A Bond That Transcended A Generation

 When a bond is to be formed, it does not really look for an excuse or an occasion, it is a simple and natural process which does not require planning or calculation or fore thought... Maintaining a bond, on the other hand, can be a gargantuan task. It depends on multiple factors and also on the people closest to the one with whom one has forged a bond. Relationships cannot sustain themselves, they take time and work and energy, but when the feelings are genuine and heartfelt, all this does not seem like labour at all!

My mother's maternal family, the Pant Pratinidhi family, who ruled the former princely state of Aundh in Maharashtra, my home state, is a large one. But the extended family is so closely knit for the most part, that often, while among second cousins, one tends to forget that it is not our parents who are siblings but it was our grandparents who were siblings....most of that generation is no more but the rest of us would continue to meet when we could, ( pre Covid), and those were nostalgic times, even as we forged new memories and children from the next generation too bonded with each other. 

And when we lost my mother's cousin (the son of one of her maternal uncles ) very suddenly, a month ago today, I felt as if one very strong branch of the family had been badly shaken. My earliest memories of him stem from the weddings of various uncles which took place during the three year stint we had in our home town Pune, in the early and the mid eighties. He also loomed large over my memories of the many ice cream parties we had at the Pant Pratinidhi  ancestral home, in the heart of Pune city. Always laughing, joking and teasing all the school going children, he and his brother ( who would pass away very tragically due to kidney failure in the late eighties) had given my sister and me the monikers, 'Rose Red' and 'Snow White'. This had nothing to do with my ability ( or lack thereof ) to blush or with my sister's complexion. We were given these grand names by our two jovial uncles, based on two of the dresses that we had worn to our maternal uncle's wedding! Frilly, frothy, organza creations, one pink, one white, they were 'every little girl's dream come true' type of outfits and we thoroughly enjoyed the attention and the nick names that were bestowed upon us. 

After a three year stint in Gauhati, Assam, where my father had got posted after Pune, I returned to complete my high school years in Pune. And came across a more sober but no less friendly version of my uncle, as it had just been a few months since his own brother had passed away. But exciting news was in the air, as he was engaged to be married and everyone looked forward to new beginnings for a family who had gone through so much already. I remember attending the wedding like it was yesterday, instead of more than thirty three years ago, and little did I know then, that his newly wedded wife, my aunt, was to become a friend for life....

 Well educated, well read, soft spoken, with impeccable manners, she was the perfect match for my suave uncle. She and I bonded from the start. May be it was because she too had left her parents and moved to our city and my parents were based in far away Jallandhar in Punjab, where my father was posted then. Or may be it was because we both were voracious readers and loved the English language. I remember bonding over my then meagre French ( I had just begun studying the language)  and her very advanced knowledge of French. Or may be it was because she was a journalist and I had started writing my first stories in third grade....Or it could be that we both had equally phenomenal memories when it came to dates and never forgot to wish each other and other people, on special occasions. My uncle, she and I had great times whenever we met, in my maternal grand mother's house in the early years and later, during my junior college years, when I used to visit their house frequently to play with their new born son. And they both, along with the baby, visited our house very often too, and she and my mother got on like a house on fire. By this time, my mother and my sister had moved back to our home town too. My father was on a field posting in Jammu and Kashmir and the baby often brought new life to our rather lonely house, every time they dropped in. 

Just a handful of years later, I was to get married at short notice, as my then husband to be had suddenly landed a job in Russia. My uncle drove with his entire family from Pune to Mumbai, where the wedding was to be held. He was entrusted with the task of escorting my husband to the wedding venue  and I have lovely pictures and a video of that occasion. Much to my delight, my husband too got on fabulously with my aunt and uncle! Once they got to know that my husband loved Indian sweets, either my mother's uncle or his son never failed to organize fresh 'Malai barfi', a particularly delicious and decadent Indian sweet, well in time for us to carry to Russia, every year for the next three years! We never forgot this sweet gesture... Like I said, relationships need investment, else they wither away like yesterday's flowers. 

And once we moved back to Pune, they got it for him every single time they visited us! Be it when my daughter was born, or when my son made his appearance in this world. Thoughtful, delightful gifts, both from my uncle and aunt punctuated these memories and the same pattern was repeated when my sister came down from Singapore, first with her older daughter who was a toddler then and later with the younger one. And when my book was published, I mentioned my fellow blogger aunt in the 'Acknowledgements' and sent her a copy, ( I could not visit, as the pandemic was raging in India), she sent a beautiful gift for me with the driver, 'to mark the momentous occasion of the publication of my book,' she said. My uncle supported her so ably in all these gestures...

Even after we had moved to Tanzania, we never failed to meet during our annual sojourn in Pune. I cannot recall this incident without laughing out loud, no matter how heavy my heart feels today. I had a cell phone way back in 2000 but Google Maps did not come into the picture until much later. So my uncle would give me directions to their home every year just before I visited, as our city Pune expanded rapidly year upon year and many landmarks near their house, which I had committed to memory from previous years, were either no longer visible or had been replaced entirely. One such year, in the mid 2000s, he had told me to cut across a huge, empty plot of land ( it's no longer empty!) so I would have direct access to their compound. I set off eagerly, with two young children in tow. All was well until I reached the field. It was dark by then and I did not realize that the entire plot had been turned into a slushy, marshy field due to the rains, earlier that day! I confidently drove on to the field and before long I was mired in deep mud! I could neither reverse nor move ahead, and the more I tried the worse it became. Panic stricken, I called up my uncle and he told me to stay put, while he rushed to my aid. His car driving skills are legendary ( as were his late brother's, I recall a drive with him as a six year old, that could have so easily gone wrong but for his skills, through our famous Western Ghats, eons before the new road was built) and in no time he had expertly extricated my car and had driven us safely to his house. I was very apologetic but we all had a good laugh about it once we reached home, where my aunt was waiting to welcome us! 

When my husband was working in Goa, my uncle visited for work and  we took him out to dinner along with another dear Uncle from the same side of the family, whose home is in Goa and whom my husband is very fond of too. The two cousins are very close and I am their niece, but some bonds do transcend a generation. Our camaraderie along Goa's beautiful shores and lush foliage and the bond my children shared with my Uncles and my Goan cousin, left a deep imprint on my heart that day...

On another annual visit, this time from Kenya, my uncle eagerly told me that he had found a new route for me to try, across another bridge, that would bring me straight to almost their door step! He tried explaining it over the phone but I felt very confused and said I would stick to the old one. After so many visits over the years, I now knew it like the back of my hand. But he urged me to give it a try and said he and my aunt would meet me at a certain point and I could follow them from there. I acquiesced and in no time I had reached their house, with no muddy adventures or incorrect turns! I will never forget the joy I felt, when I popped my head out of my car and I saw my aunt and uncle patiently waiting for me by the side of the road, in a sea of strangers. 

Some people just make you feel special and pampered, no matter whether you deserve it or not. For me, this aunt and uncle and his parents ( my mother's uncle and aunt) are one such family. Since we all share a common love of ice cream, he would ensure that he stocked up on  his latest 'find' in the field of ice cream or Kulfi ( our Indian version ), just before we visited. And if my husband was to accompany our children and me, then my uncle ensured he had a variety of Indian sweets laid out for him to enjoy....Whenever we wished each other on birthdays or anniversaries, my aunt would update me on the latest delicacy they were trying out and I would say, we have to get this when I visit you all. I knew my aunt would remind my uncle when the time came and he would make it happen! 

A few years ago, I mentioned to my Aunt that I wanted to visit Aundh with my children, as they had been very young when we had visited earlier. I said I would be happy to follow them in my car, in case they planned to visit during the time I was in Pune. My uncle went one step beyond and actually planned the entire trip on a day convenient to us all, including pre ordering a wonderful lunch and getting the strong room of the museum, which houses my great grandfather's phenomenal collection, especially opened for us. My mother's uncle who had grown up in the palace there, accompanied us and my Dad joined us too. This was one of the most wonderful trips I have ever had and my grand uncle's stories of his childhood and my Dad's photographs of the palace, the temples and the museum are the icing on the cake. All thanks to my uncle for taking time out for us.

In September 2019, when flash floods occurred in the area we live in in Pune, my uncle was the first person to call me up in Nairobi to tell me that the situation was bad and water had probably entered our compound and I should find out from neighbours what was happening. He was absolutely right and water did enter the home and we lost my car, the same one in which I had taken numerous trips to my uncle's house and got lost innumerable times too! But what's a car when we have all lost so many beloved  people in the last few years....

During the Covid years, we did not meet, of course, even though I was in Pune a couple of times. They were very firm about protecting my mother's uncle, who is now in his 90s, from unnecessary risk and exposure and I was equally strict about my mother's safety. So we were all on the same page and contented ourselves with phone calls and WhatsApp messages. 

Finally when I was in India again in July 2022, the situation was deemed safe enough to meet. We met after three long years, the last being when they had rushed to our house to meet us after my Dad's death in May 2019. This was a record for us, as we had been diligently meeting each other every year since 1989. My mother's oldest sister invited us all for a delicious meal and it was as if those Covid years melted away, as we tried to catch up on three years worth of missed conversations. We bonded over 'Bhel' ( a spicy Indian street food made from puffed rice) and what else, but ice cream, never imagining, never in our wildest dreams thinking, that this would be the last time my mother and I would meet him. We have had ice cream together for decades but that last time, on 8th July 2022, will always stand out most poignantly in my mind...

My cousin, the younger son, called me up to tell me that his dad, after nearly two weeks of hospitalization and desperate prayer, was no more. He was so calm and broke the news so gently to me that despite the intensely emotional moment, I could not help but admire him. My uncle and aunt have done a great job raising their sons. My older cousin looked after his grandfather throughout the time his Dad was in the hospital and patiently updated us all, whenever we asked.

My children sent condolence ( such a trite word, that never truly expresses the depth of one's feelings)  messages to my aunt and to my cousins, my daughter from Dubai and my son from Calgary. Unknown to each other, they both asked me later if I had got the correct information and that it wasn't all a mistake...I only wish it was....

Come November, I will be back in India and I will visit my aunt and my mother's uncle. Whom will I call when I get lost again? Who will keep my ice cream ready for me and match me, scoop for scoop? 

Bonds never die, even if they have transcended a generation, sometimes even two. And so I pray the bond between our families lives on too. 

My Dad: Engineer Par Excellence And Mr. Fixit to the T!

 Three on three....no these are not the marks of a short quiz but the number of years it's been since we lost our Dad, three years today on May the 3rd, 2022. As always, when I think about him, it is hard to imagine that he is no longer with us and lives on only in our minds, memories and in our hearts now. And so once again, as I have done on his first and second death anniversary, I have to go back to the 1970s and sift through my earliest memories...one year I wrote about my general memories of him, last year I focussed on his cooking skills and my food memories and this year I have to write about his technical skills, which were a large part of his profession and consisted of one of his favourite hobbies too! Few people are lucky enough to do what they truly enjoy, in my Dad's case, it was fixing things! 

Photography has been a huge part of my Dad's life since he was a school boy. His father gifted him a camera when he was a ten year old student at The Bishops School, Pune Camp, and he began going to the photo studio of a very good family friend of theirs, who was a top photographer of his times. Thus began his early lessons in photography and he developed such a passion for it that it was to last a life time. When he was doing the Young Officers Course in Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, he was already developing his own photographs, by converting a bathroom in our huge colonial bungalow into a dark room, as and when needed, and he used to be ably assisted by my mother. Never one to be content with one specialized skill, he decided he wanted to enlarge photos too and hit upon the idea of building an enlarger of his own, as buying one was out of question, as it was way beyond his pay grade! I must have been around four years old and as our play room adjoined the kitchen in that house, I have a very distinct memory of him rooting around in the kitchen cupboard. Then I remember him coming away with two shiny, deep, bowl like vessels and disappearing with them. I remember being upset about my mother's items being appropriated in this manner, though my mother was right there and she had no objection! 

Today, when I was discussing my memories of this incident with my mother, she told me those were two aluminium vessels with dome shaped lids, which had been gifted to her by one of my great grandmothers on the occasion of my naming ceremony! Aluminium is a very shiny metal, so my memory was spot on about that and maybe I had got upset when I saw him carting them off because those two items had been part of an occasion important to a new born me ....Memories seem to run deep into our subconsciousness, don't they?

The next day, my Dad proudly called us to view his enlarger and those two vessels had now been painted black and perched proudly on top of the whole device, which worked wonderfully well. I don't remember this, but I'm guessing I magnanimously forgave him for stealing my mother's kitchen items! Here is the enlarger, now forty plus years old and clicked a few years ago by, who else, but my dad himself.

                      Many a photo was enlarged by this device, hand made by my dad.

                        This  Bazooka like lens was a favourite with him for wild life photography!

As technology advanced, my Dad ensured he kept up with the times, and brilliantly edited his own photos on his home computer. He was also always happy to help my mother's uncle, another brilliant photographer and a very skilled surgeon as well, to edit and upload his photos, something Uncle had always found challenging, given his age. Dad's knowledge did not extend to just photography but to all the software related to photography too. It was no surprise that the very first computer, along with its witty mouse, ( I remember being highly amused by this term as a teenager) entered our house in 1990, at a time when most of India had not even heard the word. My Dad had bought it from a fellow officer who had purchased it while on a stint abroad, but had no clue what to do with it upon his return to India! 

So when something went wrong with my gynaecologist cousin's son's first birthday photographs, and they refused to reveal themselves, despite repeated attempts by professionals, she thought of my Dad! After all, all my cousins had spent their childhood watching their mothers give my Dad various electronic gadgets for repairs, the minute he came to our hometown on his annual leave. And he never disappointed them, the gadgets were in top shape again long before his leave was up...And once again, after a few hours of concerted effort, he did manage to retrieve those precious pictures, which he then saved for one set of very happy parents! 

Since my Dad was in Signals, communication was the very core of his work and he was on standby twenty four by seven. When half of India was in queue for a land line and the other half couldn't even imagine owning a phone, we had not one but often two lines, right though the 80s until the mid 90s. And there was always one extension at my parents' bedside because Dad had to be contacted at any time when the lines were down, further afield. Whenever his commanding officer ( CO) called to give instructions, my sister and I would immediately be all ears to listen to my Dad's side of the conversation. It went something like this, " Ajay here, Sir. Yes Sir! Right Sir, it will be done, Sir ! No problem, Sir! Right away Sir, copy that Sir!" We would go into fits of laughter, cramming our hands into our mouths to keep from laughing out loud, lest we be heard by C.O. Uncle at the other end. And all the while our dad would be glaring at us, even as he focussed on what was needed from him and gave all the politically correct 'colonial' responses. And guess what, if my Dad was entrusted with the task, it always WAS done, Sir...right away, Sir! 

Olfactory memory is also an important part of everyone's childhood. But while other four or five year olds might remember their mother's favourite perfume or the fragrance of their grandmother's incense sticks, I have only one smell lodged firmly in my brain, from those times. The smell of the soldering gun being used! The sticky brown ointment like cream from the tube being dabbed on to the board, the gun being switched on  and then the wires being soldered in place and the circuit being complete! Though I was very young, my dad often roped me in to hold the circuit board steady and that's why I guess I experienced this aspect so closely. I have no memory of what exactly it was that he spent so many after-office hours making, but my mother told me it was his own, powerful music system.  He had even built the speakers from scratch, getting the wooden part made by a carpenter. We had the system for years and it worked beautifully until the entrepreneur in my Dad woke up and he sold it off! Many years later, my father in law once roped in my then five year old daughter for the same task of holding the circuit board, while he soldered something he was working on. For me, the circuit was then truly complete....

His skills were not limited to just building a music system. He could play any musical instrument he laid his hands on, be it the flute, the harmonium or the harmonica! He had never had any formal training but belted out popular songs as if he had been a professional player. Ironically, in the two days that he was at home in between hospital stints in April 2019,  the last thing he ordered on Amazon ( I told you he was tech savvy and would give the younger generation a run for their money where shopping online was concerned!) was an advanced harmonica ( a mouth organ). He played one last song and recorded it too...His swan song? Today my son has that harmonica and having inherited my Dad's instrument playing skills, ( he plays the drums, the guitar, the saxophone and the flute), he is trying his hand at it.

In the India of then and even in the India of today, for reasons I personally fail to understand, owning a car or up grading to a better version, is considered a huge deal. Maybe this attitude stems from our socialist policies of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when everyone was in a queue to buy a simple Lambretta or Vespa scooter and only the 'lucky' few owned cars. Well, my Dad got his hands on a used but fantastic car in the early 1980s itself and the model was called the Hindustan 14. It resembled  the car in 'Herby Goes Bananas' and I absolutely loved it! He was often found to be tinkering with the car's engine and the bonnet was popped open more often than it was not! In the late 80s, he even changed the colour of the entire car from a silver blue to a dark blue, which he told me was an " Oxford Blue". Well, given the fact that he was an artist too and very skilled at painting pictures, it wasn't surprising that he knew his colours well. He certainly wasn't a person afraid to experiment. This car carted us and our friends around and moved all across India with us, until he decided it had grown too old and it was time to bid it goodbye. The car he drove for over fifteen years was an Indica and as he became unwell, nothing I said could persuade him to sell this truck-like diesel engine car and buy something lighter and easier to drive. He took care of it like a baby and so deep was his knowledge of cars, that no mechanic ever dared pull a fast one over him, every time the car needed some repairs. We had no choice but to sell it after he was gone.... here he is with his car and sure enough, the bonnet is open! I believe he loved the engines more than he did the cars themselves! 

And having a particularly skilled engineer Dad meant that we never had to miss our favourite Sunday morning television serial in the late 80s, in case of power cuts, which were frequent in Gauhati, Assam, where we lived then. He would simply pull out our 'Herby's' battery, connect our small black and white television set to it and lo behold, our television miraculously had power, with all the Army kids thronging to our house, once the news was out!

Many men bake these days but how many 'make' the oven they bake in? My mother, a good baker, had a traditional round 'Bajaj' electric oven, common in the Indian homes of the 70s and the 80s. But she had a deep hankering for the 'rectangular, upright ' oven of her childhood, but with a twist! Her mother's colonial oven had been one that worked on a wood fire, hers of course would need electricity. While on one of our shopping jaunts to Gauhati city, a few kilometres away from the army and air force station he was posted to then, my Dad came across a decades old rectangular oven, albeit one that was designed to work on a kerosene stove. I clearly remember it sitting in the shop window, a dusty old thing. But his uncanny eye spotted its potential immediately and he bought it without batting an eyelid. And then he set about converting it to an electric one, right from designing the circuit to locally procuring the materials he needed . He succeeded and how! Some of the best cakes I have ever eaten were baked by my parents in that oven, which was truly a labour of love by my Dad.

                    It looked something like this and is a hundred plus years old today! 

If baking was my Mother's forte, sewing like a professional was ( and still is!) her fondest desire. So with that in mind, my parents bought the much in vogue in the 80s, the sewing machine called the Singer Fashion Maker! My contemporaries will remember the Singer advert which showed the fanciest of clothes being stitched in the least possible time. Well folks, we actually had that beautiful, shiny white machine in our home, and all our fancy clothes were designed by our mother but were still stitched by the neighbourhood tailor! This was because that machine had issues since day one! Either the thread would get jumbled, or it would get cut, or the cloth would get stuck or the motor would stop, you get the picture! Now this was a challenge like no other for my techie Dad and he set work at once. Countless hours were spent after office, trying out each 'foot' that came with the machine and made different types of stitches. He analyzed and evaluated each action and its repercussion, before giving my mother a list of Dos and Don'ts and making her practice under his eagle eye. Thus, he trained the machine to behave itself and we had no further trouble. And a decade and half later, when my mother had progressed to newer and fancier machines, she gave me that one and I happily churned out soft toys for my toddler daughter on it. I used to look at it bemusedly as it purred along, for I well remembered its antics before my Dad had tamed it! 

And the knowledge that that machine had imparted to him stood him in good stead, when he was posted to Jammu and Kashmir again, later in his career. Someone had ordered many brand new fancy sewing machines for the unit but no one knew what was to be done with them. So my Dad demonstrated how the machines were to be used and showcased all the fancy stitches that could be produced. The women of the unit were suitably impressed and the machines were sold off in no time, thus freeing up unit money! Truly, there was nothing he couldn't turn his hand to.

And then there is the story of how my Dad lost out on his Engineering Drawing Gold Medal. This one I do NOT remember as I must have been barely three, but my mother tells the tale often enough for me to see it in my mind's eye. All the officers of his course were doing their engineering in the College Of Military Engineering, ( C.M.E), Pune. It was rather far from my grandparents' home but the day of the submission, my Dad was staying at home and drove across town to college  and unfortunately got caught in a rainy squall. He  was completely drenched by the time he reached and his drawings were a damp, sodden mass too. His fellow officer and good friend ( he retired as one of our top Generals) told my mother later that the minute he saw my Dad looking half drowned, holding his wet drawings, he knew the gold medal was exclusively his! Otherwise, no one came close to my Dad in engineering drawing, but fate had conspired otherwise that day...

I do not need to see a gold medal to understand how technically skilled my Dad was... I witnessed it all my life, until the day he passed away, three years ago today.

Of Bakes, Kitchen and Classroom Stakes

 As the academic year in India draws to an end,

Your keen ears, to my rant, please do lend.

When the pressure in my classroom becomes too much to take,

I run into the kitchen and begin to bake. 

As I, unsalted butter and brown jaggery do cream,

I begin to let off some steam.

The end of an academic year in India is chaotic, to say the least,

To feel a semblance of control, I sometimes try to whip up a feast.

Morning, noon and night, students with doubts do me bombard,

Even as I ensure my cake tin is floured.

Just as I feel I'm being driven around the bend,

A new student query pops up, saying many others do me recommend.

As I begin to fold in the peanut butter and whole wheat flour,

Other students begin messaging about final exams that were smooth, by far.

A pinch of baking powder and of baking soda, a dash,

A cup of hot milk, some curds blended in, and the cake's oven-ready in a flash.

My just home from school teen will smell it from the door,

Even as my kitchen clock strikes four.

I'm refreshed and ready again to conduct my next academic batch,

And my wits with my razor sharp students, to match.

Then a thought strikes me, we'll be empty-nesters soon,

So how will my kitchen, to me then prove a boon?

Neither my husband nor my mother nor I can afford an extra kilo or two,

And my canine kid's diet is always planned through and through.

There won't be much in the kitchen for me to chop, mash and pound,

But I can hope and pray my daughter, by then, might just be around!

Then I'll enter the kitchen in between classes with renewed zest,

And will feel once again, truly blessed.

I'm an Indian to the core,

Cooking for the children is never seen as a chore,

And with a plethora of food varieties, it's never even a bore.

I'm so glad that in Kenya, my classroom and kitchen share a door!

 

                                                

                                              Wholewheat peanut butter and jaggery cake, eggless. 

Recipe on popular demand!

2 cups whole wheat flour OR 1 cup whole wheat flour plus 1 cup Ragi ( nachni) flour, 1/ 2 cup unsalted butter or ghee ( clarified butter) , 1 cup powdered jaggery, 3/4 cup peanut butter, 1/ teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a few drops of vanilla essence 1/2 cup curd, 1 cup warm milk. For a coffee chocolate variation, add 4 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa and a few teaspoons of instant coffee.

Method is in the poem! Bake at 180 degree fan,  for an hour or until dry in the centre. Cool, cut and enjoy!

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