The Custodian of Stories

I call her Badibai—the elder mother. Ever since I was born in August 1957, she treated me with such abundant love that she richly deserves this name. Fifteen years my senior, Asha became more than a sister; she became a second mother, a protector, the bridge between the Wardha of our childhood and the larger world beyond.

When I was born, Badibai was already fifteen, navigating the transition from girlhood to young womanhood. She had moved to Kesrimal Kanya Shala, a Marathi medium school, because Bhaiji refused to send his daughter to a co-educational institution. She wore a sari to school from the fifth standard onwards—twelve years old and already wrapped in yards of fabric that restricted her movements.

Her birth itself had been an ordeal. Born on February 26, 1942, in Barsi at our nani’s home, as was the custom, Bai endured a protracted, agonizing labor before Asha arrived. Six months later, the Quit India movement would shake the very foundations of British rule, launched from Wardha where we would all eventually gather our lives. Perhaps there was something in that timing—a child born in pain, emerging into a world on the cusp of freedom, her own freedoms curtailed by the very traditions that shaped our family.

She was good at arithmetic, scoring perfect marks in tenth standard, but algebra remained a mystery that cost her a passing grade in the board exam. Bhaiji insisted she study Sanskrit, Music, and Mathematics—three subjects that held no appeal. She never had the chance to study further, to build a career, to prove herself. Yet I never heard her complain. Instead, she derived genuine happiness from watching her children and grandchildren achieve what she could not.

The Wedding

By 1959, Bhaiji was determined to marry her off quickly. Badibai grew weary of families arriving to inspect her like merchandise. When the Singhis from Indore finally came for a formal girl-seeing ceremony, my exhausted sister made a decision that defined her character forever. Asked about her education, she looked them straight in the eye: “Matric fail.”

In a world built on pretense, her honesty was revolutionary. The Indore party was touched. They appreciated her refusal to let lies distort reality.

The wedding on Vasant Panchmi, February 1, 1960, became the talk of Wardha for years. Bhaiji had issued strict instructions about the number of guests, and when fewer than fifty baraatis arrived, he kept his word magnificently. They stayed at Bajaj Wadi—where Nehru, Patel, and Bose had once lived. Eleven teachers from Mahila Ashram school served three sumptuous meals. No band, no baja—only a shehnai. Tukdoji Maharaj sang a bhajan. The wedding cost Bhaiji thirteen thousand rupees—equivalent to over a lakh today.

I was barely three years old, but the stories of that wedding became family lore, told and retold until they acquired the quality of myth.

Years of Endurance

At eighteen, barely out of her teens, Badibai moved to Bhopal in 1961 and lived in the vast Tapdiya house. From four in the morning until eleven at night, she cooked and cleaned for twenty-odd people, a perpetually tired young woman who never complained, never even hinted to our parents the burden she carried.

Jijaji earned three hundred fifty rupees a month. Badibai supplemented their income with stitching work. Once, traveling on the GT Express without a proper ticket, she was asked to disembark at Itarsi. A compassionate TT helped her board an unreserved third-class coach. She never told Bhaiji about the humiliation.

Her mother-in-law was strict, but Badibai found unexpected allies in her jethani—the bond between them became inexpressible. When she ran out of decent saris, her jethani arranged for a shop’s back door to open after hours so they could shop in secret. Balkishanji Singhi would buy saris for her. Another jethani sensed her struggle with Bhopal’s biting cold and arranged for buckets of boiling water to arrive every morning, traveling five furlongs just to ease her discomfort.

These small kindnesses sustained her through those difficult years.

Four Children, Four Lives

Between 1962 and 1971, four children arrived—Archana, Anand, Aalok, and Amit. Each birth brought its challenges. When Anand was eighteen months old and contracted an illness, Bai agreed to keep him in Wardha for the next eighteen months. For him, his nani became everything. When Aalok turned fourteen, he was adopted by Jijaji’s elder brother—a family tradition spanning four generations. Badibai wasn’t even consulted. Tormented by the thought of her son going away, she refused to eat for a week.

Jijaji was determined to give his children the best education Bhopal offered, even if it meant stretching beyond his means. Badibai saved every penny for their schooling. “I learned English from my children,” she told me. “We asked our kids to learn five new English words a day and use them in sentences.” She learned stitching in Wardha and knitting in Bhopal, her resourcefulness knowing no bounds.

The Illness That Brought Her Home

In summer 1975, everything changed. Badibai contracted a severe infection following surgery. Sepsis developed. Her weight dropped below thirty-five kilograms. Jijaji drove her to Wardha, and she was admitted to the Medical College hospital in Sevagram for twenty-six days. I was finishing my medical training then, and stayed with her in the private room. She barely ate, requiring intravenous antibiotics to survive.

During those dark days, Jijaji once thought she was dying and began reciting the Bhagavad Gita. Badibai, barely able to speak, summoned enough strength to be angry: “Stop this. I am not dying!”

She recovered slowly, surrounded by family. The hospital billed us six hundred rupees for her twenty-six-day stay. When she went back to Bhopal, she carried renewed determination to live fully, to see her children grow.

The Night of Gas

On December 3, 1984, the world’s worst industrial disaster struck Bhopal. The Singhi family woke at 1:30 a.m. with watering eyes and coughing fits. Anand saw the sky covered in white fumes and immediately understood. He made them get into their old Premier Padmini and drove toward safety. They had no time to lock the house or release their animals.

Jijaji drove through streets filled with people running, coughing, suffocating. By morning, thousands had died. Their dog and cows were dead. The plants had turned black.

Badibai never spoke much about that night, but I could see it in her eyes whenever Bhopal was mentioned—the terror, the randomness of survival.

The Woman She Became

In 1988, the family moved to Shail Shikhar—a home named by Archana to symbolize Bhopal’s topography of ups and downs. This became Badibai’s domain, where she orchestrated marriages, welcomed grandchildren, and finally created the home she had always deserved.

Her four children married well—Archana to Suresh Mintri, Anand to Kirti Gattani, Aalok to Sumita Lahoty, Amit to Dr. Pratibha Taori. Badibai supervised these weddings with grace, never interfering, always supporting. Her name Asha is embedded in two granddaughters’ names—Pratiksha and Nimisha. They confide in her as a friend.

Around 2010, she developed severe lower back pain that restricted her movements. She required a wheelchair when she came to Wardha. But her willpower helped her recover completely. Last November, I was surprised when she boarded Dakshin Express—a journey that once seemed impossible.

Elder Sister’s Love

“I do not recall a single day when I fought with Pushpa,” Badibai told me recently. All her life, she gave elder sister’s love to Pushpa—understanding her pain, her financial problems, her emotions. When Bai willed her ten tolas of gold, Badibai passed it all to Pushpa. She had once gifted Pushpa gold earrings because she herself had a pair but Pushpa didn’t.

This is who she has always been—someone who measures wealth not in what she possesses but in what she can give away.

I am amazed how Badibai has embraced technology. She’s often the first to send birthday wishes on the WhatsApp group Archana created. She’s aware of every family happening, every milestone.

Reflections

Today, at eighty-four, Badibai and Jijaji live in Shail Shikhar. Their bedroom houses a refrigerator, television, and tea cooktop—a small kingdom where they live without grudge. Remarkably articulate with enviable memory, they have defied their age.

Badibai can still recall her childhood neighbors from seven decades ago. Her memory for numbers remains sharp—Archana says she can recall every rupee, every bank balance, every investment.

When the pandemic arrived in March 2020, I found myself thinking often of Badibai. She who endured so much—the curtailed education, the years of domestic servitude, the illness that nearly took her life, the gas tragedy that could have ended everything. She survived it all with grace, with quiet strength that never announces itself but simply endures.

In Sevagram’s hospital corridors, when patients asked about my family, I would sometimes mention Badibai—how she raised four children despite having no formal education beyond tenth standard, how she taught herself English from her children’s homework, how she turned deprivation into determination. Many mothers nodded in recognition. They understood that kind of strength.

Badibai taught me that education happens in many forms—in kitchens where you master unfamiliar cuisines, in sewing rooms where you learn forbidden skills, in asking your children to explain five new words daily. She taught me that love sometimes means accepting decisions you disagree with, staying silent about crushing workloads, and giving away gold because your sister needs it more.

When I think of resilience, I don’t think of textbooks or research papers. I think of Badibai at eighteen, working from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. I think of her at thirty-three, fighting sepsis with her weight below thirty-five kilograms. I think of her at forty-two, fleeing the gas tragedy at 1:30 a.m., not knowing if she would survive.

And I think of her now, at eighty-four, sending birthday wishes on WhatsApp, learning technology with the same determination she brought to learning English, still deriving happiness from achievements she never had the chance to pursue herself.

This is resilience. This is grace. This is Badibai—the elder mother who taught me, long before I became a doctor, what it truly means to care.

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