My mother was born when India was still a British colony. My grandparents worked for Mahatma Gandhi. My mother grew up on his ashram.
According to my mother, until she was 5 years old, she never walked. Her father carried her everywhere. While this is an exaggeration, she was deeply beloved by her parents.
Part of it may be because her two elder brothers died as babies. My mother was the first child to live.
My grandparents married in the 1930s. My grandmother was only 18. My grandfather was 10 years older. He was a Brahmin, but she was not, and caste used to be a big deal in India.
But my grandfather worked for Mahatma Gandhi, and Gandhi preached the humanity of all people, including the despised Untouchables, the poor abused and maligned caste-less of India.
My grandfather fell in love with my grandmother and asked her to marry him, though they were of different castes and cultures — she came from South India, he came from Gujurat. Yet they were together for 64 years, until he died. They always loved each other.
Their work for Gandhi led them through the villages of India. They traveled through rural areas far from medical care. This caused the death of their first two children.
Their first baby died as an infant. My mother is not sure why. Some sudden illness that strikes the very young, perhaps. Far from doctors, maybe my grandparents did not know, either, why their 10 month son died.
They loved him deeply. Growing up, my mom remembers they talked about him often.
She never met him, but she did meet her next oldest brother. She was born when he was two years old. But he died when he was three.
He was playing outside and was wounded by a rusty nail. Something that doesn’t lead to tragedy in the modern world. But this was a village in India in 1942.
When they realized what had happened, my grandparents rushed to find their child help. They boarded the next train to the city, to find a doctor. It was too late. Their son died in their arms.
They had three more boys after my mother, and another girl. Four of their children survived to adulthood.
But my mother’s youngest brother died when he was 14. This child was born after the British left India.
My grandparents had moved to Bombay, now Mumbai. They no longer worked for Indian Independence. India was a free country, and Gandhi was dead, assassinated by a man who didn’t believe in equality among people, which Gandhi preached.
My grandfather was a contractor. He often worked with the British, despite the fact that it was the British who broke his knees in a jail cell, because he marched to the sea to make salt.
My mother was in college at the time. She was one of the rare Indian women of her era who obtained a college education. She studied art.
Her youngest brother she remembers as an angel. My uncle, her brother, remembers him as “scrappy, a good kid.”
He traveled the trains one day. Indian trains are crowded and people often hang off the sides. This is what my mother’s youngest brother did. But his arms were still skinny. He wasn’t strong enough to hold on when the train suddenly jerked. He fell off. And was run over.
One comfort, his death was instantaneous. He didn’t suffer.
It changed my grandparents, the death of their youngest son. My mother said my grandfather never recovered. It wasn’t until I was born, their first grandchild, that they began to laugh again.
I try to imagine the life of my grandparents. Born to a captive nation. Fighting for freedom. Suffering through hardship and the death of two children. Seeing the birth of their nation. Prospering, sending their oldest daughter to college. And then the death of their youngest child.
I cannot imagine the strength they had. I am humbled. When I go through tough times in my own life, I remember what they endured. It gives me courage.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by Vishnu Nishad on Unsplash