Purdah to Piccadilly by Bhatty Zarina;

Author:Bhatty, Zarina;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4568497
Publisher: SAGE Publications India Pvt, Ltd.

9

Return to India

Our family’s perception of us being “England-returned” was very different at that time. Not many Indians went to England and those did belonged to the upper crust of Indian society. A middle-class person going to England for higher studies, and a woman at that, was a rarity. My parents had imagined that I would have become a “memsahib” with short hair, smoking cigarettes and speaking only in English. They had thought that my taste in food would have changed too. They had also expected us to have become prosperous. They had no idea how financially weak we actually were. My brother Khalid and sister Sehba were sent to Bombay to receive us. My uncle Jan Nisar Akhtar (the poet–lyricist Javed Akhtar’s father) hosted us in Bombay. I did not recognize my siblings at Bombay Port. Sehba and Khalid had both grown up in the 10 years of my absence from India and I just passed by them, then Khalid recognized us. He called out to me, “Bajiya, I am Khalid” (as an older sister I was called Bajiya). It was such a wonderful surprise. I was so excited to be back and very touched that my sister and brother came all the way from Lucknow to receive us. We stayed in Bombay for a couple of days and then traveled to Lucknow, where not only my entire family but also near relatives were at the platform to receive us with garlands. It was quite a homecoming. We embraced each other and shed tears of joy. Huma loved the floral reception. She had so many garlands around her neck that we could hardly see her face; she loved them and did not want to part with them. My parents were absolutely delighted to see their first grandchild (Huma was five years old) and to find their daughter looking like a solid Indian woman, with a jooda,1 clad in a sari, not wearing high heels and no makeup except kajal2 in her eyes. Our train had arrived early in the morning so we were home for breakfast. It was so nice to be served breakfast instead of having to make it ourselves. But I was surprised to find that for us; special bread and butter were brought, along with knives and forks, to keep with our assumed Westernized habits. I was looking forward to hot parathas or roghni rotis3 with aloo ki sabzi4 or omelets, which used to be the usual breakfast in our home those days. But instead there was bread which had been toasted on a hot skillet. So I took out the electric toaster that I had brought from London, a novelty in those days. My parents were intrigued but delighted to find that a little boxlike thing could toast a piece of bread so nicely. Everyone was particularly thrilled when the toasts popped out automatically.

We were instructed by Hayat’s father to go to his village in a car. The usual mode of transport was by bus, but the England-returned son should go to his native village in style.

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