The Stranger in My Home

by The Stranger in My Home- Facets of a Life (retail) (epub)

  She called the following day. I had the assignment.

  I found quickly it was a tough assignment. The reason was the work had been started before, on the wrong foot. Esther’s young assistant, Dana, had begun the work with a questionnaire that was poorly conceived and ineptly worded, and, since it was on the delicate subject of their compensation, it was likely to have created misgivings among senior executives. We had to overcome this initial handicap before we could proceed.

  We struggled and slowly made headway, principally by seeking meetings with departmental heads. I succeeded in reassuring them that their existing benefits were not in question at all; our study intended to improve other aspects including tax liability.

  All through the exercise, I kept Esther informed, as she preferred, and she kept an eye on my progress. I felt we had build a rapport. More, I sensed an imperceptible thread of sympathy and support – a well-guarded inclination to help – and I was grateful.

  Three weeks later Esther invited several members of her staff for dinner. Next to me sat Wilhelm, Esther’s husband. He looked twenty years older than Esther, a lean, old, exhausted man who seemed lost in his chair. He spoke with such a heavy Teutonic accent that I thought he was speaking another language. Then I realized that his English was very limited: after overcoming the barrier of his accent, you had to cross the bigger bar of his Kindargarten English. I have had the advantage, however, of listening and deciphering the English of non-English speakers in ten countries. I let my ears get accustomed to his tempo, and soon I could make out parts of his conversation and respond appropriately.

  After the other guests had left, Esther asked me to stay back, poured me brandy and sat next to me. She thanked me for talking patiently with Wilhelm and said that most people gave up after the first five minutes.

  Then she told me how she had met Wilhelm. She was a senior army officer during the Second World War and at its conclusion posted in Berlin. Soviet troops had captured Wilhelm in the eastern sector, where he had gone for work, and, ignoring his plea that he was a qualified engineer, put him to work in a mine. His asthma turned acute, he worked frantically, but did not meet quotas. He was beaten, sometimes mercilessly, for his poor performance. Finally, realizing that he was useless for the purpose, the Russians handed him over to the US Army and he appeared before Esther.

  She took pity on the withered, cowering man and arranged for his care in the American hospital. She visited him at first occasionally, then regularly, and eventually became attached to him. Nine months later, when the order came for her to return to the US base, she hesitated and then went through a brief ceremony with the army pastor that made Wilhelm her husband. She said she wasn’t sure at all that she was doing the right thing, but she could not abandon him and marrying him was the only way she could think of bringing him with her to the US.

  In the US, Wilhelm continued to have recurring nightmares and indifferent health. He found it very hard to learn English and he simply could not follow everyday conversation.

  Wilhelm had worked for two major engineering firms in Germany, but he could not get even temporary jobs in Washington. Esther, who cared for him now more than ever, had meanwhile been demobilized and she quickly got an important job in an industrial association. On her reference, several companies agreed to interview Wilhelm, but not a single job materialized. His limited English was certainly a handicap. But Esther soon realized there was a bigger problem. The war had just ended, and feelings in the US were still very raw about the Germans, especially with the daily trickle of news about the holocaust.

  Twenty years had gone by. I could still hear the trace of bitterness in Esther’s voice as she narrated how, week after week, Wilhelm persisted in looking up jobs in the newspapers but seldom got even a call for interviews. Any interview he went to, he felt nobody wanted to see his papers or hear his background. He was let go after a short, perfunctory chat. Esther sought the help of friends, but even they were less than enthusiastic. As Esther’s career soared in two decades, Wilhelm’s never even started. She went to work each day and returned to find Wilhelm dejected at home. Esther said with a melancholy smile that the caregiving role she had assumed in Berlin seemed to have lasted a lifetime.

  I was sad for them both. But I also had an epiphany.

  All these weeks, working for Esther, I had felt a nurturing superior’s subtle but steady backing. Now I knew why, facing an immigrant trying to find his feet in an alien land, she had felt instinctively she had to be supportive.

  Encounters

  People You Do Not Forget

  Looking after Mother

  Just a Friend

  The Prince

  The Encounter

  A Keepsake

  Three Is Company

  When the End Came

  A Man on the Run

  A Stigma, a Pen, a Friend

  A Doctor to Remember

  Not Giving Up

  Two Persons, Three eDays

  Gifts That Sparkle

  Learning to Drive

  29

  LOOKING AFTER MOTHER

  SHE TURNED THE TABLE

  WHEN I LEFT THE US Foreign Service in 2000, I locked up my house in Washington and went to India, the country of my birth, to spend some time with my brother, Pritish. I was to assist with his large movie production company and provide companionship to my aging mother, then ninety.

  Pritish had a magnificent penthouse apartment in Mumbai with a sea-side view, and I surprised him by asking to stay in the same room as Mother. Partly it was to help her if she had to get up at night. More, I wanted to be near her and stay as close to her as I was fifty years earlier.

  Mother and I had always been close. I adored her gentle, affectionate ways, her soft-spoken style, her unfailing concern for people she knew. I also admired her ability to look at situations calmly, not judge too quickly, see both sides and be fair. These made her a good teacher and, later, an exceptional administrator. Her students loved her and her associates worshipped her, even when she took unwelcome decisions.

  At home, she was mysteriously powerful. She had the demeanour of the legendary oriental woman, deferential and feminine. But we knew that in important matters her views mattered. She decided the critical things: what we spent money on, which schools we attended, where we went for the holidays. She was always ready to listen to us, the children. Softly but tenaciously, she explored our problems, broached aspects we hadn’t thought about, and surprised us with new solutions.

  Father was no pushover. But mother had the amazing ability to bring out angles he had overlooked. Father, we could see, would be surprised, then impressed and finally prepared to adjust his views and accommodate Mother. I quickly learned to talk things over with Mother before I took a major decision or tried to persuade my parents to change their mind on a subject. Or just wanted to unburden my mind. She always listened.

  Fifty years had passed. Things were not the same. Mother was ninety and frail, a shadow of what she was earlier. She forgot so many things that doctors thought she verged on dementia. I wanted to look after her. I wanted to be the dutiful son and take care of her. So, with her permission, I moved into her room.

  I told her the first day, ‘Ma, I know you like to be independent. But, please, while I am here, do let me do a few things for you.’

  She readily agreed and said that ‘it would be a pleasure.’

  But, when I returned from work that evening, I found that she had taken out my shirts and vests from the suitcase and neatly arranged them in the cupboard. When I remonstrated, she explained that since I had just arrived and possibly didn’t know where to place things, she was initially helping me out.

  The next morning, as soon as I opened my eyes, she turned up with a cup of tea. I protested again.

  ‘Ma, it is I who should be bringing you the tea.’

  ‘But I have already had my tea. Since I wasn’t doing anything, I thought I might make some tea for you.’

  This wasn’t goin
g the way I had planned.

  That evening as we lay in bed, read magazines and chatted desultorily, I felt we had achieved some accord. She would stop doing things for me, and would let me do a few things for her, like making the occasional tea for her.

  Before she went to sleep, she told me that I looked tired and should go to sleep early. I kept reading and, the moment she went to sleep, I turned out the lights and tiptoed out of the room. I went to the study and started the computer to work on a project.

  Two hours later I was startled when a hand was gently placed on my shoulder as I worked. ‘You are working too hard,’ said my mother. ‘You should now come to bed.’ I had a blinding flash of epiphany.

  I was wrong to imagine that I could look after my mother or that she would let me do that. Fifty years made no difference at all. She was still my mother and she was still going to look after me, no matter how big, strong and independent I imagined myself.

  30

  JUST A FRIEND

  FRIENDSHIPS THAT LAST

  ‘DO YOU HAVE A pen to spare? Mine has run out of ink,’ I asked the classmate next to me. He offered one with a decorous smile and said, ‘You can keep it.’

  That is how I met Kamal on the first day of college. I kept the pen and kept talking. After class, he took me out for a cup of tea. He loved tea.

  Of middle height, Kamal had a large shock of hair and bright pair of eyes, peering at you through thick lenses. He had the most elegant style of talking in the entire class: a dulcet, deliberate pitch, starting with a considerate pause and ending invariably with an amiable interrogation, ‘Don’t you think so?’ The last would be embellished by a sunny half-smile and a gentle turning of his palm. It was hard to disagree with him.

  No wonder he easily won in the election and became a leader in the student union. I won too, but with a smaller margin and much greater effort. I spoke loudly and inelegantly, and I waved my hands too much.

  We became friends nevertheless. The first bridge was politics. We were both enmeshed in student politics and we talked endlessly of the big issues of the day: Marxism, social transformation, economic justice and student rights. But we soon found the second and broader bridge of literature. We both read prodigiously and felt passionately about what we read.

  I read to him poems, mostly modern poems, that I loved. I read them loud and clear, not economizing on emphasis. He read his favourites, a combination of old and new, in his characteristic fashion, gently and with long pauses. It was a completely different style, but strangely effective, and I fell in love with several of his choices.

  We began by meeting in college corners, teashops and coffee houses, but, since I lived next to the college, my apartment became our default space. The apartment had two large terraces, one with a convenient awning, and we would sit and talk after college until sundown.

  At that time Kamal lived in a suburban house, far from the college, where his father practised medicine. The situation changed dramatically when his father died very young, and his grandfather, a famous physicist, invited Kamal’s mother, Nilima, to move into his large house in town, fairly close to the college. We now started seeing each other daily after college and sometimes I even stayed back at his place. I loved sitting with him after dinner, drinking tea and talking about our life and loves.

  Kamal was the most unusual person. He combined disparate elements to an extraordinary degree. He was a social person, cordial to people he met. In fact, mostly he left them charmed. Yet he was highly intuitive, and if he sensed someone as overbearing, he would leave the scene without a word.

  An aspect that bowled me over was his extraordinary candour. Five of us friends were discussing the most memorable incident in our lives in a street-side café. The rest of us talked about some curious event, but Kamal talked about a most intimate occurrence and put us all to shame with our lack of self-disclosure. At the same time, I knew he could be cautious and guarded with people he instinctively distrusted.

  On one occasion, I had invited him to a small gathering. He did not come. The striking thing was that when I asked him about it, instead of prevaricating he told me, simply and truthfully, that he had not felt like joining. I accepted that instantly. He could also be preternaturally sensitive to his environment. We dined with friends in an excellent Chinese restaurant one day, when Kamal came over to tell me that the scarlet wall colour overwhelmed him. We moved to another room.

  From the university I went to work for a corporate organization, while Kamal joined India’s reputed public administration service. He took his work as a mission and rose in the ranks until he was a very senior member of the giant Indian railway system. I lived in another country and travelled constantly. We rarely saw much of each other, though we always kept in touch.

  Two years ago I walked into a college reunion and found him sitting with friends at a table, sipping tea as usual. The afternoon sun glistened on his hair, now touched with silver, and as he spoke softly, his palm turned the familiar way, his lips carrying his trademark half-smile.

  That is the picture I will live with now of my friend. Kamal died last week of a definitive cardiac failure.

  31

  THE PRINCE

  A STAR IS BORN

  EVERYTHING WAS GOING WELL in his life until Dr Chatterjee suddenly discovered that everything was falling apart. He was a doctor and yet didn’t realize that his wife was harbouring a lethal infection. She complained of a slight headache, then a more acute pain, and the next thing she was dead.

  Chatterjee worked long hours in the emergency department of a large hospital. His colleagues admired his unstinted devotion to work. His patients loved him, both for his skill and his genial bedside manner. Now he discovered that he had been able to live his life in the way he did only because his wife had run his home punctiliously like clockwork.

  What would he do, most of all, about his twelve-year-old son whom his wife had just placed in a new school? How would he look after him and find the time to help him with his books or sports?

  He turned to his friend and erstwhile patient, my father. The moment my father heard of the school the son had joined, he called me.

  ‘This boy has just lost his mother,’ he told me, ‘and his father is a very busy emergency room doctor. If he has to attend to his son, his patients would go without care. The boy has joined your school, he goes to the same class. So, I am putting you in charge.’

  He continued, ‘From next week, you will escort him to school and bring him back with you. He will stay with us during the week. Your mother and I will look after him at home. Outside, he will be your responsibility. On weekends you will take him to his father’s apartment in the hospital. All other times, you must look after him and be his best friend.’

  He added, as a final word, ‘Remember, you have a mother. He does not.’ Come Monday week, I took him to school in a bus. When his father came to drop him off, he wore new, well-ironed clothes and well-polished shoes. I noticed now: he was an exceptionally good-looking lad, tall, lithe, lustrous dark hair, large soft eyes and a truly remarkable face with chiselled features. He had his father’s grace and mellifluous voice. He held my hands and thanked me for my company.

  He had a somewhat imposing first name, and I wondered if I should float the idea of a simpler first name. The idea became moot by the end of second day of school. His classmates had already dubbed him the ‘Prince’.

  Prince was very intelligent, but not particularly interested in studies. He did all right in his classes and tests, and I could report so dutifully to his father and mine. I also noted to their satisfaction that he was well accepted in the school. This was a gross understatement, for in a few short weeks, he was one of the most popular boys in the school. This was no doubt because of his gracious manners and sterling looks. As his popularity and circle of friends grew, our closeness waned, but we remained good friends and saw a good deal of each other.

  Our paths parted after school. I went to a premier college, where the
accent was relentlessly on academic performance. He chose a middling college where a clever sort like him could sail through without demanding diligence. He could do better, but did not have to.

  Less than a year into college, at a private party Prince met a film director who was searching for a new face to cast in his next movie. To his father’s distaste, Prince ducked out of college and took the role. The film was a minor hit, and got him further offers. His next three films were all hits. He became the biggest name in the film studios of eastern India, facetiously called Tollywood. He got calls from Bollywood, the rich, mammoth studios of western India. Prince became a star not just in India or South Asia, but also in Middle East and East Europe.

  Five years ago, on a rare visit to India, I went to a social event my brother, a movie producer, hosted. Amidst all the banter and laughter, I thought I heard a voice I recognized and turned immediately. It was Prince.

  As he held my hand with his hallmark grace, the mellifluous voice prompted, ‘Tell me, where have you been all these fifty years?’

  32

  THE ENCOUNTER

  HURTS ARE WHAT WE CAUSE

  OUR RELATIONSHIP HAD BEEN eroding for a while, but it was still a shock when she left me. She just went to her mother’s home and never came back. When I called, she said she had decided not to return.

  For five years I nursed my sense of loss. Then I met somebody special. She was very special. I met her at a party and at the end of the hour I felt I had struck a chord. We walked out and preferred to be with each other.

  That was just the beginning. I wanted to talk to her every day. I wanted to tell her everything. Clearly, she felt the same way. In three months, we were a number.