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The Afternoon Visitors

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  When I was growing up in Mumbai in the late ‘50s and the ‘60’s, we often had visitors. Or to be precise, my grandparents did. After the many decades they had spent in the south and north of India and my grandfather’s long and steady career in the government’s Ministry of Finance, they had numerous friends and acquaintances in addition to our large and expanding extended family network. In their role as elders, they received visitors who were contemporaries, peers, old friends, their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, other relatives close and distant, removed by varying degrees, kin by marriage or blood or both.  Often they would call out to us to join them - my mother and the three of us - to introduce us and explain the intricate connections to us. These visits knit us all into a kind of large colorful social fabric, providing ongoing cognitive stimulus to our young imaginations working out these interwoven webs of relationships in ou
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The Tutors As the three of us moved through the various levels of the educational systems in the three different cities we lived in, we struggled with some of the subjects we had to study or chafed under the stringent teaching styles of some of our teachers. Most of the time, our mother came tirelessly to our aid, daily helping us with our homework and projects we brought home, and often staying up late or waking up early to bring us hot milk or sit with us to help. Sometimes the three of us helped one another. But a few occasions come to mind, unbidden, of the times when we found ourselves up against a mental wall and, frustrated, cast about for other options. That’s how the tutors parachuted into our lives, at different points in time, for brief but intense periods, each one with his own idiosyncrasies and very distinctive and quite unforgettable, even now after decades. The very first time was around the time that I turned 13. We had just moved to New Delhi from Madra
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