Citizen Delhi: My Times, My Life

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CHAPTER 1

Age of Innocence

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t was all so unfamiliar. I had just got married in Delhi two days ago. Now as the new bahu (bride) of the Dikshit family, I was at my husband’s home in Lucknow, a ghoonghat (veil) pulled all the way down to my waist, touching the feet of innumerable female relatives for their blessings, uncomplainingly cooking meals for the family as was expected of me, and sleeping in the store room crammed with utensils for lack of space. That routine went on for three days. My family in Delhi and my college friends from Miranda House seemed so far away.

I remember writing a postcard to my father, Shrikrishna Kapoor, saying that I felt as if I had travelled back a few centuries, but in the same breath assuring him that I could handle it. Sure enough, after observing me for three days, my 86-year-old grandmother-in-law, universally addressed as Mammu, was convinced that even though I was not a Brahmin, I was as good. She proudly told everyone, ‘Padhi likhi hai, Dilli ki ladki hai, ek Maranda se aayi hai (she’s an educated girl from Delhi, who has studied in Miranda House).’ The person whose ire at this inter-caste marriage had been feared the most, turned out to be the most liberal. My husband, Vinod Dikshit, an only child, and his father, the well-known freedom fighter and Congress leader, Uma Shankar Dikshit—the two individuals who would influence my life the most—looked ever so relieved.

That winter I knitted a sweater for Mammu. It looked like a sweater all right, except for the sleeves, which even to my untrained eyes seemed much shorter than they should have been. But Mammu silenced all sniggering comments by saying, ‘Bahurani is very intelligent. She knows I light the diya every day and she made these short sleeves on purpose to prevent them from getting oily or catching fire!’

Now when I look back to my initiation into marriage as a 24-year-old in 1962, I can see that my liberal Kapoor upbringing combined with the experiences of a seemingly conservative Dikshit household prepared me for dealing with people from diverse backgrounds and being comfortable in all possible settings. My experiences in both households taught me that differences can be bridged if one has the confidence and the intent to look beyond them. I also learnt that liberalism comes in many guises. For, within a year of my marriage, I was treated like the daughter, not a daughter-in-law, of the house.

Much of my confidence stemmed from the way my two sisters and I were brought up. I was the eldest, born on 31 March 1938. My sisters, Pam and Rama, were three and seven years younger than me. In what was still a fairly conservative social milieu, never once, in thought or deed, did our parents make us feel that girls were less than boys in any way or that they missed having a son. They wanted us to get a good education and, most importantly, grow up to be independent individuals.

At a time when most girls our age did not venture anywhere unchaperoned, we practically lived outdoors in our leisure time. We cycled furiously along the tree-lined avenues of Lutyens’ Delhi, where we we lived for over five years from the time I was about ten years old. We explored the rocky terrain of ‘remote’ Chanakyapuri, which as yet had no inkling of its future diplomatic makeover, played homegrown games like seven tiles, pitthu, gitte and hopscotch, and whiled away our afternoons perched atop our favourite jamun tree.

I was twelve when I started cycling to school, and was joined by my sisters a few years later. From Dupleix Lane (now Kamaraj Lane), we would cycle to the Great Place (now Vijay Chowk), cut across to Bangla Sahib and reach the Convent of Jesus and Mary, covering a distance of around four kilometres. By seventeen, I had learnt to drive. After finishing school, I joined Miranda House, one of the most prestigious colleges of Delhi University.

My parents’ emphasis on a good education, which meant studying in an English medium educational institution, was understandable. Both had hungered for education. In the neighbourhood where she grew up in Kapurthala, my mother, Swarnalata, was known as the girl who had studied till Class X. Having studied in a Hindi medium school, she had learnt English on her own, gaining fluency in written expression but not in the art of conversation. Although a Punjabi, she was well versed in Hindustani. She even joined Kinnaird College in Lahore, staying in a hostel, which set neighbourhood tongues wagging about a young girl staying alone in a big city. Six months later her mother’s indisposition, however, compelled her to return home.

My father, Shrikrishna Kapoor, also studied till Class X at the prestigious Anglo Arabic School in Old Delhi. He taught himself to speak English fluently when he found employment in the Quartermaster General’s office in the 1920s, further polishing up his language skills by reading P.G. Wodehouse. Popularly known as Bob, he was very British in his etiquette and a stickler for rules.

Common experiences bound my parents—as the eldest among siblings in their respective families, they had both experienced the early demise of a parent. They shored up their families, guided by a strong sense of personal ethics and duty, with no time for overt religiosity, seeing it as a matter of individual inclination.

Mother was tall—about five-feet-seven—with light grey eyes, commanding features and a heavy frame that she camouflaged by wearing a sari at all times. Father was about five-feet-ten, broad shouldered and even to our indulgent eyes, leaning towards fat. Although he was virtually bald, he kept three fancy hairbrushes to tame the few remaining strands on his head. We would watch this routine in fascination throughout our childhood! In his initial days at the Quartermaster General’s office, father used to drive a motorcycle to work. As he neared retirement, he bought a Morris, which was the pride of his life.

Both my parents’ families were a mix of the traditional and the modern. My naana (maternal grandfather), Narsingh Puri, a tall and strapping man, worked for the Raja of Kapurthala. As children, we were as awed to hear about the secret of his slightly bent arm—an injury sustained during a hunting expedition with the Raja—as we were to learn that he had played many a lawn tennis tournament. A photograph of him standing with a gun in a typical hunter’s pose greeted every visitor to the house.

After his retirement, he had picked up a fondness for wearing his hunting clothes at home and for perennially clearing his throat with Vox lozenges. Family members joked that he was single-handedly responsible for keeping that brand alive. We also prided ourselves on the fact that we could count up to 125 mamas or maternal uncles (my mother’s four siblings, along with first, second and third cousins, and more besides!).

Hailing from a fairly well-off, socially respected family, naana lived in a large, traditional home, with all rooms facing an inner courtyard. I was born in this house and so was my youngest sister, Rama. I am told that we were placed on a tarazu (scales) kept for weighing vegetables so that our birth weight could be recorded.

Another incident that was narrated to us in wondrous tones had to do with Pam the explorer, who had a fondness for milk. On a day when the house was bustling with activity because it was the wedding day of one of our uncles, three-year-old Pam came upon a huge kadhai full of milk on the traditional chulha in the courtyard, which was built close to the ground. So excited was she to see such a huge quantity of her favourite drink that she lost her balance and fell into the kadhai. It was one foreign object that the halwai had not expected to find in the milk! Luckily for her, and for us, the chulha had not been lit.

We spent many a vacation at naana’s home. Some things were a novelty for us. For instance, we would stand around the hand pump in the middle of the courtyard and ask all adults coming our way if they wanted water. It gave us an opportunity to perch ourselves on the handle and swing up and down! Other things were not so fascinating. On our first visit, I was sorely distressed upon discovering that the ‘toilet’ was an enclosed space where one had to squat on two bricks over what seemed like an abyss. I remember searching in vain for a chain to flush the toilet, not realising that they were dry latrines, where the remains of the previous day ended up in a pit far below to be cleaned by a manual scavenger. On those occasions, we would remember our home in Delhi with great nostalgia.

My father’s family was from Old Delhi. My dada (paternal grandfather), Nand Kishore Kapoor, used to work at the Imperial Bank, or what is today known as the State Bank of India. He was posted in Lahore for a couple of years. My father, his three brothers and a sister, studied in Delhi. When my father started working, he moved to New Delhi. His two brothers were also in government employment (the youngest resigned during the Quit India movement). By the time my father retired in 1953, we had shifted residence several times, from Rouse Avenue and Circular Road (now Pandit Uma Shankar Dikshit Marg) to Dupleix Lane and Queen Mary’s Avenue (now Pandit Pant Marg).

Each house is associated with strong memories. The merest mention of our house on Circular Road reminds me of the time I had inhaled the fragrance of a jasmine flower so deeply that it got lodged somewhere inside my nasal passage. My father bundled me into Rama’s pram and raced to the Lady Hardinge hospital where a doctor had to perform the delicate task of pulling the flower out with a pair of tweezers. I was about eight then.

I also distinctly remember our neighbour’s stylish, pedigreed cat, the pride of their family. I can still hear the amazement in Mrs Asghar’s voice as she told my mother about the cat’s haughty behaviour. Apparently the feline had expressed its displeasure at getting a meal of inferior meat by pushing the platter towards her feet and walking away! The memory of the night when the Asghars came to our house to tell my parents that they were leaving for Pakistan is etched in my mind. In tear-choked voices they told my mother that they had no idea what was happening, where they were going or what lay in store for them. It was the first time I saw adults cry.

My strongest childhood memory is from the time we lived in Dupleix Lane, for it is tied up with Gandhiji’s assassination. I remember the panic that seized my mother when a neighbour came running to tell us the news. Mother just picked up Rama in her arms and rushed to Birla House, where Gandhi used to stay during his visits to Delhi, with Pam and I running as fast as our legs could carry us to keep pace with her.

There was total chaos, with people running helter-skelter in distress, and shouting, ‘Gandhiji has been killed!’ A man hysterically shrieked that it was the end of the world. Taking that comment literally, I was overcome with anxiety, wondering if we would remain alive to see another day. A wave of relief washed over me the next morning when I woke up to find my sisters and parents safe by my side. For the next two days we were all glued to the radio, which broadcast Melville de Mellow’s seven-hour commentary on Gandhiji’s last journey, from Birla House to Rajghat. There was no television in those days; and the few visual memories that I have are based on newspaper photographs and newsreels that were screened before movies in cinema theatres.

The only photograph I ever saw my mother pay homage to was that of Gandhiji lying with his eyes forever closed. I was about ten years old at the time. I had not seen any photographs of gods being worshipped in our household; this was special.

The one memory common to all the houses we lived in was of the constant coming and going of relatives. My parents’ conduct with everybody was always impeccable. Mother held the family together with her strong presence and sense of fairness, and in return was looked up to by all members of our extended family. Following naani’s untimely death, she felt responsible for her father and her four brothers, who were much younger to her. Her youngest brother stayed with us in Delhi for long stretches, partnering with us on many an escapade.

During the Partition, many more of our relatives from Lahore and Rawalpindi came to stay with us for considerable periods. My sister, Pam, and I were aware that after 15 August there were now two countries instead of one. The adults in the family would speak anxiously about the spreading communal violence when they thought we were not listening. Throughout that period, however, we continued our routine of cycling to school. More than anything, the presence of aunts and uncles and their children in our midst in that dark hour signified an opportunity for us to have more playmates, though we had to make some spatial adjustments.

Ours was not the only family to extend itself so for relatives; others did the same. It was the done thing in times of a collective or individual crisis. During my college years I stayed with my widowed bua (paternal aunt), so that she would not feel lonely. She was the youngest in her family, but older than my mother, which is why we called her Badi Ma. That was what everybody called her. Badi Ma lived in a house on Ferozeshah Road that was allotted to her uncle-in-law, Jaspat Rai Kapoor, who was a Member of Parliament.

My mother and Badi Ma shared a close bond. When Badi Ma’s husband had taken ill and in the days after he passed away, mother visited her sister-in-law regularly to keep up her spirit and morale. They would also always go on trips together.

What was unusual about our family was that I grew up without even being aware that there was something called family disputes. This aspect, I now realise, taught me the value of trying to take everybody along, a lesson that shaped my approach to life and politics in the years to come.

We had a disciplined but liberal upbringing, enjoying far more freedom than other girls of our age. My father would tell us, ‘Go and find out for yourselves, learn to do things on your own.’ On several occasions when we went somewhere with him in his precious Morris, he would ask us to return home by bus. ‘Be self-reliant, be independent,’ he would say.

My sisters and I took our parents at their word. One day, when I was about fifteen, my cousins and I decided to walk from Dupleix Lane, where we lived, to Teen Murti House, the residence of Prime Minister Nehru. When the guard at the gate asked us where we were going, we replied that we were going to meet Panditji. He allowed us in. As we entered the compound, we saw Pandit Nehru coming towards the gate in his white Ambassador. We waved to him and he waved back. His charisma was palpable. There were no trappings of power about him. Can you even imagine something like this happening today?

The times were also such that it never occurred to my parents that something could go wrong if we were left largely to our own devices. Today I cannot imagine a group of children wandering around Delhi in such a carefree manner. I think we were lucky to have been born at a time when freedom was in the air; luckier still to have parents who considered a healthy, outdoor life to be an integral part of gaining confidence for facing the world.

Discipline was the norm because that was the way life was. We learnt to be disciplined in school and in society. I would further describe it as sensitivity to everything and everyone around oneself. There was a time for everything and one was supposed to respect that. One did not misbehave with people and learnt to be courteous always. Language decorum was important. I remember the word ‘damn’ was out of bounds for us.

Not that we did not flout the code of discipline, but even the naughty things we did were not nearly so naughty by today’s standards. For instance, buying food from outside was not encouraged by mother. But during the years we lived on Queen Mary’s Avenue, a little corner shop in a lane off the main road was our permanent source of temptation. It sold buns, bread, butter and peanuts that we found hard to resist. Once in a while, we would steal out of the house to buy bun-makhan, buns cut in half and slathered with butter. Then we would bury peanuts inside the buns to make our very own version of peanut butter. We had read so much about peanut butter that we were desperate to taste it! To indulge in our secret delight we would either climb up our favourite tree or hide in the bathroom, away from mother’s sight.

Our idea of daring pranks was to tie someone up—usually a younger cousin—in a gunny bag or not allowing a person who had climbed up a tree to climb down again.

There was no television, and radio was accessible only during certain hours of the day. Life revolved around studying for school and pastimes like reading books, watching the occasional film, and listening to music. There was no crushing competitiveness in school studies, no towering ambitions or anxieties. We were studying because it made us better human beings and enabled us to comprehend the world around us. May be this was truer of girls, but boys did not seem to lose sleep over their studies either.

Admission to a good school was not the headache it has become today. One just walked in. Although brilliant students were always admired, the idea was simply to do one’s best. Overall, life was marked by a carefree, relaxed and a take-it-as-it-comes kind of attitude, and there were joys in small things. The lack of television or the internet and other gadgets and gizmos just made us more innovative as children. Moreover, the streets and lanes of Lutyens’ Delhi, with very few motorised vehicles, were ideal for our outdoor adventures.

Apart from the outdoors, reading was a big passion, especially for me. It fed my curiosity about different places and the people who lived in them, especially girls my age. Father was a member of the Gymkhana Club and during my teenage years when we lived within walking distance of it, on Dupleix Lane, we would get a fresh lot of six books every weekend to last us until the next weekend. I devoured Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories, Richmal Crompton’s Just William series and classics like Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers and Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through