The Cousins

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts.  ~ Author Unknown



There is no word for cousin in our language. We were told our cousins are our brothers and sisters, and we should treat them as such. The addendum was that, since we had so many of our own age, there was really no need for friends. Blood is thicker than water, my father kept reminding us.

Dahifoi’s children lived in Gujarat and Shantafoi’s children lived in Madras. We saw them almost every vacation and the memories of the camaraderie and adventures we shared formed a deep-seated bond that exists today.

Motakaka’s children lived in Bombay, just down the street. The considerable age difference between my father and my kaka, together with the fact that my aunt married when she was thirteen, made Motakaka’s grandchildren the same age as us – second cousins, but according to our tradition, they were our nephews and nieces.

Motakaka had noticed a vacant property on Walkeshwar Road. Disregarding the dire predictions of a pandit, who portended that the place would bring bad luck, he bought the land and over a period of time, built a cluster of seven buildings. He named the lot White House, after a famous house inhabited by famous person in a famous country. The compound had a disparate amount of flats, discharging aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces. The area abutted the bay and had a stunning view of Marine Drive and the Queen’s Necklace. The main building had a huge multi-leveled terrace. Add a terrace with swings, a swimming pool and mango trees to this and from a child’s perspective, you have a veritable paradise, even without rides, attractions and a rodent with big black ears.

Most of our weekends were spent playing at White House. Our favorite hang-out was a small pond with faux lily-pads, to jump across or sit and admire the fish below. Sometimes, we would find empty apartments to play in; apartments – free of furniture, adults and servants, free to do whatever we wanted, without being caught ... or so we thought.

The first time it was Kaki, or WhiteHouseBa, as we called her, who happened to look out her window, and notice cigarette butts being tossed out from the vacant apartment below. I have no idea where my sisters and the older cousins got the cigarettes from. I pled innocence, being a pawn in their game, too young to know better and a slew of other whiny excuses.

If Lesson # 1 was never to smoke in an apartment below your aunt, they should have paid heed to Lesson # 2 : Never buy your smokes from the paanwala downstairs and put it on your father’s tab.

When dad came home from work that evening, the paanwala was waiting patiently outside the front door. And into the diwankhana trooped the troop for a good dressing-down.

The nicotine addiction had now been forever and indelibly erased from their system, partly due to the lecture and partly due to the threat of dire consequences. No one, however, had said anything about alcohol.

Dad’s bar in the divankhana was set against the wall. A clever system of a pull-down door, revealed a dazzling array of liquor bottles lined up on the shelves, the bigger ones at the back, the little free samples for show in the front. The pull-down door served a dual purpose, the two legs that clicked into place turning it into a table. In all fairness to my father - being the responsible parent that he was - the bar was kept locked. More often than not, however, Vishnu left the key dangling in the lock - a key, that lay tantalizingly within reach.

The cousins all took turns sipping out of the little display bottles – some sweet, some causing them to choke, most horridly mephitic. It wasn’t long before they were found out, and Dad ushered in the usual suspects for questioning. It was fortunate that my cousin Mickey and I had gone to see a movie and missed the whole experience, particularly the punishment.

Mickey was six months younger than me. Her real name was Monica, which was really absurd – absurd if you live in India in the 50s. I guess her family got tired of explaining why she had such a fancy foreign name and just called her Mickey. She was a docile and introverted child, with the temerity of a mouse.

Perfect. I could not have found someone more ideal to pick on. It has been said that a bully is often someone who himself has been bullied. Hurrah for the psychs. They should get paid big time for this one.

I would tease her constantly. I would order her around. I would eat her break-time snacks at school. You can’t blame me for that. Her cook was better than mine and made the best batata-powwa.

It was rare to find Mickey alone. The shadow of her old ayah invariably schlepped two steps behind her, ready to defend her charge with a good tongue-lashing. Her thick, almost opaque, soda-bottle eye-glasses left you wondering how she could see anything. It was maddening to have this diminutive bai overseeing her every move, mollycoddling her and making sure no one mistreated her. Ah, but there were the afternoons when she waddled off to the servant's quarters for a snooze.

Afternoon naps in India are de rigueur. There is something about a good thali that induces a postprandial torpor – perhaps the carbohydrate-driven combination of lentils and rice. Package this in a little pill, and you could give Ambien a run for their money.

Right after lunch, all activity starts the slow slide to a languorous stillness. Inside, memsahibs retire to their rooms to ada-pado, while in the kitchen, the vasanvalis clank and scrub and wash the steel vessels. Outside, action on Walkeshwar Road goes into slo-mo, the honking subsiding to a bare minimum and peddlers taking a break from shouting their wares. The pervasive stillness is broken occasionally by a barking dog. Around four o’clock, the first stirrings as the adults awake, refreshed and reenergized and ready for tea. Cries of Bai! Cha lao! echoing through the halls, as the servants roll up their mats, and tuck them away. Stoves would be lit, ginger grated, the black tea granules bubbling in the pan and teacups arranged on a tray with plates of chevdo or khakra.

One afternoon, while her bai slept and snored, I decided that Micky and I should practice leap frog, a favorite break-time activity at school. After a particularly energetic and forceful leap over her, she fell and broke her arm. In my defense, I felt immediate remorse, but did have the presence of mind to remind her that if she told her mother, I would not hesitate to break her other arm.

It was great to have such an ideal - and obeisant - playmate. Outside school, that is. At school, there were other fish in the pond. Popular fish, who I really wanted to swim with. I could always play with Mickey at home. Besides she was in Class B, and being in Class A, I could not be seen talking to someone from Class B, now could I? We were academically ranked at school and the top 30 went to Class A. It was nothing short of a miracle that I ended up with the top echelon and I intended to act like it.

So, after getting over the confusion of being befriended at home one day, and ignored and isolated by me at school the next, she decided to complain to her mother. Her mother told Ba. Ba told my father. And I got a stern lecture about how I should be nice to her, and how family is everything, and friends will come and go, and again the lecture on the viscosity of blood as opposed to aqua. I do not recall exactly what I threatened her with this time, but she never tattle-told again.

~

The family tree of Jhaverbhai Taljabhai Lallubhai Vithalbhai Gulabdas Patel and his wife Surajba (nee Rupba) Patel spreads its branches further and wider (and stronger) than a banyan tree. Their four children churned out a total of 126 progeny plus 43 spouses. (And we wonder why India’s population is bursting at its seams). Believe it or not, I am in touch with almost all of them. Annual trips to Bombay and attending weddings in the States helps in maintaining the close connection...as does Facebook.

A Spanish proverb says ‘An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship’. I was lucky, I got the weight of both.

You Know You're Getting Older When...

“Forget health food. I’m at an age where I need all the preservatives I can get.” ~ Email forward.



“Right this way girls,” he said as he led us to our table.

“Girls” ? Seriously? Expecting a big tip, was he? Of course, for that compliment alone, we would have given him a kidney.

As the waiter fanned out the menus on the table, five pairs of hands groped in their purses for reading glasses. Arms stretched out, eyes squinted, heads tilted back, all the while grumbling about poor lighting and fonts the size of fleas.

We scanned the options on the menu. I had a low-salt diet. One of us couldn’t have anything fatty. Another was vegan. The one who wasn’t, was lactose-intolerant. Go figure. The fifth one had no diet restrictions whatsoever, and being a really good - and skinny - friend, we hated her guts.

After the waiter took our order, we started catching up on news. In the old days, it was gossip. After we got married and started popping out babies, the conversation revolved around diapers, nap times and play dates, moved on to homework, soccer practice and carpools, later to GPAs, SATs and college choices. The kids finally moved out and while at first we commiserated about being empty nesters, we were now thrilled to live our own lives...and enjoy a clean house. Happy when they fly in for a visit...happier when they fly back out.

Now the discussion is how old age sucks. We commisserate about falling hair, sagging boobs, failing eyesight, muffin tops, acid reflux, arm flab, knee pain, back pain, muscle pain. Before you could say Glucosamine Chondroitin, the topic had moved on to what we take for what. Recommendations, opinions, warnings and advice fly back and forth. Suddenly we have five doctors who hate taking medicine and want to try everything ‘natural’ and 'organic', each one swearing what they take works miracles. Shark liver oil for arthritis. Flax-seed for heart disease. Kanthil for sore throats. Vicks on the soles of your feet. And amla apparently beneficial for everything.

We take notes. We exchange ideas. We argue. We have no time for the little things in life like reading or breathing. We are too busy making brews, juices, smoothies and concoctions with methi and flax seeds. Açai berries and cranberries. Stevia and psyllium husks. Wheatgrass and kefir grain. Hemp and pomegranate seeds.

There are side effects of course. The extra turmeric (antiseptic, anti-bacteriaI, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory) I throw in our food turns everything yellow. I show them my jaundiced fingernails. The coriander juice (diuretic, promotes digestion, has chelating properties) I drink every day has stained my teeth and my skin the color of Shrek. The iron tablets have exacerbated my anal retentive personality. I would take the gingko biloba tablets for improving my memory, except I keep forgetting to take them.

By dessert we had moved on. Homeopathy and Ayurveda. Acupressure and Aromatheraphy. Reflexology and Reiki.

Substitution and Supplements.

Substitution. Aah. The things I have swapped to live a few more years.
I have switched from regular milk to soy milk. I spread raw honey (anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral) instead of jam (additives, preservatives, sugar, sugar, sugar). Bran flakes instead of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Warm water instead of cold water. Herbal tea instead of coffee. Weird how they have rehab centers for drug addicts and alcoholics and nothing for ex-espresso drinkers.

Suplements. Vitamins and Calcium. Glucosamine and Omega 3. Mini aspirin and
Vitamin D tablets. Most of them the size of domino pieces.

Used to be that my post-prandial pleasure was pulling out a box of Lindt chocolates.

I now pull out another kind of box. This one is from CVS and has S,M,T,W,Th,F, and S carved on the front.

The Drivers

Lobo was our driver, chauffeur being too elite a word. He drove us to school and back, and ferried the various tuition teachers to and from the railway station to our house.

That was what he was paid for.

The fringe benefit was spying on us, lucrative only in the thrills he got from reporting everything back to my father, who had left just basic driving instructions. Lobo, however, fancied himself part of the Special Forces of the Indian Secret Service. Every friend we talked to was eyed with distrust. Since we went to an all-girls school, and were not allowed to look at boys outside school, let alone socialize with them, his investigative skills were pretty much unproductive... until we hit the teenage years.

When I reached my teens, my sisters deemed it necessary to include me in their trips to the Astoria Hotel. The Astoria: a name ordinarily invoking images of marbled foyers, snooty receptionists, potted plants and mustachioed doormen at the entrance, and a gleaming Rolls out front. What the Astoria in Churchgate enjoyed instead, was smelly corridors, creaky lifts with no signs of doormen, greenery or even a desk at the reception. Its regular residents were dishdasha-ed, kuffiyeh-ed Arabs, often accompanied by women of dubious repute. Sharing the lift with them, we would keep our eyes on the floor, and with a sigh of relief, get off on the fifth floor and ring the bell at Serena’s Beauty Parlor. Why on earth Serena would choose a joint like this to have an institute de beauté, defies imagination. In any event, both my sisters had been frequenting Serena’s for a few years, before they noticed that their younger sister was showing signs of looking like Bigfoot, with a mustache even Stalin would envy. So to Serena’s I went, emerging a couple of depilatory, painful hours later and considerably several pounds lighter.

What's all this got to do with the driver? Well, this scenario played out monthly, and Lobo always sat waiting for us in the car. He eyed, with intense suspicion, the comings and goings of the risqué residents of the Astoria Hotel and came to nefarious conclusions. He decided it was his duty to report this and back to the Diwankhana it was, for a good dressing-down. Except this time, it was my father, who was embarrassed and cut short the conversation, not wanting to be enlightened as to the esthetic, or any other particularities of womanhood.

My dad’s driver was Jadav, who was, to put it extremely politely, ‘visually challenged’. Any spare time he had, he spent looking in the car’s rearview mirror, checking out his gold teeth, of which he had plenty. Whatever money he had left over from dental expenditure, he spent on his matka vice. Come seven pm, when he had to clock out to make it to the gambling kholi, his persona did a volte face and he would turn into a cantankerous race car driver. He would open up throttle like the Batmobile and hightail it back home at break-neck speed … which was exactly that: risking breaking our necks. No amount of pleas would slow him down. He would screech to a stop in the garage, grab his little cloth bag and sprint for the bus stop. We peeked into the potli once and saw little triangular packets of paan. For someone who had dental problems, you would think he would hold back on the betel nut and tobacco.

Now, before seven pm, he drove at the same speed as a bullock-cart, only much slower. On seeing a green light, he would slam on the brakes. When asked why he would slow down, he would give his gold-capped, toothy grin - a sight that did not make him any more endearing - and say “Abhi laal ho jaye ga!” (It will turn red soon!) Rarely had I seen my dad lose his temper, except for when he was in the car with Jadav. In an apoplectic rage, he would thump his fists down on the seat and shout Chalo! Jaldi chalo! The more exasperated my father got, the more terror-stricken Jadav became, now applying the brake with increasing frequency, until eventually, he would be forced to pull over and my dad would take over the wheel.

Not that Dad was any better. He would insist on driving, irrespective of failing eyesight. My nephew Ashir once told me of an incident with respect to my father’s driving. It was kind of a good news/bad news deal. The bad news was that my dad saw him at the bus stop and offered him a ride. The good news Ashir said, was that he was still alive. He had kept his eyes shut all the way to Colaba. When they were open, he would caution my dad by yelling “Island! Island!” and dad would say “What island?” and up and down they would go, careening over the median. After that, whenever Ashir saw our Fiat approaching the bus stop, he would bend down and pretend to tie his laces. Either way he would lose, he figured. If Jadav was driving, he would miss work, and if my dad drove, he would miss his life.

Years later, with my sisters out of the house and me having learned how to drive, Dad sent Lobo off to be a supervisor at the factory. In India, you can wear many hats. No schooling, no training, no cv, no orientation. One day a driver, the next Construction Supervisor.

When Dad didn’t need him, or he was out of town, Jadav had been given instructions to drive me around, in spite of the driver’s license I waved before him. Emerging from the lift, I would hold out my hand for the keys, and Gold Teeth would throw his head back arrogantly and ask me “Kyu?” Why? he has the gumption to ask me (his memsahib)? I tell him I want to drink the petrol from the tank, grab the keys and order him into the passenger seat. He pales. A fate worse than death, something bound to happen sooner or later, he thinks, given my driving skills. I laugh diabolically, in anticipation of seeing him hunched next to me, right foot pumping on an imaginary brake. With no restraining harness nor the comforting thought of an airbag, both futuristic concepts totally alien at the time, he sits cowering in fear, his hands straight out in front of him, clutching the dashboard. I drive at a marginally demonic speed and make sure I go through every red light (but then doesn’t everybody in Bombay?) and weave in an out of traffic with bumper car efficiency ... a kamikaze madwoman, getting an adrenaline rush playing a game of chicken and using scare tactics, primarily meant for Jadav, but unfortunately including some innocent bystanders.

With these wonderful Indy 500 skills - perfected over eight years - under my belt, it came as a rude shock when I almost failed my driving test in California. I was made to pull over and a visibly shaken instructor decided to pass me (with one mark). This, I suspect was not out of any compassion, but perish the thought, he would be chosen to sit in my car again. I was happy to have passed, but a bit peeved. There really was no need to shout “I don’t care what the fricking signal means in India!”

Plus I should bill the DMV for all the time it took me to get his fingernail marks off the dashboard.

The Cook

Our maharaj was skinny as a beedi, and just as foul-smelling as the crude, local cigarette, an opinion based on the rare times I dared to venture close to him. Maharaj is the name given to a cook. Not to be confused with the royal Maharaja, who would’ve never stepped into a kitchen, let alone cook in it. He was also a little delusional, or at least confused with the similarity of his name and acted in an arrogant, highhanded manner. Or maybe it was because he was a Brahmin and we were of the lower caste, being Vaishyas. He sat on a rectangular, raised platform in the kitchen and from there, he lorded it over us, his Brahmin chest bare except for the obligatory janoi, the thread denoting his higher caste.

The caste system having about as much meaning to a six-year old, as the Bhagvat has to a buffalo, I tapped him once on the shoulder. He turned an apoplexy red, if you could distinguish any colors on his black face, and having been abominably polluted, ran like a screaming banshee to have a bath. Had I been a little older and braver, I would’ve kicked his dhoti-ed ass and reminded him that this lower caste was paying his salary. Mostly, I would have loved to chop off his little pigtail sticking out of the dome of his otherwise shaved head.

We should’ve kicked him out for other reasons. It was no oddity that my weight stayed equivalent to a ten year old, all the way through my teens. He was an awful cook. My poor Ba fumed and grumbled about the food. A great cook herself, she chafed at the bit to go into the kitchen and take over, except, being too old, no one would allow her. "Muo bemano!" she would rail. The vegetables were watery and tasteless, the daal the same consistency as osaman (a vile concoction if there ever was one), and just as unsavory. The lentils congealed at the bottom of the vadki, like sludge at the bottom of a stagnant cesspool. I noticed that Varsha never had complaints about the daal, partly because it made a good hiding place for the peas she never ate. Other times, she squished the peas under the vadki and the times she didn’t, they would unceremoniously be dumped on my thali. The haldi-colored, watery part floated on top, with bits of mustard seeds, kothmir and slivers of coconut.

Coconut. Now here is something that should never have been discovered. Every temple we entered, every pooja we went to, we were given little pieces of copra as prasad. Hours after leaving the temple, the nasty piece of coconut, now reduced to fibrous, tasteless pabulum, and like a wad of tobacco, would be uncomfortably ensconced in my cheek, awaiting a decision – swallow or spit. Swallowing a big chunk like that involved the hazard of choking to death. Spitting it out meant insulting god, a big sin, and wasn’t I punished enough with having to eat the maharaj’s food day in and day out?

The rest of his culinary repertoire was just as inedible and it was just as well that we spent a lot of our time down the road, at White House, where the cook used oil, chilies and salt with reckless abandon. The food was to die for ... and I mean to really die for ... probably leading to the familial problems of hypertension, elevated cholesterol, clogged arteries, and ultimately to numerous heart attacks.

The Servants

We were luckier than most. I don’t just mean having servants. I mean we thought we had divine protection: a servant named Lakshman and another named Vishnu. How could we not thrive under the aegis of a sanctified staff? After a while, Laksman was either fired for stealing or left for his village on chutti and never came back – two of the most common reasons for letting a servant go. The third most common reason was if a neighbor in the building or a friend bribed them into their own service with promises of a higher pay.

Vishnu was more than a mere servant. For an illiterate man who never had even a day’s worth of schooling, he was an amazingly quick learner. Dad taught him how to handle a camera (and even change the roll, this being a real feat with the older 120 mm film), how to work a film projector, how to be a butler, and be a gentleman’s gentleman - a first-rate factotum. He could assemble, operate and repair appliances, the instruction manuals of which he could not read, but then neither could any of us, given that all the appliances came from Germany, and the instructions were written in a language that had strange double dots on some of the vowels and random capitalization.

He did the household shopping and managed the accounts, down to the last paisa. This last was no mean feat, considering he could not write and used only mental faculties. You could leave any amount of money and jewelry unlocked and he would not touch it. I guess my father figured that if he could trust Vishnu with his family, he could entrust him with lesser valuables. He also managed the other servants, both the live-ins and the chutaks, the part-timers who came in briefly to wash the clothes once a day or the vessels, after lunchtime and dinnertime. Vishnu accompanied us on all our holidays, and once his work was done, would help improvise games and take us for long hikes. It was Vishnu who taught me how to ride the bike during our holiday in Coonoor, running patiently up and down the footpath by my side, hanging on the seat, and ready to cushion me if I fell.

Dad was a compulsive party-giver. Upon being informed about the party – my father always vague about the number of people attending, and their time of arrival - Vishnu would start polishing the silver and setting up the bar in preparation. Turning on the air condition, stacking the LPs on the gramophone player, laying out the ashtrays and cocktail napkins, filling the little bowls with almonds and pistas – all the same machinations played out at least twice a week, if not more. The last few years of Vishnu’s service with us were traumatic, the evils of alcohol got their hooks into him and sadly, the once honest and trustworthy devoted servant turned to any means he could to secure a drink. At one of the parties, a guest asked my father if times were so tough for him that he had to resort to watering down the alcohol, and that is how Vishnu got caught. He was retired to his village Ratnagiri, with a pension and his son Raghu was hired at the factory and became the bread-winner of his family.

When I was five years old, we ‘inherited’ Sheila. Her ex-employer, and friend of my father, got a job in Germany, and could not take her along. Worried about her future employment, Jackisuncle asked Dad if he could employ Sheila, who would be a good help to Ba, and make an excellent ayah for us.

Sheila had been recently widowed and was raising her young daughter on her own. She moved in and over the years, built up enough knowledge and experience to take over from Vishnu. Unlike him though, she eschewed most foreign appliances, which would actually have lightened her load, preferring instead to do everything by hand. In any event, a food processor could never have competed with the way she ground the kothmir, coconut and chilies to produce the most flavorful green chutney, nor the mandolin, with the way she diced cucumbers and shredded carrots for the kachumbar or sliced potatoes to make us wafers.

She was a tough biddy. All the servants, the cooks, drivers and malis in the building were totally intimidated by her. Their Indian machismo melted like ghee under her ferocious gaze, and when confronted with the habitual, displeased pose of hands on her hips. She may not have been the memsahib, but no one had the gumption to tell her that.

I was the last one on earth to tell her who was the boss. She was always quick to advise, correct, and scold me and put me in my place, but I never objected to anything and quickly figured out the fastest way to turn that stern frown upside down was to call her “Tikubai”, give her a big hug and shower her with kisses.

All through the years, she steadfastly maintained that she could not understand a word of English. Yet, she managed just fine, communicating with the constant stream of foreigners that traipsed in and out of our house. I kept up the charade to make her happy. We would both pretend she could not understand, and eavesdropping on my phone conversations, she would learn my plans for the day…at what time I was off to play golf, whose party I was going to, or that I planned to skip her carefully-planned evening meal in favor of an invitation to the popular Shamiana, a café in the Taj Hotel, or eat at my friend Vinita’s house, her mother making the most divine cholé. Loyal to the end, she never told on me, not all the drinking and not all the wild bashes I would throw when my dad was away on a business trip. She would bring bottles of Limca up to my room when girlfriends visited, knowing full well the bottle of Pims No 1 would come out of my secret hiding place to add a little extra buzz.

Sheila stayed on long enough to look after my kids when we went to India on vacation. Nothing the children did would elicit anything but a grandmotherly smile, and if anyone was to be rebuked, it would be me – I was too hard on my kids, they were such angels, why do I shout at them so much and so on. The hands never went on her hips, the frown disappeared, replaced by sheer joy when I left the kids with her, when I went shopping or partying. She had transcended the traditional role of ayah to quasi surrogate mother and confidante, to even playing a dadi to my children.

It was extremely fortunate, that over the years, she had taken over the kitchen and turned out to be a great cook, which was our saving grace, given the culinary muck churned out by the maharaj.