aisa din nahi rahega

G dadu was a sweet-faced gentleman - tall, thin, with a careworn appearance. They were our neighbours in the place where we rented an apartment when I was in high school. In a locality with large prosperous-looking two or three story houses, theirs stood out as an oddly-shaped (to maximize the area within the scrap of trapezoidal land) little single story building (two small rooms and an even smaller kitchen area) that housed G dadu, his wife, mother and two children. G dadu's job was not very higly paid but - my mother would point out while talking about how much he valued education - his children always had new books for school and he never skimped on school supplies. Soon after we met them, conversation revealed that G dadu was related to my mother - he was a distant uncle. So although he wasn't that much older than my mother and his daughter was just two years ahead of me at school, he became "dadu".

In those days, dropping into a neighbour's house for an evening visit, without notice, was common practice. The doorbell would ring followed by exclamations of "look who's here!" and the hostess would hurry off to put on the tea kettle. If there were no presentable snacks at home, a servant or a child would be sent off with low whispers and a few discreetly folded rupees to the neighbourhood sweet & savory shop. At G dadu's house you were sure to be served a generous portion of freshly fried cauliflower-potato-peanut singaras and a few of the astounding variety of sweets (made with just milk, sugar, oil and a flavoring agent or two) from the shop right across the street. When G dadu retired, the snacks changed. "We don't buy snacks from the store anymore", they would say frankly, "we have to count our money carefully now." Tea would be accompanied by a bowl of puffed rice with chopped green chillies, onions, mustard oil and peanuts (a snack that I loved then and love now as much as the store bought kind). The welcome from G dadu's family was just as warm and the conversation, while we sat with feet folded up on their bed (since they didn't have a separate living room), was just as cosy. Times were clearly hard for them but, with some creativity and planning, they managed quite cheerfully. For example, one day they had some relatively formal guests who simply couldn't be served puffed rice and G dadu's mom was at her wit's end. Luckily, the guests had brought some soft sandesh as a gift. G dadu's mom rolled all of it into a ball, pulled out her flower, fish and conch sandesh molds, and served the guests their own sandesh in a variety of new, beautiful shapes.

Then things got really hard for G dadu. His wife had a stroke and lost all control of one side of her body. She couldn't walk, she could hardly talk. For the first time since we had known him, G dadu looked sad and depressed. Sipping on hot tea at our house, he would talk about his worries for his wife. My mother would sympathize. Then he would put down the tea cup and dish and suddenly perk up, "aisa din nahi rahega (times will not always be like this)!" and the old smile would again brighten his face. We moved from the area soon after and lost touch with them. But that's how I remember G dadu, and when I'm in the middle of some seemingly endless challenging time or one of my friends is, his words come to mind, and although I say something like "some day you will look back and be glad you are past this time", what is really at the back of my mind is "aisa din nahi rahega".