Summer of 42

It was the early 1970s. They’d just landed in Hyderabad, a sleepy city known for the Charminar and little else. Every year they’d had to move, like the calendar itself was encouraging them to “learn more languages, make more friends”. Even now they sat bored in a relative’s place. The school year had already started, taking with it the few kids that were always around to befriend, while dad was away finalizing arrangements for the move into the new place he’d found.

Dad came back with bad news. In the time that the move was being finalized and implemented, the house-owner had decided to rent it out to someone else for a much higher price. And so the limbo continued – here they were, stuck without friends and a school to go to, and no place to call their own, at least for the time being. A father who worked in the Department of Civil Aviation was quite the tale to tell at school, but there were drawbacks.

***

The paint industry was doing great, thanks in no small measure to a number of government backed ventures that were pumping money into the biggest center in Telangana. Yet even in these times of plenty, the family business was going steadily downhill. The increase in creditors was only dwarfed by the steady rise in the number of people that the household was supporting, now numbering well into the seventies.

A good portion of that sizeable group lived in the compound in Chikoti Gardens, a large wide open neighborhood in the leafy suburb of Begumpet. Within walking distance of both the rail track to Bombay and the little civilian airport, it was growing fast from its sleepy little origins.

Real estate prices were going up, of course – and in this Seethamma saw the opportunity that all the male folk, with their worrying and squandering and pride had failed to recognize. “We’re going to cut down the tree near the outhouse, make it a portion, and rent it out”, she said with that air of finality that decision-makers in big families are blessed with.

***

The summer vacation was his favorite time of the year. His cousins could finally make the long journey up to visit, and the neighborhood would be teeming with kids ready to play a game of cricket or even cycle up to the airport or Paradise just for fun. Even the dozens of kids that turned up to visit the owners’ family would sometimes join in for an impromptu game of hide and seek.

This summer, Srini had come to visit them from Sholinghur. Srini was a particular naughty kid, and there was never a dull moment with him around at home. So it was today as well – “Fast fast, come fast!” he heard from the room at the back. Probably another lizard, he thought to himself as he made his way there.

And there, across the big tree-lined courtyard, was a sight that he wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life. Lined up and all sitting shoulder-to-shoulder were kids that stretched the whole width of the compound, from front gate to the plantation at the back, waiting for lunch to be served serially to them. Forty two of them – they counted thrice – and all of them kids, not one a year older than eighteen. And even amongst those forty two, he could spot her at a distance. A remarkable summer indeed.

***

The bank job had come at a good time, especially given Radha’s marriage and father’s passing soon after that.  It had brought some stability to their family, suddenly halved in number, and allowed mother something else to worry about – something that she could actually do something about.

The move to Amritsar had been the only downside. He’d never really stayed that far north, though they’d moved around the entire country as kids. Having mother by the side made a big difference though – she was older now and less sure of herself, but she still knew how to run a household on a shoestring budget. In a couple of weeks, the neighbors were to be seen more often in their modest two-room portion than in their own houses, and he had met them not once.

***

He was mentally prepared to be turned away before they entered Delhi. Rumors about riots had been spreading like wildfire during the length of the train’s journey from Amritsar, and he kept his ears open for the worst, fully wanting to disbelieve all that he heard.

In retrospect, he should’ve seen this coming. The previous year – particularly in Amritsar – had pointed at these events as clearly as the holy waters surrounding the shrine the day the Army was ordered in. Even then they’d gone ahead, citing the lack of auspicious dates past November. And so it was that they rolled into an empty, almost deserted New Delhi railway station.

Whatever the rumors on the train had prepared him for, this was not it. He could see tires burning right outside the station compound, and smoke blackened the sky as far as the eye could see. All of Delhi seemed ablaze, and this railway station had somehow retained an artificial calm about it. None of the trains that left during the time they were there were crowded, no one trying to flee the conflagration that the capital had become.

And onward they went on board the train named for that famed road, on to the relative safety of Madras.

***

She’d had very little sleep over the past week. A thousand ceremonies seemed to each demand their own time, all leading up to that one moment where it all culminated. And each of the ceremonies seemed to require waking up at some ungodly hour, the sun yet to peep out from beyond the horizon.

The makeshift kitchen was operating in full swing, supervised by five very competent elders whose regular mundane lives underwent a transformation every time there was a big event in the family. They were expected to cook only for a few more people, but the associated excitement and responsibility made these times special.

Ramesh had come back early from school, just as affected by the air of excitement pervading the house as the elders. Everyone in class had been talking about the cyclone and how it was going to make landfall near Nellore, and cut off road and rail links between Andhra and Tamil Nadu.

Now he came across father and a couple of his uncles discussing, in muted tones, something to do with “depression” and “cancelled”. Out of the corner of his eye, he also spied the kitchen-folk peeling the potatoes for the upcoming feast. Years later, he’d blame both his age and the hunger at that moment.

“What if they don’t make it? Can we make bondas of the potatoes?!” And so the storm contained within broke fully on him. His uncles shouted him out of the room, the ladies gave him looks that vacillated between shock and reproach, and just for a single moment, she hated her youngest sibling with all her might.

***

I suppose I’m glad that they did meet and that things worked out, but I don’t like the fact that a new twist is mentioned to me every time I hear this story. Whatever else they are, they certainly aren’t bad storytellers, my parents.

Obviously, I’ve changed all the names here.

On Loss: Part II

Earlier in 2011, I wrote about loss – why my loss was mine and no one else’s. But all it takes is loss most personal to forget the big picture, forget logical arguments and all semblance of reason – and get down into an infinite loop composed only of memories.

Last week, I got news that my grandfather’s elder brother had passed away.

I never got to see my own grandfather – he died relatively young, before his son (my father) got married and started a family. All I knew of him was taken from a framed picture at home, a few black and white photographs and the various stories that the older members of our extended family would indulge us in. Given that void, his brother was the closest I ever got to experiencing, for myself, the aura of strict, short-tempered authority that every story about my grandfather had.

Eldest in the family and patriarch to more than a half-dozen sons, daughters, nieces and nephews, everyone had a story to tell about him — none uncharitable, and most tinged with that air of fear turned to amused reverence that time tends to bring. If his nephew’s favorite story was the one about visiting for the holidays as a kid and being chastised for deviating from the set plan for the day, his daughter-in-law’s would be the one where the family had only ever seen his eyes get moist on two occasions (a tale that was handed down, of course, by his wife before a post-lunch siesta).

My earliest memory of him is the association with Madras, and the house with all its strict rules — shower before coffee, no coffee for the kids anyway, lunch before eleven in the morning, no TV for the kids, no gulping water during meals, and finally, bedtime by nine. Parents, aunts, uncles – when all these people followed the regimen with a mute acceptance, what chance did we kids stand? I even remember a New Years’ Eve where the whole house was asleep by ten, and I lay awake till twelve, with just my new “light” watch for company.

But some of the second-hand memories – the ones handed down by older members of the family – stuck just as much as my own. And more than sticking with me, they struck a chord, a desire to have been a kid in my dad’s time; the stories of hanging around with the steam beasts of the past at Arakkonam railway station, where he was Station Master, or the many summer trips and excursions that the cousins undertook. These were the things that I, the blessed kid of the golden 90s, was denied and given to vicariously living.

But some memories were mine alone to cherish. I remember his encouragement when I showed an interest in our family tree, and a desire to trace it back beyond the three generations that I was familiar with. It was something he had clearly spent considerable time on, but quite long back in the past. Thus came out yellowed papers full of family trees drawn in green ink, with names written neatly in a haphazard mix of Tamil, Telugu and English. A missing branch here, a late addition there … And while examining all these documents, a momentous discovery – that the handwriting they’d all attributed to my dad and to my aunt came not just from there, but from this man; and that here was a tenable bond to the past that lay in my own hands too.

I remember that handwriting also as the harbinger of bad news; every death in the family was announced – albeit a bit late – by the arrival of a brown-yellow postcard, corners marked in black. As trunk calls and (much later) e-mail caught on, the postcards seemed more and more delayed; yet they would always arrive, whether to the next locality or to a continent halfway around the world. And with it would come that familiar handwriting, like the hand itself had been sent as support for those reading the card.

Except this time, there will be no card.

 

As I wrote this, I was reminded of a lovely little line from Choti Si Baat; Dharmendra, lamenting the various shortcomings of the English language, latches on to the one that gives India and Indians a basketload of grief each and every time – the lack of specific terms to address various members of one’s extended family. Yet slaves that we are to this common medium, we duly soldier on.