A cuckoo’s urgent screech snaps at me. It is the doorbell. Amma goes to get the door and I inwardly groan having to change. I had just returned from another grueling day at senior high school. There is nothing I wished more, but some peace. She unbolts the door and lets in someone whom I do not see. A male voice greets her and she shows him to the chair in the visiting room.
We live in a homey old quarters built for government staff. It is undoubtedly a cozy place to live, but the house had aged, ungracefully. There is always a threat ceiling blocks falling down over your heads when you least expect it. Other than the looming threat of surprise death, it is a great place to live. We get fresh coats of painting and maintenance works done by the government occasionally. Life is good.
I hear them exchange pleasantries, and I credit myself for pulling our curtains close in the nick of time. Now everything inside the house is shielded from his line of sight. Myself included. There is a standing pact between me and Amma – not to make me appear in front of people, until absolutely necessary. But as my mom went in to prepare tea, she called me out by name to show myself. Annoyed with her disregard for the pact, I came out of my hole.
The only soul in the house with a mutinous excitement to meet the visitor was our maid. It was her greatest joy to meet people, giggle at them and then to herself. I stalled at our living room contemplating and then decide to stick out my head as welcoming gesture. My impulsive maid joins me in the act, giving a jolt to the visitor in all likelihood. What he sees are two disjoint heads hovering over the curtains parted in the middle. As if he ordered, ‘one ecstatic and one skeptical head’ with his tea. To his credit, a smile broke on his large face shrouded with thick unruly hair and beard all over.
The minute he smiled, mine vanished quicker than what was considered polite. Ever since my childhood, I had been wary of men with beards. I took them all for crooks. Our maid on the other hand, derived some sort of absolute joy watching him, undeterred by his large proportions. The man snacking on banana fries and tea had come with a definite intention – to finish something we had started in our last life. He is my Guru who had come for me. The only difference is he knew me, I didn’t.