Chatur Singh’s primrose

Uncle, do you know that a primrose is not a rose,” said my niece, not yet six, whom I was visiting. “Yes,” I said, not wantin...

Uncle, do you know that a primrose is not a rose,” said my niece, not yet six, whom I was visiting. “Yes,” I said, not wanting to appear ignorant. “Have you seen a primrose?” she asked. “Of course,” I said. “There were lots in the hills where we used to stay.” I had to catch a train back to Delhi immediately after this but the word “primrose” had stirred an unease in me.

Lying in the comfort of a lower AC berth, I remembered a beautiful house of that name in the hills where family friends stayed. But it was not that. And then it came flooding back. The house in which we stayed, the lake, the mountains, the flowers. And then came another image. A gaunt man in wrinkled coat and pyjamas, squatting in the verandah of our house. Chatur Singh, I almost shouted out aloud and understood the unease.

Chatur Singh had died a few days ago. He was a peon in my uncle’s office. Once I had seen him with a yellow flower tucked behind his ear. The image had stuck. He had been a childhood friend. Since he died at the ripe old age of 85, he must have been over 40 when we first met. I must have been eight.

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But the age gap made no difference. He seemed to accept, if not share, my enthusiasm for things my parents frowned upon. He was there in the mornings to take me to school but didn’t mind when I took a diversion to investigate whether the cat who had just run across the road with a mouse in his mouth, was actually eating it. On several occasions, when the snail that I was aiming at with small bajri pieces, refused to accommodate my wayward aim, he would come to the rescue by holding my arm on the next throw.

We lived in Nainital then. Chatur Singh, like most hill people, was honest and sincere — the perfect antithesis to his name. There was nothing “clever” about him. Hardly ever complaining, he seemed to be equally at ease in the torrential downpour as in sunshine. It was easy to picture him, trudging along the hillside slightly bent, with the curved handle of his umbrella stuck into his coat collar; or sitting humped at the base of the shehtoot tree smoking his bidi. I couldn’t remember a single instance when he displayed the slightest trace of emotion. Was it fatalism or inertia?

But ask him for any work, however difficult, and he would produce results. Once, it was a particularly bad stretch of winter. There just wasn’t enough dry fuelwood in the house and the regular supplier had run out of stocks. Chatur Singh was then asked whether he could help. Sure enough, he was back in about four hours with dry fuelwood.

Memory brought back once again the downpours, the trudge to school, the sunshine. One could almost smell the fresh air in the stuffy compartment. That was Chatur Singh, I thought. Bringing back a smile in death as in life. Were there any flowers for him then, I wondered. Maybe there was a primrose.