Not Because of You!

Right from many years ago, our mother had the habit of getting into a chat with poor people walking across our house, especially the children and the old. Very often, her inquisitive questions discovered children who were denied schooling by their parents. She dared to call such parents, give them a dressing down and insist that they send the kids to school. Toffees and biscuits to the kids were a given. If it is the old and frail that she encountered, she would find some jobs for them in the house and on that excuse feed them and give clothes on festival days, apart from token money as salary. Those days we had an independent house with a small but lush garden full of flowers and various fruit-bearing trees. So she could maintain their dignity intact, in the jobs she made them perform.

After she became a widow, she shunned coloured sarees. Still, it was not the drab white ones she wore. She liked her white sarees sprinkled with tiny little flowers or patterns in soft colours. In another decade she went totally grey. But she continued with her watchful eyes on others. By then, our independent house had become flats. She would spend her free time at the balcony of our flat looking out onto the road. She exercised a good amount of influence on the neighbourhood. Some admired, some loved and almost all respected her. A thin, delicate, dignified, pleasant elderly lady in white with silvery hair standing or sitting at the balcony, watching them all. A small but imposing persona. Most would exchange some pleasantries and pass on. Those who felt nervous seeing her due to their own uselessness would try to walk past avoiding eye contact! But even to them, she had some enquiry or other which invariably made them cringe. She spared none from her balcony. She was, however, never harsh. Her admonitions were with a sense of humour.

I came to Madras on my last posting and decided to stay in the Officers Mess near Island Grounds almost adjacent to the office. The flat was inconveniently far. My office started at 8 am, as is the norm in the Army. Later, when my family joined me, I shifted to the quarters allotted to me. That was a house built 86 years ago then and bang on Mount Road, with a vast compound. People called it a bhoot bangla and avoided taking it over. It was quite isolated with no quarters nearby. At night it was quite eery. So one couldn't blame those Officers who avoided it. One always likes to be surrounded by own crowd. To me, it was heaven-sent! We had four small dogs — Spitz-Apso crossbreeds. So nothing like a bungalow with a massive compound full of massive trees. Personally for me, to live in such a bungalow was a dream!

In such bungalows always existed servant quarters. By the time I was about to retire, we were into our third servant family, including one where the maid spoke perfect adoring Anglo-Indian English! I could have fallen in love with her, except for the fact that she was like Hidimbi! To the third maid, my wife asked whether she would like to come with us when we shift to our own flat. She agreed. For her, the stability seemed important. Otherwise, each time the Officer changes, maids may be changed. The condition was that we would pay the rent for her house and nothing else. She was okay with it.

So before vacating my quarters, I found a so-called first-floor house for her family across the road to our flat, which we could see from our balcony. I went to negotiate the rent with the owner, who stayed on the ground floor. He said a figure and I with all my non-existent street smartness tried to negotiate. He said in Tamil. "You see, I was not planning to rent this house out at all. I am agreeing to rent it out only because of your mother. Not because of you".

So much for my Colonelship!