This was a different one!

That was a rain-soaked night in Chandigarh some 25 years back. Completely drenched from head to toe, and stepping in on the verandah, I thumped my feet one by one to shake off some water, before pressing the doorbell. My friend came behind me.

A woman called up to hold on “for a while”. Some creaking sound from inside and I could make out her steps leading on to the entrance. I had not met her earlier. She unbolted and pushed both door panels. There she was, with her bold and stout built. In her early thirties. And smiling.

I had met her husband only once. We had no association except that he had used some of my pieces for the magazine he edited then. He was from Himachal and since he had given me his residential address for posting my stuff, lest it be lost in a bigger postbox, I knew where he lived.

That night we were to return to our hometown but the work whole day could not be finished and there was no way out than to stay back. I didn’t know many people in the City Beautiful then. There being no other choice, the decision of trying the editor’s home was taken instantaneously. We hired a rickshaw though my friend hesitated in bothering someone at that odd hour of the rainy night.

I introduced myself to her. She let us in, informing that her husband had to go to the Press for some urgent work, and that he would come back in a couple of hours. She then pointed to a settee for us to sit on and a table in the corner to put down our bags.

She went to the kitchen to make some tea for us while we exchanged glances.

After having tea, we announced our intent to leave. “But why?” she questioned, “I guess you’d come to stay for the night. Isn’t it! Where will you go while it is raining so heavily? Moreover, think of this home as your own.”

“That’s so very nice of you and thank you indeed for your kindly feelings but…!” I couldn’t even complete the sentence when she pitched in, “Is it because my husband is not at home? I am not alone in the house. ‘Amma ji’ and my kids are here.”

I was hardly able to mutter, “Still…!” When she silenced me once and for all, “What if my brothers should visit us like you have! Should I turn them away?” That clinched the issue and there we were laying cots with bedspreads. Like stones we dropped and slept off.

We met her smiling husband in the morning over a cup of tea when he was already awake and reading his newspaper. His looks betrayed all expressions of knowledge of our feeble disposition exposed the previous night. I looked for her around but she had already left for her school. It was a fine sunny day to begin afresh and repose faith in human relations. Thank you, sister.