I took Amma, 98 years, on a memory trip to Dharwad, where she grew up. We visited her primary school, Kittur Chennamma Park, her favourite icecream parlour, and Karnatak University Library, where she worked as Assistant Librarian in the 1950s
Illustration/Uday Mohite
I took Amma, Indu Shedde, 98 years, on a memory trip to our hometown Dharwad, in Karnataka, in July. It’s where she grew up: we were revisiting Dharwad after about 66 years. I told Amma to give me a wish list: avoid people you knew please, they are mostly dead, I said; only places. If they are likely to be sort of as she remembered them, I’d take her -- garden, school, university, ice cream shop…Sorry, I’m not taking you home, I told her, as Google maps showed me apartments where our beloved house was. Our close family friend Vishakha Patil very generously made time to travel with Amma and me for a week.
Now, planning a geriatric holiday is very different from planning a regular holiday. First, very luckily, I was able to find a doctor, a wheelchair and a wheelchair-friendly hotel in Dharwad. Indigo Airlines was brilliant, arranging a wheelchair right till her plane seat. Then I arranged that, in case Amma was disappointed by something she saw in Dharwad, we went onwards to Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal, stunning UNESCO world heritage sites, to distract her.
First, I took Amma to Kittur Chennamma Park, where she had played as a kid. We giggled doing a mock swordfight, with fallen sword-shaped Gulmohar seed pods. Then at Ice Factory, now Ice Gate, her favourite ice cream parlour, she was delighted to catch up with the owner’s family, her friends, Jayeshbhai, Diptiben and Ranjanben.
But the highlight was when I took her to Karnatak University Library, where Amma had worked as Assistant Librarian in the 1950s, under Librarian Prof KS Deshpande. The current Librarian, Dr Anupama N Joshi, very graciously felicitated Amma with a grand Mysore peta (turban), shawl, garland and Ganesha sculpture. Amma had speed-read 2,00,000 books for the library -- as she remembers it -- to make accession/library catalogue cards for the books. She told Dr Joshi the library had a copy of the PhD thesis of a student, HK Ranganath, on Yakshagana, Karnataka folk theatre, in 1954. Dr Joshi had the thesis retrieved from their archives — it was amazing that Amma remembered all the details perfectly, 71 years later! We were also especially delighted to connect with the late Prof KS Deshpande’s close family, Dr Sanjeev Kulkarni and Pratibha Kulkarni, who founded and run the Baala Balaga Eco Friendly School, as I feel our family owes their family a great deal because of Prof KS Deshpande.
Later, I took Amma to Hubli, now Hubballi, to Lamington Girls High School, estd 1904, where she studied from Class 1 to 3. She remembered her favourite friends and teachers. “I got prizes for singing, running, skipping and more — it was R1 for the first prize, and 50 paise for the second prize. I got Rs 7.50 paise and a beautiful bone China tea set,” she told me proudly. Amma always loved the arts, including cinema. “At Mallikarjun Talkies, Hubli, all of us kids would go to see films starring Fearless Nadia for two annas, after school. At the same theatre, I also saw Uday Shankar’s ballets, including the tandav, that he danced, along with Simkie [a Frenchwoman who was Uday Shankar’s dance partner for many years.] One of the rare instruments his musicians played was a ‘tabla tarang,’ played on a semicircle of tablas,” Amma recalled. Later, when she moved back to Dharwad, she loved going to Vijay Talkies. “For the film Jhoola [1941] with Leela Chitnis and Ashok Kumar, I sang the song ‘Jhoole ke sang jhoola’ onstage, and won a silver medal at Vijay Talkies during a song competition on the film’s songs, to celebrate its golden jubilee,” she recalled. We spoke to the current theatre manager, who called the owner, who was away: Amma sang the song again, as I played it for her on youtube to jog her memory, and after speaking to the owner on the phone, we waved to him via the CCTV cameras by the gate!
Meenakshi Shedde, film curator, has been working with the Toronto, Berlin and other festivals worldwide for 30 years. She has been a Cannes Film Festival Jury Member and Golden Globes International Voter, and is a journalist and critic.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com
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