Delhi days again

One of my favourite memories from my Delhi days in the 1990s was a young couple in their kitchen cubicle - the wife making rotis and curry after office and the husband keeping her company, talking to her in Hindi but keeping an eye out for the three young ladies in the adjoining room. I say room because that rented place in Katwaria Sarai belonging to a Jat gentleman -- who had a family and buffaloes living on the ground floor -- was the most rudimentary of architectural designs.  There were four rooms on the first floor with kitchens and washrooms adjoining them. The working ladies and the couple had their rooms adjoining each other, so they soon got friendly. The husband was a good singer and he would occasionally look at our room and sing "mere samnewali khidki mein ek chand ka tukda rehta hein (There is a piece of moon living in the window in front)".  I assumed he referred to my roommate who was pretty but later the couple told us that it was a tribute to all of us girls.

Whatever, the bond grew and by the time I left in less than an year's time, we had got so close that they looked dejected when they came to bid me farewell at the New Delhi railway station. Though I did not return to Delhi until a decade later, our correspondence continued and we developed a bond that was strengthened by our love for English literature and love and romance in the books we read and in life in general. I discussed my real and imaginary romances  - beginning with a knight in shining armour who rescued me from being pushed into the tracks by a desperate commuter trying to board the moving train at Chengannur where I alighted after a 3-day journey -- and my steady changes in life over inland mail in the initial years and by email and much later WhatsApp. Curiously, in those years I never knew her caste or political affiliations - it never really mattered unlike these days where people's differences are more out in the open.

Some time early this year, Seema told me her only child, who had chosen to become a professional singer, had found the love of his life - a singer herself. Though I initially agreed to go, I later told her I had a few other financial and travel commitments that would make it difficult. But when she sent me the wedding invite in October I decided to go, with ample encouragement from bro. V agreed though he wasnt really aware until much later that I had booked tickets. I decided to spend a day or two sightseeing in Jaipur to make the most of the one-week Delhi trip. I was somewhat apprehensive about sharing space with right-wing strangers in the Delhi hotel they had reserved for us but when she told me I would be sharing a room with her cousin Bobby who I knew from my Delhi stint and Seem herself, I was relieved.  

To be continued