Memories Of Life In Thimpu, Bhutan (1977-1980)

I lived in Thimpu from 1977 to 1980. I was four when I got there, and seven when I left, but I still have fairly vivid memories of my three years there. I may not remember the sites of Bhutan too clearly (for that, I need to go back, and I certainly plan to in the near future), but I remember our house, my school, happy times spent with family and friends, and quite a few incidents from my life. I lived there with my father (who was the Indian Ambassador to Bhutan), my mother, and my two elder sisters. My father, during his 35 year career in the Indian Foreign Service, had postings in Tokyo (1956-1959), New York (1962-1965), Nairobi (1965-1967), Manila (1967-1971), Sofia (1975-1977), Thimpu (1977-1980), Belgrade (1983-1985) and Vienna (1985-1989), but if you ever asked him which was his favourite posting, he would say Thimpu. My mother's answer would also be the same.

We lived in a lovely cottage up on a hill. My father's office was also up on the same hill, barely a 100 meter walk away. New India House, a new complex with the Indian Ambassador's house, the Indian Embassy, and houses for members of the mission, had been commissioned before we went to Thimpu, but it was a bit of an eye sore compared to the beautiful cottage that had served as the Indian Ambassador's residence, so my parents decided to stay on there and not move. The next Ambassador after my father, shifted to New India House, which was certainly comfortable and convenient, but lacked the charm of our cottage. Our house was surrounded by greenery and trees, and how I loved climbing trees those days! A few falls didn't deter my enthusiasm and my family referred to me as a little monkey! I was further encouraged to behave like a monkey because of my mother's numerous stories about Kapish, the monkey with the magical tail that could be elongated or shortened at will. Those were happy days. I felt protected and loved, being with doting parents and elder sisters, and my life felt so complete.

I didn't bother much about studies back then. I was a mischievous kid, who was always busy either climbing trees, or playing with animals, or playing with my toys, or rolling boulders down hills (my mother made me realise the potential dangers of that and I stopped). My class had 22 kids, and every time my report card came, I would proudly run home and tell my mother that I had come 22th (not 22nd) in class! My academic performance had to do a lot with Dzonkha, the local language, which I never managed to learn at all, and I would always get zero in it. Back then, hitting kids in school was an accepted norm, and I do remember being hit by my Dzonkha teacher on one occasion. My performance in school suddenly went up one year because I got addicted to a numbers game called Bagatelle, and suddenly I was topping in Maths, and that took my overall scores up, despite the continued zero in Dzonkha!

My best friend in Thimpu was my namesake, Akshay Mishra, the son of Dr Akhil Mishra (an army doctor) and Anju Mishra. Akshay had an elder brother, Avinash. He later got a younger sister, Akanksha, who was years younger than us. Akshay was a year elder to me. The way we first met was quite funny. One day in school, I was generally throwing stones in the air. One stone went and hit Akshay, who was then on a swing. Akshay got hurt, got was very upset, and came and beat me up. Soon we became friends, and we went on to become inseparable. Akshay's parents became very close family friends. They continue to be, and Dr Akhil Mishra has been a family doctor of ours all these years.

Siddharth Singh was an officer in the Indian Embassy, and lived in Thimpu with his wife Jyotsna and his kids Devika and Uday. Jyotsna Aunty was always this very lively person, great at telling stories, and in this one respect, she reminded me of my mother and I was very fond of her. Years later, in 2001, I visited Siddharth Uncle and Jyotsna Aunty in Rome. He was then the Indian Ambassador there. The Singhs hadn't met me in years, and remembered me as an extremely naughty kid. One evening while I was there, there was an important official dinner at home, and Jyotsna Aunty told me I could join, if I promised to behave myself! Ahem, I was 28 then, but I can't blame her for having said that because I really had been this very mischievous boy! Rajnikanth Verma was another officer at the Indian Embassy, and he lived there with his wife Minu and his three daughters, Saloni, Sonali and Sonia. Sonali was my age, and we were friends. The Vermas also became family friends. The Singhs and the Vermas have stayed in touch with the family through all these years.

The king of Bhutan back then was His Majesty Jigme Singhe Wangchuk. He was in his early twenties back then. There was a fairly high level of interaction between my parents and the king. He would come over to our place for official dinners, and we would go across to the Dzong every now and then. He was a kind man, loved by his people, and my parents were genuinely fond of him. He had a fairly informal relationship with my father. My mother would make every attempt to try and limit my interactions with him, because no one ever know what mischievous thing I would say or do. On one occasion, at a lunch at home, I asked him how many idlis he had eaten, and when he said 4, I boasted that I had eaten 12, with sambar and chutney smeared all across my face. On another occasion, I said to him "You are His Majesty. Where is Her Majesty?" He was a youngster back then, and hadn't yet got married. He laughed and replied "All of Bhutan wants to know." On yet another occasion, the Queen Mother met me and said "Hello Dear". I promptly said "I am not a deer. I am a tiger."

Once we went to the king's palace, the Dzong. He had a mini zoo in the palace, and he noticed how fond of animals I was. We went home, and there was a little gift from the king that followed - a box with two white rabbits, Benji and Zeenat. As we found out, rabbits can really multiply fast, and before we knew it, we had dozens of rabbits. My mother constructed a large cage for them in our garden. Sadly, there was some kind of epidemic and they died all one after the other within a few days of each other.

We also got a precious gift from the king's aunt, Ashi Choki. She sent us two albino Lhasa Apso dogs, with long white fur, pink noses and blue eyes. They were Karma and Karsang. I absolutely loved Karma and Karsang. Karma was a female and Karsang was a male, and they were both very affectionate and filled our lives with joy. They would bark the place down whenever the doorbell rang, and if someone from the family entered the house, they would run around the house in a frenzy of excitement. Karma was very well behaved, and lived up to the age of 16. She travelled with us from Thimpu to Delhi to Belgrade to Vienna and back to Delhi. Karsang was very mischievous and was always getting into trouble. He was constantly running into the forest and wouldn't get back for hours. When he finally got back, he would bury his face into my mother's sari, as that was his way of saying sorry. He would sometimes run to our school, which wasn't far, and he would go and sit in my middle sister's class and growl if anyone said anything to her. He would try and chase cars whenever he was taken for a walk. That unfortunately cost him his life. At the age of 3, he once tried chasing a car while he was being walked and the leash snapped, and he got run over. That was a sad moment in our lives. Karma had a total of 10 pups, spread over three different litters. Not many of the pups survived beyond a few weeks, because Apso pups are really tiny and weak, like little mice. Laika was one of the pups who did survive, and he was given to Akshay Mishra's family and went on to live a full life.

Our house was like a bit of a zoo, because in addition to me (I was quite a wild little animal back then!), the rabbits and the dogs, we also had a cat, Leiki. Leiki used to keep warm in the Bhutan winters by snuggling in between Karma and Karsang. Karma and Karsang were so small, that Leiki was practically their size. Every so often, she would give Karma and Karsang a slap on their faces if they didn't comply with any of her demands. They really were bullied by her!

Moti Singh joined us as our cook while we were in Thimpu. He had worked with elderly friends of my mother's in Delhi, Shiva Rao Uncle and Kitty Auntie, and he came to us when they were no more. He came with his young son, Jaswant, who was 9 years elder to me and became a buddy of mine. He used to help out with work around the house, and my mother educated him. He was excellent at sports, and got my two sisters and me interested in sports.

We had several members of the family visiting us while we were in Thimpu. The visitors included my Nani (my maternal grandmother); my Masi's sons Kapil and Arun Kathpalia; my Mamaji's daughters Radha and Poornima Kathpalia; my Mausaji's brother Shashi Kathpalia, who came with his wife Naina and kids Nandita and Vivek; my Chachi's sister Ani Naik (a well known painter), who came with her husband Murali (also an accomplished painter) and kids Ravi and Rupa; and my mother's close Parsi friend Minnie Boga and her Canadian husband Robert. I enjoyed it immensely when we had visitors staying with us.

While we were there, Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Thimpu. He was then the External Affairs Minister in the Morarji Desai government. I was too young to remember much of his visit, but as my mother told me, he charmed everyone (my parents, members of the Indian Embassy, and the Bhutanese royalty) with his down to earth ways, his kindness, his poetry and his articulate style of talking. There was a large reception in his honour at our house, and besides members of the Indian Embassy, the Bhutanese royal family had also been invited. He was a vegetarian and did not drink alcohol. My mother asked him if non vegetarian food and alcohol should be served at the dinner. He was so humble and non imposing in his ways that he said we should do what the accepted custom in Bhutan was. He had high blood sugar, so my mother was careful with things. When he was being served tea, my mother asked him if he would like some sugar. He said yes. My mother gave him half a tea spoon of sugar, and promptly he said "Prem Se Daliye". When he had to make a speech during the dinner, he adapted the lyrics of a popular old Hindi song, made it relevant to the context of Bhutan and recited it, to much applause! He really won over everyone's hearts!

We travelled a fair amount around Bhutan. I can't remember too many details of the historical places we went to, but I do remember that we visited places like Paro, Punakha, Bumthang and Phuentsholing. We went everywhere in our Ambassador car, and I thought my car was called Ambassador because my father was the Ambassador! Bhutanese people are very warm, friendly and accepting, and that is what endeared the country so much to my parents. We were exposed to Bhutanese hospitality, music, dance, archery (the national sport) and cuisines during our travels around the country.

My mother came away to Delhi for a month when my uncle had a near fatal scooter accident. Fortunately, he recovered from the accident. I missed my mother terribly over that one month, and I wrote a letter to her every single day. The contents of the letter were always the same, as I would write about missing her, about the two dogs, and about my father and the car both being Ambassadors! My letters to her always had little drawings too, of all the things I had written about.

I really want to go back to Bhutan. What pains me and really breaks my heart is that though I have travelled extensively around the world in my adult life, I was not able to go back to Bhutan during the lifetime of my parents. I would have really wanted to come back from my trip and share stories with them, and it pains me beyond measure that I cannot do that anymore because they have left us. Yes, my sisters are there and I will return from my trip and share my adventures with them. My middle sister visited Bhutan a couple of years ago with her husband and teenaged daughter, and they came back with glowing accounts of the country. I will visit Bhutan soon, albeit with a very heavy heart because I didn't end up going when it would have been than much more meaningful!

Memories Of Life In Vienna, Austria (1985-1989)

I lived in Vienna from 1985 to 1989, from the age of 12 to the age of 16. My father was the Indian Ambassador there, and it was his final posting before he retired following a 35 year career as a diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service. For him, it was more than an Ambassador's role, as he was also India's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headquartered in Vienna. There is no doubt that Vienna is an incredible city but I have very mixed memories of my four years in Vienna, some very fond ones, and some unpleasant ones.

Schonnbrunn Palace, Vienna

Stephansdom, Vienna

Karlskirche, Vienna

We lived in Spitzergasse 2, tucked away in the 18th district of Vienna. It was a big house within a large space with huge, beautifully manicured gardens. The second floor was the guest floor, with two guest bedrooms, and another room that we used as a library. The first floor had three bedrooms, plus the TV room. The ground floor had my father's study, an antechamber, a massive drawing room, the dining room and the kitchen. The basement contained the garage, the utility rooms and the servants' quarters. The 18th district is largely a residential district, away from the city's commercial areas, but it is well connected to the historic city centre by tram. I felt a sense of independence that I had never experienced before. Vienna was a safe city, with excellent public transport, so my parents were very comfortable with my being out in the city by myself without any supervision. In hardly any time at all, I was very familiar with the tram and metro routes, and could get around the city without any difficulty.

The Indian Ambassador's Residence in Vienna

My elder sister was away in college in England through our Vienna stint, but we got to see her quite often. My second sister was with us for the first two years, and then she came away to India for her college. My father used to stay busy with work, but he used to largely make it a point not to work over weekends, and he used to take out a lot of time for the family. He used to also take us on driving trips every now and then. We of course went to some of Austria's most beautiful towns, like Salzburg, Innsbruck and Graz, but we also went on two long international road trips, once to Paris, London, Brussels and Bonn in 1987 (my cousin, Arun Kathpalia, joined us on this trip), and once to Monaco, Barcelona and Madrid in 1989. I was too young to help out with the driving back then, so the responsibility lay entirely with my father. The long road trips used to get tiring - he used to count ABC backwards in order to try and stay awake whenever he felt sleepy!

A View of the old town, Salzburg

The Dom, Innsbruck

The Uhrturm, Graz

There were other trips too during my days in Vienna. My cousin Arun, my elder sister, and I went to Italy for a week in the summer of 1987, and we visited Rome, Florence and Venice (where I dropped my pouch with my passport into the Grand Canal - a gondola rider thankfully scooped it out for me!). In the summer of 1988, I made a couple of solo trips. I visited Budapest and stayed with the Indian Ambassador, Sati Lambah. I also went to Berlin, and stayed with the Indian Ambassador, J Doddamani, and got along very well with his son Sanjay, who was a terrific Indian classical dancer. On my way back to Vienna from Berlin, I missed my connecting train at Regensburg at 4 pm, and the next train wasn't till after midnight. In all honesty, I missed the train on purpose, so that I could see Regensburg Cathedral. After seeing the cathedral and having dinner at McDonald's, I waited for several hours at the railway station. It wasn't exactly a fun experience, because I was surrounded by drunk people, drug addicts and homeless people who kept accosting me. I went and sat next to a policeman at the platform and didn't budge until my train arrived!

My mother used to stay quite busy with official engagements, and there were constantly formal receptions and dinners at home, more so when there were visiting dignitaries from India. But my mother always took out a lot of time for me. She encouraged me to follow my interests like table tennis and chess, and she also took an active interest and joined me in watching Amitabh Bachchan movies and Michael Jackson videos! I used to enjoy music those days, and without batting an eyelid, she bought expensive tickets for me to attend concerts by some the biggest pop acts of that time - Michael Jackson, George Michael, Whitney Houston, A-ha and Europe. She and I would have these long conversations, and she was more of a supportive friend than anything else. She used to also send my favourite food for lunch everyday (chicken curry and rice, or meatballs and rice), and the big family joke was that my lunch bag was bigger than my school bag! She was a tremendous hostess to my friends whenever they came over, and she would entertain them with funny stories from my childhood. On my 16th birthday, she happily agreed to host a big birthday party at home, and I had 55 of my school friends who came over! She was once invited to my class to give a presentation on India as part of our Third World Studies class, and she conducted the presentation beautifully. I was so very proud of her for being the person she was - a warm, friendly person, with exceptional communication skills and wonderful story-telling abilities.

Our elderly cook, Moti Singh, stayed with us. Unfortunately, he got cancer and passed away while we were there. His son, Jaswant, also stayed with us and did work around the house. He and I were great buddies. We would play table tennis and chess together, and we would watch Hindi movies together. He was a very smart chap, hugely into body building, and I was genuinely fond of him. Mohan used to work with the previous Ambassador, S K Singh. After we came, he continued staying at the Indian Ambassador's residence, but he worked as a messenger at the Indian embassy. His brother, Puran, joined us from India when Moti Singh became very ill, and he started working for us. Our driver was George Thattil, a very amiable man from Kerala.

My family got close to several people in Vienna. There was Frau Sarma, who was the Indian Ambassador's Social Secretary. She was a very warm, friendly, elderly Austrian lady. She had got married to an Indian, but he had passed away years earlier. Frau Sarma was a treasure trove of interesting stories, and she was extremely resourceful. There was Hamid Ali Rao and his wife Asiya. Hamid was then a youngster at the Indian embassy. When their daughter Alia was born, my mother brought them to our residence for a full month, so that she could help Asiya look after the little baby. A life long friendship developed between my mother and Asiya. There was Marialena Fenandes, a pianist from India who had settled down in Vienna and had become an accomplished concert pianist. Listening to her play was always a special treat for my parents, my sisters and me. Dr Raja Ramanna, the distinguished nuclear scientist, was a frequent visitor to Vienna those days, and he struck up a close friendship with my parents. He was also a very good musician, and was adept at playing the piano. I recall an evening at Marialena's place, where Marialena and Dr Ramanna both enthralled us all with their piano skills! There was Bijoy Borthakur at the Indian Embassy, his wife Deepali, his twin sons Arijit and Avijit, and his little daughter Urvashi. The boys and I used to enjoy playing chess together. Sadly, Bijoy Borthakur passed away in 1988 after he got cancer, and the family returned to India.

I went to Vienna International School. It was at the other end of town from where we stayed, but I used to go by tram and metro, and the journey took almost an hour. It was a large school, divided into Primary School, Middle School and Senior School. It had absolutely fantastic infrastructure. The school had over 1,000 students, and there were kids from over 70 countries. The faculty was very good. I have pleasant memories of teachers like our English teachers Mr Graham (he was also the Drama teacher, and had a terrific sense of humour) and Ms Dettman, our Maths teacher Ms Smith (she was a very thorough teacher and got me interested in Maths, a subject I went on to pursue in college), our German teacher Mr Evert (I enjoyed my German classes, thanks to him), our French teachers Mr Decreuse and Mrs Gosset, our Physics teacher Mr Dindorf, our Biology teacher Mr Edgell (who was quite a heart-throb with the teenaged girls in our class), our History teacher Ms Ardley (I got along well with her), our Head of Senior School Mr Laidler, our Head of Middle School Mrs Ellwood, our Music teacher Mrs Schweighoffer, and our Physical Education teachers Mr Macaulay and Mr Bretherton.

I made several friends at school. There was Waseem Al Qaraguli, the son of the Iraqi Ambassador. I used to hang out quite a bit with him. Our parents knew each other rather well too, because they were all from the common diplomatic community. Humberto Gonzalez (from Spain), Fadi Jabra (from Egypt) and Basel Abdelmoneim (also from Egypt) were all friends I played table tennis with. We had a table tennis table at home, and my friends were constantly in and out of our place to play table tennis - Humberto in particular, because he stayed close by. Michael Csorba (from Hungary) was a friend I played chess with, and we used to hang out together. Rahul Narang was an Indian boy whose father ran a well known India restaurant, Taj Mahal. Yuri Fattah (who was half Bangladeshi, half Japanese) became a friend - he used to live close to our house and used to drop in from time to time. There were girls like Anamika Ghoshal (she was half Indian, half Polish), Jahanara Hasan (she was half Pakistani, half American) and Shokoufa Azarnia a.k.a. Shoki (from Iran) who became friends.

Sadly, one thing left unpleasant scars on me at my school. I experienced racial bullying, like no one should have to. It was probably done in jest with no ill intention (except perhaps by a small bunch of kids, who were genuinely nasty to me), but at that young, impressionable age, it can have serious long term implications. Now I was an Indian boy of 12, and I spoke like regular Indian boys of that age do. Yes, I had an "Indian accent", but coming from India, why would I have an American accent or a European accent? I found that within months of my joining school, kids were laughing at Indian accents whenever I spoke, and they were trying to mimic Indian accents. One of them happened to see Peter Sellers' "The Party", in which the actor plays the role of Hrundi V Bakshi, who speaks with a strong Indian accent. Every time I spoke, kids used to copy what I was saying, speaking like Hrundi V Bakshi. I wish I could say it was just a handful of kids who were doing this, but sadly it was quite rampant. I got extremely conscious of how I spoke, I became very introverted, I lost pride in my identity and I started lacking self confidence and having feelings of not being good enough or cool enough! It's something I carried with me for years, even after I left Vienna, and I'm not sure I've ever managed to get over it fully. The damage was done! I never complained to the teachers. I probably should have. My defence mechanism became that before anyone could mimic me, I would make fun of myself. I did talk to my mother about the situation. She came and met my homeroom teacher, Mr Thatcher, who said he would look into it. However, these daily incidents didn't really take place in front of the teachers, and I was not the type who would go complaining to teachers. On a few occasions, I lost my cool and got into physical fights, which was so uncharacteristic of me, but boy was I pushed to the corner and harassed!

I remember an incident in our art class where we were making objects out of clay. As I worked quietly, this certain boy kept taunting me, and kept making fun of me, my country, my religion, the way I speak, Indian food, and basically anything and everything Indian. He got tacit encouragement from his friend who was laughing, and he went on and on with his jibes. After almost half an hour of this, I looked at him and said "What about your country?". He made a hard ball out of the clay in his hands, and he smashed it on my face. He was stronger than I was. I was stunned and I just let things be, despite the physical pain I experienced. I remember another incident when it was an Indian festival, and my mother had put a red teeka on my forehead in the morning. I went to school and this other boy who enjoyed bullying me, came up to me and started asking what was on my forehead. When I told him, he made fun of me and told me to go back to India and do these things there instead of doing them in Vienna. These incidents still sting after all these years, and these are only two out of numerous ones that took place.

Another cause for bullying was that after our Physical Education classes, we were supposed to take showers and change before getting back to class. I was a modest person, who valued his privacy, and I was not at all comfortable taking a mass shower in front of everyone else, so I never did. This led to unending taunts from my classmates, with all sorts of nasty comments and shouts of "Akshay Shower!" I figured that as a teenager, one needs to either blend in with the crowd and be like everyone else, or be prepared to face harassment. Anyway, I stuck to my guns, but at the high cost of putting up with taunts for years. Even now, I'm pretty clear that I would want my son, Rehaan, to grow up in India and not outside. If he lives outside India, he will be different, and that is an invitation for mockery and taunts, and that's the last thing I would want for him.

Vienna was the place where I had my first ever crush. I was a shy chap back then, plus my confidence had in any case taken a beating because of all the racial jokes I had been subjected to, so I would be tongue tied whenever I met this one girl, and it would be an achievement worth mentioning in my daily journal if on any day I managed to gather the courage to say hi to her! So needless to say, there was never much conversation between us, because I would practically start stammering out of nervousness if she was in the same room!

In addition to the great faculty, Vienna International School had amazing sports infrastructure, with an athletics track, a football field, tennis courts, and indoor courts for basketball and volleyball. There were extra curricular activities on offer like cooking classes, and fabrics classes. I remember making a cake in the shape of a straw hut, which even our Lhasa Apso, Karma, refused to eat! In my fabrics class, I made myself a pair of shorts. My mother joked and said we would give those away in dowry when I got married! There were other interesting activities that the school organized. So for example, when we were learning about the Renaissance in history, the school took us out on a 3 day trip to Florence, where history came alive in the form of the city's fascinating art and architecture.

I have gone back to Vienna several times after we returned to India in 1989. I went in 2001, 2008, 2009 and 2011. Vienna is one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world, and exploring Vienna is any traveler's delight, with fascinating sites like Stephansdom (the main cathedral), Karntner Strasse (the pedestrian street in the heart of the city, with its many shops and restaurants), Sacher Hotel (with its famous Sacher Torte), Kunsthistorisches Museum (which has a fabulous collection of paintings by top artists like Titian, Velazquez, Vermeer and Rubens), Karlskirche (a baroque domed church with beautiful frescoes), Peterskirche (with its rich baroque interior), the Rathaus (the gothic town hall), Hofburg Palace (with its treasury, and the world famous Spanish Riding School known for its Lipizaner Horses), Belvedere Palace (which features the world famous painting "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt), Prater (a famous amusement park with its large ferris wheel and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum) and Schonnbrunn Palace (one of the most spectacular palaces in Europe).

Rathaus, Vienna

High Altar at Peterskirche, Vienna

Johann Strauss Statue at Stadtpark, Vienna

Every time I've gone back, I've met up with some of my Vienna International School friends who have stayed on in Vienna - people like Giacomo Strazzeri (a friendly, jovial, amiable chap from Italy, who I'm genuinely fond of), Armando Javier (a very social fellow, who is great at keeping in touch), Natascha Lavnick (a warm, friendly girl from England, who went on to marry a Sri Lankan), Shokoufa Azarnia (who went on to become a doctor in Vienna), Nassim Mafi (like Shokoufa, also from Iran), Igor Medan (Shokoufa's husband, from Serbia) and Juan Arellano (Nassim's husband, from the Philippines). In 2011, I went back with my then fiance and now wife, Kamalini, and we were there for the 20th anniversary of our graduation from school. Armando and Natascha had painstakingly organised the reunion and had done a great job of it. Close to 40 of us, from a batch size of about 100, had come. We had Facebook to thank for the great turn-out. It was good to see everyone. We met up in our school one evening. Then there was an extended lunch the next day at a restaurant just off the Danube River. On the third day, we went off to a little town called Langenlois, famous for its wineries. I've been to other reunions as well, but this one was really memorable.

Vienna International School Reunion, 2011

On my 2011 trip, I showed Kamalini the city where I spent four years of my childhood. She absolutely loved Vienna, and I enjoyed showing her around. I took her to the most famous sites of the city, I took her to Vienna International School, I took her to the Indian Embassy and I took her to the Indian Ambassador's Residence, where I had lived. At the Indian Embassy, we happened to meet the Indian Ambassador's wife. I asked her if we could come and see the house the next day. She said sure. Kamalini later told me that I kept referring to her as "Aunty", though she was probably my age! Well, Ambassadors' wives had always been aunties for me, so it just came naturally to me, and I totally forgot that I was now a middle aged man myself!

My wife, Kamalini, at the Indian Ambassador's
Residence in Vienna in 2011

Before Vienna, I had spent a couple of years in Belgrade, and I always say that those were among the happiest days of my life. Vienna could have been that too, had it not been for what happened in my school. But I put it down to kids having fun, being goofy and immature, and perhaps not realising the implications of their actions. Anyway, these things can happen anywhere I guess, so I shouldn't hold it against Vienna. It certainly is one of Europe's most magnificent capitals, and a city that every traveler must make it a point to visit. The Austrian country side is spectacularly beautiful, with the lakes around Salzburg and the Austrian Alps near Innsbruck. Austrian cuisines are world famous, with specialities like the Wiener Schnitzel, and of course the Sacher Torte. Austrians are by and lot a friendly lot. In the world of art and music, Austria boasts of big names like Gustav Klimt, Johann Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Whichever way you see it, Austria in general and Vienna in particular are among the favourite destinations for a lot of people I know, and I'm proud to be in that group!

Sacher Hotel, Vienna

Vermeer's Artist's Studio at
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Franz Josef at Madame Tussauds, Vienna

Memories Of Life In Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1983-1985)

I lived in Belgrade from 1983 to 1985, from the age of 10 till the age of 12. Back then, it was the capital of Yugoslavia. Now of course, it is the capital of Serbia. My father was there as the Indian Ambassador. My parents, my second sister and I went there, but my elder sister had to stay back in boarding school in India, because back then, the International School of Belgrade (ISB) only went up to Grade 8. My second sister and I were in Grade 8 and Grade 5 respectively, but my elder sister was in Grade 11 so she couldn't join us there. My father had been terribly upset about not being able to take my elder sister along, but the boarding school back in India worked out very well for her, and a year later, my second sister also went there.

The Parliament Building, Belgrade

We lived on Andre Nikolica Street 19, barely 500 meters away from the International School of Belgrade. We used to walk to school. The distance was further reduced if we chose to cut across the Africa Museum, instead of walking along the road. The Indian Ambassador's residence was spread over an area of close to 2 acres. It had formerly been the hunting lodge of a Serbian Duke. The house was absolutely beautiful, with four bedrooms up on the first floor, a wooden staircase going up, the drawing / dining / living rooms on the ground floor, and the kitchen in the basement. There was a separate building that housed the servants' quarters, and there was even an underground tunnel connecting it to the main house. The premises had an outdoor swimming pool and a large garden, fully of cherry trees and a lot of other exotic greenery. As one entered the gate, there was a marble statue of Venus outside the house. The drawing room had ceiling frescoes of cherubs and nymphs. The main bathroom had a stain glass panel of Venus. The whole house was like a living museum!

The Indian Ambassador's Residence in Belgrade

The years spent at International School of Belgrade were without doubt my best school years ever, and I have very fond memories of them. Back then, there were just 165 students present in the school. My Grade 5 teacher was Mrs Miletic, a lovely lady. I didn't keep very good health those days, with occasional asthma attacks. As a result, I would often get exemption from Physical Education class, and I would sit and draw pictures of animals while my classmates were out playing sports. My Grade 6 teacher was Mr Doneski. He was also the Middle School Science teacher. As an extra curricular activity after school, he taught chess, and I took a strong interest in the game and eventually went on to become the school champion. The Middle School Maths teacher was Mrs Obradovic. She was a strict, no nonsense teacher, but was very good at her subject and was well respected. The Middle School English teacher was Mrs Jovovic, an extremely likable person. The school principal was an American, Mr Miller, and his wife, Mrs Miller, was the librarian.

The school had special events like the annual Spelling Bee competition, and the annual Book Writing competition, both of which were won by my sister in 1983-84. It also had a unique sport, Four Square, which was a hot favourite with students during their breaks. We were also exposed to Music classes and Self Defence classes. There used to be an annual pet show, where our Lhasa Apsu, Karma, was crowned the "most beautiful dog". There was also an annual fund raising run through which money was collected for charity, and the amount of money collected depended on how many laps one ran. So there were numerous activities conducted to keep the students engaged and interested.

My best friend in school was Peter Vanderwal, the son of the Australian Ambassador, and my next door neighbour. I was extremely fond of Peter, and he was easily the most popular boy in class. Greg Wilde, also an Australian, was another friend of mine from school. I met "little Greg" in Canberra years later in 2011. He was as warm and friendly as he had always been, but I would hardly call him "little" anymore. Peter Pudaite was a classmate whose father was at the India Embassy, and he became a friend. I've met him again in Delhi and in Kolkata after we were both grown ups. Abeer Al Ajel, a Kuwaiti girl, got along well with me - she had lived in India for a few years, and that was something we had in common. Nandi Ahuja, a fashionable kid who had an Indian father and a Yugoslavian mother, was another friend I made. Monish and Karishma Mansukhani, children of the Air India representative in Belgrade, became friends. Shankar Narayan, the son of an Indian diplomat, was another friend and we used to enjoy watching movies together on his VCR player. Mujib Rahman from Bangladesh was a year senior to me in school, and he became a friend because of our common love for chess.

Meeting Peter Vanderwal in 2015 in Delhi NCR,
after almost 3 decades

Peter Vanderwal was always in and out of our house. We would chat, play Nintendo video games together, and read comics together. His favourite meal at our place was "meat balls and puris", which our venerable old cook, Moti Singh, used to make with a lot of love and affection (Moti Singh's son Jaswant also stayed with us and did work around the house, and became a good friend of mine). I would also visit Peter's place next door quite often. I can never forget one incident. Dinners at Peter's home were formal events, where people dressed up and were served by liveried butlers. One evening I went for dinner, and chicken was served. As a typical Indian boy, I was used to eating chicken with my fingers. Everyone else started eating with a knife and fork. Peter saw me looking uncomfortable and he dug in with his fingers. His mother immediately ticked him off and said "Peter, that's not the way we eat around here!" I somehow struggled through dinner with a knife and fork that evening, and then I said I must learn how to eat with a knife and fork. Soon there was no looking back, because it became so much a part of my life. Even now, everyone laughs because give me a puri, paratha, or dosa, and I will go after it with a knife and fork!

I felt a tinge of sadness on a few occasions during those times in Belgrade. My elder sister hadn't come along to Belgrade. My second sister had to leave for boarding school after 1 year. Peter's father got transferred to Papua New Guinea after Grade 5, which meant my best friend left Belgrade. My mother also had a health scare. It was suspected that she may have cancer, but it turned out to be TB. We did have a scare for a few months while she was ill. All these incidents left me sad. However, I had my loving and supportive parents with me, and that meant a lot to me and pulled me out of every difficult situation. My father was of course busy with his work, but my mother was always there for me, and I absolutely adored her. She would spend a lot of time with me, get my favourite dishes prepared for me, and take me for my swimming and tennis classes. I used to watch the daily 7:15 pm cartoon on TV (so what if it was in Serbo Croatian, and not in English!), and if we were ever out, I would pester my parents to get back home on time, and they always obliged! Whenever my father traveled to Delhi on work, as he had to from time to time, I would give him a list of my favourite Amar Chitra Katha comics to buy, and I built up a large collection, which I have with me even today (I read these out to my 5 year old son).

With my parents, I traveled around Yugoslavia a fair bit, and my favourite destinations back then were the walled Roman city of Dubrovnik, and the former fishing village of Sveti Stefan, which had been converted into a luxurious resort. I can never forget the joy of eating fried eggs with ham and bacon for breakfast straight from a frying pan in Sveti Stefan! The beautiful lakes at Plitvice were another highlight of our visits around Yugoslavia. The pretty towns of Zagreb and Ljubljana were other places I enjoyed visiting. During a visit to Skopje, while my father was busy with official work, my mom and I were taken around the town by the local government's protocol team. At Skopje Zoo, I remember seeing an animal and insisting with a lot of authority and confidence that it was a hyena. It turned out to be a baby bear, much to my mother's amusement. I also remember that we were taken to a winery. I got very nervous when my mother was asked to taste different types of wines. In Hindi, I kept telling her that she'd get drunk, so she should just pretend that she was sipping!

View of the Walled Town, Dubrovnik

Church of St Marks, Zagreb 

Three Rivers Fountain and Cathedral, Ljubljana

There were people who became close to our family. There was Deepak Malik from the embassy, and his lively, interesting and friendly wife Chandana. They had a 3 year old son, Orko, who was a real favourite at our house. Deepak was a great chess player, and I remember our 28:1 score in his favour. It was very sad news indeed when he passed away at a young age, some 15 years later. There was Lal Pudaite from the embassy. He was from the North East of India, as was his extremely warm wife, Lani Pudaite. Their two children were Peter and Dingdi, with Peter being my classmate and friend. There was Renu Rajan, the daughter of Mr Rajan who worked in the embassy. Renu was a warm person who went on to settle down in Belgrade, and become a doctor. She has kept in touch with us all these years and visits us in Delhi whenever she comes. Milenko and Vladomir were local drivers at the Indian embassy, and both were very likable people. Milenko hardly spoke a word of English, but he still enjoyed a great rapport with my family. Vesna Vucic worked at the Indian embassy, and was very popular with everyone, with her gentle demeanour and charming ways. Lubitsa and Elisabeth worked as part time helpers at our residence, and George was our gardener. They were all amiable people. People can make all the difference in a place that's away from home, and we had such wonderful people in our lives in Belgrade.

Renu Rajan with my Mother in Delhi in 2019

In 2009, I visited Belgrade, and I stayed at Renu's place with her and her young son Nihal. During that visit, I visited ISB and though I didn't get to meet my old teachers there as they had all retired, I met another teacher, Mrs Pat Andjelkovic, an American lady settled in Belgrade for decades. She took time out and showed me around the school. The school had expanded in the 24 years that I had been away. The school now went up to Grade 12, and the senior school was where the Australian Ambassador's house used to be. Mrs Andjelkovic visits India almost every year, and we make it a point to meet. We've struck up a warm friendship, though she is so much my senior and I didn't know her at all when I lived in Belgrade. Thanks to her, I managed to meet Mrs Jovovic. I rang up my sister and got her to talk to Mrs Jovovic, who had been her homeroom teacher. I also managed to speak to Mrs Miletic on the phone.

Pat Andjelkovic in Delhi in 2019

During my 2009 visit to Belgrade, I visited our old home in addition to visiting my old school. I also managed to see a lot of Belgrade's sites, including the Parliament Building (also called the National Assembly), Kalimegdan Fortress and St Marks Church. It was a very nostalgic visit indeed, and I returned to India and told my parents and my sisters all about it. Thinking back on my life, those 2 years were among the happiest years of my life. I did miss my sisters a lot, but I had my doting parents, I had an absolutely amazing house, I went to a school that I loved, and I made some good friends.

Kalimegdan Fortress, Belgrade

President Josef Broz Tito had passed away a few years earlier, and he had done a great job of holding the county together. When we were there, there was no sign of the ethnic trouble that was to come about barely a decade later, which resulted in the country eventually splitting into Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia. The mid 1980's were a happy time in Yugoslavia, and I absolutely cherish my childhood memories from Belgrade. I think I would like to take my wife Kamalini and my son Rehaan back to Belgrade some day, to show them the place where I spent 2 magical years of my life!

St Marks Church, Belgrade

The Girl Next Door Who Went On To Become Mrs Bhutto

My mother spent her childhood years in what is now Pakistan, and the family migrated to Delhi just after partition in 1947, when my mother was a girl of 12. A lot of my mother's childhood years were spent in Bahawalpur District, but they used to visit Karachi often. In Karachi, they used to stay in a plush locality called Clifton.

In Clifton, a gentleman of Iranian origin was their neighbour. He had recently come from Bombay. He lived with his wife and two daughters. One of the girls was called Nusrat, and she was roughly the same age as my aunt, and a good six years elder to my mother. My aunt, my mother and the two girls used to go out from time to time for movies and to the beach, and a friendship developed.

After partition and the formation of Pakistan, Karachi became the new nation's capital, a status it held till 1958. Houses in Clifton were requisitioned by the government for government use, and residents had to vacate their homes. Nusrat's father was not happy about this because he had just moved from Bombay and had set up base in Karachi. He used to share his grief with my grandfather, but then all residents in Clifton had no choice but to move out.

In November 1947, my mother's entire family moved from Pakistan and came to India. My mother never went back to Pakistan after that. All contact was lost with people left behind, including with Nusrat and her family. In 1964, my parents got married and my mother joined my father in New York. He was an officer of the Indian Foreign Service and was then doing an assignment for the United Nations.

In New York, my mother met a Pakistani diplomat during a certain function. He was very interested when he got to know about my mother's roots in his country, and they conversed a bit about my mother's childhood days in Bahawalpur District and the time she spent in Karachi. My mother mentioned the names of Nusrat and her family members, and this Pakistani gentleman's jaw dropped. He said "Nusrat is now Mrs Nusrat Bhutto, and is the wife of our Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto!"

Begum Nusrat Bhutto went on the become the First Lady of Pakistan, when her husband was Prime Minister from 1971 to 1977. She later became the Chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party and mother of Benazir Bhutto, who was Prime Minister from 1988 to 1990 and then again from 1993 to 1996.

My mother was never in touch with Nusrat or anyone from her family after 1947, but it was such a quirk of fate that this teenaged girl she once knew went on to become such an important figure in Pakistan's history!

Passing On: The Inevitable Reality And Its Unanswered Questions

When I was young, death was the furthest thing from my mind. It was something that happened to others, but it was far removed from my immediate life. I never thought too much about it, and I fooled myself into beliefs of immortality for myself and for those I loved, not necessarily because I believed we would go on forever, but because I just refused to think about the possibility of my inner circle not being intact - the mere thought of it was too painful, and it was so much easier to just be in denial.

I did experience a few deaths along the way, as grandmothers, a few uncles and aunts, some friends and several pets passed on during my childhood, teenage and younger days. My core unit, however, consisting of my immediate family, was intact. Then my father passed away after I turned 40, and that is when I was really jolted, because this so called safe, untouched, core unit of mine was no longer intact. It was also the first time that someone really really close to my life had left and the pain I felt was immense. That's when I finally started thinking about mortality. Others probably accepted this reality much earlier in life, but I had fooled myself by refusing to think that anything could happen to my core unit - that was my pact with God!

Recently, my mother passed away. This was an unparalleled set-back, because she was the closest person to me in my life. We humans are more resilient than we think, and life has a way of going on, but I live my life everyday with a heavy heart. I got back to my work and my basic family responsibilities within a couple of weeks of the incident, but I haven't smiled since that day, and I've lost interest in a lot of things that life has to offer. It will be a while before some degree of normalcy is restored, and I am not trying to rush myself and am allowing it to happen gradually, as I learn to cope with life with my new reality.

Death leaves more questions than answers:
What happens after someone dies?
Does the soul live on in some way, or is it like an eternal slumber?
Can souls communicate with other souls that have passed on?
Can souls observe what is happening in the world they have left behind?
Is there a way for "evolved" people to communicate with departed souls?
Is there reincarnation?

I don't know if any living person has answers to these and many other such questions. I don't know what to believe, but I do know what I would like to believe. I would like to believe that there is a conscious soul that lives on after we go. I would like to believe that there isn't nothingness after we pass on, because then it almost feels like everything we stood for eventually comes to nothing. I would like to believe that we don't forever lose the ones we love. I would like to believe that departed souls can reunite and communicate with one another in some way. I would like to believe that souls of those who have gone can observe what is happening in the lives of their loved ones who miss them. I would like to believe that souls can maintain some kind of passive connect with the world they have left behind. I don't know what I want to believe about reincarnation, because though it gives some kind of solace that the soul lives on, I say what good is that if in our new lives, there is no consciousness of what we were, and if we have lost our loved ones forever, as we start our new lives and adventures afresh?

So, death is around the corner unfortunately. We just don't know how far away that corner is, and we're in no hurry to get to it. We need to acknowledge it, and we can only hope that when it happens to us or our loved ones, it happens with minimal physical pain and suffering, and after we have lived long, happy lives. And though it is very difficult for us to believe in anything that we have no apparent way of verifying, I guess one thing that keeps us going is what we want to believe in about death, and that is something which could very well vary from person to person!

My Uncle, The Moulvi Ji And The Nawab

In July - August 2019, when my mother was very ill, my aunts would come practically every day to spend time with her. It was a very sad period in our lives, and we had extremely heavy hearts, but my aunts would try to cheer us all up with interesting stories from the past. My mother took her illness very bravely, and she would also chip in with old stories. We got to hear some lovely stories from the family archives. Here's one of them.

In pre partition times in Pakistan, my uncle was a very intelligent child. He was intellectually gifted, had got a couple of double promotions and was academically a few years ahead of others his age. He had shown an exceptional aptitude towards humanities and languages, and he was learning Persian. A Moulvi Ji used to come home to teach him. My uncle was a young boy back then, and he was in the habit of wearing shorts, which were rather loose for him. Other students who learned Persian under the Moulvi Ji were much older, and had graduated to wearing long trousers. The Moulvi Ji ticked off my uncle one day and said "Why are you wearing your mother's Ghagras?". Extremely sensitive as he was, my uncle told his mother he was not going to learn Persian any more!

He switched over to Biology and went on to study to become a doctor. He applied for admission in college. There again, he was a couple of years younger than other students who were applying for admission. During his interview, someone on the panel objected to my uncle's young age, despite his very high marks, and he sarcastically told my uncle "In the hostel, we don't have nurses to take care of  our students". My uncle took strong offence at the sarcasm, and he refused to join that college and he ended up joining elsewhere.

A few years later, my uncle applied to medical college in a sought after medical institution in Amritsar for his post doctorate. He had very high qualifications but he didn't get through because the college had reservations for local Punjabi students. My grandfather used to work for the Nawab of Bahawalpur, and he was a great favourite of the Nawab's. When the Nawab heard that my uncle was not getting admission because of the reservation issue, he used his tremendous influence, personally got in touch with the college, and secured a seat for my uncle. People around the Nawab said "If you have secured a seat, why give it to a Hindu boy? Why not give it to a Muslim boy from Bahawalpur?". But given the Nawab's very open minded, religiously tolerant and secular ways, plus his great fondness for my grandfather, he was very clear that he wanted the seat for no one else other than my uncle.

Through quirks of fate, including the roles played by the Moulvi Ji and the Nawab, my uncle went on to do very well in medical college. He joined the Indian Army as a doctor, and became a renowned plastic surgeon and had a very successful career. He could have very well been a Persian scholar instead, if the Moulvi Ji hadn't been said what he had said!!

Oonita Kathpalia Hiremath: A Tribute To My Mother

My mother in 2017.

My mother, Oonita Kathpalia Hiremath, passed away on August 16th, 2019, after battling with cancer. She was 84. No tribute that I or anyone else can write can do justice to the wonderful person that she was, but I shall try nevertheless, because I have been able to think of little else besides her ever since she left. A part of me died when she left, and life will never be the same again. But life does go on because it must.

My mother's passing away has been a loss of epic proportions, and I'm still trying to come to terms with what happened. She was a kind, gentle, generous, calm tempered, empathetic, caring, good natured, intelligent, down to earth, gracious, elegant, and genuinely good human being. She was extremely articulate, had a terrific sense of humour, and had this great knack for telling stories. We would sit for hours and listen enthralled to stories from her life, and from our childhood. Between her fantastic memory and her legendary story-telling abilities, listening to her was a real treat. I was always very proud of the kind of person she was and I always felt a great sense of pride in introducing her to my friends. What better testament to my mother's endearing ways than the fact that a few of our friends became closer to her than they were to us, and would come home all the way just to meet her even when we weren't around. A few of my sisters' friends would drop everything and come across for 2 full days year after year just to help her out during her annual Kasida exhibitions. My mother was equally at ease interacting with kings and global political bigwigs, as she was interacting with people who had been far less fortunate; she was good and fair with people, irrespective of their stature in life, and she treated everyone with utmost respect.

My mother was always very supportive of us, even when other "grown ups" questioned the wisdom of our actions. She was supportive when my sister decided to leave her course in college halfway through and skip a year; she was supportive when my other sister decided to rough it out for 2 years in the tropical forests of Central America as part of her work instead of sitting in a cushy, comfortable office; she was supportive when I got fed up with corporate life and decided to set up my own little work-from-home business. She was always there to advise us in the most non interfering manner possible, and she had full faith that her children knew what they were doing and what was best for them; if we were ever wrong in our decisions, she was always there for us.

My mother encouraged all my interests throughout my life, from climbing and measuring trees as a child; to playing with animals at a very young age; to reading Amar Chitra Katha comics and watching movies; to tracking the weekly US Top 10 and UK Top 10 music charts; to trying my hand at table tennis, tennis, swimming and football; to following tennis; to playing Chess and Scrabble; to keeping up with friends; to travelling around the world. She always stood behind me to pursue whatever activities made me happy. She in fact went a step further, and tried to be actively involved in whatever interested me. So suddenly she was watching Amitabh Bachchan movies with me, listening to Michael Jackson songs with me, and watching Roger Federer tennis matches with me.

I can't remember a single incident when my mother lost her cool with us, or spoke to us in a loud voice. As kids, we did get the silent treatment every now and then if we were out of line, but never anything more than that. The only things that ever upset her were if someone was rude, or if someone disrespected elders, or if someone was dishonest, but she had ingrained these core values in us so strongly that none of us could ever be like that.

My mother was born in Bahawalpur District, now in Pakistan, on June 13th, 1935. She was the youngest child of Ram Narain Kathpalia (1899 - 1958) and Kaushalya Kathpalia (1910 - 2003). Her elder siblings were Jagat Kathpalia (1924 - 1948), Pearey Kathpalia (1926 - 1986), and Indira Kathpalia (born in 1931). My grandfather was an irrigation engineer who worked with the Nawab of Bahawalpur, and the family travelled around in remote areas as my grandfather moved from one irrigation project to another. The family also went and stayed in Karachi from time to time in the plush locality of Clifton. My mother's kind nature was seen in abundance when she became a vegetarian at the age of 5 in a strictly non vegetarian household; the family used to move around with their farm animals, and my mother befriended the 50 odd hens that they had, gave each one a unique name, and refused to eat her "pets". So the hen with a slight limp was called "langar deen" and all the other hens had similar appropriate nick-names.

The Kathpalia Family in 1942 in Pakistan.

In 1947, the family came to Delhi after partition. The Nawab helped them escape to India during those turbulent times. My mother was interviewed in 2018 by the Partition Museum, Amritsar, to talk about her experiences from the time of India-Pakistan partition in 1947. She gave the interview in her own inimitable style and brought alive her first hand experiences from that period. My mother went to Queen Mary's School in Delhi. She hardly spoke any English when they came to India, but soon she was so adept in English that she went on to do her BA and MA in English from Miranda House in Delhi University. She even became a member of Delhi University's Shakespeare Society, and went on to act in Shakespeare plays like "A Mid Summer Night's Dream".

She worked as a teacher briefly with primary children but kind hearted as she always was, she quit when she once witnessed another teacher hitting a child. She sat and cried with the child, and decided this was not the job for her. She worked as an announcer for Air India for a while. She then had a long innings at Cottage Industries as a buyer, and that inculcated a lifelong love for craft, design and textiles, interests she would come back to later in life.

She married my father, Jagdish Rudraya Hiremath, on December 31st, 1964. He was an Indian Foreign Service officer from the batch of 1954. They got to know each other after his first posting abroad in Tokyo (Japan), where he served from 1956 to 1959. He was on a home posting then, and he was a friend and batch-mate of my mother's brother in law, who was an officer with the Indian Administrative Service. My father got posted to New York (USA) in 1962 and as luck would have it, Cottage Industries sent my mother to New York for an 8 month assignment for the World's Fair in 1964. That's where my parents got to know each other well and decided to get married.

They moved to Nairobi (Kenya) in 1965. My elder sister was born there in 1967. They then moved to Manila (The Philippines) in 1967, and my second sister was born there in 1970. I was born in Delhi in 1973, during their home posting from 1971 to 1975. From 1975 to 1977, our family lived in Sofia (Bulgaria); from 1977 to 1980, we lived in Thimpu (Bhutan); from 1980 to 1983, we lived in Delhi; from 1983 to 1985, we lived in Belgrade (Yugoslavia); and from 1985 to 1989, we lived in Vienna (Austria). Vienna was my father's last posting, and he retired as the Indian Ambassador there. The days in the IFS were largely happy days, though there were times when they were unsettling and challenging - overall, my mother went through a lot of memorable experiences that added to her endless repertoire of interesting stories.

The family then moved back to Delhi, and Delhi was where my parents were to stay for the rest of their lives. My mother kept herself busy by running Kasida Handicrafts, an organization that made hand embroidered clothes for women. My mother did it out of love for the craft (she was a talented designer), and in order to provide employment and livelihood to women. My mother made a lot of close friends from the different phases of her life - her college days at Miranda House, her working days at Cottage Industries, her days as an Indian Foreign Service wife, and her days at Kasida - she made it a point to keep in touch with her friends, and many of these friendships were to last a lifetime.

My father passed away in 2013. He was there for my second sister's wedding in 2000 and when my niece was born in 2003. He was also there when my wife Kamalini Roy and I got married in 2011 but he left before the birth of my son Rehaan in 2014. My father's passing away was a big shock, but my mother was there, strong as ever, to somewhat lessen the grief for us, because we knew she was one person who was going through more pain than we were, and yet she was doing it with amazing dignity and grace.

My Mother on her 75th Birthday in 2010.

For me, my mother was my best friend. She was the first person I would go to when I wanted to share any piece of good news or bad news, or when I wanted to discuss a problem. She would go out of her way to try and help me in any way that she could. She was there for me when I struggled with shifting schools in my childhood, when I took time to settle into my first job, when I had to deal with difficult bosses, when I had my heartbreaks as a youngster, when I took time to settle into my marriage, and when I had my moments of doubt as a small entrepreneur. Without her words of advice, always in a non interfering way, I don't know how I would have pulled through some of my most difficult times. She was generous beyond measure. She made family birthdays very special, with her thoughtful gifts and beautifully planned out get-togethers. Festivals - Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi and Raksha Bandhan in particular - were made very memorable, as she put in a lot of effort to decorate the house beautifully, and arrange for delicious family meals. Every time I went on one of my international travels, I would suddenly get an envelope with a significant amount of money and a note wishing me a very happy holiday.

Sometimes people do things for elders out of a sense of duty and responsibility, but in the case of my mother, as also in the case of my father, my sisters and I did it out of genuine love, respect, admiration and gratitude. My sisters and I took career decisions so that we could be with our parents when they started ageing. We were all there for my father and for my mother during times when they were ill and needed support, and we would not have had it any other way, because they were always there for us, not only in our childhood, but well into our adult lives, to support us in every way possible.

My Mother with Rehaan in 2016.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer in October 2018. She had surgery and chemotherapy. She responded rather well to them. As recently as May 2019, the doctors said she was fine and she should stop seeing herself as a patient. We were all so relieved and happy. Then her cancer came back very rapidly and on July 15th, 2019, after her scan, the doctors told us that the cancer had spread very aggressively to her liver and there was nothing they could do for her, other than palliative care to take care of her pain and discomfort. We were shell shocked, but my mother handled the news much more bravely than we did. She said she knew the meaning of liver cancer, and we should make the most of whatever time was left. She told the three of us that parents can't go on forever, we should be happy that she had lead such a long and happy life, and we should be prepared to let go when the time came. She expressed her wish that she should go from home, and not from a hospital with needles and pipes sticking into her. Most people in the family were practical and accepted the inevitable, but Kamalini and I kept hoping and believing that a miracle would take place and we ran around exploring alternative treatments. That alas was not meant to be.

For the 1 month that my mother was with us after her diagnosis, we got to see what genuine love was all about. My sisters and I were of course with her every single day, but her 88 year old sister, and 90 year old sister in law would come and see her practically every day. The latter in fact rushed back from the US, where she had gone to celebrate her 90th birthday with her children. Not only did she rush across, but her daughter and son in law, both doctors in the US, also came for 10 days. My niece heard the news and she took a week off from her boarding school and came to see her ill grandmother. My mother's old friend, a professor at Cambridge, dashed across from England for 3 days to see her. My mother's Delhi based close relatives and friends, both hers and ours, all dropped in regularly to meet her. She would really enjoy meeting close people and she would chat with them cheerfully as if nothing was wrong. Her only request to the doctors was to keep her as pain-free as possible, and to not give her anything that would make her drowsy or less alert.

After about three weeks, the illness started catching up with my mother. She became weaker and weaker because she hardly had an appetite. Her trips from her bedroom upstairs to the drawing and dining room downstairs reduced and eventually came to a halt. She started feeling very low on energy and found it difficult to get out of bed. Yet through it all, one never heard her complain. She took it in her stride and said she was at peace. She continued to have this amazing sense of calmness and tranquility, while all of us watched helplessly as each day was worse than the previous day.

It is difficult to prepare oneself for such an eventuality, even when one has been given notice. Her passing away still came as a big shock to me. She went first thing in the morning. I shall always regret that I wasn't there with her at the end, but my sisters both were. I got a call from my second sister at 5:40 in the morning. I feared the worst when I heard the phone ringing so early in the morning, but what she had to say was that my mother was a little short of breath, so they were considering getting an oxygen cylinder at home. I started the process of getting ready to leave for my mother's place. 10 minutes later, my elder sister called. I asked her if they had been able to make enquiries about oxygen cylinders but she said it was too late. I rushed across and was there within half an hour, hoping against hope that she was still alive, but that was not to be. My mother's last statement had been "That will not be a problem" when my elder sister said she'd have to sit up in bed to take her Crocin. She sat up momentarily with my sister's help, and then left us before she could take her medicine. That one statement was so true to the positive person she always was. I was with her the previous evening and had planned to return later that day after getting some homeopathic medicines for her. The homeopath was in fact the only doctor who had given an iota of hope, and I was clinging on to that. Kamalini helped me hang on to that hope with her positive talk, and though my mother did not get cured, that hope probably helped me get through those initial days following the diagnosis instead of falling into a complete depression, which is what happened when I first got to know about her diagnosis.

Life will never ever be the same. I have lost my best friend, my biggest supporter, and my soundest advisor. It's a void that will never ever be filled. Little things constantly remind me of her, and I am overcome with grief. Over time, I hope I will learn to look back with a smile at all the happy, precious moments I spent with her. I wish my son had spent a lot more time with his grandmother - he had just turned 5 when she went. One of his favourite activities was sitting on her lap while she read out books to him and told him stories, in a style that only she could. Four decades earlier, she had done the same to me, fascinating me with stories about Kapish, the monkey with the magical tail! The only consolation we all have is that she was not in a lot of pain when she went, she was at peace and was mentally prepared to move on, and finally, she went surrounded by a lot of love. May she rest in peace, and may she look down and see just how much she is loved and missed by the people she has left behind.

Love you and miss you Mama, more than anyone or anything in the world! Thank you for everything! Remembering you for the rest of my life with love, respect, admiration, gratitude and pride!

Kamalini and Me with my Mother and my Father
at our Wedding Reception in 2011.