Kamala Aunt, father's niece

Spoke to father's elder brother's wife, Kamala, who is eighty four, and her faculties are clearly in sound condition. She is a short and burly woman who spoke in a low voice. I wanted to know from her how father was in his childhood since she grew up as part of the family. As a child she played with father and his brothers and sisters, for she was after all related to grandmother, her maternal aunt. But my attempts at engaging her to talk about my father failed to elicit enough to get a clear picture of father in his younger days when he was under the care of his elder brother after grandmother's death from cholera, which occurred exactly ten years after grandfather's accidental death. She spoke of father very little and offered little to help construct a readable story of his early life. There was also the matter of a disagreement between the brothers over father's involvement in the political turmoil at that time, which prevented him from completing his school, and dashed his brother's hope of producing an engineer or a doctor under his care. She did not mention the disagreement, though; but stated her husband's disappointment in no uncertain terms.
Kamala aunt keeps a handbag full of medicines which she says keep her alive and kicking. She lives in a small house situated in a dirty unkempt locality with her younger son. She spoke a lot about the family problems, the property matters and the many relatives who lived at that time. Father's elder brother became the youngest breadwinner in the family after the sudden demise of grandfather. He was fourteen when the family burden fell on his shoulders. He wanted to pursue studies but there was no other source of income - women did not go out to work and father was only nine - and he was under pressure from grandmother to accept the job of his father. She mentioned that the rail company of which grandfather was a station master offered jobs to all his sons and agreed to hold the job until they completed their studies. Father due to his political activism could not complete his studies, nor was he interested in that job. Kamala aunt recalled this matter in a matter-of-fact manner and simply expressed her husband's displeasure and disappointment at father's unconventional interests.
She mentioned a diary kept by grandfather, which is now in the possession of her grand daughter. I must remember to collect it from her. The diary she says contained the exact dates on which his children were born. Grandfather had eleven children in all in his short life, which made grandma Kanaka Durga to run to her maternal home almost every year.
Aunt Kamala also gave some idea about life in her early years before her marriage to father's elder brother. My next account will be an attempt to describe that period as well as I can.