We are borrowers all, is it in our genes?

SIVAMANI VASUDEVAN

We had some neighbours who always intruded into our house for a ladder, a screwdriver, an iron, a stool, a suitcase or anything portable but not returnable. My mother was pestered by a few of her neighbourhood friends for a tablespoon of coffee powder, a cup of sugar or a bowl of curd or at least a twig of curry or coriander leaves.

I always wondered at the myriad ways some people employ to disturb the peace and privacy of others. Only the other day a youngster, with all flashy artefacts — glitzy gadgets and appliances stuck all over his body and attire — almost accosted me for a pen while I was standing in the queue at the Chennai Central railway reservation complex. I politely told the youth that it was not a pen and it was a pencil that was protruding from my shirt pocket. (Like freedom fighter Balgangadhar Tilak, I have a fancy for using pencil and the similarity, of course, ends there).

The young man did not take kindly to my answer and left me casting a suspicious look at the projecting instrument in my shirt pocket.

As the queue was serpentine (I still cannot decipher why the head of a queue in India is always bulged at the tip like the hood of a provoked cobra), I unfoldedThe Hindu in hand and started glancing at its contents. A hand sprang up suddenly from behind and held the drooping and curling righthand top corner of a page.

I noticed an elderly man painstakingly reading the contents from my paper. As his attempts to assimilate the interesting contents failed, he just mildly pulled that one sheet apologetically from me, signalling that it was not the one I was reading.

Respecting his age, I let the sheet go into his hands. The queue moved a few inches forward and it started raining. Another youngster approached me for my umbrella, smartly hanging from my elbow, as he had to bring his identity proof left in his vehicle parked outside. I said I was quitting the queue as it was too long to wait for my turn on a rainy day, suggesting that he need not have any hopes of borrowing my umbrella. The youth threw a contemptuous look at me as a cop would do when he spots a thief around.

I still did not comprehend what made me leave the queue abruptly. I forgot to collect the page of my paper from that senior citizen, who nearly forced it into his hands. Losing a sheet of a paper is wiser than losing an umbrella, I convinced myself as I came out.

I reminisced about my childhood in the small Andhra Pradesh town where I was born and brought up. We had some neighbours who always intruded into our house for a ladder, a screwdriver, an iron, a stool, a suitcase or anything portable but not returnable. My mother was pestered by a few of her neighbourhood friends for a tablespoon of coffee powder, a cup of sugar or a bowl of curd or at least a twig of curry or coriander leaves.

Some friends asked my mother to let our grandma sleep in their house as their family head had gone on an outstation visit. I still wonder how a grandma can be a potential security cover in case of trouble in their house. I lost count of the notebooks borrowed by my friends and not restored, not to speak of marbles, tennis balls, badminton racquets, carrom strikers and an assorted variety of playthings.

As I grew up, I landed a bank job and there it was all about lending and borrowing there again. Once I was flying to Pune and a fellow traveller asked me if he could take the newspaper from the pouch meant for my use. I let him have it and took a copy of the same newspaper from his pouch. He smiled at me and till today I did not know why he did so.

They say many things get passed on to us from our parental genes. As I reached the marriageable age, I was discreetly asked by my would-be father-in-law whether I had any borrowings. I replied in the negative. He was overjoyed. My father called me to his bedside during his last days and extracted a promise that come what may, I would never borrow a thing from anyone as he had suffered in his life due to others borrowing from him. I am guilty to this day of not keeping my promise as my bank had a plethora of employee loan schemes. Is borrowing hereditary?

(The writer's email id is pushpasaran@yahoo.co.in