…where it is never too old to learn

by Geetha Doctor

To the many readers who have known Anna Varki as a sparkling contributor to Madras Musings and other Chennai-based publications, the fact that she has put together the experiences of a lifetime into a book* will be a source of great joy.

The eight oval medallions that encircle the title on the cover show the author at different stages of her life. There is the little girl looking at the world with great big eyes followed by the same forthright gaze as she progresses through each turning point of her journey. In the last one there is a smiling portrait of the author as she approaches the grand old age of 97. This portrays Anna Varki, her face still bright, a halo of silver hair circling her head smiling into the camera.

That smile is as significant as the rolled-up umbrella that all good Keralites carry with them come rain or shine. It’s with the same senses of boundless adventure just waiting beyond the front door that Varki steps into the world. It’s not always been an easy life for the author but it is one that has been defined by the memories of the extraordinary era in which she was born. She calls it the ‘Gandhian Era’ in her subtitle. The men and women who formed a part of her growing years, even at a slight remove, were touched with a sense of destiny that the world would soon be made anew. That hope, the idealism, the joy of being involved in a quest far greater than the individual self, are what makes Varki’s reminiscences special. No matter what she encounters on the way, the ups and downs along which she chugs as the wife of a railways official, Anna Varki recollects each episode with an anecdote and a smile.

She begins with her birth in Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was then known. Her father had been hoping to receive the news of a son as his second child when he was informed with the words “It’s a koki!” As Varki goes on to tell us koki in Bengali means a girl and koka boy. So, my father decided to call me ‘Kuki’, which soon acquired another spelling, Cookie”. He also brought her up to be a boy, she tells us, until her younger brother Jaiboy was born.

The name Cookie stuck. This was how she was known to her close friends at Queen Mary’s College, Madras, as it was famously known. (We shall use both her names in the review depending on the context.)

Amongst her many friends was my mother and an elite circle of Queen Marians. As she describes it in one of the chapters many years later, when they met again, now in their 80s and 90s, in the City where some of them had retired, Cookie would rally them around at special events such as birthdays and the celebration perhaps of a grandchild’s wedding with a rousing singing of the Queen Mary’s anthem- “Queen Marians never die! They only fade away!” On another occasion she organised her club of Over 80s, to meet the man who stitched their blouses at college.

As she describes it, “For Queen Marians, their favorite tailor was the humble smiling Naidu, who stitched blouses to perfection from puffed- to leg-of-mutton-sleeves. Started as a one-man outfit in one room, Naidu Hall is presently a flourishing business of ready-made garments run by his grand-children, while still maintaining the quality that was Naidu’s hallmark!” The exclamation says it all. As everyone this generation might recall, Naidu Hall has been famous for its marketing of ladies’ undergarments or bridal inner wear. Some of us close family members could not stop debating how the Queen Marians would return from their Naidu Hall tea-party flaunting the best of under-wired and lace trimmed cups in Double X sizes. As it happened, we need not have doubled up with anxiety. They returned with tales of a sumptuous tea of cakes and savories that the current owners had laid out for them – still humble, still gracious!

To underline that Cookie Aunty has the gift of friendship that can light up every room that she enters, I can do no better than to quote from a foreword contributed by another famous personality, Rebecca Chandy, Retired Principal, Cultural Academy, San Thomé, Chennai. In her time, it used to be known as a finishing school for young women.

As she remembers; “Behind all the jollity there was a kindly heart. I remember travelling in a bus from Alwaye to Kottayam for the Michaelmas holidays. In those days, the Cochin express went straight through to Cochin and those of us who were bound for Kottayam had to get off at Alwaye and take a bus to Kottayam. Cookie was in the same bus, as she had to go from Kottayam to Chengannur, her family home. Although we were both Syrian Christians, I was never close to her since she was senior to me and moved around with her post-graduate friends in the hostel. As the bus negotiated the hilly tracts, I dozed off in the bus and awoke to find my handbag missing. Besides the personal effects, it contained all my money and I was frantic. I shall never forget how Cookie consoled me and lent me the money to reach home. It was only a matter of 10 rupees but to me it was more of a free fall of 100 rupees.” Many decades later Varki was to teach English at the Cultural Academy.

If this is beginning to sound personal it’s for a reason. Her father, the famous Pothen Joseph, an editor for all seasons and several newspapers, lived in the same tumultuous period in Delhi, before and after Independence, as my parents did. Cookie recollects for instance that her father would greet my Dad every morning as he walked past Rowse Avenue where my young parents lived with a “Good Morning, Padmanabhan!”

My father was in those days occupied with the herculean efforts in creating what we would now call a data base for the voters who would eventually form the blueprint for Indian democracy while working under B.N. Rao as Under Secretary, Constituent Assembly, Secretariat. As recorded by Ornit Shani in a recent book entitled How India Became Democratic what made Padmanabhan’s contribution important was “his ability to identify with the ‘weak’. It was he who first noted on the question of the registration of the refugees that they ‘are always on the move, and, therefore no residential qualification can be prescribed for them if they are to be given the right to vote in the next elections.'” The zeal to create a nation that would be a template for equality to all its citizens was what drove different individuals in a common pursuit that inspired and empowered even young girls like Cookie into a desire for serving the nation. This is what makes her title important. It underlines the passion with which young Indians, no matter what their sex, ethnicity or religion identified themselves with the adventure of not just building a nation but owning it. “This country is mine!” they might have said, echoing a famous French ruler. “L’Etat c’est Moi”.

Pothen Joseph (1892-1972) was not just a maverick editor and columnist who wrote a daily political column for five decades under the heading, “Over a Cup of Tea”, he was a fearless advocate of truth in the Gandhian mode. His editorial motto used to be “Courage, vigilance and fidelity”. His ability to quote extensively from the Bible and the classics, Dickens being a particular favorite, contributed to his legend. Amongst the original spirits that he nurtured in his time was none other than Shankar, the cartoonist of Shankar’s Weekly fame. Of him it was said the Pandit Nehru told him, “Don’t spare me, Shankar!” He was fearless in his ability to caricature the pomposity of those early politicians and parliamentarians, giving them donkey ears and thick lips. But he also captured the patrician style of Pandit Nehru, always on the run, elegantly dressed in his trademark shervani and tight Jodhpur pajama, with the red rose in his front buttonhole.

There are legions of stories about Pothen Joseph himself. One of his mentors nicknamed him “Potent Joe”. When he joined Jinnah as the editor of the Dawn newspaper that was started in Delhi, he is supposed to have quipped when his owner told him that he was often to be found in a “bibulous” state, nor ideal for an Editor. “Alas, I am not fortunate to have been born with a Gin to my name!” The more famous riposte is the one about how his constant need to move from paper to paper and place to place led someone to say: “A rolling stone never gathers moss.” To which Pothen Joseph asked, “But does a stone need moss?”

Part of the charm of listening to Cookie’s recollections is her ability to capture the essence of the people and events that she describes in a language that is always simple but elegant. In the early part, for instance, she might summon an image of Captain Lakshmi, both bold and beautiful, who joined the INA. In the latter part of the book there is yet another short sketch of that everyday creature – the humble crow. In Cookie’s eyes, the crow and the raven take wing and emerge from the mists of Buddhist legend and Californian tourist spots like the Santa Catalina Island as sentinels. Or as she signs off, “It’s a pity that the crow does not capture the attention of avid bird watchers who prefer to sight and watch exotic and prettier species.”

If the first half of the essays can be described as easy to follow lessons for the younger generation who might think of the Independence movement as a series of events dominated by high minded words and long dead leaders; the second half is a manual for seniors. It not only describes how Cookie re-invented herself by learning and mistressing her computer skills, it provides simple advice for those having to cope with old age. It’s not as though she has not suffered broken bones, or the challenge of living on her own with increasing health problems. Through it all, her instinct is to share and teach others. She advises older people to exercise regularly, visit a beauty parlour to maintain one’s feet, dispel the unsightly appearance of unwanted hairs sprouting on the once smooth womanly chins; to give ‘space’ to one’s children, grand-children AND great-grand-children, all of which advice she dispenses with brevity and wit.

Finally, however at 97 and filled with the joy of a life well lived Anna Varkie’s spirit like that of Ulysses is still ready to sail in the search of new adventures. Or in the words of the poet (Tennyson):

One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. (Ulysses)

*One Woman’s India – From the Gandhian Era to the Cyber Age. Anna Varki, Notion Press.

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