Kashi Kana

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The combination of Simple and Spirited can sometimes be hard to imagine and find. ‘Simple’ somehow can conjure up bland and ‘Spirited’ can get complexity associated with it. But Kashi Ba breaks this myth. 

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Her simplicity is filled with spiritedness. In her apparent compromised choices of life are her assertive decisions. In having lived for others she has created her own individuality.

She seems to have never felt the need to quarrel with destiny. At each juncture of her life, from schooling in Siker to going to New Zealand, getting married there, bringing up a family, touring the world, coming back to India and getting immersed in the Adhyatmik world she has let life guide her. Her thinking hasn’t been about ‘should I do this or not’, but always about ‘now that life is offering me this how can I get the best out of this’. Whether it was learning to drive in New Zealand, going to night school or returning to India for her religious pilgrimages she truly has tried to make the best of what situations and what they presented her with.

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Another thing you can never miss about her is her absolute selflessness. None of her choices in life have ever been about her alone. They have always been about her as part of her family. This would come out in everything that she has done. As a child she gave up studying at Khadsuba because she wanted to take care of her mother in Siker who was not keeping well. Later in a foreign country, where she did not know the language, she managed to learn to drive and became one of the first women to start driving because she knew she had to help with a family business. When their families were growing and they finally had savings, both she and Dada, along with the extended family, built a house for Dada’s brother’s family and later one for themselves. Sometimes when you ask her what she thinks, she is almost at a loss because she has always thought for everyone. The ‘I’ has been completely meshed with the ‘we’. Yet it has not been disfigured. You can never say that in having lived for others she has lost her individuality.

It comes out in small things: when she says she will vote for the Labour Party even though everyone else in the family will vote for the Nationals! Or the fact that she has very strong likes and dislikes. She will find ways to enjoy her hobbies. She really enjoys gardening, reading Adhyatmik texts, reading biographies of saints, or travelling and taking walks. She also thoroughly enjoys watching the Discovery channel and anything related to history.

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You would think that someone who has lived her own life almost entirely for others would expect the same from her children and grandchildren. That’s where Kashi Ba will surprise you once again! She is perhaps the most liberal grandmother you will ever find. While she does have her own opinions of what is preferred over what is not, she is someone who will never impose her views on anyone else. As she herself put it, ‘If they are going on the wrong path then I would tell. But in today’s times if I keep them backward as per the olden times then how will they progress? Today the world has progressed a lot. They have to be allowed to do what they like doing. But one has to show them the difference. If you do this, this would happen as against something else. The final choice has to be theirs.’

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Ba is a remarkable mix of love, gratitude and humbleness. She has lived life believing in really simple ideals. Do what you want without hurting anyone else, work hard, take care of elders, and accept whatever comes your way. Live your life with honesty and resilience to be able and willing to sacrifice. She has lived through some of the toughest times with an unshakable faith in destiny’s fairness of giving her whatever was rightfully hers.

 

Her Philosophy Of Life

‘When we worked we never took a single day off. We worked for seven days a week. It’s not easy to have earned and saved that much money in those times. But it was only with that kind of hard work that we could have earned and saved. The more hard work you put in the more the money in return... Every human being must have an aim—to want to better themselves. But that aim can only be achieved through following a truthful path. If one achieves the aim by hurting someone—I don’t want that. I have always followed that, if I am going to get something by hurting another person then I don’t want it. I can do without that. I can make do without anything. Whatever I get is enough.

For food also I can do with just kadhi and bread or only tea and biscuits. Even if I don’t get tea I can make do alone with biscuits with water. But no one should be hurt because of me wanting or getting something’.

Our lives are about not going against anyone, to live loving one another. Be satisfied with whatever you have—whatever you’ve got!

Whatever God has granted us, even someone who is really against us tries to do something it can’t be stolen away. That is something I am most confident about. And what is not ours will never stay with us. 

That acceptance has to be first. Then one has to learn to start living within it—right? Then one has to learn to live.’

For a woman with that as her core, her life has truly been an adventure. Let me share that with you.

 

Her Story

Born in Siker, a small village in Gujarat’s Surat district,  Kashi Ba was born in 1932. She lived at home with her mother, sister and two brothers. Her father was already in New Zealand where he ran a fruit business from a van. He would visit them once every two to three years.

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Her childhood years were spent mainly with her mother who, as Ba put it, was ‘a very loving and hardworking lady’. As a child Ba was awed by where her mother got all her energy from! She single-handedly managed the farm, and brought up all her children.

Kashi Ba enjoyed going to school. She really enjoyed learning and went to the village school. Mathematics was her favourite subject and languages would always give her a tough time. Childhood was also spent with friends in the village; one friend she fondly remembers even now—Kanku Ben. They would play together every day. Later, when Kanku Ben lived in Mumbai, on her India trips Ba would visit her and stay with her. The occasional Ramlila (a dramatic folk re-enactment of the Ramayana) that would pass by the village was a source of entertainment in addition to the games of hu tu tu.

Right from her childhood, she was brought up within a family that respected hard work and saving. As children they would spend a whole year with one pair of shoes and four dresses. If a dress got torn it had to be stitched up. If the shoes tore in the summer, as Ba narrated, her friend Kanku would run through the hot sand to avoid burning her feet because one year had to be survived with one pair.

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Ba was very keen on further study. The village school taught only up to the sixth standard and she was also keen on learning English. There was a boarding school at Khadsuba, a nearby town, where they also taught English. That’s where Ba got herself admitted for the sixth and seventh standards. However she could not learn English because the school had changed its rules. English would be taught after the eighth standard by which time Ba had to return to Siker. Her mother was ill and needed Ba to take care of her. In her conversations Ba talks about her keen desire to study (which remained unfulfilled) without any doubt or remorse for having left school to take care of her mother. It was certainly the more important duty that had to be attended to. 

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After spending the next two years with her mother, Ba, along with her mother, her younger sister Kusum and elder brother’s wife Laxmi took off on one of Ba’s most adventurous trips. 

 

Off to New Zealand! 

Her father was already there, along with her brothers. The New Zealand government was asking for people to bring their families. Ba’s father thought that it was a good opportunity for the women of the family to come and see the country. At that time, New Zealand did not have many women from India living here. So her father having sent them the top-deck tickets on the ship, the four women were set for the trip. For Ba this was her first time out of her village. The 28-day trip was the first of many for Ba. 

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The journey went: from Siker–Surat (via bullock cart), from Surat–Mumbai (via train), from Mumbai–Sydney (via 28-day boat trip), from Sydney–Wellington (via a Seaplane).

This adventurous trip by land, water and air had many interesting moments. In Mumbai they lived with Laxmi Bhabhi’s relative and saw their first Hindi film in a cinema. The boat trip turned out to be an adventure in its own right. None of the women knew English, nor had any of them been out of India before. Ba says that there were many things that she found extremely novel, one of them being ‘white people’! She had never seen so many Europeans together. 

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At one point Ba and the others actually locked themselves in their cabins and refused to open the door due to fear. And what was it they feared? The cabin boys! As Father had got them first-class tickets, they were given the best treatment on the deck, including room service. But for our four women that turned out to be a little different. 

Ba recalls, ‘Since we had lived in a village, boys did not come into girls’ rooms. So I was really struck and found it very strange that this boy would enter our cabin. He would come at 6.30 in the morning with tea and biscuits. He came the first day, after which I got so scared that I locked the room doors. Then he went and told the office that these girls are not eating anything, not coming to the dining table either, that if they don’t eat they will die on the way to NZ. The foreign cabin boys are so good.

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Then he went on the lower decks where there were some Indians. He got some Gujarati men to explain to us that we should open the door and eat. Then we realized that he wouldn’t do anything. Today I wouldn’t get scared. Today I can handle anything. But at that time I was fearful. 

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The other Indians explained to us that we could go to the dinner table and there would be vegetarian food. It’s just that we had never seen all this before so it was new.’

So they gradually overcame the fear of the cabin boys, the European food and the ‘white people’. There was one more thing Ba was scared of on the ship. And this time it turned out to be something different—dirtying the bathrooms!

“I would be scared that I would dirty it. The bathrooms would be so clean that I would fear what if I would dirty something and spoil something.’

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After this long journey, it was time for a new country. They arrived to live with Father in Wellington. By then Father had bought a house. Once in New Zealand, along with three or four other Indian families, they travelled the country during the Christmas break, living out of vans and motels. Ba saw the country where her father and grandfather had lived and earned a living.

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As with the ‘white people’ and cabin boy on the ship, Ba had to meet another new breed of people near her father’s house in Wellington. A group she had never seen till then. Who would it be this time? Drunk men! There was a pub around the corner and, as Ba says, ‘I had come directly from the village, so I had never known what drunken men were like. I remember in the beginning when I would see some drunken men walking outside the pub in the evening or night I would get very scared. Later my father explained me that you need not worry, they will not harm you.’

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For Ba the trip to New Zealand was meant to be a pleasure trip. They all had come with return tickets. So, initially she did not like it, especially the cold, the wearing of coats, of socks and shoes, and keeping the house doors closed. She would tell herself that it’s only for a while and she would be home soon.

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How then did this trip for a couple of months become one that lasted for 20 years?  The decision that got her life to take such a drastic turn, of not returning to India, of getting married, was once again taken in the most characteristic Ba style. Her future mother-in-law came to know of her. At that time there weren’t many Indian weddings in New Zealand because there weren’t many Indian women in the country. Dada’s family at that time were not doing so well that they could have afforded to return to India and find him a wife. Her future mother-in-law therefore considered it fortuitous for this marriage to take place.

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Ba remembers, ‘My parents asked me if I wanted to stay. At that time I did not like it in New Zealand much. But dad asked me, “What will you do back in India? You will get married to a farmer and your life will pass just the way your mother’s has. Instead, if you stay here, you will have a better life—if not today, at least after five years.”’

And that’s how simple it was! They married in 1955 at Wellington. Since there were no priests, theirs was a registered marriage. One of the first Indian marriages in New Zealand, it even made it into the headlines of the local papers. The entire Indian community in Wellington cooked food at home and then pooled it all together at the auction hall for the wedding celebrations, followed by the showing of an Indian movie (quite a treat in those days). Ba then moved to Pukekohe to start her married life.

From that point on, for the next 18 years Ba’s life was marked with hard work and more of it. Dada’s family had only recently bought a fruit shop. They were not in a good financial state. As a family they were starting from scratch. Ba says, ‘It was a bit difficult in the beginning because one couldn’t do anything. There was no choice... It was such a difficult time that one had to be careful with every penny.’ Building things from scratch took the next 20 years of their lives. Later, in 1965, they built their own house. In 1971-72 Ba finally returned to India, taking her two children, for the first time in 20 years.

During the difficult years, Ba helped with the family farm and then at the shop. She had to quickly get used to her new country and learn English. She even tried night school because she was very keen on learning. However, that did not work out because the other students in her class dropped out and finally the night school itself was shut. But that did not stop her from learning. She knew she had to learn, she wanted to learn and she did. Her attitude as she says in those years was ‘If you can do it, so can I.’ She learnt English from her European customers and the books her children would bring home from primary school. Given her loving nature almost everyone would help her. As she says, the foreigners helped her a lot. They would teach her, correct her if she made a mistake.

She even got one of Dada’s friends to teach her to drive. And then despite the fact that she did not know English well, with the help of the police officer, Mr Prindle, she managed to get her licence. She was determined that she needed to learn so she could help the business more.

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In the beginning she could not get to the shops either. She would have to ask someone for help even if she wanted something from the dairy, because she had never done this before. But she learnt; she made herself. 

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She narrates one of the funny incidents that happened when she was still trying to learn English.

‘Initially I did not know English at all. So I would learn from listening to others. I remember once something really funny happened because of that. One day while we were working on the farm my father-in-law told me, ‘Kashi go get the plough from the garage.’ Now how could I know what was a plough? So I was wondering what to do. I went to the garage and got all the tools that were there and carried them up the hill on the farm. My father-in-law asked me,  ‘Why are you carrying everything?’ So I told him ‘isn’t it better to bring everything up instead of bringing one thing at a time. I am sure we will eventually need the rest of these tools!’ 

She would also find another ritual difficult to understand—going out for tea—brought up in India within a Gujarati household, her habit of drinking tea was off a saucer and not from a cup. So she found it rather strange. Hence to work around the situation she would either not go out or not order tea when she did!

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Within her home she managed the finances. As a family they, would trade one movie so they could get five packets of butter instead. A movie cost 50 cents and so did five packets of butter. Every penny was spent only if it was absolutely necessary. They worked seven days a week with only three days’ holiday each year during Easter. It is with that kind of hard work that 20 years hence they have been able to leave a legacy for their children. During those times this was her routine:

“I would wake up at 5 am, wash my own and my children’s and everyone else’s clothes. Today there are washing machines but back then we had to hand-wash clothes. So by 6.30 my clothes would be up to dry. And then there is tea-breakfast. Then go to the shop at 7 am and open the doors. We would never eat before 10.30 pm in the night. After dinner there would be leftover work to complete.’ 

Within the family, every single possession was well earned, sometimes waited for, for years. Toys were difficult to buy, Vanita, as Ba recounts would have cried so many times for a skipping rope. Ba would then innovate and make them toys out of cardboard boxes left from the shop.

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For a family who put in that kind of hard work it definitely paid off after the 1970s. This family, who could not take a single day off in a year except three days during Easter, sold the shop in 1976 and took a world tour for one whole year!

They literally went around the globe for a year: Ba, Dada and their two children. Vinod was 21 and Vanita was 18. They went to all the countries of Europe, US, Canada, Australia, Hawaii, Africa, Fiji, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and a full one-month trip through India, from north to south. 

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In the US they hired a car and drove around the country. They stayed with relatives in South Africa for a month. When you ask Ba which place she likes the most, she will still say New Zealand. She loves the peacefulness of the country.

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After the world tour they came back to New Zealand to continue with their work. In the 1990s Ba and Dada returned to India for a monthlong religious pilgrimage.

This is what in many ways marked the next phase of life for Ba. After that she developed her keen interest in the Adhyatmik philosophy. She took books of interest back to New Zealand. As both she and Dada became more interested in it, they wanted to visit India a lot more regularly, so they bought a house in Navsari in 1994. After that they went to India at least once a year.

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On one of the trips Ba also found a guru, Raja Rishi Mooni, who is based in Jhakhal. So every year when they went to India they visited him. Once their children had grown up, they retired completely. Ba’s life’s routine primarily devoted to reading her scriptures and following God’s path.

 

Kashi’s Summary of Her Own Life

‘Till now I did not have so much understanding. Now that it has come to us to leave the attractions and attachments. Till now life was spent earning money. And it’s true also that if one has that, then one can live life peacefully. And God also gave us satisfaction in that. Then only can one do so much. So from now on the most important thing is the Bhakti marg (path of devotion). To do as much as one understands but to ensure that to never do wrong to someone. That is my life. One can’t follow everything. One can’t leave home and take up Sanyas but follow the path as far as possible.’

 

By Vanita Hira

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Kashi Kana passed away peacefully on 12 February 2016 and  is now in God’s arms.

We are what we are today because of our mother,
she  taught us so much, loved us so much, showed us what empathy and sympathy are  and how to  live through the hard times and the good times.

Her death leaves a heartache no one can heal but her love has left memories no one can steal.

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She was my mum, Bhai’s mum, Bhabi’s mum, Masi’s mum, Nane’s mum , a mother, a sister, a wife—an extension to the community, that’s what Mum was.

There’s not a person  who knew her that hasn’t said they were fortunate to know her,

and then give a little story about what she did for them
or the words of wisdom she passed onto them.

She touched the lives of all who knew her
and we will miss her.

Her wisdom was well beyond her years and her story telling and sharing of knowledge was a special  gift.

A beautiful soul is now resting in God’s arms. 

Love you, Mum. 

Jay Shree Krishna

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