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| Wednesday, December 6, 2006 |
| My St. Nicholas |
Christmas is drawing near and I can't help but think of Nicholas uncle, or Aan (father), as we called him in Konkani. He was old enough to be my grandfather: a sprightly man, with fantastically high cheekbones, and a booming, baritone voice. Ever since he had retired, he moonlighted as a bartender in Delhi's Hotel Diplomat because he loved being with people, listening to their stories, telling a few of his own.
He would visit our family often and impromtu parties would happen whenever he walked in. Bring out the cake, let's have a drink, sing me a song, let's have fun, he seemed to say with every breath.
I was six and he must have been 65 or so, the year my father died. I stopped talking that year...I remember dreading 6 PM every day, because that was the time my father would come home. Sick of watching me walk around listlessly, Aan decided to take matters into his own hands. He would pop in every other day with interesting stuff that kids love and very few adults are smart enough to know: old glittery christmas cards, bus tickets, funny gags. He was never kind in the unctuous way grown-ups usually are. Mostly, he would order me gruffly to stop moping and get on with it.
But the best memory of Aan I have is that of a magicky christmas night that year. He took me to the Goan club where a dance party was on. Handsome men and lovely women dancing with grace. There was Rego, such a brilliant dancer, dancing with Nica (Veronica) pretty as a picture. I have this clear memory of craning my neck to look at all these beautiful people with awe.
I must have been the only child there or if there were others I don't remember. I had never been to a club and I was absorbing everything like a sponge. Then, Aan took my hand and led me to the dance floor. Everyone cleared the dance floor and clapped in time to the music as the old man and the little girl twirled around the dance floor.
Then, it was getting late so we left for home, that is Aan was going to drop me home in a cab where my mother would be waiting hopping mad, no doubt. :) Aan was pleasantly high and insisted on singing christmas carols at the top of his voice all the way back home. He was weaving across the road (still bellowing!) so I held his hand and took him home, feeling so grown up.
Aan died a few years later. I am sure he touched many lives and gave them joy in that effortless way of his. And I can bet he is having a big party right now, wherever he may be.Labels: childhood |
| posted by Jivitha @ 11:58 PM |
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| Thursday, November 23, 2006 |
| The denizens of R K Puram |
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 |
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