Time Tales (2025)

19/03/2024

The Creative Police Officer
Taken in 1960, this photograph is of my father Gajanan Vishwanath Kale in his police uniform. My father was one of the many officers who served the British Empire and post independence, he continued to serve the Indian Republic. He became a police officer on a whim, but he fulfilled his duty with extraordinary sincerity as a policeman until the end.

My father, Gajanan was born on April 11, 1914 in Nashik, Bombay Presidency (now in Maharashtra state). He was one of the six children of my grand-parents, Vishwanath and Kashibai Kale. My grandfather, a medical practitioner of Ayurveda, a vaidya, was also the headmaster at a local primary school located near the theatre Chitra Talkies in Nasik.

In 1909, a British Magistrate (and historian) named AMT Jackson was assassinated in the theatre by a nationalist named Anant Kanhere. The colonial government sought to punish the suspected culprits but needed strong evidence. It so happened that my grandfather, the headmaster, whose school was next to the theatre, would handle the school keys and the administration threatened to frame him with false testimony claiming that the suspected culprits entered the theatre through his school with his help. My grandfather refused to comply and it led to his forceful resignation from the job. He established an Ayurvedic practice formally in the neighbouring village Dindori, but died soon after, when my father was just four. The untimely loss of her husband left my grandmother, Kashibai destitute. She had to take help from relatives and neighbours to raise the children, while working odd jobs. To top it all, my grandfather, secure with his job as the headmaster, had given up claims on their ancestral land in his home village Wada-Padel in favour of his brother.

As a teenager, my father, Gajanan began tutoring his Marwari classmate Jhumbarlal in English to earn some money. But by the time the results of his own graduation (matriculation) were announced in 1930, his mother passed away too. His mother’s wish was for him to pass the exam and make her happy, and so on her death bed, he told her that he had indeed passed the exam before the actual results were announced.

My father began looking for jobs with the help of his younger brother Vishnu who was doing sundry jobs in Poona (now Pune). In Poona, his linguistic proficiency got him the job of a Marathi typist at the newspaper office of Dnyan Prakash (a formerly popular newspaper) and he learnt to type in Marathi and English fluently. It was rare for government jobs to be advertised in newspapers; social contacts were the only means to receive information about employment opportunities. But while typing out some material, my father chanced upon an advertisement for the recruitment of a police sub-inspector that promised a better earning. On a whim, my father, blessed with a good physique, imposing personality and height, sent in his application and it was accepted.

The District Superintendent Police (DSP before commissionerate) of Poona called for the candidates to gather at the police headquarters grounds. There were no written tests, or interviews – only a physical examination. The DSP quickly scanned the physical features of all candidates in queue and selected some five to six candidates. Gajanan, my father was one of them.

After his training at the police school in Nasik, he began his career as a sub-inspector, a high ranking position, in the police forces under the British Raj. His first posting was in Jalgaon, Khandesh. As a high ranking official with a decent salary he now owned two horse-driven carts. He also became a proficient horse rider, a skill that was compulsory for all officers. He fired his gun for the first time, early in his career, near Chalisgaon, when a mob attacked his police party, and a shot in the air dispersed the mob. Since relocations via postings were frequent, he was transferred to Bedar, Udgir, Humanabad, and then to some southern Indian districts but most of his time he was posted in Poona. In Poona, he was home inspector and he served under renowned commissioners like Julio Rubeiro and the first IGP (Inspector General) of Independent India, VG Kanetkar.

Around the 1960s, when he was assigned the task of controlling the Ganesh Utsav procession, an accusation of a muslim labourer throwing dirt on Ganesh idol of Mandai Market was reported. It turned out that there was no communal angle to the incident, and the labourer was mentally unstable, but it escalated into a riotous situation. My father tactfully arranged a meeting between the heads of communities that dissolved the tension, and averted a riot. His tactful and diplomatic skills without political leanings, and complete transparency led him to be promoted as the Assistant Commissioner of Poona – Posted in Nagpur he became in-charge of Anti-Corruption Bureau. During his service in Nagpur, my father would disguise himself as different characters to catch the culprits in the act he had been tipped off about. He even caught a peer, a Police Sub-Inspector in midst of accepting habitual bribes in broad daylight. His creative methods to catch criminals, plus his honesty, loyalty and transparency, impressed his seniors and he was made in-charge of Crime Investigation Department (CID) Pune, where he solved intriguing cases.

Due to earlier hardship in life , my father Gajanan had come to suffer from asthma that returned with a vengeance. So on grounds of non-optimal health, he was denied a promotion to Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP). My father was not one to give up and he confronted the Inspector General on grounds that a health condition was not sufficient cause to deny a promotion. His contestation was acknowledged, and he became the Additional DSP of Solapur.

My father retired from service in 1970 and passed away in 1974. I believe that my father’s positive spirit and generous nature is reflected in the photograph- an upright cop who did his best and with a head held high in integrity and dignity. He held a keen interest in classical music and learnt to play the harmonium. During the organsing of Sawai Gandharva music festival, he wouldn’t miss the opportunity of meeting the extraordinary artists like Bhimsen Joshi. He taught his children English, Arithmetic, and Sanskrit. With disregard to conventional gender roles, he also knew sewing and cooking well – skills that he even taught his own daughter-in-laws, while encouraging them to earn a living for themselves.
Image and Narrative points contributed by Anil Gajanan Kale, Pune

19/03/2024

Hiding Out In The Forests Of Assam-Burma-East Bengal Border
This photograph taken in 1943 or 44 is of my maternal grandfather, Dr. Suresh Chandra Mukherjee (extreme right) with his brothers. It was taken in a forest hideout at the Assam-Burma-East Bengal border.

My grandfather, Dr. Suresh Chandra Mukherjee whom we fondly called Dadu, was born in 1895. �Our family originally came from a small town in undivided Bengal and India called Khulna (now in Bangladesh) but they worked across the states of Bengal and Assam. Dadu’s hobbies included fishing and photography. He married my grandmother, Bimala Bala in 1909 when she was only 9 years old, he was 23 and already a doctor.

Dadu was a renowned gynecologist & an obstetrician, and also specialized in tropical medicine. He worked with the George Williamson & Co., a Tea Company in Assam ( now Williamson Magor & Co.). In this photograph, my grandfather wears a British army uniform as he had been recruited into British Army to serve during World War II, when the Japanese occupied Burma and parts of the North-East Frontier.

During the war, and due to fears of Japanese attacks and bombings, the entire family of six brothers, their wives and children moved to a relative’s place and hid in the forest. The second person on the left is his younger brother Dinesh Chandra Mukherjee who later worked in the Foreign Service. The other brothers’ names I don’t’ know but one was a school headmaster. Not in the photograph is the fifth brother, Dr. Debesh Chandra Mukherjee who was also a doctor and was one of the five physicians dispatched to China by Netaji Subas Chandra Bose to provide medical assistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938. Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis was the other well-known Doctor in the group, on whom the film Dr. Kotnis ki Amar Kahani is based, and my granduncle is mentioned in it. My grandfather was the only one who served in war.

Life during the war was difficult. Most importantly, food was rationed. No cattle or milkmen were available as lived in far away towns and villages. Each time my grandfather visited the family, he would bring milk and a prized tin of English biscuits – Jacob’s Biscuits. Sometimes, but not often, he would manage to bring in eggs and Anchor Butter (from New Zealand). Without refrigeration, and in the dense tropical forest, the milk would get spoilt. In army rations, milk was only available in army rations in form of powder, that the family would then hoard. Sugar was in very short supply and often not available- so they had to manage with Gur (Jaggery) to satisfy the Bengali sweet tooth. And the most difficult thing, especially for Bengalis- was that rice was rationed, and if it was available, it was very poor quality and hardly edible. So the family learnt to eat fish curry with chapatis (flat Indian bread). �The family had to maintain a very low profile and keep their oil lamps, candles, and fires to a bare minimum in the forest, lest they attracted the enemy.

My grandfather served on the Manipur-Burma border and they were successful in stemming the Japanese entry. He had a team of informants to keep the British army abreast of the activities of the Japanese. He helped and supervise the construction of roads and bridges in the region for the British army to travel to strategic places to quell the enemy. Eventually, in 1945 the Japanese were defeated and my grandfather was decorated and personally thanked by Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of India Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck otherwise known as “The Auk”, who also served as the British Army commander during World War II. The Auk also wrote my grandfather a personal note on his efforts, that still lies in our family archives.

Dadu continued to serve the tea company after the end of Japanese occupation. Later he moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and established a private practice. He retired at the age of 75 and passed away of old age at 85, in 1980.

Image & Narrative points contributed by Shravani Dang, New Delhi

18/03/2024

Mixed Marriages Of The Indian Subcontinent And Africa
This image is of my wife’s relatives in Kenya as a reference to the narrative below.

In the late 19th century, an enterprising and adventurous Parsi Indian Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee left Karachi (now Pakistan) and sailed to Australia. As a house-to-house hawker, he managed to gain some knowledge of the English language and eventually migrated to East Africa in 1890. There, he established contact with British investors who were looking for some help to manage the planned Uganda Railways. After five years, Jeevanjee was awarded the contract to recruit Indian labourers from Punjab, to build the Uganda Railways in Kenya and the IBEAC (Imperial British East Africa Company) began building the railways construction from Kilindini Harbour, Mombasa.

Beginning 1891, thousands of the Indian ‘coolies‘ (today this word is considered a racial slur in many African countries), mainly Sikhs & Punjabis, were recruited for a three-year-contract to build Kenya Uganda Railways. Almost all of them came alone, leaving their wives in India.

One of the reasons why Indian labourers, instead of locals, were recruited was that the British faced severely hostility from the citizens of that country. The Indians on the other hand were there purely for economical reasons. They were also strong, tough and reliable hard workers and had previous experience with construction of building railways, roads, bridges and canals in India. In Kenya though, they had to face several hardships. Living in huddled groups in tents, they worked tirelessly to clear thick jungles, and break routes through hills and mountain stone with steel hammers and bare hands. Under harsh weathers, mosquitoes, snakebites, wild beast attacks, injuries and fevers were fervent. Hundred were dragged from their tents and eaten by Lions.

Amongst them was my maternal grandfather Makhan Ram Vadvae, a technically savvy man who came from Lahore, (now Pakistan) leaving his wife in India. He was appointed foreman and would check the rail tracks while seated on trolley pushed by fellow workers. His name in the labor force records is signed in Urdu as “Man eater of Tsavo”.

After the completion of railways in 1905, and the end of their contract – 51% of the workforce returned back to India, most in bad health, 8% of the work force died on job, 21% did not take their entitled return tickets and chose to stay in East Africa – setting up businesses along the railway lines, towns and cities. By year 1911, 12,000 Indians mainly Punjabis, Gujaratis, and Parsees (compared to 3,000 Europeans) were living in Kenya. A good number of them married local African women, others married mixed blood women and settled in East Africa giving birth to four generations of people with Indian-Kenyan origin. My maternal grandfather Makhan Ram too married a Kenyan woman, had children with her and settled in Kenya. He never went back to India.

While things have changed for the better over time, the colour and gene based racism was rampant at the time and with the exception of Parsees, within most other Indians. The mixed blooded children of Indian men who married local African were frowned upon. Rejected and segregated by Indians themselves, they had a terrible time trying to fit into their father’s communities, schools, neighborhoods, work places, temples and Gurudwaras. Some were treated so badly by the father’s families that it forced them to convert to Islam and Christianity – communities where they were received well and given equal place in society. Ironically, visually, majority of mixed blood children were of fair colour and beautiful features – skin-deep characteristics that many Indians preferred over any other.

My father Jagan Nath Nagpal too came to Kenya from Gujranwala, Punjab (now Partly Pakistan territory) around 1912 and began a tea stall at a railway station. Eventually he established a confectionery shop in the capital city, Nairobi. He married my mother, Maya Devi, Makhan Ram’s daughter. Two years after his marriage in 1914, he invited his elder brother from Punjab to Kenya, handed over the shop to him and decided to return to India.

Around 1938, when I was around five years old and my sister Krishna was 10, my father decided to return to Kenya. I remember the four of us sailed to Kenya in an over crowded dhow (carrying 300+ people) from Porbander, Gujarat to Mombasa. It was a perilous journey of three months, during which many people died at sea, sick with typhoid, diarrhea and malnutrition. When we landed ashore in Mombasa, most people due to being crammed on the dhow and sitting in postulate positions for weeks & months had forgotten how to walk – people were falling down, whilst others were walking backwards. Almost all children and some adults had lice in their hair.

Perhaps in India my father had gained more skills and in Kenya he became a skilled Halwai (sweets & dessert maker) who could make all kinds of delicious North Indian sweets. Later my parents had seven more children -Shakuntala, Baldev, Raji, Swarni, Subhash, Sukversha and Ashok.

Years later, my father took a huge loan with a heavy interest to pay his eldest daughter’s marriage dowry, which he was unable to pay. To supplement some family income, as soon as I finished Form 2 (half way into Secondary School), in 1947, I had to start working at the age of 14 as a Crane Driver with East African Railways & Harbours, Mombasa. Four years later at the age of 18, I married a 14-year-old beautiful young mixed blood lady Rampyari Kohli. Born in Kenya, she was the daughter of an African mother and a Kashmiri father.

After my father died in of a heart attack in 1951, I became the only support for the family. My wife and I had two boys and four girls. Then we adopted two more boys from my wife’s side of the family. All were born, bred and well educated in Kenya and overseas. Today most of them are living all over the world living in Australia, England, Germany and America. Some of them hold high positions as Bankers, Chartered Accountant, General Manager, University lecturers and directors.

My daughter and I are still live in Kenya, a country I call my home.
Image & Narrative contributed by Krishan Lal, Kenya with help from his son Dileep Nagpal

18/03/2024

Founder Of The First Waldorf Kindergarten In Karnataka
This is a photograph of my mother, Lalitha Mandana (née Belliappa) and it was taken around the time when she was 18 years old. Born on January 18, 1940 to Kodava (Warrior community of Coorg) parents in Tabora, Tanzania, my mother and her four siblings lived in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania or (formerly Tanganyika), till the age of 18.

My Tatha’s (grandfather) name, was Chendrimada Kuttappa Belliappa. He came from Madikeri, the capital of Coorg (now in Karnataka State). In 1919, at the age of 15, he ran away from home and managed to reach Bombay, where he bet on a horse and won Rs. 50. He immediately boarded a ship bound for South Africa and paid his boarding and lodging by working on the ship.

We don’t know how he survived till his 20s but at the age of 28, he returned to marry my grandmother, Biddannda Seetha Achaya who was a 18 yrs old from Pollibetta, South Coorg (now Mysore district). She was the youngest of seven children ( born July 12,1914) and had just completed high school – She was brilliant, but naive. She was happy to be married to Thatha so that she would get her new sarees as she was tired of wearing her sister’s hand-me-downs. Eventually my grandfather became the Chief Clerk in the East African Railways and Harbour, while my grandmother became a middle school teacher at the Aga Khan Girls High School.

My mother whom I call ‘Ma’ is the third born among her four siblings, her dark skin and dusky features always set her apart from the others. At the tender age of two, just after World War II, she was sent to India to live with her mother’s elder sister, for four years. The aunt had five children of her own, but included Ma as her own. My mother says she was usually left to herself, which in retrospect, she considers a blessing. A keen observer, Ma watched and absorbed the talents of her new mother who was an extremely skilled, kind and spiritual person.

At the end of four eventful years, my biological grandparents, returned from Africa to pick her up, but my mother announced that her adopted family was her family as she knew it and she did not want to return. Nonetheless, she went back home with them to Africa, where she started life anew, struggling to fit in with her own siblings. Things were tough for Ma there – she was aware of her darker skin, and the troubles it caused her – it wasn’t easy to fit in. My mother held the memories of her time in India close, with a decision to find a way back to the place she knew as home.

In 1946, Ma, a non-English speaker, was enrolled into St. Josephs Convent run by Swiss nuns, where she was introduced to the quasi Waldorf system of education. In the matter of a year, by the age of seven, she had grasped English. She learnt to knit and crochet by the time she was eight, and stitched her own clothes at the age of 11. By 12 she had exhausted all the stitching sets imported from England and graduated to using the sewing machine. By 13, she was perming her own hair and her friends. She steadily acquired several skills, but was not encouraged to question any of them, so much of her learning took place by challenging herself. At the age of 15, she watched a tailor cut and stitch a dress. When she returned home, she chopped her mother’s beloved voile sari and created a beautiful flared skirt, much to her mother’s horror.

Although, Ma had the opportunity to pursue medicine in England she chose to come back to India and earned her own passage to India in 1958 at the age of 18. This photograph was taken around that time, a little after she reached India.

When she didn’t secure a seat in medicine, she pursued her next best love, art and went on to complete her MA in History of Fine Arts/Architecture/Sculpture and Painting, from Stella Maris College in Madras (now Chennai). Unlike what society considered appropriate in those days, she got married much later, at the age of 31 to my father, who is five years younger than her. She went on to do her Montessori training, followed by her B.Ed, and became the head mistress of a school with 600 hundred children and me (I was all of seven years old).

In the years after that, she went on to pursue her first love, healing & medicine and eventually learnt Homeopathy at the age of 39 and started her own free clinic when she was 42. Decades later, she became a teacher again when she founded Promise Centre Kindergarten in Bangalore, making us the first Waldorf kindergarten in Karnataka. I took over the reigns from her in 2009.

My mother has redefined a mother-child relationship through her parenting and grandparenting style. She maybe one among a handful from her generation who can even claim to have an amazing relationship with their child. We had conversations with each other that I never heard other children having with their parents and most times still don’t. She climbed trees and rocks with the children at the school until an accident left her with a broken leg at the age of 70. Although, the broken leg troubles her, she doesn’t let it get in the way of all that she loves to do, from parent education to being a core member on the board of trustees at Advaya Shaale, the second Waldorf Grade school in Bangalore (now Bengaluru, Karnataka).

Even today, my mother is dressed in her impeccably creaseless cotton kurtas and with the glint of a curious two year old in her eyes. Her positivity and composure are enviable. She has touched and inspired thousands of lives from the children to their parents in the course of running the kindergarten. However, if you compliment her, she will humbly say, “but I haven’t done anything yet.”

Image and Narrative contributed by Jyotsna Mandana, Bengaluru

18/03/2024

The First Indian Woman To Perform On New York Broadway
I was born in London (UK) in 1936. My English-Italian mother, Marjorie Frank-Keyes was a concert singer and my father Suresh Vaidya was a successful young writer. He was also on the editorial board of Time Magazine in London. My father was arrested by the British authorities when he refused to join the British Army to fight in World War II. He declared he would gladly fight as a free man, but not as a colonial subject. He was imprisoned in Canterbury and fought and won a case in the British Court. His case was defended by well known lawyers like Sir Fenner Brockway and Lord Reginald Sorensen. In a landmark judgment, the court ruled that the British Army could not compel a person to fight because he was a colonial subject.

Of course I was one my feisty parents’ two daughters. I completed my schooling in London then in Bombay (now Mumbai). Later I graduated from Miranda House, standing third in Delhi University. I was also actively involved in theatre and was awarded the best actress for performing sections from Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Later, I began working with Link Magazine in Delhi as a journalist that also had a daily paper called The Patriot. Gopal Sharman was suggested to us as an independent writer who could write very well on the arts. Up until then I had been writing them.

In the 1950s, at the office, I was in charge of putting the month’s issue to bed and I had been told that Gopal would come by with the copy on the Arts columns. He came to the office early and sat several glass cubicles away, typing away, but by late morning the copy was still not done and I began to lose patience. I went bossily through the cubicles and asked him about the text. He looked up and said “Don’t go through the roof, this isn’t a spoof, I am writing it and here it is.” and that’s it, we fell in love. �I have no idea how, why and what it was, but that’s how we met and were together since. We began to live together in a garage in Bengali Market. Later, we got married.

Gopal at the time was also writing two popular columns under a pseudonym – Nachiketas for the Indian Express and the Sunday Standard. One was about artists and the other was about the Upanishads, Vedanta, mythology, questions on philosophy, life and death. Unknown to us the time, the second President of India, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was a fan of Nachiketas’s (Gopal’s) columns.

In early January of 1966, Dr. Radhakrishnan underwent a cataract operation. Unable to read and restless, he asked a close friend Prof. K Swaminathan who had edited the Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi and was a former editor of Indian Express, to find out who was this ‘Nachiketas’ person writing these fascinating pieces, and to invite him to the Rashtrapati Bhawan (Presidential Residence) for a narrative session. Prof. Swaminathan found Gopal and was surprised to find out that it was a young man who went about on a bicycle, with a shock of unruly hair, and wore a polo neck shirt & trousers. He asked Gopal if he would come and read his works to the President. Gopal happily agreed.

When he returned home, Gopal told me about the President’s request and insisted that since I was much better at it, I should perform Gopal’s Full Circle for the President. Full Circle was a dramatic recitation of stories and poems with philosophical concepts narrated with voices of regular people. I would perform and recite the stories & poems, while Gopal, a classically trained singer, would sing songs ranging from Meera Bai’s bhajans (songs with spiritual themes) to songs written by the poet, philosopher and politician Muhammad Iqbal. After some reluctance, I agreed and we both decided to go. I always needed glasses to read, but since I didn’t want to read off a paper, I learnt all of it by heart.

When the day came, a big Rolls Royce came from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to pick us up, along with the formal invitation. To our shock it mentioned my name, but left Gopal’s out! We informed the officials about the confusion, but they did not accommodate the mistake and no change could be made. Nonetheless, now there was no turning back. Gopal came along with me up till the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s reception, wished me very well and went off to another meeting. I still remember watching him walk down the slope of that road.

When I was escorted upstairs, the door was opened by the President, with a bandaged eye. He exclaimed “Ah Welcome! But where is the poet?!” I explained what had happened, he insisted a car bring Gopal back, but with 20-30 people in the room including foreign dignitaries already seated, it seemed a bit awkward so we let the matter rest. I began to narrate the pieces, and I remember now and then the very impressed President would interrupt to explain the contexts to his guests and what was being said.

When I ended the performance, Dr.Radhakrishnan was extremely happy. He had loved every bit of it. He insisted that this work should be performed for a proper audience and that he will have ICCR (Indian Council for Culture Relations) arrange a performance at Azad Bhawan. And so it was arranged. When we went and met the director of ICCR, Inam Rahman, I think he was a bit put out at the order of accommodating young unknown people. Perhaps to be a bit difficult, he said the only date available was January 13, only a few days after, and will we take that? Gopal and I looked at each other and immediately said yes.

The ICCR invited many well-known people & important dignitaries from the Embassies, and they all loved Full Circle. After the performance we received invitations from the Embassies of Yugoslavia (now seven independent states) and Italy to perform in their countries. But there was a hitch, ICCR refused to pay for the tickets, and we had to find the tickets on our own. We wrote to Air India and asked if they’d like to sponsor us. They wrote back and said they could, for one person and one way only, but that too on the condition that we distribute their advertisements in Europe.
Something had to be done, so I decided to go to Bombay and request the TATAs if they could help. There was a special secretary to J.R.D Tata, I forget his name now but he agreed to arrange another ticket. This was the year of tourism so there was no problem getting a visa to foreign countries. Neither was there a problem with one-way tickets at the time. We managed to get two one-way tickets but only till Rome, Italy.

In Italy, we performed at the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO). Through that performance we got invited to perform at the famous theatre, Teatro Goldoni and so we did. Then we went to Yugloslavia and performed in three cities and they were all wonderful performances. I remember as guests, we were even offered tickets, twice, to the well-known Opera La Boheme but unfortunately on both occasions we had such a time of partying and drinking the night before that we never made it to the opera.

Back in Rome, we did another round of performances, each with a theatre-full of audiences. In the audience we also noticed a lot of red cardinal gowns. Soon, we were invited by the Assistant Father General of Jesuits, an Indian at the time, to perform at their headquarters near the Vatican. We were hosted at a lovely convent and the nuns were so extraordinarily impressed with us because we were vegetarian. They thought it was such an austerity and it was so spiritual, and made lovely vegetarian things for us. Later, the Indian Assistant Father general also organized for us an audience with the Pope Paul IV and so we also got to meet the Pope.

One night, I heard that Joan Baez was going to perform at a theatre, and I was a particularly big fan of hers. It was disappointing to realise that I couldn’t because we too were performing the same night. Next morning when we went to see the papers, I was on the front page and Joan Baez was somewhere in small print. It was amazing and unbelievable. Nonetheless, we did get to met her later, but missed seeing her perform. And that’s how we began our theatre career.

In the next few months we were invited by ITV (Italian TV) to record our performance. After the recording they said that they were cash strapped and couldn’t pay too much. We were used to that, because in India no one really paid or paid well at all – In Delhi we got Rs.250. But the Italian TV pay turned out to be a lot more than we had ever imagined. Excited about our big pay, we spotted a second-hand car sales place across the TV station and Gopal and I immediately bought ourselves a Black Volkswagen Beetle, with a Number 1 plate. We excitedly discussed how we could drive back home to India, because in those days you could’ve driven back home to India.

In 1968, we drove to Munich, and the Southern German Radio & TV : Bayerischer Rundfunk, also recorded our performance. After the recording they enquired how much the Italians had paid us and simply upped our pay by a lot more. We were so happy and amused. I remember in Frankfurt, I also went and got myself my first pair of contact lenses.
We met and made so many amazing friends along the way, some famous and some not. While we performed and drove all over Europe, our beloved second hand car would often break down. I remember a lot of our friends like actress Vanessa Redgrave and even the Qatari ambassador to India were among the many people pushing that car.

In London we performed at various places, including the Mercury theatre, where T.S Elliot had performed his plays. Everywhere we went we received rave reviews. London is where we finally settled down for a while and continued to perform. Gopal began writing on the arts for The Times and The Sunday Times in London and wrote a book on Indian music, Filigree in Sound that was published in London. At the time the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) had an event called the World Theatre season. It was the most prestigious theatre festival and they approached us to bring a play to the event. Gopal said – “Yes, we’d like to, but the play I’d like to bring I haven’t written it yet.” He wanted to write a Ramayana relevant to our times, a modern, dramatic and humane interpretation of the Sanskrit epic. RSC happily agreed and signed a contract with us. When our event with RSC was announced, a TATA representative from London came forward to financially back the venture because we were getting India a good name. They awarded Gopal with a Homi Bhabha fellowship, the third person in the country to get it.

At the end of our two-year adventure, in 1970, we returned to India and began preparations on the Ramayana. We also needed to find a space to rehearse the play. We began with the process of auditioning actors and actresses in Bombay for our new play. I remember Amjad Khan came, and others from FTII (Film & Television Institute of India) and soon we had a good crew. While in Bombay, I heard that Morarji Desai, deputy to the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was also in-charge of allotting government housing to artists in Delhi, so I approached him about a place and he called me to his office at 7.30 in the morning. Gopal had written a preface on our Ramayana, and I showed it to him. Morarji Desai said he would read it and that I should return the next morning at exactly the same time. I thought he was a nasty man for calling me at 7.30 am in the morning. Nonetheless, I went and he had read it, had made some notes and said it was wonderful. I was shown six locations, and asked me to choose whichever house I’d like. I chose this one in Lutyen’s Delhi. Gopal hollowed out the bunglow, redesigned the space, and included a 50-seat indoor theatre. He did a lot of the work all by himself.

Soon after rehearsals began, the cast went on strike over some grouses. Now when I look back it was probably an attempt by some envious people whose incitements sabotaged our crew. It was dreadful and we were upset, but we went to the bank, paid them their dues and said our byes. On a trip to Simla to pick up my daughter from her boarding school, Gopal who had clearly been doing a lot of thinking, asked me to perform all the 22 roles in the Ramayana he had written, by myself. He was inspired by the narrations of Kathas (the traditional Indian storytelling format) at his home in Lucknow, UP. I was not so sure, but Gopal rewrote the script into the form of a Katha and it began to look very good – and we began working on it. But there was more disappointing news. When RSE heard that our Ramayana was going to be a one-woman show, their interest in the project turned cold. They had envisioned an epic story with a large crew. That was a big blow. Nonetheless, we didn’t stop the work and I performed it for the first time in 1970, for a small audience above the porch of Ashok Hotel and later at other venues, including our own theatre.

One day, a team from USA Educational Institute sent 15-20 people to see the Ramayana. It was their last night in India but they were quite impressed with the show and asked us to meet them for breakfast before they flew out. They said it was the first time they had seen something that displayed a contemporary spirit of India, moreover it was in English and hence understandable. They invited us to USA and to perform through their colleges. We went to America, and in the course of travelling, we were also asked to perform at the 1000-seater National theatre School of Canada in Ottawa. Along the way we met with a big New York based lawyer and an angel investor, Robert A. Hendrickson who was known to fund the arts, and was interested in our work. He came along with us to Canada to see how we did with a big audience. Of course, we did splendidly well, and soon he contacted us to do a season on Broadway and that’s how we got to New York Broadway. It was most fantastic. So far, we are the first and only Indian production to have performed on that platform.

In 1981, TN Kaul, the Indian ambassador to USA, suggested that we perform the Ramayana at the NCPA (National Centre of Performing Arts), Bombay, but NCPA’s response to sponsoring the show was at best luke-warm. Kaul then invited actors Sunil & Nargis Dutt to watch us at Akshara. After the show, the Dutts insisted on paying for the play to be staged at NCPA. We agreed and played for 10 days straight to a full house. I remember after one of our shows, JRD Tata invited us for tea and said that he hadn’t watched the play, but it wasn’t because he did not want to. He had sent his driver to buy tickets but even the cheapest tickets were being sold in ‘black’ outside.

Our Ramayana has since been staged more than 2,000 times over 45 years at the most prestigious of institutions around the world and everywhere we went the theatres were filled with audiences. We did a lot of more work after that. A play called Karma, which was funny and moderm. I produced, performed in and narrated most of Gopal’s acclaimed television films like India Alive, The Kashmir Story, The Sufi Way, Gitanjali and Gandhi’s Gita, a play about Mahatma Gandhi’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita into Gujarati and how he and his wife Kasturba went through the final revision in the Himalayan foothills.

Gopal passed away in June of 2016, and his last appearance on stage was on April 13, 2016, when he played the part of the British Presiding Magistrate in the play about my father in the English Prison: Suresh Vaidya vs The British Government.
I miss him a lot. But we both believed in our work, the wisdom of life, love and theatrical arts and that should never stop. These days I am writing a play on Gopal and my life. A life that we have so loved, enjoyed and shared. We built a wonderful world together.

But this story is about Akshara Theatre, Gopal Sharman, me, our family, friends and well-wishers. We have been theatre performers for so many years and we have been extremely fortunate. Built in phases over a decade by Gopal himself and his team, the Akshara theatre, a non-profit arts institution, is spread over an acre of land and has grown to a 96-seat indoor theatre, and a 300-seat amphitheatre at the back of the property.

Our life is about our work, and anyone who is a part of our family or the theater has to willy-nilly perform, including our dogs and cats.

Image courtesy Akshara Theatre Archive. Narrative points by Jalabala Vaidya, New Delhi

Time Tales

19/03/2024

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