Namita Gokhale
born in 1956, Namita Gokhale after marriage moved to Bombay where she worked as a film journalist. In the late 70’s, she edited Super, a film magazine, along with her husband. Her first novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, created a stir by its frankness in the early 80’s, and pioneered the sexually frank genre which made Shobha De famous.
A satire about Delhi’s upper-class, Paro has ben described as ‘far more witty and genuinely irreverent than any of De’s novels by Khushwant Singh.
Here is Namita Gokhale giving us an account of her most unforgettable day:
Let’s go back a really long time ago, to the summer of 62. It’s the 15th of May, Saturday, which is a half day at school. I am six years old and studying in the second standard in Ramnee Convent, Nainital, Mother Utah presides over us in class, and Mother Josephine Reigns at St. Mary’s (Ramnee to the initiated).
I’ve been sent off to school although my favourite aunt, my beautiful Rita mausi, is to be married today. I suspect it’s to keep me out of the way, as I am rather spoilt and therefore a nuisance.
In fact I’m so spoilt that even today my Meena Bua has to tell me the continuing serial bath-time story she improvises while I bathe, and then I gorge on gulab jamuns and pastries for breakfast. I go to school in a dandi, a dusty khakhi contraption held aloft by four dotyals. My clever older cousins and their friends, who are walking up to school, dump their school-books in my dandi.
There a graveyard near the playground where we tell each other scary stories, especially the ones about the girls who disappeared when they went to the bogs from the dormitory one dark night.
Anyway, now its twelve o’clock in the afternoon and I’ m back home wearing a pious expression and feeling quite pleased with myself and life in general. I live in a house called “Primrose’ with my grandparents and three lovely aunts, Kala aunty, Rita aunty and Meena bua. Rita is to be married today, and the house is flooded with friends and relatives. My grandfather is the local member of Parliament and my grandmother is Nainital’s resident beauty. Considering the close ratio between beauty and women in Nainital, that’s saying something.
Anyway, now I’m standing near the lily pond in this amazing garden, admiring the goldfish with my cousin Arvind. I remember that my face is a bit sticky from all the mangoes I ‘ve just eaten. I’m looking at the pond and the goldfish darting between the lilies when suddenly my safe and secure existence is shattered.
I’m not looking at the pond anymore for I’ve fallen in, I’m covered with muck and slime and I’m wearing a lotus leaf like an inelegant hat. My dignity, my composure, my pride and pleasure at being myself is forever shattered. Only my grandmother is concerned about me. She rushes over to the pond to pull me out, and to soothe and solace. Otherwise everybody else seems to have found my falling into the pond very funny. Arvind is laughing in a loud, unpleasant style. I hate everybody.
And yet as the sun glints in my eyes and I examine the blue sky and the deodar tree and the beds of gladioli from this new perspective. I suddenly understand that things look different according to the position from which you view them.
Everybody quickly forgets this minor catastrophe. Rita is the most beautiful bride the world has even seen. My mausaji and his baraat come holding flaming mashals in their hands. Kaka Luthra’s voice, the loudest in Nainital, echoes through the hills as he oversees the dinner arrangements.
There is still a scattered group of disbanded family who may remember how Ninu fell into the pond the day Rita got married. Why do I remember this as one of the most memorable days of my life? Because my innocence is still attached to my childhood romance with Primrose and nanital and the extended family that gave me their love and laughter as I grew up. Rita is dead, and so is Meena, although my grandmother’s gray-green eyes still mirror all these memories when I talk to her.
