हिंदी लिखने की आदत डालनी होगी यदि इसे इस भाषा में कहना होगा. असल में मेरी आदत तो कागज़ कलम से ही लिखने की है पर अब लिखाई इतनी विकृत हो गयी है कि लोग शिकायत करने लगे हैं . सुना है की हाथ से लिखने में ब्रेन का अलग भाग सक्रिय होता है और कंप्यूटर से द्सरा. 

थान्क्स्गिविंग का दिन अच बीता. राहुल और मिथ्रास के साथ न्यू यॉर्क में. बहुत खाया, पिया,  बाटें की. इस सब की आदत नहीं रही.

Another Thanksgiving. Another year. Gathering of the clan, festivities, laughter.

What did I know of cooking a turkey?

Yet I adopted the American custom with enthusiasm. A vegetarian and a novice at cooking, I remained undaunted. That first year I had an old TV  which I bought for $45. I was fascinated by Julia Child and watched her  shows on PBS, specially her turkey cooking.

 The McCall magazine in those days had a section every month titled " the bride cooks… "

I took out the page,' The bride cooks Turkey 'and with the visuals from Julia Child and technical help from the magazine I became adept at cooking turkey. For years I invited friends, foreign students and people who had nowhere to go, I set a beautiful table, with Ittala glasses and Arabia porceline. Good friend Faith and Niels were always included, Faith made her mother’s sweet candied potatoes, I made turkey, fancy stuffing a la McCall, my husband made mashed potatoes and later pecan pie. Often there were guests, once the Pathak family came for Holidays and we had turkey.

This tradition stopped because years passed, friends died or moved away. My last Thanksgiving I had invited a Dutch colleague who is a professor of history and a friend who taught Folklore and his Dutch wife. Obviously the Dutch wife had some reservations, she didn’t know what to expect from an Indian hostsess. She came reluctantly, with bad grace and spent the whole evening talking  to my Dutch colleague, totally ignoring me,  the other guests and even her husband. It was obvious that she thought me below her level.  I felt snubbed and insulted.

 No more Thanksgiving at my home.  I began to fly to Boston every Thanksgiving where my husband cooked turkey and made pecan pie. By that time two grandnephews had moved to USA and they both joined us, one flew from Stanford, the other drove from New York.  In a beautiful condo at Harvard campus, Thanksgiving became a small, festive family gathering.  The high point for me was  to go to the Black Friday sale at Filene's Basement. I came home bruised and with unnecessary stuff but it was fun and a ritual.

Two years ago I ordered readymade Thanksgiving dinner for four from Whole Food and we had a very nice, quiet time together. That was my husband’s last Thankgsgiving.

As the big day rolls around I sit alone in dark Wisconsin evening, forgotten  by friends . But I remember all the festivities, parties, laughter this house has seen. I am thankful for it.

Young men and women died early in the past century. Rabindranath Tagore’s stories are full of the suffering and deprivation the young women suffered. In my family the young girls died young also. They were married young, lived a restricted and un healthy lives with the in-laws and died of tuberculosis, childbirth  and many other undiagnosed diseases. My father’s three uncles had lost their young wives and remarried. Their daughters were married young and died. My Munni Bua and janaki Bua were child widows. Munni Bua was lucky to have her sister’s son look after her but Janaki Bua suffered a lot. Her husband’s nephew mistreated her all her life. She visited her extended family when she could not take it anymore but she had to go back to her brother-in-law and his children ultimately. As a young teenager, I understood her pain and felt anguished but by the time when I could have helped her she had died. Besides she would not have taken my help, I was a niece, a woman. You only took help and money from men in the family. Teasingly I told her I was as good as her nephew, but she was not convinced.

Bitti Bua, my father’s only sister died after she gave birth to a  stillborn son.She fell into a deep depression and the family declared her to be mad. She died soon after and her husband remarried. Punni Bua was also married young, she developed tuberculosis but her strict in-laws would not have her treated. She also died. Another Munni Bua died in childbirth and her husband remarried.

The family did not talk about how these women died, it was the way of life.  Once I asked my mother how Punni Bua died. She told me that her in-laws were very strict and even when she became ill, they made her take cold baths in the morning and do all household chores, grinding lentils, cooking. I didn’t ask why her father didn’t bring her back. That was a moot question. You were married and you had to go through what life dealt you. Besides her own mother had died and her father had married a very young and rather simple woman who was busy having children of her own. The family had fulfilled its responsibility by marrying her off and the rest was her destiny. Punni Bua could not come back. She had to live out her tortured life. From my mother’s account she was the livelier sister amongst Nanni and Banni As a young girl, she was full of mischief. She also loved reading Hindi novels of her time. The girls were banned to read novels because they were bad influence on young minds. My own grandmother  Parvati,would sit in the courtyard and ask Punni to read the Hindi newspaper aloud to her. When my grandmother dozed off, Punni would start reading from her current book, BhootNath. Grandmother would wake up and say, “ Why did you stop reading? Continue.”

Punni Bua would read aloud the portion of Bhootnath and after a while my grandmother would say in wonder. ‘ What kind of news is this? These newspapermen, what stories they print.” All the other women would double up with laughter. My grandmother never found out the truth.

Much later when I read these early novels by Devakinandan Khatri I remembered the story about Punni Bua. I felt an affinity with that long gone relative.

It is my guess that once my Nanaji died my Nani’s position slipped in the family. She became dependent on her eldest son. I think she must have always been a quiet person. She lived confined to her windowless small room and rarely came out to join the family. I had never seen her participating in the family conversation or be a part of it. Every year my Uncle would take a piece of jewelry from her because according to him, there was never any money to pay lagaan on the landed property.  One year it was my grandfather’s fat gold chain ,another year his multi colored precious gems armband. My mother never said this to anyone but she believed that it was a ploy on the part of my Aunt to take possession of my Nani’s leftover jewelry, because Mother saw her father’s fat gold chain years later in my Aunt’s jewelrybox. She mentioned it to me. But at twelve or thirteen years of age, this family lore was of no interest to me. It mattered to my Mother. She reminisced how she remembered her father with his arm band and fat gold chain.

But she kept quiet. It was not her habit to be confrontational.

When I look back at the lives of women in my family I find that somethings have changed  dramtically and somethings have remained the same. The third and fourth generation girls have empowered themselves, directed and changed the course of their lives. But most of my cousins and others chose to follow the conventions. That was the thing to do even though they all had education but thought that after education comes marriage then ghargrihasti and children and all the obligations of life. My mother and two aunts were educated at home, but my Nani? I don’t know. But I think she cknew how to read. And probably write. I didn’t know my Father’s mother. Parvati.  The family stressed higher education for men but the girls were home schooled .  My dadi seemed very dictatorial while Nani was quiet and gentle.  Dadi seemed very traditional and harsh. My mother never talked ill of anyone. I know she had to have her veil long after her children were born. She was so unfamiliar with the house and neighborhood that once when all the women went up to the terrace to look at one of the Bua’s barat, my mother didn’t know where the stairs were to go upstairs. She told me with a laugh,” There I was, stumbling around in my long ghoonghat.”

My Nanaji, his name was , I think, Ram Ghulam Hajela and his younger brother was Shiv Ghulam.  But I may be wrotng. There is no one left to correct me. Nanaji was a big zamindaar in Farrukhabad district and owned many villages near Talgram where he had his ancestral home. His first wife could not have children, so he married another woman, my Nani, I used to remember her name but it has disappeared from my memory now. My mother and aunt called her Jiya= Mother and later no one remembered her name, she became Jiya, an old fixture in her sons’s home.s In her old age she spent most of her time wrapped up in a gatThari like veil and did her Radhasoami worship. She barely spoke and had no say in anything. That is how I remember in the last period of her life in Hardwar.

But I remember from before, when she lived with her eldest son Har Ghulam Hajela and his family in a big and spooky house in Nai Sarak, Kanpur. Mamaji wrote Har Ghulam Hajela Raees after his name. His drawing room had my father’s  sofa set that my mother had given him after my father’s death. My mother and myself were living in Parade, closeby. My mother liked to visit Mamaji almost every week, mostly to spend time with Nani. I don’t know what they talked about, because I had discovered a big stash of Chandrakanta Santati  and stuck to it like a bee in honey or as it is said in Hindi, like an ant in jaggery, gur meN cheeNta.

Mother had talked about her childhood.  She had a good memory and a knack for story telling. One of her ancestor, several generation ago was a handsome and cultured and educated man. He also was fond of good living and blew his fortune in the pursuits of various pleasures. He moved to central India where he got a job as a Mashalchi, people who held mashaals in courts for light. Once, as the story goes, told to me by my mother, the Nawab was holding his court and Mashalchi, my mother’s ancestor along with tothers, were holding the light. The document was in Persian, the Nawab could not read one difficult word, nor could his Vazeer, but unconsciously the word slipped out of Mashalchi’s mouth. There was amazement all around. He was promoted and later became  Begum’s favorite. After Nawab died, he set for home, carrying his fortune loaded on 13 camels. Or were they 35, or 57? But in family folklore it did not matter. The sum total was that much of my Nani’s and Nana’s jewelry was inherited from that ancestor , containg precious gems and exquisite artisanship. I myself remember Tirwa Bhabhi’s necklace, a beautiful piece in traditional kundan syle, which she received from my Nani.

My mother remembered every piece of jewelry her family women owned. She also remembered what her younger sister-in-law Prabhavati brought in her marriage. She would tell in detail but never interested in this stuff I didn’t pay attention. More about Prabhavati’s jewelry later.

My aunt Shakuntala was married in to a very prosperous and well known family, but my Nanaji had set his heart on having a highly educated son-in-law for his younger daughter-my mother. There appears my father. A handsome young man, the only son of a Lawyer’s Clerk in Agra, he had done his BA and was in the final year of law. By that time my mother had turned 15 and my Nani had kept her practically a prisoner in purda because the marriageably age for the girls in the family was past. If my Mother came out in front of visiting family members, they would say, Oh ,my such big girl and yet unmarried. Nani was much humiliated but no one could say anything to Nanaji.  Finally the engagement took place. My Chhote Mamaji, known by the popular nickname,Barrister, my mother’s younger brother, came back from the engagement. Women of the family asked what the bridegroom looked like and he started saying,” He is very dark. BaRaa kaala hai” and so the teasing went on. I asked my mother about her feeling of being married to a very dark man. She  ansaid, “ What could I do? That was my father’s decision.”

 Then she smiled and said, “ Barrister was just words. Your father was not dark at all and very handsome.”

Only my eldest sister Kamla remembered out father. As I write this now it occurs to me that I should have asked her what my father looked like. But it never did. Kamla was 12 when he died. Kamini four or five and I was just a baby.

What a big change had taken place in  the course of one generation,.Kamla had met and known her future husband, Kamini’s was a love marriage and so was mine. My mother had no choice but to accept what her father desired and my nani’s sole function was to bear children. She successfully fulfilled her purpose, giving birth to two sons and two daughters. A  nicely balanced family. I wonder if she had not been able to have children or had only daughters, would my Nanaji taken a third wife? Probably.

ToBe Continued this family saga.

BLOG Nov 18
I got offline from FACEBOOK.
Got tired of false news, whiners, meaningless comments and selfserving intellectuals.
Most of them are busy in promoting themselves. I wonder when they get quiet time to sit, think and create.
It was not so in my elders. There were no awards, big/or small. No one ran around for recognition. I grew up seeing Mahadevi Verma, Sumitranandan Pant, Firaq Gorakhpuri.
Mahadevi ji rarely went out, and when she did , she carried a pool of silent reflection with her. I found Pantji often walking in his little garden and humming a tune. Firaq’s life was also very alone. But they all created first rate poetry. I could not dare to think of being a poet. The bar was very high.
When I read contemporary English poetry I am often baffled. When I read contemporary Hindi poetry I say to myself, Hey, I could write like that. But I don’t even try. Writing fiction and thinking constantly about my characters takes all my time. I remember asking Ageya ji longtime ago, When and how do you write?
I am bigtime admirer of Agyeya ji. I still read and reread his writing. You will find a book by Agyeya at my night table, as well as the latest fiction in English. I don’t read trendy things. Though just finished reading Paul Kalanithi’s ‘when breath becomes air” his discovery of 4th stage lung cancer and subsequent death at age 36. He was just completing his residency in neuroscience at Stanford. Right after that I read Erick Jong’s Fear of Dying. Just like Lily/Yaman finds solace at the ghat of Varanasi, Erica Jong’s central character finds peace in imaginary caves in Goa. But I wrote mine first. Besides very few people read what is my latest in Hindi.
So at my question Agyeya ji laughed and said, I prepare to write for eleven months and then write  in the 12th. I knew how true it was and is. Unless you churn it over and over  you cannot create anything worthwhile. It takes me years of thinking, weaving the plots, creating the character before the final draft. And then , that’s it. I never revise or edit. It comes on paper in the final form. True of Pachpan Khambe  to Nadi.
Rajendra Yadav used to be bothered by it.  He often said,”You just send the final draft , which is your first draft, for publishing”. That is true, so much editing is done already before I sit down to write. Nirmal (Verma) was also very secretive about his writing. When he was in US with Gagan and I was also in Boston , on medical leave for a broken ankle, Nirmal wrote during the day and we met sometimes in the evening, at our place or theirs. I always pestered him, “Nirmal, tum kya likh rahe ho?”
He would smile, look into his glass of cognac and say nothing.  Once he said, “ ab meri shadi ho gayi hai, mujhe aap kaha karo.” I knew it was a joke. The ties of  our unique friendship were so deep that my tongue refused to say aap to him. His death came as a big personal loss to me. Bhishamji and Nirmal were my very special friends.
Someday I will write about my writer friends' wives. I will become very unpopular.

After Election

It was devastating, to say the least. It confirmed my belief that an average, non-college educated, white American male doesn't see anything wrong in demeaning women, groping them, humiliating them, taking away their control of their bodies. Nothing wrong cheating on your first wife, installing your mistress in the same hotel and then dumping the mistress as well and going for an insipid model. What a contrast from Hillary and Michelle Obama as Flotus.
But a smile came to me when I saw the antics of my resident squirrel, first jumping high on the bird feeder and then going for blueberry muffin. While reading NY TImes I laughed when I saw that the squirrel was spitting out blueberries and eating the rest.