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.
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.
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.
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