My family and other people

"As real as love that sates the heart Is heartbreak that tears us apart And yet between them there must be Some necessary connection Else the earth could never bear Such agonizing deception" - Translated from Rabindranath Every time I left home to go to boarding school, my mother would feed me her most favourite food ever (or so I assumed), luchi and rabri - milk reduced with sugar and thickened to the point where the creamy bits had solidified. With tears near the surface and a lump in my throat, I found the pieces of sticky dripping luchi hard to swallow. It never did become my favourite food. Adults forget so easily how tender is the heart of a child, how every rebuke is a blow, every disappointment agony. I conveniently forgot too when my kids were little, yelled at them for making a fuss. But now, looking back, I remember. My unmarried aunt, my father's third sister, came to stay with us for a month.(Hardly any of our relatives visited us in the ...

My father had a rich relative, a cousin who was a self made man. He had earned the respect of his community by building up his own business. He was a gracious person who took responsibility for helping out his many relatives. But this story is not about him. It's about how I saw my parents and uncles and aunts act around him. When he was around, they all seemed a little off balance, not knowing exactly what to say or to do. They developed ingratiating smiles and ran to fetch chairs. Awed by their superior, they tossed urgent instructions at their inferiors (children and servants) - touch uncle's feet, get him a cold drink - in a "how come you didn't know this already" tone. I don't think they realized that they were groveling, but it was pretty evident to a clear eyed child. It was somewhat unnerving as well, to watch adults lose their habitual confidence. My mother had a poor relative, a cousin's daughter widowed early in life. She had no education or s...

The ETCM hospital, Kolar where I was born, and where my father worked, was founded by American methodist missionaries. When we lived there, there were always a few missionaries living and working at the hospital. Most of them had been trained as doctors or nurses, had never been married, and devoted decades of their life to the work in India. My father admired them deeply for leaving their comfortable lives and moving across the world to serve others. The motto of the hospital was "with love serve one another". Those were less cynical times and that motto was a burning reality to my father who almost became a christian because of it. Although my mother had no interest in christianity, she too was struck by their total dedication to their mission and they way they treated people with respect, no matter who they were. An electrician who worked at the hospital once invited the doctors to his wedding. As my mother tells it, the house was in a narrow lane and the guests were s...

My father lost his battle with food the day he was born. His mother was a person of ample proportions and loved cooking. She had been married off as a young girl to a scholarly and ascetic Gandhian who had taken a lifelong vow to eat vegetarian food and wear nothing but coarse handspun cloth. There was no question that his new bride would have to live life in accordance with the same strictures. So, along with nice clothes and gold jewellery, she had to give up fish, something that had been part of her daily diet. That must have been when she took to cooking elaborate vegetarian meals, fried delicacies and a variety of rich sweets with a vengeance. Fish and meat were forbidden in their house, but there were no restrictions on milk, butter, oil, sugar. In fact, if memory serves me right, the children would be served chunks of butter with their meals (to keep up them healthy) and would hide it under their plates when they didn't want to eat it. All vegetables were fried - before they...