My Best Friend

When I woke up on February 25th this year, I knew it’d be a special day; sometimes you just feel it in your heartbeat, there’s a spring to the step and all seems right, as Wodehouse would say, with the World. After an early breakfast at the Digboi Guest House, my new acquaintance, Raju Sharma, and I set off to search for an old friend.

The old friend was Mali.


Mali was not just a friend, he was my first real friend. He must have been employed by our family when I was but an infant, and he was at least thirty years older than me. Yet, when I was a little child just beginning to understand the World around, Mali held my hand in support as much as my parents did, by my side all the time.

Mali (whose name was Man Bahadur) was a short, muscular Nepali and our gardener-cum-Man Friday. He was a reticent man who spoke little of himself, but would be around for any work that needed to be done, as long as it did not remotely involve the intellect - God had thoughtfully omitted to fill the cerebrum from this creation of His, consistent with the old equation, Brain X Brawn = Constant.

Mali's background was quite a mystery. He once told me that he came from a remote Nepali village and had earlier worked in a beedi factory; this fascinated me and, on the many occasions when my parents were visiting friends or out for a party at the Club, Mali and I would spend endless happy hours rolling mock beedies out of plain paper, while engaged in light banter. He took his job of minding me very seriously and would sit by my side, as I slept. When my parents returned, often beyond midnight, Mali would walk back alone to his servant’s quarters at the bottom of the hill on which our beautiful home stood. He occasionally walked me to my friends’ homes and, during those strolls, would point out the many flowers and trees along the roadside; these were my first Nature Walks in the little town of Digboi. As most children do, I took him entirely for granted and assumed he existed to serve; his uncomplaining nature only made this assumption a reality. He hardly ever went back to see his family, even when my mother would offer to pay him for the while he was away – in every sense, we were his family.

On occasion, we would see evidence of his astonishing strength. When my brothers turned up for the vacation with their large, cumbersome hold-alls – alas, now extinct as a piece of luggage – Mali would simply swing one onto his back, pick up a suitcase and ascend the stairs, his back bent much in Nepali style, while we all watched in amazement.

In those magical years of my childhood, I made friends in school and had my differences with many, as all children will do. Yet Mali was the only friend I could never find any fault with. As for any adult, it must have been trying for him to humour a child all the time, yet he did so with silent sincerity, never asking for a quid pro quo that would have been granted by my grateful parents. When, in the winter of 1977, we packed our bags and left Digboi for good, I was inconsolable because I believed, despite my Mother’s statements to the contrary, that I would never see Mali again.


When I visited Digboi again this year, thirty three years later, I met Raju Sharma, an attender at the guest house where I stayed. It was a wonderful coincidence; he had had known Mali when he was growing up himself, and instantly recognised him from an old photograph that I had remembered to pack.

“I am not sure if he is still alive,” Sharma said, “but he had shifted to Margherita many years ago.” I then remembered that my father had got Mali a job in a tea estate. Raju put his mobile to good use and we were off to track him down. There was a sliver of a chance that I would meet Mali, and all that I had to find my way was an old photograph.

We reached the Margherita estate and spent a couple of hours asking our way around. Up a picturesque driveway and we were on a plateau, close to a large nineteenth century bungalow now occupied by a senior manager at the estate. We stopped about a minute’s walk from a labour line surrounded by tea bushes. I got out of the car, walked across to the few children and young girls standing there and took his photograph out, an old black-and-white one where he had stood next to me and the other servants in our old bungalow.

A girl of about twenty stared at it for a minute and then exclaimed in happy surprise. “That’s my father when he was young,” she said. Yes! I thumped fist-on-palm.

Just how does one describe the emotion of seeing a dear childhood friend after these years? When Mali shuffled in - an old man, bent with age and infirmity - I had difficulty recognising him……and then, I saw his fingers, gnarled and rough, that I instantly recognised from that childhood long, long ago. He looked at me inquiringly, while the girl grinned and told him that his Gopu Sahib had come.


Mali dropped his bundle of firewood, walked right up and hugged me, tears forming in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat as well, as I struggled to calm him down. The man had changed little, his simplicity and affection intact in the evening of his life. We spent a few minutes in silence and the years rolled away as I went over my few memories of a childhood long past.

We then exchanged updates – after we left, he had got married and had two grown up children. He told me of a serious fall, a battle with malaria and the other hazards of life in Assam, his feeble voice now mumbling more to himself, frequently wiping a tear away. I called my mother from my mobile and gave him the phone. He spoke to her in a voice that was barely audible or even coherent. After the call, when the conversation ceased and the far away look in his eyes stayed put, I knew it was time to go. I kept a smile on my face, and cheerily bid him farewell.

I will be back, I said. And, I meant it.


Post Script : as I post this, it has now been about three months since Mali has been missing from his home. He had been admitted to a hospital for a cataract and, on the day of his discharge, just walked away. I cannot help thinking that meeting me had something to do with this, yet I hope I am wrong and that he is safe.

The Genius

Thomas Edison famously stated that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Well, he knew his light bulbs alright and perhaps got the music industry off the block, but he knew nothing about genius, even his own. I say this, because he had never met Venu (Venu was born in the early 1950s, after Edison was had been dead for two decades, so a meeting was unlikely).

Venu (not his real name, else I could get into trouble) began his stint in modern history by enrolling for Chartered Accountancy under my Uncle. He was a thin, dreamy eyed sort of fellow, who walked as if he could always fall in a heap on the ground and had his mouth always open in a sort of unhinged way. In the few years of articleship, he acquired a cult reputation for simply being brilliantly clumsy and absent minded. He would be holding a glass of water and would find, for no reason whatsoever, that it dropped and shattered by his feet. He would then wait, mouth open and gulping in air, much as a fish would do, eyes goggling and hands frozen, until the mess was cleared up. When he walked down stairs, spectators watched with bated breath. And if this wasn’t quite enough, his skills in auditing were particularly unique: while going through vouchers, he could fall asleep in the oddest of poses, with his fingers continuing to automatically vouch the bill in the front of him. Fifty years on, the very mention of his name makes my Uncle double up with laughter; it is a laughter not unmixed with some frustration, and, as I learnt later, this was much the common reaction to Venu.

This was sheer genius, unrecognised. His parents continued to believe that their son would pass his CA if he put in the requisite preparation. Sorry, perspiration. Poor souls. Every exam would find Venu working damned hard at his books. He would eschew all pleasure, stop dropping glasses and glare fiercely at the ominous Shukla & Grewal in front of him. His resultant scores in the accounting paper varied from 5% to a high of about 20% and there is little doubt that the examiner had his moments of satisfactory mirth.

The next stop after his articleship was to join my father’s accounts department in Digboi. Those were days when jobs were got largely by whom you knew and my father had his blind spots; Malayalees was one. Venu quickly distinguished himself with some outstanding performances – my father, in later years, recalled watching the fellow spend a couple of hours at his desk staring into nothingness and smiling beningly on occasion, even as passers-by watched him curiously. This was no one-off event. When disturbed from such thoughtful reverie, he would stand up and sit down continuously a number of times and stretch his body and, in general, be all over the place, gulping continuously, the fish impression intact. Amidst all this, he never lost sight of two fortnights in a year, when his CA exams were held. He knew the pages intimately, the answers to all the sums in the book by heart and made the textbooks his constant companions in those weeks, yet the results remained astonishingly consistent. His genius – 99% inspiration and just that bit perspiration while he slept – was in being himself, not in the smaller game of life that is chartered accounting.

His parents saw the imperative in getting him a sensible wife and this they certainly did. My friend, Rajiv, who was their neighbour, recalls the now legendary incident in the early 1980s, when Venu purchased a second hand car. His wife – bless her – prohibited him from ever touching the wheel in her absence. On day, driving with her beside him, Venu got a bit mixed up with the many levers at his foot and, while down a slope, pressed the clutch rather than the brake, despite a screaming wife pointing out the technical error repeatedly. Rajiv rushed out of his home on hearing a loud noise to see a rather bedraggled Venu using all his strength pulling – yes, you read this right and I shall repeat it – pulling at the bumper at the back to bring the car (a two tonne Ambassador) out of the ditch it was now firmly in. The bumper came right off and Venu quickly found himself in the opposite ditch. Both the car and the driver were treated as outpatients in their nearby respective clinics.

Among the few Malayalees in the Digboi-Tinsukia area, Venu became a legend. He was a great conversation starter and my father, who had a ringside view of the fellow from his room, spent many happy hours practising Venu’s mannerisms that could be later used to set the tone for a memorable evening. When we left Digboi in 1978, Venu was hard at work on his exam, as always. Some years later, I learnt that he and his daughter had written the CA exams together. The bets on the outcome were very predictable and, indeed, Venu stayed close to his now twenty-year average.

Yet, Venu did something none of us could ever achieve in many a lifetime. He proved Thomas – the Thomas Alva Edison – wrong.