Whenever I think of my ‘bachpan’(childhood), some songs start playing in my mind. These include Hemant Kumar’s 1943 number ‘Bhala tha kitna apna bachpan’, Lata Mangeshkar and Shamshad Begum playing back for Nargis and Nimmi urging each other not to forget their childhood in ‘Bachpan ke din bhula na dena’ in the ’51 hit film ‘Deedar’, Lata Mangeshkar’s emotional rendering of ‘Bachpan ki mohabbat ko dil se na bhula dena’ for Meena Kumari in the ’52 hit ‘Baiju Bawra’ and Geeta Dutt and Asha Bhosle singing and humming while recalling ‘Bachpan ke din bhi kya din the’ for Shashikala and Nutan in ‘Sujata’ in 1959 though by that time my childhood was long over!
But the ‘bachpan’ song that is my number one favourite is ‘Kahan woh bachpan ka pyara sapna’ from the movie ‘Adhikar’ released in 1938, the year of my birth! Ever since I can remember, I used to play this 78 rpm disc on my HMV hand-wound gramophone. The song is begun by Pahadi Sanyal followed by some lines from Pankaj Mullick before Pahadi comes back with ‘ab woh din hain na prem ki raatein, yaad magar hain pyar ki baatein….’ Beautiful!
Here is an incident told to me by others and so pre-memory for me! My parents were staying off Chandni Chowk in Delhi when as a 2 year old I walked out of the house unnoticed on to the crowded main road. With trams operating in those days, this was particularly dangerous and I was picked up by a Sikh gentleman. Meanwhile, my absence was discovered at home and a search party of relatives set forth. Fortunately, one of them ran into the Sikh gentleman and brought me back home. Apparently the wanderlust was well ingrained in my genes and resulted in my joining the Navy eventually. Basically I am an outdoor man and am currently deeply disturbed that in the present lockdown, people over 65 are asked to stay home!
I have just one hazy memory of my father who I used to call Daddy- the two of us playing with a wooden toy train. This was when I was about three in our Alwar house. Daddy passed away when I was four and Mummy and I were taken home by her parents, Pitaji and Mataji, to Muttra (now Mathura). My grandparents and Mummy must have taken a very deliberate decision not to talk about the extremely painful incident and kept me occupied otherwise so that I would not think or inquire about Daddy. In my mind, I must have quietly accepted what happened as I do not recall ever asking my grandparents and Mummy how Daddy passed away. Whatever information I picked up over the years came from other relations particularly Sarvesh Mamaji, Mataji’s brother’s son, who was the same age as Daddy and knew him well. As far as I was concerned, I now had three parents instead of two.
In Muttra, we stayed in a house called Brij Jiwan Nivas named after my Mansi’s grandfather-in-law, in Dampier Nagar. On the other side of the road was the house in which I was born, Ganga Bhawan, named after Mansi’s grandmother-in-law. A few years back, Akhila and I went to Mathura and visited Dampier Nagar. Brij Jiwan Niwas had given way to a multi-storey building but we were delighted to see Ganga Bhawan still standing and Akhila promptly clicked a photo of me standing in the house.
My learning process started in Muttra. I recall lying in bed and listening to a grandfather clock striking the hour and Mataji teaching me how to count. She used to tell me religious stories and my favourites were those of young lord Krishna stealing butter and frolicking with gopis on the banks of the Yamuna. Nearest my age was Vinnie Mama, nine years elder. One incident I remember is Vinnie Mama playing Holi with his friend, Kuldeep Mathur, who went on to become Chairman Railway Board, with the latter forcibly dousing Vinnie Mama with colours. I thought he was being beaten and started crying!
Our stay at Muttra ended in November 1943 with Pitaji’s appointment as a Judge in Bharatpur State High Court. My grandparents were quite nervous about the move as Pitaji was leaving a successful legal practice and taking on a job which was subject to Maharaja Brijendra Singh’s famous mercurial temper. That is when I made my prophetic statement “Abhi kya, abhi to pata nahin kahan kahan jayenge, Jaipur-Vaipur’. That earned me Mataji’s sharp rebuke, “Chup kar, mat kar kulachchni baat!” Seven years later, she would happily recount this story when Pitaji went to Jaipur as a Rajasthan High Court Judge.
In Bharatpur, we first moved into a two storey house called Balbir Bhawan on the outskirts of the city. With Mansi married and Mummy and my two Mamas off to hostels for studies, I was the lone kid with Pitaji and Mataji. Pitaji now became my teacher and used to give me a task every day. At night, while lying down in bed on the rooftop with lights off, he would ask me to tell him what I had learnt. Often, while answering his questions I would hear him snoring and pause thinking he had gone to sleep. But the moment I paused, he would wake up with a snort and ask why I had stopped! I soon learnt to ignore the snores and complete my answers.
Pitaji was very particular about haircuts and had a barber visit every Sunday. On one Sunday he asked me to have a haircut which I resisted. Angrily, he gave me a light slap which stunned me as that was the one and only time that he ever slapped me!
The Maharaja then decided that instead of Sundays, the state holiday would be on Tuesdays. This upset Pitaji enormously as he did not want to have a haircut on a Tuesday, Hanumanji’s day. He had to rise very early on Sundays in order to have a haircut and then go to court.
The Maharaja had many eccentricities. At Holi, he would hold a durbar at which all state officials had to be present. He had each chair wired so that at the press of a switch, the occupant would get a shock and jump out of his seat earning loud guffaws from the Maharaja. Pitaji was fond of Tennis and so was the Maharaja. If Pitaji was his partner, every point lost by Pitaji would earn a strong rebuke, “Khelna aata nahin aur aisi hi chale aate hain.” If Pitaji was his opponent and the Maharaja lost a point he would say, “You don’t realize I am injured.” If he won, he would remark, “Why are you not playing properly, are you making me win by design?” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!
Net result was Pitaji gave up playing Tennis. He had a chronic wrist ailment because of which he would hold a pen with his thumb and middle finger leaving the forefinger in the air. This ailment came in handy as an excuse for giving up Tennis.
A very conscientious and honest man, Pitaji warded attempts time and again by Maharaja’s associates to influence legal decisions. However, such efforts caused him a lot of tension and I remember many occasions when he came home in a disturbed frame of mind and told Mataji to be ready to pack up and leave Bharatpur. On top of it all, the grandparents were under a lot of financial strain with three of their children in hostels and a kid at home.
Meanwhile, I was learning new things growing up. In those days, the electrical supply was DC (Direct Current). I had heard that the difference between AC and DC was that if you touched an open source of AC, you would get stuck whereas the DC source would throw you away. To satisfy my curiosity, I touched a fuse in the meterbox which was accessible from about the fifth step of our staircase. I remember being flung by the shock down the five steps but landed safely on my feet and never mentioned the incident to anybody. Nor did I ever experiment with AC!
One day, Pitaji learnt that Mahatma Gandhi would be passing through Bharatpur by the Frontier Mail. He took me to the railway station where through a large crowd we caught a glimpse of Gandhiji standing and waving at the door of his compartment during the train’s short stop.
Pitaji’s father, Chachaji, used to live in his own house in the city in a locality known as Gudri Ka Mohalla. Across the road was the shop of Roshan Halwai (sweet shop). He mainly sold fresh hot milk which was continuously being heated in a large kadhai. I used to watch with fascination the way he would take out a measure of boiling milk in a utensil with a handle from the kadhai, add sugar and pour it in a jug while stretching his hand from close to the jug to as far as the hand would rise, repeat the process with the other hand and do this a number of times till the sugar was completely mixed and the milk was full of froth. Not a drop of milk would be spilled. He would then add a generous helping of malai and offer the milk in a steel glass to the customer. I used to wonder if he was selling milk by length rather than weight!
An interesting feature at Chachaji’s house was a green parrot in its cage. On seeing a person, the parrot would start talking in clear, faultless tone, “Mithoo, mithoo, Chitrakoot ke ghat par, bhai santan ki bhir, Tulsidas chandan ghisen, tilak karen Raghubir.” The parrot used to be freed in the room for a while with doors closed. At times, if a door was left open, it would fly away always to return by itself except one fine day many years later, it flew away never to return.
We used to visit Chachaji on holidays and he used to come to Balbir Bhawan occasionally. He was fond of having a paan after meals. On one visit after lunch, Mataji, who had to eat separately because of purdah, asked me to take a paan to him. Chachaji said he had brought one with him and I could take it back. On the way, I decided to have it myself. Soon my head was in a spin. The paan contained tobacco which I was not aware of.
In the second half of 1944, we shifted to what was known as ‘Control house’ because previously the state excise department used to function from there. It was a large house with a large gate that would open to a parking area flanked on both sides by outhouses. Another small gate led to the main house with an ‘aangan’ surrounded by rooms. It was basically a single storey house with just a small room with a tin shed on the first floor. The tin shed was quite notorious though as many a time it was blown off by a storm and had to be retrieved and replaced.
Fortunately, the house was in quite an isolated spot but that meant I had no friends nearby to play with. So I invented some imaginary friends and can recall a few names like Pip, Peep and Beau. After early education in Agra, I imagined we had taken admission in Wellington University in New Zealand. The Wellington part came true 29 years later when I went to the Staff College in Wellington, India, not NZ. The latter was ticked off end- 2018 when Ruchir decided to take the family on a holiday to that country although this time we skipped Wellington!
I used to eagerly wait for the Allahabad University vacations which would bring Mummy, Shashi and Vinnie Mamas home. Vinnie Mama used to bring records which we could play on our hand-wound gramophone. Also, he would occasionally make a mini-newspaper for me with fictitious news about my friends and cartoons which he was very good at. Once he left his holdall in the train and drew a hilarious cartoon of the holdall looking for its master. Incidentally, the holdall did manage to find its way back to him!
In September ’44, it was decided that my formal education should begin in Class II in a school which was located quite a distance away in the city area. One of our domestic staff would drop me on a bicycle and come back to pick me up. Some days after joining, a couple of my friends who lived near the school asked me to accompany them to their home. I lost track of time and in the meantime, the person who had come to pick me up raised an alarm and went around informing all and sundry that I was missing. I was soon traced and brought back home. Mummy was also home on vacation and what followed was a sound scolding and thrashing by her and Mataji with me running from room to room but not able to escape their tight slaps. The happy ending though was that it was decided not to send me to school that academic year! By the next year, the school luckily shifted out of the city area near our house. So in July 1945, I began schooling in Class III.
When we first arrived in Bharatpur, Pitaji used to cycle to Court till a fall made him shift to a tonga. Towards end-45, he bought a second-hand Ford with a collapsible canvas rooftop which served us for a number of years despite Vinnie Mama once attempting to climb a lamp post with it!
Sometime in 1946, I developed an interest in Cricket and eagerly followed the Indian team’s tour to England. That winter, I read in the newspapers of Gul Mohammad(319)-Vijay Hazare(288) world record partnership of 577 runs in the Ranji trophy. I became a fan of Vijay Hazare and was thrilled when next year on a tour to Australia, he scored 116 and 145 in the Adelaide test becoming the first Indian to score a century in both innings of a test. On that tour, he also got the great Don Bradman out for 15, a feat that he said meant even more to him than his centuries!
I also devised a method of playing Cricket on my own. In the ‘aangan’ I marked the wickets on one wall and would throw a tennis ball onto the opposite wall and play it on the rebound. Various spots were marked on the walls which when hit by the ball would account for runs scored.
Evenings were spent listening to music on my gramophone. Pankaj Mullick was my top favourite with ‘Piya milan ko jana’, ‘Maine aaj piya hoton ka pyala’ and ‘Yeh raatein yeh mausam’ for lyrics and melody, ‘Pran chahe nain na chahe’ for marching to its beat and ‘Madbhari rut jawani hai’ for brilliant orchestral accompaniment. KL Saigal with songs like ‘Do naina matware’ and Kanan Devi with ‘Toofan mail’ were on my list too. Some songs were recalled on appropriate occasions and I particularly remember coming home after a successful Maths exam and heading straight to play ‘Aaj apni mehnaton ka mujhko samra mil gaya’.
I fell ill with malaria quite often and that made me very weak. Mataji and Pitaji were strict vegetarians but the family doctor advised that I must be given eggs to boost my health. So overcoming all mental and religious resistance, Mataji used to mix eggs in my milk and make me drink it. Perhaps because of my sickness, I had very poor appetite and it was quite a task for my grandparents and Mummy to cajole me to drink milk. One day, Mummy took me with her to visit a friend of hers whose cook promptly brought a big steel glass of milk for me. Mummy was quick to intercept and asked the cook to take it back. Just then I said no, I will drink it, took the glass and swallowed it in a flash. For long after that, I was scolded by Mummy who felt that her friend must have thought that I was perhaps not given milk at home and was longing for it.
In the summer of 1947, I heard talk of India gaining independence. One day I heard a big rumble and went out to see what was happening. I saw a number of strange vehicles and was told they were tanks. Apparently they were sent by Sardar Patel to prevent any thought in the Maharaja’s mind not to accede to the Indian state and also for riot control. Riots did break out as Bharatpur had quite a large number of a Muslim sect called Mevs. We had heard stories of killings and once when I was returning from school, I saw a number of people on the road with spears. I got very scared and hid behind some bushes till they passed. God knows what would have happened if they had seen me hiding.
Having finished with her MA in English from Allahabad University, Mummy was back in Bharatpur and got a job as a teacher in the Girls’ School. Months passed and soon it was 1948. On the evening of 30th January, Mummy had gone to a friend’s house nearby. Pitaji had just come back from Court and he and Mataji were having tea while I was playing my solo Cricket. Suddenly Mummy came all flushed and flustered. She had heard of Gandhiji’s assassination on the radio at her friend’s place and breathlessly told us about it. In turn, we were all shell shocked and speechless. For quite some time, gloom descended everywhere.
Later that year, we shifted to yet another house called Dev Kutir. This was a proper double storey residence with a front lawn and a huge area on the sides and rear where we could grow vegetables and fruit. One product I saw for the first time was white brinjals. My School was just across the road so that was very convenient for me.
Meanwhile, Vinnie Mama had joined the Navy as a Direct Entry officer and left for his training at the naval base Venduruthy, Cochin.
For holidays, we used to visit Alwar often. Mataji’s elder sister was married to Daddy’s chacha, Rameshwar Nathji, who was a Judge in Alwar state. Pitaji and he got on very well with each other and he was very fond of me. He had a big house just outside Tripolia Gate. The entry to the house was through an outer courtyard leading to an inner courtyard and then to the main two-storey building. Alwar had a purdah system much stricter than Bharatpur where it was sufficient for a lady to cover her face making a ghoongat(veil) with her sari. In Alwar, whenever the ladies had to step out, the domestic staff used to line up both sides of the courtyards with huge sheets right up to the tonga or car the insides of which were fully covered by curtains so that no one could catch a glimpse of the ladies!
In Alwar too, just outside the outer gate was a halwai shop which was famous for its delicious 'imartis' rather than 'lengthy' milk!
Chachaji, or Alwarwale Chachaji as I used to refer to him, loved to play practical jokes and I have written elsewhere how he found out that a lady visitor was wearing a borrowed petticoat and sent her son to tell her that the owner, her Bhabhi, who was not at the ladies’ gathering, wanted the petticoat back. I believe a lot of fireworks exploded when the lady furiously returned home.
Once there was an outbreak of mumps in Bharatpur. When the kids of the Chief Justice whose two sons used to play with me got it and we saw them suffering, Mataji decided to go to Alwar and keep me away from the infection. But the next day I was down with mumps. A Hakim was sent for who used to apply some black paste on my cheeks and throat a few times a day. Within three days I was completely cured without suffering any acute pain!
In November ’48, we visited Delhi and stayed with Mataji’s younger sister just off Chandni Chowk. The highlight of that visit was watching the first test between West Indies and India at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground. Batting first, West Indies amassed 631 runs with centuries from Walcott, Gomez, Weekes and Christiani.
Hemu Adhikari led India’s fightback with an unbeaten 114 with support from Ibrahim, Modi and Lala Amarnath. India totaled 454 which was still not enough to avoid follow-on which in those days was at 150 runs. India managed to save the match with another unbeaten knock from Adhikari and useful contribution from others. It was a privilege to meet Colonel Adhikari many years later when I joined the NDA and he was posted as an instructor.
In the spring of ’49, Vinnie Mama came on leave having completed his training in Cochin. He had a lot of stories to tell and showed me his photos in white naval uniform. The seeds were sown for me to join the Navy and I had myself photographed in whites with Vinnie Mama’s Sub Lt stripes and cap. The photo was with me all these years but I seem to have misplaced it lately.
In the summer of ’49, Mummy and I went to Dehradun where Masarji was commanding the 5th Gurkha Rifles. We also visited Mussoorie and were having a nice time with Mansi and my cousins when we got the sad news of Alwarwale Chachaji’s sudden demise. He and Chachiji were in Bharatpur when he went down with a heatstroke and passed away on 26th June. Mummy and I caught the train to Alwar the next day cutting short our holiday.
I was back to School in July and after a month or so, Pitaji was appointed as a Judge in the newly formed Rajasthan High Court and transferred to Udaipur. We left Bharatpur in September and I guess that marked the end of my ‘bachpan’ only the memories of which now remain.
