Table Of Content

Amma’s Daughters Our Lives: Diary, Memoir, and Letters Social history contests the construction of the past as the story of elites—a grand narrative dedicated to the actions of those in power. Our Lives seeks instead to make available voices from the past that might otherwise remain unheard. By foregrounding the experience of ordinary individuals, the series aims to demonstrate that history is ultimately the story of our lives, lives constituted in part by our response to the issues and events of the era into which we are born. Many of the voices in the series thus speak in the context of political and social events of the sort about which historians have traditionally written. What they have to say fills in the details, creating a richly varied portrait that celebrates the concrete, allowing broader historical settings to emerge between the lines. The series invites materials that are engagingly written and that contribute in some way to our understanding of the relationship between the individual and the collective. Manuscripts that include an introduction or epilogue that contextualizes the primary materials and reflects on their significance will be preferred. Series Titles Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery Helen Waldstein Wilkes Man Proposes, God Disposes: Recollections of a French Pioneer Pierre Maturié, translated by Vivien Bosley Xwelíqwiya: The Life of a Stó:lō Matriarch Rena Point Bolton and Richard Daly Mission Life in Cree-Ojibwe Country: Memories of a Mother and Son Elizabeth Bingham Young and E. Ryerson Young, edited and with introductions by Jennifer S.H. Brown Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné and Paul Jackson The Teacher and the Superintendent: Native Schooling in the Alaskan Interior, 1904–1918 Compiled and annotated by George E. Boulter II and Barbara Grigor-Taylor Leaving Iran: Between Migration and Exile Farideh Goldin My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell Arthur Bear Chief The Wolves at My Shadow: The Story of Ingelore Rothschild Ingelore Rothschild, edited by Darilyn Stahl Listort and Dennis Listort Amma’s Daughters: A Memoir Meenal Shrivastava Amma's Daughters Meenal Shrivastava a memoir Copyright © 2018 Meenal Shrivastava Published by AU Press, Athabasca University 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8 ISBN 978-1-77199-195-7 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-77199-196-4 (PDF) ISBN 978-1-77199-197-1 (epub) doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991957.01 www.ammasdaughters.com Cover image © Jessica Sharmin and Jovana Milanko / Stocksy.com Cover design by Natalie Olsen, kisscutdesign.com Interior design by Sergiy Kozakov Promotional website design by Darren Johnston, Grit Multimedia Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printers Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Shrivastava, Meenal, 1971-, author Amma's daughters : a memoir / Meenal Shrivastava. (Our lives: diary, memoir, and letters) Includes bibliographical references. Issued in print and electronic formats. 1. Shrivastava, Meenal, 1971- —Family. 2. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948. 3. India—Politics and government—1919-1947. 4. India—History—Autonomy and independence movements. I. Title. II. Series: Our lives (Edmonton, Alta.) DS480.45.S57 2018 954.03'5 C2018-900965-9 C2018-900966-7 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada for our publishing activities and the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Assistance is also provided by the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution– Noncommercial–NoDerivative Works 4.0 International: see www.creativecommons. org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. To obtain permission for uses beyond those outlined in the Creative Commons license, please contact AU Press, Athabasca University, at [email protected]. For Amma’s great-granddaughters, Aditi, Adya, and Ananya— may you lead your lives with courage, compassion, and conviction. And for Zoleka V. Ndayi, my willful goddaughter—may you rest in power. We live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted—knowingly or unknowingly—in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free Contents Preface xi A Note on Forms of Address xiii 1 Dislocations 3 2 Many Homes 31 3 No Easy Path 71 4 Meeting Babu 97 5 City of Conquests 129 6 Battlegrounds 171 7 Departures 201 8 Crossing Thresholds 229 9 Letting Go 273 Epilogue 289 Writing Amma’s Story 293 Acknowledgements 299 List of Interviews 303 Bibliography 305