Sunday, April 21, 2002		Life Ties

Finding your own space
Taru Bahl

SANTOKH Singh was a lecturer of history. His wife died after giving birth to their second son. Had it not been for his parents who decided to take care of his boys, he would not have been able to work, weighed down as he was with grief. Once the children were older, he got them to join him. Staff accommodation was always comfortable, if not luxurious. He was a man of few needs. His driving ambition was to settle them in respectable jobs and he himself wanted to continue teaching for as long as he could.

When his elder son finished Class XII and could not make it to any of the competitive exams, there was pressure from the family to move to Delhi, where they could avail themselves of better education. The decision to severe ties with Solan was not easy. Santokh had spent all his life in the hills and the concrete barrenness of an impersonal, unfamiliar city seemed intimidating. However, he took the plunge to shape his children’s future. He used his savings to buy a two-bedroom DDA flat in a middle-class locality. He took up the smaller room, giving his sons the larger one. The boys adjusted to the demands of a bigger city and he found gainful employment with an educational institute close to his house.

The sons got married. The flat was small but they managed. Santokh moved to the drawing room and the boys took up one bedroom each. He would put out his folding cot last thing at night and clear it first thing in the morning so that the family was not put to inconvenience. The living room was their multi-purpose area for watching television, eating, entertaining and congregating at various times during the day. Since it would not be right to disturb either couple for going to the bathroom, he willingly opted to use the servant’s toilet adjacent to the tiny terrace. The elder son’s wife had brought with her a fancy television set with a video and a CD player. This found its way into their bedroom. The younger one was still struggling and could not afford to buy one. He made a subtle request and Santokh allowed him to shift the living-room television into his bedroom.

Santokh was a man of routine. He took his bath at the crack of dawn, then did his puja, followed by a walk-cum-shopping trip for the house. He tried not to get in the way of his daughters-in-law who remained busy organising meals and looking after their husbands before leaving for work. He organised his own breakfast of cornflakes and fruit, settling behind the newspaper, letting the younger lot be. By 8.30 everyone was out, boarding chartered buses for different directions. Santokh would then get ready and leave for his institute. He ate his lunch at the institute’s canteen, which offered meals on subsidised rates. He returned around 4 pm and after a short nap, caught up with his reading. When his son’s colleagues or friends visited, Santokh would politely greet them and make a discreet exit. He would quietly go down, take a walk or go to the temple. No one had ever asked him to leave. It was just that he felt he would be intruding if he stayed.

He soon became a grandfather. Seeing the little ones grow was a delight but it made him acutely conscious of the difficulty the family was having in managing their physical space. The boys were in mediocre jobs. They did get a house rent allowance but that was not enough to meet the expenditure of running independent establishments. The option of staying in the paternal house, even if it meant having less space, was more acceptable. Besides, the children did not really consider Santokh’s needs. He was single and a man of frugal needs. He was managing uncomplainingly, which is why the thought of making any alterations for him was never uppermost in their minds.

When the children started going to school, the sons pooled in money and converted the tiny balcony into a study. This gave the house a completely closed look. Santokh felt suffocated. The balcony was his lifeline. He was close to 70. He no longer went to the institute but took private tuitions in the community centre. He was now spending more time at home. His knees were giving trouble. It was difficult to go down frequently from their flat on the second floor. He often wandered around the house like a lost child, clutching his book or newspaper, finding a place to sit. Although he slept in the drawing room, he did not really have a corner of his own. There was a small suitcase which housed his puja books, clothes, toiletries and medicines. He used them and stacked them away, under the table, out of sight, conscious that the living room was meant to bring in guests and not to be littered with his paraphernalia.

Santokh had spent 17 years in the flat. He had seen his boys grow, get married and become fathers themselves. He had willingly and uncomplainingly adjusted all this while by putting their needs ahead of his own. They had never been rude or disrespectful towards him. He had nothing against them. He was only too conscious of the fact that they had a tough life to lead. They had dreams and ambitions and limited resources to back them. Given the circumstances, they had cared for him as well as they could. But he was getting older and was beginning to miss having a place of his own, even if it would be a matchbox-sized attic. A place where he could keep his things without the tension of putting them immediately away, where he could sit undisturbed for puja and a place where he could drift in and out of sleep. His tired weary body could no longer be pushed into following punishing routines. It had a rhythm of its own and he was tired of accommodating all the time.

The resentment began gnawing his insides. He became cranky and he did not like it one bit. This was not the way he had visualised his old age. How could he find a way out? One day reading a column on Vaastu and Feng Shui, he was struck by a piece on ‘harmonising personal spaces’. He took the initiative of calling up the newspaper with a request of being put through to the writer. He found a soothing female voice at the other end. He asked her what she meant by personal space. She said, "any corner in the house where you can be by yourself. A place where you are undisturbed and which can radiate positive energies, helping create that perfect body-mind-soul balance. A place where you can spend a few moments and get energised for the entire day." Santokh said with a heavy voice, "What if there is no such available space in the house ?" The woman at the other end, paused for a moment, perhaps, visualising such a scenario and then gently suggested, "Is there a park close to your house, one where you can go every day and spend some time, by yourself, maybe even nurture a corner and stake a silent claim over it ?" The idea appealed to Santokh and he thanked her before hanging up. Not much of a walker, whenever he had earlier gone down for a stroll it was always because he wanted to get out of his kids’ way, not because he relished the idea of walking. He now went to the park specifically with the intention of finding "his own corner". And there it was. A rusted bench under a gulmohar tree at the farthest end of the park. This became Santhokh’s sanctum sanctorum in the years to come. He would give the bench a fresh coat of paint twice a year, planting medicinal herbs and all season flowers around it, paying the gardener a token amount to keep the place watered and clean. In the mornings he took his newspaper and in the evenings his transistor. No one bothered him. The street urchins and walkers recognised the old man with a stoop who came unfailingly to the park, to enjoy his few hours of quietude. Santokh was a happier man. He could continue being the loving, adjusting father he always was and wanted to be. The day he had his silent stroke, he was on his bench in the park. He died peacefully, without discomfort or pain. There was a calm and serene expression on his face because he had managed to create his own space, a space which allowed him to forgive, to have no expectations and to keep all negative thoughts at bay.