The Middle: A Story of Love, Life & Laughter

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The Middle, a short catchy piece, once earned notoriety for having seized the centre space on the hallowed editorial page of The Times of India. Nayana Goradia began her writing career in this column and though she graduated to other forms she reverted, to the old name The Middle, believing it invested her book with a sense of enigma it might have otherwise lacked.

The pages here reflect upon an early childhood in a princely state in Kathiwar, to a snobbish school in idyllic Sri Lanka, which lay greater stress on young ladies learning to eat with a fork and knife than on mastering the mysteries of a Pythagoras theorem. Higher study in English literature was at Washington State University and Girton College, Cambridge.

With marriage, came the move to a Calcutta basking in an imperial hangover. In the late sixties, it was still halcyon days for 'company wives' with a British label. A stylish flat in swish surroundings made up for the imposing bada memsahib with an outdated protocol.

It was difficult in Calcutta to escape the controversial Viceroy, George Nathaniel Curzon, who partitioned Bengal in 1905 and became the harbinger of the larger partition of India in 1947. After seven years of research, two school-going daughters with unfinished homework and a husband who felt the viceroy was becoming the other man in his wife's life, Nayana's biography, Lord Curzon: The Last of the British Moghuls was published by Oxford University Press and reviewed widely both in India and overseas.

Nayana Goradia now lives in Delhi and advises a school. Her husband Prafull Goradia, a former parliamentarian, is also an avid writer.

Nayana Goradia or "Nayana foi" as I grew up knowing her is one of the kindest and gentlest people I know. She is my father's only sister and since I lost him when I was only 10, she formed a large part of the link to my family's generations before me. Her stories were always in incredible detail, remembering everything from the day of the week to the colour of someone's clothes. As I listened for hours mesmerized, I wondered how I would transfer these incredible perspective to my daughter and generations after. I am thrilled that my "foi" has taken on this task and in reading it, see that not only our family heritage but a window into a time that touches on princely states, a Ceylon interlude, bastions of education, the twilight of the Raj in Kolkata in the late sixties and seventies and the evolving political class of Delhi across the years has been opened. The simple, lucid writing style with photographs makes it a nimble read that paints a more detailed picture than it seems to portray.