A Difficult Transplanting Recently, my mind strays back to Sri Lanka. I haven’t been there since 1972; it was called Ceylon then. I remember the enormous house, which my in-laws rented in Adams Avenue, Colombo. My ageing mother-in-law and rapidly disintegrating father-in-law rattled around downstairs, while my new husband and I occupied three humungous bedrooms and all mod cons upstairs. Once Balan, my husband, had rushed off to work, around 8 a m, I had nothing to do other than contemplate the view from the many windows. From my bedroom I could see into a beautiful garden next door, so I did that daily. I would go downstairs for breakfast when all others had finished. At home, in Thalassery, it had always been Dosa or Idli with coconut sammandhi (relish). Bread, butter and strawberry jam didn’t cut it. I often made up with many cups of tea. Did wonders for my waistline – until the waistline came into its own with my first pregnancy. I learned elementary kitchen Singhalese to communicate with the young Tamil maid, Pakyam, who reigned over a vast kitchen, where nothing much was cooked except my father-in-law’s insipid mushes. Pakyam had supreme contempt for me and didn’t like me around in the kitchen. My kind sister-in-law, Kamala, would come round in her chauffeur driven Cadillac, once or twice a week, to take me ‘shopping.’ Shopping as a leisure activity was new to me. My father nurtured an extended family on an uncertain lawyer’s income; if there was any spare cash, it went to sustaining waifs and strays in his village. Kamala’s chauffeur with his peaked cap reduced me to silence. Kamala would go to many shops in a day, getting material for sari blouses, garments for her niece, and odds and ends for the ‘sewing woman’ who came once a week to sew for Kamala. Clearly, this was an industry sustained by the posh Colombo -7 crowd, who kept the wheels of Kotlewala’s government turning, and subsequently, that of Bandaranaike. The Times of Ceylon would occasionally describe the fineries of the rich ones at some soiree’. After a few weeks. I signed out of the shopping events and devoted myself to sitting on a chair on the veranda and day-dreaming. As usual with the pregnancy related practices at home in India, I would go home in the seventh month. I counted the months out. Was I cut out for marriage? I wondered. I still wonder.