Life Back Then

Suchandra Banerjee was born in 1939 to Tapogopal and Usha Mukherjee. After she got married to an Army officer in 1958, she made her husband's family and the Indian Armed Forces' family her own. She moved with her husband from city to city, ending in Lutyen's Delhi when her husband, late Lt. General Ashish Banerjee PVSM, served as the Director-General of the National Cadet Corps. Known as a person of great spirit and generosity, she has helped several people, outside her family, whose start in life was disadvantaged. She nurtures a large extended family and contributes to endeavours and institutions serving to uplift communities and the arts. She lives in Noida in the home she retired to with her late husband.

Editor's note: Leena Brown, Suchandra Banerjee's daughter, submitted this story.

I was born in May 1939 to Usha and Tapogopal Mukherjee in a red brick house called The Burdwan House in Ranchi. Half of this house was my father's office and the other half our residence. I had an older sister, Shreela (nicknamed Bubu, and called Didi) five years older than me. On my father's promotion to the office of Additional Post-master General, we moved to Patna when I was a couple of weeks old.

Burdwan House, Ranchi. Late 1930s

Tara Bhadbhade (nee Pandit), born in 1930, has had many avatars over the past eight decades. She has been a lawyer, a lecturer, a sportswoman, a writer, a travel enthusiast, a loyal and loving daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. She is able to juggle all of them and give of her best from every facet of her personality. She is now taking classes in painting and music. She retired as a professor of English in 1989.  Throughout her adult life, she has enjoyed writing and continues to write. She is the author of two published books Light &amp\; Shade in Life's Glade and To Mummy with Love.

The city of Dharwad lies east of the Western Ghats and is surrounded by hills and lakes. The town had the honour of being crowned as the centre of education even during the British regime.

For centuries, it acted as a gateway between the western mountains and the plains. The home of Hindustani classical music, many eminent musicians like Mallikarjun Mansur, Gangubai Hangal, Basavaraj Rajguru, and Bharat Ratna Bhimsen Joshi - one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century - hail from this place.

There is a saying that if you throw a stone in Dharwad, it will hit a poet. Right from D R Bendre, we have any number of poets who have contributed to different genres of the poetic muse.

Tara Bhadbhade (nee Pandit), born in 1930, has had many avatars over the past eight decades. She has been a lawyer, a lecturer, a sportswoman, a writer, a travel enthusiast, a loyal and loving daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. She is able to juggle all of them and give of her best from every facet of her personality. She is now taking classes in painting and music. She retired as a professor of English in 1989.  Throughout her adult life, she has enjoyed writing and continues to write. She is the author of two published books Light &amp\; Shade in Life's Glade and To Mummy with Love.

It was March 1947 in Belgaum.

I wait for the marker at the union Gymkhana tennis court on a Sunday afternoon. Two young men come down the steps. Madhu Pitre, my classmate in college in 1947, walks like a man with a mission. "This is Madhu Bhadbhade, my friend," says Pitre. The young man with him is tall, fair and freckled. He sports a green shirt, which reflects in his light eyes. "He is looking desperately for a partner in table-tennis," Pitre adds.

Why me? I wonder\; besides, why does his friend need an interlocutor?

Madhu Bhadbhade. As Tara first saw him. 1947

E.R. Ramachandran was born in 1942 in Belgaum. He has settled in Mysore after working in Government and Philips Organizations. He has contributed to the Hindustan Times, Cricketnext.com, and is a regular contributor to Churumuri and humour magazine Aparanji in Kannada.

Many years ago - in the 1950s - travel between Bangalore and Mysore used to be almost like travel to the Moon and back. The distance had no comparison but the efforts, the travel time, and the journey itself had the same excitement and anticipation.

When you decided to go to Mysore, the news itself would create a sensation around, becoming a sort of talk of the town. All sorts of people met you and enquire: "Is everything all right?" Most enquired whether your uncle's cow is likely to give birth to a calf or something - otherwise why this decision to go to Mysore, all of a sudden.

You had to tell the Jataka-horse driver Syed or Raju previous evening itself so that he feeds enough grass and water early in the morning for the horse to withstand the run up to railway station and back. The horse's face would be completely covered with a cloth so that no one could see what the horse is eating.

Late night, you packed your hold-all. First came a layer with rice of Coimbatore Sanna or Rathna chudi for your relatives where you have planned to stay. Of course you have posted a card saying you will be coming to Mysore for a couple of days and staying with him. Most letters reached after you were with them. Only telegrams reached just when you had reached your destination.

Born in 1941, Vinod was brought up and educated in Amritsar. He attended Government Medical College, and subsequently trained as a surgeon at PGI, Chandigarh. He left for USA in 1969, and retired in 2003 as Director of Critical Care Services at a teaching hospital in Michigan. Married with two grown sons, he continues to visit India at least once a year.

When I sent five thousand rupees to Lal Devi in Amritsar, I knew that I would hear about it on my next trip from the US to India. I heard about my ‘generosity’ from an aunt in Delhi.

The reason she knew about it was what I should have known from my childhood. Lal Devi loved to talk or, as most neighbors said, ‘blab'. She was the gossip in the neighborhood and could spread a piece of information faster than the dhindorchis (drum-bangers).

When I last saw her she was blind as a bat. "I miss your mother!" she talked about my dead mother as she sunned herself in the winter morning, on our verandah. She was over eighty years old. As usual, she had had many complaints about failing organs and ingrate grandchildren. She bemoaned the fact that she had outlived so many of her neighbors and friends among others.

"I will be dead the next time you visit Amritsar," she said.

"You will live to be hundred before you die".

Born in 1933 in Dijkot, a small hamlet in district Lyallpur (now Faisalabad, Pakistan), I came after about eight attempts, including miscarriages. I grew up in Lyallpur as a pampered child. At the age of five, I was sent to nearby one roomed primary school where spartan old Jute Hessian bags (borian) were used for mats.  I refused to study there, and was enrolled in Sacred Heart Convent School for the next 9 years.  After getting his college degree in India, he moved to Singapore in 1954, and then to Malaysia in 1957, where he worked for Guthrie &amp\; Co., a large Scottish plantation company. He retired in 1988. He lives in Malaysia with his wife.  More about him at this link.

Lyallpur

In 1947, my family lived in Lyallpur before shifting to India at the time of partition.

Even though I was only 14 years old, I had become deeply interested in photography. By then I had already learned how to develop and print pictures.

My first photography Guru was Lat of Lat Photo just opposite Jatinder Ji's house in Goal Bazar that was also mentioned by Jatinder Ji in My Memories of Lyallpur.

Prakash Mathur, nicknamed ‘Titi’ by his dadi and called ‘P C’ by his friends was born in Alwar, a constituent Princely State of the Rajputana Agency since 1832, on June 1, 1940 in a diasporic family of civil service Kayasthas drenched in the Mughal-Muslim culture of Old Delhi. He passed away in 2015. He was a University of Rajasthan faculty pensioner with a continuing passion for academic activity ‘To see Rajasthan better, To make Rajasthan better.’ His wife Shashi and his daughter Sfoorti live in Jaipur.

Kailash Mathur, called Chanda by his parents, is an electrical engineer, who was born in Tijara, which is even now a very small city in Rajasthan. He lived in East Germany from 1965 to 1971, where he married Annemarie, a German, in 1969. Since 1971, he has lived in Vienna, Austria. He became a widower when Annemarie died of cancer in 2004.

Editor's note: Kailash wrote his account first, on which P C added some more memories. The authors are my older brothers. These accounts were written in 2004, after our father passed away.

Kailash Mathur

My father, Shri Khem Chand, was the Collector and District Magistrate of Jhalawar district from April 1952 to January 1954. We lived in the district's capital, also named Jhalawar, which is still a small city.

Kailash Mathur, called Chanda by his parents, is an electrical engineer, who was born in in 1942 Tijara, which is even now a very small city in Rajasthan. He lived in East Germany from 1965 to 1971, where he married Annemarie, a German, in 1969. Since 1971, he has lived in Vienna, Austria. He became a widower when Annemarie died of cancer in 2004.

Long, long ago, once my father asked me to come with him for Shikar (hunt). It was a special event. As a senior government officer responsible for the safety of the people, he had been asked to kill a tiger. This tiger must have been a menace to some village, and the tiger had to be killed. It may have been the jungle surrounding Alwar or may be Jhalawar. I was barely old enough to go with Daddy, and do not remember the exact year, but it was in the early 1950s.

Before we went for Shikar, Daddy’s gun (a two barrel 0.12 bore gun) had to be cleaned. It was a regular activity at our home\; an unclean gun can kill the shikari (hunter) rather than the Shikar. There were special tools for doing that\; I remember a rod and a flannel cloth. The gun also needed oiling, as all joints of the gun must function perfectly.

Chittur Veer Vaidyanathan was born in Churu (Rajasthan) in 1948, and grew up in Jaipur. After a successful corporate career, during which his work with his company led to an Export Promotion Award from the Indian Ministry of Textiles, he is now a developer of real estate near Mumbai http://www.universalbuilder.co.in/.  He lives in Mumbai with his wife Hemlatha\; his son and daughter, both married, live in the U.S. His hobbies are swimming and traveling.

Subhash Mathur is a resident of Jaipur after superannuation from Indian Revenue Service in 2007. Presently, Subhash is engaged in social and charitable work in rural areas. Subhash is also Editor of http://www.inourdays.org/, an online portal for preserving work related memories.

Editor's note: This is adapted and expanded from an exchange on social media in August 2016. C V Vaidyanathan (older brother of one of my classmates) and Subhash (one of my older brothers) lived close to each other in C-Scheme, Jaipur in the early 1960s, and attended St. Xavier's School. They had not been in contact for more than 50 years when they came in touch in 2016.

Visalam Balasubramanian was born in Pollachi, on May 17, 1925. She was the second of three children. Having lost her mother at about age 2, she grew up with her siblings, cared for by her father who lived out his life as a widower in Erode. She was married in 1939. Her adult life revolved entirely around her husband and four children. She was a gifted vocalist in the Carnatic tradition, and very well read. Visalam passed away on February 20, 2005.

Editor's note: This is Part 11 of her memoirs, which have been edited for this website. Kamakshi Balasubramanian, her daughter, has added some parenthetical explanatory notes in italics.