June 2016 

WThe last of the bags packed, Parul and Aahan Sikandwere ready to leave their family home for the final time.Acquired in 1946, Sikand House was intended to be thecradle for many grandsons and great-grandsons in thecoming years. Displaced as he was at Partition, Rai BahadurManohar Krishna Sikand, Aahan's grandfather, a largely selfmade man with a premonition about difficult times ahead,didn't suffer the life of a refugee, having swapped his housewith that of an equally astute Muslim acquaintance before allthe madness began. It was a gentleman's agreement.The Rai Bahadur arrived in Delhi by air, with gold coinssewn into the lining of his and his wife's coats. Their worthypossessions had followed by road, including the heavy teakfurniture and cast-iron cooking utensils that had been part ofhis wife's dowry.

As the family prospered in a new country still findingits feet, they hosted the leading industrialists of the time,and sheltered many a young, worse-off cousin, in Delhi totake an exam or for a job interview. Sikand House's lawnssaw baithaks and performances, a young Farida Khanumhad sung at Aahan's parents wedding, which Indira Gandhiherself had attended, at the height of both women's careers inthe late 1960s.
There would be no place for this largesse in Aahan'sfuture. A builder was to swiftly and efficiently raze SikandHouse to the ground, and replace it with a block of carelesslyconstructed flats, where multiple families would take apiece of Rai Bahadur Sikand's dream, and plant their own inits place.

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The June sun was unforgiving, with temperatures so high thateven the mosquitoes couldn't survive. In better days, Aahanand Parul would have been holidaying in London around thistime, drinking artisanal gin and tonics every evening at theSouth Audley pub with their friends from school, or parentsof their children's friends – Delhiwalas with apartments inLondon.
Aahan walked out for the last time, abstractedly rearranginghis thinning hair. Terrazzo would give way to Botticino, andthe driveway where he had learnt to ride a bike was to be astilt area in the new construction, where vacant-eyed servantswould inhabit tiny, airless port-a-cabins, on the border of legality, inhaling the diesel-filled air that the generator wouldregularly spew into their rooms. The builder got permissionfrom the municipal corporation to cut down the old Semaltree which his grandmother, his Dadi, had planted when shehad moved there, the one in which hundreds of birds lived andsang at dawn and dusk. He vividly remembered playing withits cotton and pretending it was snow. Where it once stoodwould now be a parking spot, a precious and hotly contestedpiece of real estate in the new order of things. He would bereturning here after it was rebuilt, to live in a flat, a threeBedroom-Hall-Kitchen unit, one bedroom for him and Parul,one for their children, and one for his mother, separated fromhis own with the thin, four-and-a-half-inch brick walls thatthe builders used now. The bedrooms in the new apartmentwere the size of the bathrooms in the old Sikand House, andno dressing rooms now of course. He would have to put thetelevision on full blast to have sex with his wife.

Parul and him, used to occupying separate living quarters,like his parents before them, would now have to perform allthe businesses of living – bathing, shaving, shitting, texting,toenail clipping – within a few feet of each other. Theirchildren, a sulky teenaged girl and a prepubescent boy, wouldhave to share a bedroom, and were aghast at the unfairness ofit all. This was all that he could salvage from the mess that hewas in, one amongst many flat owners, instead of the masterof the house. He was lucky that he was even able to makethe sale, shrouded as the property was with controversy. Hegot a raw deal, but it was better than no deal, and he wasgetting desperate. 

Settling into the second-floor walk-up flat provided bythe builder for his family to live in for the duration of theconstruction, Aahan tried to get used to apartment living forthe first time in his life. He had grown up in the ramblingSikand compound, as its prince and heir. It had been like awarm blanket on a cold winter's night, and he hadn't eversummoned the will to get out of it – when the alarm rang, hehit snooze one time too many. Everything that he wanted hadbeen placed exactly where he wanted it, not an inch to the leftor the right, his entire life.

Their temporary home must have been a state-of-the-artaffair when it was first constructed, twenty-odd years ago,when Delhi's smart set had begun to accept that they wouldhave to get used to apartment living. The deficiencies inthe builder-finish were now glaringly apparent. Most of theproblems had to do with moisture-related damage; Indianconstruction folk through the ages had never managed tofigure this one out. The faux-wooden flooring, so trendywhen it first came out, had expanded, causing the diningroom door to be permanently stuck, the fancy Italian-madetaps had limescale stains like a map of the world, and the airconditioning leaked at designated spots across the house.It was the seepage in the living room that really got to him,though. In his opinion, seepage was a sign of poverty, ofhelplessness, of failure to improve one's lot. He had askedParul, his once sweet Parul, to sort out some of these problems.He waited patiently, denied access to their bedroom while shechanted 'Nam Myoho Renge Kyo' for an hour and a half, andapproached her whilst she was getting ready for lunch with their son's friends' moms, applying her makeup stooped overthe shared bathroom sink – now that she no longer had adressing table. She hadn't responded, and didn't remove hergaze from the mascara she was applying. She finished up,picked up a fire-engine red tweezer and decisively pluckeda thick, black, stray hair from her chin, and looked up. 'Fuckoff,' she said as she squeezed past him through the bathroomdoor into the bedroom.

What struck him about his current quarters was that therooms just seemed so much closer together. Gone were thehigh ceilings, the multiple floors, the endless corridors, whichin retrospect, had managed to keep the people in the houseat a desirable distance. It seemed that his wife, mother andchildren were always in his way, not to mention the nameless,faceless and swiftly interchangeable servants, who dared tolook him in the eye. There weren't any breakaway spacesfor them either, the verandahs, terraces and laundry roomswhere they went to smoke, flirt and gossip. The old retainershad left soon after they heard that the house was to be brokendown, since the Sikands were no longer able to provide themwith family accommodation.
Aahan dreamt of his Nani that night.
His beloved Nani, who had lived her last days in the tiny,dark, damp room allocated to her at the very top of SikandHouse, from where her arthritic mobility was restricted,and her not having access to the rest of the house suitedeveryone. Nani's only son had married a Canadian womanand emigrated to Calgary, where he bought a house withthe money his parents gave him. When his father was dead, leaving behind nothing, and the time came to look after her,he had offered to put her up in an old age home an hour'sdrive from his own place. Living with him wasn't an option,he had firmly said. There would be no Indian food there, andno one to talk to, with no desi television channels either. Eventhe ignominy of having a living son yet having to reside inher son-in-law's house was better than that. Inhabiting thesmallest and most inaccessible room in the house befitted herreduced status of living in her daughter's sasural.

He dreamt of her paan daan, and of the plastic medicinebeaker from which she drank shots of Old Monk neat –euphemistically referred to as 'mataji ki dawai' by the staff.No one really knew how the rum got up there. He wassafe with her in that tiny room, lying in her single bed, incompanionable silence, reading twin copies of The TownMouse and the Country Mouse (someone had gifted him anextra copy) under the heavy, whirring fan, surrounded bypictures of Sai Baba, and of freedom fighters, Gandhi Ji andJawaharlal Nehru, with his great-grandfather, Badi Nani'sfather, a big businessman at the time. These otherwise prizedpictures couldn't grace other rooms of the house, it wasn't herhouse after all. Only the Sikands' pictures had that honour.
He had later discovered that she couldn't read English atall, that she had been humoring him all along.
The world couldn't reach him there, in his dream.
He woke up the next day, refreshed, and with more courageto face his fate than he did when he fell asleep. He tried hisbest to settle in. The Nespresso hadn't been unpacked; thekids were underfoot, their gadgets were everywhere, a tangle of PlayStation wires. Adding to the confusion, there was nowater coming from any of the taps.
Later that morning, he got a call from the builder. 'One ofthe flats has already gone, from my share in the project,' hesaid. 'Rajesh Kumar ji ko hi diya hai. MLA hai, he is even aminister now. It will be good for you, ghar ki security banirahegi. Okay sir, jai mata di, sir.' He hung up.
The water supply resumed; all the taps belched and speweda brownish liquid, and then suddenly water started flowingfrom everywhere, flooding everything.
Aahan Sikand and Rajesh Kumar. Son of Master andServant.

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