Upto 1956

Pappa mummy got married in 1944 -  29th November. On arrival in Bombay, Pappa was house guest with Jaydev kaka for - I think - almost 6 months. Subsequently – again I don’t know when – he rented a room in a chawl (a popular residential rental scheme of a small room along a corridor, a tiny drainage area and a tap in that room, and common toilets at the end of the corridor, in downtown Bombay areas) on a street in the Grand Road station neighbourhood called Chunam Lane. Congress House (the political party’s offices) was next to their chawl. He worked for the Metro Theatre (yes, the MGM owned cinema): his first Bombay job. How he got that job is a story in it self. Pappa’s eldest sister, widowed at an early age lived with him, along with a niece – Savita foi’s daughter Jaikishori. A tiny simple fresh to urbanisation family. My cousin had a great voice, and played the sitar. She would practice in that little home. One day, a lady neighbour came over and told papa, “you folks appear to be simple straight forward unworldly kind of people, so I am saying this to you. A number of your neighbours are ladies of the traditional night life industry, (which in those days had song and dance!) and if your daughter keeps practicing her singing and music, you folks may get mistaken as one of us!” No more practice for my cousin!

I remember some one telling me that pappa and mummy spent their wedding night at a dharamshala(Hirabaug dharamshala?) – a short stay facility for pilgrims, provided and maintained by some religious charity – right round the corner from their wedding Hall. Although  pappa’s family and mummy’s were of the same caste & sub-caste – Dashaporvad vaNik – their home cities were different, but the Bombay branch had a property for weddings and functions, namely Morar Baug reserved for clan functions only. I am simply assuming that since mummy’s family had access, that is where they got married. (Anju and I got married there too!).

I don’t know how long they stayed at Chunam Lane, but fortune walked up to them, and offered papa a much larger house in a fully residential area, and that too without “Paghadi” – a common practice of large non-refundable deposit paid for rental properties in Bombay, and  chained during rental transfer, with a bite out for the landlord. Rohit Dave (I think) was single, and about to move to a new place. He was a man of principle, and rejected the “Paghadi” system, but wanted a “deserving” family to take up his place. I don’t know who pushed pappa’s name to him, but they moved in to the apartment on the third floor of 25 Wilson Street. Three large rooms 20’ x 25’ and two washrooms, with a toilet in one of them. A small gallery connecting rooms 2 and 3 (which was configured as a kitchen. Two doors on opposite ends of the staircase landing (open both wide, and we had a mini cricket pitch!). Wilson school next door was a Marathi school in a colonial era building with a huge compound around it. When kids went in to play, the caretaker chased us out periodically. The floor above us had been sub-let. And the rent was just 43 rupees a month! Two down sides by today’s standards! No lift, and taps would run only from 4 am to 8 am, so water had to be stored in all the bath rooms. I think they moved in in 1946, and we stayed there till 1962. Why we left is a story for another day.

With a large house like that it was inevitable that extended family would benefit as well. Pappa’s younger brother and his family lived with us for a while, and moved out to Kandivali when pappa’s elder sister – widowed at a young age – retired from Vanita Vishram (a girls school with both residents and day scholars) as its vice principal, and came to live with us, along with my cousin Lata, who was till then in the Vanita Vishram hostel. But that was not “it”. Many a extended family brides and grooms got married out of our house. Pappa had told me once that this count was 17 weddings! Manju maasi lived down the road in a chawl, in a single room, with 5 growing up children. One of the boys would come sleep in our place, and the others would be in and out to study with pappa. Mummy’s parents and siblings lived nearby, a mere 4 -5 minute walk.

I don’t know how long mummy had continued her job as a primary school teacher with Modern school after getting married. My kindergarten school was a bit further away, and one of Manju maasi’s sons would either pick me up or drop me off to school on a bicycle. My school shifted to one just outside mummy’s parents’ home, on the second floor of a post office building! It was natural for me to go to my grandmother’s place after school, and often mummy would be there. My granny would have saved a sweet from her morning worship’s prasad only for me! This was our early life routine!

Pappa had a wanderlust built into him! And mummy was his enthusiastic partner. They had been to Ooty and Kodaikanal and a number of places in southern India, and around Maharashtra before I was born. Mahabaleshwar was a favourite trip. After I was born, we continued with Mahabaleshwar, but I have no memories from there, but Matheran was different. I have great memories from there. We typically rented a Matheran Municipality accommodation, which was a basically just a few rooms split into 2 units in a brick bungalow, in a large clearing in the forest next to the main road leading to the station and the village. A well at the back for water completed the facility. A dharamshala kind of place. We rented it by the month, and stayed put, while various family members came in and out to Matheran. The caretaker’s son – Sitaram was a bit older than me, and we had become friends. He would take me Jambu (java plum in English) picking in the forest with him. He was also the one who taught me to play gilli-danda.

If one peeks into pappa’s diaries, one sees many entries for leave taken for trips to Shrinaathji and Abu as well, but our vacations were mostly in Matheran.

Came 1956, and we found Himalay!

I remember one incident from those early days. Our weekend routine was to take off to Bombay’s hinterland of forests and hills. A favourite trip was from Borivali station. We took off one Sunday mornig, and hired a bicycle from Borivali and started for Kenhari caves about 5-7 miles away. The asphalt road terminated at near by Gandhi Smruti Mandir. The road to kanheri caves was unpaved dirt road. A footpath tookoff towards Tulsi lake about a mile short of kanheri caves. I – 4 yrs old – was on the front rod of the bicycle, and mummy on the carrier at the back. On the way back, we came to a mango tree in the jungle heavy with mangos, though not ripe yet. We got down, and plucked many, and filled a satchel bag and hung the bag on the handlebar and started onwards. But the combined weight had increased so much that pappa could not control the bike on that rough road, and threw away all the mangos, with mummy seething and muttering at the back!