Pimpri and A Taste of a Life of Leisure

Staff quarters at Pimpri [where Hindustan Antibiotics, manufacturers of Penicillin, and where Ramu was the Financial Adviser and Chief Accounts Officer] were spacious, for the officers at least. We also had a large garden with a number of roses and other flowers, and some fruit trees and a vegetable patch at the back. The household help the three men had had was equally luxurious – Gabbar Singh, the Garhwali Jeeves, did not only the cooking [three new meals each day!] but also dusting, car washing, ironing and what not; Gangu Bai, the part-time maid, swept and swabbed and washed utensils; and a 'mali' looked after the garden. But, when we came back after the wedding, we found that our Jeeves had fled with Mohan, Gangu Bai's son, also a youth and Gabbar Singh's pal. So I began to do the cooking, with GB's help with the rotis and the vegetable cutting. Within a week, however, the two runaways returned. They had been unsuccessful in their attempts to join the film world! Apparently, Mohan was the more interested; I always thought GS went off with him as he did not relish a 'memsahib' ruling the household where he had hitherto been king.

Whatever the reason, he worked with our family for years – even after Ramu and I left a couple of years later for the USA, he stayed on with Gopala and Annaiya in their Poona flat for a couple more. Then he decided to go back to his village and we never heard from him again. [However, just recently, in the new millenium, we came across a minister in the newly carved out state of Uttaranchal named Gabbar Singh! Who knows it might our ex-Jeeves!].

On my part, I realised he was a gem of a person, and handled him with 'TLC' , specially as, much as I loved cooking, I was frankly aghast at the thought of cooking three separate meals each day [morning breakfast being Indian tiffin type, and the other two meals with two sabjis, one or two rasdars/dhalls/sambars and rotis plus rice, a salad or raita, and curds, of course]. Later on, I tried reasoning with the men that they could easily eat the afternoon left overs at night [Annaiya would not eat, I knew, the previous day's, as Amma would not have], but even at that the two brothers demurred. I even pointedly asked if this had been the pattern in Mysore when the large family of twelve had to manage on Annaiya's schoolteacher's salary even if he used to moonlight, keeping the accounts for a local shopkeeper [who gave him credit most helpfully when he wanted]. Of course not, they agreed, the night meal was generally only the reheated lunch. But now, when they could afford it, and had a cook to do it, to boot, why not? I left it at that. But their views would change soon enough!

R's Colleagues Wait for the Reception

We both had agreed that in Pimpri also we would rather not have a reception, but meet R's colleagues a few at a time. Well, we did not get around to inviting anyone over for a while, what with settling down to our new life together. One day, the Works Manager invited us all to dinner and presented us a gift, and I had to apologise for our delay in having them over ourselves. Ramu explained to me later that they were keen to have their daughter marry Gopala. In fact, some time later, the mother approached me to broach the matter with G. Innocently, I agreed but G firmly told me I was never to raise the matter of his marriage again, and that was that! It was soon after this dinner that the MD and his wife came over and exclaimed they had waited first for our reception. So we explained, and later we did invite these and other senior colleagues' families, one or two at a time.

Time Pass

What did we do to relax, or as the current favorite phrase goes, what did we do for our 'Time Pass'? Ramu and I tried to play badminton at the colony recreation club, but we did not persist. He had been a keen bridge player, but I just could not summon up any interest in any card game except for an occasional fun activity. We did play a lot of scrabble that I introduced into the household. When Vaman [Ramu's sister, Tripuri's husband], was posted for three months to Pune, it became such a rage that some evenings three games were played in a row! I almost wished I had never let them in on this game!

We also went into town, some 15 km away, all three of us – R, Gopala and myself, to see a cinema [usually only English movies as we did not like the run of the mill Indian ones with so much singing and dancing and little by the way of fresh plots or strong characterisations]; or, just to loaf around on the M.G. Road or the Bund gardens, and so on.

One day, Gopala, who had joined a yoga class, invited us to see a demonstration by his Guru, the already famous B.K.S. Iyengar, and some of his advanced students. The show was truly impressive. What took my imagination was the master doing the shirasasana [headstand] and continuing his explanations while in that pose for several minutes, without becoming breathless. Ramu and I decided to join the class, and that led us to practice yogasanas for years. Even now I do some, but not very regularly.

Was I cut out to be a housewife after all?

My high hopes of finding a Marketing Research job in Pune were soon dashed. I did get one consultancy, a short one, but after that, for months, kept waiting. To while away the time, I tried to be the genteel housewife, supervising the servants including the Mali, making some fancy dishes occasionally, arranging flowers, and so on. One afternoon, Mrs. MD dropped in and in a relieved tone, said it was great that I was in, as her circle of friends were all out that afternoon, so she could neither play her usual cards, or chat. At that moment, I knew that this life was not for me – who knows, I too might be driven to seek solace in cards, gossip, and flower arrangements!

The next day, I drove to the Deccan College to meet the redoubtable Iravati Karve, doyen of Indian anthropologists and sociologists, who was the head of the then joint department in Poona University. She was the daughter-in-law of Maharishi Karve, who had defied social taboos by marrying a widow. IK herself also broke unwritten rules by zooming around Pune on a motorbike long before we thought of riding on scooters that did not need the sari to be looped up. The Maharashtrian way of wearing the sari must have helped. She was a path- breaker in the social sciences field also, being an authority on Indian Kinship patterns.

When I apprised her of my survey background, she was interested, and in her inimitable decisive way, outlined a study she had been planning to launch, and then asked me to give her a proposal for a grant she could then peddle around. Well, the long and short of it was that I developed, under her guidance, a proposal to the Indian Council of Social Science Research [ICSSR] to study the 'Sociological Aspects of Cooperative Societies' in Maharashtra. But first I had to do the pretests with the help of a staff member in the college so as to finalise the outline of the study and the questionnaires etc.

It was on one of my trips along the normally busy Bombay – Poona national highway that I almost had a freak accident. The road that day was peculiarly bereft of the jostling trucks and buses that usually made the 15 km a nightmare but on the otherwise empty road I saw to my horror a truck coming toward me, and I mean, toward me on the wrong side of the road for him! I honked and honked, and it seemed that I would have to move off the road, but to what? There was only a dip and trees to my left, and i said, well this is the end. Suddenly the driver woke up and veered away from me at the last moment!