The unfolding of our lives (4)

The past becomes our present, our present our future. But we can never quite tell the seamlessness of it all, because we cannot let go the regrets of what was or the fears of what will be.

As I look at my mother now, I feel like I never really knew her. When I was a child she was always very busy, and when I grew up and started my own family, I could never really forgive her for what I thought was her betrayal.

I was born in a tumultuous year when India’s destiny was being shaped. But I was too young to remember what happened. What I do remember is that growing up, I longed to spend time with my mother. For Ma, the Quit India movement was her real baby. She became actively involved in the struggle. She would mobilize people and support underground resistance groups. She was working with many of the women leaders in Congress like Sucheta Kriplani and Aruna Asaf Ali. Ma felt especially drawn to Aruna Asaf Ali. She admired Aruna for breaking the boundaries to go to college, work, marry outside her community. Later that year my mother led the formation of a women’s wing in Lucknow and they had decided to join their comrades in Bombay for a large scale protest. And just as they were boarding the train, the police swooped down on them and all of them were thrown into Jail. My father also believed in the cause, which is why perhaps, he let my mother go on protests around the country and get arrested, but he was more of an intellectual, who liked to ruminate on his ideas on paper, and not get his hands dirty with the nitty-gritty the way my mother did.

Two younger brothers and a younger sister followed, and we woke up one morning in a free country, though it was hard to tell in Lucknow because people were being slaughtered and houses were being burnt. In 1948, when Aruna Asaf Ali and others left the congress to form their own socialist party my mother joined them as well, and later on she helped Aruna to establish the National Federation of Indian Women, the women's wing of the Communist Party of India. My mother would also occasionally sing for All India Radio and my brothers and sisters would gather around to listen to her – we got to spend such little time with our mother that sometimes hearing her voice on the radio was the closest we got to her. The only people that my mother really took time out for was our eldest half-sister Rakhi because Ma did not want to be labeled as the bad step mother, and my youngest brother Rudra (his nickname was Babla) who was pampered by everyone in the family. But we were all tremendously proud of our mother. In 1958, she won a seat in the legislative assembly, and everyone in Lucknow knew us as Kaaveri Ganguly’s children. And strangely enough, I saw her as Kaaveri Ganguli as well - and not really as Ma.

It was my father who I had a special bond with. He was a professor of mathematics, but he enjoyed writing. He would often write political essays and at times poetry. Whenever he wrote a new poem, he would read it to me and ask me what I thought. Sometimes on weekends, he would pack all six children in his Morris Minor and take us to the cinema. On rainy days we would all drink milky tea and Mukundalal , our servant, would make us hot pakoras. We would each take turns telling Baba what we would do when we’d grow up. I think looking back now on my childhood, it’s those rainy days that I miss the most.

The day before I was supposed to get married, Baba came into my room. He looked at all the silk saris laid out on the bed and said, “Bubai, you will make a beautiful bride."
I know it was silly but I immediately burst into tears.
That night Baba also told me about my real father -Asad Shaukat.

Over the years, my mother scaled back her involvement in politics , and by the time my daughter was born , she had assumed the role of a full-time grandma. Both my kids adored her, and surprisingly, she enjoyed being a grandmother as well. My mother had never made loochis for us, but every time any of her grandkids visited, she would ply them with all sorts of home cooked delicacies. I could have forgotten the years of neglect, but I could never let go of what she had done. She had made me not just a barstard child, but an orphan. She had robbed me of my entitlement to Baba, my brothers and sisters, and even to her.

I see her now, perhaps in the final months of her life. She sits by the window reading a book. She looks up and smiles. I dab the corners of her forehead with a handkerchief infused with Eau De Cologne. She pulls my hand from her forehead and brings it to her lips. Last night we made our peace. You have his nose and chin, she says. I see the moistness in her eyes. Tears that have waited for almostn sixty years. Ma is still strong . Kaaveri Ganguly. But for the first time, I also see her vulnerability. A young girl who fell in love in the summer of 1941.