07 Bappa and Amma Get Married

While Bappa was settling down at his new job at the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay, Amma was growing up into a shy but beautiful young woman in Calicut. Her grandfather pampered her as she was a posthumous child, and catered to her every whim and fancy. Amma grew up in a large joint Family in our spacious Swargmadom Family House and very soon she successfully completed her Matriculation Examination.

Bappa, in the meanwhile immersed himself in work: writing specialist Occasional Papers on behalf of his Economics Research Department for the Reserve Bank of India. His Department was attached to the Governor’s Secretariat and Bappa was expected to churn out these economic theses, as and when the Governor required them or when matters economic came up in the newly elected Indian Parliament.

Bappa was getting marriage proposals from various GSB families but somehow he never showed any interest. But one day, he was informed by one of his relations that there was this cousin of his who was of a marriageable age in Calicut, and that he should seriously consider this as a possible marriage alliance. Bappa was finally persuaded and he agreed to go to Calicut to meet his prospective bride. Dutifully Bappa went to Calicut and met Amma at Swargmadom and as they said, the rest is history – they were engaged and decided to get married in 1948!

After his marriage in 1948, Bappa brought Amma to Bombay, and they were lucky to stay with his elder sister in Beryl House, Colaba. This was a spacious official flat of the Indian Railways where my Uncle was a Senior Official and it was located on the quiet, leafy Wodehouse Road in the prestigious South Bombay area of Colaba. Amma often used to tell me how clean Bombay was in those days especially South Bombay where the roads were washed every single day! Though it was 1948, South Bombay still had very strong colonial British influences including iconic shops like the Army and Navy Stores; Whiteaway Laidlaw and Evans Fraser where the gentry shopped.

Thus two years passed pleasantly and there somewhere in late winter of 1951, I was conceived in Beryl House, shortly after which my pregnant mother left Bombay for Calicut, to go through the rest of her pregnancy!