Mata Savitri Bai
My Mother, Savitri Devi
Part I — The First Twenty Years: Before Partition
When I look back upon my mother’s life, I find it natural to divide her journey into three broad periods.
The first approximately twenty years belonged to the world before Partition. The next twenty years or more were spent rebuilding life in Panipat after Partition. The final, somewhat shorter period was spent in Delhi.
Each phase belonged almost to a different world.
Her first twenty years were perhaps the most contrasting of all. She began life as the cherished youngest daughter of a prosperous and forward-looking father, surrounded by music, relative comfort and affection. At only fifteen, she entered marriage and a household very different from the one in which she had grown up. Before she had fully emerged from childhood herself, she became a wife, daughter-in-law and mother.
Then, just as she was beginning to establish her own little family, Partition swept away the entire world she had known.
Chapter 1 — The Youngest Daughter of the Family
My mother, Savitri Bai, was born in Multan in 1926, the youngest child of my Nanaji and Naniji.
They had four surviving daughters and two sons. The daughters were Shukla Bai, Hari Bai, Lachhmi Bai and Savitri Bai, my mother.
Naniji also once told me that another little daughter had tragically died in a fire during Diwali. I cannot presently recall her name. Perhaps someday it will return through family memory.
Being the youngest child, my mother shared a particularly affectionate relationship with her father. She was his little girl and enjoyed the security and special attention often given to the youngest member of a large family.
She attended the local school through approximately the middle classes and afterward continued learning at home. She became quite competent in Hindi, Punjabi and practical arithmetic.
Those abilities remained with her throughout her life. Years later, although she had no formal teaching qualification, she would become the first teacher of her own children, patiently preparing us for school.
My mother therefore possessed something more valuable than certificates: she had enough education, confidence and practical intelligence to educate the next generation.
Chapter 2 — Nanaji: Soldier, Provider and Forward-Looking Father
My Nanaji had served in the British Indian Army and worked as a quartermaster.
His military career exposed him to a world much larger than Aghapura and Multan. Family memories tell of his foreign travels and of his returning with substantial savings, including gold coins, as well as European articles, some of which were said to have come from Germany.
Among the Khatri families of Aghapura, he was regarded as a prosperous and respected man.
His home reflected both his financial position and his exposure to the wider world.
There were good-quality household articles, new bicycles, fine scissors and imported objects that were uncommon in ordinary homes of that period. The family looked after these things carefully.
My mother remembered, amusingly, that older or inferior scissors were sometimes kept separately for lending to people who came asking for them. The better scissors were protected for use within the family.
A prized new bicycle was treated similarly. Even close relatives might be offered the older bicycle rather than the treasured new one.
These little memories tell us something about the household in which my mother grew up. It was not extravagantly wealthy, but it was comfortable, orderly and conscious of the value of good possessions.
Chapter 3 — Aghapura and the Multan of Her Childhood
To understand my mother’s early life, one has to imagine Multan before Partition.
It was part of undivided Punjab under British rule: an ancient city of markets, religious institutions, military connections and tightly knit residential communities.
Aghapura was one such locality.
Approximately 150 families lived within this interconnected social world. They were linked not merely by neighborhood but by kinship, occupation, biradari and generations of marriage.
The Khatris constituted a broad community containing many family groupings and lineages. People generally knew where every family came from, who their relatives were, what land or occupation they possessed, and into which families their sons and daughters had married.
Surnames were not always standardized in the modern way. After Partition, many families adopted or regularized names such as Khanna and Kapoor, but in old Aghapura one’s identity was understood through family, lineage and relationships.
It was a remarkably interconnected world.
That closeness provided security, but it could also create pressure. A disagreement between two families could quickly affect marriages, friendships and relationships throughout the mohalla.
Chapter 4 — Cold Soda in the Heat of Multan
Some of my mother’s most vivid memories were not of major historical events but of the small pleasures of everyday life.
Multan summers were intensely hot.
There was, of course, no electric refrigerator in the house. Instead, the family kept a very large earthen container used for cooling. Ice would be brought from the market around Delhi Gate Bazaar, placed inside, and bottles of soda would be cooled in it.
For my mother, being able to enjoy a cold soda at home during the fierce Multan summer was a memorable luxury.
Her childhood home had bicycles, imported household articles, music and small comforts that distinguished it from many ordinary households of that period.
She grew up knowing security.
That would make the contrast with her married life particularly striking.
Chapter 5 — A Girl of Music, Animals and the Talkies
My mother was lively, attractive, small-built and full of energy.
Music was one of her great joys.
Her father had brought her a special harmonium, and she learned to play it fluently. She would play popular songs and sing along with them. She also enjoyed listening to music on the radio.
She loved going to the cinema—the “talkies,” as people called them in those days.
The songs of that era became part of her inner world and remained with her long afterward.
She was also an animal lover. Among the remarkable stories she told us was that she even kept a deer.
I therefore remember the young Savitri Bai, from the stories handed down to us, not merely as the daughter of a prosperous man but as a vibrant girl who enjoyed music, animals, films and the pleasures of life.
Until approximately fifteen years of age, she remained within this protected world.
Then marriage changed everything.
Chapter 6 — An Older Friendship Between Two Families
The relationship between my mother’s family and my father’s family had actually begun long before my parents married.
Nanaji was a good friend of my paternal grandfather.
Naniji later told me an interesting little story.
When Nanaji was away, my paternal grandfather sometimes passed their house early in the morning while Naniji was cleaning the front courtyard.
They would respectfully exchange “Sat Sri Akal” and continue on their way.
Many years later, while I was staying with Naniji during my first employment, she spoke very warmly about my paternal grandfather.
“Your grandfather was a very nice man,” she told me.
She particularly remembered his kindness toward women who were distressed or facing difficulties.
Yet his own domestic history was complicated and ultimately tragic.
Chapter 7 — The Search for a Male Heir
My paternal grandfather’s first wife had given birth to two daughters but no son.
In those days, the desire for a male heir was extremely strong.
A son was expected to continue the family line, inherit land and property and preserve the lineage. This preference was built deeply into the economic and social structure of family life.
My grandfather’s sisters therefore became concerned that their brother should have a son.
According to the family story, they took him to a saint for blessings.
The saint advised him to give up meat and alcohol.
This was not necessarily an easy promise in the social environment of those days. Men of means frequently had their own deras where friends gathered after work, ate, drank and socialized.
Nevertheless, my grandfather agreed.
The saint then gave him two apples, blessing him that he would have two sons.
My grandfather subsequently married my grandmother, a considerably younger woman.
In due course, the first son was born.
He was my father, Vas Dev Singh, born in 1919.
Chapter 8 — The Birth of a Precious Son
My father’s birth brought enormous happiness.
After two daughters from the earlier marriage, the long-awaited son had finally arrived.
My grandfather celebrated generously.
Blankets were distributed among the poor. Langar was arranged. Sweets and other offerings were distributed.
A precious male child had been born into a prominent family, and everyone believed the family’s future had now been secured.
But the celebration was followed by tragedy.
According to what my father later told me, my grandfather’s friends eventually persuaded him to join their old gatherings again.
Meat and alcohol returned to the table.
Soon afterward, he became seriously ill.
He died at only about forty-five years of age.
My father was still a very young child.
His younger brother, Inderjit Singh, was born after their father’s death.
Strangely, the saint’s blessing of the two apples had come true.
There were indeed two sons.
But they had lost their father.
Chapter 9 — Dadi Ji: Widowed at Twenty
My grandmother was left a widow at only about twenty years of age.
To understand her later relationship with my mother, one must understand what happened to her during these years.
She had two tiny sons, one of whom had been born after his father’s death. She had no husband to protect either herself or their interests.
The prosperity that should have belonged to the sons of a wealthy father did not automatically reach them.
Relatives challenged their rights to property and agricultural lands. Questions were raised about the legal standing of my grandmother’s marriage and consequently about the inheritance rights of her sons.
Property was taken over.
A long legal struggle followed.
One of my father’s sisters took up the cause of the two little boys and spent her own resources pursuing the case.
The litigation continued for approximately twenty to twenty-two years.
Eventually, it reached the Lahore High Court.
The final decision went in favor of my father and his younger brother.
They had won their legal rights.
But twenty years of litigation could not restore the childhood they had lost.
Chapter 10 — Born Rich, Raised Poor
My father’s story contains a remarkable contradiction.
He had been born as the much-celebrated son of a prosperous man, yet he grew up almost in poverty.
At one point he did not even have the approximately twenty rupees required to pay his matriculation examination fee.
It was my Nanaji who stepped forward and provided the money.
My father sat for the examination and achieved a very good result. He was considered intelligent and subsequently obtained employment in the courts, beginning the slow rebuilding of his life.
I have always found something touching in this incident.
Nanaji helped a struggling young man without knowing that this same young man would eventually become his son-in-law.
Chapter 11 — Four Daughters and the Marriage Network of Aghapura
Marriage in Aghapura was not merely the union of a young man and woman.
It was an alliance between families.
Nanaji had four daughters.
The eldest, Shukla Bai, married within the community. Nanaji later used his influence to help his son-in-law establish himself in the Army, after which the family lived at various military postings.
The second daughter, Hari Bai, was remembered as extraordinarily beautiful—so fair and striking that people sometimes compared her appearance with that of an English lady.
She too was initially engaged within an affluent family.
The third daughter, Lachhmi Bai, was similarly engaged to a young man belonging to a landowning family.
Then trouble arose.
Chapter 12 — The Broken Engagements
Nanaji broke an engagement involving one of his sons after doubts arose regarding the proposed match.
Within such a closely interconnected mohalla, this could not remain a private matter.
The offended family group became hostile.
According to the family account, pressure was then placed upon other families to break their marriage arrangements with Nanaji’s daughters.
Several engagements consequently collapsed.
For a father with daughters of marriageable age, this created a serious problem.
Hari Bai eventually married through another family connection.
For Lachhmi Bai, Nanaji made what I consider a surprisingly forward-looking decision for those days.
Instead of considering inherited wealth alone, he selected an educated and handsome young man from a financially modest family who was making his own way through life.
His name was Avichand Butta.
He was working in Karachi, associated with the shipyards.
Lachhmi Bai married him and moved to Karachi.
Chapter 13 — The Engagement Dadi Ji Refused to Break
My mother’s engagement also came under pressure.
But Dadi Ji refused to cancel it.
Her decision becomes easier to understand when viewed against her own difficult life.
She had been widowed extremely young.
She had spent years fighting for the inheritance and future of her sons.
She knew Nanaji as an established, prosperous and dependable man. A relationship with his family offered some security and strength to her struggling household.
She therefore stood firmly behind the marriage.
In 1941, my mother, Savitri Bai, married my father, Vas Dev Singh.
She was only about fifteen years old.
My father, born in 1919, was approximately seven years older.
Chapter 14 — A Fifteen-Year-Old Bride
Measured by today’s understanding, fifteen was extraordinarily young to begin married life.
But in the social environment of that period, early marriages remained common despite legal efforts to discourage them.
A girl generally did not marry only her husband.
She married into his entire household.
There was little discussion of emotional compatibility. Courtship did not exist in the modern sense. Honeymoons were virtually unknown in families such as ours.
The family selected the match.
The girl entered the husband’s house.
Then she was expected to adjust.
My mother therefore did not simply become the wife of my father.
At fifteen, she entered an entire family system.
Chapter 15 — Two Houses, Two Completely Different Worlds
The physical distance between my mother’s parental home and her in-laws’ home was small.
Both belonged to the same neighborhood.
But socially, materially and emotionally, my mother had moved into another world.
Her father’s home had been relatively prosperous.
There were imported objects, new bicycles, good household articles, music, cold soda in summer and a father who doted upon his youngest daughter.
Her husband’s household was much more modest.
My grandfather had long since died.
Dadi Ji had struggled for years to bring up her two sons.
My father was relatively calm in temperament.
His younger brother, Inderjit Singh, was handsome, fair and much more aggressive.
My mother told me that she was shocked by some of the scenes she witnessed after marriage.
On one occasion, she saw Dadi Ji and her younger son engaged in such a fierce quarrel that Dadi Ji chased him onto the terrace carrying a rod.
My mother could scarcely believe what she was seeing.
Nothing resembling this had been part of life in her parents’ household.
Chapter 16 — The Traditional Position of a Daughter-in-Law
The expectations placed upon a young daughter-in-law were demanding.
She entered the house near the bottom of its domestic hierarchy.
She was expected to obey her elders, assist the mother-in-law, cook, clean, perform household chores, bear children and then raise them.
Her own aspirations received very little consideration.
Compatibility between husband and wife was secondary.
In the traditional joint-family structure, the senior woman controlled much of the domestic life of the house. The new bride was expected to adjust to established routines.
Harsh correction was not unusual.
Eventually, after her own sons grew and married, she herself might become the mother-in-law and acquire the authority she had once lacked.
Thus the cycle passed from one generation of women to another.
My mother had entered this system as a fifteen-year-old girl.
Chapter 17 — Conflict Between Savitri Bai and Dadi Ji
My mother and Dadi Ji did not adjust easily to one another.
Their personalities were different, but even more importantly, their life experiences were completely different.
My mother had been protected.
Dadi Ji had struggled for survival.
My mother had been her father’s cherished youngest daughter.
Dadi Ji had become a widow at twenty and had spent her youth fighting to secure the future of two fatherless boys.
My mother came from a household of relative comfort.
Dadi Ji had lived through litigation, deprivation and insecurity.
The conflict between them became severe.
But I do not want to reduce their relationship to a simple story of a cruel mother-in-law and an innocent daughter-in-law.
Life was more complicated than that.
Both women had been shaped by their circumstances.
Chapter 18 — My Mother Returns to Her Parents
Eventually, the situation became unbearable for my mother.
Nanaji could see what his youngest daughter was experiencing and decided to bring her home.
Only a few months after marriage, she returned to her parents.
But there was no divorce.
In those days, returning to one’s parents did not necessarily signify the end of a marriage.
A daughter might return after a serious quarrel. Relatives would intervene. Time would pass. Negotiations and persuasion would follow.
Eventually, she was generally expected to return to her husband.
For my mother, however, the separation lasted a considerable period—nearly two years.
Eventually she returned.
Chapter 19 — My Father Caught Between His Mother and His Wife
Years later, I asked my father a direct question.
Why could he not have separated his wife from his mother?
His answer stayed with me.
How could he ask his mother to leave the house?
She had been widowed at approximately twenty years of age.
She had sacrificed her entire youth raising him and his brother.
She had fought through the courts to restore their property.
Whatever assets she ultimately recovered were meant for those two sons.
My father could not say to such a mother:
“Get out of my house.”
He felt bound to her by gratitude and duty.
Yet my mother was also his wife and deserved dignity and protection.
He stood between two obligations.
In today’s world, establishing a separate household might appear an obvious solution.
In those circumstances, it was neither financially easy nor socially natural.
This was therefore not merely the failure of three individuals.
It was also the result of the family structure within which they were living.
Chapter 20 — 29 July 1944: A Happy Morning
After my mother returned, life gradually resumed.
Then came an event she often remembered with happiness.
I was born on 29 July 1944.
My mother repeatedly told me the story of that morning.
Nanaji was religious and also a fine singer. He regularly went to the Gurdwara for Asa Di Vaar.
On his way back, he would often stop at the house of his youngest daughter.
He wanted to know:
How was she?
Was everything all right?
Too many times, the answer had not been particularly encouraging.
But this morning was different.
A son had been born.
In the social environment of those days, the birth of a son produced enormous happiness. He was expected to continue the lineage, inherit responsibilities and help preserve the family property.
Nanaji was thrilled.
After spending years worrying about his youngest daughter’s married life, there was finally happy news coming from that house.
My birth therefore became more than the arrival of another child.
For a brief moment, it represented hope.
Chapter 21 — Bhagwant Arrives
About a year later, my sister **Bhagwant—our Guddi—**was born.
My mother herself was still extremely young.
Yet she now had two children.
The girl who only a few years earlier had been playing her harmonium, going to the talkies and enjoying her father’s protection was already carrying the full responsibilities of motherhood.
By approximately nineteen or twenty, she was raising Peetu and Guddi while also managing the expectations of her married household.
Her youth had moved remarkably quickly into responsibility.
Chapter 22 — Another Marriage Ties the Two Families Together
The relationship between the two families became still more complicated.
My mother’s elder brother was keen that his daughter Prem should marry my father’s younger brother, Inderjit Singh.
Nanaji reportedly advised him against it.
His reasoning was understandable.
His own daughter was already facing considerable difficulty in that household.
Why send another girl from his own family there?
Nevertheless, suitable marriage arrangements were not always easy to find, and the marriage eventually took place.
Prem—my mother’s own niece—therefore married Chachaji Inderjit Singh.
She became my mother’s devarani, although she was also her niece by birth.
Such overlapping relationships were possible in the tightly interconnected biradari structure of Aghapura.
Chapter 23 — Prem Was Not One to Remain Silent
Chachaji Inderjit Singh was extremely handsome and fair.
Prem was strong-willed.
She was not prepared simply to submit whenever she believed she was being treated unfairly.
Her marriage therefore did not eliminate the tensions within the household.
Arguments continued, and at times confrontations became physical.
Prem stood her ground.
Instead of one difficult daughter-in-law relationship, the household now contained another strong personality struggling within the same traditional structure.
Family relationships had become increasingly intertwined.
Chapter 24 — Three Children of the Next Generation
By the time Partition approached, three small children represented the next generation of this household.
There were my sister Bhagwant, myself, and my cousin Trilochan Singh, also known within the family as Roop, the son of Chachaji Inderjit Singh and Prem.
The young couples had experienced little of what modern generations might regard as married youth.
There were no honeymoons.
There was little privacy.
There was practically no period devoted simply to husband and wife discovering life together.
There was marriage.
Then there were children.
There were household responsibilities.
There were quarrels.
There were reconciliations.
And life continued.
Chapter 25 — The Decline of Nanaji
Meanwhile, the powerful father who had once represented security for my mother was himself becoming helpless.
Nanaji developed cataracts.
He was also diabetic.
An operation was attempted, but his eyes did not heal successfully.
Eventually, he lost his sight in both eyes.
For approximately the final five years of his life, he was unable to see.
For a man who had travelled, served in the Army, handled money and responsibilities, and provided confidently for a large family, blindness must have been particularly painful.
The man who had once protected everyone now required protection himself.
During the last period of his life, his elder son, who had been staying with his in-laws, returned and served him devotedly—especially during the final month.
Whatever disagreements may earlier have existed between them became secondary before the needs of an aging and blind father.
Nanaji eventually made provisions from his property for his sons, including houses.
Yet I imagine that one of his greatest emotional pains remained the knowledge that his youngest and most cherished daughter had not enjoyed the married happiness he had wished for her.
Chapter 26 — Two Childhoods Met in One Marriage
As I have grown older, I have tried to understand rather than merely judge what happened inside that household.
My parents had come from two radically different childhood experiences.
My mother had grown up with security.
She had music.
She had a harmonium.
She had animals.
She had the talkies.
She had imported household goods and bicycles.
She could enjoy a chilled soda during the Multan summer.
Above all, she knew that her father stood behind her.
My father had technically been born into wealth.
But he scarcely experienced it.
His father died when he was a little boy.
His brother was born after their father’s death.
Their inheritance was taken away and became the subject of decades of litigation.
Their widowed mother struggled to raise them.
My father once lacked even the money needed to pay his matriculation examination fee.
One had grown up with security.
The other had grown up with survival.
Marriage brought these two worlds beneath one roof.
Chapter 27 — Understanding Dadi Ji With the Passage of Time
With the advantage of age and distance, I do not wish to portray Dadi Ji simply as the villain of my mother’s story.
To us grandchildren, she was a good grandmother.
She too had suffered enormously.
Widowed at about twenty, she raised two boys without their father and fought for years to secure their rights.
Hardship had made her strong.
Perhaps it also made her controlling.
Certainly, it made her determined.
My mother entered that household at fifteen, having been raised in a completely different atmosphere.
Their conflict was personal, but the problem was larger than either woman.
It arose partly from a social structure in which the youngest daughter-in-law was expected to surrender much of her independence.
Her compatibility with her husband was secondary.
Her aspirations were secondary.
Her comfort was secondary.
Duty came first.
Women endured until, with advancing age, they acquired some authority of their own.
Chapter 28 — Her First Twenty Years
When I think of my mother’s first twenty years, I therefore see almost two separate lives.
For approximately fifteen years, she was the vibrant and much-loved youngest daughter of a prosperous father.
She played her harmonium.
She sang.
She listened to songs.
She went to the talkies.
She loved animals.
She enjoyed the comforts that her father’s successful life made possible.
Most importantly, she possessed the confidence of a daughter who knew that her father would protect her.
Then, at fifteen, she became a wife.
The harmonium-playing girl entered a household shaped by widowhood, litigation, economic hardship and powerful personalities.
She experienced quarrels.
She returned to her parents.
She remained separated from her husband for nearly two years.
Then she returned.
She became a mother.
By the time she was around twenty, she had two young children and the responsibilities of an adult woman.
There had been little time for youth.
There had certainly been no honeymoon.
There had simply been life—family, children, work, disagreement, reconciliation and responsibility.
Yet she carried on.
Chapter 29 — 1947: The World Disappears
By 1947, my mother was still only about twenty-one years old.
Yet she had already experienced enough for a lifetime.
Then something happened that made even the troubles within the household seem small.
Partition came.
The disagreements between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, quarrels between husband and wife, disputes over property and questions of family prestige were suddenly overtaken by something far greater.
Now the question was survival.
The familiar lanes of Aghapura, the houses, the Gurdwara, the markets, Delhi Gate, neighbors, relatives and the entire social world in which these families had lived for generations were about to be abandoned.
My mother’s childhood home—with its harmonium, bicycles, imported scissors, earthen cooling vessel and bottles of soda—would become part of a world left behind.
She had begun her life as the cherished youngest daughter of a prosperous family.
At approximately twenty-one, carrying two small children, she was about to become a refugee.
That was the end of the first part of Mata Savitri Bai’s life.
Her second life would begin with Partition—and eventually with the rebuilding of our family in Panipat.
