The Minion

Kelloggs' sounds like it should be eaten with chopped bananas. I can't explain why, but it does. The fact that school started at an ungodly hour in the morning(7:45!) compelled me to wake up at 6 and there was always the maid, standing at the bed post at the far end, already folding up my blankets. 'Naaaaaaaaaaaaaa!' is what I wanted to scream, but always inevitably ended up gurgling 'Huh? Who? Where?'. Once ousted from the warmth of my bed, there was no going back. And so the day began. In retrospect, I had a double bed all to myself with a mattress on it that was the thickest and bounciest, purchased on account of my refusal to comply with normal single bunk, inferior mattress sleeping regimes. No I was not spoilt. I merely had taste.

Shyamoli di was what she'd always been called. Much like Kelloggs', her name also projected a sort of phonetic image, but none as sweet or inviting as chopped up bananas. The image of a tiny thing with curling black hair that could unfurl and reach out of their own accord and prod you on the shoulder while you are secretly, gleefully and pre-pubescently watching Ftv in the middle of the night. She arrived at our place on a dark and sullen evening, I like to think there was rain and lightning involved and the scared baying of wolves in the distance, and the creaking of rusty doors that makes the spine tingle. She was sodden and eleven, and barely five feet tall and carried her bundle, a rolled up mattress and some clothes, over her head and stood dripping at the door. The mother, the only one with the balls to venture out in the midst of a power-cut, slid the door open part-way and peered around it. Silhouetted against the light of the candle, the tiny figure was subjected to severe scrutiny before she was allowed to enter and handed a towel. Were it a horror film, her steps into the house would be followed by a shot of plastic clowns grinning on the mantelpiece, the candle being extinguished by a sudden gust of wind and the father shouting out from the study, to 'Shut the damn door! You're letting in all the mosquitoes!' Some things never change.

Five feet tall, she remains today and has risen through the ranks to the position of second-in-command at our Calcutta home. Lesser officers like the father, the brother and myself cower and tremble under the ruthless matriarchy. Coffee mugs are lifted when the table is to be wiped, the bedrooms are vacated when the beds are to be made, the kitchen is not to be snuck into when it's to be sprayed with Baygon. Any refusal to conform is to be met with castigation and possibly being sprayed with Baygon. It is not surprising that I had nurtured an unlikely kinship with the cockroaches in the kitchen when I was growing up, and had even befriended one which answered to the name of 'Pennykins'. Later, however, embittered by the sudden and despicable habit of showing up in the shower that Pennykins had developed, I smacked it with my slipper, and flicked it down the elevator shaft. I'm sorry...Pennykins. You understand right?

Over the years, however, after much tugging of hair and complaining to the mother and impelling her into action against the other and confiscation of private property, we learned to reconcile our differences. Yet I can't understand why, whenever I return, I'm still awakened at 6 every morning by the sudden tugging away of my blankets, while she waits by the bed post with a wry smile and a bowl of soggy cornflakes. With bananas.

'Huh? Who? Where?'