Rainbows in my Clouds

Rainbows

in my

Clouds

RADHIKA LEE

Copyright © 2015 Radhika Lee

First Published 2015 by

Notion Press

Old No. 38, New No. 6

McNichols Road, Chetpet

Chennai - 600 031

ISBN 978-93-5206-401-4

All Rights Reserved.

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. Please note that the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility for the occurence of any errors.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The events, incidents and the journey itself have been put together from the author’s memory and to the best of her recollection. However, out of respect for privacy some names mentioned in this book have been changed.

It has been a stormy, stormy life, but I have had

many, many rainbows in my clouds…

Dedicated to my son, who has been my

most beautiful rainbow through all the clouds…

Acknowledgements

There are so many people I want to thank for helping this book see the light of the day…

The two most beautiful people who gave me life and with it, the strength of character to endure, persevere and always do right by my conscience and the Almighty… Mom and Dad, thank you for giving me a deep understanding of life and people and teaching me to appreciate every situation that comes my way without losing belief.

My niece Amritha, who never wavered in her faith in me and her husband Yashwanth who has been a pillar of strength…

My editor and friend Reena Abraham for the relentless tenacity and encouragement throughout this last one year; you made me a better writer.

Brian, Jonathan and Simon for always being there to pick up the pieces and letting me go away for days without having to worry about Ashwin. This is my chance to say it forever; I am grateful for the last ten years of your unwavering love and support.

Aarti Gunnupuri who came into the scene pretty late but whose professionalism and eye for detail made my book a better piece of work. A superb editor and connoisseur of good writing, I thank Aarti for taking the trouble to make sure the book is as good as it can possibly be.

All my cousins back in Kerala for your unconditional love and support, these past few years especially…

Jeff for reminding me aboard a flight home that I could write too…

David, you are experienced in this business and I am grateful for your advice and time. Thank you for teaching me to keep things simple.

The book happened because Anoop, you made me believe in ‘me’ and got me to dream once again. Thank you.

The team at Notion Press who made the last leg of this journey quite an experience.

All my students these past 30 years…for the laughter in and out of the classrooms that kept my sanity…

Most of all, Ashwin my son who gave me motivation to live and cheered me on every step of the way… Vaave, without you I could not have embarked on this journey. Thank you for all the love, the unending support and wise advice, despite your age!

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword I

Foreword II

Prelude

Prologue

Book 1

Rain…

Divinity Personified

The Tragic Hero

Changes

The Silent Sufferer

New Beginnings

Somewhere My Love

I Am an Eagle That Rides On the Breeze

Book 2

First Glimpse

Alone

Home, Sweet Home

Hush My Baby

Taste of Deceit

India Beckons Once Again

Can Anyone Tell Me Why?

Everything I Do… I Do It for You

Home Is Where Your Heart Is

Revival

Silver Lining

At The Peak

Separated

The Last Straw

Book 3

A New Dawn

Not Again!

The Turning Point

Divine Intervention

Trying Times…

The Last Rites

Glorious Cape Town

Where Tomorrow Begins

Be the change…

Dancing in the Rain

A Promise Fulfilled

Hope by my Wings

If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On

Epilogue

Author Profile

Foreword I

Ifirst met Radhika at an International Schools’ conference hosted by Apple in Vienna in the year 2007. It was at the conference that she realized what technology could do for her students. Returning to Kenya, she under took the mission of setting up the first E-School in East Africa, only to realize that her superiors were unwilling to change. So she embarked on an even more challenging task of starting her own, E-school. This proved to be quite a herculean task for an Indian lady, with no one and nothing to support her, especially, in an unknown land!

Now years later, despite the overwhelming obstacles, she owns three schools that educate children from around the globe.

I call her Radical Lee because her journey is a radical departure from traditional education, just as her personal life has also been. Despite all the challenges, Radhika has remained focused, committed, positive and above all innovative as you will realize when you walk alongside her on this journey in her autobiography.

You will meet the unwavering spirit of Radhika in her book, Rainbows in my Clouds and fall in love with this remarkable woman as I did.

JOHN COUCH

VICE PRESIDENT (education) - APPLE INC.

Foreword II

One can only measure how they are doing in life when confronted with challenges. The tell-tale of Radhika’s life could not be measured until she faced her challenges…the first challenge was to break away from decades of abuse and being defined by others. Radhika’s break from her partner puts her on a path that gave her meaning but took much time to discover her amazing self, which was there all the time.

Radhika’s story is inspirational for all of us and teaches us to have faith in ourselves and know there is a powerful ‘you’. It takes time as nothing beautiful and positive is ever easy to achieve in life without struggles. I encourage you to read Radhika’s story as she narrates it in her autobiography "Rainbows in my Clouds". It will help you become stronger and even persuade you to have Radhika’s guts to want a better place for yourself in this world!

NANCY SILBERKLEIT

CEO – ARCHIE COMICS

Prelude

Relentless struggles make a successful person. Radhika Lee is no exception. Her memoir Rainbows in my Clouds is the ballade of her rise – as a young girl – from her displaced dreams to the successful educationist and entrepreneur that she is today in Kenya.

I find the spirit of Radhika’s painful migration from her picturesque tiny village Cherai in Kerala to Kenya in Africa, in these lines of the African-American poet Gwendoly Brooks, from To the Diaspora:

Here’s some sun. Some.

Now off into the places rough to reach.

Radhika set out for Africa charting rough paths and reached there. There, her dreams are reborn, though after very many struggles, both professional and personal.

Her memoir is candid. Its narrative is reminiscent of the backwaters of Kerala – placid and mirroring the verdure of nature and the blueness of the sky. Kerala’s peculiar customs and rituals, such as the celebration of a girl’s menarche, are touched upon vividly. It is an inspiring oeuvre, replete with nostalgia for her lost home.

The present-day women, empowered with education, are making their presence felt in almost all domains of life, particularly in creative domain. Radhika Lee represents this new woman. As I went on reading her memoir, it soothed me like Kerala’s summer rains.

M. MUKUNDAN

AWARD WINNING NOVELIST

Prologue

Each one of us has a story to tell. Of that, I am certain. How many of us eventually end up telling that story, I am not certain. For sure, I wanted to tell my story long ago. I started writing this memoir as a vent, when down in the dumps. Writing gave release to my pent up anger and sorrows. Those feelings that I scribbled daily, when lonely and upset, were not for anyone else but myself. It was my therapy, with no counselor to talk to and my son too young to understand what we were going through.

Maya Angelou said… People may forget what you said and what you did… but they will never forget how you made them feel. True. We have the innate ability to forgive and move on with life but we can never forget how we were made to feel. Memories are quite powerful and I, at times wonder whether they are a blessing or a curse.

Rainbows in my Clouds is not just my story. It is the story of millions of women: daughters, sisters, wives, mothers and workers. By sharing my story all I am trying to do is inspire and motivate my readers to live purposefully and courageously. The will to live, the determination to pursue our dreams, and the faith that we can do it, not only lead us to a place of success, but also to a life of fulfillment and significance.

Book 1

Karma Sarong

Time and again I let my thoughts wander

Trying hard to find the meanings yonder

Never known nothing but sorrow and pain

Pleasures and joys are not mine to sustain.

Who do I blame for all the wrong?

Karma, draped around me like a sarong?

—R.L.

Rain…

Crouching between long stretches of beaches and backwaters stood our home in Cherai, the little village by the sea. It was only an hour’s drive from the metropolis of Cochin, now Kochi, the bustling commercial capital of Kerala, the tiny state tucked away in the south-western corner of India. ‘God’s Own Country’ is the Tourism Development Corporation’s tag line, promoting Kerala as one of the top ten tourist destinations in the world for its scenic beauty; its backwaters, coconut palms and beaches. This is where I was born.

Kerala is special in many ways – special because it is there that I was a child and special because it is there that my story begins. As unlikely a story as any, filled to the brim with pain, triumph, and well…rain.

Our home was lovingly built with craftsmanship that bore testimony to a glorious past, a bygone era of flourishing architectural genius. This is where my first memories find root. Known as ‘Tharavadu’, it was an antiquated place with a large open courtyard in the centre, a place that acted both as a playing ground for children and as an architectural space that gave the house breadth and breath. There were four gigantic pillars, their unique floral designs cusped and held up the structure that we referred to as the ‘Nalukettu’, which also acted as a drainage of sorts when the rains came, and oh, did they!

The first rains in my memory are the ones when I was a little girl. A little girl with thick black curls that framed my face and fell down all the way almost to my knees, a little girl running around the Nalukettu, chasing the dragon flies that came in through the empty space, a little girl dancing in the rain. These rains were merciless when they chose to be. Rains, which came thumping down the tiled rooftops of the ancient brick red and white structure that was our family homestead. Rains, that seemed to come down with a vengeance, even when I knew they meant no harm.

I remember squatting by the Nalukettu, watching the frogs that had come in uninvited and then remained, trapped in the courtyard. The rains made their bloated bodies float in the water. They bore such a keen resemblance to human beings the way they floated downstream like that, as if they were on holiday and were bumming about in the swimming pool. It amused me no end when some even tried to get free rides on top of the others…or so it looked through my child-eyes! I remember making paper boats with my brother and Balu… Balu, the boy I loved so obviously and so naturally, who would leave eventually. Balu’s mother, Aunty Asha, was my dad’s sister. It wasn’t uncommon among Hindus across India to get married to relatives and cousins; the evolution of our relationship from childhood playmates to adolescent infatuation seemed the most natural thing to me, indeed, to all of us in the family.

During the rains, as little kids, making paper boats was one of our favourite pastimes. There was always room for little innovations and novelties that challenged and freed our creativity. They were made in different shapes, sizes and colours and they were made from many materials: note paper, foolscap, newspaper and old cigarette packets – especially the very popular Gold Flakes and Wills. We found freedom in those boats and by extension, in the rain. I would watch in astonishment as these boats moved with a latent rhythm, spurred on by the raindrops streaming down the four corners into the courtyard. They moved, bobbed, swirled, spun and quite often, bumped into the frogs floating on their stomachs. Often they just drowned and sunk, wrecked. Every holiday I would play this game each time it rained; but right up until this moment, I’m not sure what I loved most: the company or the game itself.

Rain outside the house was even more fun. The mud puddles, overflowing ponds and meandering brooks made life such a delight, although it left heaps of dirty clothes for the weary servants to deal with each day and the almost impossible task of drying them without any sunlight! Washing machines were unheard of in those days; a technology whose time hadn’t arrived, and certainly not in that remote part of the world.

Every rainy season when the first droplets hit us…the initial urge was to run out fully-clothed, to get drenched with absolutely no care whatsoever. The dusty, earthy smell as the first raindrop hit the sun-baked and parched earth engulfed us… My mom, aunts and servants would call out to us to get away and stay in, lest one should fall sick! Paying no heed to these calls, we danced away.

Now, many years later, I still harbour such overwhelming nostalgia for wet and rainy days. They make me long for Kerala; they make me long for home. It is as though rains have some kind of hold over me. It is as if they own me, as if I am imprisoned by them. I feel my heart flutter every time I hear the pitter-patter of tiny droplets hit the rooftops. I remember many a day when my life was filled with the joys the dark clouds and the stormy rains brought me. Those were the days that life meant something else. Days, when all one heard was the sound of water, and for me, those sounds from the heavens symbolise, even now, the purity of life.

Rain in the city was quite different. It was a paradox. It held both countless miseries and marvellous pleasures. Most of the time you stayed home, stuck because of the never-ending rain. The monsoons usually came along with the beginning of the academic year in June. It was as though nature had colluded and made a pact with the school calendar. Girls and boys in their new uniforms, spotless, starched and ironed, complete with polished shiny shoes, in buses, cars and rickshaws, all eager to get to school, some lugging their new school bags and lunch boxes…only to get soaked in the heavy downpour!

At times you would be hard-pressed to tell where the roads ended and the sidewalks began. Everything was flooded, even the classrooms. There was water everywhere. It flowed freely and owned every surface. Rainy holidays were then proclaimed by the powers that be. I hated the idea of staying indoors, but holidays meant that my beloved Balu would come home from boarding school at Rajagiri, just a few kilometres away from Kochi. The thought made staying indoors more bearable, less hateful. For me it was as simple as that: the pleasure of seeing Balu made everything else inconsequential. Balu’s arrival during the holidays meant that my brother and I, who kept each other company through the year had another playmate. As they say, two’s company and three’s a crowd, and for most children, a crowd is always a lot more fun.

Amongst the indescribable pleasures of rain were the games and time fillers we created. Following a thunderstorm, the electricity almost always went off for days. This meant that every night we would play ‘Dark Room’. I loved the game – basically hide and seek in a dark room – especially because it gave me a chance to hide inside the wardrobes with Balu or lie next to him under a mattress with bated breath, waiting to be caught. Sometimes his hands encircled me, trying to keep me still. Those were heady moments, even for my young, unformed mind. They made my feelings soar with excitement and took me to a place that not many things could back then.

As we talked and played we grew up, and soon came the time of transitioning from girl to woman. The time when a girl crosses that threshold and becomes a woman was a very big deal in Kerala at that time and even now. The subsequent celebrations felt almost like a wedding. To your horror, every female relative in the family was informed that the ‘miracle’ had happened - I had had my first period. Then followed a day that seemed like it would never end, a day of continuous and enormously embarrassing rituals. Tray loads of sweets and new clothes – sometimes even a new gold chain or bangle – carried by beaming relatives who had arrived to baptise you into womanhood. They made you sit on a low stool, anointed you with oil, sandalwood and turmeric ground into a fine thin paste and spread it all over your body. Then, they bathed you and made you wear new clothes and jewellery; ready to face the world as a woman.

I still remember my very pretty aunty, Indira, coming in with tins of nankhatai and monthar (these were the most popular sweets) from Alleppey’s Gujarati street, all made on special order from my maternal grandmother, Janaki. My father’s sister, Aunty Gigi, an amazingly beautiful woman, came laden with juicy laddus and delicious, crumbly Mysore-pak from the Iyyer’s shop in Thevara (a suburb in Kochi). All the while, hiding in a lonely dark corner, I hoped that no one would ever find me. I could find no good reason to explain the great fuss that suddenly surrounded me.

When the rains came again, I felt different. The rain itself felt different. Overnight it had become something not simply fun and exciting, but beautiful. Rain was a storyteller, a musician, a magician! But above all, rain was the temperamental artist. Rain was all rolled into one and when it came, everything was suddenly serene and quiet. Everything around me had stories to tell; there was music in the sound of the falling water, it was as if at the swirl of a wand, a brand new world was created around me. Or was it like the brush stroke of Leonardo when he created the masterpiece?

The reason for the unexpected poetry in my soul? I was in love for the very first time!

It was the most natural thing to have happened to two people who grew up from the very first time they could remember, in each other’s company. There was never any doubt in my mind that I was meant for Balu as he was the only boy I saw in that light from the time I could comprehend. He was smart, dashing, caring and funny. He made me feel special at every juncture and so it felt right to be in love with him. I knew he loved me too. There was an unspoken bond between Balu and I of which I was certain. The comments, smirks and knowing looks from our aunts, uncles and cousins every time we were together, reinforced the sense of belonging we felt towards each other. We knew that once we reached that decisive age, with our natural feelings encouraged and sanctioned by the customs of our family and society, all was going to be fine.

Life was beautiful with the rains playing the background score to our every whim and fantasy.

Divinity Personified

The memories of my mother are defined by scents, especially Christian Dior. The scent of the Dior combined with the delicate fragrance of jasmine that adorned her hair every day, left a tantalising trail wherever she went and the unique essence still endures in my memory. Even now, a whiff of jasmine and I am filled with a rush of nostalgia. She loved to wear garlands on her hair, made out of the jasmine that grew abundantly in the compound of her house at Alleppey and at our house in Cochin and later, in Cherai. That was one of her afternoon chores: stringing together the pristine white buds into a single-strand garland, her fingers expertly entwining the stems with the thread. One was for the idol of Lord Krishna that she prayed to, and the other, shorter one for herself. It was her daily indulgence, her guilty pleasure.

Quite often, when I close my eyes, I see her, wearing one of her favourite sarees from Kanchipuram, a town in Southern India famous for its intricate and beautifully patterned, handwoven silk sarees, the big round red bindi on her forehead, looking stunningly beautiful. Mom was a striking lady. She carried herself with poise and charisma. There was something aristocratic about her, something lofty and ethereal. Maybe it was the eyes of love, but it isn’t an exaggeration to say that she had a divine aura about her. Her conduct and lifestyle only enhanced this impression of her.

To me, my mother was the embodiment of patience and love. She exuded warmth in every phase of her life. Through good times and bad, she stood by the man she had loved and married. She could pick grass that grew in the backyard and turn it into the most delicious dish ever. She had the admiration of all who knew her, including all my uncles – her brothers-in-law – who were most often the benefactors of her largesse and culinary talent. Mom would be ready to feed an army of hungry people with finger-licking good food at every opportunity, reminding me of the story of Jesus turning water into wine and feeding a crowd of thousands with just five loaves of bread. No one could ever figure out how she managed to do this! Perhaps, that was her God-given gift, her unique talent.

If Mom had a weakness, it was my dad. She could never say no to him, even when she should have. She never opposed him in anything. Hers was a simple life; her world was her family. Her husband, her children, her large family of in-laws and her own mother and siblings: that was the extent of her horizon. The big sister, everyone’s go-to person when in