An obituary to Majestic Mansion:Continued...

Chacha

Chacha as we named him had always bidi (tobacco wrapped in unprocessed leafs-hugely popular among the poors in India) in his lips. His white uncut beard turned yellow from the nicotine residue. Most of the time we saw him dozing on his stool beside the main gate of Majestic Mansion. You can’t gauge chacha’s age from his fragile and lanky physique. Chacha’s eyes- always red and smudgy which made us suspicious about him of taking grass though we didn’t get any proof. He used to wear an old and torn jacket and a dull orange monkey-cap all through out the year. He became active in the night. Between twelve to two’ clock you could hear the irritating sound of his bamboo stick stomping on the ground accompanied with a whistle. He became hyper-active when he saw any Auto-rickshaw or cab (various office cars used to pick and drop their employees from the doorsteps) in his territory, i.e. inside the compound of the Majestic Mansion. He would blew his whistle first, then he would jump out of his stool immediately and rushed towards the car with his stick. Chacha always gave green signal by waving his hand to the vehicles coming in or going out from the Majestic Mansion. He never bothered to see if a vehicle was coming in or going out. Whenever he heard the sound of the cars or scooters or whatever, he opened his eyes and waved his hand. So a lot of time, it had happened that the vehicles almost bumped into each other.

A few months before we left Majestic Mansion, on a wintry morning, when I was going out , I saw Chacha was not there. Two well uniformed, smart and young security guards were there. I asked the caretaker of the Majestic Mansion, what happened? He told nonchalantly, “ keya hoga? Us buddhe se kam nehi chalta. Usko bhaga diya. Abhi security agency se hi humlog guard mangayega “ (what will happen? That old chap was good for nothing. So we have thrown him out. From now on we’ll only appoint guards from the security agencies.)