2

Many Homes

LUCKNOW, 1953–55

We lived like nomads for over a year, spending every available school holiday with Amma, travelling all over the vast state of Uttar Pradesh to the welfare centres she now supervised. In all that year we saw nothing of Babu, despite the vacations that came with his new job. However, Amma knew people everywhere we went, and their homes opened to us as though we were long-lost limbs of an extended family tree.

As we kept meeting new family in new homes, we also kept discovering new stories about Amma’s life—and Babu’s too. This was how we learned that, at the age of only fifteen, Amma had stabbed a man.

We were in Agra, staying with two of Amma’s old friends, Suman mami and her husband, Hari mama. An exacting man, with an angular jaw and a commanding presence, Hari mama had recently retired from teaching at the local college. As a follower of the Arya Samaj—a reform movement, founded in the 1870s, that blended Hindu nationalism with opposition to the hierarchies of caste—he began each day with ritual oblations to ancient Vedic dieties, accompanied by the sonorous recitation of verses from the Rigveda, privileges ordinarily reserved for Brahmans. Although short in stature, he stood tall, his starched kurta hanging stiffly over his wide pajama pants and his broad shiny forehead, crowned by short-cropped hair, glistening from daily applications of coconut oil. He lowered his voice for no one—particularly not for his wife, whom he frequently scolded. The moment her husband entered a room, Suman mami’s usual animated manner, punctuated by bouts of giggling, would abruptly dissolve into diffident mumbles.

We were seated on the back veranda, where Amma was helping Suman mami shell a large pile of peas, her face bent toward the big steel bowl that was filling rapidly from their joint effort. For no particular reason, Suman mami launched into an account of the time that Amma was accosted on her way back from a Congress Party meeting there in Agra. The man was drunk. Clad in an army uniform, he towered in her path, her head barely reaching his chest. Amma waited until his hands reached out to grab her and then, in an instant, pulled out the knife she carried in her shoulder belt and plunged it into his torso. His screams brought people running, some of whom rushed Amma to a safe house, while others took the blood-covered man to the military hospital. Hari mama was one of those who had helped Amma to escape arrest, Suman mami told us proudly. A few years later, when Amma was once again in Agra, a senior Congress Party leader, Revati Sharanji, had presented her with a beautiful kataar, or push-dagger, to replace the long Gurkha knife that she had left in the chest cavity of her assailant.

Didi and I listened incredulously to this story. I looked over at Amma—a strict vegetarian who refused to eat eggs because they are “seeds of life” and wouldn’t even let us kill a cockroach. She was capable of pushing a blade through someone’s flesh? My jaw was nearly in my lap. “My Amma killed a man?” I exclaimed.

At this, Amma looked up for the first time since Suman mami began telling the story. Her grim voice stood in stark contrast to Suman mami’s lively tone. “No, he did not die. I did not aim for a kill.” After a pause, she added, “When a woman is nobody’s daughter, wife, or mother, she is absolutely alone. She’s considered fair game.”

“How dare you call yourself alone? Am I no longer your elder brother?” Hari mama, who had appeared on the veranda without our realizing it, interrupted our conversation in his familiar bombastic manner. As usual, Suman mami visibly shrank when she heard her husband’s voice. But Amma only smiled at Hari mama’s chiding.

Suman mami picked up the steel bowl and retreated toward the kitchen, Hari mama barking at her as she left, demanding his afternoon tea. Amma admonished Hari mama for the terror he invoked in his wife, but the rebuke flowed over him like water.

Returning her attention to Didi and me, Amma pointed to the small fenced garden at the back of the house and told us that it used to be a large orchard with an outhouse on its edge, before Hari mama’s son renovated the property. Hari mama and his wife had saved not only her life, Amma said, but also our father’s. Long before Amma knew Babu, he had hidden in their outhouse for three days to evade the police.

“But Babu wasn’t afraid of being jailed,” Didi protested. “I still remember him showing us the whipping marks on his back from his many trips to jail. And didn’t he also lose the hearing in his left ear after he was beaten by guards?”

“Prison tortures, bomb blasts, and who knows what else his strong body had been through,” Hari mama confirmed. “But you’re right. Your Babu never avoided jail out of fear. He was badly hurt when he arrived here and needed to stay out of prison to carry on his work.”

“How did he get hurt?” Didi asked.

“Some bomb that exploded at the wrong time. He didn’t like to talk about it.” Hari mama sounded more irritated than usual.

Amma continued the story. Babu was convalescing in this very house when a nosey neighbour tipped off the police that Hari mama might be sheltering a revolutionary. The police, who had long suspected this Arya Samaji of harbouring nationalist sympathies, arrived at the house, demanding to search the premises. But, as Hari mama argued loudly with the armed policemen at their door, Suman mami quickly led Babu into the little outhouse to hide.

Having finished with the house, the police began inspecting the grounds, moving toward the outhouse. At that point, Suman mami rushed into it ahead of them, pretending to be in great pain from diarrhea, letting out a barrage of curses that she kept up until the policemen left. For the next three days, Suman mami—who continued to pretend to be suffering from the runs—brought food to Babu several times a day, along with a small brass water pitcher of water infused with medicinal herbs. She was very brave, Amma said. Her foresight and courage kept Babu safely out of sight until he was finally able to escape under cover of darkness.

Hari mama did not conceal his pride at this reminder of his wife’s actions, although he mocked Amma’s use of the word “brave” to describe them.

I looked out at the yard. Where the outhouse had once stood there was now a neat little garden dominated by a velvety green drumstick tree, some showy coral trees, and a majestic jamun tree laden with ripening fruit. Beyond the garden, the rest of the orchard had been swallowed up by new construction, buildings sprouting as far as the eye could see. But, for a fleeting moment, my mind conjured up the image of a dense orchard with a narrow wooden outhouse sitting in a small clearing. I could see the door opening just enough to allow Babu’s large frame to emerge silently and then slip into the thicket near the fence.

Our journeys that first summer took us to various parts of western Uttar Pradesh—Mathura, Kanpur, Agra, Nainital—but my favourite place was Jeolikot, a serene hill station nestled in the middle Himalayan range, nearly two miles closer to the clouds than we were in Lucknow. Amma told us that Jeolikot was one of many mountain villages to which the British retreated to escape the summer heat. But it was also a refuge for some of the spiritual leaders of the nationalist movement, such as Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekanand, who withdrew to the remote serenity of Jeolikot in order to meditate. There, our home was a government cottage set in the shadow of towering mountain peaks haloed in snow.

During the long summer days, we were never alone. We made friends with the trainees and the staff at the various welfare centres we visited and spent time with families of the chowkidars of the bungalows and cottages where we stayed. Didi and I also joined the Girl Guides. My favourite camp activity was horse-riding, and Didi’s was marksmanship. Best of all, we revelled in the love shown to us by members of the family of freedom fighters who greeted us in every new place. I hoped the summer would never end.

But it did.

The end of the summer in the plains and the mountains meant endless spells of heavy rain. When the clouds rolled in, the villagers beat a special drum to warn everyone to close windows and doors. If you missed the cue, a wet silver fog pushed through openings, drenching everything in its wake. These fogs were nothing like the sporadic drizzles in Jaipur, which were no more than an invitation for a picnic at Jal Mahal, the palace in the middle of the lake.

The end of summer also meant going back to school.

Our school was housed in a three-hundred-year-old red sandstone building, once the palace of a nawab. Legend had it that the nawab hid most of his treasure, which included the largest ruby ever known, beneath the stone floors or behind the walls of his mansion. Amma explained that our new school was the only one of its kind in Lucknow, with a full day of classes and then additional activities in the late afternoon and early evenings. But I did not like it.

Most girls arrived at school in chauffeur-driven cars or exquisitely decorated horse-drawn carriages, while Didi and I shared a simple tonga. Most mornings of the school term, I had trouble getting up and getting ready. The only tolerable parts of the long day were the dance and music classes in the evenings. I loved to practice my music lessons on Babu’s harmonium—which had, eventually, arrived, along with the rest of our belongings. Sometimes I pretended that he was sitting in the room, swaying to the sound of his beloved instrument, his good ear slightly bent toward me.

The start of the school year also meant often coming home at the end of the day to a house without Amma. Every few months there was a different arrangement. Sometimes someone’s female relative stayed at our house in Amma’s absence, but often that arrangement ended just as we were getting to know our temporary companion. Amma told us that we must write a letter to her and Babu every day, detailing our activities. Whenever she returned from a trip, she would read each one of these letters aloud, and, every month, she helped us choose some of these letters to mail to Babu in Shillong, where he was teaching. Amma also gave us each a notebook in which to keep a daily diary. This diary, she said, would be our best friend in times of fear, loneliness, or confusion, as well as of joy. At first, I wasn’t sure what to write about, so my diary quickly became a record of interesting experiences, such as trying a new dish or exploring a new place. Later on, though, I discovered that she was correct.

Although Kamala mausi had continued to stay with us when she could, she had finally decided to return to Wardha, despite her brothers’ irritation at losing the household help. So several times each month, when Amma was on one of her tours, Didi and I would end our long school day at the house of the Misras, where four generations all lived under a single roof. Lalita mausi was a firm, hardworking matriarch who ran her large household with an iron fist, firmly in command of three sons, their wives, and several grandchildren. Her husband—gentle, bespectacled Misraji—spent nearly all his waking hours in the little clinic that he ran from the ground floor of their house. His elderly mother, who was very frail, had a room on the main floor with an extra bed that was used for overnight visitors. Dadi ma, as everyone called her, was nearly deaf and blind and muttered to herself all the time. Didi and I shared the extra bed in her room.

It was hard to reconcile Dadi ma’s wispy shadow of a self with Lalita mausi’s description of the tyrannical matriarch who had once publicly repudiated her daughter-in-law for taking part in the freedom movement. Lalita mausi’s father had been a physician in nearby Bahraich, who took her to political marches and meetings from the time she was little. Nevertheless, as was customary, Lalita mausi was married at a very young age, in this case to her father’s student. By the time she came of age and went to live in her marital home, her father-in-law had passed away, and her mother-in-law strictly forbade her to participate in political activities. But Lalita mausi was not the docile sort.

In March 1931, three young revolutionaries—Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru, and Sukhdev Thapar—had been executed in Lahore for their part in avenging the death of Lala Lajpat Rai. Public protests had erupted, even as the country’s new viceroy, Lord Willingdon, adopted policies of repression. Arrests and the brutal suppression of disturbances intensified that fall, while Gandhiji was away in London. At the start of January 1932, shortly after he returned to India, Gandhiji called for renewed civil disobedience and was promptly arrested, as were numerous other Congress leaders, setting off yet another round of struggle.

Outraged by the events unfolding around her, Lalita mausi managed to persuade her husband to allow her to join a protest march in Bahraich, which she did, with her youngest son tied to her back, just like the heroic Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, is said to have done. The peaceful march was broken up by riot police who rained lathis down on all and sundry, even women and children. Along with her toddler son, Lalita mausi was thrown into the Bahraich jail for six months for violating laws against public assembly. Subsequently, she and scores of other women prisoners were transferred to the larger Lucknow jail. This is where she met Amma, then barely fourteen, who was serving a sentence for treason and sedition. As a political prisoner, Lalita mausi was allowed to keep her son with her in jail. She would have sent him home with her husband, but Misraji never appeared.

Lalita mausi’s proud but worried father visited her in jail and showed her the announcement in the local newspaper in which her husband’s family renounced any association with her. To cement the banishment, her mother-in-law was determined to arrange for her son to remarry, but her plans finally moved him to action: Misraji left Bahraich and set up practice in Lucknow, where he waited for his wife’s prison term to be over. Although temperamentally a quiet man, in 1942, during the Quit India movement, Misraji joined the thousands who courted arrest to protest the imprisonment of Gandhi and other Congress Party leaders after the British outlawed the All India Congress Committee and brutally enforced the ban on public assemblies under the 1939 Defence of India Act.

Back in Bahraich, all four of Misraji’s brothers took positions of various types in different parts of the state, eventually leaving Dadi ma alone in the ancestral home. When Dadi ma became ill a few years ago, Misraji decided to bring her to Lucknow. Since then, Lalita mausi had cared for Dadi ma, in her practical, no-nonsense way.

Our stay in this bustling household was generally marked by an intensity of noise, movement, and physical proximity that Didi and I had never experienced. In Jaipur, where we had shared a sprawling building with large families, I had sometimes felt sorry for Didi and me, wishing we could be part of those large clusters of people of all sizes who never appeared pensive. Those people who surrounded us in Jaipur, however, were always a floor or a courtyard away, except when we periodically lived in Bai ki ma’s house, pretending to be one of her many children and feeling their closeness fill a hole in our hearts. In the soft-spoken household of Bai ki ma, though, the only voice loud enough to carry over the threshold of a room was that of Jain saheb in one of his storytelling moods. In Lalita mausi’s household everyone talked loudly, except for Misraji and his muttering, bedridden mother.

By the time we arrived in Lucknow, Lalita mausi’s two daughters had married (but only after finishing high school) and were now regular visitors to their parents’ home, with their young ones in tow. What with the Misras’ three sons and their burgeoning families, there were, at any given time, close to a dozen children in the house, all laughing, jostling, shoving, running, reading, and eating noisily. The adults were no less raucous, since they needed to be heard over the din created by the numerous miniature humans careening around them. The result was a cacophony of scolding, talking, crying, singing, and screaming that started in the early hours of the morning and ended late at night. In Lalita mausi’s house, Didi’s usual quietness was stunned into a dazed silence. Not even my initial elation at finding a gang to join could withstand the constant pushing and yelling.

When we could, Didi and I retreated gratefully into the relative quiet of Dadi ma’s room, where we tried to bury our heads in our books. Unfortunately, this invited a lot of sniggering comments, especially from the girls, who would follow us into our retreat. “They think they are memsahebs.” “Look at the fat books they read.” “They will go blind if they read so much.” The worst of their stings was aimed at my dark complexion: “O Kali, can you hear us, or does reading make you deaf too?” Kali may be the name of the most fearful form of the mother goddess, but in this case it was a reference to her coal-black skin. I had inherited Amma’s complexion, and now, despite her advice, I was unable to muster the courage to remind my tormentors that Kali also rides a lion and wears a garland made of the skulls of those slain in a battle with her.

I wished I had my bike. I wished I could ride it all the way back to Jaipur.

Summer finally arrived again, heralding the end of our hated school-term routine. I was playing a game of catch with Ramu kaka in the yard when a man’s form appeared at the gate of our bungalow.

“Babu is here!” I ran screaming toward the gate.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and Amma was poring over some fat files in the living-room-office under the window that overlooked the main gate. She looked up in alarm as I turned back to shout again, “Babu is here!” In doing so, I lost my balance and fell flat on my face, making painful contact with the gravel that had been loudly crunching under my sandals a moment ago.

The man at the gate pushed past Ram Bahadurji, the chowkidar, and picked me up. He was not Babu. I was inconsolable, not so much from the humiliation of falling in such an undignified manner but from the disappointment of my discovery. As he held me, I sobbed, tears mixing with the blood trickling down my face from a cut above my eyebrow.

As my stubborn sobs slowly subsided, I was able to take in Amma’s words to the stranger. I gathered that he was Babu’s younger brother and that Didi and I were to call him Shankar chacha. He was still holding me, with my head resting on his shoulder and my arms tightly wound around his neck. He was the same height as Babu, but leaner, and had a moustache on his gentle face. His kind eyes were the antithesis of Babu’s sharp and penetrating gaze.

Shankar chacha spoke to Amma with a strange mix of mirth and affection. I had never heard anyone talk to Amma this way, but when I lifted my head slightly to steal a look at Amma’s face, Shankar chacha asked me if I wanted to get down. In response, I tightened my grasp around his neck. There was a lot of strength in my bony little arms, he chuckled—I should be careful not to choke him. Suddenly I was deeply ashamed and slid down his long torso until I was on my feet, coming face to face with Didi’s look of disdain at my childish behaviour.

Shankar chacha was there to invite us all to spend the remainder of the summer with him and his family in Bhagalpur, located about 450 miles southeast of Lucknow, on the banks of the holy Ganga. Amma was explaining how much harder it was to manage the household in Lucknow without the neighbourly support she had in Jaipur. She had been managing by working from home as much as possible and with the generous help of old friends. But her travelling for work was only likely to increase, as the Social Welfare Department was considering extension projects in remote areas of the state.

Didi and I listened intently with a sense of anticipation and some measure of dread, looking for clues to answer questions that we did not know how to ask. We loved our travels with Amma, but, so far, life in Lucknow had been a series of unfamiliar people, unknown houses, and unusual circumstances. The biggest void was, of course, the absence of Babu. His brief letters appeared sporadically for Didi and me, mostly filled with questions about our studies and various other activities. From Amma we heard only the refrain that he could visit us whenever he wanted. We were not sure what that meant.

We were initially cautious around Shankar chacha, but his easy smile and gentle way of talking won us over. He stayed with us for two days and taught me how to make a slingshot and use it to pick mangoes from the trees behind our house. Just like Babu, Didi and I never passed up an opportunity to eat a mango—phalon ka raja, the king of fruits, as Babu used to say. We would gather our loot from the bountiful trees and take the mangoes to Ramu kaka to put to good use. The nearly ripe ones were carefully wrapped in straw for a couple of days to ensure that they would be sweet and dripping with fragrant juice. The unripe ones were cut and boiled with jaggary and spices, then cooled to make the most delicious summer drink, panaa. Ramu kaka was very happy with the mango crop that year and promised to make a big jar of mango pickles to send with Amma when we went to visit Shankar chacha’s family.

On the first aftrernoon of his visit, Shankar chacha salvaged a couple of big, unripe mangoes from Ramu kaka’s eager hands, greener than any green I have seen. These were washed and cut into thick, long chunks, then smeared with rock salt, a pinch of turmeric, and chili powder. When Shankar chacha offered the result to Didi and me, we were startled by the sourness of the taste, which was enhanced by the seasoning. The tartness made me squeeze my eyes shut, and even Didi was unable to maintain her ladylike composure; she rocked from side to side with her lips all puckered up. We laughed at each other as we polished off the contents of the plate.

Later on, though, I didn’t feel so good. My stomach was really hurting. Amma came back from the office just as Shankar chacha returned from an evening stroll. When he saw my discomfort, he guiltily explained to Amma about the mangoes, at which point she sent Ram Bahadurji to fetch the doctor. In Jaipur, the nearest clinic was only two streets away, since our house was in the heart of the city, but the bungalow in the Civil Lines was far from everything. If we wanted to go somewhere, Ramu kaka or Ram Bahadurji had to call a tonga. Amma had a government car, but she refused to use it except for going to and from her office. Her soft-spoken but efficient assistant, Deen Dayalji, had delicately hinted that many directors in government departments use these cars as their personal vehicles. In fact, some even had the driver and his wife and children move into the servant’s quarters, which made it easier to use not only the car but the entire family. This suggestion merely earned Deen Dayalji a long lecture on the true nature of public service.

Shankar chacha made the same mistake now, suggesting that we use the car to go to the doctor. Amma gave him a sharp look. I was expecting her to launch into one of her rants about public funds and “public servants” who treat the public as servants. But she didn’t. Instead, she clenched her teeth and then said that he should not have given us unripe mangoes without first finding out whether our stomachs could handle them. Didi and I squirmed at Shankar chacha’s look of shame.

Didi tried to defend him. “But I don’t feel sick,” she pointed out. “It’s just Rekha.” Through my pain, I nodded vigorously, while Amma glowered at Didi. Ignoring her baleful look, Didi tried to build on her argument, at which point Amma simply told her to go to her room. By this time, Ram Bahadurji had arrived with a bottle of Ayurvedic medicine and the news that the doctor would visit soon. I fell asleep after taking the medicine, along with Amma’s home remedy of a spoon of turmeric powder in hot milk, and the next morning I felt right as rain, not even remembering the doctor’s visit. Shankar chacha left that same day, but only after having extracted a promise from Amma that we would visit the family home soon.

In fact, Amma decided to make this trip much sooner than we expected.

BHAGALPUR, 1955

To accompany her white khadi saris, Amma’s only adornments were normally a pair of gold earrings with a circle of pearls surrounding a ruby, a single gold bangle on one wrist and a gold-plated Favre-Leuba wristwatch on the other, and a decorative bindi on her forehead, the red colour of the dot signifying marriage. This time, though, before we left the house to board the train, she added a pair of silver toe-rings, a gold chain around her neck, and a thin line of bright orange-red sindoor along the first section of the part in her hair, again announcing her married status.

I admired the brilliant line of vermillion, as it set off Amma’s dark skin, so I asked Amma why she didn’t always wear it. Didn’t she like being married? Amma sighed and said I had much to learn about the connection between symbols of marriage and women’s subjugation. Then she added gravely, “His family needs to know that Sinha saheb still has a wife.” I noticed that she did not refer to him as “your Babu,” as she usually did.

The train took us to Bhagalpur toward the end of the summer, just a few weeks before our school was to reopen for the new term. Shankar chacha received us at the train station in a beautifully decorated tonga, which did not simply drop us off at our destination and then leave, as I had expected. Instead, once Shankar chacha helped Amma out of the tonga and escorted her inside, the horse was untied from the tonga and retied to a long rope in a little clearing, in front of what looked like a stable, next to the indigo-tinted outer walls of a large single-storey house. When he returned, Shankar chacha smiled at our fascination with the horse and invited us to feed him carrots as the carriage was being detached. Didi and I were thrilled to feel the horse’s moist, leathery lips graze our fingers.

After a few minutes, Shankar chacha said that we should go inside before they sent a search party for us and pointed toward an arched gateway with double doors. When we stepped through the wooden gate, we found ourselves in a square courtyard with a large neem tree in the middle and a border of carefully tended herbs and flowers all along the east and west wings. Amma was already sitting in a wicker chair with her back to us, facing a stone bench under the neem tree, surrounded by several women and children. Some of the women were wiping away tears.

Everyone’s attention turned to us when Didi and I came through the gate. Now the oldest-looking woman was weeping openly and loudly, pointing from Amma to us. Didi and I stood glued to the spot, unprepared for this outpouring of emotion. But Shankar chacha clutched both of us by our wrists and strode toward the group, calling out, “Why such unholy cacophony? Bhaiya is away, not dead.” His scolding had no effect on the wailing woman, who was now beating her chest and repeating, “My Raja, my Raja.” I could understand what Shankar chacha had just said, but he spoke in a lilting language that I didn’t recognize rather than in the standard Hindi that he’d used until now.

He pushed his way into the middle of this theatrical display and, raising his voice so that he could be heard, asked Amma to follow him. Instead, Amma turned her face toward us and gestured for us to come closer. We could see tears in her own eyes. She instructed us to touch the feet of the wailing woman to ask her blessing and told us to call her Buaji. As Didi and I dutifully bent down to touch Buaji’s feet, she wrapped us up in a damp embrace. She had stopped calling out to “Raja”—our Babu—by this point and now reeled off sentences in a rapid-fire monologue, despite her still-heaving sobs. Between the speed and the sobs, Didi and I couldn’t understand a word. We were just beginning to get used to the Awadhi spoken in Lucknow, which was quite distinct from the Marwari we knew from Jaipur, but this language was different yet again.

As Didi and I stood stiffly in Buaji’s determined embrace, straining to catch anything familiar sounding, I could hear Shankar chacha’s voice above the din. Then I felt his tug on my shoulder, which broke me out of the wailing woman’s uncomfortable hold. In response to his call for tea and refreshments, one of the other women headed down a passage toward what looked like another open courtyard at the rear of the house.

Many rooms surrounded the courtyard in which we stood, each with a wooden double door, a smaller version of the main gate. Across the courtyard, facing the main gate, was a hall with stout pillars and low arches, topped with rolled-up bamboo curtains that looked like a row of startled eyebrows. Shankar chacha ordered one of the boys to get some chairs for us. The boy darted into one of the rooms off the courtyard and promptly emerged with two wicker stools. As Didi and I sat down, most of the women and children dispersed in various directions, leaving only four young faces peering at the strangers who had just arrived.

The oldest face was that of Shankar chacha’s daughter Meera, who was probably about Didi’s age and was holding a little boy in her arms, who turned out to be her inquisitive two-year-old brother, Indra. She offered to take us into the inner courtyard, where the rest of the women were, but Shankar chacha suggested that we stay in the outer courtyard for now. Then he proudly introduced his older son, Suresh, a polite but eager boy who had recently turned eleven. Their younger sister, Rambha, stood shyly behind her older siblings, stealing unsure glances at the strangers. Didi and I were relieved that Suresh and Meera didi spoke to us in Hindi, rather than in the local language, which we later learned was Maithili. They elongated their vowels in a way characteristic of the region, which broke up the clatter of consonants and made their Hindi seem strangely melodious, but at least we could understand what they were saying.

First, Shankar chacha said, we needed to have something to eat, and then we could see the house and the grounds. As if on cue, one of the women reappeared, holding a large tray with tea and an array of sweet and savoury snacks, with a little girl of about four or five, whose name was Bala, clinging to her side. In the humid monsoon heat, the woman’s petite frame looked weighted down by her silk sari. She laid her burden on the bench, the heavy bangles on her wrists clinking softly, and, without a word, offered the first cup of tea to Shankar chacha. He gestured for her to offer it to Amma instead, who took her wrist affectionately, asking Shankar chacha whether this was his wife. Shankar chacha grunted an affirmation. I noticed how haughty his demeanour suddenly was. The easy, affable disposition that we had known in Lucknow seemed to have vanished.

Turning to us, Amma indicated that we should seek our aunt’s blessings. As we bent down to touch her feet, Chachi grabbed hold of us, her long face stretching into a sweet smile, and blessed us with a warm hug.

We enjoyed our refreshments, but Didi and I were excited when it finally came time for a tour of the house. It had so many rooms, of all different sizes, that we lost track of their number. Only some of the rooms were connected to others, but all of them had doors facing one of the courtyards. The large windows in each room were protected at the bottom with metal bars but crowned at the top with stone screens carved in elaborate floral designs. Some of the rooms contained tall bureaus, while others had enormous wooden storage chests, and in one of them was a large wooden bed so high that our uncle had to hoist us up one by one to sit on it. I suppressed an urge to swing my legs once we got up there.

“How did they get such big things in through such small doors?” I asked.

Shankar chacha laughed and said, “All this was made right here in this very room. That is why it fits so perfectly.” And then, one by one, he lowered the two of us to the ground.

Didi, Amma, and I then followed him down the narrow passage that led to the inner courtyard. There we entered a different world, inhabited by women, children, and servants. The inner courtyard was the same size as the outer one, and, as with all courtyards, the central area was open to the sky. But the inner courtyard was shabby, enclosed by crumbling walls in various stages of disrepair. It, too, was surrounded by doorways, and on one side was another pillared hall with arches. Instead of having wooden doors, though, the openings in the walls were simply hung with bamboo curtains. The yard and hall were crowded with piles of fresh vegetables, fruits, and grains, different types of mortars and pestles, rows of large earthenware pots of varying sizes, and two wood-burning stoves, which were surrounded by a wide assortment of utensils used for seasoning, roasting, pickling, and other ways of making food memorable. Many familiar and unfamiliar aromas permeated the air, despite the large wooden lids on the cooking pots.

A portly man whom we had not yet met sat on a low stool, stirring one of the pots and giving orders to two thin women. They squatted on their haunches to perform each of their tasks. Buaji was there too, sitting on a wicker chair in the hall to the side. She wore a heavy silk sari and a great deal of jewellery around her neck and wrists, as well as a long, thick, gold ornament that belted her ample waist in frilly waves. One hand rested on top of the curved handle of her ornate walking stick; with the other, she vigorously fanned herself with a colourfully decorated palm-leaf pankha. Despite the breeze, I noticed, the talcum powder she had dusted around her neck was already showing signs of cakey defeat in its battle with the humidity.

I was relieved to see her smile at us as she issued a command in the general direction of the women. In response, one of them lifted the wooden lid of one of the clay pots and scooped out a creamy dollop of cool yogurt with a big wooden ladle. As I wondered how we would eat it, Shankar chacha bellowed, “Does this household have no plates and spoons?”

This prompted sudden movement from behind one of the hanging bamboo curtains, and a petite figure draped in silk appeared with a small stack of bowls and spoons. She had drawn the long end of her sari up, so that it covered her face, and then across her head. She hurried toward Buaji, her shoulders hunched forward. Buaji gestured for Amma to come closer. I thought Buaji was introducing the faceless woman to Amma, but I wasn’t sure. My curiosity got the better of me, so as they spoke I sidled up to Amma, hoping to take a peek under the shrouded woman’s veil. She noticed my stealthy approach, however, and startled me by loosening her veil just enough to show me her big almond eyes and then the rest of her face. She smiled quickly and playfully stuck out her tongue. Too late I realized that Didi was right behind me and had witnessed my humiliation.

I found some comfort in the creamiest yogurt I had ever tasted, so thick that I could make my spoon stand up in it. Buaji was talking again about something, but Shankar chacha interrupted this latest monologue of hers and told us to finish up the yogurt since he wanted us to see all of the grounds before nightfall. Instead of rushing, though, I let the yogurt melt sweetly in my mouth, while he explained to us what made it taste so good. It wasn’t that sugar had been added to it. Its pinkish hue and sweet taste were produced by simmering milk for hours in an earthenware pot before it was finally allowed to cool and then mixed with a touch of starter. The yogurt stayed fresh for more than a week in there, he said, pointing to the wide-mouthed clay pot, which looked big enough for me to hide in.

I suppressed an urge to smack my lips, but at that news I blurted out, “If I have my way, we’ll never find out how long it stays fresh. I could eat that whole pot in a day!” Shankar chacha just laughed and said that I had better keep my word. I was thankful that the shaking of Amma’s head was delivered with a slight smile. Didi’s look was less forgiving, but she did not resist when I linked my arm with hers as we all headed off for the next stage of our tour, an enthusiastic Suresh leading the charge.

The rooms lining this courtyard had small windows near the ceiling. Two of the rooms held large metal containers and piles of burlap sacks containing grain, though some rooms were not for food storage but for sleeping. We first walked toward a door at the farthest end of the pillared hall that led to an open space. This was the rear of the house, where a thin man was drawing pails of water from the well and filling troughs with it. Two thatched shacks were attached to the back wall of the house, and we learned that some of the servants lived in them. Untidy but bountiful rows of herbs and grapevines grew near the well, and shady fruit trees stretched as far as the eye could see—which wasn’t far, what with the dense foliage of the orchard and the buildings on either side of it.

The mango trees, laden with fruit ripe for the picking, caught my eye. Remembering our love of mangoes, Shankar chacha took the time to identify some of the varieties that grew in this region—the sweet yellow chausa, the succulent green dushehri, the rosy gulab khas, the firm and fibrous kishenbhog, the fleshy and tart langra, the crisp, tangy totapuri, and the sweetest of all—the malda mango. He pointed to the buildings visible through the thicket of trees and asked us to imagine the whole area as an uninterrupted orchard of mango, plum, guava and other fruit-bearing trees.

As Shankar chacha led us down the crooked path that led through the trees, he became his familiar self again. His gruffness evaporated, and he went back to talking in crisp Hindi, sounding just like Amma and Babu. He told us that his job with the Indian Railways kept him busy with travelling but that he preferred to keep his family in Bhagalpur. He added, rather shyly, that it was a growing family.

Since the death of his parents, he explained, he’d had little choice but to remain involved with the ancestral house, whether he liked it or not. So many people depended for their livelihood on the house and the land, and the extended family expected him to maintain the household, he said, particularly his only sister, our Buaji. She visited the family house a few times every year, and it was important for her to find, when she came, all the trappings of a well-run home. On this visit, Buaji was accompanied by her two grandsons, two maids, and her youngest daughter-in-law. When we realized he was referring to the faceless woman we had met earlier, Didi whispered to Amma, “She’s not much older than me!” Amma widened her eyes in an expression that meant keep quiet.

At the sound of their whispering, Shankar chacha turned to look at us. “So how did you like the house?” he asked, smiling.

Didi and I replied in unison. “Very nice!”

“I’m so glad that Amma brought us to see your house, Shankar chacha,” I added, pleased at myself for sounding so polite.

Instead of replying, Shankar chacha stopped in his tracks and looked reproachfully at Amma. Then he crouched in front of Didi and me and stared into our eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice tender. “I forgot to tell you—this is not just my house.” Placing a hand on each of our shoulders, he added, “This is also your home.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, and neither was Didi. Seeing our hesitation, Shankar chacha stood up, seeming a bit sad. “Bhabhi,” he said to Amma, “you cannot deny them their heritage. They will need more than the idealism of their parents. They need to know where they come from.”

Her face inscrutable, Amma merely reminded our uncle that he had wanted to finish the tour before dusk. Suresh, I realized, was well ahead of us.

We resumed our walk, but now Shankar chacha was holding my hand and Didi’s while he shared more information about our home and family. Shankar chacha told us his youngest brother and his wife were on their way from Dhanbad, and we would meet them very soon. This was exciting! I asked him whether our youngest uncle had any children, but he said no. Didi asked, “Who else do we have in our family?”

With a mixture of pride and amusement, he replied: “A small battalion.” Apart from our Babu, Shankar chacha had four other brothers—three older and one younger. Our late grandfather had encouraged all six of his sons to develop their minds and bodies, so they had been trained in traditional martial arts such as stick fighting and wrestling. Shankar chacha went on to explain that Bhagalpur had once been part of the British province of West Bengal, a region known for its history of political agitation that became a hotbed of revolutionary activities during the lengthy struggle for independence. Our grandfather, Babu Biharilalji, had often opened the doors of his home for political meetings, which were attended by many prominent local figures in the freedom struggle, including Anand Mohan Sahay and Dr. Rajendra Prasad.

During the 1920s, Shankar chacha said, the independence movement began to splinter, and his four elder brothers—Kumud Narayan, Shyam Narayan, Keshav Narayan, and our father, Rajeshwar Narayan—found themselves pulled in various political directions. He reminded us that, in February 1922, Gandhiji had suspended the satyagraha campaign, after a violent riot broke out in Chauri Chaura, a town we’d passed not far from on the train to Bhagalpur from Lucknow. But not all members of the Indian National Congress agreed with his decision: some felt that a single incident of violence wasn’t sufficient reason to call a halt to the campaign. Some were also opposed to Congress’s refusal to participate in elections to British legislative councils, arguing that it would be better to infiltrate these councils and undermine British rule from within. So, around the end of 1922, this group, led by Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru, broke away from Congress to form the Swaraj Party in order to continue the fight for independence.

Didi and I were listening intently, waiting to find out more about Babu’s family history, when suddenly I felt confused. “But didn’t Gandhiji also want swaraj?” I asked.

Shankar chacha smiled, but it was Amma who answered. “Of course he did,” she said, “but he could not condone violence.” Instead, Gandhiji and those who supported him focused on other ways of gaining independence, such as the khadi movement, which promoted the use of homespun cloth in place of British textiles. They also recognized the need to improve social conditions, and so they worked hard to eliminate the class of untouchables and raise the status of women, as well as to foster Hindu-Muslim unity. “Gandhiji wanted everyone to feel a sense of self-respect and to live peacefully with each other,” she said. “That was the independent country he wanted to create.”

Shankar chacha nodded and resumed his story. He explained that socialism was becoming popular at the time, and the independence movement developed a radical contingent, many of whom were influenced not only by Marxist theory but also by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In 1920, a Bengali, M. N. Roy, was instrumental in issuing a manifesto from Tashkent calling for the formation of a Communist Party in India. Other workers’ parties soon sprang up, peasants rebelled against tenancy laws that kept them eternally in debt, and radical groups began to recruit young men and women with the goal of revolutionary action. Although Shankar chacha and his younger brother were still a little too young to become directly engaged in political struggle, his four older brothers were courted by all three of these very different groups—Gandhi loyalists, Swaraj Party supporters, and revolutionaries.

Despite his own commitment to independence, their father was conscious of his traditional duties as a patriarch and somewhat embarrassed that his oldest son, now over thirty, was still unmarried. So he persuaded Kumud Narayanji to accept a position at a civil court in Katihar, a town about fifty miles northeast of Bhagalpur, and soon after arranged his marriage. My grandfather’s next task was to put an end to Shyam Narayanji’s days of courting arrest for political actions by tying him down in marriage as well, something quickly followed by the birth of the first of several sons. To support his expanding responsibilities, Shyam Narayanji accepted a teaching position at a college in Afghanistan, leaving his wife and young children at the family home for a time—although, after returning from Afghanistan, he chose to move his family to the more modern section of Bhagalpur.

Even before Shyam Narayanji left India, the third brother, Keshav Narayanji, had begun to display signs of mental illness, which had gradually grown worse. He had retreated into a solitary shell and refused to interact with anyone in the family or in the outside world. He never married, and he still lived in the family home, where he remained disconnected from his surroundings. Shankar chacha, who was not yet twenty at the time that Keshav Narayanji became ill, did not know what had caused the complete emotional withdrawal of a young man who had been as active and vibrant as his two older brothers. But he did remember that Babu had left home without warning as soon as it became clear that, as son number four, he was next in line to be tied to the anvil of marriage and family responsibilities.

When Babu was still living at home, attending TNB College for his degree in mathematics, Rajendra Prasadji, a Gandhi loyalist, had briefly come to practice law in Bhagalpur and had taken him under his wing. After Babu abruptly departed, the family learned that he was studying at the law college in Patna for another degree. Word was that he continued to build his physical strength by swimming across the mighty Ganga, which flows through Patna. Such news always travelled home through others, though, since Babu had chosen to sever all links with his family.

Some time later, they heard that he was working for Dr. Rajendra Prasadji’s English-language political weekly, Searchlight, based in Patna. Then, in 1929, they learned that he had joined the revolutionary group Yuvak Sangh. After that, he essentially disappeared.

For years, the family received no news about him except for rumours that he was working with an underground revolutionary network connected to Subhash Chandra Bose. “We also heard that Raja bhaiya was in jail for his role in some violent conspiracy,” Shankar chacha told us. “But we had no way to contact him, even when our father lay dying. Many in the family labelled him irresponsible for abandoning his family, but I know my brother. Raja bhaiya must have had his reasons.” Shankar chacha sighed.

In the end, then, it fell to Shankar chacha to take charge of the house and the assorted pieces of the family remaining in Bhagalpur. “It is not easy to manage my responsibilities with a job that requires me to travel so much,” he admitted. “But we make do.” During the Second World War, he said, his youngest brother, Ridheshwar Narayan, had wanted to join the army. But he suffered from asthma, and the family was very relieved when he failed the physical exam. He was now the manager of a glass factory in Dhanbad, about 150 miles south, and he visited the family home frequently with his wife. “You’ll love your youngest chachi. She adores children, especially clever little girls like you two.”

Shankar chacha’s storytelling paused for a moment as he glanced back to make sure that Amma was following us on the path, which meandered around dense bushes and lush trees. Then his thoughts returned to our Babu. “For nearly ten years,” he said, “we received no word from Raja bhaiya. But we kept hoping to see him one day.”

“How did you know if he was even still alive?” Didi asked. This was a question that often entered my head when Babu would go off to work or head out for a walk and simply not return, and it scared me to hear it spoken.

“We didn’t,” Shankar chacha replied. “Not until the Ramgarh session of the Indian National Congress in March 1940.” By that time, the Second World War was well underway, and Gandhiji had learned from his experience after the First World War. He had refrained from political agitation during that war and had even toured western India to recruit soldiers for the British Indian army. More than one million Indian troops were deployed in Europe during the First World War, and some 74,000 of them were dead by the war’s end. But Gandhiji’s unswerving support of Britain was repaid with the Rowlatt Act of 1919—the so-called Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, which gave British administrators in India the power to arrest without warrant and detain without trial. So when the Second World War broke out, Gandhiji vowed to resist British attempts to once again force their war on India.

“I was one of the scores of volunteers at the Congress meeting in Ramgarh,” Shankar chacha revealed. “I was posted near the stage to manage the crowds and to run errands. On the stage sat the leaders of the Congress—Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and many others.”

Emotion crept into Shankar chacha’s voice as he recounted his surprise at being summoned by Dr. Rajendra Prasad’s secretary, Mathura Babu. Rajendra Prasadji had wanted to speak with him. “Here I was, a man in my early thirties, recently married and soon to become a father. But climbing the stage to touch the feet of the great Rajendra Prasadji, I felt like an awkward teenager. Rajendra Prasadji looked at me intently when I nervously bent down to touch his feet. He asked in Maithili, ‘Are you Rajeshwar Narayan’s brother?’

“I could only nod, still half-bent with respect. Rajendra Prasadji smiled and asked my name and then inquired about the well-being of our family. I was tongue-tied but managed to say, ‘The benediction of elders keeps us going.’ He put his hand on my head in a gesture of blessing: ‘Your brother is a great man, did you know that?’”

At this, Shankar chacha slowed his pace so that he could fish for a handkerchief in the pocket of his kurta to wipe his eyes. Then he let out a nervous laugh. Even on the stage, he said, his eyes had brimmed with tears, he felt such pride. Rajendra Prasadji had told him to carry on the good work of fulfilling his duties to the country and the community like his brother. When Mathura Babu leaned in to speak to him, Rajendra Prasadji tore a page from his notebook and wrote,

I know the family of Rajeshwar Narayan Sinha and their work for the freedom of the country. Blessings of a bright future to Shankareshwar Narayan Sinha.

Rajendra Prasad

He handed the paper to Shankar chacha and said, “Take this as my best wishes to you.”

Our uncle’s composure began to return as he explained how important this brief and unexpected interaction had been for him. Rajendra Prasadji had spoken of Raja bhaiya in the present tense, so he must have known that he was alive. The rumour of Raja bhaiya’s involvement in an underground revolutionary group had always offered the most plausible explanation for his disappearance. It must have been to protect his family. Subhash Chandra Bose had made enemies among the British as well as within the ranks of Congress leaders. If Babu was working for Subhashji, he was not safe anywhere.

This meeting had also encouraged Shankar chacha to become more involved in the political struggle, inspiring him to take part in the Quit India protests that began two years later, in August 1942.

Didi asked Shankar chacha whether he still had the note from Rajendra Prasadji. He had a shelf filled with letters and old pictures, he replied, where he kept the note like a precious treasure. He promised to show it to us when we returned to the house.

Shankar chacha turned around to check on Amma’s progress once again and continued much more merrily. “Another gift arrived around that time, when we received a letter from the principal of the Kasturba girls’ school in Wardha.” She had introduced herself as the betrothed of Raja bhaiya and requested the presence of his family at their wedding.

“Your grandmother was alive but not up to travelling anywhere, much less the eight hundred miles to Wardha.” Many in the family were very upset by Raja bhaiya’s long silence, and some questioned the decorum of the bride-to-be inviting his family to the ceremony, sidelining the traditional role of her extended family. “Your grandmother listened to all the complaints silently. Then she instructed me to go to Wardha to represent the family, even if it was too late.”

Babu and Amma were married in the simplest of temple ceremonies on 14 June 1941, in Wardha. Didi and I had read the letters of blessing from Gandhiji and Rajendra Prasadji.

Shankar chacha reached Wardha a few days after the wedding, with traditional marital blessings in the form of special clothing for the newlyweds. At the time, Babu was working at the Hindi Prachar Samiti and also helping Rajendra Prasadji with the editing of his newsletters. Babu and Amma lived in a simple straw hut in Wardha just like the residents of Sevagram.

“Raja bhaiya’s routine was as regimented as I remembered from years ago. He would leave the cottage at three in the morning to practice yoga in the nearby forest. Did you know that your Babu could do a headstand for as long as an hour?”

Didi and I had both seen Babu do this in the sandalwood grove in Ram Niwas Garden in Jaipur, so we nodded enthusiastically. Shankar chacha looked only slightly deflated at not being able to impress us with this piece of information, before picking up the thread again. “Your Amma showed me around Sevagram—a close-knit world of people from all over the country. I stayed there for a few days. It felt like I had made a pilgrimage to the holiest place there could be.”

As was customary, Shankar chacha had asked the newlyweds to accompany him to the family home to seek blessings from their elders. Shankar chacha got emotional again as he recalled Babu’s refusal. Despite repeated requests, all Babu had offered was, “There is no need for an explanation. I simply cannot return home.”

Amma, however, had surprised them both by offering to accompany Shankar chacha to visit the family. She had pragmatically pointed out that her school was closed for the summer break for another month, making it the ideal time to undertake this long journey. Babu had said only, “You are free to do as you wish.”

Shankar chacha glanced back again to check on Amma, who was struggling a little to keep up with us in the humid heat. He paused for a moment, fixing an appreciative gaze on Amma. “Do you know that Bhagalpur is known for its tussar silk? But, of course, as followers of Gandhiji, your Amma and Babu would never wear it.”

Didi and I nodded. Although we mostly wore khadi cotton, our silk clothes were made only from khadi silk, produced by a method that spares the life of the silkworm, while our sandals, shoes, and handbags were made of khadi leather, tanned from the hide of an animal that died of natural causes.

“But we did not think to consider this,” Shankar chacha continued, “when my mother sent the gifts for Bhabhi. All the same, when Bhabhi arrived here, she had draped one of the gifts, a red tussar silk sari, around her shoulders, on top of her khadi clothing.” He stopped walking long enough to allow Amma to catch up with us and then added very affectionately, “She and my mother bonded as if they’d known each other in another life.”

Amma returned Shankar chacha’s look of warmth with a solemn smile. She stated matter-of-factly, “She was the only mother I knew.”

We had all stopped walking by then, pausing to catch our breath under the fragrant foliage of a large bakul tree. The sun’s rays were beginning to lengthen, but they still pricked our flesh in the humid heat. Suresh, who had been bounding a few steps ahead of us all this while, now turned around to join our little cluster, and Amma absentmindedly caressed his head of short, shiny black hair. For a few moments there were no pangs of the past, just the rustling of the leaves in the gentle breeze and the occasional melodious call of the cuckoo celebrating the ripening of sweet mangoes.

“Strange how it all works,” Shankar chacha reflected, addressing no one in particular. Then he turned his attention back to his story.

After spending a few days with the family and making new friends in Bhagalpur, Amma had returned to Wardha. Shankar chacha wrote many letters to Babu, trying to reconnect him to the family, but he never received a reply. Amma wrote letters regularly, however. That is how they learned that, in 1945, Babu had decided to leave Wardha and move to Ajmer. He had been contacted by the Rajasthan Sevak Sangh, a group of Gandhiji’s followers, who were looking for help in resuscitating the newspaper Nayjyoti, which had been banned by the British administration for sedition. A number of the princely states in Rajputana were loyal to Britain and had likewise banned the paper.

Babu found it hard to resist a chance to defy the orders of feudal kingdoms and the British Raj at one and the same time, and he agreed to join the paper’s editorial staff. The pay was irregular, unlike the threat of violence and imprisonment, which was constant. It was Babu’s dream job. “So Bhabhi left Wardha with toddler Abha and you still in her belly,” Shankar chacha said, poking me under the chin with his last remark and making me giggle.

Didi asked a question that appeared to be troubling her. “Why did you never visit us in Jaipur, Shankar chacha?”

“I tried a few times,” Shankar chacha replied with a laugh and a twinkle in his eyes. “I would write to your mother about my plans to visit. Always on the eve of the journey, a telegram would arrive from her, announcing her own plans to travel somewhere or other. After a couple of cancellations, I got the message that Bhabhi did not want me to visit Jaipur.”

Amma immediately protested, explaining how her life had been uncontrollably busy with the duties of family, the school, the board of education, meetings, and delegations, along with frequent summons to Delhi from Dr. Rajendra Prasadji after he became the country’s president in 1950. Amma sounded a bit defensive as she explained how Rajendra Prasadji and his wife, Rajvanshi Devi, were like family and how she felt duty-bound to respond to invitations, even if Babu always refused to accompany her.

The twinkle in Shankar chacha’s eyes sparkled a bit more, but instead of making Amma squirm any further, he said with a chuckle, “Arre, Bhabhi! Everyone here knows Raja bhaiya. We know that managing him requires more skills than all your social and political causes combined. He drives a hard bargain.”

Amma looked down at the grassy ground as though mesmerized by the uneven patterns of the moist earth. After a moment’s thought, she said, “I have gained more than I have lost in this bargain. My marital shackles have given me the freedom to live by my convictions.”

Shankar chacha disagreed. “Na, Bhabhi, you were a political activist long before you met Bhaiya.” As though to prove his point, he turned to Didi and me. “Do you know how many times your mother went to jail before she turned sixteen years old?”

“Three times,” we answered in unison.

Amma was unimpressed by our coordinated response. “The country may be independent, but an unmarried woman has no freedom in our society. She must remain invisible or constantly defend her life and dignity. It is the protection of marital status that allows me to work for the greater good.”

Shankar chacha looked unconvinced but did not argue further when Amma smiled broadly at our little group. “Most important, I have gained a loving family.”

“So you have,” said Shankar chacha with a sigh, as he motioned for us to continue our walk.

Suddenly, the clusters of vegetation and haphazard buildings in our path gave way to the broad banks of the Ganga. In Jaipur I had come to love the Banganga River, which snaked its way through arid desert until the monsoon season, when it would swell its banks to nourish the fertile basin of the local reservoir, Ramgarh Lake, a favourite picnic spot. During recent travels with Amma, I had discovered the glacier-fed rivers of the mountains—the Alaknanda, the Bhagirathi, the Kosi, the Saryu—which tumbled through passes and valleys to feed the great rivers of the plains, such as the Gomti and Yamuna. These broad rivers provided water for irrigation and supported the countless people who lived along their banks. Never before, though, had I seen a river like the Ganga.

We were standing on the elevated ghat that led down to the water. Like so many other ghats, this one was hemmed in on all sides by temples and teemed with cows, monkeys, dogs, birds, pilgrims, priests, and peddlers. But none of the noisy, chaotic jumble of human and animal life crowding its banks could detract from the awe I felt at the sight of the river itself—its green water stretching to the horizon.

As we stared out across the river, Shankar chacha told us to bow our heads to the holiest river in India—Gangaji, Ganga ma, the Ganges. Rising high in the Himalayas, it flowed some fifteen hundred miles before finally emptying into the Bay of Bengal, and at this point where we stood, it was nearly three miles wide. A boat now drew closer to the ghat, the boatman bowing deeply to Shankar chacha. The boat looked almost as old as the river itself. Shankar chacha helped Didi and me into the boat, one by one, before jumping in himself. Amma looked strangely hesitant for a moment but then took a tight hold on Shankar chacha’s outstretched hand and climbed in. Without a word, Shankar chacha raised his arm to point to his right, a signal to the boatman to start rowing.

Once we were riding the current, Shankar chacha allowed Didi, Suresh, and me to take short turns at the oars. It was really hard work, which the smiling boatman made look effortless. Shankar chacha pointed to the farmland that we were passing. A recent shift of the flood plains had yielded another piece of fertile land, he explained, which could grow up to four crops a year. He described a special kind of small-grained rice, kanakjeera, so fragrant that its aroma lingered in the courtyard for days after it had been cooked.

Amma was sitting very still, right in the middle of the boat, clutching the edge of her wooden bench. Warming to his topic, Shankar chacha talked on about how much had changed since the days when poor people knew their place and farmers did not dare to pretend to ownership of the land or its produce. Nowadays, though, even a servant could stake a claim to land that had been loaned to him only for tilling, in lieu of a salary. Shankar chacha shook his head despondently. He had lost all hope of saving his family’s landholdings, which government policies were bent on redistributing to sharecroppers.

“I cannot fight this battle alone. The soles of my shoes will wear through with all the visits I have to make to government offices, just to get official proof of ancestral property. And who will fight long court battles to evict these sharecroppers—these miserable bantaidaar?” The sour note was unmistakable. Although the rest of the family failed to appreciate it, he complained, his presence here was saving the family home. “Otherwise, just like the orchard and the farmland, we would have lost it long ago.”

As he spoke, Shankar chacha glanced at Amma now and then, as if in expectation of a rebuke. But her eyes were fixed on the horizon, her face tense and beaded with sweat, and she seemed oblivious to Shankar chacha’s monologue—and to our periodic interruptions of it, as we pointed excitedly to unfamiliar-looking birds or fish. Suresh identified different types of carp for us, and he was also good at spotting shorebirds rising from the river’s banks. Shankar chacha continued to talk, now describing his travelling duties for the Indian Railways and how much he enjoyed seeing the length and breadth of the country. He was thankful to his father for ensuring that he pursued higher education, he said, since land was no longer a source of revenue. And he spoke of his plans to send Suresh to the engineering college in Patna as soon as he finished high school.

Through all of this, Amma said not a word, sitting so still that I started to wonder whether she might be meditating with her eyes wide open. Finally, discouraged by his inattentive audience, Shankar chacha let the chopping of the oars on the water do the talking. The lull in his monologue gave Didi and me the opportunity to start the singing game of antakshari with Suresh, which continued for the remainder of the boat ride. Someone playing the game only needs to sing the first stanza of each song, but when Didi started singing Tu Ganga ki mauj main Yamuna ki dhara—“You are the course of the Ganga, I am the current of the Yamuna”—everyone joined in to sing the whole song except Amma, who seemed lost in another world. Suresh and I were on the same team and Didi was on her own, but neither side faltered in carrying forward the chain of songs, and the game ended in a friendly draw.

As soon as we returned to shore, Amma recovered her voice. She embarked on a tirade about the relentless feudalism of Bihar, about men and women still trapped in the dark ages, about distorted human values and exploitative social norms. Her words poured out faster than the river’s current, some sort of inner fury visible in the veins throbbing at her temple. Shankar chacha was taken by surprise, but he was not offended. He listened quietly to Amma’s rant until she subsided and started walking back toward the path, ever so slightly unsteady on her feet, but in the lead regardless.

Shankar chacha hung back to walk beside me. A slow smile played in the corner of his mouth as he offered me his hand to hold. “Does she echo your Babu often?” At his question, I lowered my head, trying to hide the smile that I did not want my mother to see, in case she turned around to check on me.

We returned home just as the cows were returning from pasture, their copper and brass bells tinkling cheerfully around their long leathery necks. The man by the well was waiting for us, and when we arrived he poured water and handed us soap and towels so that each of us could wash our hands and feet before entering the inner courtyard through the back door. Shankar chacha then declared that we were about to eat the traditional way. “Not the big-table-small-plate-ways of the big city here, no sir.”

The pungent aroma of spices crackling in mustard oil swirled around the courtyard. The hall in the inner courtyard now sported a neat row of low square wooden tables with short carved legs, and there was a colourful reed mat behind each table to sit on. Shankar chacha assured Amma that there was no fish or meat and asked her to join him and the children in eating first. She declined, saying that she would eat with the women, after the men and children. Then she turned to help Chachi and the young woman with the hidden face serve the food.

Buaji’s wicker chair had been moved to a spot precisely midway between the row of diners and the bustling action near the cooking fires. Chachi was piling large plates high with fragrant rice, while the faceless one doled out large spoonfuls of steaming vegetable and lentil dishes into individual bowls. The pot-bellied cook was frying crisp little puris, and the thin ladies were filling little bowls with yet more mouth-watering dishes.

Amma asked Chachi not to put so much food onto our plates. Chachi gently said that there was enough food for everyone. Amma objected again that the children certainly could not finish that much rice. When Buaji heard this exchange, she demanded so all could hear, “What are the servants going to eat if the plates are empty?”

At this, Amma turned sharply toward Buaji, her face tight. For a moment everyone was quiet, and Didi and I held our breaths. When she finally spoke, Amma’s voice was slow and deliberate: “Abha-Rekha will serve themselves and will take only what they can finish. They have been brought up to respect people and food.”

I looked around and noticed that more people in the hall had stopped breathing. I was not sure what to do until Didi confidently stood up, dished out a little rice onto two plates, and, placing one of them in front of me, sat down next to me.

Just as Buaji launched into a strident reply, I heard Shankar chacha’s voice rise above her shrill pitch, asking everyone to be quiet. He turned to Buaji and told her not to make something out of nothing. “Peace is as important as food,” he declared.

He then gestured to the thin ladies to serve the food. The tension, which had hung in the air like a heavy raincloud, seemed to drift away with that slight turn of his raised wrist. Buaji muttered something, but she took care to keep it low, maintaining a furiously flapping fan between her face and her brother’s sharp gaze.

The serving of food only intensified once the plates and bowls were in front of us. One of the walls of the hall was lined with ceramic jars of every possible shape and size. From these, Chachi produced chutneys, preserves, and pickles of a seemingly infinite variety, filling many saucers and asking each one of us to try this or that. Amma warned Chachi about our sensitive throats, but Chachi had already spooned a few of the chutneys and pickles onto my plate, insisting, “Homemade food never makes you sick.”

Layers of complex aromas rose from my plate, making me hungrier than I had ever been. The faceless one—whom everyone referred to as dulhin, the newlywed—brought in two large serving bowls heaped to the top with different types of puris. I took one small puri and broke it into pieces, planning to scoop up one tantalizing taste at a time. But before that puri was done, Chachi had already put two more on my plate, ignoring my protests. In truth, these were feeble to begin with, what with Amma’s instructions never to talk with food in my mouth.

Suddenly, Buaji remembered the taro leaves that she asked the gardener to pick for her. She started giving instructions on grinding, cutting, mixing, rolling, and shallow frying, and before our meal was over this new dish was added to the spread. Everyone got a few scrumptious, crisp rolls on their plates.

This express train of sumptuous delicacies was not supposed to halt until the arrival of dessert. By that time, my stomach was so full that I could not even look at the sweet things that I loved so much. I cast a quick glance sideways to see that Didi had done a much better job than I had of protecting her plate against the serving onslaught.

The rest of the plates were already piled high with delicious leftovers when I realized that everyone was waiting for me. A substantial amount of food still remained on my plate, and I was afraid that my stomach would burst if I tried to finish it. Shankar chacha leaned toward me with a smile and asked me if I was ready to make space for the next course.

My stomach was hurting, in part from the thought of eating any more but mostly from the thought of Amma’s disapproval. I was trying to summon some tears, as the quickest way out of this jam, when I heard Amma’s voice: “Don’t clear her place. I will eat from her plate.”

The thin ladies carried all the other plates carefully into the back, where the household servants were waiting in the dark to receive their share of the leftovers. Amma looked away from this sombre procession.

I followed Didi out of the dining area and into the outer courtyard. While we had been busy eating, the man by the well had transformed the space into a fairyland. Several cots had appeared, draped in white sheets, under the ghostly gossamer canopies of white mosquito netting. Light from oil lamps and lanterns cast surreal shadows in this open yet enclosed space. The ground had been sprinkled with water, and the wet earth’s musky perfume now competed with sweet scents from the tuberoses, frangipani, and night-blooming cereus that thrived along the walls.

While Amma ate with the ladies, Suresh and I played a game of catch. Didi and Meera didi sat on the steps of the hall, chatting, with Meera didi doing most of the talking. Once supper was over, Amma took us to the room where our bags were stored, to wash and get ready for bed. In the summertime, almost everyone slept in courtyards or on terraces. While Amma sprinkled sandalwood talcum powder on my freshly scrubbed back to keep the prickly heat at bay, I blurted a confession. “Amma, I love that we have real uncles, aunts, and cousins.”

She smiled. “You mean all the loving uncles and aunts you have known so far were not real?”

I disagreed with a vigorous shake of my head. “They are real, but not our own, like Shankar chacha is.”

Amma looked at me curiously. “Ah, the call of the blood.” She paused before adding, “Remember, there is the family of blood and then there is the family of the heart. Your family of the heart is as vast and as real as the family of blood.”

Didi interrupted, arms folded across her chest. “Why did you and Babu keep us away from our family?”

Amma’s look turned stern. “We can accept privilege and live by its unjust rules. Or we can carve out our own path and fight for what is right. But we cannot do both.”

They locked steely stares for a long, sullen moment. Amma gave in first, caressing Didi’s head with a sigh. “You will understand one day.” I was afraid that Didi would jerk Amma’s hand away, but she just stood stiffly and frowned.

By the end of the next day, Didi and I had learned the names of all the people who worked in the house and the garden. Keeping in mind Amma’s injunction, just as we had done in Jaipur and Lucknow, we added “bhaiya” to the names of the men and “didi” to the women, or “ji” for either sex. Shankar chacha was a silent witness to this training session, though he hid behind his newspaper. He never failed to smile lovingly whenever I caught his eye.

For the next few days, Didi and I were in heaven. We had the orchards to play in and cousins to play with, and we had doting uncles and aunts—and so many of them. Some relatives travelled from nearby towns to see us. Some who lived in Bhagalpur came to spend the day with us in the enormous house. The kitchen kept churning out delectable delicacies under the watchful supervision of our many aunties.

One lazy evening, Amma asked me to sing a song, and I chose one of Babu’s favourites, by Surdas—Prabhu more avgun chit na dharo, “O Lord, dwell not upon my shortcomings”—earning high praise for my voice. Didi and I next did a dance skit in the courtyard in which I played the part of the dark, mischievous Krishna, while Didi was his beautiful, gentle consort, Radha. The older aunts made spitting sounds to ward the evil eye away from such magnificent performers. I was elated, and I squeezed my mother in a tight hug to share my happiness with her. She looked down at me, also looking content and happy in the bosom of a family that, despite her discomfort with wealth and privilege, she had missed as much as we had.

Bhagalpur had its drawbacks, too. The heat was much more oppressive than I had ever known. By the time the humidity had started to rise in Lucknow, we were already in cool, mountainous Jeolikot. When temperatures soared in Jaipur, we had simply stayed indoors until the evening, when the breeze always got cooler. During midsummer in Bhagalpur, however, humidity from the great river made the afternoons sweltering. Walking felt like wading through warm tea, even late in the evenings.

And then there was our own enthusiasm for mangoes. At the indulgent insistence of uncles and aunts, we consumed multiple varieties of mangoes every single day, ignoring Amma’s calls for moderation. When we paid for our extravagance with rashes and upset tummies, Amma put both of us on a day-long fast of plain yogurt—not the deliciously creamy kind but the regular buttermilk kind—to give our stomachs some relief. She also applied ground neem leaves all over our bodies to heal the rashes, and soon we were enjoying ourselves once again.

Shankar chacha had much to show us in Bhagalpur, as well—the silk factories, the historical monuments, and his favourite, the ruins of Vikramshila, a bus-ride away and over a thousand years old. During the ride, my head and Didi’s were crammed with details about the many centres of learning in ancient India and about the rise of Buddhism, Jainism, and the Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and other schools of Hindu philosophy that once flourished in Bihar.

Shankar chacha vividly described the historical significance of the region. He explained that, in the sixth century BC, the city of Vaishali became one of the earliest-known democratic republics, predating the city-states of Greece, and played a key role in the development of both Buddhism and Jainism. A few centuries later, Pataliputra—present-day Patna—became the capital of the Mauryas, who took back the northwestern territories of India from the governors of Alexander and whose empire extended, at its peak, all the way to southeastern Iran. Then there was Ashoka the Great, who built highways and monuments throughout the length and breadth of south Asia in the third century BC.

With an ongoing history lecture, we spent several hours amid the ruins of Vikramshila, one of the foremost universities of the era, as we learned, along with those at nearby Nalanda and at Taxila, near Rawalpindi. Shankar chacha showed us the remains of huge stupas and of the many-storeyed libraries, similar to those at Nalanda. Both Vikramshila and Nalanda had survived as prominent centres of learning until the end of the twelfth century, when they were destroyed by the invading army of Bakhtiyar Khiliji. Thousands of students and teachers were slaughtered, and ancient troves of manuscripts were said to have burned for days after they were set afire.

Shankar chacha’s detailed description of the heyday of Vikramshila and its destruction reminded me so much of Babu and his meticulously told histories of the places that we used to visit in Jaipur that my heart started twisting in my ribcage. My tearful eyes made Shankar chacha stop in alarm and pull me closer to look at my face. Everyone thought that I was moved by the tales of horror and carnage, since I offered no explanation for my sobs. But I suspected that Amma understood how much I was missing Babu. I saw it in her sad, comforting smile.

In between memorable excursions and elaborate meals, during the long summer afternoons everyone gathered in one of the pillared halls, where the children romped, the men played cards or chess, and the women read, wrote, or embroidered. An electric fan hung from the high ceiling, but Buaji did not like to use it. She favoured the big, frilly cotton fans that had to be pulled by hand by one of the many servants, while she muttered instructions and admonitions. As I came to understand the language better, I was able to gather that she thought the electric breeze “drying” rather than “cooling” and thus preferred to take her summer afternoon naps under the gentler breeze of a cotton fan pulled by human hands. When she started to doze, though, I would see Amma gesture to Suresh to switch on the ceiling fan and for the servant to stop pulling the cord of the cotton fan.

Buaji was also regularly annoyed at the use of electric lights at night. When she caught anyone reading under the electric lamp, she grumbled that they would go blind in the artificial light: “If God had intended you to see at night, he would have made you an owl.” Like most of her other objections, everyone ignored this one, with either a smile or, in the case of one of the boys, a wisecrack.

As our happy visit approached its inevitable end, one last thing remained. We were to receive special visitors on the evening of the day before we had to return to Lucknow. One of Babu’s distant cousins, Rai Bahadurji, was visiting Bhagalpur with his daughter, and they had been invited over for dinner. There were more lights than usual, and a big wooden table with the finest chairs of the household occupied the centre of the courtyard. Shankar chacha and Amma had an animated discussion about the arrangements for the evening, and all the children were being given special instructions about appropriate greetings and table manners.

Finally Rai Bahadurji arrived with his daughter, who had just returned from finishing a degree in Singapore. He was dressed in a three-piece suit that struggled to maintain its crispness under the oppressive onslaught of the humidity. He kept dabbing his narrow, bald head with a kerchief, in a valiant battle against streams of perspiration.

In contrast, his daughter, Miss Nisha, a statuesque young woman whose thick black hair brushed her shoulders in shiny, languid curls, seemed totally impervious to the heat. She wore an exquisite silk sari—periwinkle blue, with a faint white floral print—that flowed smoothly along her curves and over a matching sleeveless blouse. In one hand, she carried a dainty black purse and, in the other, a small Japanese folding fan, which she used unobtrusively from time to time. Her flawless skin seemed to glow in the radiance of a magnificent gold necklace, tastefully complemented by a gold bracelet on one slender arm and a gold watch on the other.

The two guests talked to the uncles sitting around the table, while all the servants, dressed in their best clothes, busied themselves with serving the finest that the household had to offer. Didi, Suresh, and I had the honour of sitting at the table in this dazzling company. We had already been given some snacks so that we would not be too hungry to remember our recently repolished table manners. Suresh and I sat very stiffly, not always knowing what to do with our arms and legs. Didi was even more ladylike than usual, looking confidently from speaker to speaker around the table as she dexterously manipulated the rarely used flatware.

As the dessert trays made their way to the table, Miss Nisha asked Shankar chacha about his sister-in-law from Lucknow. Before he could reply, she pointed toward the covered hall with her folded fan and said in her velvety voice, “I hope that she is not hiding in the inner quarters with the women and children.”

The bamboo curtains of the pillared hall had indeed been pulled down, and Buaji was presiding over the proceedings from behind them. Despite Shankar chacha’s protest, Amma had chosen to stay behind the curtains in solidarity with Chachi, who was too timid to sit at the table with the visitors and was also not feeling very well. I knew that Amma could hear us and wished she couldn’t, as Miss Nisha launched into a spirited lecture on the archaic traditions of India and the bravery of the women who had transformed society in Japan, where Miss Nisha was born.

I expected Amma to burst from behind bamboo curtains, but nothing stirred. I wondered whether Miss Nisha was deliberately being provocative, especially when she turned toward the curtains and began to address them directly, extolling the virtues of education and the need for educated women to lead by example. When she paused briefly to take a breath, Amma called out, “Abha-Rekha, please come here.”

Amma had an annoying habit of joining our names, Janus-like, sometimes creating confusion about whether she meant one or the other or both. Normally, I ran to her the instant I heard her summons, while Didi liked to wait for confirmation as to whether she was indeed the object of the beckoning. But we had just been given a long lecture warning us to be politely attentive to the guests at all times. Didi and I exchanged glances. Then Didi noiselessly pushed her chair back, excused herself, and walked purposefully toward the curtained hall.

I heard Amma’s voice asking Didi to invite Miss Nisha to come and meet the rest of the household. Miss Nisha hesitated momentarily at this invitation but then stood up, assumed her most elegant posture, and walked over to the curtains, one of which was rolled up to admit her. Now too curious to stay seated at the table with my hands folded in my lap, I slipped out of my chair, deliberately not looking toward Shankar chacha, wanting to avoid any signal of disapproval that might thwart my escape.

On the other side of the curtains, my aunts and cousin-sisters were seated on very low and ornate furniture. Everyone was draped in yards of resplendent silk and gleaming gold jewellery, the elaborate pallus of their saris covering their heads and shoulders to varying degrees. As always, the anomaly was my mother, a plump but austere presence, draped in a coarse white cotton sari, sitting with a straight back on a chair in the corner.

With a self-assured smile, Miss Nisha folded her hands in greeting. Amma looked up and returned her greeting with an open smile. Miss Nisha gazed down at the group and then said, in effortlessly polished Hindi that only my mother could match, “I was given to understand that the daughter-in-law from Lucknow was the director of a government department of some sort. But all I see here are women who cannot possibly have much education if they choose to live behind curtains.”

There was total silence on both sides of the curtains until Amma asked, “Wouldn’t you like to sit down for a moment?” She pointed to the middle of the divan, where space was created as she spoke, by rustling silk saris sliding sideways.

Miss Nisha retorted, “You are asking me to join these women in their lightless and airless world?”

I wanted to give Miss Nisha a good hard shove from behind, but instead I clutched the edge of the bamboo curtain, hard. Didi cast a swift, fiery look at Miss Nisha and then, with that defiant tilt of her chin we all knew so well, went to stand behind Amma.

Amma had sadness in her eyes, rather than the glint of anger I was expecting. “You spoke about the great Japanese women who inspired you. Let me ask you this. How much do you know about the first generation of Indian women who stepped out of their homes for the freedom of their country? Women who could no longer go back to their homes for protection or rest, who continued to spend their lives fighting for social and political justice, not just for themselves, but also for others?”

Miss Nisha opened her shapely mouth to say something, but no smooth words escaped her painted lips. Amma continued, “We don’t know each other, but I suspect we have the same objectives. We may have somewhat different paths. Your path starts with personal freedoms that you guard jealously. I admire your desire for independence, but please do not stop at that. Personal freedom is important, but on its own it is selfish and arrogant. Our quest for freedom has to be inclusive, for all women, for all of humanity.”

By now Amma was almost imploring. “I am the outsider in this family, but these women you are castigating are your own family members. It is their misfortune that they have not had the same privileges that you have had. To change this, they need someone to champion their rights. Who better to take on this onerous task than someone as bright and fearless as you?” Amma folded her hands at the end of her question.

Miss Nisha looked at once embarrassed, irritated, and bewildered, like someone who had never before been challenged. Leaving her to recover her composure, Amma excused herself, saying that she wanted to check on her sick sister-in-law.

Didi chose to walk behind Amma like a loyal bodyguard, while I stood torn between following them or returning to the dessert that I had left on my plate.

In the end, dessert won.