The secular Sanghi

On this day in 1997, Vishnu Shahani died. His widow, Rita Shahani, would write:

He had not been ill. There was no warning. No intimation. There was no goodbye. When I woke up that morning, he was gone. 

Years later, I worked with Rita to bring out an English translation of the (Sindhi) book she wrote after Vishnu’s death. As we got the book ready for press, Rita died. It was a shock. Her daughter, my dear friend Madhavi Kapur, launched the book a few days later on 23 November 2013, a tribute to both her parents Rita and Vishnu.

Tragically, less than six months ago, we lost Madhavi too. For many of us, the pain of that loss will always remain.  

Madhavi resembled her father Vishnu in many ways, specifically in her strong principles and commitment to social welfare. At the core of Vishnu’s identity was his commitment to Hinduism. Today the Rashtriya Seva Sangh (RSS) is perceived as a fundamentalist organization: inflexible, chauvinistic and with a capacity for violence. Vishnu, a dedicated Sanghi, was open, caring and devoted only to truth and the betterment of humankind. 

While Madhavi’s biggest contribution is in education and she is remembered with love and gratitude by her thousands of pupils, she is also well known for her unwavering stand towards secularism in India. On one occasion, she took a Pune housing society to court because they refused to accept a Muslim neighbour. She won the case, the Muslim family moved in to the building - and very soon they were accepted by their neighbours and integrated.

Thinking about Madhavi today, I wanted to do something that would have made her happy. So I uploaded Rita's book and you can click on Tales from Yerwada Jail to read it if you want. 

Tales from Yerwada Jail

At bedtime every night, Vishnu Shahani’s two young children refuse to sleep until he tells them a story from his time in jail. Vishnu’s stories embody a spirit of adventure, and the youthful excitement of overcoming a powerful and oppressive enemy. He speaks of personal involvement in the Indian freedom struggle, without a trace of complaint against the hardship he faced.
After Vishnu’s death, his widow, Rita, interviews others to get a fuller picture. She finds that the perception of each participant in the family’s history varies slightly. She pieces the versions together, allowing the differing interpretations to coexist.
Time has moved on, and while Indian democracy has survived, memories of the movement for freedom against Imperial rule have receded. The names of Gandhi, Nehru and just a few others, are remembered. Through the story of the Shahani family, this book honours the struggle and sacrifice of thousands of ordinary families in the 1940s.
Tales from Yerwada Jail also tells of the little-known contribution of the Sindhis to Independence, and their struggle to find livelihood and new homes after Partition.

No thank you, nothing for me

So a few days ago, I happened to be walking down New Bond Street. Posh shops with people standing outside saying, ‘Try this! Try this!’ and handing out free cosmetics. I kept going and the chant continued, ‘Try this! Try this!’ After walking a bit I started replying, ‘No thank you. No thank you. No thank you.’ One guy said, “Try it! It’s free!!” I said ‘No thank you.’ He said, ‘Are you sure? Take it!’ I said, ‘No thank you.’ He said, ‘Ok, what do you use?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ He replied, in alarm, ‘Nothing! WHY?’ So I was thinking, why do I use nothing? Why? Why? And I told him, ‘Because I’m a Buddhist!’ No sooner had the words left my lips than I was stricken with utmost guilt! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, what would my dear departed mother have felt to hear that! What a betrayal of her patriotic Hinduism!! We don’t believe in the caste system. We believe everyone is equal. But we’re Hindus! Yes, we’re Hindus! We don’t do sati. We’re fine with widow remarriage! My parents actually did ‘kanyadaan’ TWICE for me!!! And my dad’s final cremation rites were done by his daughter (me)!! But we’re Hindus. We never go to the temple – ever, ever. Actually, we do go - but only as tourists. All our worship is done at home, in private. Often in secret. But we’re Hindus! We don’t do pooja – ok, once a year, on Diwali! But we’re HINDUS. We don’t call it ‘karma’, we call it Newton’s Third Law of Motion (each and every action has an equal and opposite reaction). Still, we’re Hindus. All this was going on in my mind and the man said, ‘Ohhhh!’ and he bowed low and said, ‘have a nice day!'

Biscuits II

and now, my daughter is visiting from Kolkata.
Someone from her office just phoned:

Kya, Poona gayi?
Bataya nahin!
Kya baat hai!
Koi suspense hai, kya?
Biscuit lana, ok!

Ode to a Bakery

So the other day I wanted some biscuits

Not just ordinary biscuits, mind

The biscuits I was craving

Had got to be light and crisp

Oozing with butter

Packed into square boxes

Immediately after they had cooled

Straight from the oven.

But it was morning!

What to do?

I was craving them –

And so were all my Bombay friends!

So I had to buy not one box but a dozen!

I phoned City Bakery

(Which opens for retail sale on weekday afternoons)

“Yes, you can come,” said Salamat Irani.

I rang the bell, he opened the door, I entered.

The door stayed open, just a sliver, behind me.

An elderly gentleman eased his way in,

Opening the door slightly more.

Two fat ladies entered

Chatting away animatedly

About the last dentist appointment

While they waited their turn.

A group of children came in

Then someone’s driver

Soon there was a big crowd waiting.

They had appeared mysteriously

Gravitated to the open City Bakery door

(Which stays closed all morning, every day)

Like ants when you drop a few grains of sugar.

Patient but eager,

They waited for their biscuits,

While my boxes got filled.

Happy Birthday - in Slovenian

The restaurant was noisy with a group of students. Their teachers sat together at one table. All of us were enjoying the delicious Greek food. At first I thought they must be American but soon realised they weren’t speaking English – except to the waiter, another surprise. The students finished and trickled out and the teachers stayed on, finishing their wine and enjoying their dessert. I just had to know where they were from so got up and asked them and was intrigued to learn they were from Slovenia. Never met anyone from Slovenia before. I said we were going to Meteora tomorrow and they said, “Oh that’s a long drive, nearly three hours!” When I told them that for people who live in Pune, a three-hour drive is something you’re quite used to, they said if they got in a bus in three hours they would be at the other end of their country.
Well, the baklava came in with a candle and they stood up and sang Happy Birthday Dear Ajay – in Slovenian! It was wonderful, but I pressed the wrong button so it didn’t get recorded. Everyone came to wish him, including the manager’s cute little children.
We’ve had many special moments in Greece but this was one of the most special on this very special milestone birthday … HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AJAY!

In memory of Ramananad (Bob) Savur 14 Jan 1936 to 19 Aug 2010

When I was young, my father told me, “You can be anything you want”. As a child, it felt like a gratifying affirmation of my capabilities. Only as an adult have I realised how lucky I was, an Indian woman of my generation, to have the kind of freedom I had – to travel alone at a young age, to read whatever I wanted, to think and behave independently, to make my own decisions, to never even imagine that boys could be valued more than girls. I inherited a lot from my father, including my features and life attitudes. One of his most precious gifts was to be told I could be anything I wanted, the subtext of which was that I never needed to do something just because other people were doing it.

Monsoon Country 2

On a day like this, I feel grateful that I don’t live in Bombay anymore. Fifteen consecutive Bombay monsoons cured me of the concept that rains might be poetic or romantic because in Bombay what the rains represent is the stink of damp clothes, soggy biscuits, fungus on every untended surface, and turds and plastic bags that flap around your ankles as you try to cross a flooding road. (For a longer whine, please read Monsoon country 1)
One of the most striking annual features of those fifteen years of monsoon was a newspaper front-page headline which said, “City limps back to normalcy”. Usually on another day there would be a three-column photograph, an overhead street shot which showed nothing but large black Bombay umbrellas. Though the photograph was doubtless shot fresh every year, it looked like the same photograph. Surely they were the same umbrellas.
What ever happened to those umbrella photographs? I went looking for one a few years ago to illustrate something I wrote about in my book on stories from Sindh but could not find one and felt sorry that I had to send the book off to print without it. Eventually, I came across this on pinterest.
The reason I wanted it for the book was because something my mother told me made me realise that in Sindh in the 1940s, an umbrella was less a household item and more something you saw only in movies and magazines. What could the displaced people of Sindh, who had lost everything they had and arrived with nothing in Bombay, thought and felt when they encountered the relentless torrents of rain and the acres of jostling umbrellas of their new home?