I called Malati at about 9:30 AM her time(you cannot imagine how hard it is for me to refer to all these elderly folks by their first names…it’s just not done in the Indian culture. We also never address our elders in ‘first person singular’ but always address them with respect, it is like “usted” in Spanish there is no parallel in English). I explained why I had called and asked her whether she was in the middle of something. “No you go ahead” She said, “I was praying…but God will wait…he doesn’t get mad” She chuckled, and so we began.
Age: 84 yrs
Birth Place: Maharashtra, India
Background information: Malati is one of the 4 siblings. Her father was a school teacher and her mother had passed away when she was very little. After marriage she has lived in Bombay till today. She is skilled at many things cooking being one of them. After navigating a little through different turns of her life like her childhood, the years when she taught at the girl’s school, time when she came to Bombay she settled on the time when she had just finished her ‘Matric’ exams. These are the final school leaving board exams.
Rohini: What was Matric exam?
Malati: It is the final school leaving exam, a board exam.
Rohini: Oh a Matriculate exam? Was it Nationwide?
Malati: I think it was state wide…Me and my elder sister had both taken the exam the same year. She had lost a couple of years when my mother had passed away. So now we both were taking the exam together…and the result would be published in the news paper not like today via phone or what you call it…your internet. My friend used to live in the next compound. They would get the news paper…and one day in the wee hours of the morning I remember my friend and her sister both came to our door with flash light in one hand and coconut sweets in the other and called me and my sister from outside, “Mali, Durgi, you both passed! Malati laughed. She was re-living the moment again. Enjoying passing the exam with her dear sister!
Rohini: Did your friends wear saris? I want to visualize them…
Malati: Yes my friend was wearing a 9 yard sari; her younger sister wore a 5 yard sari just like my younger sister. I and my older sister wore 9 yard saris too. It was only after 5 years or so that we started wearing 5 yard saris…but that apart these two came in their saris with flash lights and sweets.
Rohini: So what did you do after that?
Malati: Nothing…there was no college in our town then. So I became a school teacher in the same girls school where I had studied…the college came after a year. But my brother went to college.
(Suddenly there was a very loud sound of some fire crackers in the background. She could not hear me anymore). When the noise stopped after a good 45 seconds she explained that it is birthday of some long gone leader.
We chatted some more after that till the phone got disconnected for no apparent reason,... by chance… or maybe it was a gentle reminder for me that she needed to return to what she was doing…
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