Memsaab

I love to be called Memsaab. Faintly I remember the day when for the first time Mini my maid said, “Memsaab your tea”, gently placing the tray on the table. I was sitting in front of the dressing table mirror arranging my hair in a bun. I had looked up and nodded my head…she moved out with silent steps.

It has been decades, and now Mini’s Memsaab sounds like a whisper. My bones don’t hold me strong and Mini, she is still with me.

How I had longed to be called the Memsaab. It was the time of the Raj. The Gora’s (English) ruled our country. The Gori (English Lady) was addressed as Memsaab and He, Saab. When I got married to a government officer, little did I think I would be his Memsaab. Was it fear or honour in the address or the call of the hour?

I search the corridors of memory for my lost thoughts. I still remember the Independence struggle – the Indians followed Gandhi in the non-cooperation and non-violence movement…the best way of ridding the country from the hands of Maharani Victoria’s rule. How Gandhi was laughed at and not allowed to sit at the Round Table Conference because he was draped in loincloth. They had to bow down before this little lean man who walked his Dandi March, breaking the Salt Law. The boards with “Dogs and Indians not allowed” have lost a place in this country.

The Gora’s did leave behind their impression even after Lord Mountbatten the last Governor General left India. Calcutta, fondly called the City of Joy, with all the English architectural designs still visible in the Chowringhee area. Now, the Victoria Memorial is visited mostly by people of Independent India. The Howrah Bridge, on the Hooghly River looks like a wonder for a first-timers glance, and the Khidderpore Bridge reminds of the Tower Bridge over the Thames.

Robert Clive, Lord Hastings, Lord Cornwallis, so many in the list of Viceroys and Governor General’s, still live in History. The Jallianwallah Bagh Massacre, an un-forgetful inhuman bitter event, is remembered every year.

Why even Akbar, Babar, Humayun, Shah Jehan are there in the History books -- but they belong to the Moghul Period. The magnificent Taj Mahal, wonderful white marble monument on the banks of Yamuna in Agra, still brings back the smell of the Moghul Period. That was 200 years before the East India Company came as traders, isn’t it?

God, so many years have passed, I don’t want to polish my memory… why trigger the mind that has lost its gloss in these years. But today’s thought is all for the reminiscence of “Memsaab”.