Prof.Prema Raghavan

If Not Now, When?

The thing about aging is that it takes you by surprise. One day, you are that bustling ball of energy, taking stock of your appearance with satisfaction in the mirror. The next, you are nursing a stiff back and wondering how the age spots crept up on you when you were not even watching.

People around you also treat you differently, or perhaps it merely seems so. I am undecided. Sometimes it is as though you are fragile china; at others, an easy pushover.

I did not realise that, as a defence mechanism, and particularly after coming to Delhi, I had become a lot more insistent on being heard and noticed. The way of Tao is not for me, unfortunately. From the gardener who takes care of my plants to the chap who drives me around, I have laid down the rules and, at times, laid them on rather thick. The cook and other help also need supervision. The trick lies in soft power, I think: to be firm, not unjust. Whether I always manage that, I am not sure.

Then there is the other question which assails me from time to time. Do older people laugh less? Perhaps they do, or perhaps they do not.

It has been a very long time since I giggled hysterically the way I once did. I remember a time when my mother would stop me by pinching my thigh when no one was watching because I would be overcome by bouts of laughter, and it was not necessarily a polite time to be laughing. I remember, much later, during official meetings, something would strike me as funny and I would have to bend over and pretend to meddle with whatever was on my lap, literally trying to wipe the laughter off my face.

Now, I find myself smiling polite smiles and other smiles, and laughter seems to be processed internally. It sometimes manifests itself as a grin rather than the loud chuckle it used to be.

And then there is the feeling that I must endeavour to squeeze the maximum out of a moment, an hour, a day, because a thought keeps popping up:

If not now, when?

A friend recently sent me these words, perhaps to remind me of the life I have lived and how very good it has been:

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.”
— Louis L’Amour

As I reflected on them, memories came flooding back.

My childhood was, for the most part, idyllic. My father headed a major petroleum company, and we lived a life of remarkable ease. There was a chauffeur to drive us to and from school, a sprawling house with a huge garden, a mali to tend it, a cook for everyday meals, and a khansaman who appeared for official dinners and special occasions. There was even a lady who came to wash and braid my very long hair.

More than the comforts themselves, what I remember is the sense of complete security. We belonged to a generation of carefully protected children. We lived without much thought of tomorrow because tomorrow appeared certain.

And then, when I was about seventeen, everything changed.

We returned from one of our annual trips to our parents’ native town to discover that the petroleum companies had been taken over by the government and there had been massive layoffs. Overnight, a way of life ended.

We moved to a smaller home. The car gave way to public transport. We could afford only one person to help my mother. The life I had known simply ceased to exist.

Curiously, I was not unhappy. Perhaps youth carries within it an extraordinary resilience. I had just entered college and there were new friends to make, books to read and possibilities to explore. I did not spend my days mourning what was gone.

My mother, however, had every reason to be distressed. Yet she made a decision that changed the course of our lives. Instead of packing up and returning to our hometown, where opportunities for us would have been limited, she insisted that we stay and face our altered circumstances.

As it turned out, she was right. We all did well. Life moved forward.

Another ending arrived when I landed my first job in a different city. My father would have preferred that I accept a local position, but a kind journalist friend intervened and persuaded him to let me go.

And so I found myself living alone in a new city. For a young woman who had never spent any significant time away from home, it was a plunge into the unknown. I learnt to fend for myself, to make decisions, to manage my finances and, perhaps most importantly, to discover who I was.

I spent my first few salaries with great enthusiasm and very little wisdom. During a visit home, my father looked at my bank passbook and asked, with genuine concern, whether I had been lending money to someone. I had not. I simply had no idea where it had gone.

So I learnt.

I learnt to be careful with money. I learnt that wanting something and immediately possessing it are not the same thing. There were moments when I longed desperately for things I could not afford. Once, I even toyed with the idea of selling a couple of my bangles to buy some trifles I fancied. Fortunately, better sense prevailed.

And every now and then my mother would arrive like Santa Claus, carrying gifts that were uncannily the very things I had silently wished for.

Somewhere during those years, I came down from the clouds and surveyed the land and the people around me. I believe I emerged with a little more wisdom and, hopefully, a little more compassion.

Years later, another ending arrived.

We belonged to a generation for whom building a house was itself a dream. Brick by carefully supervised brick, we built ours. It was the house in which we nurtured our hopes, celebrated our children’s weddings and watched life unfold in earnest.

And then we left it.

I turned my back on it without hesitation. My husband perhaps found it harder. Yet I have no regrets. In Delhi, the view has changed. Perhaps everything has shrunk a little, but other vistas have opened and they more than compensate for what we left behind.

Looking back, I realise that every ending I once thought significant turned out to be a doorway. Each apparent loss altered me, enlarged my world and led me somewhere I could never have anticipated.

And so these lines from a friend did indeed remind me of the life I have lived. It has been a good life. Rich not merely in comforts or possessions, but in experiences, lessons and unexpected beginnings.

Renewal is the way of life itself. Nature sheds, rests, blooms and begins again with unfailing regularity. The seasons do not mourn their passing. The leaf that falls makes way for new growth. Why then should we fear renewal or resist it? Every ending carries within it the seed of another beginning, and perhaps our task is simply to welcome it with grace and curiosity

Stories We Inherit, Stories We Rewrite

Recently, I began telling my grandchild some of the fairy tales I remembered enjoying when I was young. There is something magical about watching a child listen with complete attention, entering a world where frogs speak, princesses lose golden balls, and impossible things happen every day.

She loved the story of the princess and the frog. In fact, the golden ball itself is only incidental; it merely brings the two characters together. She also enjoyed Beauty and the Beast. As I revisited these stories, however, I found myself reading them differently from the way I had as a child.

In both Beauty and the Beast and The Frog Prince, there is an interesting idea at work. The transformation occurs because someone is seen as more than what they presently appear to be. Beauty sees beyond the Beast’s frightening exterior. The princess eventually accepts the frog and treats him as worthy of respect. In both stories, love and recognition bring about change.

That struck me as a valuable lesson. Sometimes people become more fully themselves when they are seen with compassion and possibility rather than judgment.

Yet when I turned to some of the other classic fairy tales, I found myself less comfortable.

Take Cinderella. The prince falls in love with Cinderella after seeing her at the ball, captivated largely by her beauty. Eventually, he discovers her identity, and through his recognition she becomes a queen. Similarly, in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the princesses are rescued from a death-like sleep by a prince. The pattern is familiar: the heroine waits, and the hero arrives.

As I reflected on these stories, I began wondering what messages they may quietly convey. Many women of my generation grew up, consciously or unconsciously, with the idea that life would somehow be completed by the arrival of the right man. There was often an expectation of rescue.

I remember, like many young women of my era, reading Mills & Boon romances. Looking back now, I am struck by how many of the heroes were portrayed as domineering, aloof, and often rather rude. Yet they were presented as desirable because they were powerful, decisive, and emotionally inaccessible. Their eventual acceptance of the heroine was framed as the culmination of the story.

Even Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, however much we may admire him, belongs to a similar tradition. The narrative often suggests that a woman’s worth is finally validated when she is recognised and chosen by an exceptional man.

Of course, these stories are more complex than that. They contain courage, loyalty, perseverance, and hope. Yet I cannot help wondering whether repeated exposure to such narratives shapes expectations about love, fulfilment, and self-worth.

By contrast, some of the stories I now enjoy reading to my grandchild carry a different message.

One of my favourites is about a curious frog living on a farm. His curiosity leads him into trouble when he falls into a pail of milk. He calls for help, but none of his friends come. Instead of giving up, he keeps paddling. Round and round he goes, churning the milk until blobs of butter begin to form. Finally, he climbs onto one of them and jumps to safety.

No princess or prince arrive. No magical intervention occurs. He rescues himself through persistence and effort.

I find that deeply satisfying.

The same is true of the story of the hare and the tortoise. When I tell it to my grandchild, we turn it into a game. I am invariably the hare, and she is always the tortoise. Needless to say, she wins every time. Along the way, we talk about what it means to be boastful and why steady effort often matters more than speed.

Stories become not just lessons but experiences.

As I think about these fairy tales, I find myself asking whether they should be told exactly as they were or adapted for contemporary children. I do not have a definitive answer.

Perhaps the old stories still have value. They speak to universal human experiences: fear, loneliness, hope, courage, and transformation. But perhaps they also invite reinterpretation. We need not discard them entirely; we can read them critically, discuss them openly, and even imagine alternative endings.

What if Cinderella chose her own future rather than waiting to be discovered? What if Sleeping Beauty awakened through her own courage? What if the prince and princess rescued each other?

Children are often more receptive to such possibilities than we imagine.

The greatest gift stories offer may not be the lessons they contain but the conversations they inspire. Reading these tales with my grandchild has reminded me that stories are not fixed monuments. They are living things. Each generation inherits them, questions them, and reshapes them.

And perhaps that is exactly as it should be.

As we grow older, we read the same stories with new eyes. Sometimes we discover flaws we never noticed before. Sometimes we uncover wisdom that escaped us as children. Most importantly, we learn that stories are not simply meant to be believed. They are also meant to be examined, discussed, and, when necessary, rewritten.

That, too, is part of the magic.

The Ugly Duckling and Other Childhood Mirrors

My granddaughter had encountered The Ugly Duckling in school recently and remembered enough of it to narrate parts of the story to me. Delighted by this, I bought her a cutout storybook version of it and we read it together this afternoon. The book was meant for her to take home, but she refused firmly.

“It’s a sad story,” she said.

And of course, she was right. Adults tend to remember the ending. The lonely duckling transforms into a beautiful swan and finally finds acceptance. Children, however, often experience stories in the immediate emotional present. To her, the duckling was simply unhappy, excluded and unloved. The happy ending did not erase the sadness of the journey.

That made me reflect on how differently stories meet us at different ages.

When I first truly identified with The Ugly Duckling, I was no longer a small child. As a pre-teen and adolescent, I carried a poor self-image. I was plump, dark-skinned and painfully conscious of comparisons. My younger sister seemed prettier. My older sibling, being the firstborn and a boy, appeared more valued. Like many middle children, I quietly concluded that I occupied the least luminous corner of the family constellation.

So Andersen’s tale spoke to me deeply. Not because the duckling became beautiful, but because he had suffered from believing the harsh verdicts passed upon him.

Then came one of those tiny but life-altering moments that youth remembers forever. In college, a classmate wrote a few lines praising my eyes. I still remember the astonishment of that moment. I felt crowned. Around the same time, with my very long hair, I had begun to imagine myself as Rapunzel instead. Stories had shifted. So had I.

With time came other forms of confidence. Intellectual assurance, humour, language, friendships, work and the ability to connect with people. Life itself eventually becomes larger than self-consciousness. As I now think of it, when life claims you, it hijacks you. Old insecurities do not always disappear dramatically. They simply lose their starring role.

Yet I resist the fashionable idea that approval does not matter. Human beings need appreciation. We need to be seen kindly by others. There is a difference between desperately chasing validation and being nourished by love and recognition. Sometimes a timely word, a friendship, a teacher or a community changes the way we see ourselves forever.

That, perhaps, is the real emotional heart of The Ugly Duckling. The decisive moment is not physical transformation but belonging. The duckling sees himself welcomed by the swans before he truly recognizes himself among them.

Children absorb stories far more deeply than we imagine. They do not merely read them. They inhabit them. Stories help shape their expectations of beauty, love, suffering and acceptance. Which is why an emotionally available adult matters so much. Children need someone with whom they can talk about these feelings and fears.

Perhaps my granddaughter rejected the story because she has not yet discovered that life sometimes asks us to travel through loneliness before we arrive at recognition.

And perhaps that is as it should be.

Pain Rani and the Princess and the Pea

When I was a young girl, I was fond of the elderly. I think it began when I had to go across to an elderly neighbour’s house to borrow the William series. I discovered very quickly that I enjoyed chatting with her as much as borrowing the books. She, in turn, seemed pleased to have a visitor who did not vanish the moment the books were handed over.

“Most children come only when they want something,” she once told me.

Even later in life, many of my friends were much older than my own age group. One of them was my architect’s mother. After we moved into our new house, she lived close enough for us to stroll across to each other’s homes, and we spent many afternoons in conversation.

On one such visit, she found me looking particularly dreadful. At the time, I had developed lactose intolerance after being treated with Flagyl for amoebiasis. The amoebiasis itself had probably been acquired during my travels supervising internship programmes for students. I still remember eating in one establishment politely called a “mess”, while rats scuttled around with complete ownership of the premises. But in those days, the daily allowance given to academics on field trips was not exactly designed for luxury dining.

The lactose intolerance was something I diagnosed for myself. I noticed that whenever I ate at home, I would end up vomiting violently and unable to keep food down. Yet on the days I carried food while collecting data for my PhD, I was perfectly fine. After a process worthy of Sherlock Holmes, I realised the only thing I consumed at home and not outside was curd.

Thus began my long and uneasy relationship with dairy products.

Like a proper Malayali, I eventually sought salvation through Ayurveda. After six memorable bottles of kashayam, I recovered sufficiently to tolerate a little milk in tea. But curd remains my lifelong nemesis.

So there I was, looking pale and miserable, when my elderly friend studied me carefully and said something I have never forgotten.

“You must be feeling very sick. But one shouldn’t complain too much about one’s health. People don’t really want to hear about other people’s ailments.”

I remember wanting to laugh aloud because, while I am not a hypochondriac, I have always possessed a deep affection for discussing my various bodily inconveniences.

One of my daughters claimed I had stepped straight out of a Gerald Durrell book. In his stories about life on Corfu, there is a character named Lugaretzia who invariably chooses the most delicate moment, often during a magnificent meal, to launch into graphic descriptions of her medical problems, instantly destroying everyone’s appetite.

My husband, meanwhile, maintained that my initials, PR, suited me perfectly because I was a “Pain Rani”. According to him, there was always some ache, pain, stiffness, sensitivity, or mysterious symptom occupying my attention.

I defended myself by invoking The Princess and the Pea. After all, only a true princess could detect a single pea hidden beneath twenty mattresses. If I could feel every microscopic discomfort known to humankind, clearly there had to be royal blood somewhere in the family line.

But age teaches one certain truths.

Aches and pains become faithful companions. Some part of the body is always protesting. Yet one also learns that there is wisdom in not narrating every complaint aloud. People naturally avoid those who endlessly catalogue their ailments, but more importantly, dwelling on them enlarges them. One can almost talk oneself into feeling worse.

So my quote of the day is,to keep the doctor at bay, don’t complain away.

An older piece, revisited and lightly refined. If you have already read it, scroll past with my blessings. If not, proceed at your own peril.

Tall Tales from a Warden…

According to Indian astrology, there is a much-dreaded planetary phase ruled by Saturn that lasts for seven and a half years. It is said to test one’s patience, resilience and occasionally one’s sanity. I have endured it three times: twice according to astrological calculations and the third as warden of a girls’ hostel. What astrologers fail to mention, however, is that periods of deep anxiety are often offset by unexpected hilarity, lifelong friendships and an accelerated course in human nature.

It all began with a carrot cake. Not a carrot cake so much as a strategic carrot disguised as cake, intended to sweeten me into accepting the additional charge of hostel wardenship, a responsibility the current warden was desperate to hand over with the speed and relief of someone fleeing a sinking ship.

I was vulnerable. The institute campus where I worked had staff accommodation, though the coveted “quarters” were reserved almost exclusively for senior faculty and the institutionally blessed. For a relatively new arrival, the surest route to housing was to become warden of one of the hostels. I had an infant daughter at the time and carried a permanent burden of guilt about leaving her at home with domestic help while I went to work. Living on campus meant I could dash home at a moment’s notice if required.

So I swallowed the carrot, cake, bait, hook and all, and embarked on what turned out to be a several-year roller coaster ride conducted largely without seat belts.

Among the more memorable episodes was the apprehension of a thief and his eventual handover to the police. Raju, as he was known in those parts, was a small-time thief with large ambitions and poor timing. He had evidently been studying the hostel’s rhythms for days and managed to slip in unnoticed during a change of guards at the gate. Having surveyed the terrain, he chose as his temporary headquarters the room where brooms, broken buckets and miscellaneous hostel debris were stored.

His plan, apparently, was to wait there until the hostel slept before beginning operations. Unfortunately for him, he fortified himself with some potent local brew while waiting. The brew proved too potent , seasoned though he was, and Raju promptly passed out on an old cot.

Some time later, a girl went upstairs to fetch a badminton racquet and found the storeroom bolted from inside. Peering through the keyhole, she saw the unmistakable sight of a lungi-clad male figure snoring peacefully amidst the mops and cobwebs. Showing far greater presence of mind than most people would under the circumstances, she locked the door from outside and raised the alarm.

A few frantic calls later, Raju awoke from his dreamless sleep to find himself surrounded by policemen. Perhaps he briefly convinced himself this was still part of the alcohol-induced nightmare, right up to the moment he was hauled out and deposited into the waiting police jeep. At the time it was terrifying, at least for me. Time and distance, however, have since transformed it into an excellent after-dinner story.

On another occasion, chaos erupted because one of the students was believed to have been possessed by a ghost while looking out of a hostel window. She had apparently fainted dramatically and remained unconscious for hours despite repeated attempts to revive her.

Unfortunately for the ghost, I had just returned from watching a film and was in no mood for paranormal activity. I was informed on reaching home that my immediate presence was required at the hostel. Summoning the resident pharmacist, I hurried there to find every light blazing and the entire hostel vibrating with fear and excitement.

The student, a fresher, lay on the bed with her eyes tightly shut, producing blood-curdling groans at remarkably disciplined intervals. The sounds were so rhythmically timed that they suggested rehearsal rather than possession. When I tried to lift her eyelids, I got the distinct impression that she was exerting considerable effort not to look at me.

By then the pharmacist had arrived. A seasoned professional, she surveyed the situation and instantly understood what was happening. In a tone of great authority, she instructed me that she would count to three and I was to deliver the girl a resounding slap to shock her out of hysteria.

The pharmacist began counting solemnly.

“One… two… three!”

Though I had absolutely no intention of striking the poor child, the girl’s eyes flew open before my hand had moved an inch. She sat bolt upright, thoroughly cured.

The explanation, once uncovered, was disappointingly earthly. The next morning she was scheduled to appear for a practical laboratory examination for which the only acceptable excuse for absence was illness. Possession by ghosts, apparently, was being attempted as a creative extension of the category.

The entire hostel dissolved into laughter, including the chief performer herself, who abandoned hysteria with admirable speed once the danger had passed.

Even allowing for the golden glow nostalgia casts over the past, my years as a hostel warden remain among the richest and strangest of my life. They were exhausting, chaotic, occasionally alarming and frequently absurd. They also offered an unusual closeness to young lives in transition, all confusion, bravado, homesickness and drama.

Still, wardenship is a position vested with unequal power, and if I were to walk that road again, there are certainly things I would do differently. But life, in its quiet irony, rarely grants us the chance to retrace the same path twice.