My Father, page 4
I was made to light the pyre at the cremation place on the banks of the village tank. I was shaken. Within hours mother was reduced to ashes. Having lost my father at the age of five, she was not only a mother to me but a father as well. She was a strict disciplinarian and never bent before anybody in the worst of circumstances. She gave me only one advice during her long illness, that I should remain honest and truthful. Her memory always inspired me to remain so.3
The advice his mother gave from her deathbed would become the guiding principle of my father’s life. He would remain truthful and honest throughout his life and eventually hardwire all his children to remain so too. Only once in his life would he resort to a harmless lie so that he could continue his studies. Though his mother would have likely approved of the lie, given the circumstances that led to it, the fact of having deviated from the promise made to her would bother my father every once in a while in his later life.
2
My Father – On His Own at Fourteen
I WAS BORN IN 1952. After completing a master’s degree in Jaipur, I left for the United States to do a PhD in economics at Princeton University. The plan was to return to India after completing the degree, but that did not happen. Instead, upon completion of the degree in 1978, I joined the faculty of the department of economics of the University of Maryland at College Park, located on the outskirts of Washington, DC. I married Amita in India in 1981, and became an associate professor with tenure at Maryland in 1983.
In 1985, my father and mother visited us. This was their only visit to the country. By this time, both our children, Hirsh and Ajay, had been born. During the six weeks that Father and Mother spent with us, we travelled extensively on the East Coast of the United States. During one of these outings to Washington, DC, as we were passing by the White House, Father remarked with a touch of pride how I, at such a young age, had successfully made it from the capital of the state of Rajasthan in India to the capital of the world. I replied that it was his journey from Suwana to Jaipur that represented a far bigger leap than my migration from Jaipur to the United States. For, once he had arrived in Jaipur, the road to the United States for me was an easy one. Thinking back, my response had greatly understated the contrast between our two journeys. Compared with the hazardous course he had had to cover between his mother’s funeral pyre and eventual arrival in Jaipur, where I was born, my journey from Jaipur to the United States was more like a joyride.
Returning to Father’s journey to Jaipur then, it may be recalled that my grandmother’s last wish was that he should commemorate her death with a community feast at which the Oswal families of Suwana would be invited. Accordingly, my father hosted the feast on the appointed day and invited the families. But even on this delicate occasion, the panchas representing the community did not miss the opportunity to extract a price. Many years earlier, a silver crown of a statue of Parshvanath, one of the twenty-four founders of the Jain religion, had been stolen, among other valuables from my father’s family, in a burglary that took place at the family house in Suwana. As a condition for joining the feast, the panchas demanded that the family pay for the restoration of the crown. Eager to fulfil the last wish of his mother, my father and others in the extended family agreed to put up with yet another insult in a series of insults that the panchas had inflicted on the family, especially on my grandmother, during the preceding two years.
But the humiliations had reached a breaking point. Even at the young age of fourteen, my father concluded that the system of community panchayats had not just hurt many families irreparably but had also damaged the community as a whole. He resolved that when he came of age he would do everything in his power to put an end to it. Later, after acquiring an official position in the newly formed state of Rajasthan, when he became the de facto head of the family, he saw to it that all ceremonies at the wedding of his nephew, Kanakmal’s son, were conducted without any consultation with the community panchayat. That act of his heralded the beginning of the end of the power that the community panchayat had exercised for decades. Within a matter of years, the system withered away.
The period of bereavement over, my father returned to Banera to begin preparing for the English language examination that was to take place in Udaipur in March 1936. Preparations done, he along with other students went to Udaipur two days prior to the examination. Since this was their first visit to Udaipur, they stayed three extra days after the examination and went sightseeing.
Known as the City of Lakes, Udaipur is a beautiful place. Father and others in the party visited tourist spots such as the City Palace, the Sajjan Niwas garden and the many lakes around the city. The festival of Gangaur happened to coincide with their visit. In those days, Udaipur celebrated it with a procession that was led by Maharana Bhupal Singh, his ministers and senior officials. That formed a special attraction for my father and his classmates. Later that evening, they also got to see the spectacular boat procession in the famous Lake Pichola and beautiful fireworks. After an exciting visit, they returned to Banera. From Banera, my father came straight to Suwana, where he got to tell the stories of his Udaipur visit for several days to spellbound audiences.
The examination results came in June, and my father turned out to be the only student from Banera to pass it. He was now eligible to join the ninth grade in school, but had no means to finance his further studies. Therefore, he returned to Banera to seek the advice of his teachers and elders.
One of his teachers and the headmaster of the school advised my father to continue his studies. The former went out of his way and travelled with him to Udaipur to get him admitted to Maharana College in the ninth grade. He also got him a room and boarding in the Jain hostel there, where other out-of-town students of the college stayed. As if that was not enough, he then took him to a businessman belonging to the Oswal community to secure some financial assistance for him. The businessman generously agreed to cover half of the fee charged by the Jain hostel.
Unfortunately, the teacher did not live long after that. He died in an accident a few years later. My father felt deeply saddened by his sudden passing away. He remained grateful to this teacher all his life. Describing him as ‘a jewel among men’, he later recalled, ‘But for him, I would have rusted in some dark corner as a teacher at a school or as a munim (accountant) in a grocery shop.’
While half of my father’s hostel fee was now covered, there still remained the other half. In addition, he needed to finance the cost of books, tuition and other college fees and living expenses. The prince of Banera, who lived in Udaipur at the time, paid for his books. The principal of the college generously exempted him from tuition and other fees. For the remaining expenses, he found a part-time job as a tutor to a young lady from a well-to-do family. It was as if all the forces of nature had come together to see him study further.
In the hostel, my father was placed in a double room, paired with a tenth-grade student named Satya Deo Sharma. Sharma came from a well-to-do family in Bhilwara and was studying science. The two formed a lasting friendship that eventually extended to the next generation. Sharma went on to become an eye surgeon, and we came to address him as ‘Dr Saheb’. It was to his home that my brother Ashok and I were sent the day Kaka Saheb died. At the time, he was working at the SMS Hospital in Jaipur as a doctor while also teaching at the attached SMS Medical College. He lived to be ninety-nine and passed away only in January 2019.
Lacking any guidance, my father had chosen history and geography for his electives. Hindi, English and mathematics were required courses. Later, he would acquire a background in law and, in the early 1950s, go on to do an LLB degree. He went on to top the entire university in his LLB examinations, winning the gold medal for it.
Most students covered the two-kilometre distance between the hostel and college on their bicycles. My father could not afford such a luxury. So he did what he had always done: walk. He calibrated his departure from the hostel and his walking speed carefully to be sure that he never arrived late for his first class. Each evening, after returning from college, he would visit the nearby Theosophical Society Lodge and read the Hindustan Times available there. That helped him gain fluency in English, a skill that was scarce in those days and came in handy later. Reading the newspaper on a daily basis also made him the best-informed student in the class. Because of this, the other students in his class would often call him ‘Radio’.
The final examinations for the ninth grade took place in April 1937. My father managed to top his class of forty. He was off to a good start in college, where he would compete with more select students than in Banera. With the onset of the summer vacations, he got a chance to return to Suwana. As the first person from the village to go to a big city to study, he now got to hold court on the grand platform outside the family house where his great-grandfather Budhsingh had once settled disputes among the villagers. Fellow villagers, young and old, gathered around this sixteen-year-old to hear him talk about life in the city of Udaipur, its Maharana, and the events taking place in India and the world. They would be in awe of him and ask whether he was studying so much to become the ‘thaar babu’ (telegraph clerk) or patwari (a village official who maintains land records). The simple village folk could not imagine that a fellow villager of theirs could go any further than these mighty ranks.
Among other things, my father told his audience stories of the freedom movement that Mahatma Gandhi was leading against the British. He also told them about other leading figures in the freedom movement, such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The village folk would listen to him with rapt attention, though they would occasionally express doubt as to whether Mahatma Gandhi would ever be able to throw the mighty British out of the country. Nevertheless, the stories he told created a great deal of goodwill for the Congress in the hearts of the village people. A good number, especially among the young, began to develop feelings of nationalism. ‘They were ready to do anything that I wanted them to do, though at this stage I myself did not know what to do,’ my father recalled later. Some, including a sixty-five-year-old man, began wearing clothes made of khadi (home-spun coarse cloth).
A year earlier, during the summer of 1936, my father and his friends had successfully persuaded their fellow villagers to end the age-old practice of offering male goats and male buffaloes in sacrifice to the community gods. Emboldened by that experience, the following summer they pushed for an end to the practices of child marriage and community feasts to commemorate deaths. But this time around they failed miserably on both counts. On child marriage, the villagers argued that they were able to economize on expenses by conducting the marriage of several children simultaneously. Moreover, married girls joined their husbands only after they had attained puberty. On community feasts commemorating deaths, they agreed that the practice had ruined many families, but were not willing to come forward to end it.
After the summer vacation my father returned to Udaipur. He was now in the tenth grade. He and Dr Saheb (Satya Deo Sharma) once again became roommates in the hostel. Classes began, and he was back to the familiar routine. Soon came the month of September, when it was time for the tenth-grade students to fill in their application forms for the board examinations to be conducted by the Board of High School and Intermediate Examinations, Ajmer, in March 1938.
The application form had to be accompanied by a fee of Rs 25. My father did not have such a large sum of money and did not know whom he could get it from. Therefore, though he completed the form, he could not submit it. Two days remained till the deadline and he still did not know what to do about the fee. It looked as if the efforts of his teacher from Banera and his own hard work during the preceding one and a half years would all be in vain. The prospect of ending up without a high school diploma loomed large.
That night, my father went to bed deeply depressed and worried. But he suddenly woke up at 3 a.m. with the thought that he should try his luck with Tej Singh Mehta, a minister in the princely state of Mewar. The minister lived in a bungalow not far from his hostel. He had nothing to lose: the worst-case scenario was that the minister would send him back empty-handed. Though my father had neither seen the minister nor knew anyone who could provide an introduction to him, he took courage and arrived at the bungalow at 7 a.m. the next day. A big crowd had already gathered there to seek favours from the minister.
At about 8 a.m., a tall man emerged from the house. The entire crowd stood up and saluted the gentleman. My father did the same. Assuming that he was the minister, my father sought his attention as he walked past and pleaded with him to sanction him Rs 25 to cover his examination fee. The man pulled out a one-rupee coin from his pocket and placed it in my father’s palm. That was of no use to Father, and so he returned it to the man with thanks. It looked like the game was over. Dejected, he was about to begin walking back to his hostel when he heard someone say that the man whom they had just seen was Mohan Singh Mehta, the younger brother of Tej Singh Mehta. Father immediately stopped in his tracks and heaved a sigh of relief; he still had a fighting chance.
Minister Tej Singh Mehta came out at about 9 a.m. Everyone saluted him, and he began listening to the plight of his audience, one by one. When my father’s turn came, he explained to him how his future depended on being able to pay the twenty-five-rupee fee. The minister told him to submit an application to him, which Father promptly did. The minister neither gave him an assurance of assistance nor ruled it out. Father returned to the hostel and immediately left for college to arrive in time for his first class.
Because my father was a good student, the principal of the school called him into his office and asked him why he had not submitted his examination form yet. Father told him that he planned to do it the next day, which was the last date for submission of the form. He remained worried throughout the day. His friends only added to his anxiety, telling him not to expect much from the minister. The likes of them, they reasoned, helped only their own kith and kin, not ordinary citizens. This was not without basis: as we will see later, the entire system of the Mewar government was based on patronage and nepotism rather than merit.
The long day passed and the next one came. My father went to college with disappointment written all over his face. As usual, he arrived on time and began his classes. At 11 a.m., the school principal came to the class and asked him to accompany him to his office. Father did, and in what would remain one of the most pleasant surprises of all his life, he found a messenger of the Mewar government waiting for him, with not just Rs 25 but Rs 40, under orders from Minister Tej Singh Mehta.
With a big sigh of relief, my father received the money, gave a receipt to the messenger and submitted the examination form with the requisite fee. With the fifteen rupees that remained, he later bought clothes and shoes, which he had badly needed for some time. He felt eternally grateful to the minister. Sixty years later, he would reminisce in his autobiography, ‘So there were great men like Shri (Mr) Tej Singh Mehta even in those times, who were prepared to help a needy student. Next morning, I went to Shri Mehta and thanked him profusely. He was pleased.’4
One would think that after this difficult trial, the path to taking the high school examination would be clear for my father. But the story did not end there. There was a rule at the time that anyone who had been married before eighteen years of age would not be permitted to appear for the high school examination. There was a question in the examination form asking the applicant whether he or she was married. Recognizing that the only way he would be allowed to take the examination was by answering the question in the negative, Father had checked the box that said no.
Unfortunately for him, before long the principal called him to his office and informed him that a student had filed a complaint saying that, contrary to my father’s entry in the examination form, he was married. Confronted by the principal, Father immediately confessed that he had had no option but to take recourse to a lie to be able to take the examination. Aware that Father was one of the best students in his class and a most sincere one at that, the principal was taken aback. He immediately called the student who had lodged the complaint and asked him to withdraw it. The complainant complied, tearing his submission into several pieces on the spot.
Overcome with intense gratitude towards the principal, my father instantly fell at his feet. He was out of words to thank him. Recalling the incident in his autobiography, he later wrote, ‘Perhaps Providence wanted that I should do my high school. No body except we three knew about the episode. I still regret I had to take resort to tell a lie, contrary to the advice given to me by my mother from her deathbed.’5 Evidently, the pain of having broken the promise to his mother even under perfectly understandable circumstances had remained with him all his life.
The high school examinations took place in March 1938 in Ajmer and lasted three weeks. The results came in June. My father passed in the second division. Out of a total of 125 students who had taken the examination from the college, only one passed in the first division. Father had been ahead of him in the final examination in the ninth grade, but their fortunes had reversed in the board examinations. But that is life!
For now, this was the end of my father’s studies. He lacked the financial resources to study further. Moreover, it was high time that he shouldered the burden of providing for the family, especially for my mother, who had been living in the family house in Suwana with Kanakmal and his family all this while.
