Plea from Aham Bhumika

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Write Tribe Prompt # 4

 

 http://sarabbit.openphoto.net/gallery/ 

Ths lovely picture of a girl holding red rose petals and her red sweater reminded me of a poem that my daughter wrote when she was in Class V, which was perhaps in 1996 or 1997.  It is a sweet little poem.  Just for the record, it has not been published before.

Here goes in her own lovely handwriting:

Live life on your own terms

“You live only once” seems like such a clarion call.   

Get up and do things you like. Enjoy yourself, burn a hole in your pocket, dye your hair blonde, go off to climb Everest, watch every movie, get drunk, snort cocaine, in short, be conscious of every minute that passes you by. 

I feel life is all about being less concerned about what people think of you, and being more concerned about what you are comfortable doing.

I once read an interview with Bapsi Sidhwa in a magazine.  She said, “Women are under scrutiny all the time.  It is difficult for them to be natural.”  It was such a deep thing to say.  I have never been able to forget this sentence of hers.

Women of my generation were constantly watched for what they said, what they wore, how they walked, how they sat.  It was very stifling.  It impacted your decision making ability, if you were allowed making decisions at all.  Alright, I won't go into a feminist mode on this.  But, under these circumstances, doing things that you really liked was hard.  Even if your choices were as innocuous as watching a movie or reading a book, forget about having a boyfriend.

I have come a long and a hard way to earn my right to live my life on my own terms.  There was a time when I was in a bad situation, a bad marriage.  At that time, I had to make a life altering decision. To stay in the bad marriage, or step out of it.  I wasn't really thinking of this line at that time, but I think it was at the back of my mind when I took my children and stepped out of my husband's house.

 

You live only once.

Sundernagar - HP - 1975

In the summer of 1975 my father was invited to convene a conference in Sundernagar, HP.  The erstwhile Maharaja of Sundernagar, Lalit Sen, wanted to start a college there.  He wanted my father to start it up for him.  This conference was supposed to be sort of an 'announcement' of the fact.

Sundernagar was a typical one road town back then. There was a one 'main' road that led from bazaar to residential area.  The rest of it was huts and cottages up and down the hills. It was a quaint and a beautiful town. 

We had to stay a while in Shimla and then take a bus from there to Sundernagar.  When we went there the first time, we stayed in the Circuit House.  We were given a nice room to stay in, which opened out into the garden.  It was full of climbing roses that covered the walls.  The cool weather made it pleasant to sit out all day.   The circuit house cook fed us some delicious meals.  I think this was a reconnoitre trip prior to arranging the actual conference.

The one-road town had a small cinema house as well.  As chance would have it, Pakeezah was playing.  My mother wanted to see that film and was all eager to watch it.  There were just three people in the balcony, my younger brother who was just a toddler, my mother, and I.  What an impact that movie made on me.  Watching the movie in  a beautiful hill station, in a tiny theatre, somehow made the viewing even more special.

I remember the Raja took use around, showed us his family temple in the hills, the various palaces that were now stripped of their previous finery.  They were left bare and shaky, wooden edifices that showed no signs of their previous glory.  The Raja's own house was like any other middle class man's house.  But there was no mistaking the esteem that he was still held in.  Everywhere we went, people bowed and scraped, as if he were still the Raja.

We returned in a few days for the conference.  This time we stayed in a cottage that was allotted to us.  On the next morning, after we landed up, a group of local girls showed up at our door.  My father went out to meet them.  They wanted to make friends with me.  Never again in my life have I met a bunch of girls so friendly and so open and so welcoming.  They took me around with them, talked to me.  I even exchanged letters with some of them for quite some time.

The delegates landed up with their children in tow.  It was a full house and while the elders were at their conference, we kids (I was about 15 years old then) would play around.  One time we even climbed a hill and checked out a quaint little cottage on top of it.

The last of the delegates to arrive was JP Narayan's secretary, our most respected delegate.  There was no room left for him, so we gave up one of our rooms in the cottage for him.  He was a down to earth guy, quite at home on a mattress on the floor.  I have no idea how long he was with us, but suddenly he had to leave.

Emergency has been declared and JP had been arrested.  The delegates constituted of political thinkers, teachers and journalists, and they were set abuzz by this development.  I remember being only mildly interested in all this at the time.

My father did not take up the project to start a college.  He never was an administration man.  But a college was started there, and still functions.  I am sure Sundernagar has developed a lot now.  Some of that development is good perhaps, some not.  I will always remember it as a scenic unspoiled spot in the lap of nature.

A house of her own

Sarita stared at her landlord in silent horror.  She had been dreading this moment for a while now – yet when he uttered those words, she was not quite prepared for them. 

“Please vacate the place”.

He looked at her kindly and said softly, “Take your time.  One month, even two months.  I wouldn’t have asked you to vacate but my sister is coming to stay in this town and she has asked me to arrange this place for her.”

She remembered him being all fatherly when she began living there.”You are like my daughter.  I just want good people living in my house.”  What a fraud he was. If she were to visit the place again in six months’ time, she’d find another tenant living there happily.

She noticed that landlords in Punjab seemed to get extremely agitated if a tenant were to stay at their place for longer than two or three years. As it is, the whole renting process was vague. There was hardly any rent agreement, or any other kind of paperwork involved.  The rent was paid in cash, so no transaction could be claimed.  And of course, there was no receipt provided.

She sighed – she knew what lay ahead of her now. Finding another place, with all its attendant difficulties meant starting the process all over again. And that, just when she was beginning to get comfortable in her current place. Finding another house in a decent locality, facing the questions the new landlord asked. “Where is your husband?”, “How many children do you have?”, “What is your salary?”, “Do you get many visitors?”, “No single males allowed to visit you”.

Apart from that, she would have to contend with steadily rising rents, having to cope with fitting her furniture into a smaller or a larger house, removing her electrical fittings and fixing them in a new house. Packing. Unpacking. 

Her heart sank.

That night she spoke to her mother. “The landlord has asked me to vacate this house, Ma”

Her mother started her usual tirade.  She knew Sarita could not come and live with her in Amritsar because her job required her to stay put in Ludhiana. Ever since Sarita’s husband had died, her mother had worried about her living alone in that city. Sarita’s only brother ran a flourishing business in Amritsar. 

 

“Ma,” Sarita said, a tad impatiently, “we know all that. I now need to leave this house and that’s that.”

Ma was old now and getting on.  She could not help rambling.  She exchanged some more news and put the phone down.

On Sunday, Sarita was pleasantly surprised to see her brother Ashok land up at her doorstep early in the morning.  

“Baby,” he began. (Sarita’s nickname was Baby and that is what her brother and mother still called her)  “That land that we have in the village. Ma always talks about transferring it in your name. I told her, let us sell this land and buy Baby a house in Ludhiana. What do you say?”

Sarita could feel tears forming in her eyes.  Her spirits rose.  She was to have a place of her own. 

She looked at many houses along with her brother, trying to find something that suited her requirement as well as the budget. When she saw THIS place, she knew she had to get it.  And she did!

Thank you Fotolia

Emergency

Walking into an emergency ward of a hospital is surely the most harrowing time of one’s life. I could see the anxiety plainly on the faces of other people who were rushing in along with me. Some were rushing out, slip in hand, going off to the chemist to fill a prescription.

Thank you morguefile

I kept my head down and willed myself not to cry. It was difficult. Just this morning I had left my wife at home, eight months pregnant, her belly swollen beautifully. Her hair in a disarray, face glowing with happiness. Everything was fine, doctors assured us. The baby was growing just fine, all we had to do was to wait for a month to hold our darling in our arms.

Shortly after lunch, I got a call from Suman, my sister-in-law, her voice was high-pitched. “Didi has fallen down the stairs. Sudha-didi and I are taking her to ___ hospital.”. She did not need to say “Come immediately”. I spoke to my boss and was out of the office in 2 minutes. I drove anxiously towards the hospital. Within an hour I was in the parking lot. I called up Suman and barked:

“Where?”

“Emergency, Bed 32”, she was equally brief.

I looked frantically around at people in various states of illness strewn around the emergency ward, searching for Bed 32. Suddenly I spotted Suman waving at me from left corner.

She was smiling.

”The baby is fine.” She said. “Didi has a hairline fracture in her left shin. She has to wear a cast for a month”

I looked at Sona, and brushed the wayward hair off her forehead. Her eyes were damp, and her face still bore traces of terror. But she was smiling.