What makes one British woman want to travel all the way from the UK to a remote village in Haryana in India every year? It's because she shares a strong bond with a family there. Suchitra Bajpai Chaudhary meets Caroline Gibbons for whom India brings back memories of her mother.
Imagine a British woman travelling thousands of miles from England to a little village in Haryana, near Delhi, India, to ensure that the filial bonds are not ruptured. Who is she? And what are her ties with India? To put this story in perspective we need to step back a little in time ... Circa 1990.
Jill Lowe, a 50-something woman from the UK, is on her first visit to India. A mother of five, she has just been estranged from her husband. She sets off to India to ease the pain of separation.
Her travels take her to Rajasthan where she meets Lal Singh Yadav, a tour guide and taxi operator in his late thirties.
One thing leads to another and by the end of the tour, the two realise that they cannot live without each other. The next logical step: marriage. But it is not a rushed or knee-jerk reaction to an emotion.
Jill returns to the UK, thinks deeply about it, makes more trips to India, meets him many more times ... and finally, in 1993, decides to get married to Yadav. It is an event that takes everyone – Jill's as well as Yadav's family – by surprise.
Thus a well-to-do lady from the UK gives up almost everything and finds happiness in being the wife of a taxi operator and living a simple life on a farm in Haryana, in northern India. (Friday first reported Jill Lowe and Lal Singh Yadav's love story in the April 25-May 2, 2003 issue.)
It is, of course, not easy for her or him to come to terms with the huge cultural switch. But, as they say, love conquers all. Jill learns to adapt to the tough countryside lifestyle where even accessing basic amenities means trudging several kilometres.
Pretty soon, she captures the heart of not only Yadav's parents, but also of the children from his first wife and his large extended family.
At the other end of the spectrum, Jill's children from her first husband - daughters Caroline, Lucy, Julia and Mary-Jane, and son Nicholas – also come to accept their mother's new
life and the love in her life. They visit India off and on to be with her and their stepfamily.
It is a unique coming together of a family with the oddest cultural synergies. Yet despite the differences in language, culture and thinking, the families share a strong bond. This is particularly so in the case of one of Jill's daughters, Caroline Gibbons who establishes a perfect equation with her stepfather and his family. Whenever she visits India, she enjoys travelling around the country with them.
For over 13 years, Jill and Yadav lead a married life marked by the usual ups and downs that emerge from domesticity. (Jill writes about this life-changing experience in her book Yadav: A Roadside Love Story, published in India by Penguin Books and in the UK by Somerville Publishers.)
Life would have continued as usual for Jill and Yadav and their multiracial families straddling two countries if it were not for a deadly disease which affects her. At 65, Jill discovers that she has cancer and returns to England for treatment and to spend her last days with her family.
Yadav also travels to London to be with her during her last days.
On August 19, 2004, at a hospice in Clapham, Jill, surrounded by her children, passes away in the arms of Yadav. A year later, Yadav also dies, partly pining for his wife and partly because his body had taken a beating due to his alcoholism.
***
Fast forward to the present:
Caroline Gibbons is in Dubai to spend a few days with her friends.
She is every bit a bohemian with an incurable wanderlust and a romantic spirit not unlikeher mother.
She is an art dealer in London's West End, and has worked for Christie's auction house in London, Paris and Madrid. Single, she lives in a gingerbread house in Fulham.
She visits her stepfamily annually and this year she plans to make a trip to India in August. She agrees to share with Friday a few memories about her late stepfather, her mother and their life in India:
Speaking with Caroline, one thing becomes clear: The curtain may have fallen on a beautiful cross-cultural love story, but the bonds the two families share have not weakened.
The first time Caroline returned to India after her mother's death was to immerse Jill's ashes in the Ganges. It was at this time that she realised that her bonds with India and with her stepfather's family were still strong.
She spent some time with them in Haryana and talks fondly of her step-siblings.
"I am going to see my stepbrother, Harish and stepsister Pushpa," she says.
"You know, mum was really sad to leave Delhi and go to London for treatment,'' she says. "She loved India and she was not sure whether she would be ever be able to return to the country she liked so much. She had us – five children from her first marriage – in London and she was really torn between Yadav and us.
"But the last few months were very happy times for her in London. She was at the Harley Street Clinic in Clapham. We used to have parties almost every single day.
"So many friends of hers would drop in to meet her. There would be music, flowers, happy chatter ... Mum got to see the front cover of her book."
Fiery relationship
Reflecting on the time she spent in India, Gibbons attempts to explore the many shades of black, white and grey in her relationship with her stepfather.
"Yadav and I shared a very fiery relationship. We would argue a lot but had many things in common.
"He was a big show-off and in keeping with the so-called macho traditions of his clan, he loved to order women around. For instance, some days he would shout out: 'Get me my towel.'
I'd say 'no', then he would start bargaining. 'OK, get it for Rs10,' he'd say; I would say 'Rs20', he'd say, 'no, Rs15.' It was hilarious; we connected a lot all the time.
"He and my mother would argue a lot. In his accented English he'd tell her, "You are very 'shelfish", and we'd laugh out loud. It is strange how we all became family.
"Marriage is a ceremony that commands a deep commitment from you. It seals relationships and people do get serious about relationships," she says philosophically.
Gibbons remembers the last time Yadav saw his ailing wife in London.
"I recall meeting him at London airport when he came to visit mother. When she had bid goodbye to him at Delhi airport, both had abandoned hopes of ever meeting again. Now here he was with his sick wife once again.
"Both of them were extremely pleased to see each other and he made a big show of it. He walked across the room with a loud 'darling'. She reciprocated and they both hugged each other.
"When mother passed away, her only wish was that her ashes be immersed in the Ganges. So part of her ashes were immersed by my sister Mary Jane in the Piddle river in Dorset, where she was born, and part of it I carried to India to immerse in the Ganges."
But that ceremony did not mean Gibbons and her siblings' ties with India or the Yadav family were washed away. If anything they forged new bonds and discovered new inroads in their relationship with their step-siblings in India.
"When I spoke to my brother Nicholas, who is a busy lawyer ...I asked him what he thought of Yadav ... He said he thought Yadav was a great addition to our family – and he was.
"Nick, who is married to a lovely Columbian girl called Alessandra, live in Battersea, London. He is also keen to visit Harish [Yadav's son from his first marriage] and family sometime.
"[My sister] Lucy loved Yadav very much and went to meet him and Mum in India. They all went to Kerala [in southern India] for a holiday.
"Mary-Jane lives with her husband Jamie in Sussex. Both liked Yadav very much ... Jamie got along with him like a house on fire.''
Gibbons enjoys visiting her step- siblings partly because it is a tribute to her mother's memory and partly because she has grown fond of the Yadav family.
"I have tried to keep the relationship with Yadav's family alive. I love to travel to India and have been all over the country. There is Harish. Then there is Harish's sister Pushpa, there is the entire Yadav clan – Yadav's parents, his brother Rohtas and his children.
"Mum loved Yadav's mother very much. But she is no more. Yadav's father too passed away.
"I still make it a point to visit the family every year; it's a long way from London, the trip is expensive, but I couldn't bear to lose touch with them. They are family to me now and they really treat me like a princess. After Yadav's death, the bonds are a trifle weak but they are still very precious," she says.
Village life
Gibbons doesn't recall the name of the village where Jill and Yadav lived, but launches into an elaborate description of the countryside.
"It was a tiny village on the outskirts of Delhi, in Haryana district. There were plenty of fields of mustard; there were buffaloes .... simple rustic things. Mum built a house there.
"Whenever I visit the place, I meet Harish and his wife Manoj Kumari.
I was present at Harish's wedding in January 1998. Mum was there too and it was such a memorable event.''
Attending the wedding was a high point of that visit, she says. "I remember my mother wore a sari and all the girls at the farm had to help her put it on. We were treated like royalty.
"Yadav wanted my mother to drive his Mahindra jeep (which had seen better days) only so all his friends could see a woman driving ...
"Later while she was walking the sari fell off and everybody had a good laugh.
"The preparations for the feast went on all night and the wok which they used to prepare the food was the biggest I had seen,'' she recalls.
Jill built a house on Yadav's land which now belongs to Harish. "It is set in a courtyard and I think Mum wanted to turn it into a sort of upmarket bed-and-breakfast (although I don't know where she hoped to get the clients from.)
"Harish and Manoj have a son, Rahul. The last time I went to Haryana, Harish, who works at a toll gate in Rajasthan several miles away, took a day off to be with me.
I was really touched. Language is a barrier, but we manage to communicate and it is quite nice."
Gibbons who was aware of her mother's deep, abiding love for India, did not want things to just wither away. She decided that she had to work hard to keep the bonds strong.
"Mother was only 68 when she died. I didn't really think she would die so early. Then Yadav passed away; he too was relatively young. Harish says, my stepfather died pining for my mother.
"I know the death of these two people mark the end of a huge chapter in my life. However, I didn't want to lose touch with the rest of the family that is why I go to India every year,'' she says.
Gibbons, who has lived in France for five years, admits that it is difficult to keep in touch with all the people who may come into your life in some way or the other.
"However, mum's Indian family is a big part of all our lives," she says.
She is aware that the cultural schism between the lifestyle in London and that in Haryana is far too wide to be bridged. But some day, she hopes that Rahul [her stepbrother's son] will seek a career opportunity in the UK.
"I hope I am able to give Rahul a chance to work here and change his life and that of the rest of his family back home," she says.
But until then, Gibbons is firmly determined to make annual trips to India and honour the memory of her mother.
