For Tvisha – Age 8, Grade 3 (1974)

Dear Tvisha,

There were a lot of happy moments during this year and one that was worrisome, outside of life in school.

I will get to the worrisome one first. I am not very clear as to when they diagnosed the diabetes my mother (your paati) had. One day while playing the Veena she cut her right index finger pretty badly while striking one of the strings.

She went to our family doctor and got it bandaged and continued to do so for several days, but to no avail. The finger was only getting worse, with no signs of healing.

My father (your thaatha) finally took her to the local private hospital. It was pretty serious and they had to slice off a tiny part of her finger, as it was badly infected. The doctor said that if there was any more delay they would have had to cut her finger off. She had to watch her sugar levels very closely going forward, and manage her diabetes the best she could.

Paati stayed at the hospital for over a week or so. Thinking back, I am sure that the thoughts going through her mind at that time were not pretty. She expressed the desire to go visit all of her relatives in India. She belonged to a large group of siblings who were scattered around India. She got her desire fulfilled. We had a fantastic time vacationing :-).

There were several other events that happened this year. Krish had his thread ceremony (that symbolizes coming of age). He was 13 years old. Thaatha had invited many people for this event. Such are occasions where most if not all of the family attends, and is a part of the celebrations.

We went to the south of India to attend my cousin sister’s wedding. There were so many people there. Since my mom’s family was huge, there were many cousins of ours who were present at the wedding, and mischievous things were happening that drove the adults crazy.

There was a funny incident that I want to tell you about. There was a cute old lady, called kutti ammai, translated literally as ‘small mother’, because she was quite tiny. She gifted Krish Rs.50 (a big amount those days) for his thread ceremony. She couldn’t attend the event. Now I didn’t know the reason why she gave him the money though. From where I stood in the hallway, I just saw him go down flat on the floor and touch her feet and seek her blessings. I thought to myself, hey that was easy!. So I did the same thing as Krish, and lo and behold, I was given Rs.50 as well. I was so thrilled by this; I wanted to share what happened with my other cousins. So I went running around telling my cousins about the miracle that had just happened – go seek kutti ammai’s blessings and you will be rewarded with a lot of money!. Soon there was a long line of kids waiting to seek her blessings. As they fell flat on the floor to touch her feet, kutti ammai, being the grand lady she was, did not flinch a bit and handed the kids money from her purse that after some time was devoid of financial resources. Finally, given the sheer number of kids who went to see her, I am not sure how many of my cousins actually ended up getting money, haha.

Paati started to learn to sing as well. She hired a teacher, a very kind lady who used to come over to our apartment with a harmonium and teach her music every day. Paati also got her friends from the building to join. So music was back in our apartment and it was so nice to hear the women singing on a daily basis.

Movies in India are a big craze. You can easily see that, given the way appa watches most Hindi movies that release, and the good English ones too. I know you love movies as well. Since we didn’t have a television in our apartment then, Krish and I used to go watch a lot of movies in the theater.

We did get a new phone before most people around us, and that made paati very proud :-). It was really tough to get a phone connection in India back in those days, and after filling an application for a phone people had to wait for months before they could get a line at their home, such was the demand for phones. I still remember our first phone number, which was 482627.

What I remember particularly about some of the Thursdays (my day off from school) that year was the visits my mother and I used to make to her sisters' places during the day, when the mighty West Indies team had come to play a series of cricket games versus the Indian cricket team. These kind of series last a few months, and hence there were a number of occasions when we did this. Krish used to join us most of the times.

Why do I remember this so vividly? Well, the West Indian team was so good and so flamboyant in displaying their cricketing talent that even women in India started following the game of cricket. Further when my mother and her sisters met, it was a treat for me, a mini feast, with all kinds of food experimentation taking place. Sandwiches were made with different varieties of chutneys each time, some with mango, some with ginger and caramelized onions, all packed in different twists and turns in between two unassuming slices of white bread. That was also the first time paati let me eat eggs. Remember, we were strict vegetarians. My aunt prepared a hardboiled egg, which was delivered to me steaming hot, sliced into 4 long pieces, seasoned with salt and pepper. Yum!

Finally that year we made a trip to Poona. Paati had never been to Poona and she really wanted to go there. Thaatha was invited by his friends Joshi, Thite and Mulay from the bank to visit them in Poona, and they had also arranged a guest house for us to stay at.

We were in Poona for 3 weeks. The trip started off with a big disappointment for Krish and me, since we were so looking forward to going to Poona from Bombay on the Deccan Queen. Alas, there was a railway strike, and we ended up hiring a private cab. When we reached the guest house around afternoon, when Krish and I were in a rush to see who could hit the toilet first, a couple of my fingers got caught between the door and the hinges when he shut the door in a hurry, and my finger nails were crushed. That apart, Poona was awesome. We went sightseeing all day and just ate to our heart’s content.

We were invited for a few dinners. There, instead of our staple diet of rice, we were served pooris (fried whole wheat dough shaped flat like mini tortillas) accompanied by curries and vegetables. Krish and I got hooked to pooris.

The best thing is that the restaurants we went to back then in 1974 in Poona, still exist, I think. They are Café Mona, Café Delite, Roopali and Vaishali. Café Mona had a glass walled kitchen so people could see the cooks preparing the food. The cooks used to throw huge flat poori dough high up in the air as a show, before they were deep fried. Thaatha still laughs when he remembers our standard phrase wherever we used to go to eat food in Poona – ‘chawal ke badley mein poori dena’!, translated as ‘serve pooris instead of rice, please!’

When we visit India next year, I am definitely going to take you to Café Mona to eat those delicious super size pooris.

- Appa

For Tvisha – Age 7 (1973)

(Here is my mom in the center, and a few other ladies from our apartment building singing during the Ganpati festival celebrations)

Dear Tvisha,

There are several events during this year that are coming to mind very clearly.

School was full of fun with lots of friends, homework and exams. I was doing well too, and was in the class top 10. I will give all credit to my mother for that.

During our daily short recess in school that lasted only 5 minutes from 11.25 am to 11.30 am, the school arranged for those who paid for it, a refreshment that was usually a 12oz bottle of chilled Coca Cola. If Coke weren’t available then there was Energee, a flavored milk drink.

As soon as the bell rang announcing the recess, the kids would run as fast as they could to the long hallway outside the classroom where the refreshments were kept, pick one up and drink. We had a friendly bet to see who finished his Coke first (bottoms up if they could!). I used to finish first most of the times. Yes! :-)

Father Oscar succeeded Father Gaiety. Now that I think about it, Father Oscar had a brilliant idea by which he tried to pique the interest of the kids into the hobby of collecting stamps. During the long recess at 1 pm, once a week, he stood at the balcony on the 2nd floor outside his office and throw hundreds of stamps into the air to the kids below, and the kids did their best to catch and accumulate as many stamps as they could. For some years I had picked up this hobby of collecting stamps. I had several hundreds of stamps that I gave to another kid when I grew up.

At the home front, this was the first time that Krish, paati, your thaatha and I began living alone in the apartment that was full of people living as a joint family. Thaatha’s two sisters had been married off and they went to their husbands’ homes, and cuttle appa as you know passed away when I was 3+. Thaatha’s younger brother Ramudu found a job at the same bank as thaatha. Since his office was far away from where we lived, he decided to rent a small apartment near his workplace and moved there with his mother, who was my grandmother.

To be honest, it felt really sad to be without all these people who lived with us, and with whom we had such a great time. But then that is life - keeps moving, keeps changing.

The four of us countered this loneliness at times by doing more and more things together like watching movies, visiting Ramudu at his new place, visiting my relatives, taking more vacation trips, going to the park daily, going to music shows, etc., which was great fun too.

The best times during the year were the Ganpati festival and the Diwali festival. The Ganpati festival is celebrated all across Bombay to bring in the birthday of Lord Ganesha, and also to bring all kinds of people together to get a great sense of community.

We celebrated this festival in the building in a spectacular fashion for 7 days, bringing a 3 foot idol of Ganesha and offering the Lord daily poojas, and lots of food and sweets distributed to whoever came for blessings. There would be music playing on the loudspeakers all through the evening. The whole of Bombay had and still has a festive atmosphere during these 10 days.

We had daily shows that included Veena recitals by the some of the ladies in the building, magic shows, fancy dress shows, singing, etc. Everyone participated.

It was absolute fun. The final day, when the idol was immersed into the sea, was a sad day since everything would come to a standstill, and people would get back to their routine daily life from the next day onwards.

Another occasion during which the whole building came alive was during Diwali (festival of lights, to celebrate the triumph of good over evil). On this day we would wake up very early around 4 am, bathe, and offer prayers to God. We would then wear brand new clothes, and burst lots of firecrackers in our building compound.

My mother, who was a great cook, prepared so many different sweet and savory snacks. Imagine this: early morning at 5 am all the kids from the building, and even some of the adults were down bursting firecrackers, and wishing everyone Happy Diwali in their brand new clothes. After the crackers were done, we would then head to our each of our friends home and wish their family Happy Diwali, and devour any sweets coming our way.

There was exchange of sweets and savory items amongst the women in the building, including exchange of cooking tips, critical judgment of the dishes prepared and exchange of in demand recipes :-). I used to lend a keen ear to all of this.

To top it all off, there was a feast at home usually consisting of onion sambar, roasted spicy potatoes, rice, rasam, papadam, and rice payasam.

A tradition we always maintained on this day was to go see the latest movie in the theater. To this day, there are lot of prominent movie releases around Diwali, a sure fire way to earn revenues for the filmmakers.

Here in the US, mommy and daddy have made it a point to celebrate the above 2 festivals in a grand manner, so you can not only get a good understanding of our culture and our festivals, but also we can all have a great time with all your friends and their families on these occasions.

- Appa

For Tvisha - 2nd Grade, Age 6 (1972)

Dear Tvisha,

My first Television experience

This was the year the black and white television was introduced for the first time in India. All the programs were broadcast by a broadcasting station called Doordarshan, which was owned by the government. There were no cable companies.

There was a neighbor of ours, Capt. Mani. He was the first one in our apartment building to own a TV back then. He and his family were kind enough to let a lot of the kids in the building to come to their apartment daily in the evenings to watch the shows on the television. As you can understand television was like a magic box for us, something we had never experienced in our lives.

The shows we used to watch regularly would be a 30 minute program that showed Indian movie songs. Every Sunday evening we would get to watch an Indian movie. And twice a week they would show the Flintstones, a show I used to love.

Shopping and Chocolates

My mother (your paati) used to take me shopping to the local mom and pop stores around our neighborhood to buy regular non perishable groceries, coffee, etc. Like most kids I used to love chocolate candies with my favorite being Cadbury’s. There would be a fight with my mom every time we used to go to the shops, where I would want chocolate candy and she would vehemently deny me the same. But the shopkeepers, especially the shop from where we used to buy freshly ground coffee, would give me a free chocolate, usually Cadbury’s Eclairs if I listened to my mom and behaved well. That was funny.

So you see daddy loved and still loves chocolates just like you do. The chocolate candies I use to like and eat the most then used to be the Cadbury’s milk chocolate bars and Cadbury’s Plus bar, a chocolate bar filled with semi hard raspberry Jell-O inside. I am sure you would have loved that particular kind :-).

Broken Bones

This was the only time I have broken any bones in my body, and hopefully will be the last time. I got my right hand fractured. My brother Krish and his friends were playing a version of tag it in our friend’s apartment, running around at a good speed in the very small apartment.

I, who was very small in size compared to the others wanted to participate as well. I slipped while running and fell. At the same time one of the guys stepped over my right wrist and broke my wrist.

I didn’t cry by the way, but was in extreme pain. We went to the doctor and got my hand in a cast right away. What was worse than the pain due to the broken wrist was the itching sensation on my hand inside the cast, and I couldn’t do anything about it but bear it. Grrrrr!!

All Aboarrrrd

The trains that ran back and forth all over Bombay and from Bombay to other cities in India used to pass by very near our apartment building. As a kid I used to love the sound of the trains passing by at a high speed with their horns blaring. We had to resort to real trains since we didn’t have Thomas train amongst us in India during that time :-).

The railway tracks were pretty close to our building, a couple of blocks away on the other side of a park. We used to go to the park to play, and sit and watch the trains go by.

There was one particular train that I was very fond of, called the Deccan Queen. Unlike the other trains, this train had special colors (beige top and navy blue in the bottom) and was the pride of the railways. It used to run between Bombay and Poona, and covered the distance in less than 3 hours. There were only a couple of stops between the two cities.

One could get all kinds of delicacies in the train to eat which you couldn’t in rest of the trains. There was a kitchen in the train and orders for food would be taken before the train left the city and would be delivered hot and fresh shortly. The train used to pass by exactly at 5.25 pm every evening. It still does :-).

If you remember when you were just around 16 months old on your first trip to Bombay back in 2007, I took you to the over bridge from where we saw the Deccan Queen go by, although not at a very fast speed that day. I know you love trains, and I was so excited by the fact that I could let you also experience a part of my past. Between now and then, the only difference is that now the colors of the cars are red, white and grey.

We also used to make a lot of trips to South India. My mother liked to visit the temples and her relatives, and every summer vacation the whole family would go on such trips. Krish and I used to fight for the window seat in the train.

Apart from the train ride the biggest thrill for us used to be watching the engine pulling the train cars from our seat windows when the train took a turn. And the engines were so grand looking, either electric engines, engines powered by diesel, and steam engines. Nowadays when we travel all we see are electric engines, and the days of the steam engines are long gone by and the diesel engines are almost extinct. Oh Tvisha, I miss those days!

- Appa