Humans have innumerable relationships. A matching and meeting of emotions, thoughts, values interests and voila a new relationship is born. Where ever the threads of life get interwoven, a relationship is born. But I see relationships as just two type of families. First is the one that we are born into, or marry in to, and the second one is the family we choose to be with. But families both certainly are. Both have emotions, likes, dislikes, resentments, affection, attachments, disdain. But while a birth family has social responsibilities, the chosen families have no such pre-defined riders. But a family of either kind means no sense of obligation of any kind: relationships are just as is!
Mummy and pappa had a knack for converting acquaintances of momentary contact to friends, and friends to lifelong dear ones, companions for various activities that they chased.
Their secret was their open heart and warm enveloping behaviour, and their intent to always help when they could. They were by no means extroverted, they did not seek friends, but with them friendships just happened. Pappa was not particularly social mores aware, but he built life long friends with a few childhood buddies, and a few more in adulthood as well. Before marriage, he would simply follow whatever his elder sister or his father told him to do. After marriage the arrival of the queen of social practices solved his problem to one of “implicit obedience” – his words. ( I am his clone in many traits including this one!). Mummy was simply fantastic at it: tres practical, zero dogmatic, but traditional. Pappa’s responses would be in polite and refined language, but direct – little subtlety. Mummy on the other hand was a word master, avoiding inter personal pitfalls, but still direct and uncompromising in the contents of what she needed to say. The other person was never put out at her replies.
Both mummy and pappa came from large families, and that count doubled when they got married. Mummy’s maiden family were the Tijoriwala’s. They were rather surprised by pappa’s idea of how to be a son-in-law - as different from the traditional idea of a Gujarati son-in-law. Grandma – Motibaa - would extend all courtesies to the other four son-in-laws, but would enjoy pappa’s company. He infected the whole family of 9 siblings with a fondness for nature and outdoors in the Western Ghats near Bombay, getting them clambering on to dams, and drenching under waterfalls, and streams.
Mummy was a social junction for all the nieces and nephews from both sides of the family. She was late to marry, so all her brothers – younger than her – had a special bond with her, particularly the youngest Arunmama.
The Shahs were an equally large family, but with pappa being the second youngest, his strongest bond was with his widowed eldest sister – as near a surrogate mother as one could wish for. All the rest were distributed outside Bombay in Amdavad, Vadodara, Surat and Jambusar. However, the children of all the Shah siblings kept in constant touch with mummy, who had become a port of call in all troubles!
Anju arrived, but both mummy and pappa never got their tongue around the “in-law” part of the daughter-in-law word, so “dikara or beta” it always was. Janaki arrived and mummy anointed her as “gulbas”. Pappa was not one for nick names, although he himself had quite a few from his friends. Vaidehi arrived after mummy had passed, and the grand(mother-daughter) relationship was lost. Pappa was in full-on grand daughter dedicated life style mode. Never was there a day when he was in town, and did not take the girls to Hanging Gardens for an evening’s romp.
Latuben had a parent-child relationship with pappa mummy – who were her mamma and mammi – second only to her primary bond with baamaasi (her mother’s elder sister). These three were her touchstones in life. She was not a loquacious person, so what I know of her bonds to mummy and pappa is limited to my observations.
My friend – surrogate brother, if you please – is Dhaniyo. (His aunt christened him as Dhananjay, but no one in our household ever called him that!). I had taken off for the hostel life in IIT-Bombay, and Dhaniya would visit mummy pappa almost every weekend. He was one more son to mummy and pappa, and he was certainly devoted to them. We describe each other’s families as our “chosen” family – as different from family by birth!
The chosen family relationships that pappa and mummy built reflect their fundamental attribute of generosity be it time, be it companionship, be it emotional support, be it shared interests! If pappa was the first touch point of these relationships, mummy was the maintainer. Mummy did have one close friend Sarlaben – a fellow teacher – but I don’t have memories of her, since she did visit, but I was too young to observe their interactions.
Soon after pappa passed away, I had started a project to create a coffee table books with tons of photographs – our richest inheritance – and stories about mummy and pappa. I had contacted as many of family and friends as I could to share their memories of both. I have a wealth of such stories sent by many, but since my book project did not really take off (and got replaced by this blog), I will try and share some of those stories in these pages.
પહેલું પાનું The Beginning