Jain Spirit 2003 10 No 16

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 42

ART & LITERATURE
A FAMILY PORTRAIT
Mira Kamdar takes us back to Burma, where her family became very rich
TITHIN A FEW SHORT YEARS, THE KHARA | the eternal impression of having fun. Maybe it was only
brothers turned a shop selling kitchen utensils into a having to stay still for so long while the image developed on
highly profitable import-export business. Burma the old glass negatives, but still, my grandmother looks produced little or no manufactured goods. Joining the many more than serious. She looks intensely sad. And beautiful. Indian merchants who came to dominate trade in Burma, the And very young, yet strong. She has high cheekbones, full Kharas undertook to provide the local populace with anything it lips, buttery skin and luminous, haunting eyes. I have stared might desire that was not made locally, which is to say almost into these eyes for hours, trying to imagine the girl looking everything. The only thing the Kharas would not sell were goods out from them. I don't know what was happening on that deriving from the slaughter of animals, such as leather items. At day in 1920. I do know that Motiba had lost her mother a various points in time, the brothers dealt in such diverse products few years earlier and that she missed her very much. Her as steel machine tools and Swiss chocolates, though textiles were younger sister, my Jayamasi, the one who later lived in always the mainstay of their business. The Kharas were very Singapore and London, was so traumatized by this successful. They acquired enough capital to build rice mills and disappearance that she refused to be near anyone else. So, made a handsome profit on Burma's number one export crop. Motiba was made to drop out of school in the fourth grade
By 1920, Motiba's father, Muljibhai Khara was able to so she could keep her little sister company during the long gather his prosperous family on the roof of the family's grand days the sheltered girls spent at home. villa in Akyab for a group portrait. In the photograph, one can The villa in Akyab where Motiba grew up was utterly make out some tropical foliage and the neoclassical balustrade destroyed by the Japanese during World War II, which is a that encircled the rooftop terrace. There are actually two shame because it looks as if it was a beautiful house. photographs, evidently taken the same day, with exactly the Motiba's childhood in Akyab, even if confined, was a same cast of characters except that my great-grandfather pampered one. There were scores of servants to cater to her himself only appears in one of the pictures. Curiously, my every need. If she was hungry, she had only to convey an grandmother, age twelve years, and her new stepmother, order to the kitchen via one of her maids. When she shed Samrathben, who was all of sixteen, swapped outfits so that her clothing, she simply dropped it on the floor, where it each is wearing the other's clothes in the second photograph. was picked up and whisked away to be washed and pressed As this exchange of outfits indicates, the two young women had and put away by the next morning. There were maids to become very close; so close that none of Motiba's children brush and plait her hair, maids to oil her skin and massage learned until very late in life that Samrathben, the woman they her legs, maids to keep her company. A hierarchy of knew as Motiba, grandmother, was not their mother's real servants placed those brought over from Kathiawar at the mother.
top, those from elsewhere in India next, and the Burmese, It is obvious that the family has dressed in its finest for the who did the hardest work, last. The head cook was a occasion, and the clothing together with the crystal vases and Kathiawari Jain woman whose competent hands could be the carved teak tables convey my grandfather's success as a entrusted with the feeding of a large and devout vegetarian merchant. The women wear exquisitely embroidered cholis, or family. Young Motiba's social circle in Akyab was firmly blouses, with gold fringe sewn onto the hems of the sleeves. limited to the young ladies from similar backgrounds. Their heavy silk saris, drawn demurely over their heads, have Indeed, family members were preferred above all other wide borders of gold. My grandfather's second wife holds a acquaintances, and Motiba grew up, as was typical in her plump infant on her lap who would grow up to be my kindly day, in the company of legions of cousins: first, second, great-uncle Manumama, Dhirajmami's now-deceased husband. once-even twice-removed. The older sons stand behind. They wear jackets and shoes. Of Burma, Motiba remembered most the luxurious life Seated in the centre are the adults, with the younger children at she enjoyed there as a child, the beautiful pagodas and, with their feet, including a sister who died in early childhood. some envy, I think, the independent, cheroot-smoking Strangely, her image is the only one that is blurred, as if her Burmese women. When asked about the country, Motiba death were foreshadowed somehow in that uncanny way would inevitably make a comment along the lines of, "In photographs can have of capturing things we do not 'see' at the Burma, the women are very strong, very smart. They time. Everyone looks very, very serious. Certainly, one gets handle all the money and run all the businesses. They work the impression that dignity counted more in that bygone era very hard, while the men just take it easy." I always than in our own, where one must smile 'toothfully' so as to give interpreted this less as a fully accurate commentary on
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Jain Spirit
September - November 2003