*some names have been changed as
I haven’t been able to contact them for their permission
Parmeswar Das, was senior to my father in age yet they were
very close, almost like brothers; and he was also dad's mentor in many ways. He was
well-read, large, taller than my father, very fair and had a healthy pink glow
to his cherubic face. A wealthy timber merchant once, the affluence shrank away
with time. I feel the arrogance associated with affluence of the timber
merchants brought about a complacency; and the need to keep up with the Joneses
made sure there was no use of foresight to save up for the rainy day.
His wife, petite, wheatish, barely five foot tall, as fatless
as Parmeswar Das was large, ahead of her times with a wisdom to match, gave my
father a hundred rupees when he announced that he was leaving for Pune for his
new job. She had three sons. She stated to my dad that her eldest, Gautam,
would marry me. It was a verbal betrothal, but I had chosen a different partner
before I was marriageable. I had met Gautam when he was studying in the USA in
one of our summer vacations to Mirza, found him good looking, intelligent and
enjoyed interacting with him. I had developed a teen crush and casually fantasised that
our parents had engaged us secretly; and then shrugged off the possibility. At this point
of time I was unaware of the verbal promise that had undergone between my
father and Mrs Das. I sometimes get annoyed that my parents had not told me
about this pact. Things could have been so much different had I known.
One could do a lot with hundred rupees in 1970. It was an
enormous amount of money. I think my father’s salary was about four hundred
rupees when he joined NDA. My parents had academic and intellectual brilliance,
which has its advantages, but this was counterbalanced by their almost complete lack of foresight
and management skills. Therefore Mami, Dhiren Mama’s wife was surprised to see
them come to spend a lifetime packed with just a trunkful of stuff. Material
possessions took a back seat because they got all their “sansarik” satisfaction
from their academic verbal spars with each other and with their friends. My
father’s History and mother's Political Science educations, were potent subjects
for lively debates.
In all the bags that my mother owned, there would be some
coins. I would sometimes clean the bags and
remove the coins, but they would be back again the subsequent times. In their initial months in NDA, because of
their poor money management skills and the hangover from the Mohajan days (live
today, the money supply is endless), they would have spent the salary before
the month ended. So sometimes, they would require a rupee or two for grocery or something and the two of them would scourge every nook and corner to see if any
stray coins could be found. Most times one would be found in my mother’s purse, sometimes
it would be in one of the built-in almirahs where the coin might have slipped
out from my father’s pockets. Yes they were that bad.
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