STORY  SEEDS

Scattered over seasons, growing across plots, some pruned and trained but mostly rising free, these curious seeds bloomed into a cohesive garden.

My great grandmother

I was very fortunate to have spent a big part of my childhood with my great grandmother. She had grown up during the British rule in India and had lived most of her life as a widow bearing the hardships that accompanied it with a smiling face and a loving demeanor. Aaji, as we lovingly called her, brewed hot ginger tea for the family in the early mornings, narrated folktales and mythological stories to us children in the afternoons, and spent the evenings in the company of other devotees at the neighborhood temple. Some characters from Reva’s world were generously shaped by the precious time I spent in Aaji's company and her stories (both told and untold) that I gathered or imagined along the way.

Maharashtra

 I was born in the state of Maharashtra along the western coast in India where the people are simple, and the lifestyle is muted. For almost three decades, as an overseas resident of India, I have witnessed the cultural identity of India being largely limited to images of fried spicy samosas, of countless deities both vengeful and benevolent, and of the Taj Mahal with the backdrop of poverty and decay. Added to that overflowing pot are the tired discussions on the virtues and vices of arranged marriages, on the glitz and gaudy of the Bollywood world, and the mishmash and dialects of the 'Hindu' languages. While these elements are integral to the image of the country, they are not the whole of it.

I grew up in Maharashtra eating stuffed brinjals (eggplants) and alphonso mangoes, speaking the Marathi language, and pondering the grace and complexity of the nine-yards of sari draped by women of an older generation. I grew up surrounded by academic institutions, erudite works, and brilliant progressive minds that fought for India’s independence, that sought to eradicate blind superstitions and unjust social practices, and that changed the course of Indian history. This story is an attempt to highlight a small piece of that life and add it to the existing fabric of the complex Indian identity as perceived by the western world.

Hill Stations of the British Raj

From ‘The Magic Mountains’ by Dane Kennedy: 

“Located on peaks that loom like sentinels over heat-shimmering plains, hill stations remain among the most curious monuments to the British colonial presence in India. Their origins can be traced to the effort in the early nineteenth century to establish sanitaria within the subcontinent where European invalids could recover from the heat and disease of the tropics. But hill stations soon assumed an importance that far exceeded their initial therapeutic attraction. To these cloud-enshrouded sanctuaries the British expatriate elite came for seasonal relief not merely from the physical toll of a harsh climate but from the social and psychological toll of an alien culture.”

This magical, mountainous, whitewashed world promised to be the perfect companion that would open Reva’s eyes and transform her dream into reality.