Mani Ramji

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My mum was born in Khadiawad, Navasari, in the Gujarat state. She was the fourth daughter in a family of five sisters. Her dad’s name was Naranbhai Manga and her mum’s Mithiben.

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She was engaged at a very young age as was the practice in those days. My dad, Somabhai Ramji from Veraval, had been in New Zealand since 1924. He returned to India, married Mum and later, when he had returned to New Zealand, sent for her. She travelled by ship in the 1950s via Colombo, Fremantle and Sydney, then flying boat to Auckland. My oldest brother Zaverbhai, aged four, was with her. 

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On board the ships the young Indian women formed close bonds, supporting each other and sharing the care of the children. Maniben was one of those intrepid women, leaving her home and loved ones to come to a new country with language and cultural barriers. They had to be tough and resilient to handle what life threw at them. 

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Mum was a hardworking woman who brought strength to the family. She worked with my father in the market garden, and when he was a teenager Zaverbhai also helped out. I have a scar on my nose from getting in the way of a cabbage cutting knife as a toddler. We moved from Pukekohe to Grey Lynn in the 1960s. By this stage my other two brothers, Narashbhai and Bharatbhai, had been born. I was the third child, born in between my two younger brothers.

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Mum was a homemaker while Dad went to work at Donaghy’s rope factory in Stanley Street, where many Indian people worked. We regularly visited Puke in the weekends to catch up with our relatives. 

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Mum made the trip home to India twice and when her older sister Dhaniben came out to New Zealand it was such a treat for them both. She still has one younger sister Hansaben in England.

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My dad shared and snuffed tumki using powders out of metal tins, a colonial habit. My mum wore a Gujarati-draped sari her entire life with the pallu (the decorated edge of the sari) pleated to the front. Her blouse hid two pockets for keys, coins and a handkerchief. Mum had a tikka, a tattooed version of a bindi dot, at the centre of her forehead. She oiled her hair, plaited it and wound it behind her head in a bun. My hair was oiled and plaited in two, with ribbons incorporated into the hair three quarters in to the end. The length of plait was then folded in two and tied with the ribbon placed through a gap of hair and made into a bow. Metal chipya (hair clips) and bangles, a dress with two round collars and a tie at the back was what young Indian girls of the 1960s wore.

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Mum enjoyed telling us Indian folktales; one about an old woman who outwitted a hungry tiger by eating papdi (Indian beans) was a firm favourite with us youngsters. She sent him scurrying away with a baked bean special! 

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We spoke Gujarati at home because Mum’s English was basic and we translated for her when she was shopping or on buses. Local shops were in West Lynn and Surrey Crescent, and main excursions were to Rendells, MacKenzies, and Barker and Pollock in K Road and to Farmers on the free bus to Hobson Street. Spices were bought from Dunninghams, down from Farmers. The spices were sifted, dried and stored in jars. 

Mum started to teach me to cook when I was ten. She showed me how to roll circles of rotlis, make tea and cook rice. It was fun making green masala with chillies, ginger, coriander leaves and garlic, using a mortar of a hollowed-out tree stump and a thick branch for the pestle. Memorising the varghars (spices heated in oil) was hard going. A culinary heritage: her mother taught her, she taught me and I in turn taught my two daughters Hettel and Tresha.

Shared knowledge, a bond of mothers and daughters through generations. 

One of Mum’s pleasures was receiving aerogramme letters and gallon tins filled with flavours from home. Dried boombla, fish roe, simlas, moohyou and shrimps sprinkled with kadhi leem. Dried fruit like boor and channa were sent too. These smells and tastes take me straight back to my childhood and I learnt from my mum how to prepare and cook them. Mum perfected a delicious hot spicy tomato sauce. Bottled up, it was a favourite at barbecues. She filled pottery crocks with fresh pickles, and made labour-intensive chivda, papads and khitchya.

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Khitchya are famous in Gujarat. They are thicker versions of papads. Deep fried, they expanded to double their size and were served with meals or eaten as snacks. To make these, a sunny day is critical as is an early start. My Bhabhi (sister-in-law) joined us, and we made enough khitchya to last through the year. They were individually rolled out like rotlis and thrown onto old saris to dry in the sun. One hundred, two hundred rolled, we talked, listened to Indian cassettes, watched that none blew away and turned over the khitchya that curled in the heat then stored them in tins or airtight containers. I especially enjoyed sneaking fresh warm dough pieces and dipping them into oil. Yum! 

Our backyard was a testament to Mum’s gardening skills. Chillies, chori, papdi, paatra, doodhi and tomatoes took up most of the available space. Chillies were cut into strips and dried on the versatile old saris—we were recycling even then. Other spices were ground in a heavyweight hand-turned ‘Made in England’ grinder attached to the kitchen table. 

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Mum enriched my life with a love of gardening that inspires me to this day. I can also draw on her creativity; she did crochet and macramé and made cushions with lacy edgings. She had a favourite bold-coloured crocheted theli (bag) with inserts of glass. It was fascinating to help her to make a fabric gugderaw (garland) from white cotton strips, sitting together on the carpet, me watching and following her steps. 

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You strip off threads from both sides of a length of white cotton fabric cut into even strips. A finished length has a narrow space of woven cloth between two frayed sides. The key was to fray evenly. You softly handled, bunched it, depending on the thickness you wanted to go around the neck and the length you wanted the haar (garland) to fall. Tie the length together forming an ellipse with thin white twine. Tie off four positions, matched left to right on the garland. Place the twirled red fabric roses sewn to green fabric leaves to these positions. The fifth rose is sewn at the lowest point, leaving a small length of the combined strips hanging below it. A magnificent gugderaw for Zaverbhai’s wedding in 1971. A skill learnt and passed on, as is the patience, the care she took, the love and effort she put into her creations. It was who she was. 

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These are some of my treasured memories. Our mothers did it all, labour-intensive chores, bringing up children, caring for the family and, in later years, her granddaughters Nita and Asmita. I’ll not forget you, my precious mum.

 

By Manjula Patel