A Winter Evening at a Humble Household

Recently I had a chance meeting with the parents of one of my friends. It turned out to be a very memorable experience thus conforming my belief that if you trust your instincts more easily than your logic then you can be assured of great results by sheer luck. As my buddy happens to belong to lower-middle strata of in Indian society in economic terms, his household couldn’t be a favorite sight for materialistic eyes. But it came across as a space, which my eyes were yearning for a long time. The unmistakable simplicity of their living-cum-bedroom just delighted my senses reminding me of ‘Sooraj Ka Satwan Ghoda’. That big bet, that somewhat untidy look of the room & that heart touching ingenuousness of his folks were simply nauseating & nostalgic.

As I climbed the stairs & landed on the first floor of that big house (my pal’s family is one of the few tenants occupying the building) I was uncertain of his presence in the city. I got to their rooms & enquired about him from a kid playing at balcony. Though the child was quick to respond, my friend’s mother (lets call him J from now onwards) out sounded him informing me of J’s presence in a room adjacent to the kitchen where she was with utensils & gas chulha.

I moved forward, stepped into the room & found him welcoming just near the door. I greeted his father who was lying there on a bed covered up to bust with a thin blanket & a sheet. He was wearing a woolen cap & his head was elevated with the help of a pillow & elbow. He signaled towards a chair & asked me to acquire it. I obeyed him after pulling it forward.

Then J told me about the recent operation of his father for the ailment of fissure. His father explained me the malady in general terms that I was quick to catch. Then he told me about his encounters with the medical fraternity over last few days that had started with a fever & ended with an operation. He consulted a surgeon & a physician both while eventually the physician did the surgery (he happens to be the same physician who operated on my armpit last year).

By the time our medical badinage ended, chai, & his mother had placed cookies on a small table. After some formality & amusing reasoning by me, we (me & J) started up with tea. When I asked him about uncle’s he ensured me that his will arrive in moments. And it was true. It was really a matter of moments when I saw his special tea delivered on the table. Special because it contained very less tealeaves & no water making it tastier & more beneficial. One more noticeable thing was its presence in a small steel tumbler while we had ours in cups.

By the time uncle started relishing it, auntie once again came into the room with her share of tea & made space on the same bed where uncle & J’s cousin were resting. Then she probed me about my current occupation & compared it slightly vis-à-vis J where I played myself down. Then uncle appreciated me for being engaged in something productive & not wasting my time idly (which is but half-a –truth).

Then the talks moved on the future plans, marriage & J’s brother who is working in a sleepy town of eastern U.P. We three males discussed about the woes of living in eastern U.P. At this point we made an interesting & lovely discovery that he & I share the same nickname foe home. Then the matter of his marriage came up that they were planning in a couple of years during which they expected him to reach a better position. Uncle told me that one of J’s aunts who suggested & facilitated his brother’s MBA was also advising them to send him to US. I cheered up on this & exhibiting my zeal I asked them optimistically about this. To my great surprise they had declined the proposal fearing that he might alienate form them, stop them loving & ultimately disavow them. But then I argued with them citing the example one of my friends & more. Here auntie gave an example of their close relative who was settled abroad for a long time but didn’t give them much importance in comparison to others.

When she became passionate about this partiality with uncle also joining the song, J expressed his discontent about this mundane matter. But even then we continued it for a while before ending it pleasantly. After this the chat drifted towards a married friend, his life, his wife, his destiny, his studies, his home, his financial stature & his paradoxically low-key marriage. After this, both of us planned to meet a friend who is also visiting the city these days & I asked J to visit me in coming days.

By the time our banter wound up my wristwatch was asking me (somewhat impatiently) to make hurry to the reading room as I could have got some good stuff on Mahatma Gandhi.