I have been reading Let's Call the Whole Thing Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer on my train ride to work. Most of the stories so far have been good, which is more than you can say for many anthologies.
On the train rides I have been thinking of things I always wanted to write about, this post is about my grandparents in the early 1940s.
My grandparents married in their teens and for a brief while wrote letters to each other before setting up house together. My grandmother had studied in a convent school in Kumbakonam* before being pulled out for her wedding, she probably diligently absorbed all that the good nuns taught for my grandfather says that she expressed herself quite elegantly in her very best cursive Tamil. These letters ceased when they did set up house, romantic love itself must have lasted longer. Their tales of living in a small place in a marginal suburb in their initial years in Mumbai and struggling with two small children certainly have a sense of romance about them. I cannot say how long it all lasted because we know so little of the early years of a grandparent apart from what they choose to tell us. And as with many Indian women of a certain age, my grandmother will never admit to even a hint of romantic feeling. We know about her letters only through my grandfather who destroyed them on her request. So it is that in my living memory any romance has been replaced by - as Sontag would have it – the deadly, deadening combat of marital wars. But even the seemingly unhappy marriage may not be so, as a child you see each quarrel as fatal, terminal, ugly, vicious but later you realise that the hidden mechanics of any relationship will always be invisible. Now we just take a certain bristliness in their marriage as routine.
Yet I remain touched by those letters. I can see my grandmother, a lissom form in her nine yard saree writing those letters, this a reconstructed image from photographs of her. I can see my grandfather, young, handsome, poor and a sharp witted, well read lad from the provinces writing poems in response, this a reconstruction from photographs and his reminiscences. I think I am touched by it because at that moment they are not my grandparents but simply a young, hopeful couple from anywhere on the brink of life, in a moment of time when everything to come can only be good.
*note that the town has a website and styles itself the Cambridge of South India, the alumni naturellement are "eminent stalwarts".
On the train rides I have been thinking of things I always wanted to write about, this post is about my grandparents in the early 1940s.
My grandparents married in their teens and for a brief while wrote letters to each other before setting up house together. My grandmother had studied in a convent school in Kumbakonam* before being pulled out for her wedding, she probably diligently absorbed all that the good nuns taught for my grandfather says that she expressed herself quite elegantly in her very best cursive Tamil. These letters ceased when they did set up house, romantic love itself must have lasted longer. Their tales of living in a small place in a marginal suburb in their initial years in Mumbai and struggling with two small children certainly have a sense of romance about them. I cannot say how long it all lasted because we know so little of the early years of a grandparent apart from what they choose to tell us. And as with many Indian women of a certain age, my grandmother will never admit to even a hint of romantic feeling. We know about her letters only through my grandfather who destroyed them on her request. So it is that in my living memory any romance has been replaced by - as Sontag would have it – the deadly, deadening combat of marital wars. But even the seemingly unhappy marriage may not be so, as a child you see each quarrel as fatal, terminal, ugly, vicious but later you realise that the hidden mechanics of any relationship will always be invisible. Now we just take a certain bristliness in their marriage as routine.
Yet I remain touched by those letters. I can see my grandmother, a lissom form in her nine yard saree writing those letters, this a reconstructed image from photographs of her. I can see my grandfather, young, handsome, poor and a sharp witted, well read lad from the provinces writing poems in response, this a reconstruction from photographs and his reminiscences. I think I am touched by it because at that moment they are not my grandparents but simply a young, hopeful couple from anywhere on the brink of life, in a moment of time when everything to come can only be good.
*note that the town has a website and styles itself the Cambridge of South India, the alumni naturellement are "eminent stalwarts".
why do want to embarass me at this age ????
ReplyDeletecan't imagine how i looked when i was very young.
Tatha
Hi
ReplyDeleteThat was intresting.
I was not aware that appa and amma exchanged letters. Appa says his side was all in the form of poems.
I still can't imagine them doing something remotely romantic too!!
Great reading
KM
Thatha there are your wedding pictures if you wish to know!
ReplyDeleteUpdated post to state T wrote poems. You need to isolate the fact that they are parents and then its easy to see :-)
wow!i kind of knew deep down that t and p must have done something really romantic at some point!!;-)60 years of marriage...thats a lot of time...i cant imagine any couple being insouciant about each other for such a long time even if the marriage was an arranged one!;-)
ReplyDelete