Past imperfect

What do you do when you can never go back home?

Whenever I drive down the Moolchand flyover in Delhi, I find myself looking out for a red-tiled roof on my left. It is another matter that the humble barsati that was my first home in Delhi is long gone. In its place stands a ritzy three-storey building which houses an international bank and sundry designer stores.

But even though my eyes can’t deceive me, my mind always goes back to what was: my first visit to an old-style bungalow in Defence Colony; endless negotiations to get the rent down; trips to Fab India for furnishings; the many moon-lit parties I hosted on the terrace; lazy Sundays spent in the winter sun; the searing heat that no air-conditioner could banish; the whistling cold wind of winter that got into my very bones; and most of all, the ineffable feeling of freedom I felt in the first home that was truly my own.

All of this, however, exists in my mind alone; the place that created these feelings and memories has long since vanished, a casualty to the endless development and re-development that characterizes the city. (The Khan Market of my youth, for instance, now exists only in the imagination of my generation.)

I am not new to this sense of lost worlds, though. In a way, it seems like a natural progression of my family’s own personal history of loss and remembrance. As a child, I grew up on tales of the Partition and the homes that we had left behind. My grandmother would regale me with stories of her village in the North-Western Frontier which produced so many brave soldiers that the British agreed to grant them any wish. But instead of asking for running water for the village, my grandfather would interject scornfully at this point, they asked for a cannon to be installed at the village gates!

My parents would remember fondly the large, sprawling houses they grew up in, with their endless acres of garden fragrant with the smell of mango-laden trees and flowering jasmine. Was it my imagination or did the homes get more and more palatial with each re-telling? And was it simply nostalgia, rather than blatant lying, at work? I really don’t know, though I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But such was the magical world they created in their re-telling, that I couldn’t really bear to see if it would ever measure up to reality. Which is why on my solitary visit to Pakistan, I did not make the slightest attempt to get to the village in Jhelum in which an entire mohalla had been named after my family (or so they claimed, at any rate!).

The lesson I learnt at my grandmother’s knee was that you can never really go back home; because that home could well have changed beyond all recognition. Far better to see it for what it was in your mind’s eye, than risk besmirching your memories with the stain of reality. Which perhaps explains why I am so loath to ever go back: to my childhood home; my school; my college. I would much rather remember them the way they were, than have my memories diluted by how they are now.

A friend of mine learnt this lesson the hard way. A Kashmiri Pandit, he was exiled from the Valley along with his family, while still a child. Ever since, he would have a recurring dream of his childhood home, of the garden he played in, of the school he attended. In his dreams he would roam the streets of his lost city, visit old haunts, enjoy that once-familiar view.

And then, one day, he finally made his way back home. Only it wasn’t home any longer. There were strangers living in the house that was once his, the streets looked completely different, and the Arab-style hijab had taken over from the Kashmiri kalle dajj. He took the next flight out. And since then, he says, he has never dreamt of Srinagar again.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I would rather have my dreams than a bitter dose of reality. I would rather remember my college library the way it was – with me perched on my favourite window seat, with the sloping table piled up with endless reference books, while I lost myself in a short story by Katherine Mansfield – than go back and be confronted with a modern monstrosity (which I am sure it isn’t; but I’d rather not find out).

Sometimes, of course, I have no choice in the matter. No matter how much I long to go back to my first office, in the slightly dilapidated building that then housed the ABP headquarters, there is no way that I can. That place, the repository of so many memories, burnt down to the ground, even as I watched, horrified. No, I am not kidding. A blaze that started in the early hours of the morning gutted the entire building, taking with it an entire chunk of my life.   

So, what do you do when you can’t go back home (or indeed, to the office)? Well, as I have discovered, the best thing to do is just re-create it in your imagination, populate it with your memories, and make it the stuff of your dreams. There really is no better way to triumph over reality.

Aide-memoirs

Looking through a box of old pictures is sometimes the best way of bringing the past alive

In one my periodic fits of de-cluttering, I stumbled upon a box of old photographs tucked away at the back of my closet. I sat down to take a desultory look – and before I knew it, I was neck-deep in memories, and the clear-out plan had been postponed to another day.

There I was, in my Class II year-end picture, peering out suspiciously at the world from behind a mop of hair, perched safely three seats away from my class-teacher, Mrs Murray, always an object of terrified fascination. I can still remember her orange lipstick, a shade I have never since seen, and how her short legs dangled under the desk, never quite reaching the floor. But while most of the faces of my fellow-students look vaguely familiar, I am hard put to match names to more than four of them. 

Never mind, I tell myself, that was a long time ago. Maybe I’ll have better luck with my Class XI photograph. And sure enough, the recognition factor goes up significantly. There’s my class teacher Malti Puri, who taught me that history wasn’t only about mugging up dates of important battles but about stirring stories of flesh-and-blood characters who lived and breathed in her lessons – and for that I will always be grateful. (She also taught me that a sari could be sexy, as she dazzled us teenagers with her diaphanous chiffons worn with knotted blouses.)  And there are the giddy young girls I grew up with, scrubbed clean for the camera in their prim blue skirts and white blouses. Only three girls have been courageous enough to wear the sari uniform for the class photo, braving the inevitable ‘behenji’ jeers – but, sadly, I am not one of them.

Yes, old photographs have a way of effortlessly transporting us back to the past, dredging up memories that we had thought lost forever. But far more importantly, they also provide a window into a world long gone.

There’s an old black and white photo of mine, for instance, taken on a trip to Jammu when I was 11. It’s that mandatory shot that all tourists took in those days: wearing a pheran, a Kashmiri headscarf called the Kasaba, tied turban-like around the head and fixed in place with loads of costume jewellery, and gazing soulfully slightly off camera. But the picture, despite its undeniable corniness, resonates with me because I have only recently returned from Srinagar, where the Kasaba seem to have disappeared off the streets to be replaced by an Arab-style black hijab. And therein, as they say, lies a story...

But I am getting ahead of myself. My memory bank starts with a family portrait of my grandparents, seated on imposing armchairs, flanking my father (a teenager rigged out in his first three-piece suit, complete with a flower in the lapel, and looking absurdly proud), with a massive expanse of lawn spread out behind them, fringed with immensely tall trees. But while the men are decked out in Western suits and ties, my grandmother is wearing a seedha-palla sari with a full-sleeved blouse. Clearly, in keeping with the double standards of the time, the Goswami family’s embrace of modernity did not extend to the ladies.

And then, there’s the wedding portrait of my parents. My mother, all of 18, is lost in a voluminous salwar-kameez, head covered with a gota-bordered dupatta, weighed down with jewellery, almost trembling with nervous tension as she gazes apprehensively ahead. Her husband, whom she has never met before, is perched awkwardly on the arm of her chair, trying to look at ease, but failing spectacularly. They look like the strangers they are, pitchforked into matrimony by two sets of parents, and petrified of what lies before them.

I can’t help but contrast this with the wedding picture of my mother-in-law, which occupies pride of place on her bedside table. It was taken by her husband, on her wedding day. She is a strong and confident 31 year old, wearing a simple Patola sari and a big bindi, holding a bunch of flowers and grinning delightedly into the camera held by her husband, with whom she has eloped to marry in a simple Hindu ceremony in Paris. This is a woman in control of her destiny; a choice that was denied to my own mother. Which makes me all the more grateful that she brought up my sister and me to make our own way in the world.

It’s only because of that, that I now have a treasure trove of pictures to fill my memory box. Here I am on the slopes of Machhu Pichhu in Peru, part of President Narayanan’s press party, smiling gamely despite the asthma brought on the altitude. That’s me on the Wagah border, waiting for Prime Minister’s Vajpayee’s bus to trundle across. And then, there’s the photo I took of Aung San Suu Kyi on my first trip to Burma, perched on a step-ladder on the boundary of her bungalow, with thousands of her followers across the fence hanging on to every word.

The memories flash by, frame after frame, and with each one, I am grateful for the life I was granted.