How George Fell In Love With Damayanthi

‘Mary, can I have another cup of tea, please?’ George said as he walked into the kitchen where Mary was bustling around getting breakfast ready.

‘This is your second cup this morning’ she grumbled, putting on the water to boil. ‘You are not young anymore, remember? When was the last time you went for a walk?’

‘Oh, come on, luv…I retired just last week. A man is entitled to goof off for at least a month!’ He tried to grab her waist in an attempt to add substance to his arguments, but she evaded him with a quick easy movement. But she was smiling.

He is a good man, she thought to herself as she poured him his tea, I am a lucky woman. When his marriage proposal first came up before her family, they were not too impressed. His family was not too well off and his lowly rank as a First Lieutenant in the Artillery was not all that glamorous. But something attracted her to the young man in uniform and her parents loved her too much to go against her choice.

But he justified her faith in him, her George. His bravery in action in almost all the wars the country fought, not to mention its peacekeeping missions, saw him promoted steadily to the rank of Colonel, with a bunch of medals to boot. She had followed him without a grumble from remote cantonments to frenetic headquarters, had been at his side the two times he was recuperating in a hospital from his wounds received in action, had given him two children he doted on, had been a willing and vivacious helpmeet to him in all compulsory social functions and parties he was constrained, by his rank and position, to host and attend.

And now it was all over. He was on pension and they had retired to this new house that he had built in this laid-back town, far away from the hustle and bustle of Army life. Their children were launched into their own careers and lives. Now they had the time to know each other all over again.

Cup in hand, she moved out to the verandah where he was reading the newspaper, leaning back in the large armchair he had specially made. A sharp smell of fish assailed her nostrils just as she got outside. She saw him, paper lowered, as he peered over the top of his spectacles at someone standing before him.

A short, stocky woman with a basket balanced on her head. A huge grin stretched across her dark, oily, plain face, the white teeth flashing as brilliantly as the white stone in her nose ring. Once enmeshed in that smile, you could do nothing but smile back. She could see George doing just that.

‘Good fish, madam! Special prices for you!’ she said as she lowered her burden onto the black and red tiles of the front courtyard. A high-pitched voice, strangely pleasing to the ear. She mopped her face with the free end of the faded green sari she wore, a smile as intense as ever.

The fish looked fresh and healthy. Mary smiled back at the woman.

“What is your name?’ she asked.

‘Damayanthi’

And that is how it began.

Damayanthi became a daily fixture in their lives. Each morning, after breakfast, she would be there, basket on head, teeth and nose ring flashing, clad in the same old sari. She would quote such reasonable prices for her produce that any haggling Mary felt inclined to do was half-hearted at best. As she cut and cleaned the fish with brisk efficiency, she would regale Mary with all the interesting happenings in the neighbourhood. George would sit there with the newspaper, not saying anything, but Mary knew he was listening to every word they said – and enjoying it.

There was indeed something special about Damayanthi.

For some time, Mary had been feeling the need for someone to help her around the house. She was not getting any younger either, she told George, as he came back from the routine early morning walk that he had started again.

‘I know how it is, luv’ he nodded sympathetically ‘A wife never retires, does she? I say, why don’t you ask that Damayanthi? She lives quite near us, you know, in that row of houses down the road. I saw her going to the market just now. Maybe she can find someone for you if she is not interested herself’

Mary smiled. George must really like Damayanthi. She had never heard him mention anything about any woman of her class and background before, though he was unfailingly polite to them.

‘So what do you think about it, Damayanthi? Can you help me out?’

Damayanthi picked out a choice of mackerel for Mary and said she would consider it. But she could work only between 11 and 1 in the morning and come back between 4 and 6 in the evening. Though the timings were strange, Mary agreed and they moved on to wages and terms.

Thus Damayanthi became a part of their household. Every morning, after delivering the fish, she would hurry off and be back sharp at 11 AM to help Mary clean the house, cut the vegetables for lunch, do the laundry and so on. Off she would go at 1 and return by 4. Until 6 in the evening, she would help Mary with the lawn and garden she was growing and do everything else necessary before leaving.

They would talk and talk while doing their chores, Mary and Damayanthi. Mary told her all about the happy times she spent with George in the chill of Jammu and the heat and dust of Bikaner. Damayanthi would listen to her with rapt attention, thrilled at the descriptions of the places she had never seen and never would see. She would ask questions at the right times, with a sharpness of mind that was amazing in a woman with so little education and lack of exposure.

But it was Damayanthi’s story that wrenched Mary’s heart. She was the eldest child of a fisherman. Her mother had died when she was twelve, leaving Damayanthi in surrogate motherhood of two younger brothers.

‘Such a pleasure they were! So smart and intelligent! I sent them to school, you know, from the wages I earned from housework and my income from selling fish...and they did so well! I enjoyed every minute of bringing them up!’ Damayanthi’s eyes would flash with the good memories, her smile as brilliant as ever.

But disaster struck when both the children were afflicted with a muscular dystrophy disease that left them helpless and bedridden, struck down in their prime by the cruel hand of fate. Damyanthi was who tended and cared for them, as she had done ever since they could remember. Her father could no longer go to sea. Always sickly, it was all he could do to help Damayanthi in the kitchen.

Thus Damayanthi would sally out early in the morning to the market, collect her basket of fish and sell it in the neighbourhood. She would feed them, bathe them, take them to the toilet, and do everything for them as if they were still her babies. She would earn whatever she could and spend it on their medicines and food.

She never sounded even a bit dejected while saying all this to Mary. It was as though it was only natural that she should take all this in her stride. Not a word of complaint, not even a protest to God about her fate. There had once been a man in her life, but he wanted her, not her family – and married someone else.

Mary knew that George was listening to all their conversations. She knew that George was developing a healthy liking for Mary when he suggested that she give Damayanthi a rise in salary.

Soon it became Damayanthi who prepared the steadily increasing number of cups of tea that George drank, prepared the potato curry exactly the way George wanted, and kept the furniture in the living room in the exact positions that George liked them in.

And Mary could see George was happy about it. He never spoke a word to Damayanthi though, at least Mary never heard him do so.

Sometimes, a stray thought would go through her mind. Was George falling for Damayanthi? Could it be a case of late-life infatuation? Was it safe to have Damayanthi so much in the house?

 Then she would shake it off. No, not my George. He just wasn’t the type. Not after having gone through the gamut of glamorous Army wives without having given even the eye.

When Damayanthi failed to turn up for work one day, Mary did feel it strange. Never had she taken a day off without telling Mary in advance. But what disturbed her more than Damayanthi’s absence was George’s strange behaviour. He sat in the chair on the verandah, deep in thought, his hands holding up the ‘paper, but not reading it. He began pacing the courtyard in the evening, eyes on the road outside. He tossed and turned in bed that night.

A week later, Mary was on the verge of asking George why he was so agitated at Damayanthi’s absence. But then he said ‘Mary, we must go see what is happening with Damayanthi’

A great uneasiness gripped Mary ‘What for? She must have something else to do, that is why she has not come

‘No, no…let us go see. It is just down the road, come on

‘Why are you so bothered, George?’ she asked, a strange sharpness in her voice.

‘I read up on the disease that her brothers have. Come, we need to go there’ The urgency in his manner caused Mary to get dressed and accompany him, quelling the fear in her heart.

The exposed, crumbling, laterite walls of the tiny house itself revealed the poverty of the inhabitants within. Mary could see Damayanthi’s fish basket lying upside down next to the steps leading to the unpainted, battered door. An old man opened it after they had knocked a few times. When they asked about Damayanthi, he moved aside and allowed them to enter.

A very human stink pervaded the house. No ceiling fan disturbed the humid air inside. The old man led them past a hall in a corner of which two young men were lying on narrow pallets. They did not even look up as George and Mary passed by. Mary could see a small kitchen to the left, with an old kerosene stove on a stool.

The old man stopped at the door of a room at the back of the house and knocked on it. Though there was no sound from within that they could hear, he seemed satisfied and opened the door.

Damayanthi lay on the floor of the room, bathed in sweat. She raised her head feebly as they approached. And then her face lit up in that familiar shining smile as she saw who they were.

In a weak, quavering voice, she said ‘I am so sorry I couldn’t let you know. I can’t walk now, but I will surely come as soon as I can’

In her heart, Mary knew it would never happen. The disease had got to Damayanthi, just as it had consumed her brothers. Was it the same curse that had taken away her mother? Mary had never thought to ask. It was obvious though – Damayanthi would never walk again.

She looked at George, looked at the intent expression on his face as he gazed at Damayanthi. His eyes turned to her and she remembered how it had been when he was fighting for his life in a hospital bed. The stoic way that he had borne his pain, without a murmur of protest while the doctors worked on him. The hospital’s corridors echoed with the groans of the wounded, but not a sound emanated from George.

She saw the same inner strength in Damayanthi now, as she sought to put them at ease and not suffer along with her.

As they walked out of the house, George told her ‘We must arrange nursing facilities for the entire family. Can’t leave them to themselves. The father can’t do anything for them.

She could hear him muttering under his breath ‘..and she is still smiling!’

Reaching out to hold George’s hand as they walked back down the road to their house, she understood fully how George fell in love with Damayanthi.

And she didn’t mind at all.