Tandoori Texan Tales
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TANDOORI TEXAN TALES
I am really very proud and blessed, that my parents made a
conscious and I am sure, a very agonizing, choice of having
me against such odds. Isn’t it amusing that even when I was
created, they forgot to put me in the main Book and had to
add in the Appendix later on?
Early Years:
I of course do not have the foggiest personal knowledge of
any of these events and am totally oblivious of them. For
me all this is just hearsay.
The earliest memory I have is that of my eldest brother
Dattanna’s wedding. I was barely 3. It was the first wedding
in the family and was celebrated with pomp and
circumstance, for full 5 days in Madras. Orthodox Hindu
rituals and Social parties in 1943, when the WW2 was
raging and there were rationing of all commodities. That
was a moment of great pride and joy for the whole family.
It seemed like everybody was having a great time,
excepting the groom, who had not yet completely recovered
from a bout of typhoid. But that was of minor reckoning.
I remember the new addition to the family, the new bride
Kamakshimanni. She and Dattanna had a separate bedroom
upstairs. One day I was standing outside her room peering
through the half open doorway, as she was brooming the
floor. I was too shy to go in. Seeing me, she bade me to
come in and asked what was I staring at. I asked her feebly,
why was she brooming the floor? She asked ‘Why not?’ I
said, ‘You are not Chandrika, are you? ‘. Chandrika was our
servant who did all the cleaning and washing. She pealed
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out with a big laugh. Later she kept repeating this incident
all over the family and they would also burst out with a
guffaw and laughter.
Along with Chandrika, we had Ramraj who was my male
nanny. Jagatram was our Chauffeur. Then we had gardeners
and a retinue of servants to take care of every need. Our
house was next to the PowerHouse of which Appanna was
the Chief Engineer. He could command just about any thing
he wanted and get it carried out by a hundred and odd
people working for him there. We had a big house on the
banks of Phuleli, a tributary of Indus River. The large lawn
overlooking the river was well kept and we would play, go
down the slide, seesaw or hang from the overhead parallel
bars. Once Giri broke his arm trying go from one rung to
another on those parallel bars. Karthik too fell from the
seesaw and broke his collarbone. At that time there was a
very popular song by KLSaigal that went “Jab Dil Hee Toot
Gaya”. And we would change it and sing for Karthik “Jab
Collar Bone Toot Gaya”!!
We had some half a dozen cows and there were servants to
take care of them. They were like our household pets. Akka
would personally go and visit them every morning and
some of them would even stand up and return her soft
gentle stroking, with a grateful nod. When a cow fell sick,
she had to be given medicine. A thick bamboo would be
split on one end into two. After putting that end into the
cow’s mouth, a stick would be stuck in between that split,
to keep that end and the cow’s mouth wide open. A servant
would place the medicinal pill inside the bamboo on the
other end and blow with his mouth. Thus that pill would
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land straight into the cow’s throat. However, sometime the
stick keeping the other end apart would break and the cow
would blow first, landing the pill inside the throat of the
servant!! I guess that kept the servant quite immune to any
disease as well!
In November 1944, we got the big news by telegraph that
the first grandson had arrived. We placed a long distance
call from Hyderabad (Sind) to Ernakulam. One had to book
the call and wait for hours together before it would come
through. Finally we could talk. We wanted to hear the voice
of the new arrival. So we asked them to pinch that little
fellow to hear him. Yes indeed that was true. Yes indeed
that was the voice from the next rung of Doré ladder.
Karthik, as he was called, was an apple of everybody’s
eyes. At last I could now stand taller to someone junior.
Appanna would show him around to his friends and
colleagues with great pride and joy. Appanna’s mother
Amma had become a great grand mother through all male
lineage. Quite an accomplishment by Hindu scriptural
standards. That was commemorated by a ceremony called
Kanakabhishekam - showering with nothing less than pure
gold itself amidst chanting of Vedic hymns by a band of
sacred Brahmins imported from far away South India.
After being tutored at home by Appanna’s assistant Jiwa,
for a while, I was finally admitted to the Nursery section of
Pigget’s High School near Tilak Chadi. We had a dark blue
Ford convertible, four-door sedan that would take me to and
fro school.
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One afternoon in early 1946, Appanna picked me up from
my school and we drove back home together. All else had
already finished their lunch. Keshavan laid a wooden board
on the floor and a plantain leaf before it. He served
Appanna his lunch in our traditional style of partaking
meals. I sat separately and as usual was creating a ruckus to
finish my food. Akka brought the mail and there was a letter
from Madras with a picture of a 16-year-old petite, comely
girl with large beautiful eyes and shapely neck. She passed
the letter to Appanna. I asked them who was in that picture.
I was told, that was going to be my new sister-in-law.
Things started ticking like a well-oiled clockwork. Within a
few weeks, in June of the same year, we were in Madras for
Vichanna’s wedding to Sarlamanni.
By early following year, they were expecting their first
child. In the traditional South Indian Hindu fashion, a
celebration called ‘Sheemandam’ was celebrated in
Hyderabad. It is similar to what the Westerners call a “Baby
Shower”.
In the school we were taught to draw the Union Jack for our
assignment. I would use the kitchen knife to draw all those
lines criss cross. Then one day, we were told that we did not
have to do that anymore. We were to draw the tricolor flag
of Independent India. Just 2 horizontal lines, fill Red, White
and Green, with a round wheel in the middle. That should
be easy enough.
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Calm before Storm:
Yes India had become Independent. I had no idea what that
meant. They made Karthik wear the closed neck long jacket
and tight trousers called Churidar. With Gandhi cap to top it
all, he looked very cute and like those Congress leaders in
&n
bsp; newspaper pictures. Flags were unfurled and people
constantly listened to speeches on the radio looking pretty
pleased with themselves.
While all the States, some two thousand plus of them, were
asked to choose between India and Pakistan to join, there
were a few that created more problems than the others did
in making any choice. Amongst such was a tiny state called
Junagadh in Gujarat whose Nawab stubbornly wanted to
stay away from either. Whenever I used to throw up a
temper tantrum without eating my meals, Keshavan our
cook would call me ‘Junagadh’!!
Our home was an oasis for the South Indian community in
that part of the World. Being some 1500 miles away from
Madras, most of them, especially the bachelors, considered
this their home away from home. They would come to
celebrate festivals like Dusserah, Deepawali or
Avaniavattam, the annual day to change one’s sacred
thread. They may even drop in on weekends for no reason
at all. They may even telegraph us to meet them at the
Railway Station with coffee and meals when they were en-
route some place else. Amongst a host of such friends were
Mr. Subbaroyan, who later was the Editor-in-chief of “Sind
Observer”, a daily in Karachi. And then there were Captains
Srinivasan and Balu, of the Indian Army.
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We got a new car. The old Navy Blue Ford convertible was
still there. But we prided on the new Chocolate colored
Ford with a stick shift below the steering wheel. I still
preferred the old car because it had that extra step below the
door that would help my small body to climb in and out.
But nobody wants your opinion when you are not even 7
years old. Our schools closed a few days of opening, after
the Summer Recess in 1947. There was trouble brewing all
over the region, so parents wanted their kids to stay home.
Akka would tutor us in the Tamil language to keep us stay
away from trouble and to get some training in our mother
tongue. Punjab in the north had started having serious
communal clashes between the Hindus and the Moslems.
All kinds of horror stories were being reported in the media.
Hindus were fleeing in droves across the border. The
foreboding was, that someday this cancer was going to
spread towards Sind, where we were living and was thus far
quiet.
All our belongings especially the valuables were shipped
across to India with Captains Srinivasan and Balu. Being
bachelors, they did not have much belongings of their own
and were very willing to carry our stuff as their own. None
could mess with the Army personnel on the way.
The Exodus:
From our house we could see trains going over a railway
bridge across the Phuleli. They would be overflowing with
fleeing people holding on to every nook and cranny of the
compartment and over the roofs, hanging on to their lives
literally. My playmates and their families would come
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bidding good-byes. Every man, woman and child wearing
six or seven layers of clothing. They could only carry what
was on their bodies, if they even made it across the border
alive. Feria Sahib and his family could stay on, they were
Christians. Bhise Sahib a Hindu, Mohan Singh a Sikh, with
their families, were in peril.
We always thought this whole black cloud will one-day just
pass away. ‘This is not really true’, ‘This couldn’t be
happening to us’, ‘All those terrible things you read about
in the newspapers only happen to ‘others’ never to
ourselves’. Denial. Denial. Denial. One day Appanna, rang
up Subbaroyan in Karachi to find out just how bad the
things had gotten and what precautions, if any, should we
be taking. Subbaroyan was fuming like the Vesuvius. He
flared out at Appanna. He could not believe we were still
lingering there. He told in no uncertain terms that we must
get the hell out of that place immediately if we did not want
to be raped and killed!!
That is when the whole reality dawned. All means of
transport were chock full not to mention fraught with
danger and disaster. Subbaroyan, with his journalistic
contacts was finally able to wangle seats on a ship called
“Jala Durga”. She was a vessel salvaged, reconstructed and
making her maiden voyage. That is all that was available.
No First Class seats. Just Upper Deck. Take it or leave it.
We grabbed 8 tickets: Appanna, Akka, Amma,
Kalyaniatthai, Gullanna, Giri, Roopa and myself. Keshavan,
the cook got a place in the servants quarters.
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Late night on November 23rd, 1947, we took the train from
Hyderabad to Karachi. Next morning after reaching
Karachi, we heard the news that after we left that night,
communal riots had broken out a mile away from our house
and Hindu houses were set on fire.
Appanna paid some Rupees 250 to the Coolie for loading
our dozen or so trunks at the docks. That was equivalent to
US$ 10,000 in today’s terms. We were lucky we even got
such a bargain. Around 3 PM on November 24th, “Jala
Durga” slowly steamed out of the harbor. Subbaroyan along
with some of Appanna’s loyal colleagues and friends was
standing at the shore waving at us. There was no eye that
was dry. There was no throat without a lump. One
momentous chapter of our lives was slowly drifting away
from us like quicksand under our feet. Our minds stopped
registering any more emotions, it had just reached its limits.
The land we were forsaking slowly but surely turned into a
blimp on the horizon. We heaved a sigh of relief choking
with sadness. A veritable oxymoron indeed.
Appanna was able to get leave of absence from his
employer and old time dear friend Mukhi-sahib, by
promising that he would return after safely depositing
women and children at home. There was still a lot of work
to do. The two of them had worked shoulder to shoulder in
their shirtsleeves for the better part of a quarter Century.
Appanna had created and nurtured that PowerHouse like it
was one of his own kith and kin.
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The Holocaust:
The carnage and conflagration of Partition was close to
what the Sub-continent got to a Holocaust. Our family came
within a kissing distance to it. We came out physically
unscathed. Tens of thousands of others were not so
fortunate. Horror stories abound and history books are full
of them.
Much later, I had a roommate called Ravi Kant Shrivastava
who related to me an experience in his family when they
were in Lahore at that time. His dad was a Professor at the
University there. One Sunday morning, Professor
Shriv
astava was walking down a lane ending into a cul-desac.
He was late for a visit to his friend in this
predominantly Moslem neighborhood. One of his students,
a Moslem, yelled at him from the balcony of his house,
beckoning him to come inside his house immediately first.
Notwithstanding protestations, the student dragged the
Professor into his house and locked him up in a closet. A
little later he was let go. He was then told that, the previous
night all the people in that neighborhood had decided that
the first Hindu that walked in would be slaughtered.
Professor Shrivastava would have been that person. A
Hindu teacher was saved by his Moslem student from being
butchered by other Moslems!.
It was a mass frenzy. To any right thinking person, it made
no sense at all. If ‘A’ killed ‘B’ on one side of the border,
‘C’ killed ‘D’ on the other side, for revenge as well as a
deterrent from ‘E’ killing ‘F’. Who started all this first?
Don’t bother answering that question. Husband would be
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tied to a pole in the railway station. In front of his eyes,
throats of his child would be split open by bare knife. His
wife would be raped, before her breasts cut out and strewn
on the floor. His parents would be cut into pieces. After
witnessing all this he would be untied and killed too. A little
boy of his would probably escape to come and tell the story
to others. These were not just stray incidents. There were
thousands of such incidents taking place in broad daylight
all over.
Pakistan was a wholly Moslem state. Hindus settled in
Pakistani territories had to be uprooted. They no longer
belonged there. But India declared herself secular. Families
were thrown apart as they fled. We used to hear broadcasts
on the All India Radio, separated families trying to find
each other. “Vishwanath, Shikohabad sey poochtain hain,