The postman had spent the good part of an afternoon going from house to house in our narrow lanes looking for a Mrs Aili.
“Never heard of her,” said I, watching him go on his way. Suddenly it hit me like a tonne of bricks. The power of a misplaced full stop dawned on me—it had altered my name and gender. I chased him downhill and grabbed the telegram.
“Look what they’ve done to my name!” Peter Lugg, a friend, the legendary teacher at Woodstock School muttered. A telegram addressed to a Mr. Plugg had been aimlessly doing the rounds until the time a bright student cracked the code and steered it in Peter’s direction.
How can one forget Professor Misra, Head of the English Department in our college? He took me under his wing, showering me with love and affection. I am eternally grateful for this kindness. Especially when you consider that all I brought to the table was the self-assured cockiness of a young man who would rather have spent his waking hours peeking into Hakman’s Grand Hotel to try and see the cabaret.
While Panditji (for that is what we all called Misraji behind his back and out of hearing range) brought years of teaching experience coupled gently with the awareness that all of us were facing our own struggles. Who could teach John Milton’s Paradise Lost with such passion? In the blink of an eye, Satan became not just the leader of fallen angels but a hero, who stood up to God and His fawning angels. Given his unique gift of comparative literature, his couplets still resound in my ears and have stood me in good stead. Focusing on rhyme, by the time he reached the last few lines, he was so lost in the beat of the drum, he had forgotten his dentures—we hung to our desks on as he came perilously close to spitting them out.
Chance gives and takes away. It was by chance that I met Gitaram Joshi, who had retired from the Revenue Department. It was he who flung open the doors of the past, saying: “Misraji’s home,” he told me, “was the first port of call for those coming to study in Dehradun, especially those from Jaunsar-Bawar, for whom he always left his doors wide open.”
Whilst Gitaram was living there, a telegram arrived one day. It brought ill-tidings of Misraji’s father passing away in then-Allahabad.
I decided that I must go the extra mile: trying to be helpful; trying to make things easier by getting him a ticket on the train. I packed an overnight tiffin for his onward journey; packed his clothes into a bag; got a tonga and saw him off on the train, making sure that he was comfortably seated in the compartment.’
Done and dusted. At least that’s what Gitaram thought as he wended his way home and arrived to find Misraji was already back home. He was seated on his planter’s chair in the veranda and was sipping his chai .
Seeing the stunned look on his face, he reassured him saying: “Why go through with this farce? I never did get along with my father all my life, I had left the house as soon as I became my own man. Too late to start a new chapter?”
Life’s path often becomes the road of no return.
Ganesh Saili
Author, photographer, illustrator
sailiganesh@gmail.com