Mythili Srinivasan invites Sanjiv Sharma inside the house - Part #3 - The Return of the Retired Civil Servant

 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

Chakrapani Srinivasan discovers that he has the wrong envelope - Part #2 - The Return of the Retired Civil Servant

 The Return of the Retired Civil Servant - Part 2

The bus rattled northward with the tired confidence of a creature that had done this journey longer than most of its passengers had been alive. The upper deck lights flickered once, reconsidered, and settled into a steady glow. Below them, the city rearranged itself into night-shift geometry: shuttered shops, neon reflections, late dinners in stainless steel plates.

Sanjiv watched Chakrapani adjust the cotton bag on his lap with exaggerated care, as though the fall had offended him. The old man ran his fingers over the cloth, feeling for something. His expression shifted—not dramatically, not in a way that would alarm a casual observer—but enough to sharpen the air between them. His shoulders stiffened. His breath paused.

He opened the bag.

Not wide. Just enough to slip two fingers inside and draw out a sealed envelope. It was thick, cream-colored, the sort of paper that belonged to government offices that still believed in gravity. A faint emblem was stamped in one corner. Chakrapani stared at it for a full second.

Then he gasped.

It was a small sound, strangled and involuntary, but in the tight theatre of the bus it rang loud. Sanjiv turned fully toward him.

“Sir? What happened?”

Chakrapani did not answer immediately. He turned the envelope over once, twice, as if hoping it would change identity under inspection. His lips moved without sound. Finally he leaned closer to Sanjiv and spoke in a voice so low it seemed to crawl rather than travel.

“This… this is not the cover I collected.”

Sanjiv frowned. “Not yours?”

“The bag is mine. I have been carrying it all day. But this envelope…” He shook his head slowly. “I went to an office near Crawford Market this afternoon. They handed me a sealed cover. My papers were routine. Background material. Harmless.” He swallowed. “This is not harmless.”

The bus swayed. A woman laughed somewhere behind them. A conductor clanged his ticket machine like a bell announcing normalcy. The city continued, indifferent.

“Check the name,” Sanjiv said quietly. “Maybe it’s written. Maybe there’s a number. We can call.”

Chakrapani’s fingers tightened around the envelope. For a moment Sanjiv thought the old man might tear it open out of pure panic. Instead he slid it back into the bag with precise, controlled movements.

“It is not so simple,” he said.

His tone had changed. It had shed age. The voice that remained was clipped, administrative, a voice trained in rooms where every word could become a record.

“I do not carry a cellphone,” he continued.

Sanjiv blinked. “You don’t… carry one?”

“I am not allowed to.”

The sentence landed with absurd weight. Sanjiv stared at him, searching his face for humor. There was none. Only a hard, practiced calm that seemed to push outward, creating a small perimeter of seriousness in the crowded bus.

“You’re retired,” Sanjiv whispered. “Why would anyone stop you from carrying a phone?”

Chakrapani gave a humorless smile. “Retirement is a flexible word. Some files do not retire with you. They linger. Like unpaid debts.”

Sanjiv felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. He leaned closer.

“What is in the envelope?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Even in general?”

“Especially in general.”

The old man’s gaze flicked briefly to the aisle, to the rows of commuters hunched in private fatigue. He lowered his voice further.

“It concerns an unresolved matter from my service days. On paper, it is small. A land issue. A pension trail. Something that could be filed under ‘miscellaneous’ and forgotten.” He paused. “But the trail intersects with something else. Something… sensitive. Sensitive enough that I was asked to review certain background notes. That is why I visited the office today.”

“And you picked up the wrong cover.”

“Yes.”

They sat with that fact between them. The bus engine roared, a mechanical heartbeat.

Sanjiv’s instinct was to offer immediate solutions. That was how his life worked: shirts misplaced, customers confused, stock counted, errors corrected. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

“Use mine,” he said. “We’ll call the office.”

Chakrapani recoiled as if the device were hot metal.

“No.”

“It’s just a call—”

“No.” The word was sharper than intended. He softened it. “If I use your phone, you become a participant. Your number enters a chain. Your identity becomes attached to a conversation that should not include you. Information spreads not by intention, but by association. I will not pull you into that circle.”

Sanjiv hesitated, phone still in his hand. He looked at the old man, really looked. The fear was there now, carefully folded but undeniable. Not fear for himself, he realized. Fear of contamination. Of mishandling something invisible and vast.

“My father was army,” Sanjiv said quietly. “And my father-in-law. I grew up hearing about what happens when small mistakes travel upward. I understand… at least a little.”

Chakrapani studied him. The bus lights carved shadows into the old man’s face, turning his wrinkles into contour lines on a map of long service.

“I believe you,” he said.

Sanjiv put the phone away.

“Then let me help in a way that doesn’t break your rules. I won’t touch the envelope. I won’t look at it. I won’t ask what’s inside. But you’re shaken. You shouldn’t go alone. Let me come with you. I’ll walk you home. That’s all.”

Chakrapani opened his mouth to refuse. Closed it again. Outside, the bus thundered past a flyover, the city opening briefly into dark space before closing again. He seemed to weigh invisible protocols against a very human fatigue.

“You would do this,” he asked slowly, “for a stranger?”

Sanjiv shrugged. “We’re not strangers. We share a bus route.”

For the first time since the envelope appeared, a genuine smile touched the old man’s mouth.

“That is the most Mumbai logic I have heard in years.”

They fell silent. The bag remained on Chakrapani’s lap, his hand resting on it possessively. Every time the bus jerked, his grip tightened. Sanjiv became acutely aware of the ordinary world continuing around an extraordinary secret. A man argued about ticket change. A student memorized notes under the dim light. A couple shared earphones, nodding to a rhythm only they could hear.

He wondered, briefly, how many lives around him carried sealed envelopes of their own. Hidden burdens. Quiet missions. The city, he thought, must be full of them—millions of private thrillers moving in parallel, intersecting only by accident.

“Where did you sit in the office?” Sanjiv asked suddenly.

Chakrapani glanced at him, surprised. “Why?”

“I’m thinking how the mix-up happened.”

The old man considered. “A long counter. Three clerks. Files stacked like fortifications. My cover was placed on the table. Another man was called forward. In the shuffle…” He exhaled. “Routine chaos. The most dangerous kind.”

“You didn’t notice the weight?”

“My envelope was similar. Same paper. Same seal family. These offices manufacture uniformity like a religion.”

They both chuckled softly. The laughter was thin but necessary.

As the bus entered Chembur, the air changed. It always did. The sea-salt edge dulled, replaced by the familiar mix of diesel, frying snacks, and domestic evening. Sanjiv felt his body recognize home before his eyes did.

“We get down together,” he said.

“Yes,” Chakrapani replied. “Together.”

The word carried more than logistics. It was an agreement, small and solemn.

When the bus hissed to a stop near the station, they descended into the thick, moving river of people. The night market buzzed. Vendors shouted prices. A radio played an old song about impossible love. The world looked exactly as it should, which made the envelope feel even more unreal.

They walked side by side toward Diamond Gardens. Chakrapani’s pace was measured but steady. Neither spoke for several minutes. The silence was not empty; it was watchful.

At the gate of a modest bungalow shaded by an old tree, Chakrapani stopped. He turned to Sanjiv.

“This is far enough.”

Sanjiv nodded. Relief and disappointment mingled strangely in his chest.

“You’ll be alright?” he asked.

The old man lifted the cotton bag slightly.

“I have carried heavier things,” he said. Then, after a beat: “But not always alone. Tonight… thank you.”

(c) Bharat Bhushan

16 February 2026

Sanjiv Sharma meets Chakrapani Srinivasan - Part #1 - The Return of the Retired Civil Servant

The Return of the Retired Civil Servant - Part # 1

At eight in the evening, the city loosened its collar but did not rest. The air above the road held that particular Mumbai fatigue—warm, salted faintly by the sea, yet softened by dusk. From the front window of the upper deck, Sanjiv Sharma felt the wind flatten against his face and slide past him like a patient hand. He did not move. He allowed it to comb through the day.

The bus groaned into motion from Electric House, its body protesting the load of commuters who had decided, like him, that trains could wait one day. The conductor’s whistle pierced through layered conversations: office gossip, half-finished phone calls, arguments about cricket scores, someone explaining loudly how onions were again becoming a national crisis. The upper deck was a balcony to the city, and Sanjiv occupied the front seat like a quiet spectator to a performance he had seen all his life yet never tired of.

BEST HQ, Electric House, Colaba

He worked only a few lanes away from the grand façade of Regal Cinema, folding shirts, stacking denim, convincing customers that a color suited them when it did not, and sometimes convincing them that it did when it did. Retail was theatre. He had learned to smile with the precision of a shop mirror: wide enough to reassure, narrow enough to conserve energy. Today the crowd had been relentless. A shipment had arrived late. Two customers had argued over a discount. A child had hidden inside a rack of winter jackets and refused to come out. By closing time his calves felt packed with sand.

The bus curved away from Colaba and began its slow northward crawl. Lights flickered alive in office towers like sequential thoughts. Sanjiv let his head rest against the metal bar and drifted inward.

He saw Chembur the way memory preferred it: not as it was, but as it had layered itself over years. His grandfather, Naik Havaldar Jairam Sharma, marched through those memories in sepia. A man of straight lines and polished boots. The old stories returned whenever Sanjiv grew tired: Poona Cantonment, the last years of British command, the strange pride of wearing a uniform that belonged to a country not yet fully its own. His grandfather rarely spoke of war, but he spoke of discipline as if it were a living relative. When he retired and moved with fellow soldiers to the emerging outskirts of Bombay, they carried their regimental camaraderie like a portable homeland. Chembur then was dust and promise. The Bombay Improvement Trust chawls rose in practical rows, unadorned, determined.

Sanjiv had grown inside those corridors of shared kitchens and shared arguments. Doors were rarely shut; privacy was a negotiable idea. His childhood smelled of frying onions, kerosene, incense, and damp newspapers. He had run barefoot across the corridor with Shalini, both of them scolded by multiple mothers who believed themselves collectively responsible. He smiled faintly at the memory of her braids, always too tight, her irritation at arithmetic, her triumph when she beat him in spelling tests.

The bus lurched. Someone laughed too loudly behind him. A ringtone erupted with devotional music. The city stitched itself back into his awareness.

He pictured Shalini now, probably coaxing Vijay into finishing dinner. Their son negotiated every spoonful as if it were a legal contract. Sunita, at three, would already be asleep, one arm flung across her pillow like a fallen dancer. Sanjiv felt a sudden swell of protectiveness so intense it bordered on fear. He wanted for them what he could not yet name in concrete terms—only a broad, shining assurance that their lives would travel smoother roads than his. Education, he told himself. That was the bridge. He had seen boys from the chawls become engineers, accountants, men who returned in cars that looked like visiting dignitaries. He did not envy them; he catalogued them as evidence.

The bus stopped again. More passengers pressed upward, filling the stairwell with the smell of sweat and talcum powder. An elderly gentleman emerged, gripping the railing with deliberate care. His hair was white but not defeated; it clung neatly to his scalp. He wore a pale shirt ironed with old-fashioned pride. A small cotton cloth bag dangled from his wrist, and a plastic bottle caught the overhead light.

He paused near Sanjiv’s seat, scanning for space. The only available spot was beside him. Sanjiv shifted immediately, knees angling inward to make room.

“Please,” he said.

The old man nodded, breath slightly labored, and lowered himself with a sigh that carried the weight of the day. He took a sip from his bottle, closed his eyes for a second as if sealing in the comfort, then leaned back. The bus resumed its rhythm. Outside, Marine Drive’s curve glittered like a necklace carelessly thrown on black velvet.

Sanjiv tried not to stare, but he felt the presence of the man the way one feels a book placed beside them—full of untold pages. He wondered about the cotton bag. It had the modest dignity of long use. His grandfather had carried something similar: documents, receipts, a folded umbrella, always arranged with military logic.

His thoughts wandered again, this time to the arithmetic of survival. Rent was stable for now, but school fees would rise. Shalini had mentioned English-medium tuition. He did not resent the expense; he resented only his own limitations. If he could climb higher in the shop—assistant manager, manager—perhaps one day he could open a small store of his own. He pictured a signboard: “Sharma Readymades.” The idea felt audacious and fragile, like glass warmed in the hand.

The elderly gentleman’s head tilted slightly, sleep flirting with him. The cotton bag slipped. It fell with a soft, final thud onto the floor, unnoticed by its owner.

Sanjiv reacted before thinking. He leaned forward, fingers brushing the dusty bus floor, and retrieved the bag. It was lighter than he expected. He tapped the man gently on the arm.

“Sir…”

The old man startled awake, eyes sharpening with embarrassed alertness. Sanjiv held out the bag.

“This fell.”

A flicker of alarm crossed the man’s face, then relief. He accepted it with both hands, as though receiving something ceremonial.

“Ah—thank you, thank you,” he murmured. His voice carried the rounded cadence of the south, polished by decades in offices where clarity mattered. “These old fingers, they betray me.”

They shared a brief laugh, the kind strangers exchange to confirm mutual goodwill. The man adjusted the bag securely on his lap and extended his hand.

“I am Chakrapani Srinivasan,” he said. “Retired civil servant. And tonight, apparently, a danger to my own belongings.”

Sanjiv shook his hand, surprised by the firmness of the grip. “Sanjiv Sharma. I work in Colaba. Going home.”

“Chembur?” Chakrapani asked, with uncanny accuracy.

Sanjiv blinked. “Yes! How did you—”

“This bus,” the old man said, gesturing grandly to their rattling chariot. “It carries only the faithful. We are a community of the tired.”

They laughed again, and conversation opened easily, as if it had been waiting. Chakrapani spoke of files and ministries, of decades spent navigating corridors where decisions moved slower than the ceiling fans. He had seen governments change like monsoon moods. Yet retirement, he confessed, was a stranger terrain. Time stretched differently. He now measured days by walks to the market and arguments with his gardener.

“And you?” he asked. “Family?”

Sanjiv described Shalini, the children, the chawl. He did not dress his life in apology; he narrated it plainly. Chakrapani listened with an attentiveness that felt like respect.

“Diamond Gardens,” the old man said suddenly. “That is where I live. A small bungalow. Old construction. My wife refuses to leave it. Says the walls know her moods.”

Sanjiv’s eyes widened. “I live near the railway station. In the old chawls. Five minutes from Diamond Gardens.”

For a second they stared at each other, mapping the invisible threads of proximity. Then the absurdity struck them. Two men, divided by architecture and income, carried nightly by the same bus, breathing the same tired air.

Chakrapani chuckled. “See? This city. It arranges us in different houses and seats us on the same bench.”

“Bombay is a grand equaliser,” Sanjiv said, the phrase arriving fully formed.

“Yes,” the old man agreed softly. “Here, the bus does not care who you were. Only where you are going.”

Outside, the city streamed past—shops closing, couples arguing gently, a boy racing a stray dog. Inside, on the upper deck, they rode in companionable silence, two residents of the same neighborhood, newly aware of each other, equal passengers in the long, humming vehicle that carried them home.

(c) Bharat Bhushan

16 February 2026

Being of service to the family is the purest prayer to god - memories of my father and mother (2)

Our tiny and very compact kitchen was in the balcony of our 320 square feet ground floor apartment in a single-building compound in Wadala, Mumbai since 1972 when we had shifted from the suburb of Chembur in the then northern part of Bombay, which is now very much overtaken by the growth of the entire megapolis. My father, Balapila Naga Bhushan, was with the Ministry of Technical Education, Government of India and worked at Churchgate, while my mother, Sharada (Indumati) Bhushan, was a school teacher and later served as the headmistress of the Andhra Education Society’s High School and Junior College at Wadala.

My mother had to be at school, right on dot, for the morning shift that started at something like 0700 hours while my father would leave home at 0905 am to catch the 0924 harbour line local train to VT (as we knew it then) and onwards for a crisp walk to Churchgate to be at his office by 1010 am. Their schedules never changed through our school and college-going years during the seventies and early eighties. My mother would be up by 0530 hours and would make enough of a polite disturbance to nudge my father awake within five minutes.

They would not talk to each other in order to avoid waking us up, me and my sister, Sarala. The two of us and our parents always slept on coir mats through all the 70s. As we were told in those years, that as kids we were privileged to wake up later, though not much of a sleep-in, but we had to be up and about by 0630 or at the latest by 0645, as though that was much of a luxury.

There is one image that I have in my memory, through all these years, of the morning scene at my house, apart from the one of my father making filter coffee, and my mother going through her early morning routine of prayers, dressing up, conjuring up a magical spread of food items for breakfast, school tiffen, and emergency snacks and savouries. This other image is of my father quietly standing at the kitchen sink through the early hour when my mother would need monopoly over the bathrooms and almirah and the full-length mirror. During this time, my father would be silently at cleaning up all the left over utensils from the earlier night, and would do a complete washover of utensils to be used by my mother for preparing breakfast and other stuff.

The magical aspect of it was that my father could do it in an almost silent manner which is impossible for most others, men or women. He would examine the cluster of leftover utensils, analyse the threat factor like an airforce pilot and pick out the utensils that can be first removed for cleaning without bringing down the other utensils. These initial utensils would be wiped with torn-up newspaper to remove the grit and wet layers of gravy or oil. Those were the days without the green scrub pads or the metal wipers that we have now. There was no liquid soap and there was none of the magical utensil cleansers that we have now.

My father always claimed that the first wipe with the newspaper would make it easier to wash the utensils. The second attack would be with some dishwashing powder. The entire cluster of utensils would be coated with the dishwashing powder and kept aside for some time, before finally washing them clean with tap water. This was not any brandwala dishwashing powder. My father, as would most middle-class simple households do, would go to the wholesale soap markets of Dadar, near Ranade road, and would purchase a 5 kg pack of dishwashing powder. He had a routine for storing it and using it carefully, but that’s another story.

I did not notice it much, but after the entry of black and white TV and doordarshan and a whole lot of forced programs, I realised that it was the lady of the house or the kaamwali bai who was supposed to do all the cleaning chores in the household and not the man of the house, ie the lord and master of the house. I had not known about this separation of tasks and had always accepted that my father would clean the leftover utensils and make the first round of coffee and whatever while my mother would get ready to go out of the house to go to work at her job. My parents would share their tasks in the evening and later at night, my mother would have crashed out to sleep early enough to allow my father to clean up and get the kitchen and the bathroom ready for the morning.

Much later, when I had left home for my various research stations and started working, of a sort, and had learnt about various other matters, I asked my father about it. Why would he, the lord and master of the house, take up the task of cleaning the leftover utensils and the menial tasks of making the first round of coffee, etc.?

My father did not think about it a great deal but replied in a very matter of fact manner. “That is not any other work. That is when I do my prayers and recite my routine of saying thanks and conveying gratitude to god everyday for keeping us all happy and content. It is when I am cleaning the leftover utensils out of my own intentions and not because someone else has asked me to, it is only then that I am in service to my family in the purest of ways. I keep reciting and repeating the god’s name and I have a long list of gods to whom I say thanks to, and they seem to be happy about it.”

“The best prayer is in the act of service without any expectation of goodwill or return. The best way to send our prayers across is during that moment and not when one is sitting in front of the prayer place, or when one is lighting incense or when one is visiting a temple or when one is conducting a puja or whatever. Each utensil that I clean is a manner of cleaning my inner self.”

On that day, when my father explained it, I did not understand the perspective. I did not try to. I was only happy that my father had done that particular routine because he wanted to. Later, much later, in January 2009, he had returned after hospitalisation and had been advised bed rest at my campus residence in Pune. He was staying with me in my study room and the two of us had converted it into a bedroom. He was restless at not being able to go about on his own as he would have done in our small house at Wadala, Mumbai. He told me in a very tired voice, “Go and get some 10-20 utensils from the kitchen sink and bring it over to the attached bathroom here. Let me wash them daily. I need to do my prayers in peace.”

He passed away in March 2009 in that study room at Pune without having been able to return to Wadala.

11 October 2019

Rice Plate and Masala Dosa and a glass of ice-cold water

The 21st Road at Chembur - Nothing's changed... since the 60s and 70s

It was sometime in the early 70s, maybe 1970 in fact. We were staying at 21^st Road, Chembur, Mumbai, in those years. A one-room kitchen 2^nd floor flat with a balcony. I still remember the house as quite comfortable and large, especially the balcony. It was really spacious, enough for me to hide in, away from my parents, and to rummage in my adventures, most of them within my mind. The ‘hall’, as we called the single-room, had three sections in it. One was the bedroom section, where the two foldable metal cots were placed with the cotton-filled lumpy and yet, comfortable, mattresses. The other was the cupboards section, where we had our single steel wardrobe, ‘almirah’ – it was called. The third section was the ‘study-room’, near the front window, where my study table was placed.

My study table, because my sister rarely studied. She just went to school and returned home to go to school again, to return home. My father would read the morning ‘Times of India’ while reclined on the cot, and my mother was usually in the kitchen, when she returned from her teaching job at the High School. I sat at the table, and played at studying, most of the time. It was fun to read up all the chapters in the textbooks, and purposefully read the chapters that were not being taught as yet. I felt that it was really intelligent of me, to have read up the chapters before the teachers taught them in school. It felt like we knew more than the teachers knew, for did they not read them only in the classroom?

From my study table, and out of the second floor window, I could see through the 21^st Road, Chembur, to the main road that ran from Diamond Garden to Chembur Railway Station. The 8 No. BEST buses had their last bus-stand just beyond where the 21^st Road got over, while meeting the main road. The railway station was about 150 metres beyond, and my father and grandfather returned from their workplaces by train, alighting at Chembur, and walking up to the house. I could see them, by the clock, accurate to the time, turn into 21^st Road, from the Station-to-Diamond Garden Road. My father would turn into the 21^st Road at 6 pm, exactly to the dot, while my grandfather would turn into the Road at 6.40 pm.

The turning into the 21st Road

My father’s brother, my uncle, would return by the 8 No. BEST bus, and would never get back straightaway to the house. He would go wandering about in the vegetable markets and book stalls and snack bazaars near the Chembur railway station between 7.30 pm to 8.30 pm. I returned home from school, with my sister and mother, by school bus, because the three of us went to the same school. We would return by 5 pm, for the school bell rang at 4 pm, 14 kms away, south, at Wadala, and the bus returned well in time. There wasn’t much traffic on the creek road between Chembur and Wadala during those days.

At the end of the 21^st Road, where it met the Diamond Garden Road, was a newly opened Udupi Restaurant, do not remember the name correctly now, that served vegetarian snacks during the day and rice plate at night. I could see the restaurant from my study window, and if I stared at it properly for a long time, I could almost smell the smells inside it. I could visualise the food stuffs being served inside, for it was all very different from the food that we used to make in those days. Our idlis were not like the idlis served in that restaurant, and our dosas were certainly much more thicker and fluffier than the ones in that place. Today, I feel that the thicker and fluffier dosas made in our house are certainly better, healthier and tastier, but in those days, as a child, that Udupi Restaurant was an entirely different place.

Geetha Bhavan - I went back to get the photograph.

Remember, this was a day and age when there were no video games, no TV or VCD-DVD, no internet or cellphones etc. The radio usually always belonged to the father, the lord and master of the house, and he would decide that he would listen to Vividh Bharati at a certain time, the All India Radio at a specific hour and the BBC World News at a very specific time. At other times, the radio would be shut, for it could definitely, most definitely, corrupt the children by its very bad programming of film songs and film songs. There were no games that were played by children in the apartment complexes or colonies during those days. We did not play cricket properly on the streets in Chembur until 1973. Street cricket was only played by those ‘urchins’ as elders called them in the inner streets of Matunga and Dadar. If only they knew that those ‘urchins’ were the forerunners of Sunil Gavaskar and Ashok Mankad and others after them.

Our house during 1961 to 1974 - Flat No. 17, Narulla Building

My evening was well set. Catch the school bus at 4 pm at Wadala, return home by 5 pm. Have a large steel tumbler-full of hot bournvita or horlicks or ovaltine and sit down to study. My mother would be the ‘master’ of the ‘Hall’ until my father returned, so she would be bossing my sister and me during that time, complaining to us that we did not study well, because the schoolteachers had been complaining to her about us. Since they were her colleagues, she naturally presumed that she should believe them. I would complete my homework in the ride in the school bus from Wadala to Chembur, but I still had to pretend that I had a lot of homework to do, in front of my mother. My sister usually had all her textbooks and notebooks in a bad mess inside her schoolbag, and would get a tremendous beating from my mother, and the two of them would then sit down for 10 to 15 minutes to unravel the puzzle of her school bag.

At 6 pm, my father would turn in from the Diamond-Garden road. He was a treat to watch. Very stylish, handsome in his own way, broad shouldered, with a full-sleeve white shirt tucked in, pleated trousers, black shoes with black socks, and both sleeves folded back to the elbows. Stylish glares, slim ones and a white steel-buckled wristwatch. I could see him turn in at the end of the 21^st Road, and he would be like a film hero, entering the street to fight bad villains and others, in my mind. I had just then begun to read “Into the valley of death” by Tennyson, and I could imagine him to be one of the warriors going in. Except, my father was definitely more stylish.

The 21st Road, Chembur - turning in from the main street

He would walk smartly and fast, and would come straight to the house, and would open the door by himself with his set of housekeys. You could hardly hear the key go in, and you would never hear the door open. He would shut the door very soundlessly, if that were a phrase. I believe that my father could be the reason for many phrases of that manner, such as “hear the house key not making any noise”, or, “shut the door so that you can hear the quiet sound of the shut door” among others. We knew his tread on the passage outside the door, and my mother, sister and me would rush at him and he would smile, in his welcome way, and it would always be a welcome moment in our lives, during those years, when we were all by ourselves. We were indeed happy, the three of us, me, my mother and my sister, to welcome my father, day after day, at the same time, just so that he would set our day, the same way, day after day after day after day.

He would have made a list of groceries and vegetables to be purchased, in his head and inside his memory bank, during the train journey back from his office. Somedays, he would have written the list on some sheet of paper, and on other days, he would consult with my mother, and they would draw up a list. It was usually a very short list. Those were the days of meagre wages and salary, and we always purchased groceries and stuff for the very day, or a couple of days. There was no refrigerator and nobody purchased stuff more than they would consume in 1-2 days. He would give me a 5 Rupee note and a 2 Rupee note, and would explain that the 5 Rupee note was for groceries and vegetables, and the 2 Rupee note was for purchase of bread, bananas and flowers for prayers.

He knew that there would be a few paise left over, about 50-60 paise. So, he would say that I could take 25 paise and my sister could take 25 paise, but we had to bring back the rest of the money to return to him. That was great loot, for us, for 25 paise could purchase tremendous stuff in those days. A plate of bhelpuri, that comes for 40 Rs now in a good bhelpuri shop, in 2012, was available for about 10 paise for half-plate, and 15 paise for full-plate. We could still have money left over. My sister had her own strategy for using up the money and I had a different strategy. And, my strategy had a well-thought out plan. My plan included my grandfather, who would be turning in to the 21^st Road at 6.40 pm. My plan required split-second timing and proper execution.

Each moment that my father would give me the money for the day’s purchases, and remark that the 25 paise was mine, I could immediately smell the interiors of the Udupi Restaurant, and I could see inside my mind, a hot tasty plate of Masala Dosa, which for me in 1970, was the ultimate thingee to splurge on, and to save pocket money for. Because you could get every other small snack dish on the hawking carts near the school and the railway stations, but in those days, you could get the Masala Dosa only in the Udupi Restaurants. The magic of the potato-stuffing, the smell of the half-cooked onions inside the potato-stuffing, the strange semi-green and semi-yellow colour of the vegetable and the manner of hiding it inside the dosa was like a very mysterious dish for the uninitiated kid of Chembur, in those days. We knew the “Sada Dosa”, but we had not been introduced to the “Masala Dosa” until then. And even if we were in a restaurant, my mother deemed it as “too costly” and “totally unnecessary”. Usually. 


My strategy focused on my grandfather who would be returning home from work and would be entering the 21^st Road at 6.40 pm. Having received the money and purchases list from my father, I would run down the stairs and walk up the 21^st Road to be on time at the street corner when my grandfather would be walking from the railway station. I continue to be surprised by the memories and the independence of judgement that most parents gave their children during those days. I was about 8 years old, and my father would entrust me with money to purchase groceries and food, on 2-3 days in a month, with money for purchase of rations in the ration-shop, and sometimes with old oil cans to go to the oil mill and purchase oil, including vegetable oil for cooking and coconut oil for use as hair oil. In those days, we had to purchase oil from the oil mill, and middle-class families could not afford to purchase branded oil and usually did not trust the quality. Fresh oil-mill grounded oil was most trustworthy, but that is another story.

At the corner of 21st Road, Chembur - Exactly as it was in 1960s and 1970s.

On reaching the corner of 21^st Road and the Diamond Garden Road, I would wait. My father could see me from the 2^nd floor window of our house, and I knew that he would be watching. My grandfather usually carried a small cloth bag, and would have made some purchases at the vegetable market near Chembur railway station. He would purchase small itty-bitty stuff that he thought was interesting and SHOULD go into his food, and it would usually be stuff like freshly sliced coconut, coriander, curry leaves, ginger, bananas, half-packet of ‘Modern’ bread, drumsticks and spinach – ‘paalak’. This was his staple diet, for he had given up on most non-vegetarian food over many many years. He was 71 years old in 1970, having been born in 1899, and would continue to work in vague locations and loved commuting in Mumbai, by changing over from buses to trains and sometimes taxi-cabs. Mumbai was a beautiful place during those years, when the autorickshaw had not been discovered, I guess.

I would walk back with my grandfather, holding his hand, something that he hated. He felt that we should all be independent and should be able to walk alone, and walk silently. He had a dislike for perfunctory or mundane conversation, a viral that infected my father and his brother, and similarly infected my cousin, and me in later years. There was simply no chatter or gossip amongst the men in our families, and I guess, that was how most middle-class commuting families led their lives in Mumbai, busy, tired, living within meagre means, and yet, proud, happy and independent.

My grandfather would never allow me to carry his cloth bag of vegetables and other purchases. I would keep talking to him, and would tell him about my school, about homework, and about my father’s return to the house and my responsibility for the day, of having to purchase groceries and food. And then, I would spring my master move, and would tell him that my father was allowing me to retain only 25 paise from all the grocery money, and how I loved the Masala Dosa at the Udupi restaurant, and I could not possibly get to eat it, because it was 40 paise, and I still needed 15 paise. This was our daily discussion, the same strategy repeated every day, and I would keep waiting for that magical moment of suspense, when I could convince my grandfather to part with the 15 paise that I needed.

That was not to be. He was a clever man, every day. He would give me 50 paise, every day, and would give me a different bit of advice each day. On one day, he would say that the Masala Dosa was not to be eated on a daily basis, and that I should promise him that I would save the money today. I would. I always obeyed him. Because I had to show that I deposited the 50 paise that day, in front of him, in a Mickey Mouse coin-hole savings box given for all child-bank-accounts at Syndicate Bank in those years. On another day, he would say that I should purchase a Masala Dosa and a Sada Dosa and bring it home to share with my sister. This was something that I hated, because she got to enjoy sharing both the Dosa dishes without having made any effort or thinking out the strategy that I had to convince my grandfather.

The road from Diamond Garden to Chembur - a total delight

On some days, this was something I totally loved, he would turn back, with me, and this time, he would grasp my hand tightly, and would walk back on the 21^st Road, and cross over on the Diamond Garden Road, and we would enter the Udupi Restaurant. I would look back at the 2^nd floor window, and would easily spot my father and mother watching us both, and I knew that it was a tremendous victory, for now I could eat an entire Masala Dosa, all by myself, and my grandfather would sit with me and pay for the food. The serving assistants, ‘waiters’ as we called them, knew me, and knew and respected my grandfather, because of his immaculate dress-sense, and clean clothes, sharply creased, even at 7 pm for a 70 year old. They would talk to him in Kannada or Tamil, and he would reply with some short phrases. It was home. 


My grandfather would allow me to place the order, because, I guess, he knew that I loved doing that. However, I loved hearing the waiters recite the menu though they had given the printed card to my grandfather. So, I would ask, “Yenna Special?” (= What special?) and they would reply in a sing-song accent, “Idli sambar, vada sambar, Idli vada, masala vada, bonda, sada dosa, masala dosa, uttapam”. And they would end the sing-song menu, with a flourish and emphasis on the word, “uttapam”, which would almost sound like “pummmm”. After all these years, I can remember vividly the flourish and the final emphasis and the 2-3 waiters who would surround us during the rendition. They knew my selection even before I would choose, for I would almost select the same dish each time I visited. It was ‘Masala Dosa’, unless my parents were with me, and then, it would be Uttapam, because it would be more filling, or it would be ‘Idli Vada’, dunked in sambar, because as my father would remark, “it has both and it will fill the stomach.”

My grandfather would sit alongside and have a quick cup of coffee that they would serve in a twin-steel-tumbler style, with the lower larger one used to mix the decoction and milk and sugar with the inner smaller steel tumbler. It was a standard south Indian design for drinking tea or coffee. I would never get any, because I was too young, and it was only horlicks, viva or bournvita or ovaltine for me. The coffee was always strong south Indian Philips filter coffee. Instant coffee had not arrived as yet to corrupt the world of its coffee drinking choices. The situation was too good, and I can as yet remember the sounds, smell and surroundings. They had a glass cabinet to display sweets and savouries, and the fresh trays of hot hot steaming sweets would be kept above. The smell would fill up the restaurant and flood everyone with temptation.

But, even the strong smell of sweets and savouries was not enough to drown the smell of filter coffee being mixed at your table, and the fresh smell of crisp dosa, fried in white clarified butter, with hot sambar. Most of you, reading this, will immediately know what I am writing about. Those who have not experienced it, are unfortunate, for these hotels have moved on and the smells and sounds are not the same. Today, most restaurants are suffocating and the savouries are usually outsourced like a poorly performing BPO and the resultant tragic mix is kept for display. Most restaurants that are not true south Indian ones usually offer instant coffee in very thick milk and extra sugar, which tastes almost like purgatory. My memories of my grandfather are of the strong grasp he had, very painful, when he would pull me about to go across the road, and of the smell of filter coffee that he would drink at the restaurant while he would chat with the Kannadiga and Tamilian waiters. 


An important transfer of technology took place, sometime in late 60s and in 1970, it began to spread in India’s urban suburbia. This was the water cooler. I am not mentioning it in jest. I am serious. Today it is an accepted and easily recognisable essential utility in most corporate, academic and commercial establishments. In those years, getting an ice-cold glass of water without having to dunk unsanitary chunks of ice was an impossibility. The easiest way to stomach disasters and other evolved forms of bacterial infestation was to drink cold liquids with ice cubes or shredded ice. The manner of ice preparation has surprisingly not changed in commercial terms over these many decades, and ice-manufacturers in inner cities in India continue to offer employment guarantee schemes to the millions of medical graduates of the nation.

Most houses, as previously mentioned, did not possess a refrigerator in those years. It was not as unbearably hot as Mumbai is nowadays, but it would have been a welcome aspect to be able to get a glass of ice-cold water. Restaurants did not have water coolers. The Coca Cola establishment was prominent with ice-boxes, but the ice was from the vendor who would go around in a bullock-cart or donkey-cart or cycle-rickshaw, and sell the most polluted ice-slabs that one could ever obtain. But, it was a different age and time, during those years, and for kids, the most fascinating adventure was to keep running behind these bullock-carts or donkey-carts and keep begging the urchin-assistant on the cart to shave off some ice chips. The urchin would usually oblige, and the bullock-cart owner would shout some of the choicest of phrases at the boy, and for a moment, everyone would retreat. The next corner would have a different group of boys who would go chasing after the cart, of course.

The ice-slabs were covered in sawdust and kept cool by pouring some water from a rusty 5-litre oil can that must have seen much better days for some years. It’s a wonder that the medical profession did not ask Indians to take tetanus shots if we had cold drinks, for I am sure that the rate of infection must have been quite high in most suburbia, and nobody would have been the wiser for it. There was another vendor, a vehicle that would rate nowadays as a WMD (= Weapon of Mass Destruction). This was a real goon of a guy, who would bring 15-20 ice slabs on a buffalo cart, taller one with tractor-trailer rubber tyres, and a real massive buffalo, who would amble slowly, and yet gain much distance. When the vehicle would come to a halt, the buffalo would come to a real complete halt. Nothing could move it, not even if there were double-decker BEST buses threatening it front on.

Usually, most restaurants in Chembur and in Mumbai’s suburbia would be serviced by these ice-slab vendors and the ice would be kept inside in a cool-corner, covered with ages-old sawdust, sogged down by water that would have collected in that corner for many months or years. The ice-slab would be brought out when required, to the thrill of all the local kids, with a huge clamp, and would be slid down the restaurant eating area, with the sawdust spreading all over. The ice-slab would be chiselled out into shreds and pieces and these would be placed inside the Coca Cola ice-chest. For iced-water, if you wanted a glass of it, some ice pieces would be stored in stainless steel vessels inside old non-working ice-cream chests, and you could get yourself an ice-cold glass of water, if the establishment knew you as a regular customer.

Most families would usually beg or plead for a glass of ice-cold water for their kids, and it would be thrilling to see the water drops form on the outside, and it would be more fun to draw upon the condensation and show off. Some aunts would comment that their kids were known to draw much better sketches on ice-cold glasses of water than what I could do, and that was that. It was indeed a very rare occasion when my father would be happy enough on us to go out of his way to purchase an ice-cold bottle of Coca Cola. That was a real treat, and I guess, much safer. He must have been smart, for he would never allow us to ask for a glass of ice-cold water, but would rather get us the sealed bottle of the iced-drink. He would insist that he would open the bottle at the table, and would make a flourish and clean the bottle-opener, and then upon opening the bottle, would clean the rim and pour out the bottle into four shares and the four of us would have ourselves a good treat.