Basant
Kumari Ghildiyal
29
July 1918 - 10 February 2016
Twenty
Ninth July 2018 would have been Nani’s hundredth birthday. She passed away a
year and a half ago. ‘Almost a century’ is a long time, but till the last few
years of her life, Nani was mentally as sharp as ever, and physically as active
as she could be.
Perhaps
this was because she was a woman of few words for most of her life, and
concentrated her energy on doing
things rather than speaking about them. That did not mean that she couldn’t
express herself with vigour or volume!
I
remember a winter that she spent with us in Janakpuri in Delhi. We’d always
stayed in cantonments, and it was daunting for my mother to be transplanted to a
civilian colony in a new city, with two school-going children—and in a house
that had a reputation for being broken into. Nani, sallied forth to bear us
company in this strangely designed dwelling. The living room (in the front) and
the bedrooms (at the back) were separated by a tiny courtyard, with an open
invitation to potential burglars in the form of a ridiculously low wall next to
an un-built plot. One night, we were woken up by loud clanging sounds from the
backyard. My mother, my brother and I were petrified into silence, but Nani immediately
let out a resounding bellow: “Nar Bahadur, Khukri
nikalo’! This was followed by some blood-curdling yells and thumps from
above, barely recognisable as emanating from Nar Bahadur, our batman, who slept
on the terrace. He leapt around to the accompaniment of Gorkha war-cries, till
we were convinced that any burglar would have probably collapsed of heart failure.
We
never found out if the intruder was a stray cat or a cat-burglar. Nani’s vocal
chords and her presence of mind, were reassurance enough for us to face the
prospect of any such future incident, and we stayed there with equanimity till
we were finally assigned accommodation in the Delhi Cantonment.
In
fact, her regal and fearless presence made one forget how physically diminutive
Nani was. I’ve wondered how she would have looked alongside my grandfather, who
I’d heard was unusually tall. He passed away when his own children were very
young, and for all of us, it was Nani who was the undisputed head of the
household. She always wore white and light-coloured cotton or silk sarees,
though some of my mother’s cousins would talk of how she was wont to be clad in
chiffons and pearls during my grandfather’s time. After she was widowed, she brought
up seven children, finished her graduation and post-graduation, taught Hindi
and Sanskrit at St. Thomas’s High School, managed the Bhubaneshwari Devi Trust
instituted by her father, Pandit Haridutt Shastri, and did much more. All this
I gleaned from elsewhere, since she was never one to dwell on her work or her
troubles.
When we were very young, it was in the summer
holidays that we spent time with her and the rest of our uncles, aunts and
cousins in the house they lived in at Dehra Dun. A game that we played with our
cousins unfailingly every night was hide-and-seek in a dark room. Nani was
apprehensive that someone would get hurt, and would repeatedly tell us not to
play ‘Dark Room’, explaining why we shouldn’t do so. We’d nod in unison, but
find it impossible not to resume the game as soon as she left us to go to
another part of the house. Back she’d come to check after a little while, and
again firmly switch on the lights, tell us to play something else, and explain why
we must do so. This routine would go on practically every night that we were
there, and I don’t remember that she ever lost her temper at us or raised her
voice at us, reputed as she was to be a disciplinarian. It was always with a
hint of disbelief that I received news of this reputation of hers, such as the
time at an army dinner at Jaislamer, when a young officer introduced himself to
her, recalling his awe of her as a student at St. Thomas.
Achieving
the difficult balance of being firm without being fearsome, she also combined her
great sense of responsibility and independence with a love for travel. So, just
as she came to us when were living alone in Delhi, she would go to any of her
children wherever they were, even after they were grown up, if she felt they
needed her. She told me how she refused to budge from the gate of Scindia
Girls’ School in Gwalior, where she had rushed to, on hearing that her eldest
daughter, there on her first teaching assignment, had developed stomach ulcers.
The guards, who initially did not agree to let her in without a valid entry
pass, had to capitulate and the management did not merely allow her to meet mausi,
but let her stay on to look after her!
Later,
when she came visiting my parents on their postings all over the country, it
was in Nani’s company that I visited many spectacular places, since my parents
were generally busy with official duties. One memory that is etched in my mind
is of both of us at a magnificent evening arati
composed entirely of bells and drums, one glorious sunset in a temple atop
Chittorgarh Fort. In her later years, she was happiest when I would ask her
about the town of Tehri, which she left as a small child of ten. She would
speak of the Shivalaya near the house of her father, the Rajguru of the Tehri
King; of her haughty eldest Bua, used to routinely entering the King’s palace
with its many courtyards reached through ramps; of the Ghanta–ghar, the tall
clock tower below the palace; of the Ganga flowing at the foot of the town,
where she was taken to bathe; of the animal-sacrifices on Durga puja which were
stopped by Manmantji; of the goddess fashioned in mud and laden with jewels given
by women devotees; of the seven-pulse sprouted prashad. Those days, she said,
now seemed like a dream.
Nani
saw many generations of her family pass away and a world that, as she said,
slipped away like a dream. But, that only rarely made her depressed or
despondent. She was a remarkable lady. Eager, curious and interested, she would
not just quote Sanskrit shlokas to me
in telephone conversations, but often fill me in on current affairs and news of
the world. She saw much in her long life, and combined a host of distinctive qualities
in her person. She passed these on, in some measure, to her children and
grandchildren. Though none of us can claim to have even a fraction of her
indomitable will, we are fortunate enough to have shared in Nani’s life. And one
of her great-grandchildren is fortunate enough to share her birthday, giving us
one more reason to celebrate and remember Nani on her hundredth birthday.
