Part 2: Beginning Our Life Together
Chapter 6: Back to Bombay
When I woke up in the morning, I had a shower followed by tea, and I was ready to leave for the rail station. She came over to me. We held each other’s hands, looked at each other, and smiled. There was no question of hugging in the presence of the elderly ladies, who were all staring at us.
I reached Bombay the next day, February 20. My finals were to start on Wednesday, the 28. I had little time to read up and get ready. When I was writing my first answer, my Mama got a telegram from Kundla.
My Kaka (paternal uncle), who had made all the arrangements for my wedding, died of a heart attack in Kundla. He had fulfilled his promise given to my father twenty years ago when he was dying that he would get his son and daughter settled in life.
Chapter 7: Bakul Goes to Palanpur
As tradition demanded, Bakul had to go to Palanpur. That was where my mother, sister, and I resided in my Kaka’s house with his family after my father's premature death. The deeply saddened party of the groom and the bride went to Palanpur. I was busy with exams in Bombay, about 200 miles south. There was a one-month period of mourning. Cousins and nephews of my Kaka and other relatives came to Palanpur.
Bakul got busy cooking with the wives of Kaka’s two sons and my mother. The guests had to be fed and housed. Bakul, being the youngest, simply followed instructions given by older ladies. She was learning quickly about the customs of the in-law family.
One five-year-old daughter of my cousin in the house got very attached to Bakul and insisted on sleeping in the bed by her side.
Bakul told her bedtime stories and taught her a prayer in Gujarati to recite before sleeping. This girl became very attached to me and Bakul and lived with us in Baroda in the late fifties when she was in college.
Chapter 8: Shanti Goes to Palanpur
The exams were over in March, and the results were announced in April. I got a B on my finals but was selected for my graduate-level course in Mathematical statistics, starting for the first time at the university. I was one of only 24 students selected from all over India.
May was our summer vacation month. I was anxiously eager to be in Palanpur to see her, Bakul. The shock of my Kaka’s death might have receded, so I hoped. When I appeared at the house all the ladies in the kitchen came out and greeted me. She too came out and gave me her characteristic faint smile.
She told me that I should take my suitcase upstairs in the big hall because that is where we were housed during my stay in Palanpur.
I was familiar with this huge hall with two windows looking at the secondary school and Kirtistambh, the tall tower of fame built in honor of his father by the Nawab of Palanpur, Sir Taley Mohamed Khan. The hall also had a door leading to a huge terrace over six rooms below. So, this was like a vacation home for us.
Bakul appeared to have matured by working in the kitchen with two or three older ladies, sweeping the floors, and dusting my cousin’s living room. I was surprised to see so much change in this seventeen-year-old girl. After dinner and attending the daily meeting of my cousin’s friends in his living room, I went upstairs.
She smiled, we met halfway in the hall and hugged each other for several minutes. We sat down on the kingsize bed in the hall and talked for a long time about her activities here in Palanpur and about my post-graduate course at the university. She was anxious to know when my studies would end and when we could start living together in our own house. These were not easy questions to answer.
Soon, we were lost in the ecstasy of love and slept soundly, holding each other's hands. The whole month passed this way, and my time to leave had arrived.
I told her that my next visit would be at the end of 1953, when my education would end.
She said that in 1952, my mother’s younger brother was married in Palitana, a place with beautiful Jain temples. We called this younger brother of my mother Ramu Mama. He had developed a special liking for Bakul and wanted her to come to the wedding. He wanted her to visit and see the girl he was marrying so she could give her opinion to him.
She also told me that she wanted me to concentrate on my studies and not think about her. We parted with a long hug, and our eyes swelled up with tears.
Chapter 9: Another Visit
My graduate-level course was quite rigorous and lasted for two years. In the second year, during Diwali vacation, I could not resist visiting Palanpur. Bakul and I had a good time together.
She told me that she had heard Sarabhai (my uncle’s son who had taken over his father’s medical practice) telling his wife that each extra person living in the house was costing him one hundred rupees per month. Bakul was a smart girl. She concluded that she, my mother and I staying in the Palanpur house was costing the cousin’s family three hundred rupees a month, and she noted that his ayurvedic medical practice was rapidly declining.
We were becoming a burden for his family. This issue weighed heavily on her mind. My mother, Bakul, and I decided we should move out of the Palanpur house as quickly as possible. The question was, where would we go?
We decided Bakul would move to her mother’s house in Vile Parle. My mother would move to Kundla in our ancestral home after staying in Palanpur for a month or two. She would manage with the twenty rupees per month pension the King of Bhavnagar state was giving her after my father’s death.
I would continue to stay with my Mama’s family in Bombay until my graduate studies were over in six months.
Chapter 10: Where to Go?
The question remained- where and when could Mother, Bakul, and I stay together?
This question was on the top of our minds. My mother felt we should move to Kundla and start living in the ancestral house, where we had two rooms and a kitchen unrented. With my master's degree in statistics, there were no jobs in Kundla; Bakul did not like the idea.
Bakul’s mother, too, was very concerned that although her daughter had been married for three years, she had no place to stay with her husband. She was very worried about this issue and prayed about it daily.
In late 1953, her prayers were answered. The gentleman who lived in an apartment just below her was moving. He was happy to transfer the lease to us if we could give him 1800 rupees. Bakul’s mom remembered that in their home in Amreli, about 200 miles north, there were silver items. These could be sold, and we could have enough money to pay him. Bakul, just 19, a dashing teenager, went to Amreli by train, sold the items, and returned with Rs2000 in cash. The man was given the rupees he needed.
We became new tenants at a monthly rent of fifteen rupees for an apartment with a kitchen, a room, and a bathroom but no toilet. To use the toilet, we had to take water with us in a small bucket and go to the back of houses to toilets used by all tenants of apartments in the complex. Sometimes, you had to stand in line for your turn.
Overjoyed, Bakul became happy that, at the very start of her twentieth year in life, she was starting her own house. She quickly decorated the house. Her every action and move was a matter of great joy for me, and I made no secret of it.
Her mom gave us three mattresses and six months of groceries. She placed double mattresses against the wall below two windows and covered them with printed cotton sheets.
Over the double mattress, she placed a four-foot-long plump pillow with a decorated cover. This is called a Takiyo in Gujarati. That made a very inviting sitting place for visitors. She was able to find two wicker chairs for ten rupees.
My Mama gave us a five-foot-tall and two-foot-wide wood and glass cabinet. This cabinet was used by me in my Mama’s home to keep my ironed clothes and books. This beautiful cabinet became an attractive piece of furniture. Mama also gave us a used dining table, which Bakul covered with a good tablecloth and was placed against one wall. She also bought fabrics and made three curtains to cover half of three windows in the room used by us as a bedroom/living room so no one could peep inside. I close my eyes and vividly see how uncluttered and inviting she had converted our living/bedroom. I was so proud of her.
When you entered the apartment, the first large room was the kitchen, with many shelves on which she arranged all brass and stainless steel dishes and other brass pots and pans. My mother also used this room as a bedroom at night.
Every one of us slept on the floor by rolling out mattresses.
Once a famous elder uncle, Mast Fakir, who was also an author of humorous Gujarati books came to see Bakul’s house. He told many others how happy Bakul’s house was with positive vibrations. Many relatives living in Vile Parle came over to see Bakul’s house.
