by Sucharita Ray

Created on: August 15, 2009

Aunt Prema was one of Mamai, my paternal grandmother's closest friends. She also happened to come from an Indian royal family. Mamai had taught me to address Aunt Prema as Princess, a title the latter always cringed at and which I later learnt she truly held before the abolition of the Indian Privy Purse and royal titles. They had known each other since childhood and even after half a century, they never failed to bring out the little girl in the other.

Subhadra too was one of Mamai's closest friends but in a very different way. She had been Mamai's maid for as long as I can remember. They shared an unspoken understanding that develops between an employee and her employer after many years of faithful service. I also suspect old age, widowhood and the wounds of life had brought them even closer.

I can't remember Subhadra actually ever working at our place. Yes, she would at times make Mamai's bed, prepare a betel leaf and even occasionally fold her clothes but she never scrubbed, cleaned or cooked like the other maids in the house. However, what she did most of the time was blabber this preposterous story of being an aristocratic lady who had never even poured herself a glass of water till the 1947 Partition reduced her to destitution.

Of course, even at a very young age I had heard horror tales of the Partition and the subsequent bloody mayhem on both sides of the border, including those involving the extended family. However, never had I or anyone else around heard a story of such deprivation and it sounded extremely implausible.

Moreover, I had at times seen Subhadra do dishes at a neighbor's and my young mind couldn't envisage that frail woman in the tattered sari on her haunches scrubbing hard at another family's dirty dishes as an elegant wealthy lady. People used to incessantly taunt her and call her names. In fact, I had even caught Ma in a foul mood snap at Subhadra and call her a liar.

One afternoon, a month or so after my sixth birthday, I returned from school to find Ma decked in fancy silk and the aroma of the special three layered pudding the signs of a guest for lunch. I was told that Princess was coming for lunch. As I could make out from Mamai and Ma's conversation, this was extremely uncharacteristic of Princess she never paid anyone a visit before late afternoon. To add to Mamai's tensions, a visibly uncomfortable Subhadra declared she was going home early on grounds of feeling unwell. Ma rightly pointed out that she'd feel even

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>