The
Little Pumpkin And Us
She was the third child in the family. When
she was expected everyone told me - I was less than five - I was going to have
a brother; but since we two were at loggerheads more often than not I wanted a
perfect sister and had no interest in an unknown entity like a brother, and so
loudly insisted I wanted a sister.
When she was born, the other grandmother -
his mother - came from the hospital and told me I had my wish, that I had
another sister. I didn't quite believe her, thinking she was just saying it to
please me. When we were taken to visit I was satisfied after checking the facts
of the case. I do remember being very vociferous about what name she should be
given, and to my surprise that name prevailed without anyone arguing with me
directly - they argued with each other and mother went with my choice rather
than the elders' old fashioned one - that name already belonged to a playmate,
a golden haired girl in the neighbourhood, so I must have thought it was not an
attractive choice. I had heard it all of the five years of my life.
Mother told us later that all we - the first
two kids - were interested in was the contents of her bedside table and she was
a bit disappointed we paid no attention to the new addition. Well, I can reach
back into the frame of mind I had then - what was a five year old going to do
with a new born baby other than looking, and we were not so old that the baby
would fascinate us by just being the way it does adults. When I held her
newborn daughter a little less than three decades later, that was all absorbing
just to look at her, whatever she did. But Mgm was a sister, and we were small
too. Naturally we were interested in what else we could do other than look at
the mother and baby.
We spent some six odd months at grandparents'
home, and I was sent to school with the other neighbourhood children, all
playmates. This time I was all right - mother often used to tell me how she had
taken me to preschool at an age earlier age, probably about two, and how I
played the whole time happily and when we returned I sat down heavily on the
floor and wailed my heart out, and her parents - all three adults authority
over her - couldn't stop scolding her for being so hard on a small child. She
feebly argued the need to send me to school and to get an education, and they firmly told her it was
quite all right if I never went to school and remained illiterate, but this
torture of a child wouldn't do at all.
Of the four of them including mother,
grandfather was a lawyer and had made it on his own supporting himself and his
sister and her four children while getting his law qualifications; his wife was a teacher with two or three post graduate qualifications; mother had finished her master's
degree in a then very new subject, psychology; and her mother, our own Aajie,
never stopped reading when she had a free moment, which was not often but did
happen often enough to keep it up. So this defending a child was all the more
special, coming from them.
This time around, though, there was a new
factor. I heard some of the adults - talking about how mother had gone to
school straight into fourth grade, and right then I declared I was not going to
go to the first grade any more, I was going to go to fourth grade. She had
always been the one for me to compete with - what with my being the first child
and her being not only more available but also the presence of the older
generation in the house I spent so much of my babyhood and childhood, her elders being adults
for whom she was the beloved little one and I was the new, precious one, as her
first child. So if I wanted to wear only red before I was able to speak, and
there was a fight, they took my side. That had only helped to bring us closer,
and if she did or had or was something I couldn't do or have or be less. If she went
only to fourth grade straightaway, so must I.
Since the nearby school - where I could walk
alone, not having to cross a busy road - was only a preschool plus two, this
was a small problem. But mother placidly said that in any case we were moving
back to the city where we had lived last few years, and I would have to join
school there, so it was quite ok if I did not go here after all. In the event I
was taken into second, not fourth, grade in the school near home in the city we
went back to live in - and she told me the school did not have a fourth grade,
and I thought all right, second is a small victory. When later I met some
fourth grade students and came and told her she had been wrong, she comforted
me by saying it was too late to change now into the fourth, and it wasn't so
bad being in the second, so why don't I stay put in the second after all. I
consented. It took a few decades to realise I was fooled, and that she must
have known the truth. She often described how she had been much smarter and I
the far too innocent one. In this assessment she was a bit kinder - her younger daughters had no qualms declaring I was a fool.
When we were still back at the grandparents'
where the new baby was growing quietly - a characteristic she had until she was
seven -, but not quite so much the middle one, who generally managed to create
some problem or another, for at least one person. When we had arrived before
the baby's arrival she had jumped out of the vehicle as soon as it stopped and
ran straight into the grandfather's room and jumped on him as he was in his
bed, fresh with stitches after an operation, and he had screamed in agony. Now
the baby was small and one day we were playing in the yard, and a little later
she asked me to help her to remove a petal out of her nose, where she had
pushed it up far too high for her to retrieve. I couldn't, and asked mother -
who had to get up and take her to the hospital to have it done, leaving the
baby with grandmother. Going to the hospital or even doctor is no small or
common thing even today as it is in the west, and then it was a sensation -
this little girl (two year old) had played such an unnecessary game all by
herself as to be taken to the hospital, not due to a fall and injury but to
have a flower petal taken out of her nose by a doctor.
Once back in the city, I went to school, and
was weighed down by all that I was supposed to carry - a book bag, a wooden
board freshly washed and limed every day, and an ink pot, to do the writing on
the board (dictation on one side and neat writing on another) - and to top it
all they made me take the two year old as well, to sit with me in my class. She
added to all the rest of the heavy burden often - with her innocent and logical
mind and her naughtiness.
This was a region of another language, and
once in the beginning I got punished (just a simple slap in the face) for not
having obeyed the teacher when she saw the principal approach and ordered us to
stand up; I didn't comprehend because the word for stand in that less familiar
language was the same as the word for little stone in our language, and I had not the slightest idea how she meant us to become little stones, except perhaps by being very
quiet and not noticeable.
Another time the teacher told the story of an
ancient king who was always truthful no matter what, and suffered much due to
various reasons including the truthfulness and kept it up. In the middle of the
story where it got worst - ends are always good when children are told stories,
as they should be - the teacher said, impressively "and he even sold his
"istree", due to his poverty" - and I asked mother when I
arrived home what was the big deal selling an iron if you need money for food,
who cares for ironing clothes anyway; she explained that the teacher had meant to say
"stree", the word in India for woman which here meant wife. That
indeed was horrifying, even at that age.
I was almost immediately the favourite of the
principal, and soon enough of most of the teachers, though. The very next time
there was big national day I was part of the presentation from our school for
recitation, and I remember being very surprised and puzzled as to why they
asked me to stop when it was hardly begun - they of course had to accommodate
everyone else who was slated to perform, and I could have gone on for better
part of an hour, taking up all the time. I was told to wait backstage to meet
someone who had asked to meet me, but then that did not happen, after all - he
was called away on matters of national importance. When in a couple of years or
so, perhaps three, mother told me she had heard of his passing away, I was
crushed, and later she found me under the bed, crying wordlessly without a
sound.
Grandmother had come with us this time unlike
when we had been in the city before, and it was home again, living with her so
we could be secure and mother was free to go out to do various things. As became
far too necessary soon enough - a bank crashed and he lost money he couldn't
afford, and had a psychological effect on his back muscles and was bed-ridden
for a few months, while Mgm was still a baby. Mother has to tend to him and do
everything, not unlike her mother-in-law who had to tend to a husband paralysed
much of his old age. Since there was uncertainty of every kind, mother went
back to work and she quit only when the youngest one was born a bit more than
two years later.
Grandmother was our sense of home, and mother
the provider, through our childhood. It was and is different for Sgk - she
clings fondly to the horror of an aunt who was with us during her babyhood,
having no memory of being terrorised by her. The rest of us were more close to
Aajie, who was loving and wise and protective, told stories and cooked
wonderful food (during my mother's childhood her kitchen was visited by various
missionaries who were students of her brother, and they sat on the floor and
ate our regional vegetarian food, with hands - our way - just for the
pleasure of her food), and generally watched over us. Which, she frankly told
mother, was all right with the other two as long as mother took the middle one
with her - so she went with my mother on most occasions, whether for shopping
or even to work often enough.
When she, Sgk the middle one, accompanied me to school for the
first few months of my going to school in the new place, I was five and she was a strong two year old (and the phrase "terrible twos" was still unknown - someone should have thought of it looking at her, but then about her two was nothing special, so -), and it was an added
responsibility for me to be providing for her needs as well as all the school
and other needs of my own to take care of, and take her and bring her back
safely as well, and frequently I arrived home crying, with her in tow quiet in
the full knowledge that she had made that happen.
Once it was about my accidentally splashing
water on her - the hand pump was not easy, I was not quite used to it, and I used more force and it gushed
upwards and wet her thoroughly - so she threatened to walk home without
clothes, just to punish me psychologically. She later - three decades later -
explained she had no intention of carrying her threat out, but at five I was more
innocent and also it was all a matter of my honour personally - it was my
school, my sister, my responsibility, and I walked those unpaved back lanes
every day through homes and people would see me, and I can still remember the
horror of the thought then, never thinking of actually challenging her to carry
it out and disassociating myself from the two year old.
Another time she stood by while I struggled to
carry the book bag (on my back), the board in one hand and the ink pot in
another, while yet a hand was needed to pick up and carry the sack we sat on -
the school was not yet in the building being constructed for it and we sat in
tents on earth, so the sack was a need - and my shoe buckle came undone. The
earth beneath was wet mud as often it was when it rained, and I probably was
very conscious of not willing to get various things dirty with mud, so I asked
her to do my buckle for me; and she said why should she! - I pointed at all the
trouble I would have to have to do it, and she said, would I do it for her if
her shoes were undone instead? I said, of course I would - so she undid her
shoes and said, ok then, do it for me first. So I put everything down, did the
buckle, picked it up again, and walked home (crying, she says), with her
trotting after me silently. She says I didn't do her shoes; I thought I did those
too.
The baby grew silently in all this, sitting
day long in sun with grandmother in winter on a rope cot as all neighbours did,
and eating peanuts, and very scared of the planes flying over. That was not so
common then elsewhere, and our house - our neighbourhood - was on the flight
route to the airport. She - the baby - made up her own stories as I had done
five years before her, and she grew without any trouble to anyone at all. She
was used to Aajie from her infanthood, and was fine, sheltered behind her,
always with her. Or at least we had no inkling otherwise, until about half a
century later she told me she felt neglected and ignored while the elder two
had all the attention. Not that she complained, she said - she was free, she
felt.
When she was able to walk she came running
round to where mother was when mother came home - we probably all did - and she
was a little round ball, so it was more of a rolling than running, mother said.
When I think of her as she was small she reminds me of an orange, round, bright
and sweetness all closed in. Mother called her bhopl(d)a (the "l(d)"
pronounced the German way, as in Nagold - it is a sound not often understood in
most places but does exist), and she was very happy coming rolling around
saying "bhopl(d)a coming"; and then one day she saw a red huge
pumpkin, and asked and found out that is what she was being called, and dropped
the fondness for it. Mother was fond of telling us stories of our - and her own
- childhood, and it is a wealth incomparable. It makes a connection to make us
whole. But for the stories we would have not remembered the pumpkin story at
all.
When mother came back from work, often with
shopping, we crowded around her, and she would fill the dining table with the
fruits and vegetables she had bought. I was older and being the first was
different - but the others went around the table picking and straightaway
eating what they found attractive, fruits, carrots, radishes, peas, tomatoes,
and the only thing they were told is to wash the non-peeling things first. I
was different, being the first, and only ate when told by mother or Aajie, and
ate what was given or asked to - I might not always eat if I did not like or
was apprehensive about new things often, but never by my own initiative, and
mother had to look after my share not being eaten up by the -
"smart", she said - younger children, who grew up with the knowledge
they had to snatch and finish. Not that there was any lack, on the contrary -
it is only that when one is younger one competes with the elder siblings, and a
first born trusts the adult elders to care for one.
North Indian fruits and winter vegetables are
the most delicious and sweet flavoured in the world, (with the only possible
exception of mangoes which are better where we came from, and other more
tropical things) - especially those red carrots (all other carrots in the world
are orange or yellow in comparison to those) that can be eaten straight off.
Later when we had a vegetable garden in the backyard, those three - we were
four by that time - went around taking things out and eating them right there,
and again the only admonition was to wash them at the tap right there, low
enough that they could all operate it. We hardly ever had anything reach the
kitchen from the garden - what those three did not finish way too early was
eaten by the cows roaming around.
Sometimes mother came home with more - dolls,
toys, and so forth, for example. There were only three of us, and the middle
one was given the first choice since she would demand the choice of others if
not given the first choice; but she did not fall for that trick, and was quite
suspicious, and would make me choose first, and then demand what I had. Once -
she says - I got the better of her, but that must have made her even more
suspicious, and this trait was still there in her supposedly grown up twenties
and thirties. She never accepted a gift without being suspicious and wanting
others' gifts and complaining, and if she was given something by herself she
gave it away in the belief it couldn't have been good if it was given to her. A
lot of my most cherished or expensive gifts were so squandered by her and it
hurt much, even apart from her vociferous complaints about how she was only
given dregs (untrue). Then as later there was no helping her about this. She
had been inculcated with the characteristics of the aunt of the other side of
family, her having been around when Sgk was a baby. So she fought with both of
us.
Mother came home just as often having had a
tiring day, and then she still had to deal with the tale of what we did during
the day. My usual crimes were to go on reading since morning till fifteen
minutes before having to run to school, and then bathing and eating in a hurry
and being late. Sgk was far more creative - she vanished often, and had poor
old Aajie running all over the suburb looking for her, frightened someone might
abduct an attractive child, and Aajie did not even speak the language.
Sometimes MG, the elegant and beautiful neighbour who was a caring friend, was
needed to come forth to help in the search, and she helped as often as needed
and called, but mostly Sgk was only found when she came home by herself
eventually and explained she had been visiting a friend - and had generally
done so, which we did not know until such a commotion brought it forth.
Once Mother came very tired and frazzled, only
to find we had been all impossible - us two fighting would be another way I would
join the list - and she went after us, whacking us. We took it guiltily and
without protest, but Mgm the little one went around running to escape, small
and frightened out of her wits, and objecting very logically that she had done
nothing to deserve it that day. "Well, you will, another day" was the
comfortable reply she got while they ran around the bed, and then mother jumped
over the bed to catch her, poor thing. Not that any of us remember mother
hitting us as a traumatic event, in fact I have no memory of it whatsoever although when Sgk related the story a few decades later I vaguely recalled it but not the beating, it was more of a symbolic and we knew we had been
wrong enough to deserve it. But the evening report that day, when he came home,
was two parts - we took the admonitions for our crimes, and Mgm complained
about mother having hit her as well, for no reason at all. I presume she got
some comfort from having her complaint validated, and more.
To be fair, she was always scrupulously good
when she was a child, or at least clever enough not to lose trust of elders -
she knew all the secret places Aajie kept stuff like peanuts and suger, and
helped Sgk to discover them and had a pact to share with Mgm never getting
named about how it was discovered or about how she shared it - and later when
she was not quite so quiet, she nevertheless was able to always deliver deadly
blows verbally and emotionally, in a such a way that it would leave the one who
was hit gasping for life, but unable to say anything in protest at the moment.
Either she was right, or what she said was so atrocious and tangential it was
impossible to say anything immediately in protest. And if one comes back with queries of whether her accusations are true, she is always ready with more of the same, way too tangential to retort or be ready or even make any sense; all I generally got is she was stressed to the limit of her little being, and she never got over it in this respect - but all this was to begin a few years later.
Those
days she was quiet, strong, silent, and her determination to get her own way
rarely shown. Once, I remember as clearly as if it were a few minutes ago and
not well over five decades past, I had a glimpse of it when she was a baby
still not walking, and did not know it was that, and thought it was an accident
as babies do tend to get into because they don’t know yet. Now, one knows
better – it was her spirit of rebellion against any authority that might care
and not wield a carrot or a stick, her core of scientific enquiry and need to
experiment what and when she felt like it.
It
was dark that evening, she was sitting next to a kerosene lantern, very fascinated
by it and trying to touch it, and I with the huge responsibility of my elder
sister status and all of five years of wisdom was preventing her by repeatedly
telling her not to touch the hot glass, taking her hands away again and again.
I was too small to pick her up and take her away from the danger, she was not
yet walking and so I could not move her, and it was dark with power cut which
was frequent those days – hence the lantern – and I had probably been told by
the elders, mother and grandmother, to look after the baby as they were busy. So
there was a moment she managed to catch with my attention away and touched it,
and was burned, and in great pain. I was pained to see her, and I still am just
remembering it, but couldn’t do anything, had no clue how to take her pain
away, or if there was anything I could do.
She
tells me she still is fascinated by fire and heights, wants to touch one and
let go and fly of the other! And to see the horror of the latter is only
possible when one knows the three, with Sgk in leadership and with other
children of the building tailing her as well, regularly played jumping from one
part of the terrace on the ninth floor to another, not only from one above to
one a foot below but back as well, with nothing to stop them from stumbling and
falling nine floors below on concrete; this they did while preteens and
younger, and it was only recently – over four decades later – that she
condescended to admit it had been dangerous. I was not informed of any of it
until a few years later, because I would have stopped it, and they knew that.
When she was two years old, once mother took
all three of us to the distant market and we had fun, and after shopping
returned in the dusk. We were almost home when we realised that the little one
had walked the whole way, to and fro and also through all the shopping and so
forth, for two to three hours - perhaps even more -, without any complaint, or
any demand to be carried, or even so much as a whimper. She was much pleased
with all the praise, and even smiled a bit, uncertainly.
When she was one or a little more than one she started
drawing. The middle one might have been drawing before but now she simply had
to - she couldn't allow a younger one to have or do anything she did not (not
that she was ok with me or anyone else for that matter having or doing anything
else she did not) so the two of them went about drawing all over, the little one
on floors and lower parts of walls, the other one on a little higher parts of
the walls. Sgk drew pretty faces as mother had done - but it was Mgm who was an
artist, grandmother pointed out; she drew Raadhaa and Krschna in a slightly
turned pose and looking at each other with an expression in eyes that was
indicative of artistic ability well beyond her two years of age.
She was not yet three when turmoil broke, this
time a national emergency. We in school were called to the terrace - we were in
the building then and had been for a couple of years - for a special meeting
and were given the nature of present emergency and history of it, this being
1962. I was very aware then on and saw and heard and read - how brides all over
the capital were taking off their wedding jewellery to give it to the beloved
prime minister for use of the defence fund, how the neighbourhood one day
emptied into the trucks that came to bring the soldiers to the front - we were
in a government colony and about half the neighbours were soldiers, which we or
I had not been aware of till then - and the latter was then even personal, with
women and children of neighbourhood silently waiting for their men, listening
to radios.
And then the baby arrived in a couple of
months later, this time without a trip back to the hometown. Mgm was no longer
the baby.
……………………………………………………
……………………………………………………
No comments:
Post a Comment