Dr. Aunty and Mama
‘Hello’ said a
familiar voice on the phone.
‘Hello’ said I.
‘Who is this?’ she asked.
‘Dr. Aunty’ I said.
‘Is it you?’ She said my name with the same love and
affection as she has for all my life.
Neither or us needed to introduce ourselves, we know each other by our
voices.
I do not remember
when I saw her, or even noticed her first.
She has always been around. I often forget her first name, but we always called her Dr. Aunty. In fact the entire neighborhood called her
Dr. Aunty.
Dr Aunty and Dr. Uncle were
our neighbors in Delhi. But they moved
to their own place sometime in early 80s.
Until then they rented the first floor (which in the US is second
floor—its not the ground floor but the one above it) in the house adjacent to
ours. Those were the days of joint
families, which to me till this day remain the best antidote to depression and
isolation that is the product of our modern times. And Bauji and Biji (grandfather and
grandmother), Guli uncle’s wife and her two sons, Kaka Uncle his wife and their
children, and Dr. Aunty and Uncle and their two sons lived there. Today one
wonders how, but for me, these people remain role models. They created a secure safe society for us by
their simple life and high morality, which in India is always a group morality,
and we were the beneficiaries.
So much so that I
took that idea of security with me and have lived by those standards and ideas
–for all the years that I have been away from home. I remain grateful to all these people who
gave ‘an idea of a very simple life’, an important factor of which was that ‘we
just do not live for ourselves’. But
unlike the west or the modern ‘idea’ of goodness, this idea was closely
connected to the family. As a result,
families took care of each other, in the long run with little dependence on the
state. After having lived and travelled
in so many places, I think it is a very important factor in creating a
self-sufficient society.
We were still in
school, when Dr. Aunty, Dr. Uncle and her two sons moved away. Bauji and Biji by then had sadly passed
on. Then years after cohabitation,
everyone created their own family. But
my memories of them as neighbors are some of the fun filled memories of my
childhood.
Dr. Aunty’s older
son, who is a year older, was in my class and her younger son a year older than
my middle sister. So, at least with her
older son G, and another neighbor who lived on the second floor S, we would
always discuss school and exams. We sat
for our standard exams for tenth grade the same year. I remember at one time G, S and I had decided
that we will all study in our respective houses but step out of our room, G and
S in their balconies and me in my ground floor house, and chat for a few minutes
to cheer up and encourage each other and then go back to studying. We would do it about 2-3 times through the
night, as we all studied well into the night.
But here is the
truth that at least one of us, if not all of us, would sometimes nap between our
meetings, because we were just tired and because we were kids.
I remember Dr.
Aunty’s witty remark when she said, ‘This year, there will be a steep rise in
our electricity bills and possibly a steep decline in the grades of our
children.’
We laughed but we
were truly concerned. Tenth grade decided our fates. Today I find it so hard to believe the
pressures that were put on us at that age. Tenth grade for me meant barely
14. Which means since 12-13, we were
burdened with the fear of scoring high in 10th grade. At my time, we prepared for two years. Meaning in 10th grade, we were
tested on our knowledge of 9th and 10th. After the standardized tests of tenth grade,
we had to decide whether we will to towards science (pure sciences and math,
engineering, medicine), commerce (business etc.) or arts (arts, humanities,
& languages). Imagine having that heavy responsibility at that young an
age. When I think of how children that
age in the US were thinking of dating, I just have to smile at the difference. Dating was nowhere near our hearts and
minds. Besides our parents took care of
that for us…ha, ha…thanks to arranged marriage, which still works better.
Once in 11th
standard, which is not really the determining class for our academic destiny,
G, who was quite resourceful called us and told us that he had in his
possession as ‘leaked paper.’ In India
in the standardized exams, one never knows what will be asked of us. Since we
are taught in our schools, some one else sets the exams and someone else grades
them.
Excited, we decided
to meet at S’s place. S was the youngest
of siblings and quite pampered. Also, being the only son, had some sense of
‘being the young man’ in the house. It must
have been about 9 pm that time. I ran next door and took two flights up. I so
well remember that stairway. Not really
a winding stairway, and not metallic either, it was built into the building, all
stone and concrete, was not very wide and often dark. But in hot summers it seemed the coolest of
all places. G, took just one flight up,
and we all met. We must have studied the
exam for about 4 hours, before we returned to our respective homes.
Imagine our
surprise when the next morning, all of us, in our respective schools (all of us
went to private schools, and they are all different, although S and I were in
the same school until grade 8) did not know whether to laugh or cry or simply
fall asleep on our tables, when we found out that we had not prepared the
correct exam. Usually, the board sets
several exams, and only a few hours before the final exam, do they choose which
exam will be used for the entire state, and sometimes, entire country. Also, the classes that determined our future,
at that time were 10th and 12th. I think it was only that
year that they had decided that even 11th grade exam will be set in
offices outside of our home schools.
We returned home,
with long faces. Dr. Aunty, had her
usual giggle. ‘Chal, koi nai’, doesn’t
matter, no big deal, it was only 11th grade’ she said. It was after 12th grade’s
standardized exams we got our entrance to university and forever our fate was
sealed.
As crazy as it
sounds, today, all of us, and I mean all of us are Doctors, Engineers,
Professors, Historians, Mathematicians and Entrepreneurs!! None of us ever did
drugs, no alcohol, we never swore, no dating scene. Every except me is in a gristha ashram (householder’s life)—Two of us are outside of
India. Who are these people married to?—doctors,
engineers, entrepreneurs. They all have
had only one partner in their life, all of them are together with their first
partner. How can I not acknowledge –the
foundation of our childhood. From people
who were sorted and did their dharma,
like they were breathing. Cooking,
running a household, and taking care of in-laws and grandparents and
grand-in-laws was not labeled oppressive or restrictive. It was merely doing something that upholds a
healthy society.
Today, I think,
those who have not had this kind of background or do not engage in such activities
to create such structures, have and will always have a sense of loneliness and
emptiness.
IN the west that is
why people after a certain age either rush to volunteer or work harder at work.---to get a sense of meaning in
life. But, our Indian society has known
it for a long time. Happiness, as I read
somewhere, comes from not having things but being a part of something. And no matter how much you volunteer and no
matter how hard you work, a large, well knit connected family cannot be replaced. I know it from personal
experience. I have friends all over the
world, but it is amazing what I have created with my family, and extended
family members even those who were born after I left home.
In the middle of
our growing up, was the laughter of our parents, the Doctors, Sahni Aunty,
Chachaji and Chachiji (our next door neighbors), and many others who were a
witness to our growing up.
I remember a line
from Namesake, when the protagonist Ashima, says to her husband after the birth
of her first child ‘I don’t want to live in America’. The husband says, think of what we can offer
him in the US. ‘But Ashima did not want
her child to be raised, unobserved’
writes the author.
We were certainly not unobserved. I remember, because I was short, all the aunties
around me always said, ‘So when are you growing up?’ When I go home, they
compliment me and say, ‘God, you still look the same’. It was that knowing that kept us secure. Today people put pictures of their children
and their families on facebook, ‘to be noticed’.
I find it sad,
because that ‘noticing is devoid of knowing.’
Dr. Aunty, I would
say, knows us. She has a joyful voice and
a hearty laugh. She had a way of making things seem easy. My all time memories are of her laughing, as
her shoulder come closer to her chin, and she still continues to keep a smile
on her face.
As is obvious from
my other posts, we celebrated birthdays with a big show usually. So, we invited our relatives and the entire
neighborhood. The thing was that so many
of us were the same age. I remember
attending a few birthday parties at Dr. Aunty’s. After the cake was gone and we
have devoured the snacks, and left the gifts, we would play in the house. Looking back I wonder how in the world did we
even do that? The rooms were not that big, but oh, they were our world!! We
played this game called ‘hot & cold’ where we would hide something, and the
one person had to figure out where it was hidden. When sh/e was closer we would say, ‘hot’ and
if they were far, we would yell ‘cold’ to help them find the hidden object,
which could be as small as a coin.
Then we played ‘The
dark room’. Where we turned the lights
off and scared each other. Dr. Aunty
would always pop in the room and check what we were doing.
‘A little less
noise please’ she would say as she knocked at the door, and go back to the
kitchen.
Today, when I think
back, I realize how much work she did.
She was a full time doctor and the elder daughter-in-law who took care
of all. Can we imagine a young woman
today who does the same job, ‘actually do the same job?’. Even in India, with live in servants and easy
life, people do much less work and are more tired. Technology and other empty things take up
time. Spirituality and prayer was not
something that was outside of their daily lives. Dr. Aunty, my Mom, and women of their
generation did their work as a prayer.
Mamma and Daddy and
Dr. Aunty and Dr. Uncle would usually go for late night movies or plays. We were under the careful watch of our
grandfather and G and B under the careful watch of several adults at home. Sometimes G and B would come and stand outside
our window and scare us and some times we girls would scream in Bollywood
style.
Papaji, our grandfather
would gently say, ‘Enough kids, stop it.’
Once when our
parents were away for an evening outing, we found mom’s vanity box, and treated
ourselves to all kinds of makeup and three kinds of perfume. But we made a mistake; we played too long,
got too tired and then went to bed with boxes open and our faces painted like
we were clowns. Mom was really upset the
next morning, Not because we used her things, but because she said make up and
creams were not good for our tender skins.
‘You can ask Dr Aunty’ she had said, always pointing at her as the
authority. I can smile today, but it was
nice how mothers used each other as an authority in various things to make
their children understand something.
Dr. Aunty and Dr.
Uncle left for Ghana, sometime when we were in fourth grade. I do not remember much, except that, we were
told they were in ‘Africa’. G stayed
back, being taken care of by his grandparents and uncles and aunts, because it
was not wise to disrupt his schooling. B, who was the younger one, accompanied
his parents. Those wonderful days of
joint families!! Children did not belong to just one pair of parents. They belonged to the family. They were taken care of by the family. I remember how often, I would hear ‘Biji’
(affectionate term for mother and grandmother) call ‘G’ out to get his head
massage, a weekly ritual in India.
During the four
years the doctors of the neighborhood were gone, if I remember correctly, they
made one or two trips back home. Then we
would see Dr. Aunty in those African shirts, with little pom-poms hanging at
the hem. They seemed so different. Dr. Aunty would also bring us gifts. I always remember her by her laughter.
G made a couple of
trips alone to Ghana, and would tell us about ‘the wonders of being inside a
plane’. I remember I used much of that
knowledge and one lesson from my eighth grade book titled ‘A plane ride’ (in
Hindi) to navigate my own first flight.
The Doctors
returned when we just finished our seventh grade. Then, they started to visit more often and
once again our parents started to hang out together.
I remember the
night before my history exam, when Dr. Uncle came to park his car in our verah
(open space which is cemented rather than with grass), as he always did, past
10 pm, I was studying hard. ‘Do you wait
till the last moment to cram it all’ he
said.
I giggled embarrassingly. But I did study a lot
more around the exams. But I guess so do
most students J. I think the only time I truly was interested
in doing what I did was during my masters.
That was my high time!! I loved every class and scored pretty high
GPA. Why? Because all of it was creative!! Some of our
classes were, Black and White photography, with a focus on developing
photographs creatively (in the dark room, sometimes using tinctures and colors),
Advanced media Writing, Television Direction, Video Editing and Script Writing.
Dr. Aunty never
made those jokes as Dr. Uncle, who was very straight-forward. Dr. Aunty’s jokes were always about ‘life is
ok, it is good, we get more than we deserve and it will all be fine.’
I remember she
never forgot my birthday. And even as I got older and was shy to have a
birthday party, she would have a gift for me.
One of the most attractive gift I remember is a white skin hugging top,
which a ribbed pattern. I must have been
about 12, and I wore it with a deep blue mini-skirt that my mom’s friend from
London had given me or with white trousers that mom got me stitched at family
tailor’s shop. In the recent years, I
made sure to call her on her birthday as well. And sometimes her anniversary.
But over the years,
travel and much work-load got me tired.
I started to feel that I was the only one keeping relationships and
connections together. If I thought of
her so fondly, her children could keep a connection with mom and us as
well. But may be they don’t because they
are boys. Well, then their spouses
should take up responsibility. Family
relations, as we knew, that went for generations have a strength, that cannot
be replaced with new friendships. But
people need to understand, there is a security for people to know people from
generations, it is that that has lent security to India.
I have stopped
connecting much, and calling, I simply cannot keep up. There is also Chawla Aunty, who lives only
ten minutes drive away, and while I sent her letters and called her sometimes,
I have not been able to keep up with that either. Same thing, she has two sons, none of who
keep in touch with mom or us. Last time
I was home, I told them off. ‘Who is going to keep these relationships. I call
your mom, but you living in Delhi do not come and check on my mother’. These things come as a ‘the right--haque’
after having put in energy and affection into people. And so, they listened, they apologized and
promised to keep in touch with mom and me.
I refuse to believe
it is all because of time. Such
relations are not easy to find, cannot be developed in a few years. These are generational. I am in touch with R, Dhan Uncle’s daughter
quite often. Whenever I am home we visit
each other. Usually we are out of time,
but we have met always whenever I am home.
And she calls home whenever she can.
I also call P and S who lived on the second floor, although not that
often. And Sh, who lived on the ground
floor, next to our house. It was truly a
magical time.
Rishte—relationships ---are maintained by effort. While movement and relocation can
change/alter/modify them, it is important to work on them. Life has a way of taking over, we need to
know where we want to steer it. Despite
my movement, I have some people from all stages of my life, who I am in touch
with. From my friends who I have known
since before I was five, and those I met during Phd and those I have met during
my travels. Sure, many have fallen off.
But that neighborhood of mine, where I grew up in India, that place, where
people lived in one place for generations provided a level of stability that is
hard to come by today. May be that is
why people watch ‘Friends’ ‘Big Bang Theory’ because that familiarity that
takes decades to come by is what people want, they also want to have
friendships that will bear the test of time and difference, arguments and
conflicts. Those are the ones that are
worth keeping.
If you have not had
a serious conflict and overcome it, then you do not know what friendship
is.
But people want it
easy today. I have slowly let things
go. Just because I cannot keep up. And for the last 8 months I have been on sick
leave at varying levels. Exhaustion took
over. ‘Oh you are so sweet’ people said
when they realized how much I put in them.
But did not realize it is was not a charity, it was an invitation for a
connection, which means you put in effort too.
Although I took that stance about twenty years ago, today, I am very
clear about where my energies will go. Not in a mean way, but as a way of
survival. In 7 habits of successful
people, Steve Covey says, that love and affection are like a bank account. You cannot keep extracting without putting it
back, or the account/giver dries out at some point.
I read the book way
back in 1993. Understood and agreed with
it. It is only now that I put it in practice.
But even today,
whenever I go to India, my trip is incomplete without seeing Dr. Aunty, Chawla
Aunty and several other people from my neighborhood.
But Dr. Aunty
remains special for more than one reason.
She is one person who always makes sure to connect. Yes, I am
disappointed that her children have not continued that. But she comes, always.
‘Hello’ said a
familiar voice on the phone.
‘Hello’ said I.
‘Who is this?’ she
asked.
‘Dr. Aunty’ I said.
‘Is it you?’ She said my name with the same love and
affection as she has for all my life.
Neither or us needed to introduce ourselves, we know each other by our
voices.
‘How long are you
here?’
‘Well, now only
three days left’
‘Ok then, put the
phone down, I am coming.’
She lives an hour
or more drive away. Knowing Delhi traffic nothing is certain. But she was at our house within 2 hours of
speaking to me, with gifts and laughter and smiles. She always brings me these philosophical
books from India’s tradition. I love
reading them. They add to my collection
of other spiritual books that I read from India and other places.
I am grateful that
they all, gave me and many others in our neighborhood a life that became our
support. It was that strength –that
foundation that allowed me to do what I have done. It is only now that I have travelled the
world that what I have done is almost impossible today. It is hard to find
people who live with the integrity I live with, when I’ve coursed through life
without any tangible, close support. It
is because I had my parents, and people like Dr. Aunty who give me a
continuity!
As Dr. Aunty
entered, I rushed to hug her. And then
rushed towards the kitchen to make some tea.
‘No, you sit down
here.’
*aaati hoon, aati
hoon aunty, I am coming, I am coming’ I
said I set up the tea to boil on the stove, so we could in a few minutes, once
again sip tea and chat about life, as if we have always been neighbors!!
