The Stranger in My Home

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

  I told her about the other relationship. She said, uncomfortably, that she felt guilty because she was usurping someone else’s place. I explained that the relationship had ended, definitively, before I met her. I was not sure that she was persuaded.

  Seven months later I had an accident. It was late and I was tired. Doubtless I was also careless. The front edge of the car struck a concrete block and caved in. Seat belts weren’t then in common use. The steering wheel ploughed through my chest, cracking all the ribs on the right side and breaking the sternum.

  A colleague was passing by lucky happenstance. He rushed me to a hospital and arranged for a surgeon. He knew of my long-term relationship and called my former partner. Later he thought of my special friend and called her too.

  When I recovered from the painkillers, I thought of them. That, in fact, was all I thought of. But none of them came to see me.

  I lay in bed, took pills, read and watched the lengthening shadows of the day. Some friends and relations visited me, but the two persons I most longed to see did not come. I could not have told them, not in so many words, but both teetered endlessly at the edge of my mind.

  The day I was finally released from the hospital, the specialists forbade me to use stairs for two months. Since my apartment was on the second floor, my brother insisted that I stay awhile with him and his wife in their large ground-floor apartment. They took punctilious care of me.

  When I was leaving their place, my brother told me that my special friend had called him regularly to ask about my condition. She did not want it mentioned to me.

  I still walked and drove with great difficulty. But I went to see her. How could she not come to see me even when my life was in the balance?

  She listened quietly and then told me something I did not know. The colleague had called and she had rushed to the hospital. She was told she could not see me immediately because the doctors were in my room, examining me and discussing my status. She had to wait.

  The waiting room was empty save for one person. This was the person she had felt guilty about. She was the usurper. She could not face her. She stood, unseen, at the waiting room door for a long time. Then she went home.

  She said she felt she was wrong. She should have visited me; she owed me that. But she could not, knowing the other person would be there.

  But the other person was never there. She told me years later that, though she was distraught, she had actually noticed my special friend at the door. She felt then she couldn’t be at the hospital or in my room. She couldn’t be with me anywhere if there was another presence. She returned home from the waiting room.

  I could recall the misery of the days in a hospital bed. Little could reduce the sting. Yet I now knew someone had cared – as we all do – in her own way.

  33

  A KEEPSAKE

  WHAT I REMEMBER HIM BY

  I WAS CLOSE TO Dad, but I never felt closer to him than when we were on vacation and went together for a walk every morning. Our vacation was always with his sister who taught in a school and lived in a pastoral little town in central India. There was nothing to see or do there for recreation except go for a walk. That is what we did each day at dawn, long before the bicycles, bullock carts and inter-city buses unfurled a canopy of dust over the town.

  Before sunrise Dad would bend down next to my bed and gently touch my hand to make sure I was awake and eager to go. He wouldn’t say a word to disturb others sleeping nearby and wait for me to get ready. Once outside the house, he would still wordlessly look at me while I silently pointed to one of the only two roads that could take us out of town. He would let me choose, and sometimes even confirm the choice by saying, ‘Well done! This side of town seems quieter today.’ I wondered about the comment then, and I realize now he said it more as an encouragement to me than as a factual observation.

  We would soon go past the early vegetable vendors and the hawking newspaper man on his decrepit bicycle and, just after the tiny farmers’ cooperative, be out of city limits. Here the air was fresher, and Dad and I would pick up speed. We walked briskly in the cool morning air, alongside the few evergreens that dotted the roadside, and watched the emerging orange line on the horizon. A few huts on the sloping hills, the occasional little stream, an emaciated cow or two next to the huts. ‘Look,’ Dad would softly whisper, and draw my attention with a forefinger to a blue flycatcher on a twig or a modest garden with flaming bastard teak, then touch my shoulder to indicate that we should move on.

  We walked three miles to the river, sauntered a little on the scraggly shoreline and then turned around. Another long stretch of silent walk, punctuated by the briefest of remarks, till we again came within city limits. A bustling town was slowly coming awake. I knew what was on Dad’s mind but waited for him to broach the subject.

  Sure enough, he would suddenly turn to me, as if a new idea had just struck him, and say, ‘Do you think we should stop for some tea?’

  He loved tea, every kind of tea, and I knew he was by now longing for a sip of strong morning tea. I would nod my agreement and we would take a quick turn to visit the small street-side tea stall where a wizened old man made and served tea to day labourers passing by. We would sit on a rough bench next to a rickety table, and soon two steaming cups of fragrant, over-sweetened Darjeeling tea would be placed before us. I loved to see Dad’s face as he took his first sip with an expression of benign satisfaction.

  After the third sip, he would turn convivial and ask, ‘So what do you think of this town?’ It was the opening gambit in a facile stream of conversation that curiously seemed, unlike any of our conversations at home, like an exchange of equals.

  Dad has been gone for some thirty years. I live thousands of miles away at the opposite end of the world. I have no keepsakes, nothing to remind me of him, except a handful of old photographs. He died suddenly, from a surgery gone bad, and I never even got to see him before he was buried. But, in the picturesque Washington suburb where I live, I walk every morning with an ageing husky and watch the morning unfold around a tranquil lake.

  I walk in silence and remember the quiet loving man who made me feel his equal. That is my truest keepsake.

  34

  THREE IS COMPANY

  A TRIAD, NOT A TRIANGLE

  JAYA AND I WERE classmates during our undergraduate days and the friendship continued during our graduate studies. We explored the city together, went to parties and spent endless hours in clubs and restaurants.

  We went to see a movie one afternoon and, on the way out, she told me she had to meet a friend in a coffee house nearby. I took her there and since the friend was still to arrive, ordered a latté. A half-hour later the friend, Sanku, sauntered in. He was a spare man, with light hair brushed back, an aquiline nose and dark horn-rimmed glasses. He had a professor’s look, serious, almost severe, but a singer’s voice, gentle almost musical. When he spoke, always in a low key, you wanted to hear and paid attention.

  I was instantly charmed by his conversation. He seemed to bring magic to any discussion, a new point of view, softly voiced and gently urged. He sounded light-hearted and his bright smile added to an air of playfulness, but you could see he meant what he said. There was often a touch of cynicism, but you heard the ring of sincerity and wanted to agree with him. I liked him and clearly showed it.

  When I rose and said I would leave them alone, to have their time together, he vigorously demurred. He said he had nothing private to discuss with Jaya, and if he had he would happily keep it for another occasion. He added that the three of us could continue the lively chat we were having.

  Continue it did, and, since it was a weekend, for a very long time. When we parted at a late hour, it was only with the agreement to meet again two days later.

  When we met, it was again a quick, unbelievable alchemy. Jaya had met Sanku because he had had a fling with her sister. Instead of it creating a rift, she had begun to see him as a friend and grown fond of him.

  He might ha
ve resented my presence, but he clearly welcomed it. I just liked him too much to entertain the idea of him as a bar to my close relationship with Jaya.

  Then it became routine. We three were always together. All our spare hours we spent together, and it never occurred to us to exclude one. We not only liked one other, we felt the three-way relationship was perfect. It was the most natural and congenial for us all. If one couldn’t join a planned event, we went out of our way to accommodate him or her: we cancelled or postponed the event until all three of us could be together.

  People got used to seeing us together. Friends, at first curious about the nature of the triad, began to accept the three-way relationship as an enduring phenomenon.

  When I look back at that period, my most vivid recollection is of the fun we had together, the pleasure we derived from being with the other two. Occasionally I would rib Sanku that had it not been for his obtrusive presence, I could be happily with Jaya. He too would jocularly complain that he could not have a private moment with Jaya because of my recurrent appearance. But Jaya knew – we all knew – that these moans were little meant and never believed.

  It was a curious conjunction of a relationship that never again occurred in my life. I don’t even understand how it could have functioned. But it did, and it did so seamlessly and without an effort. We were delighted to be with one another and we were unspeakably happy.

  Of course, such a halcyon period isn’t destined to endure. Sanku left to be a professor in a Canadian university. Jaya left for Germany for higher studies. I took a job that took me out of town and later out of the country. Our contacts became at best intermittent.

  But the memory remains: of what we meant to one another, the joy it brought us and the very curious way true friendship can add an unexpected dimension to our life.

  35

  WHEN THE END CAME

  LYING AT THE FINISH LINE

  WE HAD BROKEN UP three years earlier. I had been dating someone else off and on, and I had heard she was dating someone too. She was not far from my mind, though I knew she was irretrievably in the past.

  Then I decided to make a break with that past and move to another country. I started getting rid of the furniture and then of the smaller items. The most difficult was to let go of personal letters and photographs.

  The last day, as I sorted the remaining photographs, I suddenly gasped: there were, in my collection still, three photographs of her that I had taken, which I liked and which she liked too. I held them in my hand for a long time, knowing that I could not take them with me and I could not destroy them either. They were just too beautiful. Also, she was just too beautiful.

  There was only one thing to do. I got into my car and drove to her office. The receptionist, who knew me, smiled and went in to fetch her. She came back with a frown and a message: she could not see me.

  I gave her the envelope with the photos, ‘Please give it to her.’

  I would have liked to see her on my last day in the country, but it was not to be.

  I went back home, had an early dinner and started working on the endless chores one must finish before exile.

  It was midnight when the bell rang. I opened the door and found her standing. Barely. She held on to the door to keep her balance and she was reeking of wine. I was astonished. I had known her for years, and she never drank. She disliked the stuff.

  I held her arm and brought her in. She collapsed on the sofa. ‘Those photos were good,’ she said. The words slurred.

  ‘But,’ I hesitated, ‘you don’t seem so good now. Are you all right?’

  A second later she started getting sick. She retched helplessly on the floor, the sofa and even on herself.

  I carried her to the bathroom and turned on the shower on us both. Once clean, I dried her hair, helped her put on my pyjamas and put her to bed. I made her swallow two aspirins and let her go to sleep.

  I washed, dried and ironed her clothes for the next day. Then I readjusted the cushions on the just-washed-mildly-moist sofa and tried to go to sleep.

  Slender fingers nudged me awake. I saw the burgundy nails before I saw her face. It still looked as beautiful as ever. She had found and put on her clothes.

  ‘I have to go,’ she murmured. That murmur had always entranced me.

  At the door I felt I could not let her go. She was important to me. What we had was important. Nothing else mattered. I wanted to tell her that. No words came to me.

  Finally, hesitantly, I said, ‘Please write to me,’ and gave her a card. She looked at me, the very last time, and said, ‘I will.’

  We both knew it was a lie.

  36

  A MAN ON THE RUN

  HE JUST WOULD NOT SLOW DOWN

  SAM WAS A LARGE man who dressed flamboyantly and wore an oversize Rolex and ornate sunglasses. A friend who heard of his plan to help poor students develop commercial skills introduced us. He requested that I help Sam.

  Sam needed assistance with the project’s technical aspects. I told him I was quite busy but would be glad to see him during the weekend.

  He turned up on Saturday at my home at six in the morning and woke me up. Annoyed, but impressed by his enthusiasm, I told him I had studied the papers and concluded that though well-intentioned, the project design was inept and needed complete overhaul. Not the least daunted, he asked who could fix it. No name came readily to mind. He urged me to join him and redesign the whole project. I had misgivings about a partner so different in style or personality but agreed reluctantly.

  What followed was a whirlwind of activity. Any idea I broached, Sam would convert immediately into a huge set of activities, all pursued with unrelenting vigour. No point telling him something needed to be reworked; he would instantly press ahead with any half-baked notion I mentioned. No matter if the idea proved wrong or impractical; he would glowingly tell me of the new pointers he had gained from discussing it with government officials.

  My work hours were long, but he knew when to turn up in my office just as it was closing and suggest a cocktail, or to ingeniously gain entry into a party he knew I would attend.

  With Sam around, there could be no discussion that did not turn soon to his project. He would find a way to involve everyone and pump the unlikeliest person for ideas. The puzzling part was he did pick up new ideas and found new friends to help.

  Speed was his hallmark. He was the only person I knew who carried official stationery in his briefcase, and, if a written request was needed, produced it instantly, handwritten. If a form demanded statistics, he would concoct the best he could muster on the spot and later send a letter of correction. What could be done the next week or month, he wanted done that very day, in fact immediately, and would gladly run to the end of town to do it. ‘Now is the best time,’ was his favourite phrase.

  I gave up complaining about his hasty commitments and ill-phrased letters, much as I realized the futility of suggesting that we think through a problem before we rush into action. Sam would act before I could blink, and the only way was to anticipate a strategy or instantly devise one.

  Our project took off earlier than expected and produced results better than our fondest hopes. His astounding drive had partly infected our staff and associates. I knew it well, because I had begun waking up at night with new ideas. That added to Sam’s enthusiasm and his determination to accomplish everything at lightning pace. He would gulp his drink, smoke through his cigarette in record time and rush to the next meeting with a briefcase loaded with talking points.

  Doctors started warning him of telltale signs. I counselled caution and snatched the perennial cigarette from his lips. Friends urged him to settle down and enjoy the striking success of our project. But Sam dreamed of building a new office, getting new staff and enlarging the project tenfold.

  I was accidentally at the project office window one afternoon when I observed the strange arc of Sam’s car as he dashed typically to another downtown appointment. He was an excellent driver, and that reckle
ss curve was bizarre. I rushed out and found the car stalled on the sidewalk, Sam’s large frame sprawled on the steering wheel, motionless. Ominously, even the Rolex on his drooping wrist was still. My best friend, always in a hurry, had finally slowed down.

  37

  A STIGMA, A PEN, A FRIEND

  A TIME TO CHERISH AND A TIME TO ACKNOWLEDGE

  DAN WAS GROSSLY OBESE. From the moment he joined our school, he was the butt of many jokes. He tried to be friendly, but the other boys and I would have none of it. I did not particularly want to be unkind to him, but I considered it important to be one of the crowd. That Dan was from a wealthy family and came to school in a chauffeured car somehow made it easier to laugh at his expense.

  One day I fractured an ankle on the school playground. The headmaster called my father, but it would be a long time before he could find a taxi and come to fetch me. Dan asked his driver to give me a lift home. After that Dan and I started spending time together. I found him genuinely good-natured and amiable. To my surprise he ate very little; a thyroid problem accounted for his large size. Doctors continued to treat his condition, but he seemed placidly resigned to it.

  I hid my friendship with Dan from our classmates, even going along with their unseemly jokes, though they made me increasingly uncomfortable. Then Dan began coming to school less regularly. He told me he had begun to feel unwell, as a specialist had warned his parents he might.

  Finally, Dan stopped coming to school altogether. The teacher told us he had become quite sick. Without telling my classmates, I went to see him. When I sat down next to his bed, he smiled wanly. He was writing in a notebook – keeping a journal of his illness, he said, so that he could later tell our class what he had been through. He wanted his classmates to understand why he was so large.

  I admired his beautiful fountain pen, a Montegrappa. I had never seen such a fancy writing instrument before. Dan readily said I could borrow it and return it to him the next time I visited. Maybe it was his way of ensuring I would come back. I took the pen and showed it off to friends the next day, though I avoided mentioning where I’d gotten it.