A Delhi childhood
My childhood friend Sameer lives in a tony home at one of the poshest addresses in the National Capital Region (NCR) in Delhi. Every guest visiting him has to climb three steps from the driveway to the front yard, where they will confront a life-size sculpture of a sleeping man, carefully placed on a bench, halfway down the yard.
On a recent trip, I visited Sameer to meet his newly-born first grandchild. Sameer and I grew up as neighbors in such a seedy part of NCR that as kids when we were asked where we lived, instead of saying Paharaganj, we would routinely say Panchkuian Road, a nearby commercial furniture market street near because that seemed more respectable. We grew up in terrace flats on the third floors of buildings, a two-minute walk apart. Our homes were smaller than the ones on the lower floors of the buildings but had open spaces on the sides, exposed to the sun and rain.
Hot summer days
Under Delhi’s unrelenting, hot summer sun, scorching afternoon winds (called loo in Hindi), turned the concrete buildings into hot furnaces. Even the ceiling fans moved the hot air to dry us out. The rare cooler was such an ultimate luxury that if one family had it, neighbors were invited over for afternoon siestas in darkened rooms. Power outages, (we called them load shedding,) were routine. Every evening, if we could afford to, we would sprinkle water on the terrace to cool the concrete so we could walk and play on it.
My resourceful single working mother discovered a government-run swimming program at the Talkatora Gardens, a short bus ride away. My friends and I signed up for it for the summer holidays. Swimming was such a luxury – something we’d only ever seen in movies. It was always an indicator of wealth and the movie character living in the lap of luxury.
A swimming lesson
It was amazing to have daily access to a pool. We would arrive early for its 5 pm opening, so as not to miss a minute of our hour-long slot of beginners lessons. One afternoon, while waiting in Talkatora Gardens by the pool entrance, Sameer (about ten years old), spied a maali (gardener) taking a nap after his day’s work. He was a frail, bare-chested man, with a balding head, curled into a near fetal position, sleeping with such contentment – it seemed he did not feel the sweltering heat that oppressed us. That image of peace stayed with Sameer.
Later, when he was 45 years old, Sameer saw some sculptures online by a young art student, also from Delhi. He decided to commission a sculpture for his garden and shared the story of the Talkatora Gardens maali.
A Sleeping Buddha
This is the sculpture that greets visitors to Sameer’s home today. Its humble presence is a sharp contrast to the marble and teakwood opulence surrounding it. When old friends meet, the Talkatora maali story is shared. Most of us did not know Sameer carried it in his heart for so many years.
We revisit the old times of making happy memories and forming friendships at Talkatora Gardens in the late 1970s, while silently acknowledging our endurance of the heat and dust of our childhood homes.
The roots within
The maali serves as a symbol of the roots we carry within, like the invisible roots that trees need to thrive, whether we just move to a different address in the NCR or become an immigrant in the land of the free and the home of the brave on the other side of the world.
The origin of maturity with the influences we invite into our consciousness is evident as Sameer says to me on this visit: the old maali was sleeping so peacefully that I understood how his hard work had been the antidote to oppression of the Delhi summer. I half-joked when I said, “Just sleep is enough for me to escape the oppressive world.”
My cousin who visited me saw the conversation starter sculpture and said he was reminded of the only sculpture of Jesus in a supine pose, that he had seen in Rio, Brazil. He imagined the sculpture might have been inspired by that. Sameer calls it the Sleeping Buddha.