Rau’s grandmother cannot speak English, but they got along very easily in spite of the language barrier.

She and her sibling, Premilla, were taught Hindustani by their mother so they could both understand the
language though they were still too out of practice to try speaking it. During their stay in Bombay, she
found out that her grandmother was trying to instill the traditional Hindu girls’ attitude to the
household. The servants were the first problem that came up. Whenever the telephone rang, one of the
servants will ran to answer it, unanimously terrified of the instrument. She began to spring for the
telephone, too, whenever it rang. Once, when she and the houseboy reach for the telephone at the
same time, the houseboy did not give it to her. She asked him if she could answer the telephone in the
future in a very polite Hindustani, using the formal from of “you.” Afterwards, her grandmother called
her into her room and warned her against treating the servants in such a way again. Her grandmother
said that the servants are not her equal so she must not treat them as such. The fear that servants have
for Rau must be founded on respect. By all means they should give the servants everything they need
but they should always keep their social distance.

Then there was the matter of prayers in the mornings. Her grandmother was always up by five
o’clock to say her prayers. The other women of the house were expected to join her, though there was
no expressed compulsion. One afternoon, she told her grandmother that the prayers were meaningless
and felt that she was too old to be converted to Hinduism now. She assured Rau briskly that even if she
wanted to, she could not be reconverted to Hinduism. Rau had been born a Hindu, but since she ate
beef, neglected to wear her caste mark, and committed innumerable other offenses, she had lost her
right to both her religion and her caste. But her grandmother reprimanded her that even if she lost her
caste, she is not allowed to marry anyone outside the Brahmin caste. She told her granddaughter that
the real Indians are the peasants because poverty is so much a part of their daily living that they must
have a tremendous, inclusive faith to make such living possible. If she wants to understand these
people, she must also understand that Hinduism is the most rigid of beliefs that determines for them
everything from their food morals. She lectured that India has been called pacifists but it is not because
of ignorance. They can only hope that the religion and philosophy of the people will secure them against
civilization.

Rau wanted to argue about her grandmother’s hopelessly reactionary attitude towards “those Indians
less fortunate than ourselves” but was scared to do so. Her grandmother shares that the West considers
India as one who lost its culture. But it is in the oral traditions of the villages that the arts of India are
really alive. The brief Western immortality of museums is pointless to people who have seen eternity in
their earth. Her grandmother described the West as short-sighted and Indians as long-sighted, which is
not the same as far-sighted. Rau had invited a friend to tea and asked if her grandmother will approve.
Having thought that her granddaughter’s visitor is female, she agreed. But her grandmother was
shocked when Rau said that it was a ‘he.’ Her grandmother was amazed at how her daughter allowed an
outrageous behavior from Rau. Rau argued that it was not her mother’s fault as she was away all the
time. When Rau asked if she will have to cancel tea, her grandmother refused as Rau invited him already
and that they were obliged to extend their hospitality to him. But her grandmother warned her that this
will not happen again.

Rau went to her mother’s room and told her what happened. Rau was anxious as she also
promised a dinner with John. Her mother explained that her grandmother never receives Englishmen in
her house because she makes it as a social issue. Her mother thought that the situation was funny
because if Rau will go out alone with John, she’s as good as married. Her mother advised that she should
break the dinner appointment to avoid any conflicts. When John came, they had tea in icy solitude on
the front veranda. He remarked that Rau looked pale; she answered that make up was not allowed in
their house. When her mother joined them, she saw the family was gathered in the living room. John
asked where the family was and Rau’s mother said that they all went out to the tennis tournament. Rau
took John to the garden and told him the reason why she couldn’t dine with him. But John, seemingly
not understanding the situation, asked if she does not want to marry him.

This incident caused her to recall that the betrothal ceremony performed between her grandparents
was when her grandmother was just nine years old. This means that even if her grandfather were to
have died before the actual wedding ceremony, her grandmother was not allowed to marry someone
else. As soon as the betrothal ceremony was completed seven years later, she went to live in her
mother-in-law’s home. She stayed there until her mother-in-law died and she, as the oldest woman in
the house, became the head of the family. Rau recalled that her grandmother was chaperoned by
members of her husband’s family on all occasions, was trained to be the perfect wife and mother,
learned to cook, sew, clean, bring up children, run the family life, advise those younger than herself,
keep the accounts of the household, and keep a careful check on the finances of each individual
member of the family. Her grandmother learned to read and write along with her nieces and nephews
after she was married, but that was the limit of her education.

The joint-family system was brought out because the sons of any land-owning family were compelled to
live together for economic reasons. As the system took root and grew, somehow the women seem to
have taken charge. Their province- and this is true to a wide extent even today- was the home and there
they were dictators. By the time her grandmother, as a wife of the oldest son, came to be the head of
the household, the system was already breaking down. Their family moved from the south, which was
their home, to Bombay. One of the minor forms which her grandmother’s continued autocracy took was
the examination of the mail received by anybody living in the house. Asha told me that she used to
censor, and sometimes entirely remove, letters from people of whom her grandmother did not approve.

Rau also heard that her mother was taken out of a medical school in Madras when it was known that
she was the only girl in class, and was transferred to a more ladylike work in English literature in
women’s college. She also learned that her mother defied two of the most rigid social conventions of
the time before she was twenty-five. She earned a living by lecturing in English literature in a living by
lecturing in English literature in a Madras college; and at twenty-five, Rau’s mother was the first Kashmir
girl to marry outside her community. Because Rau was brought up in Europe and educated in
preparatory and public schools in England, she felt that the conventions were not only retrogressive and
socially crippling to the country, but also a little ridiculous. But she was only flattering herself, for later
she found many young Indians who had a far clearer picture of India’s social problems and, moreover,
were doing a great deal more toward solving them than she ever thought of doing.