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| Modern School, Barakhamba Road |
I am taking up the pen again, the present lockdown due to the COVID-19 scare does leave us with time at hand. Rather than go into a depression due to idleness, I decided I shall just be penning the story of my life - as I remember - as seen through my eyes.
My earliest memories are of our house in Kashmiri Gate, Delhi, where I was born and spent nearly the first ten years of my life. It was a government accommodation - a stand-alone bungalow.
My memory always showed the bungalow as a massive and very large property. I was disappointed and realized that it was not all that large when I visited the place with my wife and daughter, many years later. In childhood, one has a small frame and small steps, and the distances appear longer than what they are in reality. The bungalow also appeared massive in my childhood memories.
Initially, the bungalow had 3 rooms. One was a large hall, which was our living cum dining room, It became an extended bedroom during the winters. The second room, on the western side of the hall and covering its full western wall, was a kind of a large storeroom. The third room, on the southern side of the hall, was also fairly large and longish. It was a bedroom cum pooja room. It also served as a labor room during my birth. There was a very large verandah on the northern side of the hall, that had a sloping roof of clay red tiles which was the hallmark design of English cottages and bungalows. This verandah opened into a cemented courtyard. The courtyard and the verandah were the family sleeping areas during the summer and the rainy seasons. We had a fairly large kitchen on the eastern side of the courtyard. It was in a separate building altogether and was not a part of the main building. The eastern side of the hall had an open passage connecting to the bathroom on its southern end.
A lot of additions were done later on and I recall the addition of at least 5 more rooms over the years. 3 were made on the northern end of the courtyard, One of these was a small-sized room (probably about 6’x6’) and we called it the kothri. It was used primarily for storing coal (soft coke) and firewood for the hearth. Our kitchen used these fuels only. Kerosene stoves were a rarity. Cooking gas had not come to this part of the country, though piped natural gas was known to be available in some areas of Bombay and Calcutta, a legacy of the British Raj. The area in between the kitchen and the rest of the house had a tap and a washing bay, that was used for washing clothes as well as the kitchen utensils. My family here consisted of my parents and four elder sisters. There was another older sister, Phulan, she was already married and stayed separately with her husband and her children. Her place was also in Kashmiri Gate, though it was about 2 km from our house. On the north side, we had a row of rooms that housed the domestic helps and their families. Dhobi, sweeper and cleaner families lived these rooms. Their housing was also built like the English cottages having clay-tiled roofs.
Our bungalow was located on what was known as 5 Lothian Road. Now it is shown as "Kela Ghat Marg" in the present-day maps. The house was on a 7 to 8 foot higher ground than the road and about 50 meters off the main road. Presently the area is shown as Priyadarshini Colony - in the Google maps. The river Yamuna was almost where we have the present day Ring Road on the north side, Frequent floods in the river used to cause a lot of hardship and devastation. One could invariably see human corpses as well as domestic animals like goats, dogs, and cows being carried away in the flooded and fast-flowing river. During floods, quite a bit of the Kela Ghat Marg would be underwater and the river waters would threaten us from the steps as well as a sloping ramp that lead to the higher ground where our bungalow was located. Flood water did not ever our area because of the higher ground.
The next few paras are, of course, from hearsay and not my memory:
It was a cold December morning much before sunrise, with just a few days before the New Year of 1946, when my mom (she was called Mataji), Lilawati, went into labor before I was born. Although it was peak winter, the atmosphere in Delhi was hot and burning in those pre-partition days. A night curfew was clamped in the whole city with a shoot at sight orders. Shouts of Allah ho Akbar, Jo Bole so Nihal and Jai Bajrangbali could be heard amongst the clanging of swords and sound of gunfire. Screams and yells of humanity rent the air. My father had to go unseen and hidden to fetch the midwife to deliver me into this world.
I was born around 4 am. Word was sent to Phulan's house that an important event had taken place and she has been blessed with a young brother after a long wait of the parents after 5 daughters. What do we see next morning! Phulan and her family coming to our Kashmiri Gate bungalow with a regular brass band that one sees in traditional Indian weddings, to celebrate the birth of a son in the family! I was born with sounds of gunfire and swishing of swords and heralded into this world amidst sounds of trumpets and drums. I am sure, not many can boast of such a welcome into this world.
My other siblings were Neena, Prem, Pushpa, and Devika, in the increasing order of age.
My name had to start with the letter "T", it was drawn from Guru Granth Saheb, the holy book of the Sikhs. Accordingly, I was christened Triloki Nath, another name of the Lord Shiva, meaning the lord of the three worlds. During my growing up years, I was very protected and always treated with kid gloves. The son is the most important being in a Hindu family. He is looked upon as the torchbearer for the future generations. He is required to light the funeral pyre of his father to ensure the latter's entry into heaven. We had a family astrologer by the name of Ghananand. He was always consulted for all our family's religious needs. My birthdays were celebrated with a havan and it was followed by distribution of grains equal to my weight plus cooked rotis equal to my height when stacked. All this was done to ensure a long and healthy life for me. A huge weighing scale suspended from a tripod made of thick wooden bamboos would have to be erected in our courtyard for the purpose. I was made to sit in my underclothes in one pan of the weighing scale and a sack of grain with an open mouth would sit on the other pan. The grain would be added into the sack until it balanced my weight.
My oldest memory is when I was just around 2 years of age, I had gone to Vaishno Devi with my parents, to get my hair shorn - mundan. I do not have any recollection of the journey but I do recall the hot paved courtyard where my hair was shorn, and I was barefooted having great discomfort. I do recall seeing my picture in our archives with shoulder-length hair before going for the mundan ceremony. I also remember crawling on my stomach to enter the cave of the deity at Vaishno Devi. This was my first and last visit to this place.
The evening celebrations were non-religious and generally included the performance of any popular English play to be staged by my 4 elder sisters who were being educated in the most reputed convent of the time - Presentation Convent. The stage would be set up most professionally, with footlights, a draw curtain that could be closed with drawstrings. I can still recall two very well known plays very vividly, which were performed in our home theatre; viz., “Bishop’s Candlesticks” and “Blue Beard”. My sisters were very resourceful and used to get all the props for the play and well as the scripts from their school. I still recall the silver candlesticks that had been borrowed from the school for the occasion. I, on the other hand, did not study in a convent. My father was of the opinion that boys become too docile if they are taught by the nuns. So I had my schooling in Modern School at Barakhamba Road - which was considered the number one school in competition with St. Columba's School.
The whole environment would be that of a festival matching the decorations of a pompous Indian wedding. This continued for the first ten years of my life before we moved to Calcutta because of the transfer of my father to the National Museum, Calcutta. He had got transferred in 1951, however, the family moved to Calcutta only in 1955.
While we were in Kashmiri Gate, a back room and the open space at the back was let out to a Sikh family who had two boys. The boys were probably a year or two older than me and were bullies. We never played together, in fact, I did not like them at all. In fact, I felt vastly relieved and happy when they vacated the place around 1952. The backroom and the entire open space came into our possession and was never let out again as long as we lived in this house. Later we did get a couple of our relatives viz., Yoginder (YL Arora) and Satish Gulati to stay in our back room. The open space had the passage through the back room. It was now converted into a vegetable patch and we had a good sprawled out kitchen garden with my first exposure to vegetable plants like bhindi, brinjals, tomato, peas, beans, karela, pumpkin, watermelon, cucumber and many more. Everything comes with a price, hordes of monkeys had started coming in to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Mataji had green fingers and the garden prospered well with her efforts. With our own garden, I started to develop an interest in nature, insects, birds, etc. I started keeping caterpillars in a shoebox and would wait for them to emerge as butterflies. A few of them did emerge as moths but none as butterflies.
Once I found a baby sparrow that had probably fallen out of a nest and was too tiny to fly. I kept it in a shoebox and tried feeding it for a couple of days but it just died. I was most embarrassed and ashamed and I did not tell anyone at home, not even my sister Neena who was just a bit older than a year and we shared most of my secrets.
I did have a few friends in the neighborhood. One nearby bungalow had a family (Ahujas) and there was a boy of my age. I do not recall his name, however, I do recall some of his toys though. He had a train set which fascinated me. They also had a fridge - which was a rarity in that period. The father was a senior government official and they had also spent some time abroad - probably in England. I recall another neighbor's family, the Mathurs. They had children closer to Prem's age and Prem had found a friend - a girl from that family. The Mathurs' bungalow had a bigger open lawn and I recall Ram-Lila festivities being celebrated there. As a matter of fact, the characters who dressed/acted as Ram, Lakshman and Sita were revered by the crowd and many of the spectators bowed before them and touched their feet in obeisance.
Then we had a Sindhi family staying nearby, the Tahilramanis. The gentleman was a senior official in the Posts & Telegraphs. He was tall fair and handsome. Their flat was on the first floor in a building adjacent to the present day GPO. From their back courtyard of their flat one could look into our back courtyard (vegetable garden) and we could converse or exchange pleasantries very easily, the crow's flight distance being just about 15 meters. The wife was a housewife, as it used to be in almost all cases, a chubby sweet and short woman - very loving to all of us. Their son Subhash was almost my age, maybe a year senior. He had an older sister Indra, who was Neena's friend and her age. There were two younger siblings, Chandralekha (Munni) and Ashok (Kiku). The youngest - Kiku - was born during the course of our friendship. Subhash and I had gone to their old residence a few years ago. The place had been converted to a guest house of the Posts and Telegraphs Department. We are still in contact with the family. Subhash and Indra do meet Neena and me quite regularly. Subhash is settled in Saginaw (MI, USA). Indra lives in Mumbai. Her children are also settled in the US. Our parents did not have much interaction with each other, but the children did. We used to play together every evening and our favorite play area was the green areas around the present day "British Magazine Memorial", opposite the General Post Office at Kashmiri Gate. As children, the various games that we indulged in or played in the limited area available to us were: Pithhoo (7 tiles), Hide and Seek, Geete (5 stones), hopscotch, skipping et all. It was generally just four of us in the group - Indra, Subhash, Neena, and me. Prem was much older and Munni was much too young. We lived in the Kashmiri-Gate house till mid-1955, before we permanently moved to Calcutta.
Around 1951, Pitaji had got transferred to Calcutta on promotion as the Administrative Officer to the Indian Museum. However, we did not all move to Calcutta as Prem was to complete their Senior Cambridge. Pushpa fell sick and was diagnosed with meningitis and was hospitalized. The parents decided that Pitaji should accept and proceed to Calcutta and Mataji would stay back with the children and would move only after the problem of Pushpa's illness and Prem's school final were resolved. She became quite serious and was hospitalized in Irwin Hospital (present-day LNJP Hospital). Pushpa was very critical in some of the phases of the sickness and had to battle with life and death. As Pitaji was in Calcutta and Mataji had to battle it out without his support plus looking after 3 children at home. Prem was the eldest and was just about 13-14 years of age. Neena and I were between 5-7 years old. Pushpa's hospitalization lasted about thirteen months and Mataji had to spend all her time in the hospital leaving Prem in charge of the home and the two siblings. It was a tough life for both Mataji and Prem. The latter had to not only look after two siblings but also manage the kitchen and the cooking. This period with Prem brought Neena and me quite close to Prem. She was like our parent who had to look after both of us along with managing the household for the entire length of Pushpa's hospitalization. She had to invent stories and anecdotes to keep Neena and me engrossed and in awe. Using her very vivid imagination, she created stories out of shapes of clouds that flitted across the sky, stories made from the play of lights that would fall on the large side wall of our kitchen from any vehicle would headlights coming down on the unnamed road coming right in front of our colony from the side of St James Church in Kashmiri Gate. Ghost stories would be made up by her by the imaginary shapes on the neem tree after it became dark. The massive neem was in the north-east corner just outside of the hall. The squirrels used to make an unusual side, with a little imagination, you could hear the tinkling of anklets or ghungroos. There was such a fertile ground for an imaginative storyteller - ghungaroos and the shadows on the tree; and Prem was really good at creating stories from anything and everything. At times when she would bungle in the making of the quantity of dough for the rotis, she had to hide the excess dough by tossing it in a ball of the slanting red-tiled roof of the verandah.
We had a lot of fat monkeys and their families as visitors in this house. They would invariably find their way to the verandah’s sloping roof and create quite a havoc there - fighting to grab the dough balls or the leftover roties thrown on the roof by Prem. The racket created by them would make us wonder if the clay tiles would hold on and not start braking and collapsing. There was a huge neem tree overhanging on the roof of the verandah, which was the playground for the monkeys, squirrels, and a variety of birds and insects. We could often spot a large honeycomb high up branches of the neem.
Prem did prove to be the biggest support for Mataji during Pushpa’s sickness in being able to look after the house as well as her two young siblings viz., Neena, and me. The house problems and issues were getting resolved. Mataji’s strongest anchor during the crisis and illness of Puspa was our family astrologer, Pandit Ghananand, without whom no decision was taken during this crisis period. He had predicted that Pushpa would recover fully, in spite of her close brushes with death and long hospitalization. When it was finally decided and the complete family moved to Calcutta in April-May 1955, the happiest persons would have been Mataji and Prem, for their respective reasons. Mataji was finally able to be able to depend on Pitaji for the innumerable problems that she had faced all alone with the 4 children with the eldest in hospital in a critical condition most of the time. Prem, who had her childhood snatched from her by the added responsibility of the hearth and two young siblings. Pandit Ghananand also got left behind and we moved on to the typical happy family. Pushpa got admitted into the Calcutta National Medical College for pursuing her MBBS as per her life’s desire. Prem joined BA in Asutosh College to pursue her love for English Literature. Neena and I joined South Point School in class 7 and 5 respectively.
Before I move to Calcutta with my next chapter, I would like to share some of the anecdotes that come to my mind as I pen (or rather, type) this document. Let m share some of them with you.
As mentioned earlier, Phoolan’s house was less than a couple of kilometers away and she had some of her children even older than the 3 of us, Prem, Neena, and me. Her one daughter Mohini was quite friendly with Neena as they were almost of similar age. She was extremely naughty in her childhood days. One day when we had gone to Phulan’s house, we children - Mohini, Neena, and I had gone to the market. Mohini hatched a plan of stealing guavas from a fruit vendor selling the fruits on a hand cart. The plan was that each of us would pick one/two fruits at a signal from Mohini and run for it. Mohini managed to pick two guavas, Neena picked one and yours truly just panicked and ran without any fruit. We ran on without looking back, till we reached Phoolan’s house. Neena hurt her hand on the next day. She felt that she had sinned so that hand injury happened. Result of her convent upbringing.
Delhi summers were hot even in those days with temperatures going up to 40+ deg C and we had dust storms and loo (hot winds) even in those days. The hall had a wide door (about 6 feet) opening into the passage on the eastern side, into the passage for the bathroom. In summer months we had a khas ki tatti (wicker frame with fragrant grass) covering the entire doorway opening. My parents had got a G.I. pipe connected to the water supply fitted on to of the tati, that had drilled holes on the eny=tire length. This was connected to the main water supply of the house through a valve. So keeping the khas wet was no big deal and did not require a great effort of a person to keep splashing water on it. There were no G.I. sheet desert coolers we have in abundance these days.
I was not just naughty but also quite destructive. A heap of clothes used to lie for washing on the stone slab outside the bathroom. One day I just lit a match and just burnt them. Neena was also there and witnessed the destruction She was absolutely dumbfounded by my act. She could not keep the secret and I received a thrashing from Mataji.
One day Subhash and I were playing near his house. A truck was parked there and we would get into the driver’s cabin and jump out on a sand heap nearby - pretend to be doing a get-away. In one jump Subhash landed at a peculiar angle and started howling that his bone had broken. Some workers nearby immediately came and took him inside. I was very scared, I went away home without even knowing if he was badly hurt. When I came to play the next day, his arm was in plaster. He actually had a fracture.
So with these anecdotes, I close my Delhi (Kashmiri Gate) Chapter, please click here to move to Calcutta in Story 2.
