Shakuntla Malhotra Recalls Her 86 Years for the FIS Oral History Project

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: Perhaps it was the hardiness of her rural upbringing that taught her to be focused and not give into her fears or it is the wisdom of her years from which she has learnt the calmness that she exudes, a quality many who know her admire. Still, it may have been a little daunting for my 85 year-old mother to sit in front of a television camera and do a live interview, all in one take, in a language – English – that is her third (her mother tongue is Punjabi, then comes Hindi) and speaking softly.

But if anything at all, Shakuntla Malhotra enjoys the company of others and makes friends quickly, even if this time it was with becoming comfortable with a TV camera! She was taking part in the ongoing Indo American Oral History Project that is being managed and propelled forward by the Foundation for India Studies since its inception nearly three years ago. As the visionary and founder of the project, Krishna Vavilala explained, the idea is to digitally capture some of the faces and moments from our desi community for posterity.

Towards this end, 28 Indo Americans from the Bayou City have so far been interviewed and the recordings digitized and saved to the Houston Public Library’s servers for anyone to view on line. It has been a labor of love for Vavilala, a retired 78 year-old electrical engineer who gave up work completely two years ago to devote his Golden Years to this project and other community work. He has raised some money for the project from a fundraiser and other sources, and has, by the dint of his persuasive skills, been able to get studio and editing time from Houston Community College and even set up a tiny studio in some donated office space by Northwest mall.

It was through this same tenacity that Vavilala had secured a recording slot at the HCC Cash Road campus for my mother’s interview. And, as I have done for a few other people in the project, I had the honor and somewhat nervous task of interviewing my own mother without resorting to calling her “mama” and referring to my father as “your husband” because this interview would be seen by many people, it is hoped, worldwide and years into the future too.

Mama’s story is typical of her generation who was from West Punjab and had to flee for their lives when the Partition of India happened in August 1947. She related how her father’s father had land in the Jhung area, near the Jhelum River; how she was born in Lahore and then grew up in Lyallpur (since renamed Faisalabad after a visit by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia); how she got married at 19 and had to run for her life on one of the last trains out of the newly created Pakistan; how her extended family of 36 members lived in a two room flat; how my father joined the Government of India, first in the Ministry of Broadcasting and later in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Haltingly and pausing for the right words, mama declared that no Punjabi would beg for help after the Partition, that she and the other women of the family would sew their own clothes, knit their own sweaters, and welcomed all who needed a place to stay. “When my husband became a diplomat, his first posting was to London,” mama recalled, “and the whole family came to the railway station to give our family a resounding farewell.” From there, there were postings to Karachi, Pakistan (“my mother was afraid for us to go there,” she remembered), then Teheran, Iran; Bern, Switzerland and finally Bucharest, Romania where they had to live through a devastating earthquake. After retiring to New Delhi, the Malhotras lived quietly in their own 3-story house until my father passed away in 2003. In 2004, mama moved to Houston to stay with me, her younger son.

It has been quite a remarkable journey for mama, from the farmlands and prosaic rural settings of a small town in West Punjab to becoming a world traveler and then finally living her Golden Years in America, learning to cope with a new culture and lifestyle and getting comfortable with fluency in another language at her age. But she has taken it in stride, just as she had to cope with the massive upheavals that shaped her youth.

And in doing so, through her own discipline and interest in people, other activities and to keep her mind alert and occupied, she took on the challenge of writing Punjabi recipes, from her vast recollection of the many dishes that she has a mastery in cooking and for which she has always been praised. Her recipes have been printed in this newspaper – Indo American News – every week for the past 20 months and many people have become her fans. And, apart from that, she is accomplished at crochet, embroidery and knitting, in fact she would love to teach people if they are interested.

To top it off, mama celebrated her 86th birthday with a small lunch party at Nirvana Restaurant, this past Sunday, July 27. About 40 people who have come to know her really well serenaded her with a lively Birthday Song as she cut her cake, surrounded by them and her son and grandson, Stefan.