My Uncle

If people say that there is no such thing as The Indian Dream, my uncle and my father proved them wrong.

The ‘good old days’ were far from good - at least in India. They were the days when the poor stayed poor and the rich got richer. It was rare to scale the oppressing wall of poverty and make it to the side of the ‘haves’. It was rarer to imagine that a boy could leave his village with eight annas in his pocket and within a few decades entertain the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Gregory Peck.

That boy was my uncle, Ambalal Jhaverbhai Patel (aka A.J.), born in the obscure village of Ode, Taluka Anand, in the Kaira district of Bombay State (now Gujarat). Now here’s a village that had not seen the light of the 21st century, nor the 20th, and not even the 19th for that matter. Reputed to have the deepest wells, there was a little ditty putting a curse on any father that married his daughter to a man from Ode. If a girl had to rely on getting her water from a well, it would only be the beginning of all her problems. Its redeeming value, and possibly the only one, was the fact that it was a member of the Panch Gaam group of villages.

A.J., or Motakaka as we called him, was not one to follow his father’s profession. My grandfather, Dada, the son of a humble farmer, educated himself and became a primary schoolmaster, earning the equivalent of eleven rupees a month. With this paltry amount, he was able to support a wife and four children, my father being the third child.

Ambalal was a boy of vision, but not one to study. His grades at school clearly demonstrated that he would not graduate. One fortuitous day, a visiting photographer showed his camera to the young boy, whose fate and future was forever sealed. Determined to do something with photography, he landed a series of jobs, the first being an usher in a cinema theater. This led further to stints in a photo studio and a job in East Africa. By now he was experienced enough to return to the film capital Bombay, popularly known as Bollywood today.

In 1932 he opened a small camera shop in Bombay with a capital of five hundred rupees and called it the Central Camera Company. It was at this time that he brought his family from the village. My fifteen-year old father, at first delighted to leave the village, soon realized it came at a price. His brother insisted on him pursuing higher studies. Enrolling himself in school, however, he found that he nevertheless spent most of the time working at Central Camera and not before long, dropped the idea of school altogether.

By 1937, Motakaka and my dad were pretty involved in the photographic industry. MGM contacted him and asked him to do some research for their movie “Kim”, which was to be shot in India and later 20th Century Fox did the same for the movie “When the Rains Came”. Together the two brothers made great strides in making Educational Short Films and later also Indian Movietone News during the partition of India and Pakistan.

My father remembers the tough times. Whenever the film clips depicted Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, the Muslims tore the screen. Every clip of Jinnah incensed the Hindus and they did the same.

In 1946 Motakaka started Film Center, a film processing laboratory, which initially only processed black and white films. By 1950 he had installed color film processing equipment.

He hosted lavish parties and invited many a foreign dignitary: Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Caesar Romero, Stewart Granger, and Otto Preminger were among the notables, signing his guestbook. Indian film stars such as Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Dilip Kumar and others were also habitual guests.

One of the most famous stories of Motakaka is how he shanghaied Gregory Peck. Upon hearing that the famous American actor was coming to Bombay, he told his daughter Indira to go with his good friend Sabu (the actor famously known as The Elephant Boy) to the airport. Together they went onto the tarmac and right up to the plane, this being the pre-‘Take your shoes off and put your liquids in a Ziploc bag’ days. Armed with a smile, a namaste and a traditional marigold garland to greet him, Sabu and Indira then brought Gregory Peck back home to White House for dinner.

My uncle was a real family man. We spent most of our free time hanging out at White House. Almost every Sunday, he would organize outings and we would pack the picnic staple of puri-and-batata-nu-shaak. On Republic Day, he used to rent a truck and we sat on thick gadlas and munched on methi-na-dhebra, while admiring the buildings, which were decorated and lit up for the occasion.

Motakaka could be quite feisty. When a teacher at his daughter’s school sent a note home complaining that Geeta was not studying, he fired back a reply, saying that it was his duty to feed and clothe his daughter, and it was theirs to teach her, which is why he was sending her to Walsingham in the first place. Apparently, he wrote, I am doing my job, whereas you are not doing yours.

He built a bridge at Chowpatty in 1953, which he named after his father. Always building, planning and dreaming big, he bought property on Walkeshwar Road and called the complex White House, where his family still lives today. At one time, he had even built an open-air theatre, where his tenant the United States Information Service showed films free of charge.

Film Center soon became the largest color processing center, handling the majority of all Hindi films. Few times a week they would run a film check for quality control. Unbeknownst to dad, we would sneak in and watch the previews. Whenever, one of our favorite songs came on, we would beg the projectionist to replay it a couple of times.

There were times the producer or the director sat in as well, and I was gently cautioned to keep my caustic and sarcastic remarks to myself. You would think they would appreciate genuine critique from the audience, but apparently, I do not represent the average Bollywood movie-goer.

It was unfortunate that A.J. died at the age of 54. At the inauguration of Film Center, S.K. Patil had said of him: “Ambalal is a dreamer of great calibre and with rare determination and will to accomplish ever greater things. I wish India had a few more people like him.”

It was a pity he didn’t live long enough to fulfill those dreams.

Don’t Judge an Italian by his Kurta

A short while after taking off, the plane carrying my father on a business trip developed engine trouble and headed back to Madras for maintenance. While waiting in the airport lounge, he noticed a little commotion going on with some foreigners.

Apparently one of them had decided, come hell or high-water, she was not getting on that plane, even after they had fixed the problem. The others were trying to placate her that it would be alright and tried to allay her fear of flying. It was imperative for them to get back to Bombay that night.

My father, being my father, went over to help. Convincing them that things would be alright,  he would help and even put in an intercessory prayer to all the million Indian Gods, he managed to help the lady emplane. Once aboard the flight, he went to request special help from the flight attendant and got some seats blocked off for her, so Donatella could stretch out. He organized a couple of cars to meet them at the airport upon arrival and take them to the Taj Hotel, where they had reservations.

Back in Bombay the next morning, at the breakfast table, I was informed that he had met some Italian 'hippies' and to please entertain them.

I had long ceased to argue with my father or ask questions. He was forever making friends all over the world and giving them a Mi Casa es Su Casa card. Once it was a Japanese group who I rescued from a cramped Buddhist temple in Worli and brought back home. Except the group turned out to be fourteen young kids. With huge backpacks. And bicycles. They were on a biking tour through India. The tour leader Moriwakisan was so grateful and the ensuing friendship went so deep, that he named his vacation home Pateru House after my dad. Another time, it was Bo, a Swedish gentleman who organized concerts. The moment I found out he had once organized a tour for the Rolling Stones, I was more compliant to give him a royal tour and show him the sights of Bombay (hoping to wangle a free ticket in the future of course). Had he organized a Barry Manilow concert, it would have gotten him a viewing of the best slums.

For four days, I showed the Italian hippies around. They had the whole ‘kurta and beads’ vibe going on, this being the 70s and all. We walked around Chowpatty Beach, restraining them from eating anything from the beach stalls, no matter how appetizing or appealing they looked or smelled. We compensated by serving them hot bhajias, or ‘bombolini fritti’ as they called them and then wined and dined them. They saw a Bollywood movie at Film Center, the family’s color film laboratory. And then we said Ciao and back to Florence they went.

A few weeks later, we received a book in the mail: Villas and Palaces of Tuscany. Little cards were paper-clipped throughout. The cards read “Conte e Contessa Giovanni Guicciardini Corsi Salviati”, highlighting their summer homes and winter homes, their city homes and their country homes, and their family estates. I almost dropped the book, risking amputating a toe. A few years later, while studying Italian in Florence, I found out that they are one of the most influential families, with a Lungarno Guicciardini and part of the Pitti Palace, because as it turns out, the original Signor Guicciardini was a scribe to the Medicis.

Still friends after all these years, my sisters and I spent a wonderful afternoon with Donatella and Beppe in her country home in April.

Just goes to show, never judge an Italian by his kurta!

My Mother

I was told that my mother had cried when I was born.

They were not tears of pain from having pushed the proverbial equivalent of a camel through the eye of a needle.

They were not tears of joy, such as when I delivered my own children several decades later.

They were tears of disappointment.

She already had two girls and was hoping to give my father what every parent in India wanted – a son, an heir, an occasion to distribute peda to the whole world.

When the childless nurse in the hospital saw her crying, she offered to take me off my mother’s hands. It was fortunate that she refused, or I would now be manjo-ing bartan in a chawl somewhere, whilst one sister would be choosing jewelry at Bulgari and the other choosing which country to visit next.

It was tragic that she died only a couple of years later, so there is no way of knowing whether she got over the disappointment or not. In any case, if I had been that sick and having difficulty breathing, I wouldn’t have cared if I had a third daughter or a third cow.

Nina and Varsha inherited, sadly, her asthmatic genes. I inherited her physique and metabolism. She looks tall and thin in the few pictures I have of her. She never put on weight and lost even more when she fell ill. I can eat a tub of ghee and not gain an ounce...not that I would try it, or Dr. Ramirez would even let me. Sounds pretty gross anyway.

My cousin Dineshbhai stayed with us for a couple of years and he and Shardaben, his sister, still talk fondly of my mother, who was their mami. She had a natural elegance, and was kind as well as extremely generous and ready to feed and help anyone even remotely needing food or shelter. Sigh, where have all those genes gone?

Since I was only two when she died, I have no memories of her at all. I must have been pretty thick, because it was not until I was almost ten, that I suddenly had a thought. It was one of those ‘What were you doing when you heard Kennedy was shot?’ kind of moment. My cousin Mickey and I were playing with dolls in the garden, during a holiday in Matheran and she was talking about her mother. I remember stopping and thinking: What the heck? Where is my mother? This admission is embarrassing on two counts...one is admitting that I played with dolls in fifth grade and the second is being ten when I first realized I was the only one who didn’t have a mother.

Not that there were any shining examples of motherhood around, for me to wish upon a star for one of my own. There was of course Madrasfoi, the sweetest, most kind-hearted person in the world, who we met often. She treated us with the same love and affection she doled out to her own five children. But since I called her Foi, I assumed she was a Foi to her own children as well. This assumption should come as no surprise: proof of how dense I was has already been established as a precedent.

We didn’t interact much with adults anyway...even those related to us. We were more familiar with everyone’s bais, rather than everyone’s mothers...Sheilabai and Chandrabai and Rukhmanibai and Mickey’s old, diminutive, sodabottle-thick spectacled bai, who made the best vatana-nu-shaak and who shadowed her everywhere.

Between Ba and the bais, all the relatives and all the servants, I guess we turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

It still would have been nice to buy a Mother’s Day Card.