On Her Own Terms

 “This picture defines auntie”, a young woman in my neighbourhood said when she saw this. The very words I had used when I sourced this picture from my niece. This dates back to 2009 when the two of us and my sister’s family had gone on a trip to Himachal Pradesh. This was on the lawns of the hotel in Narkhanda where we made the first stop. The paper was either Indian Express or The Tribune.

Rangamani Parthasarathy simply HAD to read the newspapers – note the plural – every day. And she would make sure she got it. On that trip, whenever we passed a wayside shop, the car had to stop and we had to check if an English newspaper was available.

Amma was always up to date on the news – after going through the newspapers, she was constantly switching between her Tamil serials and television news channels. Often it was she who informed me about breaking news events, knowing that I don’t watch television news. She knew the biases of every news channel and which anchor is fair and which one is patently unfair. `Yenna adaavadi (what brazenness)’, was a constant refrain as she watched the 9 pm panel discussions. She would give me the low-down on the discussions and I would tell her to stop wasting her time on those. 

How does one even begin to describe her?  She was a bundle of contradictions in many ways. She was beautiful, as these photographs show, but she frowned on any preoccupation with looks (she has never applied lipstick; pottu (bindi) and kajal were her only adornments). She combined tradition and modernity in her own unique way. She was the source of strength to her four daughters but was never the conventional mother. She was God fearing but shunned ritualism in any form. She lit the lamp in front of her deities every morning and spent some time in silent prayer, but she never chanted mantras or observed fasts or attended bhajan sabhas/kirtan sabhas. But she made sure all festivals were observed the way they should be.

The first photo was when she was one or two years old; the second when she was 16; and the third when she was in her 40s. 

Where she came from is best described in this post about her family. She was highly educated – BA from Queen Mary’s College, Madras, BEd from Central Institute of Education, MA through correspondence course in geography from Aligarh Muslim University, and PhD in urban geography from the Delhi School of Economics. Her PhD thesis was a talking point when she submitted it in the seventies. The central argument was that Connaught Place would decline in importance as a retail destination and markets in what were then the suburbs – Greater Kailash, South Extension etc – would rise in importance. She was interviewed by Hindustan Times, I remember. Her prediction did come true, though Connaught Place is regaining its lost glory now. I remember accompanying her on her field trips, as she went around markets noting down details of shops and talking to residents about their shopping habits.

She was all dynamism, but she lacked that certain something that should have made her a successful career woman – she taught in schools for short spells and did some post-doctoral research. That was just about it.

Her focus on her education – even though she was married straight after school – did not mean even the slightest neglect of her daughters. She wanted all four of us to be strong, highly educated, independent women with successful careers and went all out to ensure we got the best possible education. As one of her sisters-in-law once said: “Ranga lives for her daughters”.

But the relationship is best described in the modern lingo: “it’s complicated”. She was a strong-willed woman – some would call her headstrong and she would accept it as a compliment. So were her four daughters. Clashes were, therefore, inevitable, though she backed us to the hilt in our choices of academics, careers and life partners. So what were the clashes about? When one looks back, trivial things in comparison to the areas where she let us simply be.

One frequent reason for fights used to be her penny-pinching ways. ‘For heaven’s sake, we are not so badly off, I can afford this,’ one of us would invariably snap. `Just because you can afford it, doesn’t mean you have to blow up money,’ she would retort. And the final word was always hers: `It is because I am like this your father never had to take a loan for educating all you or for marriages.’

But was she perhaps also responsible for some of our weaknesses? She was never one of those pushy mothers who put pressure on their children to top the class, come first in school, excel in this, surpass in that. Knowledge was more important for her than a mere exam, substance scored over appearance/style. But even in those days, marks and appearance were becoming more important than mere knowledge and substance. I keep swinging between “I wish she had been like that (switching between conventional and pushy mothers)” and `Thank God she wasn’t like that’.

She would say marriage should not define a woman, but she worried herself sick that I did not marry. But she also tried her best to ensure that I never came to know of this, just so that I did not feel pressured into getting married. When my younger sister was going through a divorce, a neighbour came and said `hamare sanskar mein divorce nahin hota’ my mother snubbed her saying in her broken Hindi (she spoke atrocious Hindi even after six decades in Delhi) that if one goes by tradition, then she should not have allowed an inter-caste marriage. There was no confusion in her mind – her daughter had made a mistake and wanted to correct it and she had to give her full backing.

Concentrating on her education also did not mean neglect of the kitchen or outsourcing to a cook. We had two brief spells of cooks, but even then it was her domain. The sweets/snacks at every festival were made at home till she was well into her sixties.

One lady in her neighbourhood told my sister, `aapki mother to gai thi, gai’. We all had a hearty laugh about that. Amma was no gentle soul, as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, masons and neighbours who were a nuisance very soon realised. We would cringe with embarrassment and try to stop her but to no avail.

In the eighties and early nineties she was involved in the consumer protection movement. She came up against crooked ration shop owners and stood up to them. One dared to send our rations home. She not only returned it immediately, but went to his shop and ticked him off. Another took the name of the local MLA. Off she went to see him and tell him what the ration shop owner said. Soon the MLA would invariably make a stop at her home when he was on his rounds and touch her feet.

She used to control the queue at the Delhi Milk Scheme counter and at the vegetable trucks sent by the Delhi government civil supplies department (something she was instrumental in arranging). Invariably that involved clashes with those trying to jump the queue. Some times there were personal attacks, and that became another source of our fights at home. But she wouldn’t stop. Soon many of those who had fought with her would concede that she was fair and often ask her to arbitrate.  She became famous as doodh vaali auntie and alu-pyaaaz vali auntie!

She continued to remain physically and mentally active till the end (she was discussing politics with my aunt till one hour before she passed away). If the maid didn’t come, she would not leave vessels piled up like many much younger women would. If we stopped her from doing anything or from going out to the market alone, she would get furious:  `don’t make me an invalid’. Of late, she had stopped her evening walks (she was diabetic) because she found walking difficult but that didn’t stop her from climbing three flights of stairs to her sister’s home just because she wanted to go there on account of having missed the cremation.

I would tell people, my mother is never going to suffer from Parkinson’s or dementia and I was right – she went quickly, peacefully, in full control of her faculties till the end. In her eighty-six years, she had never been hospitalised except for the deliveries of her daughters. She didn’t trust government hospitals and was sure private hospitals only exist to fleece patients. And she ensured that she was not admitted to hospital even at the fag end of her life - she had a heart attack and was declared brought dead when we took her to the hospital, so there was no question of her being admitted.  

I guess this is one of the rare examples of someone who lived and died on her own terms.

The Amazing VK family

There  are  just  three left now. Out  of a brood of 11. And what  a brood – bright, strong, temperamental, tempestuous, best of friends, best  of enemies, innocuous conversations leading to massive fights where  some wouldn’t talk to each other for months, years. The VK family fights and politics were legendary. And if any of us cousins railed against this or ribbed them about it, the combined put  down was swift – we may have our fights, but in times of trouble we will always be with each  other. And as one aunt married into the family said today – look, they always used to say they would be together despite all the squabbles and so Babu and Sukumaran went within days of each other and  Mythili (my aunt, sitting) and Ranga (my mother, standing) within less than 24 hours.

I often used to say the oddballs of  the VK family need to be chronicled, but today I will forget about their eccentricities and celebrate them.

The VK referred to V. Krishnamachari, my grandfather. He trained as a lawyer but refused to practice after a point because he didn’t want to wear trousers – his way of opposing British rule. So he became a journalist in The Hindu. He  retired as assistant news editor and was a legend there. G. Kasturi particularly held him in high regard. My mother and her elder brothers have read proofs of pages carrying news of World War II that used to come home for checking. But journalism was such a badly paying job that he didn’t want any of his children to become one. Many years later, his youngest son (who was just four when he died) became one – in The Hindu. And then two granddaughters also did, one me and the other  in The Hindu again.

Then there was his wife Chellama. Daughter of a railway  official, my mother is not sure if she went to school but she was a voracious reader in Tamil and English and  apparently even wrote short stories in a little notebook. So broad-minded was she that when  my mother nervously told her that my eldest sister wants  to marry a baniya from Uttar Pradesh, she said, if they are decided  then  just  fix the earliest auspicious date.  And when my second sister took her Kerala Christian husband to meet her, she immediately took my sister to buy her utensils. Not once did she come in the way of her daughters’ education.

Between VK and Chellama, they raised a remarkable brood, particularly the four daughters.

My grandfather was insistent that  all his daughters would be at least graduates. My mother, Rangamani (sibling number 3, daughter number 1) was married straight after school, but when searching for a groom, my grandfather insisted that she should be allowed to go to college and become a graduate.  She went on to do her BA (she was pregnant with my eldest sister while giving her third year exam), MA, B.Ed and PhD (she was pregnant with my youngest sister then).

After her was Mythili (sibling  number 4, sister number 2), who became a doctor. When VK died of a heart attack a few months after my birth, his youngest son was only four years old. Mythili shouldered the burden of educating all her younger siblings, deciding to remain unmarried.

Sister number 3 (sibling number 6) Shakuntala Chellappa (the second of the siblings to die) was a school teacher as well as a gifted singer who was a staff artiste on All India Radio, Hyderabad. She passed on her musical genes to her daughter, Nandini Srikar. Daughter number 4 (sibling number 8) Vatsala Mani is an economics PhD from the precursor  of JNU - School of International Studies. By the way, all the daughters had to learn music.

The sons were qualified and highly respected professionals – from a telecommunications engineer (V. K. Aravamudhan, a crack solver of cryptic crossword puzzles); a veterinary  doctor (V. K. Seshadri, a voracious reader who could quote passages out of books he had read years earlier); a mining engineer (V. K. Raghavan); IAS (V.K. Srinivasan); IPS (V.K. Rajagopalan); journalist (V.K. Raghunathan). V.K. Soundarajan was the only one who lagged behind, thanks to an overdose of anasthaesia when he broke his arm as a child. The reputation of Srinivasan and Rajagopalan for being non corruptible bureaucrats and sticklers for rules was legendary in IAS and IPS circles. Raghu too got drawn to music – rock music - in college and continued his interest through his career. He had his own band at one point.
All the siblings had a ear for music. With Tata Sky, Srinivasan, Mythili and my mother would often be tuned to Carnatic music programmes on various channels and would be constantly calling each other almost every  evening to listen to this new singer on this channel or an established singer on another channel. 

I’ve just read this again and it reads flat. That’s because the eccentricities of the VK family don’t figure. But that’s for another day.