Visiting Rita in Dubai
When I was a young girl in New Delhi, we were put into the best school in the city, sorry India Today says in the country now - The Jesus and Mary Convent, Gol Daak Khaana, because Mum worked there too. We were lucky we got these fabulous schools only because Mum taught in them and so we did not have to pay fees which would have been unaffordable for a service officer Dad, with five kids.
Rita and me in the VIIIth std. Obvious I was 2 years young for the class.
In school I made good friends with a girl named Rita Raj and we went through all the classes in school right upto the ISC or Senior Cambridge. In those days our answer papers were shipped to the UK and we girls prayed the ships sank! However after school, Rita and I joined Jesus and Mary College Chanakyapuri and we had another friend join our group there from the Mater Dei Convent -- Patricia D’souza. Rita lived in Jodhpur Mess while I lived in Sangli Mess as we were serving officers' daughters. Patricia was the star who lived in the grandest and most massive house I had ever seen on Tilak Marg -- the Times of India House, as her father was the resident Editor of the entire Times of India. Her house was just behind ours and so I would walk through her enormous vegetable garden at the back, to visit her. Needless to say the family included me in everything including her big brother and friend who teased me mercilessly.
Then we lost touch as Dad got posted to Shillong and my mind was occupied with my National level athletics and my new college. Patsy finished from the same college and became a top secretary with the CBCI and Rita left for Dubai after finishing school. Only I left to finish in Shillong. We lost touch completely, till my sons came on the horizon and I had to go to Delhi accompanying them for a national Swimming Meet in the Talkatora Gardens pool. I know Patsy was somewhere in Delhi as we had attended her wedding in Bangalore, since her husband was my husband's classmate in college and a Josephite. So I connected and we went to our old hangouts to eat chaat and chole in Gupta Market if I visited Delhi.
Email kept us in touch and I got occasional snippets of news about Rita from Patsy. Then suddenly I got a call, asking if I could make a booking for Rita and Steve, her husband, in the Catholic Club as he was ill and was coming to Bangalore for an operation. That's when the three of us became close friends all over again. We just picked up where we left off, as by then Patsy also had retired in Bangalore where both her husband's family and hers had moved.
With Steve and Patsy in Dubai
The icing on the cake was Rita’s buying of an apartment on Rest House Road to retire, just a stone’s throw from me. We can now just saunter over on the top class Tender Sure pavements to have a cup of tea and chat in one another's homes. Sadly as I write this Patsy’s husband has been ill in St. John’s with Covid for THREE months. He is fighting to pull himself out -- first off the ventilator, then the tube in his throat and now the infection in his kidneys. The support one gets just from knowing we are there at the end of a phone call is so calming.
Rita's sons have moved to Canada, from Dubai. Ours to the US and UK and Patsy never had any children.So basically we need one another for support as we age. Life has come full circle for the three of us and we are back to being there for one another like we were as little girls. Each of us have had different experiences in our better or for worse vow of Marriage. None of us have to pretend that we are eternally in love. Everyone has their faults and we accept or grumble to one another about it. Lucky for us we have managed, shouldered on and come out better for the tough years we faced. Each of us are women of substance, working and earning our own keep, not beholden to any man's bullying or stinginess. And we have sons who have seen us struggle to keep the family together whatever the circumstance and back us one 100% now as we become seniors.
At the Burj Khalifa
It’s a good feeling to know these solid pillars of my youth are there for me at any time. For now we pray as one unit, for Leslie to pull through and for Patsy to get the strength to shoulder on with this difficult time.
