Back in Delhi

I spent the first twenty years of my life in R.K. Puram. Went back recently to meet my old neighbours (who are practically family) and spent some time nosing around the old haunts. My school, a hop, skip, and jump away from from my house. (My mother would wave me away to school from the terrace every morning, to many jeers from the other colony kids and my eternal embarrassment. How fervently I used to wish I could take a bus to school and travel for hours if need be like the other kids. Anything to escape being sent off with love. I'd rather she kicked me out every morning saying, Nikal ja, shaitan ke bachche! I would have got some sympathy, at least.)

The old water tank. The park. The shortcut through the old government school and the park has been sealed. I don't think I could have squeezed through the iron rungs, anyway. The trees, big and shady even then are mammoth now.

Many more cars; not so many scooters, forget rickety Chetaks that one saw mostly. Kalra's lending library is gone. (Not that I had a membership there, I lost the book my sister had borrowed and she got me blacklisted for, like, a lifetime. She actually hauled my puny ass to bloody Kalra's and hissed, "Is ladki ko kitaab kabhi nahi dena, varrrrna!" Darpok Kalra didn't even let me sniff at his books after that.)

The chinese meals-on-wheels is still there. And to its credit still looks as though it will roll away one day mysteriously. Panditji in the sabzi mandi is still going strong. The saste kapre ki dukaan is very much there.

Then, someone whizzed by on a scooter. That was Satti, said my little bro. Satti, as in Satti, Toti, Taari, the three monster brothers of the colony, I asked? Yes, he grinned. The Satti I remember was this thin, lanky boy, dashing madly on a scooter always on the verge of falling off. I am sure he took many tumbles but amazingly never did so in front of any eye witnesses. Or was that Toti? Anyway, this Satti, was fatter and compared to his grand prix days, practically sedate.

They lived in the building next to ours and didn't figure so much in my life. I had bigger problems to contend with in my building. My next door neighbours were the Saxenas, with six kids, including a Papoo and a Baboo. I was terrified of them because I was a total dabboo madrasi. My hindi was so terribly accented, I can only cringe when i remember how i said "Baldi" for "balti" and called Siddhi "Suddhi". My revenge is that my hindi is first-rate now and I can put any heartlander to shame. So there. Anyway, I was terribly bullied by Papoo who despite being match-stick skinny and dark to boot, thought he was Shammi Kapoor. He would walk around with a Shammi Kapoor bracelet and sweater around his neck and make those amazing neck contortations which made him look like a penguin having a grand mal seizure.

Anyway, then there were the Sharmas. Mr. Sharma had two wives (don't know how he managed that) and at last count, five kids. The last was a boy so one can safely assume he stopped at that. They were shamelessly opulent, loud but not kind or particularly generous, which made them very difficult to like. I think that was the first time I realized how different I was. My mother and aunt got along famously with Mrs. Sharma and her daughters but I would just shuffle my feet and exist on the periphery of the sisterhood. I used to be miserable because I couldn't be so effortlessly flirty and feminine like them. And I still can't be like that. I can be sarcy and wry on my good days. But pert and spoony? No way.

My affliction continues to this day, I think. I am a sore disappointment to my landlady (a very ladylike Sardarni) who was looking forward to many woman-to-woman tete-a-tetes with me. I only end up manfully respecting her privacy---when all she wants is for me to dig for information so she can talk--or worse offending her by offering to do things for her in a matter-of-fact way instead of showing some finesse.

Luckily, my mother is in town and she told me happily, "Teri maa badi mazedaar hai!" Story of my life.

Labels: childhood, people, R K puram

posted by Jivitha @ 9:05 AM

1 Comments:

At November 30, 2006 10:38:00 PM PST, Garfieldjunky said…

Your denizens are quite lively, more so becoz of the way u have described them....and I do agree with the last part about ur landlady.....I have this neighbour who has been constantly inviting me to her place and generally to sit down and chat with her...and I feel hopelessly out of place...becoz she is dying to spill everything and get me to spill everything....and I lack the 'womanly' trait of being curious to boots about these things :)