Pedigree
It was one of those days of ‘depression’, wonder why they call it that. The radio announced that this condition of depression over the Bay of Bengal was likely to last another day which meant that the rains that lashed the humid city of Madras and brought much needed relief to the populace from the previous evening would last another day at the very least. The streets were flooded; the drains were inundated and there was an unending drizzle.
Ananth was one of those diligent managers in an Indian arm of a British MNC – the kind for who work and life did not need any balancing. Work always took priority and he could make do with whatever life had to offer when work got over. If it rained and the streets were flooded, his office would send a jeep to haul him and others in, otherwise he rode his Rajdoot to work.
This was in the early 80s of the twentieth century – television was not an asset in everyone’s homes and children were comfortable watching the weekend black and white movie on TV at the affluent neighbour’s house; families still ate their dinners together and when the power went off as it did quite often, they all sat outside and played word-building or song-building depending upon who all got together and what time of the evening it was. His wife, Mala, was always busy rearing their three children – two sons, Venkat and Ganpat, and their little sister Kamu. The truant maid, Devi, was so busy running yarns of gossip across the neighbourhood homes that she often didn’t make it on time to do the chores. If a matinee idol had a new release, Devi would bunk.
On days such as this one, when it rained all day and schools declared a holiday, the children stayed indoors and played all kinds of games – carrom, chess, Ludo, cards, whatever took their fancy at that time. When they played, they would often accuse the winner of cheating in whichever game they played. This set off a general free-for-all and Mala would have to shriek to bring the house to order. For the next hour or so, peace would prevail, each child at their own corner of the house. Then they slowly came around to start the next game and the cycle continued.
Presently, the rain stopped. They had a little strip of concrete leading up from the gate to their door where they played their cricket with the other boys. Ganpat suggested that they had a little knock -around, up and down that concrete strip, for the rest of the garden was slushy. Kamu always played with them and always took first strike. Venkat tossed one up to her, she swung, missed it and the boys claimed she was bowled. She said she wasn’t ready; the boys prevailed and she went bawling to Mala. The boys were now left to themselves which was the whole idea. It wasn’t long before they quarreled again and in a fit of rage, Ganpat forgot about the pact to just gently pat the ball back to Venkat, went for a wild slog and top edged one. The top-edge would have gone straight up in the air for the wicket keeper to take it, if it was an open ground, but this skier just disappeared over their two-storeyed rented house of which they lived in the ground floor. The shock of losing a relatively new and fairly expensive ball, all of a rupee and twenty-five paise, was too much for the younger Ganpat to take. Venkat took this opportunity to chide Ganpat for not only a poorly executed stroke but for causing the ball to be lost forever.
It started drizzling again. Ganpat threw the bat down and disappeared over the side of the house. By the time Venkat came around and followed him, Ganpat had placed one leg on the window sill, a second on the plastic pipeline and before Venkat could say anything, Ganpat had climbed onto the sunshade.
Venkat rushed to the scene and whispered, “Dei, someone will see you…”.
“No one will know…”, hissed Ganpat for he had now climbed onto the parapet wall on the first floor.
Walking with his eyes firmly fixed on the goal, Ganpat was now onto a vertical down-take pipe. He had his fingers wrapped around the grimy and leaking pipe, and with this firm grip, he began to climb, his barefeet gripping the lower part of the pipe. He had seen the men climb coconut trees to bring the coconuts down and watched their technique. Swiftly and with a sure rhythm, he was making good progress. In virtually no time, he was onto the sunshade of the upper floor and with a little push with his arms, he was now onto the roof of the house, a good 12-15 metres from the ground level.
The roof did not have any side walls. It was grimy and slippery too and by now it was raining steadily. He spotted the pink rubber ball close to one of those drains at the roof and in one swift movement , he swooped on it and tossed it in the direction of where Venkat had been standing. He could hear the ball bounce, Venkat was obviously not where he should have been.
He now looked down; it seemed a long way down. But he had no time to think or waste at the top. He hopped down onto the sunshade which had a width of about 3-4 feet, grasped the down-take pipe again and slithered easily down to the first floor. It was now a matter of a minute or two to get back to the ground level.
“Dei, Dei, Dei….” It was Seetha Paati, the landlady who lived on the first floor of the house. “Where are you coming from ?”, she shouted, walking briskly towards the back of her house where the down-take pipe was.
Ganpat now had his heart in his mouth. Seetha Paati would tell his mother about it, and his mother always thought of him as a good boy. It would impair his image in the neighbourhood too. But there was no time to waste. He leaped over the parapet wall onto the sunshade and had just placed his feet in those slots provided by the bathroom ventilator when he looked around and saw his mother, Mala, waiting below him.
“Amma…”, he began to weep, hoping for anticipatory bail.
She watched him place his feet on the grill on their bedroom window and then finally he was back on the ground, thoroughly drenched in the rain.
He expected a swift, solid palm planted on his cheek; but what came out instead was a hand that pulled him towards his mother. She hugged him and was weeping. The boy began to cry louder, clearly feeling triumphant that the ball had been retrieved without so much as a spanking.
Seetha Paati was now leaning over the wall and watching the scene, holding her umbrella. “What sort of a boy did I take him for ? Thought he was a good boy… his limbs would have been smashed to bits if he had slipped anywhere. Besides, the wall adjoining the pipe has his feet marks all over it…” So, that was it, Paati wasn’t really concerned about him, thought Ganpat, she wanted his mother to know about the wall.
Amma took him inside the house, gave his hair a nice rub with a fresh towel, changed his clothes and then began to weep again. Ganpat couldn’t understand why she was weeping, so he offered an explanation. “Venkat bounced the ball this high”, he began pointing to his left shoulder. Amma seemed to be smiling now, but she got up, bolted the door from inside and announced, “Stay where you are, until Appa comes back”.
Ananth did not normally return before 8 pm. He would normally get back, have a bath, change into a white ‘veshti’, spray some talcum powder on himself, and then slump into his usual armchair. That was his chair; if anyone else was sitting there, they would hop out and offer it to him. Mala would then bring him a cup of hot coffee and start narrating about the day’s events. It would often be about the maid and how she did not turn up that day. Sometimes she would tell him about the letters received that day or even about theft in the neighbourhood. Ananth would sip his coffee, wait for her to finish, and then say, “shall we eat ? Hungry now..” and then the family would run around to fetch the dinner plates, glasses, water, dishes, and everything that they needed from the kitchen to the floor where they squatted and ate together. Ananth usually finished way ahead of everyone else and Ganpat would try hard to match his father’s speed.
On rainy days such as these, Ananth usually got back home much later. The office-jeep had to traverse water-logged streets and slowly make its way across the city. There was no way he was going to make it back before 10 pm, or so Ganpat hoped. Then Amma would not be able to narrate about the events of the day before the kids’ bedtime and that would mean ‘Escape !’
It was barely 7 in the evening, when the wicket gate made a creaking sound. “Appa’s home” shrieked Kamu as she made a dash for the gate. “What ?! Appa ? Back so early ?” asked Ganpat, trying to sound very casual. Ananth walked in, ruffled Ganpat’s hair and asked “Didn’t go out to play with your friends ?”.
“No”, volunteered Kamu, “Do you know what he did?” Ganpat gave her a stern hard look.
“Why, what happened?” asked Ananth
“He threw the carrom coins around after losing to Venkat”, she lied
“Oh, the usual” said Ananth, “you must learn to take winning or losing in your stride”. He took his towel from the clothesline and disappeared into the bathroom.
Ananth got dressed, switched on the gramophone and placed the disc with his favourite Sivaji Ganesan number on it and began to hum the tune even as the song came on. Amma got busy with her kitchen work and Ganpat called Venkat to a game of chess. Dinner was served, they ate and Ganpat feigned being extremely sleepy immediately thereafter. He went to bed but was anxiously waiting for the evening to pass off peacefully.
He woke up the next morning, to find Ananth already getting ready to leave for work. “Ganpat, come here”, he said sternly as he saw Ganpat trying to sneak into the bathroom. “You didn’t tell me about your heroics yesterday”.
Ganpat went silent. “So, Amma did tell Appa about it last night”, he thought.
“Now look here Ganpat”, said Ananth, ”Before you do anything, first think through it. If you’ve done something wrong, first tell Amma and then Appa, never hide anything from your parents. What are we going to do ? If we feel you did the right thing, we are going to encourage you to improve upon it. If you didn’t do the right thing, you yourselves know you shouldn’t do it again, don’t you ?” He said. With that, he patted Ganpat on his shoulder, picked up his briefcase and climbed onto his Rajdoot.
In life thereafter, if Ganpat thought there was something which if he did his parents would not approve of, he never even tried it.
Years rolled by, Ganpat got married to Rukku and they now had two daughters, Syama and Preethi.
Ananth was now retired and in his seventies. One day, while Ananth was trying to fetch something from the top shelf of his cupboard, he tripped and fell heavily on his side. Mala gave the ambulance a call and then called Ganpat to let him know. Scans revealed that Ananth had a hip fracture and would need to stay in a hospital for atleast a few days for his blood pressure to first get stabilized before attempting surgery on the hip. The Doctor had given him some pain-killers and asked him to try to sleep. Pain would not let him sleep.
Ganpat who was attending on him tried to humour him, “What were you trying to do, Appa? Why didn’t you call me and let me handle it? You know very well that I scaled a two-storey building once, don’t you?”
“What you did at 9, I had already done at the age of 7.”, replied Ananth calmly.
“What? you scaled a two-storeyed building ?”, asked Ganpat.
“Sort of…, this was a few days after India became independent”, said Ananth, “My cousins in the joint family were flying kites and it was great fun trying to cut the threads of the other kites and capturing theirs. One evening, there was this lovely rainbow coloured kite which belonged to one of the cousins that got cut off. It flew away and got stuck just over the street lamp at the corner of the street. The cousins turned and looked at me – I could climb trees faster than most. Without another word, I darted across the street and with a firm grip of my hands and feet around that lamppost, I climbed steadily and had almost reached the kite right at the top of the lamp. I don’t know what happened next but I woke up to find my mother weeping and hugging me and my uncle, mother’s brother, who was the Doctor, saying I had a providential escape from the grip of Yama, the God of death. Apparently, I had grabbed the electric wire and got thrown off the post from a height of over 10 feet. It’s been over 65 years since and I can remember it as if it was yesterday”.
The hip surgery went off well but Ananth had a tough time getting back to normal health thereafter. He could not follow his daily routine of walking 3-4 kms in the morning and that led to worsening of his diabetes. Ganpat decided to move them with him to Bangalore, to take better care of his parents.
As they drove back to Ganpat’s apartments from the airport, Ananth pointed something out to Mala and Ganpat. “Isn’t that Rukku ? What is she doing there?”
Ganpat turned in the direction to which Ananth was pointing and found his wife Rukku looking up somewhere. He stopped the car near the entrance, leaned out and asked her what was going on.
“It’s Preethi”, she said with a tremor in her voice, bordering on breaking down, “look at what she’s doing”.
Ganpat parked the car quickly and Ananth got out leaning on his walking stick. They saw Ganpat’s younger daughter on a down-take pipe, close to the balcony of the second floor and leaning across to retrieve a balloon that had was stuck between the balcony and the sunshade. A crowd of her friends, some other residents of the Apartment and the Security Guard had gathered below her watching the fun.
“Don’t worry ma”, said Ananth to Rukku. Then, winking at Ganpat, he said “she’s got pedigree”.
Sure enough, the balloon soon broke free and they all watched it fly way over the compound wall.
