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| Edited By: Yogesh Pawar |Source: DNA |Updated: Aug 12, 2018, 07:00 AM IST
August 15 might mark Independence Day for India but many still nurse wounds of the painful Partition it brought in its wake. Yogesh Pawar caught up with the 86-year-old Manik Varadkar who has seen it all unfold from the cusp of time and history.
This 86-year-old's lived a life which will pale out most fantasy films/books in comparison. Yet, Manik Varadkar's face is a picture of calm that gives no hints of the number of borders (nation, religion, region, language and eras) she has crossed in keeping tryst with milestones of the Indian subcontinent's history.
“I don't see my experience as exceptional. Destiny gave me the fortitude to deal with her ups and downs,” she offers modestly, her octogenarian fingers busy at the knitting needles putting together a sweater for her great-granddaughter, Avantika.
(Ramji Dhonji Khanolkar in 1904)
Her story begins in Quetta, in a mansion along a road named after her grandfather Ramji Dhonji Khanolkar - an army doctor transferred to this provincial capital of Balochistan (now, in Pakistan) in early 1900. Though the family patriarch was with the army, in an era doctors were hard to come by, his medical skills saw many local Pathan families bring their sick to him from across the province. On the verge of his retirement, the Vengurla-native coastal Maharashtrian was convinced by locals to stay on and practice.
“Going back to our village would've meant a climb-down and getting into the thick of family feuds/dynamics so he stayed on and all his eight children were born there,” remembers Manik whose father came from a rather illustrious brood. But we will come to that later.
(The palatial Khanolkar home in Quetta)
Manik was born to her surgeon dad Vishnu Ramji Khanolkar and homemaker mom Sushila on September 4th 1931. “There were at least 30 Khanolkars living in a two-storeyed palatial mansion,” she beams with pride. “We owned two cars, a buggy and four horses kept in a stable behind the house. The large family and a retinue of help headed by an elderly Garhwali retainer Gopal Singh with the family for decades meant there was a continuous domestic bustle about the home,” she remembers and adds, “Despite being one of the most well-to-do Quettans, our thrifty Konkani Maharashtrian simplicity had seen the family wealth grow.”
Destiny then rolled her dice in a way that neither the Khanolkars nor their city ever recovered from its devastating impact. Prided as the finest hill stations in British India, Quetta (called 'Little London'), was destroyed in an earthquake at 02.33 am on Friday 31st May 1935. Among the 30,000 plus dead the ginormous 7.7 Richter scale temblor killed in seconds were 13 Khanolkars (including Manik's parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins. They also lost a few help). The four-year-old, asleep with other children on the terrace, miraculously survived. “I wonder if God kept me alive to mourn them later since I was too young to understand what was happening,” she says sorrowfully, “The voice of our distraught Gopal Singh consoling me in Malvani as I kept crying out for aai, amid all the rubble, still haunts.”
(The Khanolkar home in Quetta after the earthquake on 31st May 1935 where 13 members of the family died)
Her widower uncles Vishwanath, Vishwamber and Vinod rebuilt some portions of the house and they continued to live there with the other surviving Khanolkars. “Their practice was flourishing and we girls were in school. It was felt unnecessary to upset this routine.”
By the time the girls reached Class VIII destiny was already beating her drum again. “Though I remember seeing Frontier Gandhi (Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan) at a procession once, we were far from the freedom struggle which was picking up pace by 1942 in Delhi, Lahore and Karachi we got to know from reports in newspapers.”
While they only got one local newspaper one of Manik's eldest brothers Madhusudan Khanolkar, a magistrate got quite a few in his official bungalow ten km away from the Khanolkar home. “We would often see reports about Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah in those papers.”
When the summer of 1947 set in the whole Northern subcontinent began boiling like a cauldron. “Hot furnace-like winds and barbaric clashes between communities seemed to compete with each other,” she remembers. While their immediate neighbours the Sayyeds (a Karachi-native family of prayer-cap sellers) were supportive there were others who spewed hate which she still shakes her head on recall. “I remember many Hindu families were fleeing and some peers had snarkily said Yashomati and me will soon become their bhabhis.”
By September that year, things got so ugly that except for Manik, Yashomati, the uncles and the Garhwali retainer everyone was packed off to Vengurla in coastal Maharashtra. “We didn't want to interrupt our academic year and my uncles naively thought this political storm would blow over returning everything to normal,” says Manik.
The first inkling of trouble coming to their doorstep came from the Sayyeds in October of 1947. “We were warned of an imminent attack by lynch mobs from Peshawar looking for Hindu homes to target,” she remembers, “My adamant uncles first refused to move out but the Sayyeds pleaded asking them to think of the safety of us 16-year-olds. Since we refused to go without them they relented and were hidden in the Sayyeds' zenanakhana.”
The lynch mob took all their jewellery and saris (“There were my grandmom's real gold zari paithanis, likes of which I've never seen”), ransacked the house and set it ablaze before coming looking for the Khanolkars at the neighbours. The Sayyeds who knew the family for two generations swore on the Koran that the Khanolkars were not at their house and the mobs left.
She remembers how even her braveheart uncles broke down to see the blackened, ransacked house which they had painstakingly put together after the quake 12 years ago in the morning. The family then decided to go to the refugee camp before nightfall for safety. “We packed whatever we could in two trunks and were almost done when the Sayyeds' daughter Habiba (my close friend) came with two new saris I'd lent them to wear a few weeks ago,” she recounts, “She did not want to keep them fearing they'll be targeted.” Those saris, carelessly tossed atop the impossibly jammed tin trunk would turn out to be lifesavers later.
Why couldn't they have taken refuge with Manik's brother? “In that era when landlines were a luxury we had no word on my brother Madhusudan. Though no one mentioned it we feared the worst.”
When they set out for a refugee camp in a tonga no one spoke afraid of being killed, abducted or worse. The girls were dressed in salwar kameezes, heads covered with dupattas in the local style and the uncles too took care to dress to blend in. There was another Rane family in the neighbourhood (who sold flavoured sodas) in a tonga behind. But the head of the family (Manik remembers him as Rane Kaka) always wore dhotis. “He wore the same even that day and that gave away that they were Hindus. The whole family was massacred we found out at the camp and broke down since we knew them from early on.”
Ideally, the Khanolkars took a train from Quetta to Karachi (24 hours) and then a boat to Mumbai (three days), where they stayed with extended family for a day before taking another boat to Vengurla (24 hours). On the occasion that the few boats plying to Vengurla were full, they bussed it to Belgaum changing to another smaller van to Vengurla (24 hours). “We'd be welcomed by a sprinkling of gau mutra and holy water on us and our luggage. We'd have to bathe before entering the house since we'd lived with Muslims,” she remembers. “As a child, I hated this ritual and the really long journey which I feared would take me to a watery grave.”
But this route was unavailable in the turbulent times and the journey on the special refugee train the Khanolkars were put on was fraught with new dangers (“Mobs chased and flung bottles/stones leaving many injured”) and experiences (“We sat along tracks/roads in lines where generous Sikh langars served us food.”) She recounts how the 24-hour journey to Karachi took more than 42 for even half the distance. “Mounted army sepoys kept clearing mobs baying for our blood.”
But the hostility, the Khanolkars realised, was not only coming only from outside. Everybody in the train kept staring at them strangely. Only when a Congress leader asked if the girls were Pakistanis being trafficked did they realise the gravity of the situation. “The neta told my uncle to do something about our clothes. Our Baloch salwar kameezes, the complete absence of bindis, bangles or anything to suggest we were Hindu left other passengers suspicious and restive, he said and warned we'd be attacked as passengers were still seething about being uprooted.”
Worried, they were thinking how to deal with this when Manik remembered the two saris. “We just draped them haphazardly over our salwars, covered ourselves in the pallu and began chanting Sanskrit stotras, both to ward off our own fears and reassure those around.”
After disembarking at Marwar Junction, the Khanolkars were shifted first to refugee camps of Bharatpur and Gwalior. “Conditions weren't right to go back to Vengurla,” is all she says when asked why they didn't head for Konkan.
While in Gwalior, Manik's uncle Vishwanath heard there were no doctors around in Kulpahar, Bundelkhand and went there to set up practice. “His practice took off but I hated it. I'd stopped schooling midway in Class VIII there were also no schools of standard in that interior Bundelkhand.”
Since correspondence with the family at Vengurla had begun they found by the end of 1948 that Manik's magistrate brother had survived (“He was flown out in a special plane and had assumed the worst for us since there was no word.”) and was now the refugee camp commander in Kalyan camp (today's Ulhasnagar). Manik began a steady spate of letters to him complaining how unhappy she was till he came to fetch her.
After spending a few months in Kalyan she was then packed off to Maj General Vikram Khanolkar in Delhi who was the commanding officer there. “He was married to a Swiss woman who he met, fell in love with while on a deputation in France with the Allied Army during WWII,” she points out. (SEE BOX)
(Major General Vikram Khanolkar with India's first President Rajendra Prasad)
Savitri Khanolkar, who designed India's highest military award, the Param Vir Chakra, spoke fluent Marathi-Malvani, was very warm and welcoming of Manik who began pursuing school with their daughter. “Because of the long gap, I couldn't clear matriculation with her, rewrote the exam and cleared it in October 1950.”
(Major General Vikram Khanolkar with his wife Savitri nee Eva Yvonne Maday de Maros)
Soon after tragedy struck again, as her Maj-Gen uncle who was transferred to Kolkata died of a massive heart attack. “Though his wife was happy to let me stay on, she was already struggling with three kids. I came back to my Mumbai relatives and was married off.”
(Manik Varadkar as a young bride with her freedom fighter-husband Manohar)
The groom Manohar came from a family of freedom fighters who served time for their resistance. “Maybe it was my own fighter spirit or being married into a family like this, but I became very close to Mrinal Gore, Pramila Dandavate, Kamal Desai and Ahilyabai Rangnekar while we lived in Goregaon and participated enthusiastically in the Samyukta Maharashtra agitation,” she points out. In fact, she had to spend over a fortnight in Yerwada prison when her eldest Shekhar was only a year-and-half old.
And yet, soon after his Class X, when a viral attack left this same son unable to walk for over a year she dropped everything and nursed him back to health. Her youngest, the well-known Odissi danseuse Shubhada Varadkar who was detected with cancer when she was 40. “I told her you are Manik's daughter and have to fight this!” Inspired by this grit and her mother's genes ensured Shubhada danced after every chemo session.
It is while speaking of the polarisation and bigotry that she sees around in contemporary society that she first opens out about her own feelings. “I had internalised my anger and bitterness of what I had been through,” she observes and adds, “Since I hate unpleasantness of any kind, this manifested in my avoidance of Muslims.” As destiny had it the family hired a full time help Rubeena Sayyed to be with her through the day a decade ago. “I realised that I was mistaken. If there were hateful mobs trying to attack and kill us, there were also Habiba and her family who had risked their own lives to save ours. There are good and bad people everywhere.”
(Manik Varadkar and her great-granddaughter Avantika)
We can only fold our hands in respect!
# Of Ramji Khanolkar's seven sons, five were doctors. One was with the army like his father - Maj General Vikram Khanolkar. While on a deputation in France with the Allied Army during WWII he met and fell in love with Eva Yvonne Maday de Maros. “She defied her parents, came to India, learnt Sanskrit, became a Hindu, calling herself Savitri and was given off in marriage by Shakuntala Paranjape, filmmaker Sai Paranjape's mom,” says Manik. Her background led to her being chosen to design India's highest military honour.
(Savitri Khanolkar)
#Vasant Khanolkar (Manik's uncle) another of Ramji's illustrious sons is the father of cancer research in India whose bust is installed in the Tata Memorial Hospital. Both the approach road to the hospital and a building in their new Kharghar facility is named after him.
#Manik's brother in law Ashok Varadkar went to the UK to practice as a doctor in the 1960s where he met his nurse wife at Slough. Their third child Leo, also a doctor, is now the Irish PM and Ireland's 1st and the world's 4th openly gay head of state.
