The Return of the Retired Civil Servant - Part # 3
The gate had barely finished its metallic click when the bungalow door opened again, as if the house itself had been listening for the sound. A rectangle of warm yellow light spilled onto the small front path. In that light stood a woman, slight, upright, her grey hair tied back in a disciplined knot that suggested a lifetime of classrooms and punctuality.
“Chakrapani?” she called, already stepping forward. Then she saw Sanjiv.
Her expression shifted instantly, not suspicion exactly, but the sharp alertness of someone trained to notice variables. Her eyes ran over her husband, scanning for imbalance, injury, confusion. The cotton bag in his hand. The stranger beside him.
“What happened?” she demanded, voice tightening. “Did you feel giddy again? Why didn’t you call?”
Chakrapani opened his mouth, closed it, and in that fractional hesitation Sanjiv saw the lie prepare itself. Not malicious. Protective. A reflex born from decades of filtering information.
“I was, a little unwell on the bus,” he said carefully. “Nothing serious. This young man helped me home.”
Mythili stepped closer, her hand already on his arm, fingers checking his pulse with unconscious professional precision. Only then did she look directly at Sanjiv.
“You were with him on the bus and accompanied him all the way from the bus-stop?” she asked.
“Yes, madam,” Sanjiv said, suddenly aware of his dusty shoes on their clean path. “He said he was feeling weak. I was getting down nearby anyway. I stay in this same area.”
“Inside,” she said immediately. It was not a request. “Both of you. Let me check my husband and see if he is telling the truth. Please come inside.”
“No, no,” Sanjiv protested, backing half a step. “I should go. My family will be anxious.”
“You will not go anywhere,” Mythili said, with the authority of a professor who had silenced lecture halls. “You will come in, sit, and drink lemon juice. I just made pakoras. If you refuse, I will assume that there was some bigger problem. A serious one.”
Chakrapani gave Sanjiv a helpless, apologetic smile. “Come inside, Sanjiv. You are really welcome. You see my situation.”
Trapped by hospitality, Sanjiv removed his sandals and stepped into the bungalow.
The first thing he noticed was space. This was unlike the single room tenements that his family had lived in for many decades. Not emptiness, space. Air that did not bump into walls. The living room opened wide, the ceiling high, fans turning lazily like thoughtful birds. The furniture was simple, functional, arranged with the geometric clarity of people who disliked clutter. Bookshelves lined one wall, packed tight. A faint smell of old paper mixed with frying gram flour from the kitchen.
Sanjiv stood awkwardly near the sofa until Chakrapani gestured for him to sit down.
“Sit, sit. We are only the two of us. Our children are all married and gone. You need not feel uncomfortable.”
Sanjiv laughed nervously and sat at the edge of the cushion. His eyes traveled the room with quiet amazement. Framed photographs: convocations, black-and-white portraits, a younger Chakrapani shaking hands with a man whose face Sanjiv recognized from old newspaper archives but could not recollect by name. A chalkboard leaned against a corner wall, covered in faded equations, as if someone had been mid-thought and stepped away years ago.
“I have never,” Sanjiv began, then stopped.
“Never what?” Chakrapani asked.
“Never been inside a bungalow,” he confessed.
The elderly man burst into warm laughter, the sound filling the room and dissolving some invisible stiffness.
“Then you must relax and not feel shy,” he said. “We are the same, except that we walk around freely inside the house.”
From the kitchen Mythili called, “I heard that! Don’t corrupt the guest.”
Her voice carried steel wrapped in affection. Sanjiv watched her silhouette move briskly behind the half-open door. Even without seeing her fully, he sensed the tension that clung to her movements. The clatter of glasses was slightly too loud. The spoon stirred too fast.
She emerged with a tray: three tall glasses beaded with condensation, ice cubes and lemon slices floating gently. A plate of pakoras followed, crisp and fragrant.
“Drink,” she ordered gently, handing a glass to Sanjiv first. “You look more tired than he does.”
Sanjiv took a cautious sip. The lemon hit sharp and clean, cutting through the day’s residue. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was.
Mythili sat opposite them, eyes fixed on her husband.
“Why didn’t you call?” she asked again, softer now but no less pointed. “If you were unwell.”
Chakrapani wiped his upper lip with a handkerchief, buying time.
“We were already close to home,” he said. “I did not want to alarm you unnecessarily. By the time I found a phone, it would have been too nearer to the house,” He gestured vaguely. “We were here.”
She turned to Sanjiv. “You had a cellphone?”
“Yes, madam,” Sanjiv said carefully. “I offered. But sir said it was not needed.”
Mythili’s gaze returned to Chakrapani. Something passed between them, an entire private language compressed into a look. Suspicion, understanding, resignation. She nodded once, as if confirming a hypothesis she would not voice in front of a guest.
“Hmm,” she said. “You always decide what is ‘not needed.’ One day you will realise that it is better to really retire and not pretend that you are retired.”
Chakrapani chuckled weakly. “Physics professors exaggerate.”
“Physics professors calculate risk,” she corrected.
The conversation drifted, but the tension did not fully leave. Sanjiv sensed that he had stepped into a house where secrets were not unusual visitors. He focused on the pakoras, grateful for the ordinary act of eating.
“So, Sanjiv,” Mythili said, turning her attention to him with professional curiosity. “Where do you live?”
“Near the station. Old chawls,” he replied. “Fifteen minutes from Diamond Gardens.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling faintly. “Then you are also from Chembur. We have probably shared the same bazaar and shopping areas.”
“That is true,” Sanjiv said. “My mother and my wife, they go for the shopping. I am too busy commuting.”
They laughed, and for a moment the room relaxed. Chakrapani watched them, his hand still resting on the cotton bag placed carefully by his chair. He had not let it out of reach.
Mythili noticed.
“You are holding that bag like it contains your LIC certificates,” she said lightly.
The joke seemed to be one that was often repeated between the two. Chakrapani’s fingers twitched.
“Old habits,” he replied. “Papers can disappear if you place them down at a wrong place.”
“Papers can still disappear, but also appear” she said dryly. “Only now they call it digitization.”
Sanjiv smiled at the exchange, but his eyes flicked to the bag. He did not know what lay inside, yet its presence shaped the room. It was a silent fourth participant in the conversation.
Mythili leaned forward.
“You frightened me,” she said quietly to her husband. “Standing outside like that. I thought you had fallen.”
“I am still difficult to topple,” he said gently.
“That is not what age says,” she replied. Then, catching herself, she smiled at Sanjiv. “Forgive us. Old couples rehearse the same arguments until they become music.”
“It is good music,” Sanjiv said honestly. He thought of Shalini, of their small quarrels about school fees and grocery lists. He suddenly imagined them at seventy, still circling the same conversations, and the thought comforted him.
The clock chimed softly from another room. Time, which had paused politely for hospitality, resumed its march.
“You must go home,” Mythili said at last. “Your family will worry.”
Sanjiv stood reluctantly. The bungalow felt like a different climate, one he had visited briefly and would now leave carrying its air in his clothes.
“Thank you, madam,” he said. “For the juice. And the pakoras.”
Turning to Chakrapani, Sanjiv said, "Sir, I will be traveling tomorrow to Colaba, going by train. If you want me for company, please tell me. You can call me on my cellphone. Please take my number."
Mythili looked steadily at Chakrapani, not speaking. Chakrapani wrote down the number. He nodded, and said, "I will call. Perhaps I will travel with you by train if I am able to come to the station on time."
“You will come again,” she said, not asking. “Next time without emergencies.”
Chakrapani rose with him and walked him to the door. At the threshold, away from Mythili’s direct gaze, the old man’s voice dropped.
“You did more than you know tonight,” he murmured.
Sanjiv shook his head. “I only walked with you.”
“Sometimes,” Chakrapani said, eyes steady, “that is the most helpful. It could have been dangerous and you would never have realised. It depends on what the envelope contains.”
They held each other’s gaze for a second, an unspoken pact forming—fragile, undefined, but real.
Behind him, the bungalow door closed softly. Ahead, the Diamond Garden glowed with familiar noise. Sanjiv walked carrying a secret he did not know, already entangled in a story that had not finished introducing itself.
(c) Bharat Bhushan
16 February 2026
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