I am sixty four

I must have been fifteen when I first heard When I am Sixty Four by the Beatles. It was in Ankara and I had just got my copy of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. In those days sixty four seemed so far away. Time does move slow when you are young. I runs at the speed of light the older you grow. Anyway the song them was amusing and above all peppy and one did not pay much attention at the lyrics. It is said that Mc carney wrote it at a very young age and back then I guess 'sitting by the fireside' and 'digging weeds' was what young people thought old people do.

Today I am sixty four and perusing the lyrics there is not much I really do. I may have lost some hair but that is about it. My Vera Chuck and Dave is my grandson Agastya and by sunshine boy Utpal. What a blessing.

In his lyrics Mc Cartney states Who could ask for more? I mean more than the weeds, the walk, the knitting of the sweater and the Sunday mornings ride.

I do as I have so much more. From a partner who feeds and needs me, to children who love and care but above all my Project Why family that has allowed all my dreams and aspirations to come true and  given me a reason to live. I am blessed.

The little girl in the antic pram could not have imagined what life had in store for her on the other side of fifty. Thousands of beautiful children who entrusted their dreams to her, a huge network of beautiful friends that became family to this only child. I have never felt so loved and wanted and needed. I feel humbled and small and elated and euphoric at the same time.

I want to thank each and everyone who made this possible.

God bless you all.

Today I lose another friend.

The neem tree next to my house

The house next door was broken down a few months ago to be replaced by what is knows in Delhi as builder's flats. This is the plight of numerous houses like mine, built in the sixties when one family or at most two lived in villas with a courtyard in the middle and a small garden in front. Since as demand increased and maintenance costs too appeared the ubiquitous builders flat. The builders lobby has ensured that they be allowed to use maximum space. The authorities insist on parking space on stilts. So bye bye garden, greenery and flowers. Cement vies with marble and glass for space. 

In front of the house being erected stands a majestic neem tree. It has been there for more than 4 decades and provided shelter and shade to many. Though not directly in front of my house, its sprawling branches caressed our home and the rustle of its leaves when the wind blew was welcome as I sat outside reading a book of watching my boys play. 

This tree became part of my life and a much loved friend. Its branches also covered the patch of garden next door and thus became a threat to the new structure that needed that space. The battle was unequal: the tree was destined to lose.

 From the very first day I lived in fear of the moment when the axe would fall wondering how many branches will be sacrificed to the alter of urban living. The dreaded moment dawned and as I write these words branch after branch are being felled mercilessly. It will stand mutilated, robbed of its majesty and grandeur. 

I lost a friend a dew days back. A human one. One I had know for decades. Today I lose part of another friend and I feel a pain I cannot describe. This tree has been witness to every moment of my life from the time I was a college student to the time I became a grandmother. It made me feel protected and safe.

I have often compared myself to a tree when I decided to lay down my hat for the last time. My rather nomadic life had left me exhausted and I needed to set my roots deep. Trees meant being safe, secure and loved.

That the tree is being truncated in front of my eyes brings to mind the ephemeral and transient nature of our lives and the reality that nothing is truly secure.

My tree will reinvent itself as Nature is nothing short of miraculous. It will probably looked skewed to many but to me it will be the indubitable truth that it won the battle.

Someone wrote: We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved. 

How true this is

Au revoir la haut; until we meet in heaven

Au revoir là haut Etienne. I would have much preferred have him say these words to him and yet it was not to be. Etienne left this world last Sunday leaving us stunned and lost. Etienne was my father's best friend's son and we knew each other from the time we were both in our teens. He was two years my junior. He often said I was a role model. I guess we both were rebellious and non conformists to the despair of our rather conservative parents. This was in the sixties and we were true children of the sixties. I had happily embraced the flavour of the times donning my torn jeans and flowered shirts with gusto, my fringe practically covering my eyes. We lived in Ankara and Etienne who must have been 14 came for a holiday. We bonded at once and spent hours listening to the Doors and Dylan and remaking the world. Whereas I would return meekly to the fold, Etienne the tall dark good looking man, with deep brooding eyes remained a free spirit at heart and would go on to conquer the world of music and showbiz with success.

We lost touch for a while but did meet again and each time we did it was as if time had stood still and we are picking up the conversation of yesterday. In 1985 when I made a short visit to New York, Etienne took us to a magical dinner at the Riverside Cafe. The memory lingers on and fills me with immense warmth as that was what Etienne was a warm and kind soul.

He lived his dream and lived life to the fullest, at times even recklessly. But could it be otherwise. That was who he was. You cannot contain a free spirit, the world as we know it s too small a place.

I woke up this morning feeling that somewhere along the way the tables had turned and the mentor had become the disciple. The lessons of freedom and liberation I had once brought to him had been not only learned but perfected and never abandoned. 

We talked sometimes and it was always a joy. In January this year Etienne took my grandson and the husband to a grand lunch in Paris. I was happy to know that they had met. 

I will miss him. I will miss his smile, his booming voice, his warmth and his presence. He was a part of my life, a kindred soul. No wonder his birth day was one day after mine.

Au revoir là haut Etienne

Th best place in Paris

It is always difficult to chose the one place one likes  in the magical city of Paris. The choices are mind blogging. For me it is often the mood and memories that decide the Parisian flavour of the day. I just follow my heart. Another little bloke did just that last week. The difference is that he did not hesitate one bit as I often do. My grandson spent his holidays in Paris with one set of grandparents. He dutifully followed them from parks to museums and went on long walks. He was to the manor born, a far cry from the bundle of energy running through our lives every summer! But all that would change as his other grandpa, my better half decided to go and spend a few days with the boy in Paris.

Plans were made by one and all though no one asked the two main protagonists. It all boiled down to more walks, this time along the favourite haunts of the Indian grandpa. The later even took his walking shoes! I guess the walking shoes remained in the suitcase as my two favourite lads had other plans.

When they met in the hotel room, no one could have guessed that it would become the best place in Paris for these two souls. Agy spotted the big flat screen TV and the deal was done. It would take a little coaxing and wooing to get mom to agree that this would be where they would like to spend time, the little dude with his cartoons and the old one veering between book and screen. So for the past 3 days, barring meals and a few visits that need to be made, granddad and grandson snuggled under the comforter in the cosy hotel room and indulged in their favourite pastime, one that is not on offer in the little one's home. I guess he is gorging on unchecked viewing. The next time will be when he comes home to us.

So for my boys the best place in Paris is the warmth of a comforter and the big TV.

Enjoy boys!

The first man I fell in love with

It was on a cold April night that he came into my life. He was the first face I saw as I entered this world. It was love at first sight. As he  gently took me in his arms. I clutched his finger tight and knew I was safe. For the next 40 years and 8 months we would live a perfect love story till on a cold November morning he would breathe his last, me still clutching his finger. He was my father. I called him Tatu.

From Prague to Delhi we travelled across continents as I discovered life in its magnitude with the most incredible teacher anyone could have.

He was my father but also my pal, my guide, my mentor and my anchor. His arms were the one place I felt entirely safe. He loved me unconditionally. True we both had short fuses that resulted in angry words and banged doors, but minutes later a gentle knock at the slammed door made it all go away as he stood with a treat he had conjured that would wipe all the tears of hurt and rage. His unique way of  asking forgiveness was food, a pêché  mignon we shared as is amply proved by our escapades to restaurants that began when I was 5. He took me to Maxims in Paris for a three course meal serenaded by a violin. That was the first of many meals together in restaurants across the globe. But he was also the one who taught me to savour the simple of foods and eat with the simplest of people. A hot roti dipped in raw mustard oil with some salt was as titillating as a lobster or a bowl of caviar en tête à tête My greatest joy was when he fed me with his hands making that special bite. I must confess that I enjoyed those even as a gown up woman and a mom myself.

I took my first hesitant steps in life again clutching his hand and learned to walk alone with a confident stride knowing he was always just behind me in person or in spirit. He made sure I never fall. It was though his eyes that I discovered the world and he gently taught me how to look beyond the visible and see the essential. It is he who opened the dormant eyes of my heart and coloured my world with compassion and humanity. With him I discovered cities and countries and many other wonders but somehow everything was imbued with values and that 'je ne sais quoi' that made the most inconsequential place or object worth a king's ransom.

The 40 short years of this incredible journey had its difficult moments, most of them when I came into my own in my rebellious teens and we clashed. He wanted to keep me locked in his love and would have got me the moon had I asked for it and I wanted to break free and discover the street next door on my own. To the young teenager, the portly man was a far cry from all the long haired singers of the sixties, and a child of the sixties I was with frayed jeans and short skirts. I now smile with indulgence at the battailles royales we had as he frowned upon my attire and I held my on.

But the world without him may have meant freedom but everything seemed pale and faded, deprived of all the hues only he could put. It is only when I realised that and returned home as the prodigal child that I lived again.

Tatu was there at every moment of my existence and steered me through every peril and pitfall as I grew from child to woman. He made every hurt go away and every tear turn into a smile. He was the sunshine of my life. When he left he took my sunshine away. Life could only be a poor ersatz of what I lived with him. Only memories provide little slivers of light.

The real legacy he left me was not in the shape of things you can see and touch but in the most unexpected words of people that remember him, be it the woman who sold him vegetables and calls him 'the men with a hat', or his meat vendor who talks of him with gratitude for some legal work he had done or in the memories of a woman who was but a child when we lived in what was then known as Saigon.

To the world he was an Ambassador, a jurist, a man of letters, a connoisseur of wines and food, an orator, a humanist and above all a man as defined by Oriana Fallaci: kind to the weak, fierce to the arrogant, generous to those who love you and ruthless to those who ordered you around.

To me he is simply Tatu, the first man I fell in love with and still love with the same passion.

A beautiful smile

Kamala Goburdhun née Sinha
15 October 1917 - 13 June 1990

If there is one thing Mama had in abundance, it was her propensity to smile and laugh wholeheartedly, a perfect counterpoint to my Papa who was predisposed to gravitas and who did not learn the art of laughing. Mama was one of those women who grew more beautiful with age, reaching the pinnacle of her beauty in her fifties!

The daughter of a freedom fighter who grew up in want and paucity; the eldest child of a woman who became her mother when still in her teens and whose art of parenting consisted in disciplining her eldest who then was left with the task of keeping the siblings in line; a girl who broke all rules to accede to the highest level of education even if it meant adopting her father's Gandhian ways to get what she wanted; a woman who refused to marry unless her country was liberated and worked and lived alone in the big city at a time when girls were married in their adolescence; a woman who fought for women's right when NGOs were not in fashion; a woman who fell in love with a portly gentleman and followed him across the world; a woman who only spoke Hindi to her child so that her child could speak her mother tongue effortlessly as she grew in different lands, a woman who learnt her husband's favourite language (French) as a birthday present to him; a small town girl who was to the manor born ; a mother who ensured that her child would never question her origins and love her country with passion; a woman who embraced life to its fullest refusing any treatment for the cancer that took her away as 'life was too precious to be wasted in induced slumber', Kamala Goburdhun née Sinha was an incredible woman who died with a smile on her lips.

Her refusal to bear a slave child resulted in my having a mother for just 39 years! And all through those years she never lost her smile, even when she sat in a car following an accident waiting for help. It did not matter if her sternum was broken and so were her ribs, she smiled so that her 6 year old child would not be frightened.

I am who I am because of what I learnt at her knee.

I miss her. I miss her smile. I miss her presence. I miss the bliss of still being a child.

I try my best to live to her expectations but know I will never be able to. I only hope that when we meet again I can look her in the eyes without hesitation and bask in the warmth of her smile

In the words of Pierre Lemaitre: Au revoir, là haut!( see you, up there)

There is no God - Serendipity

Just got the news that my uncle passed away. He was my mama's youngest sibling and somehow more a son to her than a brother. She loved him unconditionally. I wonder if he ever knew the extent of her love for him. Now they are together in a better place and will have all the time to say what was left unsaid. He had been very sick recently and I reminisced about him in a blog I titled La Cabana and Shagoofa. In that blog I had prayed that he leave the hospital and go back home to his family. God heard that prayer. He died in his home peacefully. May he rest in eternal peace.

You may wonder why the post is entitled There is No God? It is serendipity at work. Last night my phone pinged and a picture appeared. It looked like a badly scribbled page. I was trying to figure out what it was all about when the phone rang. It was Utpal's teacher and mentor who said she had to share what the lad had written as it was very moving. I will not reveal all today as we hope that once polished the text appears in the school magazine but part of it was the almost disturbing words: there is no God. But the lovely boy went on to say: in the universe there is God: our parents and in those who make our lives.

Yes child, you are so right. For me God was revealed in the eyes of this very little fellow when I first saw him in March 2003. Whenever I am in pain or in doubt; when I am worried or sad; when I am fearful or apprehensive this little chap conjures the miracle needed and lifts my spirits. Having that little scribbled page on my phone assuaged the pain I felt today and reminded me that God is with us all the time.