Dear Friend,
It's Christmas again ...
Christmas meant a long drive in my father's Ambassador. It was an old, white car
with English origins, yet to me, he was German, because all good cars desire to
be German. My father had it painted red, when Maruti 800 made it fashionable
for cars to have colour. WB 7938 used to have a distinct smell - that of Wills
cigarette. Baba (my father) was a chain smoker and WB 7938 was like an
extension of him, just like the books that lined up our book cabinet, all catalogued and bookmarked in his own hand writing.
"This book belongs to:
" he would write and put our names on it. And the book suddenly belonged
to you, became an extension of you. It was your book to discuss to tell a story
on, it belonged to you.
Anyhow, before I digress too
far, WB 7938 used to be our vehicle for Christmas. Christmas meant cake from
Nahoums, the lights of Park Circus and wisdom on equality of men from Baba, as he
filled WB 7938 with clouds of smoke. It was our yearly trip aboard WB 7938, which was otherwise reserved for my father's office and occasionally on
weekends for my mother, mostly within a day or so of the big fight, which was
kind of on a schedule. My brother and I would get jittery when two weeks went
by without a fight. It was ominous.
Anyhow, back to Christmas again.
We did not have trees or bells or Christmas decorations or even gifts for that
matter, just the visit to Nahoums and the cake from Nahoums with my friend WB Gich.
A visit to a Jewish bakery on a Christian holiday by Hindu infidels who thought
nothing of having beef and pork. No wonder me and my brother turned out the way
we did. We wrote poems, smoked cigarettes and drank cheap "Old Monk"
vodka while at college, as that was all we could afford. And yes, not to
forget we had the Bedouin's egg roll every day without fail from the day that my
brother got his first job. It was a routine for us to go for a saunter after he
came back from the office around 6:30 PM, threw his cheap old suitcase, a legacy
from my father's collection,on the diwan and called me out.
Back to Christmas again, once
my brother started working suddenly, we had a lot more than a cake for
Christmas. He loved the fruit cake, the egg chops, the biscuits and the
cheesecake which we would know to be cream puffs only much later in life.
Now we have cheesecake, a six
foot tall tree that we decorate every year and we have cake from Flurys, the
French Loaf or even the Taj Cake shop when we feel indulgent. As we pour
white wine into crystal glasses and light up our Marlboros, I am reminded
again of my sputnik comrade.
Wish you a Merry Christmas, Gich.
