I have wanted for a long time to put down on paper all the store of events and episodes collected in my mind over the years. It gives me great joy to dip into this treasure now and again and reflect how interesting, how rich and varied, are the experiences that I have had the good fortune to enjoy. Now I can look back at things with detachment and view them in their proper perspective. The landscape is complete with its background and composition. Not much, it seems to me, is likely to be added to it hereafter. Anyway, if there is, it will not alter the picture.
The experiences of plain and simple people like us are not, perhaps, worth recording, or so my husband said when-ever I toyed with the idea of writing them down. Latterly. however, I found that he did not entirely dismiss the idea, and it seemed to me that he too, like me, felt that we have gone through a life which has been, on the whole, satisfying and rewarding.
This, then, I thought, was the chance for me to crystallise my ideas and put them in a presentable form. As I commence writing, I am beginning to see that life around us has been often momentous and breath-taking, even though we may not have been seriously affected by what was happening around.
Our life has not been either rugged or steep, with sharp contours; but it has its scenic beauty. I think it worthwhile to let flow from my mind my thoughts so that they wend their way up hill and down dale to form, in the end, a silvery cascade for others to enjoy in their leisure moments.
A book like this has necessarily to be both autobiographical and biographical, as it concerns the lives of two persons knit together to form a single pattern. In the absence of personal diaries, I have eschewed documentation as far as possible. Besides, intimate personal glimpses are more ap-pealing than recorded data and bring the reader closer to the author.
An autobiography, or a biography, has to contain facts in their stark form which may, at times, be unpalatable. The facts quoted herein are narrated without bitterness or malice, and only as a record of events and episodes as they occurred.
I have tried to take a detached view to the utmost extent possible.
Fifty-seven years of my own experience and ten more of my husband's, taken together, synchronise with the story of India from the beginning of the twentieth century: India under subjugation; the freedom struggle; the achievement of independence; renascent India; and finally the threat of foreign aggression. All these phases of India's history have naturally had their impact on every home and every individual.
In the sphere of world politics there have been two world wars and a continuous cold war. Science has advanced by leaps and bounds, and man has almost conquered outer space. The world has shrunk considerably, and we are closer to remote parts of the earth than we ever were. Great and varied have been the social changes too, and all of us must have had some interesting experience to relate.
If I have succeeded in presenting faithfully a picture of a normal, middle-class family life, covering three generations, I shall have cause for satisfaction. It seems to me that the middle-class family plays a definite role in any democratic society. It is my wish to portray a true picture of this section of society, which is its backbone as it were and will have to be its basis when a real socio-economic levelling up takes place.
Histories of nations are revealed by political biographies and life stories of great men and women. Through the novel one gets glimpses into normal social life, since a novel is a portrayal of life with an emphasis on selected aspects. In this true story are glimpses of life as it was in India, when ortho-doxy prevailed, when laws and social customs were more rigid, when we were under a foreign government and, as it is now, when we are independent.
I wish it to be known that India was not so superstitious. so caste-ridden, so socially backward, after all, as some people believe, that the structure of Indian society had a well-meaning scheme of things, despite a few strange customs, and that the individual had the freedom of making the best use of his opportunities if he so wished.
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