Page 93 - Musings 2022

He shrugged. “It was a lonely place. Empty walls and empty hearts. My grandparents were

much too old to look after me and I was too old to care. Still, I had no friends and it was
extremely dull for the most part.”

“Except for Narayandev” she egged him on.
“Except for him, yes.” He submitted

“Tell me more about him”

“He had been the servant of the household for some 30 odd years. Started when my father was
just a boy. He was the definition of old-fashioned. I never saw someone as dedicated to his job

as he was. The cleaning and maintenance, the cooking and filling up water, all was done by
him alone. He was extremely strict when it came to using water.” He chuckled in nostalgia “A

single drop wasted would incur his terrible wrath. In those days, there was no water pipeline

or electric motor to pump water up to the house which meant that Narayandev had to fill up
and haul 15 brass pots full of water from the lake and up a 100m steep incline to the house,

thrice a day. Just looking at him doing all that work at 50 would make my joints ache at 15.
But he never complained once. That’s the true mark of a man, you know. Fulfilling his duty,

no matter the circumstances”
She nodded as if what she heard satisfied her immensely and that annoyed him. It made him

feel like a test subject, which he knew he sort of was, but still pretence was bliss.

“What was your relationship like with him?” she asked
They had discussed this before as well. Using his meek powers of concentration, he mustered

the monologue that he had delivered the last time. The recounting of his relationship with
Narayandev had been drawn out so much that at this point he wondered whether any of it was

even real or not.

“He was my only friend” he stated matter-of-factly “As close a friendship that can exist
between a 15-year-old boy and his 50-year-old servant. Narayandev didn’t have much family

of his own. No wife and no children. His widowed sister and her daughter lived in their
ancestral home outside the central city, in the bazaar. He didn’t have anyone to talk to and

neither did I and so we talked to each other.”

“What would you talk about?”
“Just regular stuff. He told me stories from his childhood, of how the city had changed. I would

tell him stuff from my school and my friends and the trivial tribulations that seem important to
a 15-year-old. It usually ended with him preaching me about getting a good education and

become a ‘big’ man”
“Every single time?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

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