Being of service to the family is the purest prayer to god - memories of my father and mother (2)

Our tiny and very compact kitchen was in the balcony of our 320 square feet ground floor apartment in a single-building compound in Wadala, Mumbai since 1972 when we had shifted from the suburb of Chembur in the then northern part of Bombay, which is now very much overtaken by the growth of the entire megapolis. My father, Balapila Naga Bhushan, was with the Ministry of Technical Education, Government of India and worked at Churchgate, while my mother, Sharada (Indumati) Bhushan, was a school teacher and later served as the headmistress of the Andhra Education Society’s High School and Junior College at Wadala.

My mother had to be at school, right on dot, for the morning shift that started at something like 0700 hours while my father would leave home at 0905 am to catch the 0924 harbour line local train to VT (as we knew it then) and onwards for a crisp walk to Churchgate to be at his office by 1010 am. Their schedules never changed through our school and college-going years during the seventies and early eighties. My mother would be up by 0530 hours and would make enough of a polite disturbance to nudge my father awake within five minutes.

They would not talk to each other in order to avoid waking us up, me and my sister, Sarala. The two of us and our parents always slept on coir mats through all the 70s. As we were told in those years, that as kids we were privileged to wake up later, though not much of a sleep-in, but we had to be up and about by 0630 or at the latest by 0645, as though that was much of a luxury.

There is one image that I have in my memory, through all these years, of the morning scene at my house, apart from the one of my father making filter coffee, and my mother going through her early morning routine of prayers, dressing up, conjuring up a magical spread of food items for breakfast, school tiffen, and emergency snacks and savouries. This other image is of my father quietly standing at the kitchen sink through the early hour when my mother would need monopoly over the bathrooms and almirah and the full-length mirror. During this time, my father would be silently at cleaning up all the left over utensils from the earlier night, and would do a complete washover of utensils to be used by my mother for preparing breakfast and other stuff.

The magical aspect of it was that my father could do it in an almost silent manner which is impossible for most others, men or women. He would examine the cluster of leftover utensils, analyse the threat factor like an airforce pilot and pick out the utensils that can be first removed for cleaning without bringing down the other utensils. These initial utensils would be wiped with torn-up newspaper to remove the grit and wet layers of gravy or oil. Those were the days without the green scrub pads or the metal wipers that we have now. There was no liquid soap and there was none of the magical utensil cleansers that we have now.

My father always claimed that the first wipe with the newspaper would make it easier to wash the utensils. The second attack would be with some dishwashing powder. The entire cluster of utensils would be coated with the dishwashing powder and kept aside for some time, before finally washing them clean with tap water. This was not any brandwala dishwashing powder. My father, as would most middle-class simple households do, would go to the wholesale soap markets of Dadar, near Ranade road, and would purchase a 5 kg pack of dishwashing powder. He had a routine for storing it and using it carefully, but that’s another story.

I did not notice it much, but after the entry of black and white TV and doordarshan and a whole lot of forced programs, I realised that it was the lady of the house or the kaamwali bai who was supposed to do all the cleaning chores in the household and not the man of the house, ie the lord and master of the house. I had not known about this separation of tasks and had always accepted that my father would clean the leftover utensils and make the first round of coffee and whatever while my mother would get ready to go out of the house to go to work at her job. My parents would share their tasks in the evening and later at night, my mother would have crashed out to sleep early enough to allow my father to clean up and get the kitchen and the bathroom ready for the morning.

Much later, when I had left home for my various research stations and started working, of a sort, and had learnt about various other matters, I asked my father about it. Why would he, the lord and master of the house, take up the task of cleaning the leftover utensils and the menial tasks of making the first round of coffee, etc.?

My father did not think about it a great deal but replied in a very matter of fact manner. “That is not any other work. That is when I do my prayers and recite my routine of saying thanks and conveying gratitude to god everyday for keeping us all happy and content. It is when I am cleaning the leftover utensils out of my own intentions and not because someone else has asked me to, it is only then that I am in service to my family in the purest of ways. I keep reciting and repeating the god’s name and I have a long list of gods to whom I say thanks to, and they seem to be happy about it.”

“The best prayer is in the act of service without any expectation of goodwill or return. The best way to send our prayers across is during that moment and not when one is sitting in front of the prayer place, or when one is lighting incense or when one is visiting a temple or when one is conducting a puja or whatever. Each utensil that I clean is a manner of cleaning my inner self.”

On that day, when my father explained it, I did not understand the perspective. I did not try to. I was only happy that my father had done that particular routine because he wanted to. Later, much later, in January 2009, he had returned after hospitalisation and had been advised bed rest at my campus residence in Pune. He was staying with me in my study room and the two of us had converted it into a bedroom. He was restless at not being able to go about on his own as he would have done in our small house at Wadala, Mumbai. He told me in a very tired voice, “Go and get some 10-20 utensils from the kitchen sink and bring it over to the attached bathroom here. Let me wash them daily. I need to do my prayers in peace.”

He passed away in March 2009 in that study room at Pune without having been able to return to Wadala.

11 October 2019

growing up with filter coffee, first thing in the morning - memories of my father and mother (1)

We lived in a 320 square feet ground floor apartment at Wadala, Mumbai, through my childhood and formative years, through marriage in 1986 and onwards to moving out to Pune in 1996. My father, Balapila Naga Bhushan stayed back at Wadala until the December of 2008. We retained the house through many trying years and plenty of happy times. It was a one-room plus kitchen plus balcony. We modified it by moving out the kitchen to the balcony and used the available modified space as an additional room. Both rooms were for all-round general purposes and were used as bedrooms, study rooms, prayer halls, TV space, lounging area and whatever.

The kitchen in the balcony was a new idea and many apartment houses in the area were warming up to the concept. Our neighbour had also converted their balcony and we were not alone in this innovation. Nobody pointed fingers and there were no complaints from the resident’s association. The municipal corporation in Mumbai is generally kind to such actions and they came and inspected the premises and said that it was a violation and that we would have to pay up a “compounding fee”, which we did, and that was that.

The kitchen window backed up into the hall-plus-bedroom and the entire family slept there on coir mattresses on the floor until plastic mattresses replaced them. The climate in Mumbai was very unique in our childhood days. Nobody needed a bedsheet to cover oneself and one did not require any cotton mattress or groundsheet to sleep on. A coir sheet was perfectly okay and we got really splendidly woven ones from Kerala. Vendors would bring them in to Matunga and one could bargain forever and get a real good deal if one was persistent.

Early mornings, we generally woke up to the excellent and enticing aroma of filter coffee being brewed by my father in the balcony-kitchen. The tremendous waft would forcibly wake us up. My father was a specialist at his art. A real master. He would brew the filter coffee that he procured regularly and faithfully from Phillips at Matunga with hot steaming water. In those moments, the milk would be got ready, boiled, diluted to the correct measure and kept ready to receive the filter decoction. My mother, Sharada (Indumati) Bhushan, would have already been up and she would be getting ready to get out of the house to reach the school where she worked as a teacher during the early seventies and later as a headmistress in the late seventies and early eighties and until her retirement.

My father would not partake of the coffee or distribute it until he had placed some milk in a small vessel on the prayer shelf in front of the deities. He would recite a brief prayer and my mother would take over the space after having had her bath. This was a fixed routine in an apartment with only one bathroom and one toilet. The person who would exit the house first always got priority in the queue. After the prayers, my father would distribute steaming hot coffee to each one of us. That was a sacred ritual in our small and compact family. We never realised it. My father had privilege of getting it ready and handing it over to each one of us. We would sit quietly, each one on the coir mattress, our backs leaning on the wall, sipping the coffee, enjoying it and delighting in the taste and flavour. I do not think any south Indian house would be different in those years. The moment of drinking the first morning cup of filter coffee was pure pleasure and every family would probably indulge in it.

I often wondered as to why my mother did not make that first cup of filter coffee. She did the second round in the morning though, and later in the evening. The night round was made by my sister, Sarala, much against the wishes of my parents. This was only for me, as I would sit late at night, reading novels and comics and whatever. We did not have much of anything else to do at home until the black and white TV entered the room and took over much of our future.

The filter coffee decoction vessel was also different for use by my father or by my mother. The one used by my father was a small and compact one and cleaned efficiently by him and kept aside in a location where my mother and sister could not access. He would always claim that the ladies did not know how to clean the decoction vessel properly. Only men were good at that activity. His younger brother, Shantaram Naidu, always agreed with him, as he did on each point made by my father. Their father and my grandfather, Shyamala Ranga Bhashyam, on the weekends that he stayed with us, was most happy when he saw his elder son preparing the filter coffee. He would not control his patience and would take over the act of performing the first prayer so that it would force my father to hurry up with the final preparations of serving or distributing the filter coffee.

My grandfather needed an entire large mug of filter coffee, almost equal to four of our cups. He would indulge in it, by worshipping an entire range of gods, seeking their blessings from the heavens by pointing the coffee mug at every other corner of the skies. My father would wait quietly with his cup of coffee and ask politely if my grandfather would need a refill. Precious memories, all.  

My mother would be wary of serving the second cup of coffee to my grandfather, ie her father-in-law. She knew that he would be very demanding of the correct taste, the exact proportions and the rightful flavour. She could not cheat by asking my father to make it as he would do it, for my grandfather would recognise the difference. So, she would make it as she would, and hand it over to my grandfather and would immediately place a disclaimer, “This is of course not as good as your son would do, but what to do, we are not perfect, all of us.” That would certainly allow her to escape with a smiling nod from my grandfather who would agree with the confirmation, “Yes, of course, nobody can make filter coffee like Babu ( = his name for his elder son) can.”

10 October 2019