There are some places that get etched vividly in your memory for a lifetime, down to photographic details. They are almost like the old grainy picture that you pull out of that yellowing paper album stashed away gingerly in a secluded corner of the house, a place which rarely warrants a visit except for those odd days of the year when you are alone in the house with time at your hands and an ache in your heart.
One such indelible place is the dusty dingy stairway of my first school. Sitting hunched, resting my face against my elbows, alone, after school hours, watching silently and intently the rays of the setting sun stream in through the empty spaces of the school corridor against the paint peeled ochre walls of the long hallway, is my earliest ineffable memory.
I didn't know how long I had to wait. The school had begun to wear a dreary look. Having always seen the corridors swarming and swathing with children, the emptiness of that space brought on a sense of eerie calm and filled my thoughts with the fear of the impending visit of the shadowy monster who devoured children venturing out alone. Mom had narrated this story religiously at bedtime. Could she have been wrong all this while? Thirty years later, though my adult mind has discerned that the shadowy monster of mom's bedtime stories fame does not exists, the eeriness of calm empty spaces still makes the adult me break into a cold sweat.
The wait had seemed unending. It was almost sunset time as the little circles of sunlight filtering in had progressively become smaller in size. A banana and a gulab jamun lay untouched on the plate beside me, left there by the school janitor, in case I felt hungry. I had forgotten what hunger felt like. There wasn't a soul in sight and the only feelings that gripped me were the sporadic bouts of fear of being left alone for the night on the stairway alternating with that of being gobbled up by the shadowy monster.
Faint voices drifted into the open airy corridor, interjecting my nightmare. I thanked God for his small mercies, it meant there were people around. I tried to concentrate and hear intently, fighting hard to make sense of the muffled words that seemed to blur and jumble while making their way through the breezy stairway. While the words were a haze, the voices were raspy and had an uneven shrillness, rising and ebbing, suggestive of a nasty altercation.
I could recognize two of the voices. Sister Veronica, the school principal, with her mellifluous yet assertive voice was the one you couldn't mistake. The other angrier and louder one with a sense of urgency to it was the one I knew from the time I uttered my first syllable, my father's.
The voices became more distinct as I heard feet stomping to the principal's office that hid itself from the stairway by it's balustrade."She hasn't come to school today, I have informed you several times now, why don't you understand? , I could hear the principal's hurried and impatient voice. I know you are not telling me the truth, I want to see her just once. I promise I won't take her with me, my father's angry yet submissively endearing voice trailed.
I hadn't seen my father in months now and all of a sudden, there he was, at my school, to see me, fighting, demanding and finally ending up pleading and begging to a stubborn, almost stoic opponent, Sister Veronica.
My mother's instructions to the school authorities had been unfailingly clear - my father wasn't supposed to have access to me during school hours. My father, for whom, venturing into a fist fight with an opponent warranted little or no provocation, the incitement on refusal of permission to meet his daughter was grave. Yet, he tenuously held on to his sober and calm visage, struggling hard to not let the rage brewing inside remotely affect his chances of meeting his daughter.
My mother had been a nervous and trepid woman, living constantly under my father's shadow, raising neither temper nor voice despite living in perennial consternation, courtesy my father's whimsical and impetuous behavior, an inevitable consequence of his alcohol addiction. Notwithstanding his paternal love, my father had recklessly, on many occasions, taken me away for days without letting a soul know about my whereabouts, while my mother stayed awake through those harrowing lonely nights. To avoid being left in the lurch and insulate me from the idiosyncrasies of a man, whose intellect had been left subverted by his intoxication, my mother resorted to a desperate step, directing the school authorities to stonewall any requests from him to meet me.
Sister Veronica, therefore, on that day was merely attending to her Christian duties.
I sat still on the steps of the staircase, helpless, overhearing the acrimonious exchange of words. My father's anger had now transformed into despair that lent a very heart wrenching quality to the air. It seemed to reek of the smell of rotting flowers that had fallen off the plant that once bore them. I abhorred that smell.
The ability to fathom moral dilemmas is not one of the Forte's of a 5 year old, let alone confront one. I wanted to break free from the principal's instructions and run to hug my father. I wanted to shout my lungs out and call out, “Papa, I am here.” But my mother's tears and repeated pleas to always return home to her came in the way of my desire to rebel against the principal. I was at a loss to what my filial duties were. But the mind of a toddler gets befuddled in no time. Soon l was more scared of disobeying the principal than anything else. I decided to stay put on the staircase while hearing my father giving up his futile fight because, Davids beat Goliaths only in the stories.
Today, the adult in me is stronger and decidedly more adept in handling and confronting the dilemmas of the world. But that fated day, I sat alone, imagining the sun setting on the horizon, spreading a million hues, forlorn, unable to understand the ways of the world for the first time in my life, learnt to hide my tears from the world and cry alone.
That lesson in shedding lonely tears has been coming handy since.