Ganga Parbhu

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‘The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India’s age long culture and civilisation, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet the same Ganga.’

 — Jawaharlal Nehru 

 

Our Ba, as in the quote above, was beloved of her people—her family, friends and others who came in contact with her—around whom are ‘intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats’. To us she was a symbol of her religion and culture, displaying and imparting values and virtues in a quiet unassuming manner.

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Our Ba was born into a farming family in Palsod, Gujarat, in 1928. She had several brothers and sisters, but not all reached adulthood, including her twin sister who died when they were youngsters, at almost two years of age. Mum said she was too young to remember her feelings about losing a sister but that she did remember her. Ba had told us that her sister got sick because she had been cursed by a witch. There are lots of stories of this kind of thing happening in India, not only at that time but also when our mother took us to India for four months in 1966. A beggar had come to the door and despite our mum telling us not to look at her because she was a known witch in the village, one of my sisters did look and she started vomiting immediately. My grandparents had to call for a Brahman to say some prayers to lift the curse.  

 

Marriage came in 1947 to our Bapuji (Dad), Parbhubhai Bhagabhai. Theirs was an arranged marriage as were almost all marriages in those days. Mum told us how our Bapuji’s wedding procession came down the streets of her village: him sitting on a white horse, dressed in all white and adorned with very colourful flowers and decorations. They lived in our Bapuji’s village, Munsad, with his parents as was customary. Our Ba was a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law. Our grandparents could not fault her because she was very respectful, hardworking and performed all her duties well. Mohanbhai was the first child to be born to our parents in 1948. 

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Only two months after Mohanbhai’s birth, our Bapuji left India for New Zealand to make a life for his new family there. It was his second trip to New Zealand; he had spent three years in Wellington, from 1936 to 1939, when his brother, Kanjibhai, settled there. Their father, Bhagabhai Haribhai (our Dada), had come to live in New Zealand in 1919, leaving our grandmother (Pemi Maa) in India. Dada remained here until after the Second Word War ended in 1945, although he did make some trips back and forth over the years. 

It took our Bapuji six long years to save enough money to pay for his family’s passage on the Himalaya. Our Ba and Mohanbhai travelled by sea to Sydney and then flew by seaplane to Auckland. From there they travelled by road with our Bapuji to Wellington. It was on this voyage that our Ba taught herself the English alphabet and also taught it to our brother.

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Life was hard at first because our Ba and Bapuji were not conversant with the language and the ways and culture of the locals; at times they even faced prejudice and racism, and often lived in fear of being blamed for something they did not do. There was one particular incident when Ba and Chandan were in the kitchen and heard a car accident, which had happened on the next corner from our house. Chandan’s first reaction was to go and see if we could help but Mum said not to because we could get blamed for something. This had a huge impact on us . . . we realised at this point the fear that our parents lived with. 

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On one side we had a neighbour who did not like us interacting with them or playing with his children. If we played with them during the day the mother would call them home or if we were in their backyard she would send us away before the father got home from work. There was not much of a fence between us and you could tell from his behaviour, a lack of communication and so on, that he had a problem with us. The neighbour on the other side showed his dislike for us by throwing his gardening rubbish into our backyard. We threw small stones at his window and hid sometimes because we didn’t like him—if one of the balls we had been playing with bounced into his yard, we were so scared of retrieving it. At school, you could tell which kids didn’t like you because of your colour and quite often they would call you a curry muncher or even use the word ‘black’. Sometimes, as young adults when shopping in both Auckland and Wellington in the 1980s, Pakehas were served before we were. 

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Our Ba and Bapuji were grateful for the support of other Indian families who had settled in New Zealand earlier. The first home our Ba knew of was with Lalabhai and Shantaben Bava and their young son, Kishorbhai, in Wellington. They provided not only a home but also work for our dad. Over the years, we kept in touch with this family regularly and in 2012, a few years after our parents had passed, Shanta Kaki told us lovely stories of our Ba during the short time she stayed with them in the early years. Our favourite is when the Indian women gathered to cook for their families, sometimes without having the correct cooking materials, utensils and ingredients to make meals. They would stand there puzzled, not knowing what to do but our Ba would quickly come up with a solution, improvising with the little they had. They stood there in awe of her. It became obvious to the other women that our Ba was not only an intelligent woman but a creative, lateral thinker. She also seemed to naturally know how ingredients behaved and reacted with each other. Later, after they moved from Wellington to Pukekohe, she became known in the Indian community as an excellent cook and was often asked to cater for weddings and other functions. Just watching her calculate fractions quickly in her head, the ingredients required to feed sometimes up to two thousand people, was astonishing! 

Indiraben, our parents’ first daughter, was born in 1954 in Wellington before the family moved to Pukekohe in 1955. Later, in 1957, Hunsa arrived, followed by Chandan in 1958, Bharti in 1959 and Nela in 1965—five daughters who our parents from time to time lovingly referred to as the five Pandavas. 

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Family, culture and religion were important to our parents. Our Ba never undertook paid employment but devoted her whole life to looking after our family and to serving the Indian community through her cooking skills. Being a very pious woman, she ensured that spirituality became part of our daily life—lighting the deva and prayer was a daily practice, as was teaching us values through our thoughts, words and deeds. For years at bedtime, with the light left on in the passage all night, she would chant the words of a prayer out aloud which we repeated after her: 

‘Om’

‘Brahma’

‘Vishnu’

‘Maheshvara . . .’

Every night, to this, we fell asleep. 

Over the years, our Ba told us stories of village life in India and of the Hindu religion. Storytelling helped her stay connected to the motherland and to other Indians who also emigrated here. Culture, religion and many values were passed on to us in this way. There was one story that had an incredible impact on us. Our Ba told us how Mahatma Gandhi visited her village when she was a young child. All the schoolchildren lined up waiting to see him and when Gandhiji came past her she recalled how he put a piece of fruit in her hand. We were in awe! What good karma for these children to have been in the presence of such an extraordinary soul. 

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Before books in Gujarati became available from India we attended a Christian Sunday school for several years. The Bible stories we learned reinforced the values we were being taught at home—our Ba used to say, ‘There is only one God . . . so go and learn about Jesus.’ When our Ba was able to get her religious books from India she used to read them then teach us lessons. Her own wisdom helped us with many things in our lives, the most powerful being whenever we confided in her about some injustice we may have been going through she would often say, ‘You know the truth and God knows the truth and that’s all that matters.’ These words on their own were so empowering and had a huge impact on our lives. They helped us believe in ourselves and develop self-confidence.

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As our Ba never worked it was not necessary for her to learn the English language—she spoke just enough to get by when she went shopping and if she couldn’t understand visitors who came to the door she would just say something like, ‘No English, no home’, and they would go away—of course this did not always work in her favour, especially when one day a man from immigration came to the door in connection with her getting her citizenship! 

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Bringing up six children and also ensuring that our Bapuji’s needs were met (our dad did expect his meals on time and they had to be hot!) was not an easy task for our Ba. When our dad had a fruit round she used to help him early in the mornings before he went out on his round, then she got on with her own chores. Although we heard later in life about the difficulties she faced, we do not recall her ever complaining about this in our childhood. She performed all her duties as an act of love. 

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Other than looking after our family, she supported other families in our community who needed help, specifically looking after other children when their mother was in hospital during childbirth or in one case, where a widower had lost his wife, our Ba looked after their son for quite some time. Our family are vegetarians so this brought another challenge (which non-vegetarians may not appreciate so much); in the early years it was difficult cooking with lack of spices and other ingredients and not having Indian vegetables, dhals and pickles that our parents were accustomed to having. They improvised in those days and made do with what little they had. 

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Her love of gardening showed in her vegetable garden and also the beautiful colourful chrysanthemums and other flowers that lined our driveway. Quite often in the summer she would have us sitting on the ground in the garden, rubbing sun-dried corncobs together to remove the kernels for popping corn or cleaning some other vegetable for freezing or cooking. We spent many days in the summer making papad with our Ba and when she went outside to collect them after they had dried in the sun, she picked each one up with so much love and care. One day, as she was putting them in the basket, one of us commented, ‘Wow, it’s like she’s holding gold.’ To this she said, ‘This food is God’s gift to us, we must treat it appropriately.’

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Our Ba, this little woman, was not more than four feet eleven inches in height. As our Bapuji liked her to wear light colours, she often wore white or pastel-coloured saris with matching blouse, cardigan and socks. She sewed our frocks, dressing us girls alike and plaiting colourful ribbons into our hair. We especially enjoyed it when she would take time out of her busy schedule to play board games with us. Our Ba was open minded and open to learning, quite often practising and expanding her little English from the words she saw displayed on the television screen and from newspapers. She laughed often. 

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Because our Ba was positive she often saw the humour in people’s contrary behaviour, finding something to laugh at rather than focusing on the negative aspects of things. She was good at joining in with us when we found something funny and we remember her enjoying comedy shows like The Lucy Show, Bewitched (how Samantha twitched her nose to place a curse on people), Mr Ed (the talking horse)—the magic of TV amused her. A couple of her older grandchildren remember her playing tricks and joking with them on April Fool’s Day—tricking her eldest grandchild one time into believing a mouse had run past her and given her a fright. Another good one is her singing to her second granddaughter who was born on April Fool’s Day (in her deep accent as best as she could): ‘Happy birthday, happy birthday’ and then following it up with ‘Happy birthday April Fool, happy birthday, April Fool’! She was very social and because of her hospitable nature we had many visitors, occasionally staying for a few days. We believe that our Ba had an impact on anyone she came in contact with. She had a special bond with her daughter-in-law, Devi, and they had much respect for each other. 

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She was a great role model for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and when other children visited it was apparent that they also loved her. To the young women who had left their families behind in India and emigrated to New Zealand to be married to Indian boys in Pukekohe, she reminded many of them of their own mothers because of her gentle, loving and inclusive nature. Our aunt, Maniben Kanjibhai, who we called ‘Moti Ba’, saw the special relationship our Ba had with us girls, and said to her, ‘You are so blessed, your daughters buzz around you like bees to honey.’ Her cousin Naranbhai Kana from time to time would say, ‘God has kept a special place in heaven for Gangaben.’

It goes without saying that this amazing, spiritual, wise and insightful woman had a very positive influence on our lives. Through her wisdom she helped us to strengthen our faith and develop love and compassion for others no matter what caste or creed. She corrected our mistakes, but never judged us or compared us to others, and wanted us to be good, empathetic and caring individuals. She helped broaden our perceptions, our beliefs, our opinions, our views, and taught us to act and believe. She was an extraordinary role model, building our characters and deepening our faith in the midst of her daily work. We will always remember her to be not only a very gentle and loving soul but a great soul who continues to live on in each of us. Our Ba is a worthy symbol of her culture and religion: ‘ever changing, ever flowing, and yet the same Ganga’.

 

Written from the cherished memories of Nela, Bharti, Chandan, Hunsa, Indira and our brother Mohanbhai