Geeti Sen A Collage of Family Photos

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A Collage of Family Portraits

Author(s): GEETI SEN


Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3/4, Second Nature: Women and
the Family (WINTER 1996), pp. 54-68
Published by: India International Centre
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23004609
Accessed: 18-09-2021 03:57 UTC

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GEETI SEN

A Collage of Family Portrait

when I came home from the nursing home and held my


The time that Ichild.
new-born really missed my mother most of all was
It occurs to you when you bring home your first baby that there
isn't a woman of your family to show you how things are done,
how nappies are tied or how to make the baby burp if it has
hiccups, or how to rock it to sleep. Having come back from
graduate studies in America, having grown up without the
shared responsibilities in an Indian family, I had never held a baby
for years. My world was composed of notecards and paper clips
and rubber bands to put together my lectures; but I never had
those essential items of needle and thread or cotton wool in the
house. My ignorance became a threat to my baby's life.
I began thinking about my mother. I wondered what sort of
training she might have given me, and what values she might
have instilled in me, had she not died so suddenly.
"Your mother cared desperately about her two children."
How to make them happy, how to make them feel secure, how to
fill their lives with meaningful things. "She was a perfectionist", I
was told over and over again when her name was mentioned.
"She would have done everything for you..."
But why did she always look so vulnerable? I recall that face
so fragile and poignant, and I look at the photograph of that
radiant young woman, and I wonder what was it that trans
formed her. Was it the burden of her family? I realise that there is
a private history here which is untold, which will never be told. I
realise there is a difference between my image of my mother, and
what people said about her, and that photograph. I resolve many
times over that I will never let this happen to me, that I will never
let my child dominate my life.
"She lived only for her children", we were told. I recall being
taken for picnics in the Lodi gardens with hampers filled with

My grandmother with my aunt, 1903.


Inset: My mother with me, 1942

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56 / India International Centre Quarterly

roasted chicken and chips, and white napkins to clean us up—and


rolling down the grass slopes just to be able to soil my clothes and
provoke my gentle mother into a rebuke. I recall days and days
of packing (everything had to be perfect) for that longed-for
summer in Calcutta—when the cousins would be all together in
that huge house beside the Hooghly, watching the steam boats
cruise down the river, feeding pet goats and monkeys, eating
mangoes and guavas. When I remember Calcutta, it is with the
smell of mangoes and guavas and the goats and the river swelling
through the monsoon, all together.
I remember the nights of insomnia and loneliness when my
mother would work into the late hours. It troubles me that I do
not remember her voice, whether it was gentle or assertive, but I
remember her beautiful hands that kept writing away. It seemed
to me as though she never slept but she wrote and she wrote—was
it her "social work" and "political commitment" with Jai Prakash
Narain that we heard about that kept her preoccupied, or was it
some private anguish? Did she keep a notebook which was never
revealed to us? This was the other side of day, lurking, hidden
away from the public gaze.
It seems that almost with the moment of her death our
childhood vanished into the night. Days that had been carefully
structured were now amorphous and idle. That "togetherness
towards which she worked became a matter of past memories and
old photographs. The cousins scattered all over the world, each
to his or her own. Our children, their children, never were to
experience that sense of family which we had once so intensely
known.

1 remember the last evening spent with my parents. It was


the day after Christmas, and on the way home from a children's
party we stopped by to visit my father. My parents laughed a great
deal and spoke to each other in a bantering tone, with affection.
She told him about her plans to visit California to renew her work
in sociology.
Did she die, did she kill herself? People began to whisper this
and the whispers grew louder and more threatening—they in
vaded our childhood. "She is not to blame." "She was always
innocent." "She suffered a great deal.." My father retained a
taciturn silence. One day when a year or so had passed, he

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GEETI SEN / 57

suddenly made up his mind to leave this country and return t


the London he had known with my mother.
In my mind the whispers that grew so loud and the memory
of my parents together on that last evening present two differen
sides of the face of truth. We construct memory as we wish, and
there is no photograph here to testify as the evidence.
London suffered still from a post-war bleakness. There wa
fog on the window sills and the cold lard left in the frying pa
always needed scouring. I hated the tedium of boarding schoo
and I came home to study privately, and childhood was over. O
perhaps, if one were to examine the case, childhood never left m
The desire remained—for a sense of family.
My grandmother and I wrote to each as though nothing had
changed. She would send me aam papar and daal mot as though
these were the greatest culinary delights that India had to offer.
She knew perfectly well that this was a way of keeping a hol
over me, of retaining tenacious ties with my childhood. And o
each visit home, I would bring back one or two photographs that
would help me to weave together my fable about a family history
Didima retained a sense of serenity which nothing could
efface. She lived through the deaths of her two sons, her daughter
(my mother) and her daughter-in-law by preserving the hom
and bringing up the grandchildren. Time was preserved intact by
keeping strictly to the precise hours of a daily routine. There wa
the time when the chiks on the verandah were raised; time when
the cook brought in his huge tray of fish and jackfruit and brinjal
time when the green shutters on the windows would be closed
and a deep silence descended into the long afternoon; time whe
family friends arrived for tea on the verandah; time when th
dhoop was prepared to drive away the mosquitoes; time when
Didima's silver hair was plaited into fine braids for the night.
This unchanging edifice is the image of the house that my
grandmother ran. Nothing ever changed, not especially the se
vants, over twenty years. My grandfather, so highly esteemed as
the senior-most living member of the Indian Civil Service, live
to ninety-three and to the last day wrote in his diary. With the
wisdom of years he had withdrawn into himself and was content
to watch the world go by, humming to himself about "a bicycl
made for two", reciting couplets in Sanskrit when the occasio
required, or with acid humour commenting on the ladies council

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58 / India International Centre Quarterly

for the upliftment of fallen women. Apart from these council


meetings, Didima ran the school board. She was an early feminist,
and the education of girls was of primary importance.

which makes its presence felt. High thinking and simple


In Brahmo households
living among this reformed sect of there is ina thecertain austerity in lifestyle
the Bhadralok
nineteenth century had resulted in a lifestyle which outlasted the
British in India. Victorian furniture sat heavily in these drawing
rooms because there was little to relieve it. Images and pictures
were conspicuous by their absence. What became noticeable then
were the photographs of your ancestors, nailed to the walls and
hung high so that they look down with omniscient power to guide
by their exemplary conduct, your thoughts and actions.

Trunkloads of these pictures probably existed in every mid


dle class home in Calcutta. They fell out of closets and from
among old bookcases. They surfaced when you least expected
them to, because they seem to possess a life of their own. Usually
this was at the time of a funeral, sometimes a flood during the

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GEETISEN / 59

rains when there would be other things demanding immed


attention. Only occasionally would you have the presen
mind to assess their importance. Most of the time they vanish
like the past.
There was for instance, an old carte de visite in sepia of m
great great grandfather, Durga Mohan Das, with his splen
beard and piercing eyes looking into the future. Barrister and
progenitor of this clan, he was among the early reformers in
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, begun as a breakaway group in 18
Described as a "female emancipationist" he supported the f
girl's school of the Hindu Mahila Vidylaya started by Ann
Akroyd, where his own daughters were among the first studen
But according to family lore, it was more to the point that
was persuaded by his daughter to remarry—to support
reform of widow remarriage that became such an important i
in the late nineteenth century3. In family lore more much is
about his daughter, Sarala Ray.
There is a picture, buried in the pages of some book, of m
great grandmother sitting out in the verandah that runs the
length of a huge house in Bhagalpur. She is no great beauty
as splendid and formidable in her old age as Queen Vict
seated proudly with her brood of five daughters, one son and
the grandchildren before her. Somewhere in the background a
almost lost between the potted plants is my great grandfather,
Ray, an eminent educationalist.
Photographs have their way of finding out the facts of a
history. This picture establishes the assertion of an impli
matriarchy which began with Sarala Ray, continuing thro
three generations in the family. Professor P.K. Ray may have
the first Indian to become principal of Presidency College; but
was his wife who opened the school for girls in Calcutta na
after Gokhale. According to reputation, she would "hold a
of "salon" in her home which was a meeting place for promine
social and political figures from all over India. She was also
of the first women to smoke publicly 4
There were eminent men in this family who were patri
and history records them as pioneers in different professi
among them, historians, educationalists geologists, botani
lawyers, one revolutionary, and men in the civil service. But in
family history, oddly enough, we recall vividly the wome

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60 / India International Centre Quarterly

through anecdotes which bring out their personalities. Is this


because they were educated and some of them wrote their
memoirs, or more likely because the family history was handed
down through them? It is not exactly as if the records were ever
distorted; but the men receded into the background, and the
women came forward as the leaders. Not merely because they
ruled the family but because they showed character.
A photograph of my grandmother used to hang above the
dining room table—to become for me the most precious family
heirloom. I used to call it the engagement picture, though there is
nothing to substantiate this fancy of mine except the signature
scrawled in one corner which says, "yours affly, Minnie,".
Her real name was Charulata, carrying with it the elegance
of a discretion which was hers. She stands against a stone
balustrade, poised in a three-quarters view that shows to great
advantage, her figure. The saree is pinned at the shoulders with
a brooch, the blouse she wears has puffed sleeves with lace
reaching up to her neck and down to her wrists. Her hair is parted
in the middle, plaited and then knotted up in a bun. Nothing is
out of place here and nothing could be more discreet. Yet, if you
were to look closely, you might notice that under the saree she
wears a corset—which defines subtly, the outlines of a good figure
and indeed, of her bearing and her whole character.
The photograph is taken from low height, so that she appears
to be taller that she was, and supremely dignified. The gaze is
serene and ineffable with not a twinge of anxiety, as though she
is looking positively into some future which holds out great
promise.
And as a final clue to her personality, the reason perhaps for
her not misplaced confidence, you note that her right hand rests
upon a book bound in leather. In fact, her finger still lingers upon
a page within this book, informing you of the fact that she is well
educated and that she likes to read. This is the most important
"sign" of all in the engagement picture because it is by that sign
by which you might be able to assess her background—from a
family which endorsed and believed in the education of women,
in the dignity which was bestowed as their right.
What did my grandfather make of this portrait, if indeed it
had been sent to him? Her inscription becomes of critical impor
tance because it establishes the fact that they had met each other

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GEETISEN / 61

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62 / India International Centre Quarterly

prior to marriage; it endorses the custom which was still new and
which believed in consent to marriage even if it was arranged.
This portrait study which I now cherish may have played a crucial
role in the marriage of my grandparents.
Two more pictures in the family archives complete for me the
story of my grandparents—although their lives had only begun
its long saga of sixty-three years of marriage. In the "honeymoon
picture" taken in the same year of 1900, my grandfather wears a
three-piece suit and places carefully on his lap (for display only)
his top hat. He is seated while my grandmother stands beside
him, wearing an exquisite laced cloak over her saree and an
extraordinary hat that is the final give-away that tells you that this
is a display picture. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the
restraint with which they conducted their lives but it tells you
about the aspirations of this small and anglicized community in
Bengal. In the third and "after-marriage" study they have shed
these accessories and look more domiciled, but the aura about
them has not lessened.

One of the remarkable things about photographs is that


although the person may age through the years, the persona does
not seem to change. It wears the indelible stamp of a certain
character. Consider the pictures of Bertrand Russell taken when
he was four years of age, and again at ninety plus, and you can
still see the same person.5 This becomes especially true of mem
bers of your family whom you have known. My grand- mother
is seen with her first child dressed up in fine lace: my aunt who
became a staunch Gandhian at age sixteen, and has worn khadi
through her life, is now ninety-three years of age and looks
remarkably the same! So, through family photos, it becomes
possible to determine the character of a family member at six
months of age.
So too, perhaps my mother, you could
argue. But here the story changes or rather,
the pictures tell a different story. A family
group picture taken in London in the early
1920s portrays her at sixteen, radiantly
young and innocent. In the picture taken as
a student at St. Beads in London, she is
positively coy. At the studio picture after
marriage she looks petite and strangely
Mummy at Beads

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GEETISEN / 63

frightened—although this happens to have been a marriage of


own choice. In the last, as a mother, she looks older than her y
and yet deeply fulfilled.
It becomes of interest for me to compare the marri
photographs of my grandparents and those of my parents
cause wedding pictures tell you about how the couple are
sciously portrayed in a studio picture—as sanctioned by soc
norms. What has changed over thirty years is the positioning
the couple: my grandfather, seated in both the marriage pictu
is supported by my grandmother who stands beside hi
someone of equal importance. On the contrary, my moth
seated in an antique chair, looking demure and fragile lik
exquisite doll—next to my handsome father who towers a
takes priority. This imaging of the married couple is repeated
most wedding pictures from Brahmo families in the 1930s. Su
it says something about how relationships of the husband
wife might have changed.
These pictures told me a great deal that I need to know
about that sense of family, and family values, which for so lo
had eluded me. True, I have focused in my telling only on
women and the male characters have remained unobtrusive,
shadows in the background. Much more needs to be said a
my father since he was a deep and positive influence on my li
But this is a story about the women in my family and that ot
story will need to be told in its own time, elsewhere.

the past by making them more vividly real than the


Memory present.
has aWherever
strange way
I went, the of resurrecting
photographs of my fami images from
ly travelled with me—possibly standing in for the absence of
family.
We arrived in Delhi in May 1975 when my son was five years
old. The declaration of the Emergency made it no easier for me to
find myself a job and a secure footing—journalists were being
fired and not hired. In one of the hottest summers of the city, we
moved into a barsati and set about furnishing it with the bare
requisites. To be a young divorced woman and single parent was,
and probably remains, something of an outrage; but the situation

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64 / India International Centre Quarterly

My parents

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GEETISEN

My Grandparents

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66 / India International Centre Quarterly

was much worse for my son who was having a hard time adjust
ing to new spaces and new faces.
The inquisition began with the little boy next door, who put
to us certain questions of fundamental importance. Did we own
this flat into which we had just moved? Where was our ancestral
home? Was our car on its way to Delhi? Where was the television
set? Had I seen the picture of his parents in the last Illustrated
Weekly of India? And finally, where was the rest of the family?
Predictably, we failed the test on all scores. He slipped away
down the stairs, without downing the coke ordered for him—
without that encouraging nod of friendship. Packing cases were
still strewn about the room and my son went out to watch the
homing pigeons that were being trained on an adjoining terrace.
For the first time, he looked a lonely child.
In that moment I realised what had to be done, first of all,
before the books and paintings and bedlinen were unpacked.
With an artist friend who arrived for dinner, we worked feverish
ly through the evening on a new assignment. Fortunately, an
empty picture frame was found. The carton of family pictures was
opened, one envelope after another, and the pictures examined
and discarded, arranged and re-arranged on the picture frame
until we were satisfied.

On that evening we built a collage of family portraits that


dated from 1900 to 1975, grouped around a casual snapshot of my
son. Some "connections" were obvious and amusing, like that of
my father aged six with his governess Miss Kelly in London,
dressed absurdly like Lord Fauntlroy in velvet and lace; or my
grand-mother with my aunt who is now ninety-three years of age
but looks remarkably the same as when she was a baby of
months. Some pictures introduced members of the family whom
my son had not known: my uncles in their youth. Two studies
introduced the institution of marriage: of my grandparents and
my parents. One dated from my childhood with my baby brother
and mother; another of my mother with other siblings in her
childhood. Finally there were pictures to which he could relate,
of his grandfather far away in Canada.
An idea took form, to build a family to whom this child could
relate. To suggest the notion of generations, and that intricate web
of relationships and of institutional bonds which form the basis
of a family. Undoubtedly, there was a definite bias which shows

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GEETI SEN / 67

through in this selection of pictures and which focused on on


half of his family. Happily for my son this was corrected by his
father who, being a genuine artist, some years later built a collag
which was a fine work of art. In this collage he introduced a came
photograph of his father, and of the time-piece that was a famil
heirloom. For all collages of this nature are constructs of memor
where family photographs play a crucial role.
My son is now twenty-seven years of age. He wrote to m
the other day, asking for a construction of family history, almo
demanding this as his birthright. Oddly enough, this was my ag
when he was born, when I had brought home my baby from the
nursing-home and missed my mother. And strange though it ma
seem, I am in the process of constructing this family history
through the photographs which had been collated for him wh
he was five years old.

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India International Centre Quarterly

Notes

1. For references to Durga Mohan Das, see Malavika Karlekar, Voices from Within
Early Personal Narratives of Bengali Women, Oxford University Press, New Delhi
1933, pp.86,141,167 and 172.

2. Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849-1905, Princeton


University Press, Princeton, 1984, pp. 89-90.

3. Renuka Ray, My Reminiscences, Social Development during The Gandhian Era an


After, Allied Publishers, Bombay, Hyderabad, 1982, p.6 p.7 for further references.

4. On P.K. Ray and Sarala Ray, see Borthwick, op.tit., pp.264, 285-6 and 334.

5. Meredith Borthwick, op.cit. p.284

Other References

1. Roland Barthes, Selected Writing Introduced by Susan Sontag, Fontana Pocket


Readers, London, 1983.

2. Kalidas Nag, ed. Bethune School and College Centenary Volume 1849-1949, Calcutta,
1949.

3. Sarala Ray Centenary Volume, Sarala Roy Centenary Committee, Calcutta, 1961.

4. Geeti Sen, Ed. The Calcutta Psyche, India International Centre and Rupa & Co.,
New Delhi, 1990-91.

5. Jo Spence and Patricia Holland, Eds., Family Snaps, The Meaning of Domestic
Photography, Virago Press Ltd, London, 1991.

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