ANOTHER MOTHER INDIA - P.R.VISHWANATH

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Another Mother India – my 101st blog
(This article by P.R.Vishwanath has appeared in two places
(a) SULEKHA
(b) Citizen Matters - on line blog of Bangalore i

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It is difficult to write about one’s own mother in an objective manner. I won’t event try that. This is a simple tribute to a great lady who would have been 100 years old this year. We are having a small function in Bangalore in July to commemorate this event. She was one of the most well known social workers of Bangalore in the last century. Her body was steeped in the present but her mind was soaring towards the future. This is a brief look at the fascinating lady.

She was born in Hassan (poor man’s Ooty) , yes, 100 years ago, Her father was a shirestedar ( a government official ) .She was the youngest in a family of four. She had a pretty face. She was dark and short. At the age of 10, she was married off to a reasonably tall and fair youth 24 years old. The man who she was married off to was an idealistic youth who had run away from Mysore to Benares when he was in school. He had lived in Benares for more than 10years and was about to complete his Master’s in Chemistry when the pied piper from Porbandar called upon the youth of the country to make sacrifices and serve the country. My father , who had personally met the Great Soul, discontinued his studies and came back to Karnatak as a Hindi teacher. For reasons I have not been able to decipher, he had had already a wife when he married my mother.

My mother, 12 years old at that time was in an unenviable position. Coming from a comfortable bureaucrat’s family , she had to start a life with a poor young teacher and his first wife. However, she did get along well with the first wife. The problem was her husband who was also an angry young man. He did not even like the show of luxury and contentment. She told me how he had slapped both his wives when he saw them laughing with betel leaf and nuts in their mouth. My father followed Gandhiji in all ways including ill treating wives. When my mother was 16 years old, she gave birth to her first child, a son who was later to become one of the most well known economists of the country.

While her husband started a Kannada newspaper, my mother took active part in folding the paper, putting wrappers on it and posting it. My father, apart from being idealistic, was a good entrepreneur and the newspaper became the most well known Kannada newspaper of the erstwhile Mysore state. He was also very active in politics. By the time I (their last child) was born, the penury the family had endured was over. We even had a Morris car. My parents were well known in the community for their generosity. They probably could have led a luxurious life but they saw to it that many people were helped.

As my father’s journalistic and political career came to an end , my mother, who was in her early fifties took upon the torch which had been lit by him. For me, an adolescent at that time, it was as though the Sun with his fierce rays had set and the Moon rise was to begin. My mother was really the Moon , a beacon of light , but also cool with compassion and kindness. My mother became a corporator of the city of Banglaore for the Jayanagar constituency and eventually its Deputy Mayor (Those were the days when these postions denoted lot of authority and meant something . A lady occupying the chair was also unusual ). She worked very hard during those six years. I remember my college days when she would go in the morning and return very late in the night. It is well acknowledged that the present Wilson Gardens area owes lot to her for whatever it is today. She was also associated with many organizations including the State social Welfare board for a long time.
It is not my intention to list all the organizations she was involved with. But what I really intend to do is to bring out the great and complex personality of the lady I had the fortune to be born to. Her activites as a corporator for the city of Bangalore really pale compared to what she did for the less fortunate women and children of the society. Even till the age of 80+ she would take up the problem of each unfortunate woman case by case. She would personally take the helpless women to proper organizations and see they are housed and fed. She ran a school and an orphanage for the deprived children of the society and when the grants from the government were not forthcoming she would go and do DHARNA in front of the chief Minsiter’s office in Vidhana Soudha. This orthodox lady, who protested the opening of a beer shop in Gandhi Bazaar, would go and knock on the doors of liquor barons to get money to build a dwelling for her (yes, she would call them that ) children.

My mother was very orthodox in her personal life. As an official of the Social welfare board, she used to tour most of Karnataka for days together and all that she would take in would be bananas and cocoanut water ! She was also compartmentalized in her life. She would spend whole days in harijan bastis but would take bath at the end of the day. In some strange ways she was an extremely modern person. When boys and girls in our extended family married out of caste (inluding her own daughter) she was the first one to give pleasant welcome to the new entrants to the family . I think she understood the nuances of social change very well.

Her education had stopped at the middle school level. She was fluent in kannada, Tamil and Telugu. My father , who had an almost renaissance man’s interest in life and read almost anything under the Sun, did not seem to have influenced her at all in this aspect of life. She had no hesitation in displaying her broken Hindi and butler English. When I see her myriad photographs with the important people of the age, I cannot help a great sense of awe and admiration for her. She used to tell us at times that she would have been a minister in the center if only she had known English.

She was also Rajasik to the core. When many people visited Bangalore it was she and not the Mayor who would go to the airport and welcome them. She reveled in the photo opportunities. I still remember the glee and enthusiasm with which she would get ready for meetings , not unlike that of a school girl on her first day of the class. She would have loved awards from the government. Here was somebody who worked very hard and was not modest about it .

At times we would criticize her for her generosity. The great Plato had said that the best way to help a hungry person would be not to give him a fish but teach him to fish. My mother who never knew Plato taught many unfortunate women and children to fish. But she also struggled to give the unfortunate person a fish for the day to quench her hunger. She used her personal money for this purpose. And when she did not have money, she took loans from people and this is what we did not like. I remember that she would retort saying that the children would remain hungry and starve if not fed immediately. Looking back, I feel that ours was an armchair criticism while it was she who worked hard.

My father’s activism was rooted in his intellect but for my mother it came straight from the heart. It is in this aspect that she reminds me of Buddha more than any of our heroes.

Amma, Happy 100th birthday ! NOORU VARSHADA SHUBHaSHAYAGALU. Yes, you were another Mother India

( At this juncture of my 101st blog, I would like to thank Sulekha for giving me an opportunity to express myself. Many people from the blogdom have nurtured me. Without belittling my other readers, I would like to thank these people for their good words : Riverine, Narensomu, Melody Queen, UshaM, Maria m, Nargis Natarajan, Ranjini Sharma, BSKeshav, Spothadhwani (Rajeev) , Srinivasarao. Nakedwrites, Dsampath, Avinashjee, VS Gopal.,DMR Sekhar, Raghuram E and others. Without their encouragement I would not have reached this stage )