My Sisters

In the cookies of life, sisters are the chocolate chips.  ~Author Unknown

Nina was born with grace. And looks. And brains. Pollyanna incarnate, she was ‘the perfect child’. Above joining in her junglee, younger sisters’ shenanigans, she was rarely found without her nose in her book. She was especially taken with the Reader’s Digest, from whence Varsha and I claimed she got 98% of her information. The 2% she did not know, she made up, with a fifty-fifty chance of being right. My expertise at math being as pathetic as my command over statistics, I shall leave it to you to figure out the percentage of what she did not know. When she was not reading, she was busy drawing, her pencil always moving, sketching models in varying poses and fashionable attire.

She always did what she was told and said what she was supposed to say and ate what she was supposed to eat.

Which is why, I always turned to Varsha for entertainment and diablerie.

Varsha was always game to play and always ready for a good fight. Being older, she thought it was her prerogative to tell me what to do and how to do it. It was not so much that I was bullied, as manipulated into doing things her way. It was always HER way. The highway was not even an option. After several games of playing TeacherTeacher, I would meekly suggest that I was tired of being the pupil, who was always scolded and given homework, and it should rightfully be my turn now to be the teacher. At this point, she would suggest that the game was boring anyway, and why don’t we play Airplane instead. She would be the flight attendant. I got to be the ignored passenger, who would constantly try to get her attention. This had its own advantage of training me for future air travel.

These games were minor torments in comparison to an annual summer event. Most kids react with elation when finding out the circus had come to town. They did not have a sister named Varsha. I am sure, had I suffered from bed-wetting, the servants would have been changing my sheets nightly during their sojourn. The days following our trip to the Big Top were the worst. She would be in a fever of excitement to copy all the stunts, and dragging me along on her wild, and oft dangerous flights of imagination.

The two of us occupied the bunk-bed in the Vachli-Room, or the Middle Room. The ladder of the bunk-bed, propped up on the back of a chair, became our tightrope. I would then be cajoled into ‘tightrope’ walking across it; each space between the rungs representing a wide chasm, and offering the frightening possibility of falling through. You would think, with so many people in the house, the servants or Ba would have stopped the insanity. Wily as always, she chose her time carefully, and the suggestions, or rather the orders, to comply with her or else!, were done during siesta-time, when even the flies left us alone.

Emulating a funambulist not being entertaining enough, she then decided to replicate the trapeze-artist stunts. After scouring the flat for a suitable spot, she settled on my father’s room. Next to his bed was a huge cupboard, reaching almost all the way up to the ceiling. After pushing a table against it, and propping a chair on top, I was made to clamber up and onto the top of the cupboard...the top of the cupboard where servants could not reach to clean of the dust and the cobwebs and the dead cockroaches. I crawled around, however best I could with a headroom of about two feet, and then splaying my arms wide, flew off, hoping to land on the bed.

What she failed to mention to a younger sister who had the brains the size of a pea, and the spine of a jellyfish, was to take care to steer clear of the fan - a revolving fan.

The dictionary definition of ‘trapeze’ is known as ‘disambiguation’. My definition would be ‘dislocation’. It was fortunate however, that the experience left me with no more than an emotional scar on my fragile psyche and a painful gash on my finger, which healed over time.

Nina was my ersatz mother, tending to all my needs and imbuing me with a passion for reading and the arts. My wardrobe was handled by her, as was my allowance (a whopping twenty rupees a month). When she started college, interest in me and my education/wardrobe dwindled to a minimum. All of a sudden, she started taking a little more interest in her clothes, her hair and her make-up, and a little less in her books and her drawings. When the phone rang, she would jump up and run to get it in the diwankhana. It didn’t take long for us to find out.

There being very few other ways to entertain ourselves, Varsha and I would quietly pick up the extension and listen in. A boy’s voice! Nina had a boyfriend! This was even better than the Mills and Boon books we read clandestinely. This was a real live romance!

The boyfriend also attended Sydenham College. It didn’t take long for him to pick out the cream of the crop. So I am biased. So sue me.

We became masters at picking up the extension oh so gently, till Varsha with her annoying allergies would sneeze. We would get blown away through the line with a “PUT DOWN THE PHONE!” - often followed by dire threats. Since we knew she applied the same ferocious intensity to every project, be it reading or drawing, we knew she would not hesitate to use the same passion in killing us both. We would put the phone down and run through the house, giggling and cooing: “You’re my cutchie-cutchie” and the other would reply, “No, you’re my cutchie-cutchie!”

Our favorite part was this treacly endearment. Our other favorite part was when they fought, which was just as often. It was almost entertaining to watch her slam the phone down, stomp to her closet, and gather up all the presents he had given her. She would sit morosely, playing Englebert Humberdinck’s “Please Release Me” over and over. Trust me, it’s true. You cannot make this stuff up.

A few days later, the presents were back in the closet, in addition to a few new ones and life repeated itself – the phone calls, the cooing, the shouting, the slamming, the present-gathering and the make-up.

Until Lobo found out. Lobo was our full-time driver and part-time spy. Faster than you could say cutchie-cutchie, Dad was duly informed and there was an eruption to rival Krakatoa. A meeting was called in the diwankhana. We filed in and the entertainment began. The explanations, the screaming and the tears were enough to daunt me into sitting there with my mouth shut...which opened in astonishment as I heard Nina say, “I am eighteen years old and I can do whatever I want!” Now whereas this sort of rebellion is commonplace in most western countries, this may have been the first time it was uttered in India. One too many ideas from Mills and Boons can undo you.

She was told in no uncertain terms that if she was eighteen and she thought she could do whatever she wanted, there was the door, and she could go do it outside. And outside she went, and had just about reached the ground floor, when my dad caught up with her and begged her to come back.

(Warning to kids of today: Don’t try this at home. Your dad may run after you...to hand you a packed suitcase and wish you good luck.)

It ended happily after all and the cutchies have been married for over 37 years.

My father got a break for two years, till he caught Varsha sneaking down to the third floor to meet a boy. This time Lobo wasn’t the snitch, but the gurkha, who became suspicious when the third floor bachelor’s best friend, also a bachelor, came to visit even when said Third Floor Bachelor was not at home. Krakatoa exploded again. And the drawing-room drama played out once more.

This ended happily as well and the bachelor has not been one for over 35 years.

The explosions ceased for seven years after that - I was a bit craftier with the sneaking around. To be honest, it was my father who did the sneaking around trying to find me a husband and I did the eruptions. He hunted for husbands the way most people look for a good mechanic/plumber...word of mouth. "Do you know anyone who can fix my car? Unclog my drain? Marry my daughter?"

 He eventually found a ‘suitable match’.

This too ended happily, and I have been married over 28 years.

***

“A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost”, so goes a quote by. M. Garretty. It is a lot more than that. A sister is a friend, a triplet, a mirror image, a solace, a safety net.

A sister is a gift to the heart.

An ocean of water separates the three of us. A blood connection links the three of us.

Blood is thicker than water.

I love you both.

The Name Game

Certain names date people. Chances of a Percival or a Prudence having a Facebook profile will be slim, chances of them being alive even less.

Apart from being old-fashioned or obsolete, some names are totally outrageous... as is the case of Apple and Moses. That honor goes to the progeny of Gwyneth Paltrow. Moses? Seriously? What was she smoking? Bulrushes? Sage Moonblood is Sylvester Stallone’s way of torturing a daughter. And all this time, I thought those punches to his brain while shooting the movie Rocky (and its five sequels), he had used a double.

Out of curiosity, I googled celebrity baby names and these are a few I found:
Atticus and Aurelius - were they conceived after watching 'Gladiator'? Brooklyn Joseph and Bronx Mowgli - what happens if they move to Queens? Diva Muffin and Daisy Boo - a singing cake and a scary flower come to mind.

The stitch in my side prevented me from going further down the alphabet.

It’s one thing to have a cheesy name. Another to bear the burden of a blunder made by ignorant Indian-American parents. It would bode well for some of them to check out meanings in Merriam-Websters before naming their kids - or even doing a Charades version of “sounds like….”. Names like Harshit and Hardik, Anal and Penal and....drum roll please... Fahkruddin: incontestable reasons for granting these kids clemency, when they are charged with the heinous, yet justifiable act of shooting their parents.

Some kids hate their name for no apparent reason. When my daughter Meera was small, she didn't like her name and wanted to change it to Melisa. I patiently explained why not, and said I had never seen a black-haired, brown-eyed, dark-skinned Melisa before, and we wouldn’t want to set a precedent in case it takes off.

She came back with, “How about Ashley, instead?”

It must be a gene thing, as I hated my name as well and wanted to change it to Sunita – for reasons best forgotten. I changed my mind when I found out it was another name for Saraswati – the Goddess of Knowledge. Oh! The pressure of living up to the name. If only I had a brain...or at least a brain with some gigabytes of memory left.

It seemed there was another reason I was called Bharti.

I was talking on the phone to a woman at a call center, and when for some reason (which had to be really important, as I would reveal certain classified information only to the DMV and/or to someone holding a gun to my head), the topic turned to my age. She said, very astutely, that I must be in my fifties. Now it may be an old-fashioned name, but pinning it down to the decade takes some doing.

How on earth??? To date no one had explained to me why so many of my contemporaries also suffered the same misfortune of having a name which involved some sialoquence during introductions, and a lot of time, effort, patience and repetition.

A little side note here. The ‘bh’ sound does not exist in the English language and in a few others as well. Maybe in some Bantu language somewhere, but researching this does not appeal to me. I am tortured enough with having the ‘bh’ coupled with an ‘r’ and then having to live in a country where they cannot pronounce, nor remember my name.

The name-mutilation has ceased making me wince, only because I have changed my name to 'Bati'. Took out the offending ‘bh’ and the cursed ‘r’ and what remained was a pronounceable, yet unique name - or maybe not, as I did find a shop with this pseudonym in Florence. To my embarrassment, I found out that it also is the Caribbean term for 'ass' or 'bum'.

Less embarrassing is that some knuckleheads pronounce it is as Batty - followed by a juvenile giggle. Note to the Harshits out there: I would not laugh, if I were you. Crazy, as opposed to animal excrement. Take your pick.

To get back to the Name thing. It was a pretty interesting story, however.

India got its Independence in 1947. The next few years saw a lot of rejoicing in the new country, and apparently a lot of the rejoicing went on in the bedroom. The next generation had a slew of patriotic names, Bharat and Bharti being foremost amongst them. Bharat, apart being a celebrated hero and monarch of India, was also the Sanskrit name of the country (albeit with a different pronunciation). When the girl was born, they probably said let's just stick an ‘i’ at the end, and be done with it.

It’s a girl after all, who cares.

My Teenage Angst

I am not as normal as I appear. Woody Allen

My two older sisters were the the big Kahunas. It was “NinaVarsha this” and “NinaVarsha that”, with nary a Bharti thrown in. Growing up as the third kid, I was largely ignored, as the youngest sometimes are. For years, I tagged along behind them, both physically and mentally. They were fairer, and got the looks and the brains in the family. And when they hit puberty, they got boobs. I was flatter than a Kansas landscape. If my eyesight was 20-20, my body measurements were 20-20-20. The teachers at school looked at my face, my skinny frame, my report card and then double-checked whether I was really NinaVarsha’s little sister. The piteous looks accompanied the ‘Maybe she is adopted’ thought.

I remember wanting to be as beautiful as my sisters. Since that was out of my control and could be achieved by nothing short of a miracle or better still, rebirth, I concentrated on being as smart as them instead. I had tuition teachers...English, Maths, Hindi. I took sitar lessons, singing lessons, drawing lessons, sewing lessons, cooking lessons. I loved learning new things, wrote journals and tried my hand at writing The Great Indian Novel. I pictured myself being the kind of person that says “You almost gave me a conniption!” when scared; a person who hears the name Levi Strauss and thinks of the French intellectual and not a pair of jeans; someone who can tell the difference between a Manet and a Renoir and the words discreet and discrete; someone who knew Georges Sand was a female and how to pronounce Yeats and Proust; the etymology of assassin and serendipity.

I read and read and read. After Noddy and Big-Ears, I moved on to Malory Towers and St. Clare’s, the Famous Five and Secret Seven, the Bobbsey Twins. P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. On to James Michener and Taylor Caldwell and Ayn Rand. With every book, I went into another phase of my life. I wanted to go to boarding school, be a detective, be a twin, have Vishnu wear coattails, travel to Hawaii and Afghanistan and the South Pacific, read the Bible, be an ethical egoist.

Reading books took me into a world of Walter Mitty fantasies and fueled my over-imaginative mind. I read Francoise Sagan, and went around saying Merde! And Zut Alors! Jean Paul Sartre had me wanting to move to Paris and sit in cafés, wear a beret, and discuss existentialism. I loved reading about Che Guevara - but the closest I got to him was buying black paint and making a poster; and the closest I got to rebellion was refusing to eat the bhinda shaak or sitting through another long puja.

I loved The Bell Jar. Reading about Sylvia Plath led me to contemplating suicide. I guess I wasn’t so much depressed as I was unbalanced. I remember standing on Walkeshwar Road, waiting to cross the road and for the traffic to abate (now there’s hoping for a miracle), when I got the idea. I estimated whether the speed of the cars would have me as road-kill or lying maimed and crippled at Breach Candy Hospital. Ok, too messy and too complicated, requiring a skill involving accuracy of jumping into the road at precisely the right time. Slamming into the side of the car could result in a small bruise for me, an impressionably big dent in the car. (Things haven’t changed much regarding the metal gauge used for Indian cars. Resting so much as a bottle of Bisleri on the hood of a Maruti can involve some serious body-work).

I read about Marilyn Monroe, which gave me the idea of sleeping pills. Where would I procure some? Our family doctor didn’t believe in giving us medicine. A bit absurd when you think about it. Would the Pope not believe in giving benediction? If one of us had a fever, he would tell us to go lie in bed, to cover ourselves with thick razais and sweat it off. This in total contrast to the American idea of being dunked in a cold-water tub. If we had a headache, he told us to drink tea. Strange as it sounds, this still works for me today.

Anyway, back to my drama-ridden narrative. Soooo, sleeping pills were out of the question.

Next idea: drowning. Two possibilities here: 1. Governor’s Beach, where Dad had procured a pass to the private stretch of beach on the bay. Problem was the shallow bay meant swimming out a good two miles to get to the ocean - a feat totally out of my abilities. 2. The pool at Willingdon Club. As with a lot of things in my childhood, I was overlooked regarding swimming lessons. I was almost eleven, when it came to light that I did not know how to swim. (They also forgot about taking me to the dentist. So Nina and Varsha got dental cleanings, retainers and their cavities filled, while I got crooked teeth). Anyway, although perfectly content to stay swimless, I was then forcefully woken up at an ungodly hour of the morning before school, and driven to the Club against my will. Of course, they had to get this brilliant idea during the winter months, when there was a layer of fog on the water and you couldn’t tell where the fog ended and the icy-cold water began...terrifying for a girl who doesn’t know how to swim. The instructor was an extremely obese man called Bathena, who tied an empty dalda tin around my waist with a rope and threw me into the water. Naturally it was the deep end, instructors in India - swim teachers or otherwise - being well versed in torture tactics. All those months learning how to swim, I never saw a drop of water touch any part of Bathena’s 300+ pounds. He paced up and down by the side of the pool, shouting, yelling and berating me about being a real sorry-assed swimmer. Americans should really do a power-point presentation to educators in India called: “You can do it honey!”

...and back to the story. Last resort: hanging. Ugh! the very thought of it was so disturbing, it lasted not more than five seconds in my already-disturbed mind.

Being the cowardly sort, the idea of killing myself seemed too scary, extremely inconvenient, and not to mention terribly labor-intensive. The Sturm und Angst period thankfully lasted little more than two weeks and less than a month. I had by then fortunately discovered Mills and Boon, and entered my Romantic Period.

My Foi

My father had two sisters - the older one we called Anandfoi, who lived in Gujarat and who we did not see too often. The younger Madrasfoi we saw at least twice a year, if not more.

She accompanied us on our summer vacations, while winter vacations were always spent at her house. We loved the trips to Madras, and we loved my beautiful aunt even more - she, inheriting all the softness and kindness from her mother, but regrettably none of her steeliness, which could have stood her in good stead in the past. She cried with joy when we arrived and cried with sadness when we left.

With five cousins to play with, a huge house with a garden, a gooseberry tree to climb, idlis for breakfast and dosas for dinner, we had the time of our lives. Evenings were spent on Marina Beach eating raw mangoes covered with salt and lime juice. There was unlimited papad, or papadums, as they were called in the South - papad that didn’t come in a store-bought, cellophaned package, but from under Foi’s hands. She would sit on the floor, her trusted servant Kutiamma next to her, kneading the hard-as-a-rock dough and rolling out hundreds of chili-flaked, paper-thin delights. Running up and snatching gobs of the raw stuff, we would disregard her warnings of a stomachache from eating the uncooked dough, and then enjoy them on the swing.

The yearly trips to Madras always included a side-trip to the Tirupati Temple; a twofold objective achieved by having good fun and building up good karma in the same vacation. In Tirupati, the priests told us that if we shaved our heads and rolled around the temple four times, it would guarantee us being reincarnated in a superior form. This concept, however appealing, usually left us open-mouthed and grossed out at the guileless devotees who did believe it. I would take my karmic chances by coming back in my next life as an ant, and even take the risk of being stepped on, as opposed to being bald in this one, rolling around on floors littered with remnants of prasad, crushed flower petals and dirty water.

I can totally understand how it got to be the richest temple in the world...the capitalist idea of giving people a Front-of-the-Line Pass by paying more money, copyrighting the Ladoo prasad, earning millions for the temple treasury from the hair tonsuring and paying for viewing and participating in various sevas. The crores that these temples spend on covering the gopurams with gold, beggars belief (the Mahalaxmi Temple at Vellore has a gold one worth over $ 120 million). While I realize that they do do charity, you could build a lot more hospitals and schools and feed more of the hungry masses. My humble suggestion would be: Leave the gilding and pay more of it forward, folks!!

While in Madras, my penchant for learning languages ever present, I picked up a few basic words of Tamil: yepdi irke, nalla irke, tanni kunda wa! being the most useful. The most fun was when I was driving. One hand on the wheel, one head out the window, I would yell maniacally: “Korung! Seth ponu?” at jaywalkers, but the warning - asking a monkey if it had a death wish - went unheeded. A good sign that a man was going to dash across the road, was when he would pick up his lungi and tuck it into his waistband. Wenda! and Po! came handy, when telling the vendors, who came by the dozens up to the gate, offering us a variety of items, like fried, circular murrukku and the spicy avakai pickle, all of which we said we didn’t want, and to please go away, our Foi making the best of anything and everything.

In the early 40s, Foi was married and lived in Dadar, a suburb of Bombay. In the apartment next door lived a young girl who she befriended and even took with her on a trip to Baroda. Who was to know the young Geeta Roy would become famous and marry Guru Dutt. Another close family friend was the actress Shashikala, who would call on Foi every time she came for a shooting to Madras and make her take her shopping.

Everyone has a role model in their life. Mine is my Foi. If I could even have half her qualities, I would come out ahead. As I think of her now, I vow that my next trip will include going to Madras to give her an extra special hug. This time it will be me who will cry with joy when I go, and cry with sadness when I leave.

Non Compos Mentis

“Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your children.” Sam Levenson


At the first sign of cranky or irrational behavior on my part, the kids respond with an expression familiar to adolescents all over the world: the eye-roll. This is often followed by: “She must be pms-ing”. Here we go again, they sigh, and stay out of my way. Way, way, wayyy out of my way. They console each other and give each other advice: “Be careful not to anger the beast,” they whisper; and whisper they should, for were the beast to catch them, it would produce fangs and claw their eyes out.

Personally I find the remark demeaning and insulting, and not always accurate. I am not a monster only when I am at that time of the month. I also tend to go a bit berserk when I see their credit card bills, when I see their parking/speeding tickets, when I see the empty beer bottles in their room.

Their pronouncement as to the volatile and often psychotic behavior of their mother has became progressively worse as they age and they have gotten bolder with the insults. Exponentially worse. I had apparently developed ADD, then ADHD, and now stand at being bi-polar. When they started hinting at schizophrenia, I threatened to cut off all aid – rent, tuition, food and especially their breathing.

In the old days, their insolence could be stopped by a few curt phrases: You owe me. I carried you for nine months. You peed in my stomach. I changed your diapers. When they crossed the line, I could yank them back, pulling on an imaginary leash. The leash however, weakened substantially with age, snapped eventually, and had to be replaced by the simple threat of disinheritance.

In recent times, in deference to my age, they reason: “She’s menopausing.” My husband probably agrees with them, but in his wisdom knows better than to voice this out loud. At best he would have to sleep in the guest room, at worst he would be divorced and living alone in a seedy, one-bedroom apartment.

I do concede, albeit grudgingly, that over the years, there has been a steady rise of paranoia on my part. By dint of being a Virgo, I already had a strong-willed, fastidious personality embedded in my DNA. Being judgmental and critical is part of the charming package. Creeping old age was manifesting itself with signs of dementia. In this broiling cauldron of lunacy, add chameleonic temperamental changes and mercurial moods, which swing like a pendulum on steroids.

While I am on a roll with the self-bashing, let’s not leave out the fact that my friends call me anal-retentive. Admitting certain things to them have had certain disadvantages. While they can easily forget my birthday, they always remember the confidences told to them in my cups. So I do have 32 files, each color-coded according to investments (even if recession has been chomping away at them), insurance (car, health, home, earthquake, dental), utilities, mortgage, etc. Well, this is just so that if I am ever asked to produce an invoice for a cavity filled in 1995, I can do it in less than five minutes.

I have an eleven-page compendium of itemized information (driver’s licenses, bank info, investment info, frequent flier mile info) on paper, on a cd, and on a flash drive. It is not on the hard drive, in case the computer crashes, and I have to take it to a tech. (If he is smart enough to fix it, he is smart enough to find my password and hack into my accounts). Three calendars are posted around the house, and one in my handbag - you never know when you have to make an impromptu coffee date. Near every phone in the house (and yes, near all seven of them) is a notepad, and pencils (yes, all sharpened) and a pair of scissors (bought in bulk from Costco). My house is super clean, thanks to the 17 wastebaskets/trashcans around the house – to throw out whatever it is I cut out with the scissors.

Every day the laundry list of manias and phobias get longer and longer.

Case in point: I am leaving for Italy on the 3 pm flight. My daughter asks me if she would like to take me to the airport at 9 am. The sarcasm is lost on me and I accept eagerly. After all, there could be an accident on the freeway, we could get a flat tire or there could be a long line at the airport. And have you seen the security you have to go through these days?

Case Two: I am going to see a movie. I debate leaving my cell phone in the car, but then think if there is a fire, I could call the kids to let them know I am being incinerated in the theater and to please cancel the contract with Combustible Cremations; we would not be needing their services any more.

Case Three: I am at home and every door and window is closed. Ever since Vector Control told me that all a mouse needs to enter the house,  is a hole the size of a quarter, every opening to the house has been caulked and hermetically sealed. We have never breathed in fresh, outdoor air in fifteen years, my reasoning being that there is enough oxygen in a 4,000 sq ft house to last us for ages.

Case Four: There is a copy of everyone’s driver’s license, insurance cards, emergency money, a first-aid kit, an umbrella, spare clothes, a shovel, a can opener, a flashlight, a hand-crank radio, granola bars, bottles of water and maps in my Earthquake Emergency Kit. I just hope to get to the shovel in time to dig my way out of the six-foot debris on top of me.

There are quite a few other cases I can think of, the kids offering to add a hundred more. But a note of caution to self: were I to elaborate further, and were a mental health professional to take this as incriminating evidence, he could have a just and reasonable cause to call the men in white, declaring me non compos mentis.