The screaming always attracted the attention of the passers-by, the vegetable vendors, and the clients at the diminutive medical store , which also served the purpose of our bus-stop.
"Nooooo, I dont want to go home. I waant to go to schooool."
Rolling in dust, throwing a terrible tantrum, the child would create a royal spectacle , the moment the school bus left, with prim and proper school children, dressed in starched whites, hairs combed slickly back, smelling of talcum and anticipation, carrying fragrant tiffins, freshly covered books and notebooks in cool rucksacks. She would insist on dropping her siblings off to school, in their sky blue matador school van, with the name of their school painted on the side in large shiny black letters, would invariably try to sneak up aboard in her crumpled nightclothes, and would have to be restrained.
The bus would leave , in a cloud of dusty disappointment, and the sobs would start.
The impossible job of ferrying a kicking and screaming child from the bus stop to home was given to Anirrudh.He would hoist her on his shoulders, and she would traverse the rest of the path, wailing, pummeling his head, neck, shoulders, her tiny fists in his luxuriant hair.
That unruly brat would be your's truly, I am quite ashamed to admit.
Anirrudh bore the humiliation and embarrasment of it quite well, now that I come to think of it. All he would do was have a permanent grin,albiet sheepish, on his face.
Every summer, he would shave his head; a common custom in those parts, partly to beat the heat, partly to control lice growth. An added bonus of being a low-maintenance hair style.That summer, monsoon broke in a hailstorm. Thunderous black skies rained hailstones the size of laddoos that pierced every single leaf of the guava tree in the backyard, flattening standing crops, pummelling stray cattle and a dare devil Anirrudh who volunteered to fetch the clothes from the clothesline .A steep staircase led the way down from the living quarters to the courtyard.In his teens then, the poor guy went rolling down the numerous steps, coming to rest only at the bottom, battered and bruised, then running to take cover under the scant roof of the porch.
With total disregard to his injured state, he proceeded to gather as much hailstones as he could, in his tattered vest, on his way back up, for us kids to play with.The shaved head was full of ugly, red-blue blotches for the rest of the rainy season. His courage earned him my granny's fussing-over(put this sandal and turmeric paste on it , you takloo !) and our undying gratitude.
Anirrudh came to work in our home when he was a gawky teenager. He literally grew up with us. Making mud balls to learn counting and tables (poor man's counting frame), polishing shoes every evening(he would , in his assiduity , polish the soles even!!),cleaning the house, get the kitchen fires going, fetch water from well, groceries from the market, industry was his second name.
The day his namesake was instated the head of the state of an island nation-Mauritius ; was a day of immense pride for us. Only the surnames differed. The President was Anirrudh Jagannath.; and he was Anirrudh Panjiyara.
One of us ran to the well looking for him and gave him the news, in a fit of misplaced enthusiasm.
"Who?And what place is this morisas?"Panted Anirrudh while hefting up a huge bucket of water.
Splashing some on his face before wiping his hands on his yellowed dhoti, he said- "Chalo, hato"I have so much to do".
Summarily dismissing all island nations and their heads of states, in one breathless heave of a splashing bucket.
On another occasion, my brother was being bothered by a class bully; Anirrudh was sent post haste to the school play-ground to sort this guy out. He, in all his muscled rustic vigour,was able to wreak more havoc in the poor guy's heart than any school principal.All Anirrudh did was to whisper some rude threats into his ear. The boy never bothered anyone, ever again.
He would ferry hot lunch to us, at school, every afternoon, on his bicycle. Patiently waited for us to finish, helped us to wash up and then leave carrying the empty lunch boxes.This arrangement carried on for two long years. Once the youngest among us reached primary school, and we were considered old enough to carry our own tiffins, the practice was discontinued.One particular incident stands out in the memory as we waited the entire lunch break with rumbling tummies, and then going back to classes as the bell had sounded. Halfway through the class, sister(nun) called me away and asked me to' Go quickly, have tiffin and come back.' Apprehensive, I scanned the now-deserted corridor, to find a grinning Anirrudh and his trusty bicycle propped against the wall near the staff room, waiting for us three siblings with a large pot of soft, melt-in-the-mouth sondesh, fresh from kolkata, as my father had arrived that afternoon.
Those were the best sondeshes I ever had.
Anirrudh learnt Hindi quite early. Having abandoned the local dialect, made him a'pretender', but he couldn't care less. A fast learner, he learnt how to crank and coax the old ambassador to life, where other ,more 'qualified drivers' failed.
He had a penchant for mischief too. That we discovered by the by.
Slated to depart for the village one morning, by the early 6 am bus, Anirrudh was found concealed in the foliage of the date-palm tree at the gate, helping himself to the golden brown sweet dates, as late as1030hrs, much to the collective chagrin of the elders.
On another occasion, a ghost story with several(un-parliamentary)juicy bits was recounted blow by blow to my grandpa by my tell-tale brother.Upon enquiring as to the origin of the unsavoury story, a fat finger was pointed at the hapless Aniruddh.
Some days, he would go to watch a late night movie with his village pals, come back and sleep it off. In the morning, he could neither recollect the name of the movie, nor the plot, nor the lead actors.We would blame it on his thickheadedness, he would blame it on poor quality movies but in his heart he knew better than to invoke the wrath of my grandparents by recounting romantic stories to us 'pure' ones.
Anirrudh still lives in our ancestral village with his grandchildren. In the industrial boom of the 90s in Punjab, he made a daring journey to this far-flung state to earn enough money for his children. He was the first one in the village to have undertaken the trip.Thereby triggering an avalanche of migrant workers from our village. Always the dare-devil.
