Prabhu

Deepa writes to say that she was born in the ACC Hospital. Was surprised to learn that. Well, I guess, while WE were the devout Muslims, SHE was the one born in Mecca. Datha also called yesterday to let me know that most of the Saint Ambrose and Mount Carmel fraternity were in or around Hyderabad or Cochin. Hope we get to meet one another. Back to Wadi now. I plan to go back a little in time in this post and talk again of the late 60s and early 70s. While we were at the Irani building premises of the school, in the second and third standards, we had a boy called Prabhu (pronounced Parbu – in true Wadi style) in our class. Prabhu was tall for his age and I guess quite a bit older than all of us in the class. Also unlike others, who came from ACC colony or Railway Colony, he came from Tanda. He belonged to the Lambadas. He, like most boys of his age liked to imitate the filmstars of those age and times. He wore tight pants and sunglasses. Being older he was a bully. He used to harass us kids. But it wasn’t the done thing to report these harassments to the teacher. We had to deal with it ourselves in a manly way. When I reported this problem at home, my mother wrote out a note to out a note to our class teacher saying “please ask Prabhu not to trouble Ramdas”. Since it would have meant that I was seeking outside help to deal with the problem and since I thought that the note should have read …..”please tell….rather than …….”please ask…..”, I did not actually deliver it to the teacher but threw the note into a marsh on the eastern side of Irani building. Prabhu was part hero part villain till we were in third standard. I remember praying that I be rid of him. One day when we went to school we heard that Prabhu had died! We went in a line from the school, accompanied by the teacher to his house in Tanda. He was lying on the floor in the school uniform, which consisted of green pants and lemon yellow shirt – which, considering their economic conditions was the only decent dress he had. His father was a drunkard and his mother sold milk for a living. He had on the sunglasses too and lying on the floor lifeless, he looked much smaller than us. Death has a way of shrinking people physically. We kids, seven and eight years old, didn’t really know what death meant, But we knew Parbu wouldn’t be coming to school any longer. We felt a curious admixture of grief and relief.

My son Kartik, who is now of the same age, was yesterday talking to me about a classmate of his. He said, “Vedant’s dad died a few years back in Malaysia in a road accident. He was driving a Scorpio. Vedant lost both a good car and a dad”. It seemed a curious viewpoint, equating a dad with a car. But possibly that’s how kids think. The place things more in perspective. Possibly that’s how we thought about Prabhu too.