Letter to Salman Rushdie (Part 2)

My Maternal Grandmother: Ilse Lieblich Losa,
Was born in 1913 into a liberal German Jewish family living near Osnabruck. Her father traded in horses and served with the German army in France during the First World War. She studied to become a nurse and was for a brief time in London. The rise of Hitler found her in Berlin, I think, where she had a non-Jewish boyfriend. This character became a Nazi and, naturally, broke my grandmother’s heart (something that scarred her for life, I suspect). At the end of 1933 she managed to escape from Germany, thanks to her blonde hair and greyish blue eyes. Due to a series of whimsical connections, she ended up in Porto, where she met many of the students of the Fine Arts School. She married my grandfather and settled back to a life of writing and socializing, focusing on children’s stories and psychology. Unlike my grandfather, she abhorred all totalitarian regimes and, even after the revolution in 1974, she never joined the anti-American wave that then swept the country.
She was not a religious person and I can almost be sure that she would eat pork occasionally.
I was never very close to her…she always kept a safety perimeter around herself. Maybe a slight superiority, maybe just an emotional defence mechanism. Most of her relatives died in the concentration camps.
Unlike my grandfather, she seems to have left more bitter memories amongst her descendants.
She has been in a state of deep Alzheimer for the last four years.


My Father: Sushil Kumar Mendiratta,
Was born into a Hindu family from north Punjab in 1942. After the partition, the family fled to Jaipur…my father must have been five years old and this event can’t have left him with fond memories. My paternal grandfather was a doctor and my paternal grandmother had a secondary education and eventually became the mother of eight.
Besides studying hard, my father took the burden of looking over his brothers and sisters, since he was the oldest (of the brothers). At sixteen, he could already support himself and even send some money to the family. He studied at Pillani and, obviously, was brilliant in his field (telecommunications engineering).
This allowed him to fly over to the States. However, just before leaving, he married (I know almost nothing of his first marriage).
According to legend, my father arrived in 1963 or 64 in the U.S. with a small suitcase and 100 dollars (or was it 10?). Anyways, he continued to work hard and joined IBM, where his future looked bright indeed. When he met my mother (somewhere in up-state New York), his wife and life in India must have seemed to him to be light years away.
He dated my mom for a few (blissful, I suspect) years, wrapped up his doctorate, started teaching, climbed up the ladder in IBM, was at Woodstock, and risked deportment by attending anti-Vietnam demonstrations.
They got married in 1972 but not before a complicated divorce between my father and his first wife…who got a cosy settlement, I suspect.
In August 1974, my sister Maya was born. My parents had been considering moving to India since my father, an Indian citizen, couldn’t possibly enter Portugal. However, with the revolution of April 1974 (in Portugal) and all the excitement in the air, the three came over, early in 1975.

This second “culture shock” must have been much harder on my father. Portugal was (and still is in many ways) a backward and chauvinistic country, in spite of the political atmosphere after the revolution. He had a tough time getting a job although he had high qualifications.
At any rate, by mid 1975, both my parents were university teachers. But I suspect that my father must have had second feelings about his “family” move.

I was born in 1977 (in Porto) into a still happy marriage.

Things started getting worse around 1984, when accumulated stress and so many other things and nature itself led my parents’ marriage downhill. They tried hard to save it (too hard, that’s my opinion) but divorce came in 1990. My sister and I moved with my mom to a new house.
My father stayed in a near-by town where he eventually re-married. My little brother Raúl was born in 1996. My father has only few years until retirement, but I worry that his health will not allow him to enjoy his hard earned garden with its roses and its Queen of the Night.

Besides, he also carries the burden of the recent family misfortunes in India, where his brother and sisters struggle for a living with various degrees of success.

(End of part 2)