Hootoksi Tyabji

We were married in Bombay on the 8^th of December 1971. and after a wonderful honeymoon in England and Switzerland we began our lives together in a barsati (terrace apartment) in Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi.

Living in Delhi was quite different from living in Bombay and initially it was a huge culture shock!  I came from a cosmopolitan, liberal city to a parochial, conservative one especially for women. Both Robert and I were able to adjust to life in the capital quite quickly (in spite of the often 45-degree-plus summer heat) and we made a lot of wonderful friends many of whom we are in touch with to this day.

Robert had his BSA Gold Star motorcycle his pride and joy! we whizzed around on it and often rode out of the city over the weekends exploring and picnicking! After the Gold Star came the 1953 Matchless twin and it was only when we had our 3 children, that we considered getting a second hand Ambassador car! I used a little Moped which I had to pedal to start, to run around town and occasionally I drove it about 20 KMS to Delhi University to attend a couple of lectures there. In 1972 It was unusual for a woman to be seen riding one of those and I was often teased and harassed which I found quite tiresome and dangerous!

Theater and Music were important parts of my life and so I joined a choir and two theater groups Yatrik and Theater Action Group (TAG).  Through them, we made some wonderful like-minded friends. There was Sanjay & Sonya Acharya, Philomena D’cruz & Jayaram, Surinder Duggal, Annie Thomas, Himanshu & Maya, Dhruv and Poochi Dalmia, Barry John, Joy Michael and Amal Allana whose daughter Zuli was the same age as Michel and they were inseparable in Playschool.  We performed many wonderful plays, and it was through theater that we got to know Cousin Khalid Tyabji and the extended family in Delhi at the time. There was his dad Badruddin Tyabji who intimidated me with his regal bearing, his sharp wit and his amazing intellect.  Aunty Suraiya his wife, was exceedingly kind and her cookbook Mirch Masala is a treasure in my kitchen, and I use it frequently. We also got to know their daughter Leila Tyabji and their sons Hindal and Adil. We enjoyed spending time with Cousin Nasir and his sister Salima, their brother Hassan & his wife Zahara and Uncle Daniel and Aunt Sarah Latif. My mum’s younger brother Rear Admiral Sarosh Lalkaka and his wife Roshan were also posted in Delhi for the first two years that we lived there, as was another relative of mine, Freny Mody who was married to Sharad Ghathosker, the Drugs Controller of India. We once invited them to dinner where I cooked a prawn curry that was so spicy none of us could eat it! There were also my old school friends Urmila and her husband Neil Dongre and Jeri Ardeshir who was Jeri masi to our children and who totally spoiled them!

When we first moved to Delhi, Robert worked for a company called Cinema Workshop, producing 16mm educational films and training materials for teachers. He did several assignments for the UNICEF Regional Office (ROSCA) in Delhi and greatly impressed UNICEF's regional communication officer, Ken Nelson, who offered him a contract to work on a series of communication projects. What started off as temporary contractual work continued untill he was made a permanent staff member. We moved from Delhi to Bhutan, and then to Somalia, Yemen, Tanzania, and Nepal. Robert worked in UNICEF till he retired in 2003, 30 years of selfless and dedicated service to children in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world.

I briefly worked for the Delhi TV station Doordarshan where I produced a weekly program called “Mirror of the World” and then for the Narang Group at a company called Hindustan Garments where I was the Public Relations officer. I knew nothing about Public Relations, so I learned on the job! I had a wonderful boss called Jagraj Mehta who was a great motivator and a terrific person to work for!  I went to and from work on the back of Bhuvnesh Singhal’s Vespa scooter. Bhuvnesh worked in the cosmetics division of Narang’s and then branched out to form his own cosmetics company called LIPPS. He remains a good friend to this day, and we keep in touch with him and his wife Usha and their two children Abhinav & Anjali.

In December 1972 Michel was born in Bombay at the St. Elizabeth Nursing Home where both Robert and I were also born. I spent three months after his birth at my parents’ home at 20 Nepean Sea Road and then flew to Delhi where we began our married life as a family. We rented an apartment at C-399 Defence Colony. It was a three storied house, Mrs Tej Vir Singh who owned the property lived on the ground floor, we were on the 1^st floor and an American gentleman called Chris was in the barsati. He had a string of helpers all of whom frustrated him especially the cook who served him a bowl of boiled lettuce when he had asked for a green salad! After Chris left, Nasreen Fazelbhoy rented the flat. She was a lovely lady whose aunt, Mrs. Carimbhoy coincidently lived above us at Nepean Sea Road in Bombay!

Our landlady Mrs. Tej Vir Singh was a Sikh woman of large proportions with a loud voice and a dictatorial bearing. She managed the Cottage Emporium which was Delhi’s premier establishment for arts and crafts.

Her Sunday ritual included the washing of her long hair which she proceeded to dry while lying in the sun in her car parked in the driveway directly below our balcony.

Our apartment had two bedrooms each with an attached bath, a nice sized living dining room, a small kitchen and a beautiful large, tiled terrace where we had some lovely plants. It was a great play area for the children on days when it wasn’t too hot. In the living room Robert had installed a wonderful large desert cooler with “Khus Khas” mats – warm dry air from the environment is changed to cool moist air through a process of evaporation and blown through the khus mats into the house. The perfume from those mats was divine and the desert cooler was a lot more comfortable than air conditioning! On the outside where the cooler was installed, we had the most glorious large Bougainvillea, which was covered for most of the year in the most spectacular pink flowers. The apartment had a separate living space above the garage for domestic help which was accessed from outside and had its own entrance. It was a large room with an attached bath and kitchenette, and because of it we were more attractive to prospective helpers who wanted the job because it came with a nice place to live!

Our first domestic helpers were an elderly husband-and-wife team, Thomas and Shanta. They were both dark complexioned and looked like they had come from South India. When I inquired if they had, Thomas (who did all the talking) was indignant and told us in no uncertain terms that he was from Burma and had only ever been a cook for English people. Coming to work for us was a downgrade for him but he needed the living space and so accepted the job! His resume had a line “Thomas has only cooked Englishmen” I did not dare comment on this! Shanta helped me take care of the house and the children and Thomas did the cooking. Unfortunately, he had a drinking problem and we eventually had to ask them to leave.

After Thomas & Shanta, we had Devi a young Nepali woman who was wonderful with the children and enjoyed playing with them but did not like to do the housework; then came Alice a sweet kind woman who unfortunately had to leave for family reasons, and then there were two Mary’s. The first one we couldn’t communicate with as we discovered after we hired her, that she was very deaf and couldn’t/wouldn’t wear a hearing aid. When she came for her interview, she came with a relative who did all the talking on her behalf. I thought Mary was shy, it didn’t cross my mind that she may be deaf!! The second Mary was a disaster! While we were on holiday she used our home as a brothel, pimping her own daughter. Long after she left, we kept getting calls from prospective clients. At this point my mum intervened and found me a cook in Bombay who was willing to come and work for us in Delhi. She put him on a train and told me that I would be able to identify him when he got off it as he would carry an umbrella in his right hand and a tiffin carrier in his left, and he did! We spotted him immediately because in addition to those items he was dressed in baggy Khaki shorts, Bombay style. He hated living in Delhi and lasted perhaps a month, maybe two. He was fearful of the Sikhs with their beards and turbans, would go to the market to buy vegetables and come home without them. The sellers laughed at him and his Bombay-hindi! he called potatoes “batata” not “Aloo” and onions “kaada” not “Pyaz”

Just when I was giving up hope of ever finding good help the Gods smiled on us and we were blessed with Dolma. Dolma Gyaltsen was a wonderful Tibetan lady who worked for us for 5 years. She lived with her husband and two daughters Choden and Tenzing who were about the same age as Michel and Farhad and they played together. When we left for Bhutan, I managed to find Dolma a job with some friends in the American Embassy. Through them she worked for another diplomat and finally ended up in the United States. Now she lives in Berkley California, where she takes care of an elderly professor. With his help she was able to get her entire family to immigrate, her daughters are married and well settled, and she has 4 grandchildren. 

In 2014 Michel was pwerforming with his Tibetan Band in a concert hall in San Francisco. There were posters plastered around the venue with pictures of the band members, his among them. Dolma and her daughter Choden were at that concert and were besides themselves with excitement when they went backstage to introduce themselves to Michel. It was a magical, wondrous moment and because of it we are all re-connected!

Defence Colony was a lovely neighborhood, and it was self-contained. We had a small market where you could buy fresh produce and all the groceries you needed. There were a couple of nice stores and restaurants, a doctor’s clinic (Dr M N Sood was our family doctor), a pharmacy and laundry and a Mother Dairy Milk vending machine which squirted out a liter of ice-cold milk into your own container. I could bicycle to the market and back in 20 mins with Michel sitting in a basket upfront. A canal or “nala” ran along the middle of the colony and there were bungalows and two to three storied homes on either side of it. The house numbers were prefaced with an alphabet A-D with the poshest homes in D block. Punjabi ladies at high society gatherings had no qualms in asking these questions when you were first introduced. (1) Are you married (2) how much does your husband earn? (3) You live in Defence Colony, which block? 

We were surrounded by wonderful neighbours who became particularly good friends. Opposite us was Kuldip Shenker and his wife Meera and their young daughter Madhuri, Leila & Kidoo Bath, their two daughters Sonali and Shalini loved to “borrow” Farhad and carried him around. They were young children themselves, only all of 8 and 10 years old!  Brunhilda Gupta & her husband and two young sons lived down the road on the same street as ours, as did Purveen & Sahas. Vikram, Michel’s buddy and his family lived behind our house. Ellen and Bhadra Raghavan lived next door, and it was from them that we inherited our cat Nooky, a beautiful large American Tabby, which they couldn’t afford to take back to the US!

Farhad was born in 1975 and Adil came along in 1978. Both children were delivered by Dr. Mohini Karna at the Holy Family Hospital. My mother flew from Kuala Lumpur for both births, and it was a great comfort and help to have her with me at that time.

As I had interrupted my tertiary education in Bombay to get married, I decided to complete my BA degree from Delhi University through correspondence. This proved to be quite a challenge, so I quit working for Hindustan Garments to become a full-time mum and student. I graduated in 1975 a few months after Farhad was born!

Soon after we moved into the apartment, we noticed a street dog who followed us every time we walked out of the main gate. She would wait to greet us when we came home and was always very affectionate. One Sunday we decided to adopt her, so after giving her a good scrub, she walked up the stairs, into our house and hearts!  she immediately settled in and was absolutely at home the first day we had her. Our gardener a kind old man said we should call her “Sunday” so we did!  She walked beside me when I took Michel out in his pram and would sit and guard the empty stroller till we returned no matter how long that would take!  She loved the baby and was patient with him when he tugged her ears or her tail! Unfortunately, she contracted Leptospirosis two years after we got her and there was nothing the vet could do to save her from it.

On Michel’s second birthday we bought him a puppy, a black Labrador who we named Akbar after the great Mughal Emperor. He was a very handsome dog, with an excellent pedigree and a bearing to match his royal name. Akbar was an exceptional dog and undoubtedly Michel’s best friend. I can clearly see them lying on the floor with a pair of headphones each, listening to Micheal Jackson on a Walkman! He always carried a stone around in his mouth and behaved rambunctiously with youngsters and sedately with older people and was always in great demand as a stud as he knew how to approach different temperaments in dogs as well!

Across the street from our apartment there was a rickety old wooden cart covered with a blanket which served as an ironing board. All day long, the couple who owned the cart ironed clothes for all of us who lived in C Block. Their iron was huge and heavy, the top came off and had to be filled and re-filled with burning coals from a fire they kept going all day long beside them. They were called Presswallah and Presswali, or ironing man and ironing woman. Along with their eight or nine-year-old son, they came each morning and evening to our house to collect and deliver clothes. It was a superb service! They also had three younger children who happily played all day long in the mud beside the cart. 

Presswalli and Presswallah were amused by us and our home which was always filled with children, dogs, cats, fish, and tortoises. One morning one of their children was playing beside the drain when he saw a beautiful rock and climbed down to pick it up when it began to move! Frightened, he started screaming and when Presswallah picked it up he saw it was a turtle. He brought it to us, and Robert put it into our bathtub filled with water.  No sooner was the little fella in the water we saw a string of bubbles floating to the surface, and a tiny face and three flappers, the fourth one was missing! We called it Bubbles and were able to find her a beautiful home with friends who lived on a farm in Gurgaon. She happily slipped into their pond leaving a string of bubbles behind her!

Michel went to Ms. Bim Bisel’s school called “The Playhouse” for two years and then to The Happy Hours Primary School in Greater Kailash along with Farhad. Adil had no schooling in Delhi as we left for Bhutan when he was just two!

Our lives in Delhi were busy, culturally rich, and wonderful. Robert enjoyed working for UNICEF, he was in the field, inventing, creating, and traveling, I had the children, theater and college and together our lives were filled with fun-times and good friends. We loved the music and theater scene and often went to talks at the India International Centre. There were wonderful outdoor concerts, Ravi Shankar, Zakhir Hussain and the Dagar Brothers were some of the big names we were privileged to enjoy. Robert recorded the Dagar Brothers for an American film producer who was making a film on Indian Classical music with a focus on the vocal Dhrupad genre which the Dagar Brothers were famous for. It was a superb recording but sadly we don’t have a copy of it.

We went on weekend trips out of Delhi and spent many evenings in Lodhi Gardens and Safdurjung Park with the children.

We loved our friends who became family and life in Delhi from 1972-1980 was filled with fun and it was GOOD!