My house in Jamnagar

This is the house I grew up in.  It is a part of an ancient building which has been built over to some extent now.  Such building are a dime a dozen in the old part of Jamnagar.  I lived there, approximately from 1961 to 1979 with an absence of nearly 3 years when I went to live with my parents in Bangalore from 1971 to 1973.  At that time everyone I knew lived in similar houses, all aged at least 50 years. 

The house was, I presume, one of those grand havelis that was constructed in a closed rectangle. Three walls of the rectangle were a series of rooms built in double storey with a verandah in front. The south wall had two huge gates, one on the right side and one on the left.  Between the two gates stood at least four err.. Latrines.. Sorry, there is no other word to describe them. The center of the haveli was a large courtyard.  The haveli belonged to two brothers and the younger brother lived with his large family on the right side.  The left portion that belonged to the elder brother was let out.  He lived in another house close by.  Some part of it was let out to my uncle in times when there was less commercialism and a lot of love between people.  The landlord had called my aunt his sister and had decreed that their family could live there as long as they liked at a rent of, I don't remember exactly, but something ridiculous like Rs.35/-.  The wing we lived in, the left corner, was accessible from both the courtyard side and the other side that overlooked the main road.

As I said the house was built in a series of rooms that lined the courtyard.  There was a small room in the back say about 8'x8' and large 12'x8' room in the front.  We lived in a set of 4 such rooms, so a total of 8 rooms.  A small gallery, used as a passage, separated one set of 4 rooms from the other.  The first 4 rooms were our primary living area.  There was a living cum dining room, and the smaller room in the back was used as a kitchen.  This was the hub of the family, this is where we all hung out.  My aunt's bed was in this room, and the dining table, and the sewing machine, and the dressing table, and most of our things.  The other 'set' was connected to these rooms from inside too. The smaller back room was our bathroom, used only for bathing.  As we had no running water, large drums stood here filled with water.  The front room was where we had a proper drawing room, lined with a sofa set, bookshelves, wall hangings and  a divan.  This was where guests were entertained. My school books and clothes were stacked in a covered alcove in the walls (which were two to each room) in this room.  This is where I sat most times, reading a book, clinging to the transistor.

The other two sets that were ours were a little apart from the main living set, and were kept locked if not in use.  The rooms were given names, my uncle's rooms, with his bed in the front was called 'Papaji's room'.  As this room was supposed to be the most secure as it belonged to the head of the family, it contained all our precious stuff.  Our safe stood in the smaller room at the back, which contained all the jewelry of the family.  It had all the mattresses, clothes and such stuff.  The last set of rooms was called ..Duh.. 'last room'. This was the bachelor hang-out.  It belonged primarily to the male cousins and my brother.  The inner room was the food store.  It had our stock of wheat, onions, masalas, and daals. It had shelves that were stacked with large canisters of these things.  Right next to this was a flight of stairs that led to the main road.  This was our main exit and entry point. 

In the mid 70s, with 3 eldest cousins married off, there were still 5 of us, my 3 cousins, my brother and me. Now you would think, that living in such a house, so open, and with doors opening everywhere, anyone could come and go as they pleased.  Alas, our elders were wily and very alert to our movements.  In a time where there were no cell phones and no GPS, some older person would always be savvy as to our whereabouts.  In the dead of the night, our steps would ring out loud and we had to hold our breath and tiptoe, if we were sneaking out somewhere. A click of the key turning in the lock was a dead giveaway and so was a creak of the stairs. But why did we need to sneak about?  Those were conservative times, and children were not allowed to run about as they pleased.  A visit to a friend's house needed to be monitored, visits to the movies were severely restricted and sanctioned sparingly.  Our family has always been high spirited and for us, walls were meant to be scaled, not meant to hem us in.  Hence we would be as good as we could when we were under scrutiny, and break out when we were not.  Of course, the height of our rule breaking was to go see a late night show, so it was more or less harmless fun.

 

I find a smile creeping up on my face when I think of those golden days, where we were cosseted by a family that had lots of members around and enough fun that was to be had.  I spent at least two hours each evening visiting my best friend's house with was barely half a kilometer from mine.  My uncle was a doctor who ran his own dispensary.  He shut his shop at 8 PM every evening.   I had to take permission from my older cousin for a visit, but the standing primary rule was always, “Be back before Papaji comes home”.  I would often start from my friends house a few seconds before 8 PM and run all the way back, race up the stairs, break into the drawing room, sit on the little sofa on the far left of the room, and open my school books.  When Papaji walked in, a few seconds after 8 PM, he would find the house in order.  Everything neat, the younger kids at their homework, the food cooked, the transistor switched off, everyone looking quiet and meek.  Any cousin who broke the protocol was scolded by my uncle, much to the merriment of the rest.  Being the youngest, I could not afford to jeer openly, because I could get a whack from anyone who was even a bit senior from me.

Now that I am a parent, I know it was not possible to control such a large family unless the head of the family was firm and undeviating.  And frankly, things were so much more fun when they were a little hard to come by.  All those movies we saw, all our little rendezvous had a flavor of adventure that heightened our pleasure.

My first Pizza and my first Levi's

In the year 1971 people in India had not really heard about Pizza's and Levi's.  Most of them didn't, that is.  Courtesy an American Stepmom, I had heard eaten, worn and loved both these items.

My Mom (I am going to shun the 'step') loved cooking.  In Bangalore, in the 70s, she was able to get most of the ingredients of her western recipes in Russell Market.  We would often come home from school to find something exotic cooking in the oven.  The oven was something unique.  It was like a tin box with shelves and a door that just sat on the normal gas chulhas that we have.  It was ingenious and workable. Later when mom got one of those round electric ovens, she found it not as efficient as the simple gas-top one.

The pizza's bases were handmade, not one of the bread things we get so easily these days.  The toppings were usually keema and Amul cheese.  It worked, I tell you, like a charm.  Pizza days were a big hit.  It was nearly the end of 80s when pizza's started appearing on the menu's of fast food restaurants.  I rushed to eat them, reminded of the glory days of eating pizza's in Bangtalore.  I was disappointed with the bread bases, the vegetarian toppings of the early pizza.  It has improved vastly now but I am not crazy about it anymore. The taste of Mom's thin crust handmade pizza's will linger in my memory forever.

Sometime in 1972 or 1973, my Mom made a quick trip to America to visit her ailing mother.  When she got back, she brought for me an american classic; A pair of Levi Strauss jeans.  Again, in those days it was not yet something youngsters died for, simply because they did not know of it. The way the pair of jeans was 'treated' is worth recounting.   It was soaked in water overnight, then washed, its legs twitsted into knots and beaten to soften it.  I was told that a 'new' looking pair of jeans was just not done, it had to look worn and faded to be really valuable.  Needless to say I practically lived in those jeans.

Again it was nearly the 80s when the jeans mania hit the middle class.  The only way of procuring a pair of Levi's was to have someone bring a pair back to you from USA.  Ah, those were the days when jeans were lovingly ironed to sport trouser like creases, or even dry cleaned!  How boring it is these days to just walk into a showroom and buy a pair of any brand of jeans.  We used to feel like conquistadors when our beloved relative returned from a trip abroad with a pair of jeans for us that sported this label.

The Jamnagar Gurudwara

View Gurudwara in a larger map

This here is the Google map location of the gurdwara in Jamnagar.  My uncle Santokh Singh Suri was one of its founders.  It was aimed at providing a place to pray for the growing Sikh community in Jamnagar.  Santokh Singh Suri was the personal physician of Jam Saheb, whose generosity helped lay the foundation stone of the gurudwara here.

Of course, all this happened before I was born.  Circumstances in my life made my uncle and aunt my guardians, hence my childhood was spent in this amazing little town.  I will be writing about it often, as it has shaped me and my thoughts.  Often, as I sit around doing some work, I am suddenly seized by some memory of a day gone long past, something trivial, like walking down a road or appearing for an exam.  But the memory is so real, I feel like I am re-living that moment.  It is to put these memories down on record that I will be doing a series of sketches like this one.

My uncle and aunt were a devout couple.  All the various gurupurab's (birthdays of the Guru's) were celebrated with gusto.  As were the Shahidi Diwas (martyrdom days).   On these occasions we would donate some mah ki daal (black lentils) for the langer (community lunch).  We would all sit around and clean the mah ki daal scruplously.   Baiji (my Aunt) would wake up at 4 in the morning and go to the Gurudwara to do service. I would throw a tantrum until I was allowed to go along.  In the gurudwara we would help make rotis.  We would sit around a large 4 foot long tava with a roaring fire under it.  Women would crowd around and roll out thick rotis that another lot of women would roast expertly on the hot tava.  Another big bunch of men and women would gather around the kitchen cutting up mounds of cauliflower and peeling and dicing potatoes.  The job of cooking was under the expert hands of a gentleman we knew as our mamaji (maternal uncle).  He was not a relation, but in that sparse close knit Sikh community, everyone was an uncle, it would have been rude to call them our 'acquaintance'.

As the afternoon of Gurupurab rolled around, at the completion of prayers with Ardas, the carpets would be rolled away and thin runner carpets spread out instead to create long aisles.  People would sit on them and be served all the food prepared since early morning on leaf plates.  Boys and young men would walk down the aisles doling out daal, aaloo-gobhi sabzi and 'parshadas' as the roti's prepared in Gurudwara were called.  I can swear I have never ever tasted food so tasty ever in my life.  It was full of the taste of simple living and love that existed between people in those days.

Although the Gurudwara was open for prayers all days, Sundays were special.  Come Sunday, and we were all hustled into the car and driven to the Gurdwara for prayers.  The ceremony probably took 3-4 hours.  We sat on durries on the ground in front of babaji's beed.  The sanctum was appropriately decorated with flowers and colourful silk spreads.  There were sparkly buntings on the ceiling. Sobha Singh's portraits of the Guru's adorned the walls.  Lovely glass chandeliers, a personal gift from the Jam Saheb, hung from the ceiling.  I would often get restive, and sneak out to get a toffee from the shop outside, not that I was hungry or anything, it just was nice to run around with other kids.  Soon, the paath would be over, and it would be time for ardaas.  That was the time we were all required to be in our place.  Head bowed, I repeated 'Sat sri Akal' everytime the granthi said 'Jo Bole So Nihal'.  From the corner of my eye, I could see the assistant granthi making his way to the big paraant of the crowning glory of the day - the Kada Parshad.

My mouth would water in anticipation as, the Ardaas over, we would sit and await our turn to be served the glorious dollop of Parshad.  It was oily sweet and hot.  It was like the perfect end to my visit to the Gurudwara.  I am not particularly religious, but a visit to the gurudwara, always ending with a bit of parshad, makes me feel secure, as if I am back in the arms of my parents.