Social media had some wounding snippets of news this week: a bridegroom cruelly trolled for being dark, young people despairing of getting an education, and parents working themselves to the bone for their children’s sake. It made me want to share some personal history that reflects the ongoing struggle for respect and opportunity in our society, and how faith can fail.
My paternal grandmother, Lalita, was widowed at twenty-six. She and her children, my father and his elder sister Kanthi, were sent to her brothers as poor relatives. My father got everything, but the uncles did not think it necessary to educate Kanthi. Nevertheless, when Kanthi was eight, Lalita requested that she be sent to school so that she could earn her living one day.
The uncles said she would have to be married, but nobody suitable would marry a fatherless girl without money, so they would have to find Kanthi some poor man willing to take her for free. They said it was enough if she could read and do household accounts.
Tripurasundari, Lalita’s mother, said nobody would want to marry Kanthi for being dark-skinned, since she was born brown in a pink family. She vehemently opposed Kanthi’s education more than her sons did. Ringed by dragons, Lalita politely asked them not only to send Kanthi to school but also to let her have music lessons.
This gave the uncles a ladder to climb down without losing face. They said Kanthi could either go to school or have music lessons. To pacify their mother, they also said Kanthi had to get the highest marks in class each year if she wanted to go to the next one.
There was nowhere that Kanthi could study peacefully, and she was frequently interrupted by her grandmother for a new chore. Tripurasundari, a sore loser, never stopped saying how dark Kanthi was, a burden on Earth with her lack of looks and dower. Kanthi silently swore never to get married. Later, despite immense family pressure, she held by that decision.
Kanthi was not always the first in class, but she pushed herself hard so she never slipped below the top five. If Lalita caught Kanthi reading a storybook, she beat her with the visiri kattai, the wooden handle of her palmetto fan. Lalita had paid Kanthi’s school fees with her pride and did not intend to let her squander her chance. This pressure to escape indignity through study ruled Kanthi’s life. Going to college, too, was an epic struggle. Her professor at Madras University, Malcolm Adiseshiah, encouraged her. Eventually, she taught economics at no less than Delhi University.
Lalita and Kanthi earned their keep, and my father’s, by doing a heavy share of housework. Lalita maintained a brave front, while Kanthi said with iron resolve, “I loathe self-pity.”
The Freedom movement had begun to stir up the Madras Presidency, the oldest bastion of British rule in India. The uncles were pro-British and disliked political opinions in women. So, Kanthi and Lalita spoke of it covertly, for Lalita was intensely nationalistic.
Lalita had somehow taught herself to read English, Hindi and Urdu, and used part of her scant allowance to buy newspapers in all three languages. She began to keep a secret political diary that Kanthi read only after her death. In it, said Kanthi, she had poured out all her hopes and apprehensions about the social and political future of the country, its communal rifts, and her own absolute abhorrence of caste and gender discrimination.
Tripurasundari scoffed at Lalita’s reading, especially of English books, but could not really object since Lalita sat down to read only in the afternoon after completing any number of household chores.
A cousin from Vellore began to visit in the early 1940s. A well-read and highly intelligent lady, she was married to a rich but uneducated man, who liked to drink and party with the men of his neighbourhood.
This lady had not been allowed to study but had taught herself to read. She had a keen interest in Marxism, and in Lalita she found a kindred spirit. She came by often, and they would read the Communist Party paper Janasakti. They secretly procured P Jeevanandham’s banned Tamil translation of Bhagat Singh’s essay Why I Am an Atheist, which they hid under a newspaper cover.
Lalita and her cousin spent hours discussing politics at the temple, the only place they could visit freely. It is a piquant thought that these two outwardly meek women sat in a corner of the open courtyard of a temple as the safest place in which to discuss Marxism, atheism and caste.
Lalita introduced her cousin to Dr Samuel, a Tamil Christian lady doctor known as ‘Apathikaari Amma’, the woman apothecary. Dr Samuel gave Lalita a picture of Baby Jesus and Mother Mary, which she kept in her puja corner, in accordance with the ingrained Hindu belief that ‘God is One’, next to a picture of her beloved Kanchi Kamakshi. Kanthi, however, turned atheist, disgusted by the cruelty of ‘believing’ society.
When my father found employment and took Lalita away to hired lodgings in Madras, she took a sweet-natured Dalit couple in as part-time help. Neither Lalita nor Kanthi kept ‘separate’ glasses and plates for their household help, a practice I follow. They believed it was important to serve them with affection and dignity, on proper plates, and to give them tea in unchipped cups. Personal pushbacks against the crushing weight of the centuries, which are still going on, alas.
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
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