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Marshall Cavendish International - Ashwini Devare

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91 pages

English

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From Russia's Iron Curtain to Burma's Bamboo Curtain, Sikkim to South Korea, this biography follows the struggle of a young girl whose life was a cross-continental roller coaster ride that soared and plunged from one country to another. By the time she was 15, Ashwini Devare had lived in 5 countries. Born in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, her journey continued to the other side of the Cold War, to America, a Superpower mired in the Vietnam War. Sikkim, a forgotten mountain country tucked in the Himalayas became her next home, against the backdrop of a pro-democracy movement that would overthrow the monarchy. From Sikkim to Switzerland, where the challenges of assimilation in a deeply conservative country, left long-term scars on a young, impressionable mind. As a teenager in India during a turbulent time in the nation's history, she witnessed the upheaval and anarchy that followed in the wake of the assassination of its prime minister. In South Korea, she attended college with US soldiers in the heart of a military complex, while student demonstrations convulsed the country. She was a spectator to the dawn of democracy that rose over the Land of the Rising Calm. From being an observer of historical political events to becoming a journalist, her globetrotting life that began in the Soviet Union culminates in the tropical foliage of Singapore.

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Memoir

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	15 octobre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814841313
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Lost at 15, Found at 50 has the unique advantage of being based on a life that has seen the author move through a series of exciting opportunities for travel and work and the reader is given a front seat in a ride that is as enriching as it is illuminating.
- Professor Rajeev S. Patke, Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Combining her life-time experiences, journalistic skills and talent for story-telling, Ashwini has brought forth a wonderful book. It should appeal to readers of all ages.
- K. Kesavapany, Governor, Singapore International Foundation
Lost at 15, Found at 50 is a rollercoaster of a memoir that takes you racing through time and space, starting with India still in its teens, to an icy, post-Khrushchev Moscow, to a Washington under siege, to a Sikkim in turmoil, to Burma, to South Korea. Don t miss the ride. It will leave you breathless - and asking for more.
- Kiran Doshi, author of Jinnah Often Came to Our House
Ashwini is a talented story-teller and this book is a wonderful, gripping book, that everyone, especially women, should read. It s a travelogue, a lesson in history and a life manual all in one. I highly recommend this book.
- Ira Trivedi, author and yoga master
A personal testimony of wandering through the lanes and bylanes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century history. This is not a history of great world events - that is in the backdrop - but of what it was really like to live through those times.
- Sanjeev Sanyal, author and economist
Ashwini Devare represents India s post-midnight generation - born not in the flush of the freedom that arrived on the midnight of August 15, 1947 but within the cohort that appeared between the searing defeat in the China war of 1962 and the massive victory over Pakistan in 1971 that stamped New Delhi s dominance over the sub-continent. Daughter of a distinguished Indian Foreign Service officer, Ashwini Devare has written a memoir that also tells her father s story: the Indian external relations journey starting with the nervously uneasy proximity with the Soviet Union, the instinctively warm but ideologically distant United States, hegemonic behaviour in Sikkim and the easy moorings India found in Singapore as the springboard of the contemporaneous Look East/Act East policy.
- Ravi Velloor, Associate Editor and Asia columnist, The Straits Times
A fresh and lively narrative, suffused with the authenticity of a bright-eyed child growing into adulthood from her front-row seat to world-changing international events. Ashwini Devare s memoir makes you homesick for places you ve never set foot, all the while giving you a glance into the often not-so-glamorous life of an Indian diplomat and his family. More than anything, the book demonstrates how seemingly distant political incidents shape the lives of individuals, both natives and those who are temporary guests in a foreign land.
- Anne Ostby, author of Pieces of Happiness

2019 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Text Ashwini Devare
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com
Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices
Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Devare, Ashwini.
Title: Lost at 15, found at 50 : a memoir : travel, trials and tribulations in foreign lands / Ashwini Devare.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2019
Identifiers: OCN 1052723708 | eISBN 978 981 4841 31 3 Subjects: LCSH: Devare, Ashwini. | Women, East Indian--Travel--Biography.
Classification: DDC 305.48891411092--dc23
Printed in Singapore
In this memoir, names, places and experiences are based on the author s memories, conversations and recollections. Some of the dialogues, names and scenes have been changed or recreated to protect individual privacy. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For Mom, Dad and Aparna
Contents
Behind the Iron Curtain
Russia 1965-1967
The Other Side of the Cold War
USA 1967-1970
Kingdom of Hope
Sikkim 1970-1974
Brown Girl in the Ring
Switzerland 1976-1979
Behind the Bamboo Curtain
Burma 1979-1981
Feels Like Home
India 1981-1985
The Land of the Morning Calm
South Korea 1986-1989
Guns and Graffiti
USA 1990s
Island in the Rain
Singapore 2000s
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Telegram from Moscow announcing author s birth

Behind the Iron Curtain
RUSSIA 1965-1967

Moscow
A slender young woman stood at the hospital window, straining her eyes through the sleet that buffeted the street six floors below. My mother clutched me tightly in her arms, her child-like face pinched with fatigue and anxiety, eager eyes searching the sidewalk corner where she knew her husband would be waiting to catch a glimpse of his young wife and newborn.
Snow fell steadily, casting a silver metallic over the darkening afternoon. Suddenly my mother spotted him in a swirl of snowflakes, huddled in a coat, scarf and a hat, bracing one of the bitterest January days of the year. She waved wildly, her face brightening the minute his outline emerged through the snow.
Look, there s Daddy! She lifted me higher in the hope that he could see us: two blurry little dots outlined against a frosted steel window. Her eyes filled with tears, worrying about her husband shivering in his coat. He stood there, waving at us for a long while till the darkness swallowed him from sight.
My life began here, in the heart of Moscow, in a hospital for foreigners, near the grand Kropotkinskaya Station. There was nothing grand about the hospital though; it was stark and spartan, as were most institutions in communist Russia in those days. The austere maternity ward my mother and I were in was devoid of any toys or colours heralding the presence of a newborn; instead it had grey curtains and sheets, metal beds, steel trays and windows with grills. The week I was born coincided with a flu outbreak in the city and to seal off all infections, the hospital authorities immediately slapped draconian quarantine measures across all wards, forbidding visitors - even family members - from seeing patients. As a result of this sweeping ban, I did not get to see my father for the first fortnight of my life, except for those rare snatches of him standing on the roadside from our perch high above.
My birth created quite a stir at the hospital; it was the first time Russian nurses had seen a brown-skinned baby with dark hair. In fact, the girl with black hair became a talking point in our ward and nurses from different departments came to peer at me and marvel at my jet-black halo of curls.
Just twenty years old, my mother was lonely and homesick, and welcomed the diversion. It helped her get through the long dreary days of being the lone Indian in the hospital, the agony of mastitis, and the postpartum depression that was washing over her in big giant waves.
No, please, I cannot eat this, she shook her head at the plate of food the nurse had wheeled into the hospital room. She shut her eyes tightly to hide angry tears; this was the third day in a row she was being offered boiled potatoes and cabbage. Earlier, the nurse had brought in a juicy chicken drumstick which my mother refused, being a strict vegetarian. Fresh vegetables and fruits were in short supply in the streets of communist Moscow and, in any case, no one seemed to comprehend her desperate requests in broken Russian that she was a pure vegetarian, who did not even eat egg. As each day passed, my mother started becoming weaker. The pain of mastitis became unbearable and she stopped producing milk. It was only when a senior nurse noticed the untouched food trays leaving my mother s room that there was a sudden bustle of activity in our ward and senior staff were notified. The management then reluctantly agreed to my father s request to send in home-cooked food. From then onwards, every day, a tiffin would arrive at the maternity ward, concealing within it the aromas of curry, vegetable and chapati , all of which deliciously boosted my mother s spirits for the rest of our hospital stay.
I loved Russian milk, which I drank in copious quantities the first year of my life. My father would go to one of the several milk kitchens located near our house and buy small bottles of milk and yogurt, a common source of dairy for children in Moscow back then. My parents often joke about how the Russian milk made me bonny and strong, giving me good immunity in those early months.
You never got sick, my mother told me. It was definitely the Russian milk!

Ten days after your fa