From “Baano” to “Badi Mausi”

Today I called up my four year old niece to wish her for her birthday. Her mother(My sister) called out to her: “Saanvi,” “Badi Mausi”...........I could hear an excited voice enquire and exclaim “Badi Mausi?!” ..........and then with more excitement on the phone she went on .... “Badi Mausi aaj mera birthday hai......I went to school.....cake aayega......and soon she was lost in the excitement of the party and friends in her house...........But the gentle loving words “Badi mausi”.....kept echoing in my ears for a long time after I disconnected the phone.....being the eldest of six siblings and of the whole of my generation in my family “badi” has become an epithet to the different “roles” I Play. Off late I realise my mother always introduces me to her new found friends, the elderly women in the society who spend a few hours together chit-chatting and sunning themselves in the cold Delhi weather in their evening years of their life, whenever I visit her... “Ye meri Badi Beti hai......Nainital se aayi hai”..... It mesmerises me the way “names” and “roles” have changed or has been added in the last four decades of my Life!

I am told by my mother when I was born my mother was staying with her uncle’s family as my father was away in the US pursuing his executive management programme. At Patna it was a family of my mother’s Uncle and my uncles (mamas) who stayed in the city pursuing their jobs and education and I was the only little baby in the family then and so, my mother’s uncle my grandfather named me “Baano”.......the little child then “Baano” is still called “Baano” whevenver she visits them.....not only do I love this name with which I was born it brings me fond fading memories of my childhood.

I am told one of my aunts was fond of the character “Bunty” of a serial story with the same title she was reading in a magazine and gave me the name Bunty which became my nickname for the rest of my life!

Soon it was time to go to school and register an official name and another aunt of mine decided on “Jyoti” as she thought the first child of the next generation of the family befitted this name. It was also the time when caste in India was becoming a disability rather than identity and also that perhaps my father a congresi by ideology and a rather un-proclaimed admirer of one of our nation’s most fiery Prime minister, preferred to suffix “Priyadarshini” rather than the family surname.

Schooling in the southern part of the country I heard very interesting accents of my name and also my teachers and friends liked to take some liberty with my name. One of my favourite teacher till now calls me “Jyotipriya”......which I so love to hear.

When my marriage was fixed, my to be husband’s friends and Bhabhees also gave me names I cherish, one of them called me “Ujala” perhaps associating it with the “Jyothi Laboratories” product, which I still use as a password to many accounts!

When I stepped into my marital home shy to call me by my name my husband always called out “Listen” to which once my mother-in-law remarked “Ye tumne badhiya naam rakha hai “Listen”......... I guess he just translated the commonly used “suniye ji or suno”!

When I was teaching in a college I also had the privilege of the names my students kept for me some of which I know and some I don’t......I often asked them to tell me their nickname for me as a farewell gift in their last semester and once a supposedly brave student said “Mam ye sab aasp se dartey hain aur aapko nahin bata rahe hai......ye aapko “Jyoti Moti” bulatey hai...” I stood smiling to a class of undergraduates fearing about their internal marks !

Few Years ago my sister was blessed with a son and our younger sister was babysitting during her visit to their place and she spent quite some time teaching the three year old about relatives and friends. He was introduced to his “Badi Mausi” at the Bangalore Railway station when we visited my sister a few years ago. I haven’t forgotten the deep brown eyes looking into the mirror of the car sitting in my lap on the way from the station to his house he kept saying “Badi Mausi” several times. Since they migrated to the US I hadn’t heard it in several years. Today again my little niece with her gentle and loving voice took me on a voyage of memories.

“What’s in a name”...... they say, Lots I guess... my names bring me memories, memories filled with love, warmth and identity ........from Bano to Badi Mausi life has been a mixed bag of feelings!

My Empathetic Husband

Being unsure of my suspicion about my maid stealing petty things from the house, one day I decided to confirm it. I counted the number of 'samosas' (the small sized sukha samosas) in the 'dabba' and left it on the table. After the maid left, I went back to count them and not to my surprise the lady had done her job. Happy that I was not just a suspicious lady of the house always untrusting her servants, I decided to convey the revelations to my husband. Expecting his support in many words and a further strategic plan of action against the now confirmed culprit I took my husband to the scene of crime and narrated my 'sting operation'. Listening to my trickery with all empathy my husband picked up one of the samosas of the now few remianing and popping it into his mouth, saying "let me eat one before she steals all of them", went back to his "Tally"....whatever version he was working on!  

Homeless in Homeland

“Didi tum to yehan ki nahin lagti, tumhara ghar kahan hai? ” (Sister you do not look like a native of this place where do you hail from?). No this was not the first time I was facing a question like this. In my almost forty years of life I have been subjected to similar queries innumerable times and every-time it has left me pondering. India is a country so intensely united and yet markedly diverse. It's diversity in language, food, clothes, festivals and etc need no elaboration. It also has diverse races of people who are identifiable and can be attributed to specified geographical regions of the country. Thus the question to a wheatish complexioned north Indian from a fair looking Uttaranchali must seem natural to most local inhabitants. Yet it leaves me reflective and contemplative. I have spent almost two decades of my life in a beautiful town in the southernmost part of the country. Me and my siblings identify more with the people from there than with people from our own native land. Our familiarity with which is only limited to stories of their days there, from our parents and our annual summer holiday trips. Which were later not even annual thanks to the board exams…competitive exams…, and holidays that could not be synchronised as amongst half a dozen siblings some of us in college while the younger at school would have exams and vacations alternatively, leaving our parents no choice on their annual trips. They had to be content with my father making the mandatory trips and my mother would stay back and ensure we did our exams well.
We still enjoy south Indian food, invariably wear south silk sarees on all family weddings. Fondly remember our days there and look for an opportunity to go back there.

After my marriage I moved to my husband’s home, right from the seashore down south to the foothills of the Himalayas up north. Personally for me it has been a beautiful journey, the ups and downs on the ride up the hill have been memorable, enriching and learning experience. My husband is often surprised when he hears me humming the kumaoni folk tune (no I am not much of a singer although) as I make his favourite rawa dosa for a sumptuous Sunday breakfast.

We love the hills and seem to have never got enough of it. Having spent more than half of my life and more than a decade of it here when I am still asked this question by a curios salesman “didi tumhara ghar kahan hai……” I almost feel homeless and abandoned and wake up to the reality life is temporary and my permanent home perhaps lies elsewhere.

The Lonely Leaf

Dark was the night, a few people were still on their way back home after their day’s work, a cyclist was trying hard to make his way out against glaring lights from the trucks on the opposite side, a car full of young boys were whistling their way to a late night movie, a young lady was hurrying up home may be today she had to attend a meeting before leaving her office,….the air was chill she pulled her scarf tight and made her steps faster, the leaf had begun to shake even more vigorously as the air blew……standing by the side of the road this old tree had been there for ages……nobody in the neighbourhood could really tell how long it might have been there but the leaf certainly knew how long it had held its stem and watched life’s play. Sometimes just an onlooker sometimes part of the game itself.
It seems just a few days in a beautiful rainy weather, when the sun shone so pleasantly and the neighbouring puddle was so full of small children jumping and splashing muddy water on each other when the plants around the puddle had fragrant flowers blooming, the leaf felt as if it had been sent to paradise with young fellow-beings on the same stem and the tree was full of many like itself.
Soon the rains were heavy the leaf dreaded the sound of thunder and shivered when there was lightening. A few of its fellow-beings simply fell off, it watched helplessly and silently.
There was a slight chill in the air, fragrance on its own tree, and the flowers soon turned to fruits, ripe and juicy they gave birth to many new saplings around and the leaf felt a mad sense of joy.
Few seasons of rain, sun, snow and spring and the leaf loved every hue.
Today it had turned pale, some of its veins had broken and some felt a crackling in its fold, a portion of it had already withered and the leaf was quiet, sad and lonely.
The cyclist was gone, the car had sped far ahead, the young lady had found her husband who had come looking for her…………………………….there was a gush of strong wind the leaf could no longer hold, it had given up all its energy it just slipped off the tree.

Monkeys in the Mindland

Science has not been able to physically mark where the mind is situated in the human body although it places a lot of importance to the mind and calls it as the central seat that guides all our actions, beliefs and thoughts. There is a lot of research on the human brain but the mind remains an area only discussed by spiritual leaders.
Just like the monkeys in the wild forest jumping from one branch to another and often from one tree to another our mind also keeps wandering. It traverses time from past present and future in nanoseconds and geographical distances in a butt of an eye lid. One moment I am reminded of the snow capped Himalayan mountains which were breathtaking view from the Kumaon in Uttarakhand next moment I feel the wet sands below my feet at the Pondicherry beach. The fragrance of Jasmine in the plaits of women in the buses in south India gush in and the next moment I am transposed to the manikarnika ghat at Banaras where I can smell the burning dead human flesh.
The chirruping of the maina on my terrace, the rustling water against the pebbles in the stream ring in my ears as I close my eyes, the sound of the dhol during the durga pooja opens my eye wide. As I savour the kapoor mixed laddos of tamilnadu, the taste of the chicken momos I ate on my way up to Gangtok from Jalpaigudi fill in my mouth.
Pictures of my maternal grandfather and me in my childhood days at his farmhouse on the bullock cart are vivid in my mind and is flipped just like an old album by my nephew's photo I just saw on the facebook yesterday .
The train pulls to a halt at the station, my husband asks "where were you lost, what have you been thinking looking out of the window all the while?"
"Monkeys in Mindland" I tell him unsure he smiles at me and leads me out of the compartment.

Life goes on......

Have you ever observed the rain fed streams? They lie dry with vast amount of sand, so isolate and deserted for most times of the year. There are very large stones embeded in the hearts of these rivers, which seem to have been lying there for ages. Then the rains come. The river is flooded, it is so full and swelling with pride. It sometimes breaks its banks and invades homes of people, washes away their belongings, uproots trees, and flows speeding so fast that it seems like it will take away everyone and everything that comes in its way.
soon all the water has flowed, the rains stop and the the river is bare again.
Some trees on its banks stand rooted strongly.
Homes have been built on its banks again.........Life continues till the next rains!