Of Monsoons and Mangoes, and Outings in Orchards

Consider this:

‘The girls now go towards the mango orchards…Various kinds of mangoes grow here: Mohammad-shahi, laddoo, shahad kooza, shah pasand, batasha, safeda, gulabi, sindoori and siroli. They are piled up ready to be eaten. Jamuns fall from the trees and the girls rush to pick them up. Several fruits — sour lime, mulberries, oranges, phalsa berries, khirni, gular, star fruit, berries, jackfruit, peaches and apricots — have ripened, ready to be plucked from the trees…While the grey clouds sway and dance in the sky, every now and then a burst of rain adds to the beautiful ambience. Peacocks sing, nightingales chirp, koels sing…A girl pulls at the fruit cluster of the banana tree…and they climb various trees in a rush to be the first to pluck the fruits and eat them on the branches itself…Some friends continue to swing from the trees laughing joyously.’ 1

This is a description of the princesses and their friends, maids and attendants, enjoying themselves in the baghs and amriya’n, the mango orchard near Zafar Mahal in Mehrauli in the monsoons. The family of Badshah Bahadur Shah Zafar accompanied him here every year for some weeks before and during the Phoolwalo’n ki Sair held in the month of Sawan. Not just the royal family and their retinue, we are told that ‘Monsoon is the season when everyone spends time in the gardens’. 2  

In a time when the onset of monsoons in Delhi essentially means water-logged roads, sweltering heat, more traffic jams and mosquitoes, this description of how monsoons in Delhi might have been around two hundred years ago, sounds idyllic — and impossible. The stuff of stories. Too far away to seem real.

Amidst the first few showers of the season, as these thoughts ran through my mind while reading about nineteenth century Delhi, I happened to speak to my Mausi, now in Shanghai where she has been ever since the lockdown. The talk turned, as it invariably does between us, to gardens and green things. She was missing her litchi trees in Dehradun, and trying her best to make up for it by growing chillis, marigolds and melons in pots in her daughter’s house. 

Not one for normally reminiscing, in the course of our conversation, she was led to recall that when she was a child, the litchis would ripen much earlier in summer than they did now. And how after they returned from school, entrance to their grandfather’s house on 36 Lytton Road — where they lived with their mother, and their uncles' families — would be preceded by a climb up the litchi tree at the gate. Only after eating their fill of the half-rosy half-green litchis, would she and her cousins and siblings pick up their bags and satchels deposited on the ground at the foot of the tree, and proceed inside the house. 

She also told me how the children in the house and the neighbourhood would walk from the Lytton Road house in the heart of town, all the way to Ballupur to their extensive orchards and fields and the family-temple. Their grandfather had given strict instructions to the contractors who manned the orchards in the fruiting season, that the children should be allowed to eat their fill whenever they came. So they would eat quantities of litchis and mangoes straight from the trees, play around under them, and then walk back home singing all the way. My mother, when I mentioned Mausi’s recollections, remembered cycling there in big groups and sometimes staying-over on the top floor of their Nana’s house there, clattering over the wooden floors.

And suddenly, it seems to me that Bahadur Shah Zafar and his family, just like the other residents of Delhi then, and my mausi and mother as children in Dehradun in the middle of the twentieth century, had essentially done the same things. Enjoyed the seasons, frolicked under trees in the company of family and friends, feasted on fruits. The Badshah and his family and the people of Delhi swinging under trees and sampling mangoes in orchards, are not so distant after all.

Growing up in cantonments, I am fortunate to have somewhat similar memories. My walk back home from school in Wellington in the Nilgiri hills, was enlivened by the simple device of choosing a different path back home everyday rather than simply following the road. Sometimes that meant sliding down stretches of a steep grassy slope, or getting momentarily lost amidst tall trees and shrubs, or climbing up a particularly challenging tree-trunk. But the one constant in all these different routes, was the eating of the blue-black lantana berries that grew profusely everywhere. We plucked and consumed these with single-minded concentration, berry-stained fingers and much delight, despite already having had two tiffin-breaks at school.

I have not gone back to Wellington, but the fact that it is a cantonment means there is a greater chance that it is still green and blessed with trees. Not so Delhi. Nor Dehradun — or indeed any part of the country. We can only visit them in memories and in drawings — such as the one Snehanshu made of the mango orchards that once surrounded his ancestral home in Birnagar in Nadia.

Mukherjee-Bari among Mango trees, Birnagar, Nadia, Bengal.
Sketch by Snehanshu Mukherjee

I remember the first real project I was more or less independently entrusted with, in the architectural studio I joined after graduating. It was a tiny building in Najibabad, a place I had not heard of till then, about five-six hours drive from Delhi. We needed to set out at five am to reach there by mid-morning, and then head back after checking work at site and a late lunch. 

It was always a tiring journey, but the distance and the discomfort of being cooped up for hours in the Ambassador taxis, was, at least for me, always mitigated by the mango orchards that bordered many of the narrow roads or lay beyond the fields on the way. As we sped past their dark stillness, with golden bars of sunlight slanting through their intensely green solidity, I would beguile myself with visions of lying there on a charpai, with a favourite book, nimbu-paani, mangoes, parathas. And the scent of the mango blossoms wafting in as we dozed or looked out into the dark on the way back, stayed with me long after we entered the noise and hard lights of the city close to midnight.

It seems strange to think that the number of years that separate today’s time from the days of my mausi’s and mother’s childhood, is half of that between their time and nineteenth-century Delhi. Yet the experiences between them are closer. We have come a long way away in the past few decades. And lost experiences that celebrated everyday life amidst the changing seasons. We have forgotten how much joy trees and gardens can give everyone, even the mere sight and scent of them. So we cut down trees, thousands of them — mango, neem, oak, jamun. And gouge out the earth to widen roads, make stadiums, offices, flyovers. Any excuse will do. What we need is many more trees, orchards and gardens, not manicured memorials, ministries or malls, but is anybody listening?

Trees cut and hillsides levelled in Rajaji National Park and Mohand, Dehradun, April 2022,
Photo: Treya Mukherjee

                                                               

1  Dilli ka Aakhiri Deedar, The Last Glimpse of Delhi, Syed Wazir Hasan Dehlvi, published 1934, Dilli Printing Press; this excerpt is from City of my Heart, p. 50-52, selected and translated by Rana Safvi, and published by Hachette India, 2018. A description of the Phoolwalo’n ki Sair is also included in Bazm-e-Aakhir, The Last Assembly, Munshi Faizuddin, first published in 1885, p.122-128, and included in the same collection of translations.

2  Ibid., p. 23

National and Regional Identity in Design: Part I

Part I- The Question of a Culture of Design

I had heard stories from Snehanshu of his spirited paternal grandmother. She came to Birnagar near Kolkata, from Kanpur in the early decades of the 20^th century as a young bride. The intricate purple, pink and gold Benarasi silk sari that was bought for her wedding, was given to me by my mother-in-law. As a 25 year old, new to Bengali customs and completely unused to wearing saris, I draped on the beautiful heirloom with some trepidation at my wedding reception.

My Grandmother-in-law's Wedding Benarasi Sari
(Purple silk worked in zari, probable date of manufacture: 1910 CE) 

Some of my mother’s saris, including the red Benarasi silk worked in silver thread that she chose as part of the wedding gifts my father’s family bought for her, have also come down to me. My mother was born in the mountains, much removed in space and time from the Kanpur of my grandmother-in-law’s childhood. She spent her girlhood in and around the Garhwal Himalayas in the 1950s and 60s, largely in a place described by a British officer in the 19^th century as ‘the beautiful valley of Deyra, luxuriant with many-tinted forests, and refreshed by the rippling little rivers, which, with as many arms as Briareus, run in a meandering course through the wide length of the vale, from the Ganges to the Jumna’.[1] Many of the Benarasis that formed part of my mother’s wedding trousseau, despite frequently jostling cheek-by-jowl in iron trunks with my father’s treasured whisky bottles across army cantonments all over the country, still retain their lustre and delicacy. Though it is only infrequently that I wear saris, I took the red Benarasi out recently to wear at our friends’ wedding reception.

My Mother, Aruna Shekhar's Sari: Detail of Aanchal and Main Body
(Red Benarasi Silk worked in zari, probable date of manufacture: 1965 CE)  

 What has all this got to do with design and regional and national identity? First, that in my subjective opinion, the design of the sari ensures that it is flattering to most women in the Indian sub-continent. It was the overwhelming mode of dress for Indian women, whether a Bengali brought up in North India, or a Pahari travelling all over the country. Secondly, the fact that the sari, even with its dwindling popularity, is an identifiable symbol of India. Which is why, so many of us, who may not wear saris on a regular basis, still fish them out on formal, celebratory occasions. Or why, professions or people who are involved with presenting India to the outside world, whether in the hotel industry or in the political arena, also often opt for the sari as a formal mode of wear. Thirdly, that different regions in India have different and recognisable patterns, weaves and motifs and even ways of tying the sari. The Benarasi, the Chanderi, the Sambalpuri, the Baluchari, the Dhakai – saris from different cities and regions of India, carry the names and ethos of their cities or regions with them, and conjure up specific variations on the theme.

So, the Benarasi sari, though evidently associated indelibly with a specific place in India, was a cherished possession in the plains of many parts of north and east India – as was the Patola or the Paithani sari in western India, and the Kanjeevaram in southern India – wherever the sari was the preferred mode of garment. And even in some of its mountainous regions, where the flared skirt or the lehnga was more practical and was also the traditional choice for wedding apparel, the Benarasi sari was still a significant part of special wear for many women. Attributes of saris from different areas also percolate down to a shared lexicon used to evoke certain textures, or types of pattern – even when not describing clothes, and sometimes in rather unexpected places. I was reading out to my daughter from a Hindi Science magazine. This was an article on the tailor-bird. Originally written in Marathi by an ornithologist, it describes the appearance of the tailor-bird thus: ‘its orange eyes, rusty head, set off by its green jacket – soft as Chanderi silk.’[2] The delicate Chanderi, a product of the town in Central India famous for its fine weaves, is still familiar to most people in India – from a little girl in a metropolis to an ornithologist who grew up in the Ghats of Western India.

The sari then is as much representative of a regional as it is of a national culture. This is not to disregard the fact that the sari is not worn all over India, even traditionally. The lehngas of Rajasthan, Kumaon and Kutch and the woven shifts of the Nagas are just some spectacular exceptions. Neither is the sari worn in the same way over different regions of India. What it does show is the preference in the Indian tradition, for an unstitched, woven, multi-purpose garment – despite the technology and the knowledge of stitching and sewing from very ancient times, evidenced by the archaeological finds of needles in many sites of the Harappan civilization. This predominance of a flexible, unstitched garment may also be seen in traditional men’s wear – in the form of the dhoti, the mundu, and the lungi, where depending on the fabric, the intricacy of weave and the style and variations of drape, it may be used for occasions varying from pujas to weddings to simply lounging around at home.

Even most traditional stitched garments in India, such as my personal favourite, the lehnga, offer this feature of flexibility and multiple use, though naturally not as much as the sari. My own wedding lehnga has been reused sufficiently, not just by me at festivals or marriages of friends, but also by a much taller cousin. One of the lehngas I treasure the most, is the one made in the early decades of the 20^th century for the marriage ceremony of my grandmother, who is of partly Kumaoni extraction. It has come to me via my mother, the only one of my Nani’s daughters to marry into a Kumaoni family.

The Silk Wedding Lehanga originally made for the wedding of my Nani, Basant Kumari Ghildiyal, nee Joshi
(probable date of manufacture: 1925 CE)

And I use my odhnis, duppattas and shawls – other unstitched garments, which the lehnga is conventionally teamed with – to protect my head, chest, ears and arms in the dry summers, the sudden monsoon squalls, and the blustery winters of Delhi. Like the sari, the lehnga can suit both casual and formal occasions; the waist can be drawn in or let out depending on how much you have eaten in the recent or distant past; it can be lent or handed down successfully without any alterations to people of different dimensions. In fact, as Rta Kapur Chisti, who has researched and written extensively on the saris of India, also demonstrates, some of the many ways in which the sari is worn, includes a form of draping and pleating which makes it function and appear like a lehnga![3]

Thus, most traditional saris, while being a perfect compound of not just obvious hallmarks of our regional and national identity, also reflect an individual identity that owes as much to each of their makers as to their users.[4] Even in the same region, there is variation depending on the material of the sari, different guilds and so on. In Banaras itself, the two main weaving traditions that still exist, have distinct and characteristic motifs. Yet, saris woven by different craftspeople in the same area, or even by the same craftsperson, even when they bear similar sorts of patterns, are never identical. How does this happen? Design, in its conventional meanings today, is limited to dictionary definitions, such as ‘to indicate, to draw, to contrive, to form a plan of, to set apart a plan or scheme formed in the mind’.[5] But, evidently the sari is a designed garment, and equally evidently, rarely is it made through elaborate drawings.

Detail of the Aanchal of my Grandmother-in-law's Wedding Benarasi Silk Sari

If the idea of luxury touted and sold today ‘still harks back to bespoke…not just ownership or consumption of an expensive object, but an enriching, individualizing, personal experience…which stays with the user for posterity’,[6] then in India, the idea of luxury has been accessible to rich and poor alike, for generations in the past, in the form and design of the sari. In fact, even as late as about three hundred years ago, Europeans visiting India, noted that there was not much difference between the dress of the poor and the rich, except that the clothes of the rich were perhaps cleaner.

Definitions by themselves, then, will not take us far, especially in the context of India. As Chaturvedi Badrinath notes in a discussion on the Mahabharata: ‘One characteristic of Indian thought has been that in the place of definitions of things, it asks for their attributes or lakshanas. That is because all definitions are arbitrary, whereas the lakshanas or the attributes, are what show a thing, through which a thing becomes manifest. Thus, not the ‘definition’ of truth, or of love, but the attributes of truth and love by which they are known is what is central.’[7] It may be worth our while then, to look for the lakshanas of Indian designs, in the context of their regional and national identity. Are there any obvious characteristics in form, or external treatment or any intangible features about designs made in India that render them recognizable as Indian?

One attribute of design historically and over a fairly wide area of the globe, and certainly in India, was a shared knowledge and appreciation of aesthetics informing the practitioner and the patron alike. N.J. Habraken in his writings on Thematic Design records and analyses experiences in different parts of the world, to explain how design practiced within a shared image and language allows the creation of cohesive yet varied and well-suited forms and details.[8] The presence of a shared image, and the engagement of the craftsperson as well as local resources in the production and development of artefacts, was a factor in most societies in the world – not merely in Indian society – before the onset of large-scale mechanisation. That also seems to make the sari a metaphor of universally and historically valued attributes.

However, notwithstanding such similarities in localization and customisation before industrialization, historical examples of Indian design, across various fields, show some elements that seem to be quite different from other traditions. One of these distinguishing elements of design in the Indian tradition seems to be the preference for attributes that offer flexibility and versatility, for multiple purposes and occasions. As well as of the strong streak of individual creativity that eschewed replication even while following conventions.[9] We find thus, in designs ranging from saris to cities, a high aesthetic sensibility and skill which ensure that, they are, in almost in every case, both beautiful and practical.

The Pink Cotton Benarasi Sari of my Mausi, Mohini Jayal 
(probable date of manufacture: 1960 CE) 

So, not just those of my mother and grandmother-in law, but the saris of a majority of women from their generations and before, are stunning pieces of craftsmanship and design. At a cousin’s wedding recently, my aunt brought out some of her old saris to see if any of us would like to wear them. One of them, a particularly beautiful pink cotton Banarasi, was her wedding sari. As we carefully handled its now fragile folds, we decided not to risk wearing it, till we could get someone skilled enough to add on a cotton lining to it. I instead photographed it in detail, and mailed the photos to her daughters in China and England, who had not been able to attend the wedding celebrations at short notice. I had forgotten, till my cousin in China reminded me, that years ago, while I was in college, I had been lent this very sari to wear at her sister’s wedding! My mausi’s sari linked three weddings in different decades in our extended families, and reawakened memories across two continents and three countries.

Such instances of a spirit of optimum efficiency, designed through creative improvisation within a cohesive whole, can be found in many indigenous folk and classical Indian traditions – music, theatre, architecture. But the sari perhaps is the best representative, and also practically the only living example, of this tradition. As Rta Kapur Chisti clarifies: ‘The sari allows us to go back at least a thousand years in design terms with variations in pattern, weave and structure between its inner and outer end-pieces and its two borders which provide drape, strength and weight while the body enhances the form of the sari or dhoti when it is worn.’[10] In most traditional saris, the decoration is part of the structure of the garment. The overall dimensions of the sari are more or less fixed, and the variations happen within a certain range of a fixed length and breadth. The design effort knits together and goes into spinning the material, composing the patterns and directly weaving them on the fabric. And once it is done, the same sari can fit different women of different sizes at different ages and different times of their lives. It can be bequeathed from generation to generation, and yet look different on each person, transforming itself by taking on the silhouette and the volume of the form it drapes. It is not tailored and sewn to fit one individual at one point of time in their life. The weavers and spinner’s skill and craft can be conserved and presented and displayed and worn for generations.

It is in this context that the sari can also be used as a distinguished example of the qualities that marked out much of Indian design in the past, which we can learn from and apply over a wide field.[11] Does formal Indian design in the hands of professionally designated designers exhibit these values of efficiency, multiple purposes, and customization exemplified in the sari? Do we still have a culture of design?

To explore these questions, read the next essay on The Question Of Identity:

National and Regional Identity in Design: Part II

---

[1] Captain Mundy, Journal of A Tour in India, Ch. IV, pp.174-5, ‘The Valley of Deyra’.

[2] Kiran Purandare, ‘Cheuhit’, p.17, translated from Marathi into Hindi by Aamod Karkahnis, as published in the Children’s Science Magazine in Hindi, Chakmak, June 2012; translated into English by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

[3] For a demonstration of the different ways of tying the sari, see Rta Kapur Chisti on TED:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbqqeNCfQIk

[4] For a brief and brilliant discussion on the sari, see ‘What is the Sari?’ By Ashoke Chatterjee, http://www.craftrevival.org/voiceDetails.asp?Code=218,

[5] The Chambers English Dictionary. The dictionary has more words under Indian, including Indian berry, Indian hemp, India rubber, Indian fig, Indian ink, India shawl, Indian gift, etc. There is nothing that is listed or distinguished as ‘Indian design’.

[6] Living, Issue 7, The Park Magazine, ‘Made to Measure’, p.03,

[7] Seminar April 2010 issue: The Enduring Epic, ‘Living with the Mahabharata’, p. 69

[8] ‘Sharing’, The Appearance of the Form, N.J. Habraken, Awater Press, Cambridge, USA, p. 13-17, pp. 23-34

[9]  Habib Tanvir’s explanation of how Sanskrit drama as well as the folk and classical traditions that succeeded it, is illuminating in this respect, p. 23, ‘My Milestones in Theatre, Habib Tanvir in Conversation’, Charandas Chor, Seagull Books 2004, Kolkata. Nageen, Habib Tanvir’s daughter, who continues to work with his theatre repertory, explains her father’s experience with scripting his plays and directing folk actors “Up to a point it’s important to leave the actor free. And in Indian art it’s important to let them improvise.” http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/living-theatre/article4724470.ece  

[10] ‘The Unstitched Garment’, Rta Kapur Chishti, http://www.india- seminar.com/2010/609/609_rta_kapur_chishti.htm

[11] See http://anishashekhar.blogspot.in/2009/02/most-magnificent-palace-in-east-red.html for a discussion on the tradition of designing multi-use and flexible architectural space, brought to perfection in the 17^th century palace-fortress built for the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.

Images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Plain Tales from Doon - Third Instalment

Some Further Exchanges Between Garhwalis and Kumaonis…Telephonic and Otherwise

My father, belying Onial Mausaji’s general pronouncements on the differences between the Kumaonis and the Garhwalis, fits in quite contentedly with the vagaries of the Ghyldiyals. His military training may have something to do with it. But it seems to me that his motto of “Quick march”, (without any attendant fear of where he is marching to!) is only partly due to his life in the army. For it seems to have been his creed even before he joined the NDA. As a fairly little boy, Papa was once on his way home with Bhawani Chacha - his slightly younger brother – when he spied a ladder-seesaw contraption. It was hanging from a tree, part of an obstacle course for training soldiers. Before Papa could finish his very natural investigations into its possibilities, Chacha’s hold gave way. From his position half-way up the swaying rope-ladder, Papa found himself whizzing through the sky. Landing a great distance away with a nasty cut over his bleeding lip, he needed the imperative attention of several surgical stitches. That, he explained disarmingly, was the reason for his attractive lop-sided smile.

Since, neither that experience nor others that followed have ever shaken Papa’s impatient fascination for the new and the curious, he continues to have varied and exciting experiences. His nonchalent optimism rivals and occasionally complements Mummy’s characteristic concern for cleanliness, to produce some interesting situations. One recurring object that he never ceases to tire experimenting with, is the cell phone. His cell-phones retire sooner rather than later under the pressure of his random punches or their outdated technology – depending on Mummy’s interpretation or his. While drawn to their mysterious charms, Papa resolutely refuses to take them seriously – or indeed take at all, whether on his daily walks or his round of golf. Conversely, when he is in the vicinity of his phone, it is generally switched off. So, the family knows better than to call him on his cell phone – which is just as well. He also changes the phone companies he patronises, adding greatly to the custom and confidence of salespersons.

Once, we all went to visit Deepa Chachi - Bhawani Chacha’s wife - after her knee replacement surgery. She was at my cousins’ house, 25 kilometers away from ours, a fair distance in the NCR. We all sat without worrying, since my father, as the more frequent visitor to that house, had assured us that he would direct us. As we neared our destination, he casually said that he did not know the house number, but that was all right. He remembered the route perfectly.

After we had circled the colony a couple of times, Snehanshu at the wheel tersely requested that we call up my cousins’ so that we could check the sign-boards announcing the house numbers. Mummy dug out Papa’s phone from her handbag and handed it to him in the front passenger seat. A couple of hasty tries later, Papa declared there was no answer. Luckily, I had in the meantime, managed to get through from my phone. We drove up, amidst my parents’ animated discussion on the proper way to use cell-phones and directions.

Halfway home in the evening, at the conclusion of an afternoon of much conversation, tea and dosas, Papa suddenly enquired, “Aruna, have you got my phone?”

“No,” answered my mother. “You took it from me just before we reached. Remember when you tried to call - but couldn’t - for directions to the house? What did you do with it?”

“I kept it in my pocket…and then on the table next to where I was sitting. I thought you would have picked it up,” remarked Papa in an imperceptibly aggrieved tone. “Never mind if you didn’t. It is safe enough there.”

After a minute, he added “Just call and check. It is there of course, but just let them know”.

I called again. My cousin Vimal, promised to look for it. He found it almost immediately, reposing quietly on the table, and asked if he should come down to give it to us. We were nearly at Noida, and considering my father’s frequency of using the phone, I firmly declined to let him come so far on a smoggy winter’s evening. Anyway, as Papa reminded us, Bhawani Chacha was going back to DehraDun in a few days time. He could carry it there with him, from where Papa could easily collect it since he was planning to visit DehraDun as well.

We all agreed that this was the best thing to do. Almost immediately, he thought of another idea. Arvind Bhai, Papa’s sister’s son, who also lived in Noida, was planning to visit Deepa Chachi the next day. “Arvind can get it back. He is just a few kilometers away and we can arrange to pick it up.”

I duly called up both sets of cousins to inform them of the handing and taking over of the bag. “You can switch off the phone,” I told Vimal. “No, I’ll keep it on – that way Tauji will have a record of his missed calls.”

“Don’t bother”, I told him. “He doesn’t”.

He obviously did not believe me. In due course, the phone came back, still switched on, just in time for my parents’ forthcoming visit to Dehra Dun. I advised my father to keep it handy, and answer phones, to enable coordination of station-dropping and picking. “Don’t worry, I have it with me,” he said brightly. “Yes, the charger too.”

I finally tracked my elusive parents in one of the numerous houses at Dehra Dun the next day, after many phone calls to the houses of aunts and uncles from where they had just left or were just expected to reach. “Why don’t you switch on your phone,” I demanded, justly irritated. “Oh you know, the battery had drained off, and I found the charger I was carrying did not fit,” was the equable answer.

Two days later, we arrived at DehraDun as planned. “Of course, I don’t really need it now that you all are here and we will travel back together,” Papa said, after he had thanked us profusely for restoring his charger to him, retrieved from its hideout inside the cabinet in his study. “Your mother, as usual, must have tidied it away - you know she can’t bear to see anything lying around”.

“Indeed? You must have got mixed up with the charger of one of those innumerable phones that you persist in buying.” Mummy countered.

And they steadfastly stuck to their individual explanations.

© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

More Plain Tales from Doon

The enumeration of the eccentricities of the Ghyldiyals was received rather enthusiastically by those in the family who were ‘half-and half’. Most of the full-blooded Garhwalis reacted by a studied silence or by retrieving superior anecdotes from their own store of tales worth telling. My father, from his Kumaoni vantage point of an objective onlooker, was the most appreciative.

“But you haven’t written about our Ghyldiyal”? he encouraged hopefully.

Our Ghyldiyal, is of course my mother, Aruna - or ‘Urhna’ as she complained her mother-in-law, my Dadi, insisted on calling her. The youngest of Nani’s three daughters, the family traits are not immediately apparent in Mummy. Her brief and acute comments bear little resemblance to Saroj Mausi’s detailed drifts from corruption to Chaucer. Or to Guni Mausi’s enigmatic utterances, darting between gardening lore, unusual recipes, child-rearing, and much else. Mummy’s adamant adherence to a clockwork schedule, come rain or shine, is also rather different from the untrammeled space and time-cycles of her elder sisters.

It takes the privilege of proximity to realize that in Mummy, the Ghyldiyal connection manifests itself more in deed, rather than in word (though she has not entirely escaped the particular family feat of carrying on a conversation quite independent of the listener’s response). Having apparently inherited all her seven siblings’ share of my grandmother’s legendary order and neatness, as well as the clan’s ‘do-it-yourself’ motto, she is akin to an extraordinarily efficient whirlwind. You have only to say something. Like Maggi Noodles, Mummy has already done it in what seems like 2 minutes. You need not say it either - and she will still have done it.

“Chotti didi bahut jaldi karti hain”, Nani spluttered with laughter as she remembered the resigned comment of a harassed family servant in her father’s house years ago. My mother, all of perhaps nine years old, had passed through the room on her way out to play. With an already characteristic quickness of eye and hand, in the short interval that the servant returned with some matching thread, she had tidied away the special buttons lying around, destined for the coat of Pandit Haridutt Shastri. This was Nani’s father, the head of the household, the Rajguru of Tehri Garhwal, and from all accounts a stately and stern personage. Then with a useful ‘out of sight-out of mind’ philosophy, she forgot where she had put them, or even that she had put them away.

Mummy’s energetic efforts at ensuring neatness in her neighbourhood often leave me at a loss too. Within the space of the half-hour that it takes me to pick up my daughter from school, I return to a sparkling and unfamiliar kitchen bereft of its usual merry mix of organic dals, herbal teas, powdered orange-peels, and dried neem leaves. Mummy - instead of reading the many interesting books that I have pointed out for her edification and entertainment, or admiring the squirrels on my terrace – has been ‘clearing up’. The empty bottles and jars which jam my cupboards (owing to my reluctance to add them to the garbage heap, and my ambition of someday using them to make interesting ‘bottle-walls’) are now suitably stuffed with useful things – or packed outside to be thrown. The kitchen is wonderfully clean, but it takes me rather longer than usual to find what I need. And since our notions of necessities don’t really match, where and when I find them is often a surprise.

Such as the one I got on a damp morning several years ago. My brother and I were about to resume our progress on Delhi’s roads, after unsuccessfully sheltering under a bougainvilla bush during a brief burst of rain. It took me an instant to realize the identity of the blue bundle, with which Vivek was briskly mopping up the seat of his mud-spattered motor-cycle. By then, it was too late. Dust and grease stains had joined together to render my much cherished T-Shirt emblazoned with the memories of NASA – National Association of Students of Architecture - unfit for wear. Which, it always had been, according to my disdainful parent. I feebly drew attention to it, whereupon Vivek turned surprised. “Oh is it something you use? Mummy gave it to me to clean my bike.”

I therefore, like the rest of her family, regard my mother’s skills with admiration tinged with trepidation. One of her self-imposed tasks is to bring some order into her busy sisters’ houses whenever she is visiting Dehradun. The methods she uses to transform an untidy room into a marvel of neatness at lightning speed, are direct but effective. The results are a bit like a conjuring trick. She simply bundles unsightly things into bags, under beds, and inside cupboards. From where, as my cousin Manishi giggles, they roll out when least expected.

Naturally enough, it is in combination with her sisters that Mummy manages to make most of her memorable moves. As on a visit to DehraDun a summer ago. We were at Saroj Mausi’s digesting a lunch of delicious Garhwali dishes accompanied by her quintessential turns of speech. It was then that Guni Mausi called up in a state. She could not find her phone anywhere – either in her own house or in the one across the lichi trees where Nani stayed with my younger uncle’s family. Had any of us seen it? We diligently scoured Saroj Mausis’s overflowing house to no avail. Sometime later I heard a low buzzing in the background. Recollecting my frustration at getting through to Saroj Mausi on the phone, I firmly directed her attention to it. But, both hers and Onial Mausaji’s phones were lying decorously silent on the table.

“It is coming from Sarojdi’s bag,” observed Mummy. We fished out Mausi’s black capacious bag, which she contrives to fill, like Mary Poppins, with an array of surprising articles. After some delving, we discovered a phone, ringing insistently. A visibly astonished Saroj Mausi, expressing wonder at this Mystery of a Strange Phone, tentatively answered it. “Hallo? Who??”

Audibly excited tones carried to us. “Your phone?”, said Saroj Mausi. “But how did it come inside my bag?”

Almost immediately, an indignant Guni Mausi arrived in person down the two short lanes and little length of road that separated her house and Saroj Mausi’s. “Everyone knows how absent-minded you are - but to put my phone in your bag and to not remember it even when I ask whether you’ve seen it, is really the limit”!

They were still trying to reach a satisfactory explanation, when Mummy who had been exclaiming with us over the discovery, was struck by a possibility.

“Sarojdi, I put a phone inside your bag in Guni’s house. I spotted it on the divan when I was tidying up at the time that the maid was sweeping the floor.” she explained.

“Since you say it isn’t yours,” she added wisely, “then it must have been Guni’s.”

“Though really, I did not expect Guni to be as careless as you.” By the time her sisters could collect their answers and their bags, Mummy was on her way out of the room, pausing to point out thoughtfully in passing - “Just as well that I kept it away safely. What if the poor maid had been tempted to take it?”

Images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji