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The women’s living room in my childhood home had a single piece of furniture—a huge rosewood swing with four long chains that were anchored into the ceiling when my grandfather built the house, on a leafy road in Madras, India, in 1939.
That swing, with its gentle glide back and forth in the South Indian heat, set the stage for a million stories. My mother, her sisters and her cousins, wearing simple saris in fuchsia, blue or yellow, rocked on it in the late afternoon with cups of sweet, milky coffee, their bare feet stretched to the floor to keep it moving. They planned meals, compared their children’s grades, and pored over Indian horoscopes to find suitable matches for their daughters or the other young people in their extensive family networks. They discussed politics, food, local gossip, clothes, religion, music, books. They were loud, talked over each other, and moved the conversation along.
From my earliest days, I played on the swing with my older sister, Chandrika, and my younger brother, Nandu. We swayed and sang our school songs. We snoozed; we tussled. We read British children’s novels by Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton, and Frank Richards. We fell onto the shiny red-tiled floor and scrambled back on.
Ours was the big, airy house where a dozen cousins would gather for festivals and holidays. The swing was a set piece for elaborate plays we wrote and performed, based on anything that caught our fancy. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles gathered to watch, holding bits of torn newspaper scrawled with the words “one ticket.” They felt free to critique our shows, or to start chatting, or simply walk away. My childhood was not a world of “Great job!” It was more like: “That was so-so.” or “Is this the best you can do?” We were accustomed to honesty over false encouragement.
The reviews didn’t matter on those busy, happy days. We felt important. We were in motion, laughing and carrying on to our next game. We played hide-and-go-seek, we climbed trees and picked the mangoes and guavas that grew in the garden surrounding the house. We ate on the floor sitting cross-legged in a circle, with our mothers in the center ladling sambar sadam and thayir sadam — lentil stew and curds mixed with rice — from clay tureens and dishing out Indian pickles onto banana leaves that served as plates.
In the evenings when the cousins were visiting, the swing was dismantled—the great, shiny-wood plank unhitched from the silver-colored chains and carried to the back porch to be stored overnight. Then we’d line up in the same space to sleep, boys and girls in a row on a large, colorful mat, each with our own pillow and cotton sheet. Sometimes, we’d be under a mosquito net. If the power was on, a fan turned lazily overhead, pretending to break the heat when the overnight temperature was 85°F (29.5°C). We’d sprinkle water on the floor around us hoping its evaporation would cool the place.
Like many houses in India at the time, Lakshmi Nilayam, as our house was named, also had a men’s living room—a vast hall with big square windows directly off the entry portico where it was easy to keep an eye on who came and went.
My paternal grandfather, a retired district judge, had used all of his savings to design and construct this grand, two-story residence, with its terrace and balconies. But he spent almost all his time in the men’s living room, a grand hall with windows all around and a wall clock that rang at the half hour and hour. He read newspapers and books, lounging in an easy chair with a canvas seat. He slept on the carved-wood divan with deep blue upholstery.
He warmly welcomed visitors, who almost always dropped by unannounced. The men would gather on the room’s two large sofas and talk about world affairs, local politics or current issues. They had strong points of view about what government or companies should be doing to help citizens of the country. They spoke in Tamil or in English, often swapping between the two.
Children came and went—hanging out, reading or working on homework. I never saw a woman sit in that room in front of my grandfather, who I called Thatha. My mother was always in and out of the room, serving coffee and snacks to visitors, or tidying up.
An Oxford English Dictionary and a Cambridge Dictionary, both bound in burgundy-colored leather, lay on a wooden side table. Thatha once had my sister and me read Nicholas Nickleby, the almost 1000-page novel by Charles Dickens. Every few chapters he’d take the book, point to a page and ask: "What's the meaning of this word?" If I didn’t know, he’d say, "But you said you’d read these pages.” Then I’d have to look up the word and write two sentences to show I understood it.
I adored and revered Thatha, whose full name was A. Narayana Sarma. He was born in 1883 in Palghat in the state of Kerala, which, under the British, was part of the Madras Presidency. He was already in his late 70s when I was a schoolgirl, a slight man of 5-foot-7 or so with thick, bifocal glasses, regal, very firm and very kind. He dressed in a perfectly pressed white dhoti and a light-colored half-sleeve shirt. When he talked, no one else did. He had studied math and law, and, for decades, was a district and sessions judge deciding both civil and criminal cases. His marriage was puzzling to me. My grandparents had eight kids, but when I knew my grandmother before she died, they never seemed to speak. They lived in different parts of the house. He was entirely dedicated to his young grandchildren, introducing us to ever-more-sophisticated books and ideas, explaining geometry theorems, and pressing for detail and clarity on our school efforts.
I was never in doubt that the head of the household – and of the family – resided in the men’s living room. But the heart and soul of our lively existence was down the hall, in the open space with the red-tiled floor and the gigantic rosewood swing. That’s where my mother kept the household running, with the help of Shakuntala, a young woman who did the dishes at the outdoor sink and swabbed the floors.
My mother was always in motion – cooking, cleaning, loudly barking out orders, feeding others, and singing along with the radio. The house was eerily quiet when she wasn’t home. None of us liked that at all.
My father, an unusual man for the times, was around too, assisting with the chores and helping care for the children. He had a Master’s degree in mathematics and worked in a bank. He shopped for essentials, helped make beds, and he loved to compliment my mother when she made his favorite foods. He often allowed me to tag along with him. He was a quiet man with a wicked sense of humor, filled with wisdom. I often refer to the Greek philosopher Epictetus’ saying: “We have two ears and one mouth, so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” My father was a living example of this. He was adept at walking away from any tense situation without exacerbating it.
Every month, my father handed his paycheck to my mother, who handled the everyday expenses. She documented all the transactions on a paper “cash register” and balanced the accounts each week. It’s a bookkeeping system that she set up intuitively, and still amazing to me that she developed it with no training at all in accounting.
***
My childhood home was defined by particularly progressive thinking when it came to educating women. I was a middle child, dark-skinned, tall and skinny. I had loads of energy and loved to play sports, climb trees and run around the house and garden, all in a society where girls were judged on their skin tone, beauty, calmness and “homeliness.” I overheard chitchat among relatives wondering how they would ever find someone to marry “this tomboy.” That still stings.
But I was never deprived, as a girl, of being able to learn more, study harder, or prove myself alongside the smartest kids in our midst. In our home, boys and girls were allowed to be equally ambitious. That’s not to say that the rules were just the same – there was certainly a sense that girls were to be protected differently from boys. But intellectually and in terms of opportunities, I never felt held back by my sex.
This came from the top – from our family’s interpretation of centuries-old Brahmin values, from India’s mid-century mission to prosper as a newly independent nation and from Thatha’s world view. I was lucky that my father, who I called Appa, was completely on board. He was always there to take us to any lessons and walked around with a proud smile if we did something well.
He told me he never wanted me to have to put my hand out and ask for money from anyone other than my parents. “We are investing in your education to help you stand on your own two feet,” he said. “The rest is up to you. Be your own person.”
My mother’s view was the same. She is a tough, driven woman who, like many daughters-in-law in those days, was blamed by the elders for family conflicts, even if she had nothing to do with them. She handled those issues deftly and with a firm hand. She would have made a great CEO. She didn’t get the chance to attend college and she directed that frustration into making sure her girls could soar. It wasn’t easy for her. I have always felt that she lived her life vicariously through her daughters, wishing for us the freedoms she never had.
***
When I was about 6, my sister, Chandrika, and I were assigned daily chores. The most relentless began near dawn, when, on many days, one of us climbed out of our shared bed at the first sound of a grunting, bawling water buffalo at the front door. A local woman would arrive with the big, gray animal and milk her for the day’s supply. Our job was to make sure she didn’t bulk up the milk by adding water.
My mother, who I call Amma, used that buffalo milk for the yoghurt, the butter and the delicious, aromatic South Indian coffee that were staples of our vegetarian diet. A vendor came a little later in the morning, selling fresh vegetables—cauliflower, spinach, squash, pumpkin, potatoes, onions. Great variety was available, for a price.
By the time I turned 7, I was often sent to the grocery store a few blocks away to drop off a list of items for home delivery or pick up a few things. The clerk would wrap up the lentils, rice or pulses into a newspaper curled into a cone, and tie it with twine at the top. Large orders would be delivered to the house in more newspaper cones. The grains were poured into glass or aluminum canisters in the kitchen, the paper folded, the twine made into a ball, and both left on the shelf to be used again. Nothing was discarded.
I think of Amma as busy all the time. She’d be dressed and in the kitchen when the milk was carried in, and soon deliver the first cup of coffee to Thatha and my father. Kids were given a cup of Bournvita, a chocolate malt drink. Then she’d make breakfast, usually oat porridge with milk, sugar and cardamom powder. On very hot days, we drank kanji, a mix of cooked rice soaked in water overnight, and then blended with diluted buttermilk.
By 8 a.m., she’d be in the garden, working alongside Shanmugam, our gardener, tending flowers and pruning the bushes. She picked flowers to adorn the prayer room, a large alcove in the kitchen, where she told her daily prayers, often while she was cooking. She listened to Carnatic music and sang along. Amma always wore flowers in her hair, a string of white or colorful blooms around her dark bun or ponytail. Once in a while, on weekends, she tucked flowers into our pigtails.
Once my father and the kids had left home, she’d be back in the kitchen, preparing lunch for Thatha, Chandrika and me. The stove was fueled with kerosene and the fumes could be overpowering. But she always cooked us fresh meals that were packed into neat tiffin carriers and sent warm to school. Shakuntala would spoon out the food while we sat under a tree in the playground. Every morsel was consumed; if we didn’t eat it all, we’d have to eat the leftovers at dinner, a situation we knew to be avoided at all costs. Amma served Thatha his midday meal on a large silver platter with little bowls for the various vegetables and accompaniments.
In the afternoons, she’d take a rickshaw to her parents’ house a mile away to check in, discuss family matters and help her mother in the kitchen. Then she’d head back home to cook again. Day after day, each meal was uniquely prepared, eaten and cleaned up, with no leftovers. We had no refrigerator.
Chandrika and I returned home from school at around 4:30 pm, and were greeted by Thatha and Amma. We got an hour to snack and play until Appa came home at about 5:30 pm.
Then we sat on the floor at Thatha’s feet to do our homework, even though we had our own desks. He checked our work regularly. If we struggled with math, he’d pull out papers on which he’d already composed practice problems. On many days, we also wrote out two pages in handwriting notebooks to practice cursive — usually the phrase “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” because it includes all 26 letters of the alphabet. Thatha believed that “a good handwriting meant a good future.”
At around 8 pm, we ate dinner together, although Amma would serve us first and eat later. Then there would be more schoolwork, chores and lights out. Often, there would be power cuts and the house was plunged into darkness. We lit candles and lanterns. Mosquitos buzzed around, loving the dark and feasting on all of us. Capturing mosquitos with a clap of the hands was a required survival skill. Before we slept, we had to tell our prayers loudly so my mother could hear them — the Lord’s Prayer, which we also recited at school, and then a couple of Sanskrit prayers.
When I was 8, my mother gave birth to a little boy, Nandu, through a complicated C-section. He was the pride and joy of the entire family – someone to carry on the family name. I absolutely adored him. As was the tradition in families like ours, Amma and the baby spent a couple of months at her parents home, a period when my father did a lot of the chores and got Chandrika and me off to school. Eight weeks later, when she came home with Nandu, Amma was busier than ever, managing a new baby and all her previous activities, even though she was still recovering from major abdominal surgery. As far as I could tell, she never missed a beat. How she did it, I’ll never know.
Excerpted from My Life in Full: Work, Family, and our Future by Indra Nooyi with permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Preetara LLC
