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PJ: And my grandfather -- I mean, it's interesting because he was a certain way with my grandmother, which often, I think, really minimized what she did know. But when I, when he died, and I found some old letters that he had written, he was, it was very interesting. He was really the one who refused to allow his sister to be married off to a very old gentleman -- because one of his sisters died who was married to this man, and they wanted to marry his other sister off. And his other sister was very, I think... very vivacious and very -- and he took on the wrath of his family and wrote this letter saying, "He absolutely should not marry her," and, "she deserves to finish her education."

So, and then he was absolutely committed to his kids being fully educated. I mean, every single one of his children -- well, actually, three out of the four have graduate degrees, and he's got three girls and one boy. So, you know, he's just a very complicated mix. And he was always very... I was always scared of him, I think, as a child. But when I went back to India again, I developed -- I mean, going back to India for me was so wonderful because there were all these relationships that I reconnected with, and his was one of them. And he ended up -- he was one of those people who never praises, never. I mean, never, never says anything good about anybody, really, to them. Now, to somebody else he might talk about how wonderful his daughter is, or his grandchildren, but, but he wrote me a letter after one of the articles that I had written, which he used to get copies of. And I have kept it to this day, because my mother says he's never, she's never seen a letter that he's, that he's written like that to anybody else. Just talking about how much he enjoyed the article, and how well-written it was, and how much I covered. You know, just things that he wouldn't -- [laughs] -- I mean, I was so surprised to hear him say. So he's a, he's a complicated man.

AI: Well, so then you mentioned that he made sure that his children were educated. And was that unusual then? Was it, I'm wondering how unusual was it for someone like your mother to receive as much education as she did in that era?

PJ: I think it was pretty unusual. I think that probably a small percentage of the wealthier or more education population received some kind of college degree. But for a girl to actually finish college and then be encouraged to go for higher studies, was very unusual. But we did, we came, we come from the state of Kerala, which is... I mean, one of the wonderful things about Kerala is it's a matrilineal society and women, for a long time, in fact, I think this has been less so, the modern age has actually reduced sort of the strength of women in Kerala. But for a long time it really has been that everything was transferred through the women. Land was transferred through the women, the women presided over a lot of the ceremonies, even though, technically, it was the mother's oldest brother that would, for example, preside over a marriage, it was still the mother that controlled everything. And the name was passed on. I mean, my name, if I went according to our lineage, and according to our history, would be P.K. Pramila, would be my mother's house name, it used to be called the taravad, taravad means "the house," that you come from. And it's defined by your, by your mothers all the way up. And so if you go to the temple, when we go to our temple, our family temple in Kerala, they will ask me who my mother is: "What is the mother's house name?" And they'll say, "Oh, that's Ramani's," and so they'll go through the maternal lineage. Like I said, that's changed, but I think Kerala has had this very strong tradition of respecting women. So I think in Kerala it may not have been so unusual, but for the rest of India it was very, very unusual. And still is.

AI: Right, right.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.