2020 - In Retrospect

For me personally the notable event of the year was... Guess what? No, not Covid. Not the Work-From-Home concept. No, not the onset of online purchases; nor the film industry tending to take a backseat to Netflix, Prime Video, or Hotstar...

No more guessing. The year marked my 80 years of life on planet Earth. I recall vividly my grandfather’s words in his 1940 diary, on the 22 October leaf: “Meena delivered a male child; normal delivery; both doing well.”

Yes, I entered the world not to make a difference, but to join the teeming millions. Otherwise, thunderstorm, cloud burst, lightning or other elements would have announced my arrival to the world with Mahendra Kapoor’s soundtrack of the Bhagavat Gita lines: Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya, Glanir Bhavati Bharata, Abhyutthanam Adharmasya. Tadatmanam Srjamy Aham – whenever Dharma is in peril, I will manifest myself on this Earth.

On my 80th birthday my SFV Rudram-Chamakam group friends paid reverential visits to my house as Aunty and I called on my solitary senior member at his house to pay our respects. The group organized a special chant-session in my honour in which our learned Shri Muthuraman chanted with incredible ease Ayushya Suktam, Bhagya Suktam, Roga Nivarana Suktam, Navagraha Suktam, Shatamanan Bhavati slokam...At the end I checked if he was by chance the Veda Adhyayanam Asthana Vidwan to Sringeri Matam. What a wonderful flow.

Originally my sons and their families had planned to visit India to celebrate the event. But by then the old saying got slightly modified - Man Proposes, Covid Disposes.

Yes, Nature took its toll this year in the form of Covid, for reasons best known to it. Medical world braved it with a record-time invention of vaccines to combat. At last, relief seems in sight. Meanwhile I have declined two marriage invitations from Chennai in February and March, pending the vaccine shot.

As an aftermath, Work From Home is here to stay – if the thinking of the corporate sector is anything to go by. The business community lost no time in cashing in on it. We now have scores of WFH furniture, gadgets, and a host of ‘immunity’ products as well.

Online purchase, or home delivery, is another lifestyle change that is fast overtaking the conventional shopping method. Yes, just read a message that D’Mart too has started online service. The other day the boy at the vegetable shop told Aunty not to bother to come to shop physically but to order them over the phone. He unleashed a list of apartments in SFV who do so regularly. That has set Aunty thinking, but with her habitual apprehension - what if I get rotten tomatoes?

On physical shopping, Easyday has vacated and Shoppy Mart has flooded the allotted space with goods. We read mixed reactions about the latter’s quality of stock and price. A small-time vegetable vendor has pitched tent outside Oak gate for a few hours in the morning – seemed a contended family until Easyday disturbed his peace of mind with setting up business a few yards away, on Wednesdays and Saturdays with a 10% discount to Easyday card holders. Perhaps this reinstates the concept, Survival of the Fittest. Regardless, our own co-residents, Girish and Hemangi, have been having brisk sales of their organic products, for whom quality comes first.

With nowhere to go for a chat, and confined to homes, sedentary habits are fast gaining upper hand. To cash in on that, the likes of Netflix, Prime Video, or Hot Star, lose no time to come with up their own entertaining, gripping or time-pass short movies, or series, seasons, or episodes. Right now we are busy watching The Crown, with its good, bad and indifferent episodes. But full credit to the power-packed one-upmanship dialogues and the British humour.

A virtual general body meeting was held to ratify the election of new Managing Committee members to the Association. So far each MC team has left a mark of itself with one innovative measure or the other. The new MC has thus an onerous task ahead. We wish them all success.

Maid Gauri, A Model Mother

 

This story might seem a straight lift from one of Salim- Javed’s Bollywood movies of the 1960s with Nirupa Roy at the centrestage. It is not. It is a fact, and it is about Gauri (name changed), the domestic help in the apartment complex we stayed earlier.

As a lass, Gauri lived a simple rustic life helping her father in his tiny agricultural land in a remote village in Karnataka. Her mother tended a cow to supplement the family income. Gauri’s elder sister was married off, and had children. A contended family, altogether.

But that was not to be. Her sister fell ill seriously. The village apothecary couldn’t reassure her survival. Two growing children and a baby in arms, this shattered the son in law. He asked his father in law to give Gauri in marriage to him while his wife was still alive, so that she could rest in peace that her children would be in safe hands. And so Gauri got married to him.

INTERVAL

As fate would have it, Gauri’s sister recovered, rather rapidly, and became fit like a fiddle. But she understood Gauri’s predicament, and their lives went on without much bitterness. Gauri bore a girl and a boy for him and, while they were still attending school, she moved with them to Bangalore to eke out a living. Her husband would visit her occasionally.

She took up domestic help’s job in a few apartments in our complex. Her work as such may not be gold standard, nor will she sparkle the utensils as an ad for a cleaning liquid would, but her sincerity, honesty and reliability won the hearts of housewives. Thus it became clear, “Once Gauri, always Gauri,” in any house. Yes, she has been working in houses for ten, fifteen or more years without break.

Not just that. As though with a missionary zeal, residents began to count on Gauri for assisted-living seniors. She would help my friend Narasimhan (name changed) to take a shower, put on his clothes, and would take him for a slow-motion walk around the complex in the evenings, till the family moved to Chennai to be with their children.

And now? Yes, she helps my 87-year old friend Krishna Kumar (name changed) who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s. I have known KK as one of the most active persons while the going was good. He was at one time a trapeze artist in a circus, as he shared the information with me.

Years rolled. Now time to admit the daughter to college. Gauri was particular that her daughter should pursue engineering. Many advised that with her good marks, her daughter would easily get a ‘free’ seat under the OBC quota. But Gauri didn’t want the OBC stigma to be attached to her daughter while she pursued the course. She opted for the ‘payment’ seat – whatever might be the loan amount she might have to avail from a bank.

The girl came out in flying colours in Electronics and Communications, accepted a campus-interview offer, changed for a better one, yet another one. And now? She is all set to marry. The boy? An engineer too. Last week his entire family flew from Hyderabad for the engagement ceremony. If only Covid is a little accommodative, Aunty and I would attend the marriage slated in a 3- or 4-star hotel later this week.

Her son? Well, not everything works one’s way every time. He too pursued engineering. But is stuck with some papers. But the incurable optimist that Gauri is, she is confident he will clear them. And let’s hope he lives up to her expectations, lands up on a good job and gives his mother some years of well-deserved rest.