Back To Normal
Manojendu Choudhury
11 December 2007, 20:31The minute hand had crept to six and the hour hand had crossed nine half an hour back, yet there was no sign of Tina.
“Damn the woman!”, Jaya exclaimed under her breath. The clock was new, bought last week, a rare gift from her husband Souvik. But now, fervently looking at it, she had to exercise extreme control over her desperate urge to rip it apart. It was the second day in succession that Tina had failed to appear, nor was there any news of her teenager daughter, Rinky, who worked as a daytime servant at their neighbour’s place. They were not answering the mobile number that Tina had given her, the mobile belonged to Tina’s son.
Souvik was about to come out of the bath, the whizzing sound of the shower had just stopped, and his humming of the latest hit number had ceased as he was scrubbing his head vigorously. Twelve years of married life hammer in the small nuggets of your spouse’s daily habits into your subconscious, and Jaya instinctively pictured her husband coming out of the bath in a rush, with a towel round his waist, shouting for his socks as he rummaged through the pile, swallowing whatever was on the table in lieu of breakfast, running out to catch the bus to his office.
Yesterday Souvik had grudgingly stayed at home for half of the day to take care of Nantu, earning his boss’s wrath in the process. But Jaya had to be present at the meeting yesterday morning; it wasn’t everyday the Chairman came to meet the junior scientists in their labs. She had managed to sneak out of the lunch party with the Chairman, enabling Souvik to assuage his boss by showing up, even if for only half of the day. But Souvik was not in a position to take another half day off again, his boss would blow a fuse. People with old mindsets equated presence in office with professional output, and no amount of modern management training could rid them off their long held, mostly misplaced, ideologies.
Jaya reached for the telephone diary. Rummaging through the pages for the number of the nearby creche, she braved herself for the impending unpleasant talk with the supervisor who would not be very willing to take care of Nantu for the day. Such ‘temporary cases’ upset their daily rhythm. Nantu was Jaya’s younger son, three years old, who normally stayed at home with the widowed middle aged babysitter Tina who, in addition to taking care of the young boy during the day, also took care of their household when the couple were away at work.
The arrangement was convenient as Jaya’s elder son, nine year old Biltu, could also be taken care of by Tina after his return from school in the afternoon. But on such days when Tina didn’t materialize at their door at nine, the problem of taking care of Nantu reared its ugly head. Biltu was old enough to stay with their friendly neighbour next door, but Nantu was too young and needed to be fussed over. That creche nearby was the only feasible solution.
The supervisor of the creche was expectantly tart in her exchange with Jaya as she explained that they entertain such ‘temporary cases’ only because they expect such kids to get admitted to their day-care centre on a permanent basis in the near future. Jaya pleaded with the stern lady to consider her special request, managed to convince her, prepared Nantu for the day, carried him to the creche, and reached her office an hour late. Wondering if she should really consider putting Nantu as well as Biltu in the creche permanently, she immersed herself in her research experiment.
When Jaya returned home Souvik had already brought Nantu home. Their neighbour Ravi Kumar was having a chat with Souvik. As Jaya entered, she sensed a grim atmosphere in the room. Ravi cleared his throat, then haltingly told Jaya that while coming in on the suburban train he had noticed that the few hundred shanties where Tina and her family lived had been razed to the ground.
Jaya froze as the enormity of the situation slowly gripped her. A few months back Tina had animatedly told her that they had been ordered to relocate, but the slum-dwellers were demanding the government fulfill the promise of constructing houses for people who had been staying there for more than a decade, and Tina’s family were in this category. However, like all government proposals, this one was taking too long to implement. Skeptics were saying that there never existed any such plans as the cost was too much for the government to bear. Jaya had slowly got used to the stalemate between the slum-dwellers and the municipal officers, believing that nothing ever gets done in these issues and life goes on.
But now, suddenly, Jaya felt vulnerable, as if a vital piece of security and stability had been snatched from her life. What tugged at her heart was not sympathy for a servant who belonged to a lesser strata of the society, but helplessness. A vital part of her household didn’t have the security of a home and was perhaps out wandering the streets, looking for one of the most basic needs that so many took for granted, a roof over their heads.
Compounding her confusion was the nagging guilt deep inside that she, being a part of the higher echelons of the society, had to bear some responsibility in this brutal act of demolition. Ultimately, the cities seem designed to provide comfort and a high quality of life to the educated and cultured class. The ones who live illegally or semi-legally in the slums did not feature in the grand scheme of things and were supposed to scuttle around and bear the brunt of development.
Souvik and Ravi planned to visit the neighbourhood of the razed shanties the next morning to make an attempt to locate Tina and her family. The grim evening passed on to a morose night with Souvik remarking a couple of times that people who had been provided with electrical and water connections were legitimate residents of the city and did not deserve this fate and it was the government’s responsibility to provide an alternate arrangement. These remarks did little to alleviate the mood of the household as both he and Jaya knew that ordinary citizens like themselves had no influence on the manner in which the city administration functioned.
The next morning Souvik and Ravi went early, and returned a few excruciating hours later. Jaya had been going about the daily chores in a strange absent minded melancholy. She didn’t feel the urge to reach her lab, but was pensively waiting for any news of Tina. As she heard the roar of the motorbike she ran to the door. A tired Souvik entered and plopped down heavily on the nearest chair. The last few hours had drained him off his natural exuberance.
Slowly he told Jaya that the displaced slum-dwellers had been scattered all around, at the roadsides and the playing grounds as well as the parking lots of the nearby buildings, but were being hounded off by the local police. Their homes had been completely razed to the ground, with many of their meagre belongings being lost in the rubble. People had been surviving the last few days under the cold night sky. Some of them were trying to organize a mass march on the municipal corporation’s office but were discouraged by the low numbers that were responding to their call.
In the whole melee of chaos and confusion of sufferings it had taken nearly two hours for Souvik locate Tina and her family in the confines of a parking lot of a nearby building. The owners of the apartments along with a few local heavyweights were abusing the lot who had taken shelter there. In no uncertain terms they were told to pack off from that spot within a few hours.
“It was really very strange,” Souvik muttered with his eyes focused beyond the hilltop visible through the window, “to stand there and listen to the humiliation that they were going through. The slum-dwellers considered me as an opponent, I being what I am. And the flat owners were giving me dirty looks too, as if I was to be blamed for their inconvenience. I couldn’t place myself anywhere in that battle.”
“What did Tina say?” Jaya asked timidly.
“She was dignified,” replied Souvik, “as much possible under the circumstances. Others were hankering for sympathy and attention, she just said she is trying to contact a cousin for some immediate shelter.”
“But those people will also be staying in such temporary shanties only,” Jaya remarked softly.
“Well, as long as their huts are not razed, they will manage, I suppose,” Souvik said.
“What else did she say?”
“Nothing much else.”
“What about about Rinky?”
“She was there, of course, taking care of their belongings. The son was also there, I forget his name.”
“Sushant.”
“Yes, he went off to arrange for some transport to his cousin’s place.”
“Did she tell anything about when she will come here?”
“She said tomorrow, if she manages to settle with her cousin.”
“Well, we don’t have any space here,” Jaya sighed.
“Nah, there isn’t any servant’s quarter here, and even if we can manage to let one person stay here, we can’t really adopt the whole family.”
Jaya silently moved away, getting ready for the day. “Did she say anything else?” she asked.
“She said she will come to morrow if she finds a place to stay,” Souvik replied. “But I don’t know………. Ravi was of great help. I had given up on searching for them, but he kept on asking people for Tina, until we found someone who knew them.”
Souvik went for his bath. He was already a few hours late for the office.
At the breakfast table Souvik remarked, “Rinky was very steadfast, she kept on saying that they will get their accommodation soon. Most others were baying for sympathy, but she was very dignified like her mother, never the one to give up, even in these desperate conditions.”
While going out of the door Souvik sighed, “The days when they are fifteen minutes late we feel our world has crumbled down, whereas, just look at it from their point of view, fifteen minutes seems such a kiddish thing, so small and insignificant.” Souvik went out of the door, to meet the ire of his boss.
Next morning at half past eight the door bell rang. Jaya ran to Souvik, who was brushing Nantu’s teeth, “Tina’s here!” In less than a minute with quick footsteps Tina entered the wash basin area, talking to Jaya all the while. She quickly washed her hand and took Nantu in her lap to finish the brushing process, cooing excitedly at the baby. Rinky was there with her. With a soft smile the mother and daughter duo narrated their tale to Jaya. They had found a temporary shelter for a few days, and were planning to rent a room for themselves until they got their promised house from the government. Jaya was surprised by their optimistic attitude towards the government. She decided that these people needed that piece of optimism to sail through the storms of their dismal existence.
For the next couple of days the mother-daughter duo arrived early, despite the fact that now they were staying further away and had to start their journey at least forty five minutes earlier than before. There was a new found sincerity in their attitude towards their employers. The simple act of Souvik and Ravi locating them and presenting themselves at their time of distress had earned their respect and loyalty.
A week later Tina informed them that the municipal office had promised to provide houses, but it will take a few months to complete the procedures, but their papers were supposedly moving amongst the various departments of the bureaucratic set up. They had already shifted to a rented room, which had a legal entity and was therefore safe form the demolisher’s wrath. Jaya had increased Tina’s wage by a couple of hundred of rupees to enable them pay the rent.
The next day there was no Tina at nine. Ten minutes later Rinky arrived at Ravi’s place, she popped her head inside Jaya’s door to let her know that her mother would arrive soon. At twenty five past nine, when Tina entered through the door, Jaya was screaming at her for being so late on a day when she was needed early in her lab.
Life was back to normal.
U r simply a man with a golden arm(OOOPS DADA WOULD BE JEALOUS), so better to say that MAN WITH A GOLDEN HAND.One thing that I m curious about is that, is this based on a true story??I mean some real life experience?
— TINTIN · Dec 13, 20:15 · #
Welll… the story conveys one inevitable aspect of middle class lives… On the one hand, one is deeply concerned but helpless, on the other, the need to get on with life!! Good work, Manojendu. :)
— Sarita · Dec 14, 22:12 · #