Padma

Padma was no girl..and for a long time i wondered why he was given a girl"s name....or whether i heard right.....It only struck my tube light brain very much later that his real name might have been padmanabham..or ..padmakar...or padmabhushan...and padma might be a pet name...I still am not sure....

I don"t remember when i saw him for the first time....As kids, we--meaning my sisters and bro and cousins-- used to visit grandpa in Bandar,,,and knew Padma was always there...In the opposite house....It was a big, handsome one storied house, standing amidst a neatly kept front yard...A beautiful NOORU VARAHALU, and RAMABANAM trees used to bloom profusely,..one at the portico and one at the side gates..There might have been one or two mandatory (for a coastal town) coconuts too... I don"t particularly remember...

Padma always sat on a bench in the front veranda closed on three sides....except in too hot days of summer...placid and silent....sometimes he was seen helping his mother in her chores...Always dressed in khaki half pants like a school boy..In fact i have never seen him in anything else...Nothing really seemed to be wrong with him at the first glance...He was already a quite grown up man when we were kids... Of medium height, and well built,perhaps he walked with a clumsy gait....Could not talk properly, i think that was the trouble with him,..and on second thoughts,he would appear slow....It is no wonder,i feel since a proverb goes in Bandar that it is a town with a temple in every street and an odd cap at every house...With me in our house and Padma at the opposite one i thought we fitted the bill rather admirably...

As we, kids ran around energetically ,up and down the stairs,we used to catch sight of him, from our balcony...and it seemed a shame to us,that he should be sitting about so silent instead of playing....Somehow , with the unerring instinct of a child we recognized the kid in him...Standing in the balcony we gestured to him ,often inviting him to join in...But he never was allowed to go outside and we could not go inside, since his family somehow never were too familiar. He stayed with a widowed mother and a brother. There was little interaction with the neighbours , limited only to attending just important functions like a marriage... though ,a married daughter of the family would come in once or twice for women"s parties...

Our communication with Padma was restricted to gestures only...Here from the balcony, we saluted...Padma took his time to reciprocate...He would watch us for sometime and slowly saluted...Then we would do a namasthe...He would namasthe..we would wave and he would wave...Then we went away laughing..Padma never seemed as if he ever laughed or even enjoyed being with us.....He continued to sit or potter about as calmly as before...This ritual would follow every time we saw him,though we had to be a bit surreptitious about it...For,we knew with an uncanny knack of survival, ,that before a childlike padma,even we kids would be at a disadvantage,if the elders mistook us and suspected we were teasing him...

For years,this peculiar kind of friendship went on with us and Padma.. just these greetings..nothing more ,nothing less..He seemed to have become a fixture ,synonymous with Bandar...Every time we got down from the rickshaws in front of our house,we looked for him,and he was always there,..placidly sitting on his bench...When i was in bandar for my high schooling, it was a part of my routine to wave(furtively) to him daily as i left for school..He waved back,or at times just watched ....

I grew up , went away from Bandar,did my college,got married and every time i went there Padma recognized and acknowledged the greeting,,as usual..slowly after a thorough inspection...But in course of time, my trips too became rare and the last time i stood and waved from the balcony,,Padma strangely kept staring at me without any response...It was as if he did not recognize me...I waved , gestured and repeatedly asked him if he was okay....He blankly kept staring at me and i had to give up and leave,as he still kept staring me with a unfathomable look...

Sometime later i heard that he passed away and was no more....I still keep remembering him and wonder how and why i do it...