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I had gone to the house of my childhood friend, Suma. I had barely stepped inside when Suma’s daughter Pranathi’s friend Priyanka, without even noticing the two of us, went on angrily,
“How arrogant you are! When you come to our house, you run around everywhere… Do I ever say anything? Just because we belong to a higher caste, have we ever treated you that way…?”
Pranathi followed her, pleading, “No, dear… please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t like it. If you can’t understand even this much as a friend, then what meaning does our friendship have? Where are high and low, castes and communities now? Why are you behaving like this?”
Unable to pacify her, she finally gave up and went to her room crying.
When I was about to go towards her room, Suma stopped me.
I looked at her in surprise.
She sat beside me and said, “You know about my daughter, don’t you? No one is allowed to use her clothes, earrings, necklace, plate or tumbler. No one can even sit on her bed. She doesn’t like it if someone does… and immediately she will remove it and spread another bedsheet. All this is something she has inherited from her father.”
I said, “Fine… there’s nothing wrong in that, is there? Is this the reason for Priyanka’s anger and her own unhappiness?”
“Yes. When Priyanka comes, she wants to sit on the bed and talk. If she sees my daughter’s new clothes, she has this urge to say, ‘Give them to me once.’ A couple of times, my daughter has given them to her. But when Priyanka returned them, she said she didn’t want them anymore. Today, my daughter had spread a brand-new bedsheet and made the bed look nice. Priyanka came and directly sat on it. That was enough for my daughter to get angry and tell her to sit on the other bed.
“Priyanka got angry. This happens quite often. I have always been the one going between the two of them and making peace. Even after they came to college, it has continued. They have been together since LKG. Thirteen years of the same story. This time, I feel their friendship itself is going to end. I am tired of putting myself between the two of them and trying to join and mend their friendship.”
She let out a deep sigh.
In that sigh, a track from my own memories appeared, and along it came a bogie, dhadak… dhadak…
This Suma had been my friend right from the first standard. Whenever she came to our house, she had to remain in the courtyard. They had made a place there to sit by laying stone slabs. A platform had been built between two trees using a mixture of mud and cow dung. Whenever she came, the two of us were not allowed to sit on the same platform.
Even if I took her notes, or she used my books and brought them back, or if she brought flowers or fruits, they had to be sprinkled with theertha before being taken inside. Food cooked at her house could neither be brought nor served in our house. Even if I had to give her some snack or coffee, it had to be served in separate plates and tumblers.
Yet, not even for a single day did she feel bad about it or become angry.
As my bogie was passing before my eyes, Suma said, “Hey… you look like you’ve gone somewhere far away… Here, I’ve brought onion pakodas and tea, since I know you like them. Let’s eat and talk.”
“Nothing… Just remembered some old things… that’s all,” I said.
“Oh… I was thinking about the same thing while making the pakodas, you know? When you used to come to our house, the words my father said to you, without even letting you enter beyond the jagali and making you stand in the courtyard, are still ringing in my ears…
“You had asked, ‘What is this? You think it’s only in our house that they do this…? You people do the same thing, don’t you?’” she said, laughing as she spoke.
“Yes, I remember that too,” I said. “Your father used to tell me, ‘The Bhoota Mancha and bhandara in our house… if you people come inside and something becomes apachara, we are the ones who will have to suffer for it. Children nowadays have no madi-mailige… and if you tell them, they don’t even understand.’ And then he would turn to you and say, ‘Suma, look, your friend has come. Go and get her a bonda (tender coconut),’ and treat me with such hospitality.”
After I went home, I too had to go around to the backyard, bathe and then enter the house.
If we went together to watch a movie, she had to bathe and enter her house, and I had to do the same at mine. Whenever we wanted to sit and chat, we would take refuge on the platforms outside either her house or ours. We never felt any sense of inferiority.
We shared many such memories.
Suma said, “You know, whenever I see my daughter and her friend, our childhood friendship keeps coming back to me every day. You know? From then until today, caste practices never brought any deficiency into our friendship. I adjusted to the customs and traditions of your family, and you adjusted to ours. None of that exists in our minds anymore, does it?
“Now we are modern… sophisticated… broad-minded… We have risen above everything… They say all this with their mouths, saying they aren’t people with a cheap mentality like yours… But look, their minds are still narrow.”
By then, my husband had come to pick me up…
By Veena Shanbhogue
Translation and Preservation by Sumanth Shanbhogue for Shanbhogue Publications
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