Winter afternoons were precious. They would surrender to
darkness sometimes as soon as 4.30, the impending night a guest that had come
too early while we were still uncombed and disheveled. The silken sunlit
theatre of these afternoons began with lunch, which everyone would pile on
their plates carry outside to the nearest sunny spot.
It was the season of greens and salads and local citric fruits
– like the tangy chakotra – and
varieties of hilly daals – like tore – that we waited for from autumn
onwards. The mooli salad with soft
new leaves would make an entry on a huge plate, sprinkled with lemon juice that
made it glisten in the sun, and red chilly powder that lent it a festive air; in
the corner languished an accidental lemon pip with a secret sorrow. Then came the
steaming daal, challenging the sun with its yellow heat, making rivulets amid
mounds of white rice. Then the
accompanying dish, which proceeded to raise the quilt-and-comforter feel of
familiar food to the level of high art: Rich green paalak, cooked the Garhwali way, thickened with rice paste. Crisply
fried mustard leaves laced with layers of besan. Golden kadhi, sour to just the
right degree. “Aaaah, kafli today…”,
an uncle would sigh – as one whose tantrum-prone lover had turned up after much
beseeching – though kafli was made
every Wednesday like clockwork.
Conversations over lunch often took an unexpected but
fascinating turn. This usually stemmed from the fact that Dadaji was hard of
hearing but reluctant to admit it, Chacha was hard of hearing but refused to do
anything about it, Baba was absent minded but didn’t know it, and everybody’s
mouth was full.
“I think Api can go stay at Mrs Sharma’s while studying in Delhi”,
Dadaji would propose.
A chewy silence would prevail while everyone who had been
able to hear him clearly commiserated with the unsuspecting family of Dadaji’s
old friend, Dr Sharma, and tried to figure how to get them out of hosting my
young cousin for 2 years. Dadaji got along perfectly with Dr Sharma who had short-term
memory loss, and when she said “How is the rice Saklani sa’ab” and he replied “Tuesday”,
neither of them felt they had lost anything.
“Dr Sharma’s will be convenient too; the metro line between
her house and Connaught Place is starting in a year, I read in the paper today”,
he’d bolster his argument.
“The Delhi Metro is excellent”, Chacha would opine, never having been on it and blithely unaware that
his son’s future was being discussed.
“No, it’s starting in a year”, Dadaji would repeat his
information.
“It started a looong time back, Pitaji,” Chacha would say
with gentle pity, referring to the entire Delhi Metro project and looking at his
father, the best-informed member of the family, with a patronizing smile. “Ask
Juhi”, he would rally support as the family always did while arguing with the
patriarch.
“Juhi? Api can’t stay with Juhi”, Dadaji would try to keep
up gamely, “her house is too small”.
“No , no, it’s not small at all”, my father would unexpectedly
enter the conversation, utterly oblivious of the context, bristling at the idea
that anything regarding his daughter was being judged not good enough. “She
deliberately does not want a big house, she has very different ideas.”
“Why would Api stay with Juhi?” Chacha would ask confused.
“Api? Stay with Juhi?”, my father would ask in alarm.
And both would look for explanation to their father. “Right,
right…” Dadaji would strain to understand his sons, and fail, as he had much of
his life.
Api meanwhile would be getting a military dressing down by our
aunt’s husband, “Young man, you have nothing to say for yourself! It is your
future they are talking about! Don’t slouch! When I was your age I was taking
the responsibility for much of my family and paid for my own studies. I remember,
when I went to Greece in 1952…”
Lunch over, the whole menagerie would disperse to find,
quite literally, their places in the sun. Those whose rooms got sunlight went
straight to warmed quilts. Those, whose rooms didn’t, would tarry, linger and
delay, with perhaps a cup of coffee, in a chair that had already been dragged
around the lawns and verandahs in determined pursuit of sunny spots for half
the day.
In the sun it became increasingly hard to move. Through
half-closed eye lashes we could see the bare movement of the shadow of the
bottlebrush tree. A butterfly would flit past underlining the inertia of
everything else. The warmth would become hypnotic. Very soon mumbled
conversations about how sleepy rice could make you feel would die down.
Then the whole tableaux would find its fulfillment in a
gentle open-mouthed nap. A benign sun would fill that valley of ours, a little bowl amid the gently pretty Shivalik hills, with its slanting rays. With
Dadaji’s oiled skin shining a healthy red, Baba’s silver hair catching the
light, an orange cat curled up near Chacha’s green socks, ma’s banana-yellow
shawl, the family looked more than anything like a Dutch still-life oil
painting of a fruit bowl.
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