at last! a little encounter with the uk police.

i so much wanted to see if the police in london were really the ‘chocolate police’ that praveen always told me about. …that they were really very nice and helpful to the general public, that there was no such thing as bribing or corruption in this country, that they respect the privacy of an individual and in doing so, command respect themselves…could it really be true?

travelling on the tube for two months i had already seen they were really helpful and never lost their temper or patience with the public, even under pressure. they helped me when i got lost a number of times on the underground, especially at stations like king’s cross or paddington that had many lines connecting everywhere. they also helped me get on the right connecting trains to where i had wanted to go when most of the train services were cancelled due to flooding on the tracks. most often, i have seen a single policeman handle a mob of people very calmly, as if he comes across such crises everyday. the same with bus drivers and the traffic police.

had it been india, i used to wonder, and with shame…there would be a shower of gaalis by this pot-bellied paan-chewing policeman or havaldar (constable); the more the pressure caused by the situation, the more the swear words in the language of your choice, and the lighter your wallet for the bribe you have to pay. it was almost like they were doing a favour by serving the police, and having bribed their way into their post themselves, extracting money from the common people seemed to have become their right.

i hate to say all this, but then give me one police officer in india who is not touched by corruption and i will gladly delete this entry.

why, my father (a builder) told me of cases where someone who bought a flat from him had to pay rs 10 lakh to reach his post of superintendent in a month or two. in a month or two!?
~~~
i will never forget the 20 minutes at vartaknagar police station where i went to get my passport verification and was made to feel like i was on the local ‘wanted’ list.
~~~
when i got married and had to get a marriage certificate in time for my visa, i made several trips to the marriage register office with my friend jayashree, to prove to my father that if a job was done in time and by the rules, bribing was really not necessary. despite our efforts, i was annoyed because just like my father had anticipated, he had to cough up rs 3000 — for a mere piece of recycled paper and a signature that would land me here in the uk with my husband.
~~~
after 21 days of training behind the wheel for a driver’s license, when i went for my driving test my instructor accompanied me, with about 32 others from the same driving school. no sooner had the test begun with me displaying the hand signals that the car began to move by itself. i was shocked even further when my instructor calmly muttered to me under his breath “just hold the steering wheel and pretend you’re driving; i have control of the car. i’ll see to it that you pass the test”.

this happened with each of the 32 students, who also, just before entering a room for a theory check of the traffic rules, were prompted by the owner of the driving-school herself — about the questions they would be asked inside!

when completely disillusioned, i returned and told the instructor that i would had rather have failed the test than cheat and die in an accident later, he laughed and said matter-of-factly “this is the way of the world dear, each person has to survive here by doing this”. and then, in the same tone, he asked me for an additional rs 300 for having helped me. i checked with some of the other students and he had already extracted a couple of hundreds from each one of them. as if this was not frustrating enough, they all looked at me as if i had just landed from the planet mars!
~~~
where do we draw the line? this is not a one-man (or woman) task…if there is one person who says ‘no’ to giving bribe, there should be another person saying ‘no’ to receiving it.

to know what it is like to live in a land untouched by corruption, *live in one. believe me, it’s like breathing in clean air.

~~~

late last night as we were returning home after watching die another day with our friends at uxbridge, a light flashed twice on praveen’s rear-view mirror. when he pulled to the left of the motorway, a police car stopped right next to us.

i froze, and was reminded of the night at nerul when we were stopped by a patrol of plain-clothes-policemen who were carrying huge guns. what could be the matter this time i wondered…praveen does not drink, we were driving slowly, talking about nothing and everything in general…

“hiya there” he greeted us first, taking a quick peep inside to look at me. then he got out of his car and asked praveen “could you please step out for a minute sir?”

my heart sank. inside my head were all sorts of bond-movie strategies we had just watched. i strained to catch words they were talking as they stood in the lights of both the cars, and imagined the worst. would praveen have to pay something too, as my father had done once for no fault of his at a signal at dadar? what if the policeman was a racist and punched him in the stomach suddenly? i shuddered looking at the vast motorway ahead wondering how i could get help at 30 minutes past midnight. and i wasn’t even carrying my cell phone!

less than two minutes later, the conversation between praveen and the policeman ended. i managed a weak smile as he wished goodnight and drove off with his colleague. praveen waved back too, so nothing seemed to be wrong…

apparently, they were on their routine late night ’rounds’, and noticed that we were driving slowly. our **ancient rusty car, which wobbles when below a certain speed-limit, gave the policemen an impression that it had a drunk driver. wanting to check, they asked us to stop, and when assured nothing was amiss, they left. he even said ‘take care’ added praveen, laughing at how paranoid i’d become. “see? that’s why i call them chocolate-police. aren’t they sweet?”

sigh, why can’t i have just a whiff of this clean air in my country too…?

little rainbow-bubbles of life,

lots of hugs and happiness

surprises and pranks

and simple dreams

stories and music

silly disappointments

and frowns…
never more than a minute (okay, two :-p)

kitchen experiments,
some garden ones,

our own home
setting it up.

moving on
‘here’ for each other

always…

it seems like we’ve known each other for ages. yet i can’t help wonder…
didn’t we meet just yesterday?

happy first wedding anniversary, praveen 😡

after a degree in english literature, i was expected to marry and settle down in a family. but i refused, much against the wishes of my parents. i was so desperate to get a career for myself, and know “who am i?”, that i agreed to work as a trainee in an advertising agency very close to my home. anybody can guess, my father was a client at the ad agency.

i love the ad world, but i hated every day at that office. because every body was too nice to me. after all, at 20 i was very inexperienced. i was told to spend time at whatever section i felt like, and then decide on what i favoured over the rest. fair enough, but i was the client’s daughter. so i never was given the complete picture. not quite sure of what lay ahead, and though i knew copywriting was something that interested me, within six months, i quit.

i cannot do something if my heart is not in it.
that was my first education.

in those six months, i got the first taste of what bombayites call duniyadaari (literally translated as the ways of the world, it perhaps is more apt as a slang for ‘being streetsmart’). the ‘office’ was a place where rumours brewed along with tea and coffee, and everyone from the peon-cum-chaiwallah to the french-bearded ‘ceo’ took part in mud-slanging and unhealthy competition against their co-workers. apart from my mixed feelings of disappointment, curiosity and sometimes even amusement, i was undeterred. my resolve to make it somewhere, somehow, on my own only increased, and thanks to constant encouragement from chacko varghese, the copywriter who i used to assist, after one or two interesting interviews that failed, i soon landed up at the indian express. of course, my parents never had wanted me to work, so i had not told home i was going for an interview. the company published a tabloid about computers, which i knew just how to spell. but i passed the subbing and editing tests, and was taken in as a trainee right away.

someone believes in me, which means i’m not doing something ‘wrong’.
that was my second education.

when we go to school we are told it is necessary to study and get a degree “for a decent job”. but as i began to look around i saw it was so untrue. rarely did i come across anybody who stuck to a subject he/she had chosen at school. as for whether my literature degree helped, shelley or wordsworth never wrote an ‘ode to a personal computer’. i thought this is it, i should have a degree in journalism…but again i was told it was not necessary. since i was already working in a publication. i was disillusioned, but yes, i did have a job. i stayed on.

my next job saw me as copy editor for a magazine that was not yet launched (chip, now digit). i had freedom, i loved the people around me, and i believed it was ‘my’ magazine. however, in just a week i was overwhelmed to tears by my doubts of whether or not i could match up to the expected standards, i was assured by my editor “yes radhika, i know you have that quality”. i stayed for two years, and it was the best part of my career.

when you are in the right place, it reaches out and talks to you.
that was my third education.

i did not want to leave that job, ever. but part of me also wanted to know if i could ever be independent, and live alone. i had had a protected life. my parents gave me everything even before i could ask. so i was asked “will you be able to live alone?” i thought i was running away from a truth; i knew i was afraid of facing what i could not predict, and of leaving behind my present in which i had learned to be complacent. i decided to find out. it was the toughest decision i had to make. i quit.

when a fear haunts you, turn around and grab it by the collar.
that was my fourth education.

nine months later, i resigned when i learned the company was more of a game played by the management and i was not going to learn anything here. i did prove to myself however, that i could stay on my own, and that it was alright to make decisions that a certain situation demanded. and even if i took a wrong decision, i had myself to blame, because it was my decision after all.

we all live one life, and it is alright to make mistakes.
that was my fifth education.

i was now the home page editor at zdnetindia. my parents wanted me to get married. i had my biases. i also had a past. i had wanted to hide. but life goes on, and somewhere i read “if you stop to watch the world go by, it will!” i was not a quitter, and i knew i would be in the right hands as soon as i saw him.
maybe i was plain lucky. i gave up my job. i left behind my friends and memories. somewhere inside i knew i would still be me. and so i got married. today i know, i did the right thing.

your parents will only want the best for you. no matter what you give to the world, remember that one day, it will come back.
that was my sixth education.

i had begun writing in a personal diary when i lived alone. this was to keep in touch with my friends and family, and i wrote in it “for fun”. but it began to take shape and have a life of itself. it affected me, and what i thought of the world. because the world was no longer a place to hide from. everything i did was on the world wide web for everyone to see. like millions of others, i was online, and i too was making mistakes. like them i also laughed and cried. “what will people say” never mattered to the introvert anymore…i was free!

there is so much freedom in the simplest of truths. the only way to feel it is by just being yourself.
that was my seventh education.

i came to the uk with praveen. i did not have a job, but it did not stop me from writing. on the contrary, i took it so seriously that often i did not post an entry if i was not satisfied with it. i was unconsciously developing a hobby that i thought could only happen to anyone else, or a distant cousin. i redesigned my journal, and my husband made it possible. my journal began to include experiences of an indian girl in a different culture, and one day i was discovered. my teacher used to say “the world is a thick huge jungle. you’ll never know from which bush a rabbit will jump”. this surprise though, was pleasantly encouraging.

wherever you are, make the best of what is given to you. when the signs tell you something, listen.
that was my eighth education.

but i did not listen. i wanted something that would keep me occupied, a job so i could bring discipline into my content life. i did not want to get comfortable. i did not want to be a ‘housewife’. i wanted to be a ‘home-maker’. soon enough, a job offer landed in my email inbox. had i come across it in the ‘job opportunities’ sections i would give it a miss…it was too far from home. it did not seem creative enough. but it was very tempting. it was a mutual need on both sides. i accepted the offer.

“it is better to be hated for what you are, than to be loved for what you are not”. i was trying to step in shoes that i knew would not fit.
that was my ninth education.

that was also the shortest career-life i ever had. two months. it was also what seemed to be the longest ordeal. the travel, the frustration of doing something i did not enjoy…it was like my life was on a pause. like the two or three trains i changed every morning to work, everything had become mechanical. my journal stagnated, so did my attitude. i was seeing sides to myself i had never seen before. i had stopped being the ‘fighter’. i gave in to being depressed easily. i resisted no more. i stopped writing.

it is one thing to be able to adapt to a new routine. it is another, to not want to adapt to it. if you think to survive you must get out, get out.
that was my tenth education.

something finally must have snapped inside me too. two days ago, halfway on my way to work, i turned back home. i called my kind director, explained why it could not work, and quit the job. thankfully for me i had understanding colleagues. thankfully for them i was on contract.

today, once more, i start afresh. like my friend sanjeev says, very zen-like “to unlearn, simply forget”. but i need not unlearn. i have no regrets for the past, nor (many) expectations for what’s going to come. after all, i’m a normal life-loving girl, and like most people, i too like to collect my observations and experiences, and turn them into lessons i’ll never forget.

this entry is for swathi sri, the “tamilian gal” from singapore, who touched me today, with her simple email.

it was crazy.

every wednesday evening, at my cosy little one-bed house in uxbridge, i would wait for the dull thud of the free weekly tabloid, dropped at the doorstep. that evening, and through the week till the next wednesday, praveen and i would comb through the 40-page-or-so almost sandpaper-like musty smelling property section, looking for a home that we could afford.

i loved that one-bed house we used to rent. it was the perfect space for a couple newly wed, to learn about each other, for love to blossom. despite my reputation back home for being a very career-minded, and rather anti-tradition or the not-so-family-sort girl, it did not take me any extra effort to make it ‘feel’ very homely — with its terracotta wallpaper and rather tiny kitchen, spiral stairs going up to the bedroom and huge bathroom, the only place in the house that was blessed by sunlight, the only place where i nurtured my new love for gardening. it was also enough to squeeze in six friends (two on their honeymoon tour of europe!) visiting from india, all of who landed on the same day, and stayed overnight!

soon however, with each passing day in the house came the need for space that we could call our own, ask friends and family to visit more often without having to worry about whether we could accommodate them comfortably. with that also came the realisation that our lovely home was not worth the 600 pounds that went into the landlord’s pocket every month.

like most people here in the uk, praveen calculated that if we ‘owned’ a property, it would turn out to be a far better investment than renting a house. apart from the fact that we could invite home more family members without having to get on each other’s toes, we could perhaps even rent a part or whole of it later, thus being able to repay the mortgage and perhaps earn a little extra income too.

but we had very little time. the house prices had been steadily rising, playing havoc with families in the country. we did not know whether to wait for it to collapse, or take in the plunge right now. we decided it had to be now. and so the search began.

wednesday evenings were suddenly filled with fresh purpose. it wasn’t enough to simply select a house…it had to ‘click’ for both of us. apart from the features of the house itself, it had to have easy access to public transport and the town centre, it also had to be close to praveen’s workplace.

i spent one entire afternoon walking into every estate agent’s shop on uxbridge road (19 of them!) registering ourselves and telling them what we want: two/three-bed house, end terraced, small garden, nice and homely. ‘house agent’ visiting cards multiplied. at night we would both scour web sites offering houses for sale, followed by my phone calls to them the next day. in most cases i was to learn that the house we chose was already sold, or the web site had not been updated since a week, and so on. we found a few houses, but we lost many more. the closest being one we both had instantly liked…and lost at an auction.

in my ‘just-arrived in the uk’ mind, the house-hunt excitement had begun to resemble the likes of the dotcom mania that swept the world not too many months ago…property prices in uk were soaring higher and higher, and everyone who (already) owned a house wanted to make the most of it. many trends began to emerge…

trend#1. pamphlets from estate agents were being distributed everywhere, everyday. on the piece of paper would be the picture of a certain house on a certain street, with the estate agents asking “do you have a property like this to sell?”
sometimes, the question would be the other way around — “would you be interested in this property?”, with specifications of the house and contact details of the agent below. sometimes the agents would just be “looking for landlords with a property to sell”…

it was interesting to see how each time the message would be different, and sometimes five or six of them, all varied, would land on our doorstep on a single afternoon.

trend#2. another housing community undergoing a silent change was the council home. in spite of the larger space that these homes offered, i was told that these were often located in areas that had a poor reputation — something one normally would not go for…but now since the increasing prices, attitudes were changing fast.

trend#3. trying for houses outside the ‘central’ london parameter was an alternative most buyers were beginning to consider. so did we. and that’s how we discovered this town. having spent one evening just looking around the area (it was a 40-minute drive from where we lived), we decided we liked it. but going through every agent also would involve painful waiting periods (for the agent to get to the house owner, the house owner back to the agent and the agent back to us), and hopes and disappointments again.

so we did it our way…

early one sunday morning, after our homework with all the estate people (luckily most of them were lined up along the way to the town centre), armed with a lot of enthusiasm, notepad, pen, the town map, praveen’s excellent sense of direction and brochures of prospective houses for sale, we drew up a search route all around the town. having shortlisted about 19 houses spread all over the place, we then numbered them in terms of proximity, affordability and how much we favoured it in terms of house specs. since this was also going to be our investment, we had to make sure the house was in a decent area, so we didn’t have problems in the case we had to sell it or rent. so there, that was going to be our main house-qualifying value for money factor.

towards late noon, hungry but still excited, we had driven all around the county, and were left with just two houses we needed the agent to book for a ‘viewing’. the rest were disqualified either because the area seemed unwise for investment, or because the house was too far from the town centre. two days into the week, the other two houses went off our list too. apparently, they were put up for sale only because the estate agents had offered a ‘free property-valuing’ if someone was selling a house!! and that, was another rising trend. trend#4.

two weeks later however, we received a call from one of the hemel agents, asking if we would like to view a property that evening. the house was freshly marked for sale. it was at a very short notice, but we decided to cover that 25-mile 40-minute distance one more time. five months later today, we are glad we did.

as we soaked in some of the rare sunshine this morning sipping our coffee, and browsed through the ‘properties for sale’ pages in the (hemel hempstead) friday tabloid, we looked at each other and smiled. within the last three months that we moved into our new home, its market value has had an appreciation of a little over fifteen percent already!

we smiled, because even today, we cannot help turn to the property pages every time we pick up a newspaper.

because today, we are on the other side.

it got me my job, but my job took it away from me…such irony!

it takes me 90 minutes to work and back home each day. during these travels i have devoured three novels, all lovely pieces of work. the more i read, the more i seem to withdraw myself, guilty: another day gone by and i haven’t written a word.

today i decided to use my train time differently, and this is what i got…

this is getting even more difficult than i had imagined it to be.

i’m happy to have my own space.
i’m happy i now have a job.
i’m happy i got seen on guardian uk.
i’m happy i got seen on rediff. thanks to anita 🙂
i’m happy i might soon get seen on ….. (shhh, i’m not revealing yet 😉

but i’m certainly not happy i’m not able to devote quality time to entelechy.

i have never put them on paper (or any web site, if you like), but i’m aware of the standards i have set for my journal. one of them includes a sincere attempt to not-regress into rambling…like i used to many (journal) entries ago.

i am going to set that rule aside. just for today, just like that.

some of my most memorable moments during my vipassana course, were the post-lunch breaks…and of course, the almost 13 different varieties of soothing herbal teas (which i plan to write about soon too)…

—————————————————-

it’s amazing to realise how much your mind chatters even when there is no communication with the outside world. you suddenly discover hidden joys in little things, secrets you smile to yourself about, and a smug feeling about the love inside you, that you so much want to share. and then there are also moments when you discover the little mischief monger in your mind.

despite a tight schedule, most of us would try and sneak in whatever exercise we could provide our limbs during the breaks, by simply walking around the areas marked for us. post-lunch, which i always ensured it did not last for over 20 minutes, almost everyday, i walked to the vast green space in front of the women’s residential quarters.

there, i would take off my sandals, roll up my trousers, and sink my naked feet into the lush green ankle-length grass, which seemed to nod its heads under the weight of single dew-drops glistening in the light of the 11:30 am sun. lifting my foot, i’d glide my feet over the soft green blades, letting them tickle me gently, and then put it down on the warm earth again. walking slowly, alive and aware of every silent sensation it created, rustling the grass all over, my feet were drenched to the bone from the all the dew they had stolen…

gradually my co-meditators would return from their lunch too. one interesting observation: some of them followed, taking off their slippers and walking, enticed by the green like i was. others saw the sun shining above, promptly rushed in to get their mats or coats, spread them out on the grass quickly, rolled up or even took off their shirts, and began to sun-bathe. the ones that walked on the grass barefeet were the indians among us; the rest who prefered to lie down on the grass were europeans.

two cultures
one ground
one sky
one feeling
sshhh…

a noiseless twenty minutes later, i walked back to my room. stretching myself on the bed, i smiled to myself and closed my eyes… content with the thought that i had deprived everyone of the pleasure of having discovered some of life’s deepest secrets from the dew-tipped grass 🙂

happiness is a colourful little bubble, and right now i’m in it 🙂

the thought occurred to me umpteen times even as my feet carried me unwillingly through the two hour-four-train-journey from hemel hempstead in hertfordshire, to burgess hill in west sussex. even as i flipped my ticket between my fingers while waiting for my trains, wondering whether i should turn back, and noticed the ‘return ticket’ punched on it accidently…i could turn back!

i was probably enjoying one of the happiest times of my life — married only for nine months; hardly two weeks in a new home, and a just week away from my first job abroad…why then did i sign up for a serious course that would keep me away from my loving husband not for one or two, but ten full days, and make me work hard from 4:30 am to 9:00 pm every day?

it was too late to reconsider. i had reached my destination and a room was allotted to me. fighting against all the big NOs running in my head, i decided to stay. today, eleven days later, i’m glad i did.

“you will blow this whistle when you are lost. and you will do it loud and clear so i can hear you and come to find you. do you understand that?”

at the hemel hempstead station waiting for my silverlink train to london-euston, i couldn’t help overhearing a mother repeat these instructions to her daughter and older son, as the father watched quietly. hours later the same the evening, as i walked back home, a girl in her late teens, three studs on her brow, approached me.

“do you have a pound on you that you can spare?” she asked. holding her hand was another little girl of about four or five, a rag-doll clutched to her chest. the two girls did not seem to be poor at all…both wearing bright jeans studded with little stones, while the little one wore a pink striped t-shirt and a red skirt. “i need to get her home to her sister”, the girl continued, pointing to the little one, “and i have run out of change for the bus.”

my instant reaction was to give her a pound, but as i searched about in my handbag for loose change, i wondered if she was telling the truth, and then i wondered why she would be lying. i noticed another man around us now…bearded, stout and scruffy looking, he almost looked like an egyptian crook, and i remembered seeing him watch the girls from a distance just minutes before the girl stopped me. when the man saw that he had been spotted, he walked past us at the footpath where we were standing, and stopped by a bend in the road just a few yards away. had he not turned back to look, i would have put away the doubt lurking in my mind, that somehow he was connected with the girls.

hemel is a small old town, with ducks and swans that laze around in the water gardens surrounding the town, shops that shut early for the day and buses that don’t ply after five in the evening. it was for that reason that i was walking home and so, i asked the girl if she would find a bus at that hour, and where she was going. she said she would and added “why don’t you take out all the money that is inside your purse so we can see if you can add up the change for me.”

that did it. something inside me said not to trust this girl, or the man (who was still waiting there), and i showed her the 15 pence that i (deliberately) managed to find. i lied to her that i had just used my change for the bus myself and so i cannot find any. “can i keep that then?” she asked sweetly, looking at the 15p in my hand. yes you can, i said, and dropped it in hers.

three years ago at commercial street in bangalore, i was faced with a similar situation. i was looking for a little bell-string and stopped at a bedspread store to see the intricate designs the storekeeper had. amid the moving crowds outside, i saw a woman looking at me across the narrow road. she had a kind face but she looked like she was lost. when i came out of the shop, she came to me and smiled, asking if i could understand kannada, the language spoken in karnataka.

“yaenn aaitu?” (what happened?) i smiled back and asked. somewhat relieved, she hurriedly narrated that she lived very far, and that she’d forgotten her wallet at home when she went to drop her kids at school. she had tried to walk back all the way but it was getting late and in two hours her kids would be waiting for her at school. finally she stammered what she really wanted, and i could see the moist humiliation in her eyes when she blurted out “10 rupees kodteeya?” (will you give me 10 rupees?)

i knew she was telling the truth, and not wanting to make her feel any more bad for the money she had to ask from a total stranger, i nodded yes.

no. i finally told myself as i walked away from the girls…i wasn’t feeling guilty for not having helped this european girl today. she wasn’t telling the truth. was the little girl accompanying her really her sister? i will never be able to find out.

it saddened me to think of what they must have been up to. i wondered if they were in some kind of trouble, and if i had made it worse by not giving them any money.

the pied piper is not dead.

what is it about the children in this country that some of them just disappear? we hear of teenage children missing, abducted or raped almost once every two weeks, and these are just the reports that have reached the bbc. the disappearance of 13-year-old milly, or amanda dowler in march this year perhaps was the rare case that received a lot of media attention…and it helped. even though she’s not been traced yet, her pictures still haunt in the form of posters everywhere, reminding every parent to take care. even so, the missing-children files in the uk is only increasing. the most recent one being the double disappearance of two ten-year-old friends — jessica and holly.

“if they haven’t done nothing bad, they are not wrong are they?” said a visibly shaky classmate of two girls over the evening news today. it really is heartbreaking. apparently the school had warned children and their parents just two months earlier, that a suspicious-looking couple had been lurking around the school grounds, and to be extra careful.

i suddenly recollected seeing a similar couple stand behind a bush outside the moss hall nursery school that i come across on my way back from office. i was curious why the duo were hiding behind a cluster of creepers to watch tiny children play football in the mud. then i had thought perhaps they were parents of a certain child and were simply watching him/her play. i shuddered to think if they were the same suspicious-looking couple the newsreader was talking about.

how would children be able to know the difference between a ‘good’ person and a ‘bad’ one i thought, if grown-ups themselves could not. little wonder then that the soft toys children normally carry around, are being replaced by shrill whistles.

the next afternoon, as part of my training projects at my new workplace, i had been laying out the story of the pied piper of hamelin for children in the hindi language. i secretly wished he were still alive and had moved to london. and that he would play a ‘reverse’ tune that would bring all the missing children back.

reading daughter’s daughter by indian author mrinal pande brought my own memories of childhood, and how nasty children can be…

like anita. she lived in a bungalow next to our three-storey building, and she always smelled of dog fur and flies. so did her little brother, whom some of us used to tease because he had a speech defect. no, he didn’t stutter or stammer, but he seemed to have difficulty with any word that began with the letter ‘p’…so pankha laav (in marathi, it means switch on the fan) became fanka laav, please became flease, and the most unforgettable of them all f-words was when once he said “frofessor gupte“…

anita and her brother loved animals, and you’d find at least three pet dogs in her home at any time. besides she also brought home wounded or hungry stray dogs who invariably whined in front of her. her father was a milk distributor (perhaps still is), which explains why there were always huge blue containers of plastic milk bags and three steel drums stocked with milk — with the constant buzzing of flies all around the house…on the tables and chairs, on the sofa sets, around the milk drums, on the wounded dogs, and on anita. but of course, we were all kids, and none of us did mind. we enjoyed playing with the dogs, and our mothers collected milk from their milk-shop every morning.

sometimes we played hide-n-seek in her big house or watched anil kapoor- or dada kondke-movies on her video. sometimes we played catching-cook or dabais-pais in our society or on the terrace. when we were not playing, we were narrating ghost stories or tales of strange grandmothers or uncles or grand-aunts who never returned from somewhere…it could get very eerie, yet it was at the same time, well, very childish.

apart from being the only quiet and wide-eyed non-maharashtrian pair in the noisy gang, (by their standards) my sister and i were known for having the “strictest” parents in town.

it wasn’t their fault…no matter how interesting a game or how less time deepu and i had been outside, we were to report home by 7:00 pm, while the others enjoyed play-time till 8:30; we were not to play under the sun during weekends and other holidays, while the others happily got tanned all afternoon and screamed till their voices got hoarse. there were more of these rules, but you get the point.

anyways, we were indifferent to what they thought about us — i loved the storybooks and endless amar chitra katha comics my parents got for me to devour at home, while my sister was still too young to even know what ‘strict’ meant. she was to find out soon enough, but in what way…

one evening we decided to play on the terrace. my sister and i had some extra time that day, because my parents had gone shopping and would return by 8:00 pm they said. the terrace, with all its tv antennae, cables and water-pipes sticking around, was not the best place to play jhatapatti — a game where one person catches another, and then the two together catch another, and so on…thus forming a ring to catch the last player. we had never played this game on the terrace before, but we decided to try anyway.

about 20 minutes into dodging and running in the exciting game, we heard a dull thud and a yelp, then followed by a loud wail. no doubt, it was my sister. she’d fallen on one of the water pipes and hurt herself. luckily, the aunty living just a floor below was also on the terrace with a neighbour that evening, and they immediately carried my sister downstairs to examine and treat her if necessary, pacifying her all along that she would be rewarded with a chocolate if she stopped wailing, and that mom and dad will return soon with icecream, and so on…

fortunately there was not much damage to be concerned about. after some soothing iodex and sweets, she seemed alright, but strangely quiet…

soon my parents came back from the market, and she was sitting on my father’s lap, narrating what had happened. after dinner, she went to bed early. i was doing my homework, when i heard some muffled sobs behind me. i turned around to see my kid-sister finding great difficulty in crying without a noise (which was very unusual). a little surprised and amused, i gently asked her what was wrong.

she first shook me away, refusing to even look at me. now i was really curious, and pressed further, threatening her that if she didn’t tell me i would never speak to her again. i think that worked …for a while, the sobs increased with more intensity, and finally she looked up at me with red eyes full of big tears and said “oh what are we going to do? our mother is a stepmother”.

i was speechless, stunned no doubt at how much my otherwise bubbly, noisy and quarrelsome kid-sister suddenly seemed to be falling apart in just four years of her existence on earth. i asked her if she knew what it meant, and why she felt so. in between sobs, she explained to me that stepmothers always scold children, they’re always ‘strict’, and that our mother fit the role perfectly.

by now i was thoroughly amused, and also sure that it was somebody else’s imagination that was running in her head. i told her firmly that’s not so, and that she’s our real mother and that i could prove it to her. getting my parents’ wedding album from the next room, i flipped the pictures one by one, and then realised that wasn’t really the appropriate evidence…because the very next sentence that popped out of her was “but can’t you see chechi (elder sister), we’re nowhere in any of the pictures!”

having seen just three more vacations than her, i wasn’t really a big girl myself, and could see the situation was getting out of hand. i explained to her again, that our mother really loved us, that’s why she scolded us. i was just wondering where she heard the new words from, when she wailed again “but anita said our mother was strict because she’s our stepmother! why would anita lie to me?”

some fifteen minutes later when she calmed down, half wondering if she should believe me or anita, she told me not to tell this to our mom, or “she’d throw us out of the house”. i promised her i wont breathe a word of it to amma, and gently stroked her hair till she fell asleep.

switching off the lights and tip-toeing out of the room, i took my books and went straight to amma, telling her what happened.

i think my mother really laughed that night.