In September of '74, I was taken as a Water and Sanitation Evaluation Consultant, though the understanding was that the post was equivalent to that of a national Officer post at level 3 [NO C] and would carry the remuneration for such a level. NO C corresponded in duties and responsibilities to a P3 in the International Officer level. Briefly, UN agencies use a step system for professionals – P1 to P5, and then up to D1 and D2 [director levels]. Above that come the Under Secretary Generals etc upto the Secretary General. The support staff – secretairies, programme or information assistant, and so on are termed GS [general service] and have their own levels.
Most UN agencies did not have National staff [I do not know if this is still the case]. But UNICEF and UNDP did, basically since they were more field oriented than the others and had offices in most of the developing countries. Originally, N.O.s were just support staff, under I.O.s [International Officers] but when I joined, UNICEF at least had shed that distinction and some zone offices within India had N.O.s heading them.
The Delhi office was a regional office serving not only India, but also Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives and , believe it or not, Outer Mongolia. The Regional Planning Officer, Victor, and the Planning Officer, Gerry, had to visit these other countries periodically. By chance, the week I was to join, both of them had to be in Afghanistan for some meeting. Victor told me though that I should use the week to familiarise myself with the documents and issues.
Victim of a Feud
Ram the Sr. Programme Assistant in the section and Leonora, the secretary, greeted me when I came to the office on a Monday, and I was busy with my reading at my desk when I was told the Personnel Officer wanted to see me. 'Ha', I thought, 'this will be to sign the contract'. I went to his office and JM said, in a dry voice,
' So you think you are going to join UNICEF, and on the NO C level?'
' That is what I have been told by Mr. Soler-Sala'
' Well, you may think so, and he may do too, but that cannot be!'
'In that case, I will go back home', I said. ' I did not come begging for this job'.
I went up to the room and started gathering my belongings, plus the documents given to me. Ram and Lenora were startled and on my narrating to them this incident, firmly said, “Victor will sort it out. Please do not go home. Victor will be furious with us if we let you go, and anyway why should you? JM is like that!”
But I had made up mind not to hang around. I told them not to worry, I would do my reading at home, and when Victor came back, we could work out what was to be done.
The moment Victor found out what had happened, he called me and told me to come right back. There would be no problem. Later, I learnt, the two of them had had a long standing feud, and JM thought he could score off Victor by taking it out on me. Apparently, Victor gave him a dressing down, and anyway, JM gave me no further trouble, and meekly produced a contract for me to sign.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Pratima; GC Project End ...
Pratima
One day, one of the other staff in Ford, whom I knew only by sight, came up to me and said she was faced with a problem. She had to go on a short trip and her husband was also away for a couple of days at the same time. Would I come over and sleep with my child in her place for those few nights so her children would not be alone with her manservant? Not that Bhanu was untrustworthy or not caring with them, but it would be better , she said if a famiy member or friend was around.
I agreed and that was the beginning of a good friendship not only between us two, but for the two families. Madhavi and Rahul were quite a bit older than Adit, but the boys especially became good friends. My good deed was repaid as such some years later when Ramu and I were in the same position, travelling at the same time. Nowadays, Pratima and I rarely contact each other but the strong bond still remains.
End of the Growth Centre Project
By mid 74, however, with no signs of this happening, and the Growth Centre project coming to its close, the questions of what next on our location and my career reared their heads again. In fact, Andrade, the FF director of the project, was moving to the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, and offered me a job there. But Ramu would have none of it. He just wanted out of Calcutta. “No, you stay there, i am coming back. I can't stand this place! Apparently, people either love or hate Calcutta and there is no arguing with either set of people!
I then decided that this was the time to finish my dissertation, a draft of which I had somehow managed to get going in between my hectic job and home responsibilities. I worked out with Prodipto an arrangement by which I could use my old office there, and get some help in accessing the Delhi varsity computer too if needed [though most of my data and analyses were done by then]. So, almost seamlessly, I moved into my new role, with no letting out that I was no longer employed but working on my own, on the dissertation, to Annaiya or others, family or friends, as I wanted no distractions in this onslaught on my dissertation. Actually, all the data was on hand and only the final analysis and writing up were due.
Another interesting development took place at the same time. Gerry, who had quit FF a few months before, had joined UNICEF Delhi in its Planning Section. At a party he gave, I met Victor Soler-Sala, the head of the section, and soon after, he conveyed through Gerry the offer of a post in it. After talking over with Ramu, I told him I could join in a couple of months to give myself time to send off my dissertation. Another problem that weighed on my mind was the possibility of Ramu being posted somewhere other than Delhi soon and so we agreed that I should come in as a consultant rather than as a regular staff member.
One day, one of the other staff in Ford, whom I knew only by sight, came up to me and said she was faced with a problem. She had to go on a short trip and her husband was also away for a couple of days at the same time. Would I come over and sleep with my child in her place for those few nights so her children would not be alone with her manservant? Not that Bhanu was untrustworthy or not caring with them, but it would be better , she said if a famiy member or friend was around.
I agreed and that was the beginning of a good friendship not only between us two, but for the two families. Madhavi and Rahul were quite a bit older than Adit, but the boys especially became good friends. My good deed was repaid as such some years later when Ramu and I were in the same position, travelling at the same time. Nowadays, Pratima and I rarely contact each other but the strong bond still remains.
End of the Growth Centre Project
By mid 74, however, with no signs of this happening, and the Growth Centre project coming to its close, the questions of what next on our location and my career reared their heads again. In fact, Andrade, the FF director of the project, was moving to the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, and offered me a job there. But Ramu would have none of it. He just wanted out of Calcutta. “No, you stay there, i am coming back. I can't stand this place! Apparently, people either love or hate Calcutta and there is no arguing with either set of people!
I then decided that this was the time to finish my dissertation, a draft of which I had somehow managed to get going in between my hectic job and home responsibilities. I worked out with Prodipto an arrangement by which I could use my old office there, and get some help in accessing the Delhi varsity computer too if needed [though most of my data and analyses were done by then]. So, almost seamlessly, I moved into my new role, with no letting out that I was no longer employed but working on my own, on the dissertation, to Annaiya or others, family or friends, as I wanted no distractions in this onslaught on my dissertation. Actually, all the data was on hand and only the final analysis and writing up were due.
Another interesting development took place at the same time. Gerry, who had quit FF a few months before, had joined UNICEF Delhi in its Planning Section. At a party he gave, I met Victor Soler-Sala, the head of the section, and soon after, he conveyed through Gerry the offer of a post in it. After talking over with Ramu, I told him I could join in a couple of months to give myself time to send off my dissertation. Another problem that weighed on my mind was the possibility of Ramu being posted somewhere other than Delhi soon and so we agreed that I should come in as a consultant rather than as a regular staff member.
Household Help Come & Go
As soon as Adit could keep his head steady, I took him to the Ford swimming pool,and with the help of inflatable arm bands, let him soak in the coolness, shielded from the fierce Delhi heat.
Some months after Ramu left on his transfer, Shivaram who had got married, quit in a huff as he felt I was roping in his wife to stand in for him when he took ill, and he did not like that. I had only requested her to come watch Adit while he was having his breakfast and I was getting ready for the office [as Venkatamma would only come when I was all but ready to go].
Then an even major blow! Some weeks after this, Venkatamma told me she too had to leave. Her excuse was thin -she said her health was deteriorating, and I knew she was worried about our household itself moving from Delhi, and so she must have got the certainty of another job. I tried to reassure her that the household was not folding up here, but to no avail.
So we sent an S.O.S. to Madras and got the School of Social Work to find us a girl who had passed her school exam and was trained to be a housekeeper/ayah. Our intention was both to have help and also help out such a person. However, from the beginning, Raji turned out to be less than well-trained, and worse, non-trainable. She was just not interested. I kept trying.
Ramu continued to come on brief visits and we waited patiently for a denouement of this act in our family life. He disliked Calcutta and wanted me to stick on to Delhi, hoping he would be transferred back. One day, when Adit was over a year old, we were startled to hear him wishing Ramu bye when he was going back with a 'Bye, bye, maama [uncle]'. That was too much for us. We fervently hoped he would soon come to stay and be able to be called 'Appa'.
Some months after Ramu left on his transfer, Shivaram who had got married, quit in a huff as he felt I was roping in his wife to stand in for him when he took ill, and he did not like that. I had only requested her to come watch Adit while he was having his breakfast and I was getting ready for the office [as Venkatamma would only come when I was all but ready to go].
Then an even major blow! Some weeks after this, Venkatamma told me she too had to leave. Her excuse was thin -she said her health was deteriorating, and I knew she was worried about our household itself moving from Delhi, and so she must have got the certainty of another job. I tried to reassure her that the household was not folding up here, but to no avail.
So we sent an S.O.S. to Madras and got the School of Social Work to find us a girl who had passed her school exam and was trained to be a housekeeper/ayah. Our intention was both to have help and also help out such a person. However, from the beginning, Raji turned out to be less than well-trained, and worse, non-trainable. She was just not interested. I kept trying.
Ramu continued to come on brief visits and we waited patiently for a denouement of this act in our family life. He disliked Calcutta and wanted me to stick on to Delhi, hoping he would be transferred back. One day, when Adit was over a year old, we were startled to hear him wishing Ramu bye when he was going back with a 'Bye, bye, maama [uncle]'. That was too much for us. We fervently hoped he would soon come to stay and be able to be called 'Appa'.
Food matters
I asked the paediatrician, Dr. Subash Arya, for his advice on supplementary foods, and specifically if I could give him idli. He promptly said, 'By all means, if you give me some whenever you make them!'. He added I was to start the baby on this regime from the fourth month, but to do it one item at a time, in minute portions first and for a week at least before moving on to another food. So we progressed in this fashion till I tried hard boiled egg. This did not agree with him first, and Annaiya, who had already grumbled that no one in the family had been fed this forbidden food, and anyway, I was pushing too many new foods, really held forth. Adit did manage to stand eggs when it was given some months later.
We had got a high chair for Adit and soon after he was able to sit up, he was in it, and trying to manage eating by himself, with his hands or a spoon. Sometimes, he would throw the food around just for the fun of it. One day, he threw down some favorite item and wanted it back on his plate. That was my chance to explain that it was dirty, and that he should see to it that the food did not end up on the floor. It worked by and large. I think when mothers have too much time on their hands, they tend to fuss over a child's eating, and make it worse. I for one was glad that I did not end up running after a child to make him eat his food even when he was five years old.
Adit did not give us any problem in coming to meals or eating enough and in a reasonable time. Except during summers. The first year this happened, a really hot one, I was alarmed and rushed to the doctor. He said not to worry, most kids lost their appetites in summer. But I blurted, 'he will only eat oranges and curds!' Pat came the reply, 'Sensible chap! Don't you wish you could do the same?'. As to my worry that he was not gaining weight, he said he would automatically do that in winter, and so he did!
We had got a high chair for Adit and soon after he was able to sit up, he was in it, and trying to manage eating by himself, with his hands or a spoon. Sometimes, he would throw the food around just for the fun of it. One day, he threw down some favorite item and wanted it back on his plate. That was my chance to explain that it was dirty, and that he should see to it that the food did not end up on the floor. It worked by and large. I think when mothers have too much time on their hands, they tend to fuss over a child's eating, and make it worse. I for one was glad that I did not end up running after a child to make him eat his food even when he was five years old.
Adit did not give us any problem in coming to meals or eating enough and in a reasonable time. Except during summers. The first year this happened, a really hot one, I was alarmed and rushed to the doctor. He said not to worry, most kids lost their appetites in summer. But I blurted, 'he will only eat oranges and curds!' Pat came the reply, 'Sensible chap! Don't you wish you could do the same?'. As to my worry that he was not gaining weight, he said he would automatically do that in winter, and so he did!
The Last Flicker & Single Parenting
The Last Flicker of Enjoyment
Sometime in June/July, we decided to take time off to go to Bangalore both to escape the North Indian heat and also to have Appa, who was now confined to the house in his semi-paralytic state, meet his new grandson. It was a good holiday though very brief. I was doubly happy that I managed to take the baby over to Appa as that October, just a month before his 77th birthday, he passed away. I flew down with Adit for his cremation, which, for the first time in our family, we had in the electric crematorium. Our older relatives were a bit surprised when Kumar announced , after that day's ceremonies, that he was not performing all the 13 day rites, as per Hindu custom/rules as Appa himself did not believe in them. [As the elder son, it was he who would have to perform them]. I stayed on for a couple of days and then flew back.
The last few years seeing Appa mostly bedridden or in an armchair had saddened us. All his life, he had been such a vibrant active person that this situation did not seem right at all. Still, he had not lost his sense of humour and mischief, and had enjoyed the four grandchildren in Bangalore, Kumar's and Gokul's children then in their childhood or adolescence, his special favorite being Gautam, Kumar's son.
Before the end of the year, Ramu was transferred to Calcutta, first as Officer on Special Duty, an euphemism for shunting out a person for whom no appropriate posting could be immediately found?? Soon, however, he was appointed as Audit Member, Coal, with his office in Calcutta still. Though he soon had one of his favorite nephews, Vivek, for company in that place, sharing the same flat, he did not take to Calcutta even after months. The saying is that the city and its vibrant cultural life grow on one, and soon one becomes a confirmed Calcuttan?? Not Ramu! He persisted in his efforts to get back to Delhi, and in '75, he succeeded.
With him away for so long, it was very demanding for me in the evenings and early mornings - I had no help, as I tried rushing about getting ready or feeling tired. I had also to take Adit whenever I went on essential shopping. Gerry had presented a baby carrycot and I used to strap Adit into that and keep it next to me [nowadays, that would considered very unsafe, especially in the USA – it would be illegal there].
Sometime in June/July, we decided to take time off to go to Bangalore both to escape the North Indian heat and also to have Appa, who was now confined to the house in his semi-paralytic state, meet his new grandson. It was a good holiday though very brief. I was doubly happy that I managed to take the baby over to Appa as that October, just a month before his 77th birthday, he passed away. I flew down with Adit for his cremation, which, for the first time in our family, we had in the electric crematorium. Our older relatives were a bit surprised when Kumar announced , after that day's ceremonies, that he was not performing all the 13 day rites, as per Hindu custom/rules as Appa himself did not believe in them. [As the elder son, it was he who would have to perform them]. I stayed on for a couple of days and then flew back.
The last few years seeing Appa mostly bedridden or in an armchair had saddened us. All his life, he had been such a vibrant active person that this situation did not seem right at all. Still, he had not lost his sense of humour and mischief, and had enjoyed the four grandchildren in Bangalore, Kumar's and Gokul's children then in their childhood or adolescence, his special favorite being Gautam, Kumar's son.
Before the end of the year, Ramu was transferred to Calcutta, first as Officer on Special Duty, an euphemism for shunting out a person for whom no appropriate posting could be immediately found?? Soon, however, he was appointed as Audit Member, Coal, with his office in Calcutta still. Though he soon had one of his favorite nephews, Vivek, for company in that place, sharing the same flat, he did not take to Calcutta even after months. The saying is that the city and its vibrant cultural life grow on one, and soon one becomes a confirmed Calcuttan?? Not Ramu! He persisted in his efforts to get back to Delhi, and in '75, he succeeded.
With him away for so long, it was very demanding for me in the evenings and early mornings - I had no help, as I tried rushing about getting ready or feeling tired. I had also to take Adit whenever I went on essential shopping. Gerry had presented a baby carrycot and I used to strap Adit into that and keep it next to me [nowadays, that would considered very unsafe, especially in the USA – it would be illegal there].
The Language Riddle
My first words to the baby automatically were in Tamil, and Annaiya's reaction was immediate. 'If you speak to him in your mother tongue, how will he learn Kannada?' I suggested that we each speak in our respective languages, and that he would learn both. Ramu was using more English than Kannada even before, and even though he was called to do his part to inject Kannada into Adit, he did not desist from this practice. I reminded Annaiya that in our own childhood too, we had all unconsciously and apparently effortlessly picked up both our own mother tongue and the regional tongue, and then added English to them. He was not convinced. The baby would be confused, he felt. By chance, my cousin Mani, a neurologist of repute, was in town, and on checking with him, he said that a child was known to manage six languages at the same time, and no one knew about the seventh, as none had tried! Adit, in fact, was soon understanding and talking four languages, since the household help and friends and others around spoke Hindusthani, and we used English a lot.
What was interesting was that Adit never mixed up the languages or spoke a language inappropriate to any person. If I asked him in Tamil to convey something to his grandfather, he smoothly did so in Kannada! And so on. Once Gopala, who had come from the States on a visit, tried his level best to make him talk to himself in Tamil [Gopala's Tamil was passable, certainly miles better than Ramu's!] after a long while, however, he had to give up as Adit, probably making out that G was of the same blood as Annaiya and Ramu, replied to him only in Kannada or English!
When one sees the present trend in urban middle classes of talking to their young ones only in English and of preschools also insisting on their charges using that language alone, and even demanding that the parents speak to the children only in it, one feels very dejected that this wonderful facility that a child has is being snuffed out. It puzzles me why they do not see that the more languages a person knows, even if not all of them equally well, the better the communication links, he/she can have and fit more easily into different circumstances. Recently, I chanced to see a National Geographic documentary that substantiated this view, showing how the brain's links [a purely lay description this!] becomes more sophisticated when a young child picks up more languages.
What was interesting was that Adit never mixed up the languages or spoke a language inappropriate to any person. If I asked him in Tamil to convey something to his grandfather, he smoothly did so in Kannada! And so on. Once Gopala, who had come from the States on a visit, tried his level best to make him talk to himself in Tamil [Gopala's Tamil was passable, certainly miles better than Ramu's!] after a long while, however, he had to give up as Adit, probably making out that G was of the same blood as Annaiya and Ramu, replied to him only in Kannada or English!
When one sees the present trend in urban middle classes of talking to their young ones only in English and of preschools also insisting on their charges using that language alone, and even demanding that the parents speak to the children only in it, one feels very dejected that this wonderful facility that a child has is being snuffed out. It puzzles me why they do not see that the more languages a person knows, even if not all of them equally well, the better the communication links, he/she can have and fit more easily into different circumstances. Recently, I chanced to see a National Geographic documentary that substantiated this view, showing how the brain's links [a purely lay description this!] becomes more sophisticated when a young child picks up more languages.
First Few Months
Adit was just 2.25 kg. at birth. He was put in an incubator for a couple of days. The practice then was no rooming-in after an operation so as to give the mother adequate rest. Also due to the many medications, antibiotics and other stuff that they had pumped into me, I was not supposed to breast-feed the baby for a few days. So to prevent the milk production and the possibility of an abscess as I had had the first delivery, and assuming that I would not want to feed him as I was working, they injected something to curtail the flow before I knew what was happening. Whether that alone was the reason or Adit was not strong enough to suckle well, we had to give up the idea of exclusive breastfeeding within a few weeks to ensure his survival. There was an altercation later between the gynaecologist, Dharma and her husband Tarun, the paediatrician, on these actions!
For a couple of anxious months, Aditya was still below normal weight and looked weak and undernourished. But suddenly he beame ok and was moving around as per the norm, and later beyond it. Indian tradition enjoins a minimum 42 days as a seclusion and recuperation period for both the mother and child after childbirth. Even modern health systems advise extra care during the first 6 weeks, both to safeguard the duo from unhygenic environments and to allow the uterus to get back to normal. It is also supposed to make for maximum breastfeeding results. I think I took about two months off and then had to get back to work. By chance, a wonderful ayyah called Venkatamma, came to look after Adit, and they took to each other. She stayed at the servants' quarters of a nearby flat that her son had had allotted to him. Venkatamma was a golden find as an ayah. She seemed to have an instinctive mothering nature and she and Adit took to each other from the beginning. The only problem was that she would come only at 8.30 a.m. and go away at 6 p.m. Sunday was her day off. So, it was straight from work to mothering and back again without a moment in between.
I went back to work after about two months. At first, I used to come home for lunch and some time with Aditya. But he was usually soundly sleeping at that time, and with summer coming upon us, I found that the net result was that I was totally fagged out and did not get to interact with the baby either. So I gave up that futile practice.
For a couple of anxious months, Aditya was still below normal weight and looked weak and undernourished. But suddenly he beame ok and was moving around as per the norm, and later beyond it. Indian tradition enjoins a minimum 42 days as a seclusion and recuperation period for both the mother and child after childbirth. Even modern health systems advise extra care during the first 6 weeks, both to safeguard the duo from unhygenic environments and to allow the uterus to get back to normal. It is also supposed to make for maximum breastfeeding results. I think I took about two months off and then had to get back to work. By chance, a wonderful ayyah called Venkatamma, came to look after Adit, and they took to each other. She stayed at the servants' quarters of a nearby flat that her son had had allotted to him. Venkatamma was a golden find as an ayah. She seemed to have an instinctive mothering nature and she and Adit took to each other from the beginning. The only problem was that she would come only at 8.30 a.m. and go away at 6 p.m. Sunday was her day off. So, it was straight from work to mothering and back again without a moment in between.
I went back to work after about two months. At first, I used to come home for lunch and some time with Aditya. But he was usually soundly sleeping at that time, and with summer coming upon us, I found that the net result was that I was totally fagged out and did not get to interact with the baby either. So I gave up that futile practice.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
adit
Every summer that I spent in Delhi, i wondered, 'what crime have i done to go through this horrible heat!' The summer of '72 was a real scorcher, made even worse for me as I was pregnant again. Even with several baths a day, one felt hot as an oven. Nights were so bad that i could not sleep. One weekend that we spent in Faridabad with the Bhats, Sripathi taught me a trick that was very useful. Before going to bed, have a cold shower, and wear light clothes without wiping oneself with a towel. Then, lie down on just a natural mat on the floor. It really helped.
I followed his example and found it very nice as long as that coolness lasted. Then I poured water over myself again and repeated the procedure.
To escape the heat, R and I went to a hill station, Musoorie. It was so fresh and cool there, but coming back, we were in the thick of a heat wave, and the 46* C felt even more pin-pricky than it would have been if we had not gone at all. and the car journey was unbearable. It was a relief when the rains started even if Delhi turned sticky, for, to adapt Keats' famous line - if monsoon comes, can winter be far behind?
Cold Feet
Someone told us about a very good doctor who had guided other women through difficult pregnancies. When he learnt of my previous history, he ruled that on no account was I to take any medicine whatever the symptoms were, for the duration of the pregnancy. He would, he added, prescribe some vitamin E and iron-folic acid tabs when the time came, in the third trimester. In fact, I did have at least one attack of headache and another of tummy ache, but I just rested, ate satvik [bland, soothing] food and they passed.
Just a couple of months before my time, i suddenly panicked and began fretting as my delivery date grew nearer, and feeling that however good a doctor he was, I was doomed to miscarry or lose the child somehow. My confidence ebbed not just in myself but also my excellent doctor. After all, i had gone each pregnancy to the best doctor in town, hadn't I? I was convinced that only someone whom I knew well and who really cared for me personally would be able to see me through this time. My second cousin Dharma was a gynaecologist at Safdarjung hospital and i turned to her. She was very understanding but warned me that she could deliver me only in that hospital, a public one, no comparison to the private ones that ford would have paid for. Despite that issue, i clung to her as my saviour, and shame-facedly told my kindly old doctor that i was no longer coming to him. He seemed to understand.
While Dharma was quite willing to see me through the rest of the pregnancy, she tried to dissuade me from delivering in the Government hospital where she practised, since Ford would pay all the costs for the best private one in town. But there was no way she or anyone else could change my mind. Cockroaches, dingy sheets, shared rooms and all, I still clung to Dharma. However, she said it would not be correct for her to do the Ceasarean being a relative, and so she would just be present while another did it.[It had been decided that in view of my history and age, this too had to be an operation, not a natural birth].
When the subject of maternity leave came up, and my preference was for taking almost all of it after the delivery. It would keep me from worrying if I kept busy till the last moment. Dharma agreed but advised me to take some rest each afternoon. So I used to lie down on a sheet spread over the carpet in my Ford office after lunch, locking the door, for 10-15 minutes. Prodipto had a very different reaction to maternity leave. He snorted, 'what maternity leave? You don't need any! An ndean womAn just gets off her mulewhen she feels labour coming on, delivers by the wayside and then mounts again on their mule and sets about her usual duties! She even goes inside to prepare coffee for her husband to prove how strong she is'
To which mcp remark, I just snorted that I was neither Andean nor did I have a mule , and I would take all the leave I was entitled to!
Just two weeks before the due date, my colleague, Vinod and I had met on a Saturday to finish a project that we were working on [school quality and location] but could not finalise our paper. I told him, let us leave it for Monday. It was the festival of Shankaranthi and on going home, I finished the special dishes of the day, savory and sweet pongal, with Shivaram's help, but then the pain began. The baby was delivered on 15th, just after midnight, but according to the Hindu way of reckoning, the new day begins only about 2 am, so to Annaiya, it was 14th and still the day dedicated to the Sun [and the new harvest in South India].
We had deliberately not decided on any name, nor made any preparations for the new born, except get some hand-me-downs from family. It may have been superstition, though I pride myself on not being superstitious at all, but it may also have been prudence. Why invest so much emotional and rational planning on what might not be?
Even when we were discharged four days later, the baby boy had no name. The hospital certificate simply said 'Baby Padmini'! This was to have comical consequences later. Back at home, our choices for an appropriate name clustered around words meaning the Sun in honour of the festival day he was born on, and finally it was 'Aditya', the first and thus the Sun, the first created.
I do not recall any problem with that even when he joined his playschool or the various schools he went to, but years later, when he applied for a greencard in the USA, I had to sign an affidavit that ’baby padmini’ and ‘r.p. aditya’were one and the same – and how did I know that? – I had to write ‘ because I am his mother and gave birth to Aditya who was named first as 'Baby Padmini’'!
I followed his example and found it very nice as long as that coolness lasted. Then I poured water over myself again and repeated the procedure.
To escape the heat, R and I went to a hill station, Musoorie. It was so fresh and cool there, but coming back, we were in the thick of a heat wave, and the 46* C felt even more pin-pricky than it would have been if we had not gone at all. and the car journey was unbearable. It was a relief when the rains started even if Delhi turned sticky, for, to adapt Keats' famous line - if monsoon comes, can winter be far behind?
Cold Feet
Someone told us about a very good doctor who had guided other women through difficult pregnancies. When he learnt of my previous history, he ruled that on no account was I to take any medicine whatever the symptoms were, for the duration of the pregnancy. He would, he added, prescribe some vitamin E and iron-folic acid tabs when the time came, in the third trimester. In fact, I did have at least one attack of headache and another of tummy ache, but I just rested, ate satvik [bland, soothing] food and they passed.
Just a couple of months before my time, i suddenly panicked and began fretting as my delivery date grew nearer, and feeling that however good a doctor he was, I was doomed to miscarry or lose the child somehow. My confidence ebbed not just in myself but also my excellent doctor. After all, i had gone each pregnancy to the best doctor in town, hadn't I? I was convinced that only someone whom I knew well and who really cared for me personally would be able to see me through this time. My second cousin Dharma was a gynaecologist at Safdarjung hospital and i turned to her. She was very understanding but warned me that she could deliver me only in that hospital, a public one, no comparison to the private ones that ford would have paid for. Despite that issue, i clung to her as my saviour, and shame-facedly told my kindly old doctor that i was no longer coming to him. He seemed to understand.
While Dharma was quite willing to see me through the rest of the pregnancy, she tried to dissuade me from delivering in the Government hospital where she practised, since Ford would pay all the costs for the best private one in town. But there was no way she or anyone else could change my mind. Cockroaches, dingy sheets, shared rooms and all, I still clung to Dharma. However, she said it would not be correct for her to do the Ceasarean being a relative, and so she would just be present while another did it.[It had been decided that in view of my history and age, this too had to be an operation, not a natural birth].
When the subject of maternity leave came up, and my preference was for taking almost all of it after the delivery. It would keep me from worrying if I kept busy till the last moment. Dharma agreed but advised me to take some rest each afternoon. So I used to lie down on a sheet spread over the carpet in my Ford office after lunch, locking the door, for 10-15 minutes. Prodipto had a very different reaction to maternity leave. He snorted, 'what maternity leave? You don't need any! An ndean womAn just gets off her mulewhen she feels labour coming on, delivers by the wayside and then mounts again on their mule and sets about her usual duties! She even goes inside to prepare coffee for her husband to prove how strong she is'
To which mcp remark, I just snorted that I was neither Andean nor did I have a mule , and I would take all the leave I was entitled to!
Just two weeks before the due date, my colleague, Vinod and I had met on a Saturday to finish a project that we were working on [school quality and location] but could not finalise our paper. I told him, let us leave it for Monday. It was the festival of Shankaranthi and on going home, I finished the special dishes of the day, savory and sweet pongal, with Shivaram's help, but then the pain began. The baby was delivered on 15th, just after midnight, but according to the Hindu way of reckoning, the new day begins only about 2 am, so to Annaiya, it was 14th and still the day dedicated to the Sun [and the new harvest in South India].
We had deliberately not decided on any name, nor made any preparations for the new born, except get some hand-me-downs from family. It may have been superstition, though I pride myself on not being superstitious at all, but it may also have been prudence. Why invest so much emotional and rational planning on what might not be?
Even when we were discharged four days later, the baby boy had no name. The hospital certificate simply said 'Baby Padmini'! This was to have comical consequences later. Back at home, our choices for an appropriate name clustered around words meaning the Sun in honour of the festival day he was born on, and finally it was 'Aditya', the first and thus the Sun, the first created.
I do not recall any problem with that even when he joined his playschool or the various schools he went to, but years later, when he applied for a greencard in the USA, I had to sign an affidavit that ’baby padmini’ and ‘r.p. aditya’were one and the same – and how did I know that? – I had to write ‘ because I am his mother and gave birth to Aditya who was named first as 'Baby Padmini’'!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Field Trips
Another interesting trip that I made towards the latter half of the project, this time with Vinod Kumar, the architect and regional planner in our team, was to a village in Haryana, where we got data for a paper we were jointly writing on schools, not just locations but also the quality of teaching etc.
A trip that depressed me much was to Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh and this was in connection with a totally different project that CSD was doing for UNICEF Delhi – a literacy project evaluation. We found very visible and almost universal signs of heavy drinking by both men and women in the evenings. They were landless labourers, from some of the poorest communities in one of the poorest districts in India. Questioning the women as to why they frittered away their meagre earnings and also ruined their health so, we got the defiant answer, 'How else do you think we can face the next day. Our life is so hard!'
What was even more stunning was to learn that they habitually dosed their infants and young children with opium to keep them quiet while they were away at work or even when they carried them along!
A trip that depressed me much was to Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh and this was in connection with a totally different project that CSD was doing for UNICEF Delhi – a literacy project evaluation. We found very visible and almost universal signs of heavy drinking by both men and women in the evenings. They were landless labourers, from some of the poorest communities in one of the poorest districts in India. Questioning the women as to why they frittered away their meagre earnings and also ruined their health so, we got the defiant answer, 'How else do you think we can face the next day. Our life is so hard!'
What was even more stunning was to learn that they habitually dosed their infants and young children with opium to keep them quiet while they were away at work or even when they carried them along!
Adventures of Gerry
A Faux-Paus Averted
With the weather cooling down, life in Delhi got more bearable. Once we had the overall project strategy and scheme of activities worked out in GCP, there was the training and initiation of field work in all the participating states and Union Terrritories [UTs] that kept me and a few others busy with travel, feed back and changes. Some places, we had very good state collaborators either from the Planning Department of the state/UT or from an academic institution designated as our counterpart. In others, the quality was really poor, especially where the project was away from the state capital.
One such visit in the second year of the project was to the Davangere block of Karnataka state. Gerry, Prodipto, his wife Joya and I made the trip together. We flew to Bangalore and had a day or so there before going to Davangere by road. As we made a beeline for the city's famous silk shops in M.G. Rd. [was it still called South Parade or did it become patriotically renamed after Gandhi [as at least one road in each town was] soon after Independence?], Jaya exclaimed at a pedestrian crossing where the policeman held up the vehicular traffic to allow us to cross, 'What a civilized city!'. If only she could see it now! [there are places where such compassion for the poor pedestrian still is shown, but the overwhelming attitude of vehicles, with the traffic police looking the other way, is 'Pedestrian Beware!, there is POWER behind my wheel!'].
The Field Director of the Davangere project invited us all to lunch one day. Gerry managed to sit on the mat laid on the floor, in various poses from cross-legged to sideways, and still enjoy the food. However at one point, when a second round of pooris was, in typical hospitable fashion, put on his banana leaf without his even noticing, he was about to put it back into the serving dish. Horrified, I screamed, 'Gerry , don't do that!' Having succeeded in arresting his action, I explained that the concept of 'enjilu' ['joota' in Hindi, terms that may be interpreted as food or drink polluted by someone else biting or touching with one's hand that has been used in eating, or even placed on some portion of one's plate or leaf]. Told by the others too that if he had put back those pooris, the whole lot of them in the serving dish would hav e had to be thrown out, he was most bewildered. 'But how do I prevent them from just putting more and more food on my leaf?', he pleaded.
So we showed him how one crossed one's arms over the leaf when any second helpings came around, and even bent over the leaf protectively if the host was insistent. This incident reminded me of Seymour's lunch at Gopala's in Pune when we both came there two years before and he had tried to use his right hand to take an extra serving [the fact that it was quite clean literally was of no consequence – in the Indian purity theory, the spoon is only an extension of the hand, and once it had touched the mouth, the hand too was not 'clean' till it was washed after the meal!] .
Gerry's Introduction to Diwali
Another delectable Gerry story is the first Diwali in Delhi. The air was thick with rumours of impending conflict on our Eastern border with what was then East Pakistan. Still, Delhi was all sparkle and gaiety for days before. Prodipto invited all the project staff and their familes to his home for dinner a day before the actual festival. We were enjoying the fireworks and most of all the crackers too not me - as always, I was scared stiff of them and their noise!] from the terrace of his house, Suddenly, Gerry burst upon those of us who were already gathered on the 'Barsati' [open terrace on top – literally, the rainy place] yelling 'What has got into you Indians? I thought you were a peaceful lot! Or is the war already upon us'?
We burst in guffaws. Apparently, no one had thought fit to warn Gerry that while the actual meaning of Diwali was ' the festival of Lights', it was even more the festival of noise a la crackers and fireworks, not in some central controlled environment as on July Fourth in America but in every home, and nook and corner. Come to think of it, it did sound as if we were on the war front!
As we went into '72, our project staff, except the directors, got involved in an unsavoury incident of our own making. The third foreigner in our group, a young man called B.., had somehow irritated a lot of us, and we got together and wrote him a real nasty ote. I do not recall the sequence of events after that, but we all soon regretted our hasty and intemperate action, and we made it up with him. I believe the directors knew of all these happenings, and wisely kept out of it. For me, it was the third time, I had got into actions that left a bad taste in my mouth afterwards, and I made a fresh resolve that I would never again fall into such a mire again! This has been one resolution well kept.
With the weather cooling down, life in Delhi got more bearable. Once we had the overall project strategy and scheme of activities worked out in GCP, there was the training and initiation of field work in all the participating states and Union Terrritories [UTs] that kept me and a few others busy with travel, feed back and changes. Some places, we had very good state collaborators either from the Planning Department of the state/UT or from an academic institution designated as our counterpart. In others, the quality was really poor, especially where the project was away from the state capital.
One such visit in the second year of the project was to the Davangere block of Karnataka state. Gerry, Prodipto, his wife Joya and I made the trip together. We flew to Bangalore and had a day or so there before going to Davangere by road. As we made a beeline for the city's famous silk shops in M.G. Rd. [was it still called South Parade or did it become patriotically renamed after Gandhi [as at least one road in each town was] soon after Independence?], Jaya exclaimed at a pedestrian crossing where the policeman held up the vehicular traffic to allow us to cross, 'What a civilized city!'. If only she could see it now! [there are places where such compassion for the poor pedestrian still is shown, but the overwhelming attitude of vehicles, with the traffic police looking the other way, is 'Pedestrian Beware!, there is POWER behind my wheel!'].
The Field Director of the Davangere project invited us all to lunch one day. Gerry managed to sit on the mat laid on the floor, in various poses from cross-legged to sideways, and still enjoy the food. However at one point, when a second round of pooris was, in typical hospitable fashion, put on his banana leaf without his even noticing, he was about to put it back into the serving dish. Horrified, I screamed, 'Gerry , don't do that!' Having succeeded in arresting his action, I explained that the concept of 'enjilu' ['joota' in Hindi, terms that may be interpreted as food or drink polluted by someone else biting or touching with one's hand that has been used in eating, or even placed on some portion of one's plate or leaf]. Told by the others too that if he had put back those pooris, the whole lot of them in the serving dish would hav e had to be thrown out, he was most bewildered. 'But how do I prevent them from just putting more and more food on my leaf?', he pleaded.
So we showed him how one crossed one's arms over the leaf when any second helpings came around, and even bent over the leaf protectively if the host was insistent. This incident reminded me of Seymour's lunch at Gopala's in Pune when we both came there two years before and he had tried to use his right hand to take an extra serving [the fact that it was quite clean literally was of no consequence – in the Indian purity theory, the spoon is only an extension of the hand, and once it had touched the mouth, the hand too was not 'clean' till it was washed after the meal!] .
Gerry's Introduction to Diwali
Another delectable Gerry story is the first Diwali in Delhi. The air was thick with rumours of impending conflict on our Eastern border with what was then East Pakistan. Still, Delhi was all sparkle and gaiety for days before. Prodipto invited all the project staff and their familes to his home for dinner a day before the actual festival. We were enjoying the fireworks and most of all the crackers too not me - as always, I was scared stiff of them and their noise!] from the terrace of his house, Suddenly, Gerry burst upon those of us who were already gathered on the 'Barsati' [open terrace on top – literally, the rainy place] yelling 'What has got into you Indians? I thought you were a peaceful lot! Or is the war already upon us'?
We burst in guffaws. Apparently, no one had thought fit to warn Gerry that while the actual meaning of Diwali was ' the festival of Lights', it was even more the festival of noise a la crackers and fireworks, not in some central controlled environment as on July Fourth in America but in every home, and nook and corner. Come to think of it, it did sound as if we were on the war front!
As we went into '72, our project staff, except the directors, got involved in an unsavoury incident of our own making. The third foreigner in our group, a young man called B.., had somehow irritated a lot of us, and we got together and wrote him a real nasty ote. I do not recall the sequence of events after that, but we all soon regretted our hasty and intemperate action, and we made it up with him. I believe the directors knew of all these happenings, and wisely kept out of it. For me, it was the third time, I had got into actions that left a bad taste in my mouth afterwards, and I made a fresh resolve that I would never again fall into such a mire again! This has been one resolution well kept.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Life in Delhi
Our Own Flat
After two months of waiting, our house allotment was made, 'expedited' as we opted for a type one rank lower than what Ramu was entitled to. It was in Vinay Marg, about four km from my office and six to his. A much sought after colony among the knowledgeable, we were cheek by jowl with Nehru park, and close to Sarojini Market, one of Delhi's best shopping area for almost everything. Being on the ground floor, we had a little patch of lawn in the front and a kitchen garden space at the back.
Ramu would usually drop me off and pick me up again and then go to his office in our new Fiat [aptly named Premier Padmini]. There was a luxurious bonus at Ford – a swimming pool at the guest house that staff could also use. So on warm days, he joined me for a short while. Being pretty busy otherwise, we did not go out much; even a cinema was rare. Our other exercise was a walk in the nearby Nehru Park, a charming medium-sized garden.
Annaiya joined us as soon as we had settled in our flat. Also, Shivaram moved from Poona to work for us when Gopala went off to the States some months after we came back. So he handled cooking the three meals a day and I had no housework to do. There was also the ubiquitous Tamilian part-time maid servant, so the household was running as smoothly as anything in India can do.
When our unaccompanied sea shipment came, with all our books, and other clothes and some nice kitchen stuff we had, to our surprise they were all intact.
But we had trouble with one item. The Customs summoned us and asked us to explain why we should not be arrested. The problem was an atlas that did not depict Kashmir as part of India! We pleaded ignorance but of course that was not admissible. Anyway, after stern warnings, and blacking out the offending part of the map, they released all our stuff including the offending atlas.
Life in Delhi
Some time after our move there, Sripathi, R's sister, Savithri's husband, was transferred to Faridabad by the National Sample Survey, where he worked. So they were just an hour's drive [those days] from where we lived. Another of my sisters-in-law, Lalitha and her husband, Babi, already lived in Delhi. Then there was Sundara's family. So we had quite a bit of Mugur family interaction. On my side of the family, the trickle started quite a bit later with my niece, Vimala [Malli] and nephew, Ravi and his wife, Geetha, settling down there and being in close contact. In addition, there were umpteen cousins and some uncles and aunts around whom we met occasionally.
Soon, it was summer, and the 'andi' [dry hot winds blowing from the Thar desert in Rajasthan] really hit us. A fine layer of dust then covered everything, and one felt even the covered food tasted grimy. We were lucky, people said, that we had the ground floor since the topmost floor, here the first, takes the brunt of the heat. We really welcomed the Ford Foundation swimming pool. Even Ramu used it sometimes, swimming as much as he could, and soaking in the coolness.
Should I trust a doctor?
It was my first taste of a hot dry climate, followed by the still hot and humid monsoon, and I reacted with a chronic cold and cough, and rather than go to a doctor again, I just took regular doses of an asprin that I had a bottle of with me, to keep this in check.
Around this time, I started to have my periods almost every fortnight. After a few such episodes, I went to the gynaecologist whom Prabha used. She pronounced a hysterectomy essential. I was aghast! I came home and mulled over this, and then I had an idea. When I told the doctor over the phone that every episode had been preceded by a heavy bout of asprin taking, and asked whether could be any connection, she calmly said, yes, it could very well have. She added that some women were so sensitive to drugs that it could happen to them with some other drugs too. As a final touch, she told me that a few even died from such heavy doses! I did not say it aloud, but to myself, I blurted “Damn you, and you wanted to remove my uterus! You did not even ask me if I had taken any drugs, or any such question. All you wanted was to make money out an operation'.
She had not asked me about any medications I was taking, even after I had told her the history of my failed pregnancies and my sensitivity to drugs when pregnant! I felt she was just pushing me to an operation that was unnecessary. I stopped dosing myself with tylenol and the bleeding stopped. Perhaps due to my getting used to Delhi weather, my frequent colds also vanished. My faith in doctors was further shaken.
After two months of waiting, our house allotment was made, 'expedited' as we opted for a type one rank lower than what Ramu was entitled to. It was in Vinay Marg, about four km from my office and six to his. A much sought after colony among the knowledgeable, we were cheek by jowl with Nehru park, and close to Sarojini Market, one of Delhi's best shopping area for almost everything. Being on the ground floor, we had a little patch of lawn in the front and a kitchen garden space at the back.
Ramu would usually drop me off and pick me up again and then go to his office in our new Fiat [aptly named Premier Padmini]. There was a luxurious bonus at Ford – a swimming pool at the guest house that staff could also use. So on warm days, he joined me for a short while. Being pretty busy otherwise, we did not go out much; even a cinema was rare. Our other exercise was a walk in the nearby Nehru Park, a charming medium-sized garden.
Annaiya joined us as soon as we had settled in our flat. Also, Shivaram moved from Poona to work for us when Gopala went off to the States some months after we came back. So he handled cooking the three meals a day and I had no housework to do. There was also the ubiquitous Tamilian part-time maid servant, so the household was running as smoothly as anything in India can do.
When our unaccompanied sea shipment came, with all our books, and other clothes and some nice kitchen stuff we had, to our surprise they were all intact.
But we had trouble with one item. The Customs summoned us and asked us to explain why we should not be arrested. The problem was an atlas that did not depict Kashmir as part of India! We pleaded ignorance but of course that was not admissible. Anyway, after stern warnings, and blacking out the offending part of the map, they released all our stuff including the offending atlas.
Life in Delhi
Some time after our move there, Sripathi, R's sister, Savithri's husband, was transferred to Faridabad by the National Sample Survey, where he worked. So they were just an hour's drive [those days] from where we lived. Another of my sisters-in-law, Lalitha and her husband, Babi, already lived in Delhi. Then there was Sundara's family. So we had quite a bit of Mugur family interaction. On my side of the family, the trickle started quite a bit later with my niece, Vimala [Malli] and nephew, Ravi and his wife, Geetha, settling down there and being in close contact. In addition, there were umpteen cousins and some uncles and aunts around whom we met occasionally.
Soon, it was summer, and the 'andi' [dry hot winds blowing from the Thar desert in Rajasthan] really hit us. A fine layer of dust then covered everything, and one felt even the covered food tasted grimy. We were lucky, people said, that we had the ground floor since the topmost floor, here the first, takes the brunt of the heat. We really welcomed the Ford Foundation swimming pool. Even Ramu used it sometimes, swimming as much as he could, and soaking in the coolness.
Should I trust a doctor?
It was my first taste of a hot dry climate, followed by the still hot and humid monsoon, and I reacted with a chronic cold and cough, and rather than go to a doctor again, I just took regular doses of an asprin that I had a bottle of with me, to keep this in check.
Around this time, I started to have my periods almost every fortnight. After a few such episodes, I went to the gynaecologist whom Prabha used. She pronounced a hysterectomy essential. I was aghast! I came home and mulled over this, and then I had an idea. When I told the doctor over the phone that every episode had been preceded by a heavy bout of asprin taking, and asked whether could be any connection, she calmly said, yes, it could very well have. She added that some women were so sensitive to drugs that it could happen to them with some other drugs too. As a final touch, she told me that a few even died from such heavy doses! I did not say it aloud, but to myself, I blurted “Damn you, and you wanted to remove my uterus! You did not even ask me if I had taken any drugs, or any such question. All you wanted was to make money out an operation'.
She had not asked me about any medications I was taking, even after I had told her the history of my failed pregnancies and my sensitivity to drugs when pregnant! I felt she was just pushing me to an operation that was unnecessary. I stopped dosing myself with tylenol and the bleeding stopped. Perhaps due to my getting used to Delhi weather, my frequent colds also vanished. My faith in doctors was further shaken.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)