Life had been one long battle, with no compromises on the self-respect front, for Komal uncle, recalls Rooma Mehra in a nostalgic piece.
He was a warrior to the last

I could barely make out the words in the din of the band, drums, scuffle for food and the general commotion that accompanies traditional Indian weddings. "Incidentally, did you know that Komal Uncle finally died about three-and-a-half years ago?"

I had not known. We had missed his annual visits preceding Holi, with his bagful of sweet-scented gulal that he always prepared for us ever since the time we were little children. Genuine, unadulterated gulal that left no scarry reminders of a happy festival on protesting skins.

As little children, with self-centredness typical of the very young, we were always too engrossed in feeling the satiny-smoothness of Komal Uncle’s gulal as it gently sifted through our little fingers before it finally settled back like powdery mist back in the bag — to think that he might have enjoyed, once in a while, a pat of his own gulal on his old, wrinkled face. Komal Uncle’s face had always been old and wrinkled. So much so that we would, at times, joke conspiratorially among ourselves, whether he had ever been young.

His visits were looked forward to for yet another reason. Komal Uncle’s jhola was always full of miracles of all kinds. From the common cold, to receding hairlines, to chronic cases of diarrhoea. He had ready home-made remedies for all ills that befell the human body.

The only miracles he could not work were the ones that could make his amputated right arm grow back again, his legs walk and his ears hear again properly. He, however, never cared to inflict his "minor" problems on his "patients" of falling hair and drooping spirits. Nay, Komal Uncle never showed the drooping of the spirit. He only pulled up those of his more fortunate brethren.

The only time I saw anger in Komal Uncle’s time-worn myopic eyes was on his last visit, when he was not allotted his humble, long-awaited quarter by the DDA when he should have been. He was contemplating a visit to the then PM’s house and a dharna in protest.

God alone knows where under the benevolent blue skies he breathed his last.. but it was certainly not inside a tiny DDA quarter with Komal Enterprises written on the door.. because this incident dates back to too near the time of his death, as mentioned in passing at the wedding party.

Presumably, his end came in one of the dharamshalas or temples he had spent his long hard life in. Unless, of course, he had relented at his final hour of sunset to accept an offer of a bed in some well-wisher’s house. Faint hope though, knowing him.

No, there was nothing komal about the world’s treatment of Komal. And there was nothing komal about his tenacity for survival against all odds. Life had been one long battle, with no compromises on the self-respect front, no stooping to beg for assistance for this limping padyatri who scorned any offer of a crutch.

But yes, the gulal he brought for us every year had indeed been komal and so was his concern for the receding hairlines, common colds, common depressions and chronic stomach problems of his acquaintances. Remedies were spontaneously handed out (after much laboured listening) with the same generosity as the gulal, which always came with an accompanying bottle of sweet home-made sharbat which went by the name of "a little something for the children".

I wondered, who had bagged, ultimately, his only long-cherished dream of a four-walled living quarter all his own. And I wondered at the casualness of the finality of the words intimating the death of one of life’s true warriors.