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PARVEEN KAUR ❏ My younger brother Lali was born on March 17, 1946. It was his fourth birthday. We were in Jallandhar. He was in an English medium school where the sons and daughters of rich people went. My mother, Pushpa, had gone to his school and invited all the twenty children of his class to his birthday party. On that auspicious day, the dining room was decorated with balloons and buntings. Kiddy bags were filled with goodies for the little guests to take back home.

PARVEEN KAUR ❏ “Oh, my God! Look at her, you have given birth to the ugliest girl on earth,” said my father’s mother, Karam Kaur, when I was born. My mother Pushpa was only twenty. She had a two-year-old toddler, Minna. Pushpa was young, hopeful and a day dreamer. She had a son already; now she wanted a daughter. All through her nine months of pregnancy, she dreamt of having the most beautiful daughter who would look like the apsaras of Ajanta and Aalora caves. My mother was such a romantic.