And Psychiatrist Too- Beginning at Freedom

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“And Psychiatrist too”- Beginning at Freedom”- 

It was the year of the ‘Quit India’ movement. The country was poised to take charge of its ‘Tryst with destiny’.

In a small ‘Utte wala Kothra’, my Nani, Bhabi helped her first daughter deliver her first child, ‘fruit of 9 months’ after her wedding at 18 to Babuji at 22.

Bhabi’s younger off-spring scrounged around in excitement for Sarla Pehn’s Munni to be later named Shashi.

Sarla Pehnji was to deliver her 2^nd at Lahore after another year. Bhabi decided she could not manage 2, although she herself had brought up a whole lot of them, hers and her other inlaws’s.

Well now, the new baby was the ‘fairer’ of the two, so She became Shashi, ‘as fair as the Moon’ and I, Veena, whose strings when touched would resound with Music, so my Father had said later.

Veena that ‘s I, was bundled up and brought to Ludhiana by Bhabi to be fed on her Breast as was Kamlesh my Masi, a few years older, but still suckling whatever her share was.

Like all Nanis, mine too was always my ‘more’ real mother. In later years I was ofcourse jealous of my sister who I felt got a bigger share of my real. ‘Real mother Jhai’.

The ‘Next conceived’ developed Whooping cough and died soon after. Many ladies had gathered in the Aangan, beating their breasts and Sort of screaming, for her I guess.

India was at War to be free from the British, a non-violent War they say.

I remember ‘Curfews, Dark nights, Whistles of Soldiers marching outside our Big House at Takia Gujran. Once peeping from a tiny, seemed big then, Hole in the Wooden door of Nana’s Baithak’.

I saw one, pointing a Gun at me through that big hole and I hid near under Nana’s big Table, not a squeak from me, not to expose my ‘wrong doing’. All the family was supposed to be in the Vadda Kamra with all the Vaddas you see!

Well, there was one good thing. Babuji had joined the CGO? and was posted near Calcutta and every now and then we would get Chocolates, Blankets, Sheets sent from Dum-Dum airport. Those Army Blankets kept us cozy for many years to come.

It was August, 1947. Babuji held my finger and walked me to witness the Hoisting of the Free India’s Tricolor at the big Mela at the Ludhiana grounds.

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance....said Chacha Nehru, from the Ramparts of Red Fort at Delhi”.

Thus begins my first Chapter.

Veena