away. Yet I have to admit—the idea of returning to Lucknow is very tempting. I’ve ached for home for a long time, and, even with all their traditional nonsense, the contentment I feel when I’m back with my family is hard to resist.”

Amma’s gaze lowered, her normally firm voice sounding like the whisper of a little girl. “I can only imagine.”

Kamala mausi looked pained and gently put her hand on Amma’s arm.

With almost visible effort, Amma pulled herself out of her thoughts and turned her attention to us. “Abha-Rekha, this isn’t the first time I’ve had the chance to live in Lucknow.”

Didi and I had gathered as much just from seeing Amma’s familiarity with the local language, but now was our chance to learn more. Amma explained that she was last in Lucknow in the late 1920s, at the time when protests against the Simon Commission were erupting all over the country. She had been invited for a visit by Manoramadevi, the principal of her school in Mathura, whose family home was in Lucknow. They took part in marches after the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, who had been badly beaten by the police in Lahore during one of the protests. They had witnessed similar sights in Lucknow, Amma told us—unarmed protestors brutally assaulted by the police. It was also here that Manoramadevi had introduced Amma to a network of generous men and women who had been more than family to her over the years.

With past history lessons in mind, Didi interrupted Amma. “The Simon Commission was set up in 1928. How old were you then, Amma?” The strain of puzzlement was writ large on her face.

Amma looked evenly at Didi: “I was no older than you are now, around ten years old.”

Didi was incredulous. “And your parents let you attend a protest march?”

Amma looked blankly at the wall. “I was no longer living at home.”

“Why not?” I asked. This history was new to me.

But, once again, Amma redirected the conversation. “That’s another story for another time. Anyway, I have written to many of these brothers and sisters, and they have offered to help us. Misraji and his wife, Lalitaji, were with me in the civil disobedience movement. Their home here in Lucknow is full of children and grandchildren. They offered to have you two stay with them when we cannot travel together.”

“But Amma, we want to go where you go,” I piped up for Didi and me.

Amma hesitated and then spoke, carefully choosing her words. “I would like that too. But be warned that it will not be easy. You will have to share a room with me, eat whatever they give you, wash your own clothes, perhaps draw water out of a well, and maybe even help out in the training programs. Are you prepared for that, my little soldiers?”

I sprang to attention. “Ji haan!” I expected to hear Didi’s voice echo my own eager affirmation. I turned around to look at my sister, whose large almond eyes were fixed intently on Amma.

Amma put her hand on Didi’s knee. “What say you, Madam Cabinet Minister?”

Amma’s gesture softened Didi. She could not suppress the smile that accompanied her nod.

  • In Her Own Words: Meenal Shrivastava reads from Amma's Daughters (Chapter One)

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