My Mahim memories from the age of 3 onwards are vivid and sharp – it is with great nostalgia that I now recount some of these memories. I remember distinctly my first haircut when I was taken to a haircutting saloon down the street, grandly named the Vienna Haircutting Salon! I was fascinated by the myriad bottles of all shapes and sizes, inside the saloon including a bottle from which cold water was sprinkled onto my face and my hair. I was at first a little scared when the hair trimmer was applied to my hair, but fortunately I did not cry.

I was taken by my father everywhere including for a ride on the suburban train from the Mahim Station. I recall whilst passing the Parel Loco Shed, suddenly one of the engines whistled shrilly, startling me badly and I got very angry with Bappa, my Dad. My Mother often took me shopping for vegetables to the nearby City Light Market and I was thoroughly fascinated by the petromax lamps that were lighted in all the vegetable stalls in the evenings. Later on, I wrote a poem about these visits to the market, which I am reproducing below:

City Light Market
those soft evenings returning home
clutching my mother’s hand
with memories of rich redolent smells
ripened fruit and rotting vegetables
slippery pathways in the market place
swinging petromax lanterns
casting long ominous shadows
across wrinkled brown faces

Ramgopal Rao ©2013

On another of my walks with Dad, I was excited to see a little sharkskin suit of mine, hanging in the display case of the dry cleaners (it was mine, and I couldn’t fathom why it wasn’t back home) – I repeatedly pointed this out to my Dad, saying over and over again that this was my coat!

The other memory that stands out clearly in my mind: are the two unforgettable movies that I saw in 1955 & 1956. The first movie was “The Robe” the actors being Victor Mature and Richard Burton based on the famous book The Robe by Lloyd Douglas. I saw this movie with my parents in the rather old cinema house called Shree Cinema, not too far away from our house. I remember my mother being deeply moved by the crucifixion scene where Jesus lay dying on the Cross – I recall that she wept when this was being shown.

The second movie was “The Ten Commandments” – for many days a portable advertisement cart was rolled down our street and at times it was kept stationary right in front of our building and I could see from our window sill, Moses with the two Tablets of Stone in his hands and the bald Yul Brynner staring down from this placard. I finally persuaded my Dad to have this movie shown to me – he could not take me personally but he requested my older college-going cousin to take me along to the iconic Regal Cinema in South Bombay where the movie was running full house! Thus I finally got to see The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Ramses II.

Early memories tend to be patchy and fragmented – my earliest memory is that of the birth of my younger brother as mentioned earlier when I was just 2 years old in 1953. Apart from this memory of my brother, several early memories stand out distinctly in my mind! Our building Krishna Sadan, was just off the main road – Lady Jamshedji Road and over looked a fairly busy street. My mother used to carry and place me on the window ledge and I would then peer out endlessly, fascinated by the various goings on in the street below.

I remember seeing my first funeral – it was a Christian one, and a black hearse was slowly and solemnly moving down the street followed by a retinue of people all wearing black and looking sombre. At this point I asked my mother what it was and she replied that the sleeping man was being taken to the nearby Church and then to Heaven!

I was quite mischievous as a kid and I remember throwing a laundry hanging stick off our balcony! As soon as the stick fell on to the pavement below, I saw a passing servant woman picking it up and marching off with it as if it belonged to her. Another fascinating sight was a Road Roller on the street below when the road was being re-tarred!

Finally, I have a memory of receiving my first injection on the same balcony, from my Uncle, Dr Pai – he asked my mother to distract me with something happening on the street below and while I was engrossed with this, he quickly injected me in the butt!

Many years ago I decided to write a poem which talks about my childhood memories and I called it childhood remembrances. Here is the poem:

childhood remembrances

skeined memories
full of nostalgia and dread 

like watching the first funeral procession pass by
from our first floor window
whilst hanging simian like on my mother’s arm 

like seeing the first monsoon rain
iron clad grey skies
the flash of light and then the sound
sheets of water pouring
and car wipers doing a desperate dance
on plymouths and morris minors 

like going through the first day at school
apprehensive and excited
herded into a room
some crying, some looking blank
whilst I watched with increasing irritation
my father peering anxiously from the side window 

like going on my first train journey
jostling crowds and pandemonium on platforms
the sudden shrill whistle of the steam engines
as we passed the parel loco-shed
and I bit suddenly into my father’s face with fright and fear

like receiving my first injection on my rump
whilst the kindly owl-faced doctor diverted my attention
and punctuated his tale with a short sudden stab of pain 

like getting my first brother deformed and helpless
and telling my mother in a fit of anger
to send him back to the hospital from where he was obtained 

skeined memories
full of nostalgia and dread
now some fifty years ago in bombay.

© ramgopal rao

18 august 2002

Knowing that Bappa would soon become a Father, he started in right earnest, to find himself a flat of his own in Bombay. Luckily in 1952, there was a newly constructed building called Krishna Sadan, built by a fellow GSB, a Mr AK Shenoy in the Bombay suburb of Mahim. Bappa quickly rented this flat for a princely sum of Rs 80/- sometime in early 1952. By this time I was a new born baby back in Calicut. Bappa proudly brought Amma and also my Grandmother along with me to Bombay, the Urbs Prima in India in the monsoons of June, 1952!

My father made it a point to bring his mother-in-law (we called her Ma-Amma) to Bombay along with him. Ma-Amma was a very quiet, self-effacing and dignified lady who had lost her husband when she was in her early 20s, and pregnant with my mother. She was well looked after and treated with dignity, by our joint family in Swargmadom after the death of my grandfather from typhoid.

Mahim was a quiet suburb of Bombay of those days, and two blocks away from Krishna Sadan were stables where cows and buffaloes were housed; there were also small fields adjacent to it where vegetables were still being grown. There were gas lamps in our street and in the evenings a lamp lighter used to come and light the lamps! My earliest memories were of being carried by Ma-Amma and going across the street to the grocer and vegetable vendor where my grandmother would make her weekly purchases. Ma-Amma was an outstanding cook and anyone who had tasted her dishes would rave about her culinary skills! My mother was lucky to have someone to manage the kitchen so well, and this gave her ample time to take care of me and my siblings also very well.

Talking of siblings, my brother was born on 31^st October 1953, just a day before my birthday! I still vividly remember being taken to the hospital to see my new born brother. I believe I threw a tantrum when he was being brought home, saying it would be better if he was left in the hospital. So much for sibling jealousy!

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!

My father, Bappa as I called him, was all of 23 years when he arrived in Bombay in 1943, with a freshly minted M.A.Degree (in Economics) from Madras University. Job prospects were dim in those days and with all Civil Services exams cancelled due to the ongoing War, he decided to study further. He wanted to do a course in Accounting and joined Davar’s College of Commerce at Flora Fountain to prepare himself for the Accounting examination. During this time, he stayed with his older cousin Dr Amembal Purshottam Pai, who had a thriving practice as a General Physician. He lived in their spacious flat in the Girgaum area and travelled by tram to attend his Accounting classes at the Davar’s College.

The Amembal family was a very talented family and as I mentioned earlier, Bappa was staying with Dr AP Pai and Dr Pai’s elder brother AV Pai, ICS who was at that time in Delhi had carved out a very illustrious career in the Indian Civil Service. AV Pai was a very helpful man and when Bappa asked him to help him get a job, he promptly called Governor Taylor, a fellow ICS man at the Reserve Bank of India, and put in a word for my father. Lo and behold, Bappa got a telegram from the Reserve Bank to attend an Interview. He promptly complied, and in a short while, Bappa joined the Reserve Bank of India as a Research Assistant in the newly formed Economic Research Department. The RBI was very small at that time (as it had just been set up in 1935) and Governor Taylor was its last British Governor. 

The tide of war was slowing turning in favour of the Allied Forces and Bappa told me that the Fort area in Bombay was swarming with British Tommies and American GIs who were in transit and going onto the Burma front to fight the Japanese. And in 1944 the Dock Explosion in the Bombay Docks took place, which he experienced first-hand – he remembers distinctly two loud explosions and the mayhem that followed. And in 1946 was the Naval Mutiny, where Indian Naval ratings of the Royal Indian Navy both on board ships in the Bombay Harbour and on shore establishments, revolted and ran amok in the Fort area.

The Freedom struggle reached its climax in 1947 when India became a free India. Around this time Bappa started receiving marriage proposals and one of these proposals was from Swargmadom in Calicut. As I said earlier, Bappa’s and Amma’s families were related and therefore both these families were well known to each other. So in 1948, Bappa took leave from his work in Bombay and went to Calicut to have a look at Amma.

So Bappa took the Madras Mail from Tellicherry, and arrived at the Madras Central Station during the summer of 1939. He enrolled himself in the prestigious Presidency College, that splendid 178-year-old building facing the Marina Beach. The Presidency College held a special place amongst the students of colonial Madras and a favourite ditty sang of the “Princes of Presidency, the Gentlemen of MCC (Madras Christian College), the Slaves of Loyola (run by the Jesuits) and the Rowdies of Pachiyappa’s”.

Bappa found himself staying in the red brick Victoria Hostel just behind the Presidency College in Triplicane. War clouds were gathering over Europe and the winds of war were about to be unleashed upon the world, but the leisurely student life in Madras ambled along. Bappa enjoyed the occasional filter coffee and the idlis and the vadais at Picchu Iyer’s small eatery near the College!

Bappa had opted for the BA (Hons) course in Economics and his Professor was Dr Franco. The then Principal of the Presidency College was the Rev. Dr. Harold Papworth, the last of the British Principals of the College. World War II had started and there was an eminent threat of Madras being bombed by the Japanese; and soon the College was closed and students including Bappa, left for their various hometowns. Bappa described to me the difficult train journey that he had to undergo to go to Tellicherry, as there was a massive exodus of people fleeing from the beleaguered city.

However after a couple of months, the College reopened and Bappa came back and to cut a long story short, completed his studies and got himself an MA in Economics. He wanted to join the Indian Civil Services but, as the war was still raging, the ICS exams were cancelled as they were normally held in London. With this opportunity out of the way, my Dad decided to go to Bombay and try his luck at getting a job!

In the meantime, as Bappa was busy swotting for his upcoming exams and going through heavy tomes written by Malthus, Hobbes and Keynes, my mother was growing up in Calicut being looked after by my great grandfather, the towering patriarch of Swargmadom. My mother’s and my father’s families were in fact related and they were cousins, living in Calicut and Tellicherry respectively. And soon both these families were going to be connected once more as we shall see later!

Tellicherry is a small, shining jewel of a town encrusted along the ear lobe of the Malabar coast, where the white, foamy waves of the Arabian Sea gently break on its sandy beaches and against the iconic Tellicherry Pier. In this picture perfect town, my father whom I call Bappa, grew up in the 1920s. He attended theGovernment Brennen High School and later went to the Brennen College, an educational institution which is today over 127 years old, founded by Edward Brennen in 1862.

Our family name is actually Maller or Mallya as some people prefer to spell it, therefore how my father got the surname of Rao by itself makes for an interesting tale. The story goes that Bappa was taken to school by one of our family retainers and when at that time of enrolment, he was asked by the local Malayali clerk what was my father’s uncle’s surname since Kerala society is largely matriarchal to which the servant replied Rao as my dad’s uncle was avery well-known lawyer in Tellicherry and his name was Damodar Rao – and that is how Bappa became Ramappa Vittal Rao!

Bappa lived as part of a joint family where Bappa’s father and his brother-in-law had built 3 large houses on Logans Road in Tellicherry. Together they ran a grains wholesaling business importing rice from Rangoon as Burma was then part of undivided British India and they would supply the same to petty merchants in North Malabar. My grandfather’s role was that of an accountant in his brother in law’s wholesale shop in the Tellicherry Bazaar.

In the1920s and early 30s, the British Raj was going strong and the sun was still shining over the British Empire! In a small town like Tellicherry there were very few cars: Dodges, Studebakers and Morris Oxfords; and one of the privileged few who had one of these was Damodar Rao, the lawyer uncle of Bappa and this car was used to ferry the Maller children to School and back.

The years rolled by and Bappa completed his Matriculation and joined Brennen College to do his Intermediate in the Arts stream. In those days, one had to go either to Mangalore or Madras to complete one’s graduation as the College in Tellicherry offered education only up to the Intermediate level. So Bappa decided to go to Madras in 1939 and he was fortunate to get admission to do his B.A (Hons) in Economics at the renowned Presidency College in Madras, now Chennai.

Both my parents belong to the GSB Community. They were in fact cousins, and their families lived in Calicut and Tellicherry (now Thalaserry) respectively. My Mother whom I called Amma, was a posthumous child – she lost her Father to Typhoid while my grandmother was about 7 months pregnant. Amma, whose name was Premalata, was brought up by her grandfather and they all lived as a large joint family in Swargamadom, our ancestral house in Calicut.

Amma was a sensitive child and was in a way, over protected by her doting grandfather who was a highly respected teacher in Ganapath High School, a family run School. The school was started by my great-grandfather – an educationist named Ganapath Rao in 1886. Ganapath Rao later on in his life became an ascetic and took the name of Swami Suvicharananda. Spirituality was certainly running in the family and Amma especially, had a deep interest in all things spiritual as you will see later on in the story.

Amma often recounted to me her memories of Calicut of those days including her happy childhood when she was at school. She remembers meeting Mahatma Gandhi when he visited Calicut, and she was asked by her school to present him with a purse for the Freedom Movement. She was also cautioned by the family members not to wear any jewelry on her person, when she met Gandhiji, as the Mahatma had the habit of asking people to part with their jewelry as a contribution for the Freedom Movement!

Amma told me of the many trips that her grandfather took her on especially to the picturesque Calicut Beach, especially down Beach Road where the Beach Hotel was located – this was earlier the Malabar English Club built in 1890 but converted to a Hotel in the early 1940s.

Calicut was a very cosmopolitan town even in those days where Gujarati businessmen, Moplahs, Tamil Brahmins and Konkanis lived happily cheek by jowl – the Gujarathis spoke fluent Malayalam! Calicut was abuzz with commerce and trade.

And in another beach town of Malabar just 75 kms north of Calicut was Tellicherry where lived another GSB family, the Mallers or Mallyas as some of them spelt their name and into this family in 1920 was born, my Father!

Once the baptism ceremony was over, I walked down the church aisle, to be greeted by the other church members who warmly welcomed me into the fellowship of the Bombay English Church of Seventh-Day Adventists.

Besides me was my Mother who earlier that year had been baptized into the Adventist Church. Looking at her, I could not help but go down memory lane and reminiscence how all this came to pass! Was it my mother’s conversion that influenced me – the answer was both yes and no, as you would see later on in my story and how the conversion dynamics played out. But then we are getting ahead of the story!

Our Family belongs to the small, close knit Gowd Saraswat Brahmin community popularly known as GSBs, whose mother tongue is Konkani and are typically found settled down along the western coast of India, stretching from Goa to Cochin (now Kochi) in Southern India.

Tracing the roots of my immediate family, I discovered that we had fled Goa about 300 years ago, to escape religious persecution and forcible conversion by the Portuguese who came to Goa in the early 16th century. Earlier legend says that the GSBs had come to Goa from the banks of the now extinct Saraswati river in northern India, sometime in the dim past.

My ancestral history also tells me that our whole family especially from my mother’s side had settled down in Calicut: now known as Kozhikode, in the Malabar area of the present State of Kerala. Calicut in those days was ruled by the Zamorin who had welcomed Vasco Da Gama, the discoverer of India. Again, historical records show that my ancestor had lent money to the same Zamorin, who had in turn given as mortgage, a large house in the Taleel area of Calicut which my family occupied. Apparently as the Zamorin was unable to return this loan the house came into our ownership.

This property in relationship to those days was fairly large and the house was commodious with about 22 rooms; and adjoining this house was situated a ritual bathing pool. The name of this manor is Swargmadom, or the Heavenly Abode, and I was born in this house just past midnight on the 1st of November 1951.

I could not believe that this was happening to me! I was standing in the church vestry, hearing the rising notes of the church organ played by the elderly American missionary, Mrs McHenry. I could see the dark, shining face of Pastor Ebenezer giving me an encouraging look, as he gingerly stepped into the water-filled baptismal tank. The music rose to a crescendo. I became increasingly more nervous and self-conscious as I was terrified of water; and at the thought of being immersed in the baptismal tank. I wished I had learnt how to swim earlier.

The music stopped. Pastor Ebenezer, now waist deep in water, held out his hand and gripped mine, as I descended into the tank in a daze. I looked nervously at the congregation. I soon felt the Pastor place a little white towel over my mouth. I was briefly pulled under water but in no time I found myself pulled out again. The organ started up again, and in that surreal moment I realised that I had just been baptized as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, and admitted into the fellowship of the Bombay English Church.

The year was 1971 and I was just 20 years old.

Standing there in the baptismal tank, I experienced my Spiritual rebirth, what is termed in Christian Theology as being “born again”. I cannot but look back with amazement and analyze how all this came to pass. And this is part of the story which I will now tell.