For the Love of Swaraj

In the last year, a person of considerable peripheral significance in my life has been Mrs. Swaraj Sukhija. My landlady and all of 82, she is the coarse voiced, nitpicky, impatient old woman everyone always unsuccessfully avoids. I am the incumbent of the smaller of two bedrooms in her modest home at a relatively unflashy South Delhi neighborhood. It has been about ten months now. My friend Ananya is therefore right when she says that if I were a virile hundred year old man and Mrs. Sukhija a bit more adventurous, we could have maybe had a baby together.

 You would most likely be endeared by ‘aunty’ (she prefers that to dadi and I learnt that late) the first few times you met her. Old people, little children and dogs have that essential likeability about them – they can be vulnerable even when they use their most audacious tones. Besides, dadi makes a really great opening joke. When you tell her your name, she will tell you hers and add with a twinkle “Bhai mere liye to pura deshh lada tha”. And so you and everyone around (mostly me and Devi our simpleton Gorkha house help) will look at her warmly and gush.

 Given her non-convent educated, non-army background, Mrs Sukhija would I’d think  qualify as a reasonably forward thinking person. She only minorly winces at the sight of “one piece dresses” on Simran (her 18 year old granddaughter who occasionally visits) and if I’m in a kurta(soon after work, feel happy MOM), will look at me like I’m the bloody behenji and say “theek hai! aap bhi pehena karo”

 She likes to keep abreast with the news, has a lot to say about corruption (Ramdev nerd) and even has her very own theory about SABSE ZYAAADA poverty in Tamil Nadu.( She lived there for 3 whole months sometime in the 60’s when her husband was training there. Incidentally, I’m Tamillian too) But that aside, Mrs Sukhija is really a very decent woman – she is often generous and loving, asks about my day a lot, and is most unlike the calculative, scheming gorgons most Delhi land ladies tend to be. So when I say now that I want to run-away and scream, it’s probably because I am being a stone hearted, vitriolic bitch.

 I’ve always been of the belief that all there is an underlying karmic purpose behind every relation we are ever caused to make in our lives. At a time like now then (little to do work-wise, going over dadi’s life stories much more, and reading a lot of Eckhart Tolle) I tend to think of why the Universe ever had us acquainted. What could possibly be the spiritual take back from hearing about the parathas at Moolthal(someplace near Karnal) EVERYDAY at breakfast (while we eat parathas) or her pet Pomeranian “Ginny” from a thousand years ago, each time the neighbor’s dog has a mad barking fit.

 Mrs Sukhija for all her humor and nicety seems to me like someone who has lost all fascination for life as it transpires in the now. The stories she tells me are the memorable bits of a larger chronicle that once was. As she moved through life as daughter, teacher, wife and mother she always had something to ‘do’ and ‘be’. But I suppose most 82 year olds lack the wherewithal to ‘do’ and ‘be’ very much. To her, her story ended 5 years ago, with the passing away of her husband – ever since, nothing has felt very relevant.

I suppose then, that we make the basic error in seeking our identities from the external circumstances of our lives, and the various roles we play. We therein disregard their inherent impermanence, and often find ourselves disillusioned if there is a crisis whilst we try to create yet another such ‘identity’.

In a book I read once it said “In the true order of things one does not do something in order to be happy, but one is happy and hence does something.” I wish I will still remember that when im 82.

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~ by Uthara on June 5, 2011.