I must have been six, maybe seven. There was chaos in the house. Clothes being stuffed into suitcases already full of clothes and sandals and pots and bags of masala and fried onion wrapped in newspaper and then again in multiple layers of plastic, and papads and achar and ladoos and paper kites and manja. My always stressed out aunt, was besides herself. With three young children, eight over stuffed bags and a long transatlantic journey back to the US she had reason to be. “How am I going to get through this?” she shouted hysterically, throwing her arms up in the air with all the drama of Meena Kumari in Pakeeza. “Don’t tension,” our servant Ali, tried to calm her in his broken English,” Iqbal apa, come.”
That is my first memory of Iqbal Dhakam.
Over the years whenever family members were flying in or out of Bombay her name would pop up. Flying to Singapore for the first time, my own frayed nerves would be soothed by her calming presence. As one of Air India’s ground support staff at the airport, she primarily helped with checking in the luggage, but just knowing that she was around somehow made it easier to get through immigration and customs and the general anxiety and horror of flying internationally.
I don’t know much about her early life. I believe the Dhakam family were officers with the Nawab of Janjira, but with the dissolution of the princely state in 1948 the family’s fortunes declined. The eldest of three sisters, she took on her family’s responsibility at an early age. Working odd hours, helping her sisters get through college and caring for her aging parents left her with little time to satisfy her own needs. Eventually she did fall in love, but it ended badly and left her disillusioned with companionship and marriage.
Not sure how much of what I wrote in the above paragraph is factual, but for most of us that is not what is important. What matters are the stories about Iqbal apa.
Like the one where she was on a crowded local train with her hands pinned to her sides by the other passengers jammed in to the ladies compartment. As the train left the platform a man jumped in and pulled off the long dangling gold earrings right from her ears and ran away, leaving her screaming, “Chor, chor, chor.”
Or the time we were leaving her apartment in Poona, with a tap that would not stop leaking. “Not a problem,” she assured us, “it will eventually stop.”
And then the time in a restaurant where she kept knocking over a two liter ThumsUp bottle every time she reached over to get some food and finally when my aunt sitting next to her opened the bottle she was sprayed with a never ending fountain of brown fizz that exploded out of it.
When Iqbal apa was near, it seemed, trouble would not be far. Like my uncle used to say, “Uska to bad luck he kharaab hain.” But it never seemed to bother her. There was always that big huge gummy, toothy smile. And she was tall and very fair skinned and her upper back arched a bit, all of which made her a very striking presence.
She fell off a double decker bus once and fractured her leg. How, is still a mystery. She was not very proud of that accomplishment and did not like to speak about it much, but that wasn’t the only time she had broken something. Maybe it was severe arthritis or some kind of skoliois or maybe just her bad luck being bad, but she always seemed to be breaking some thing. “Salaam Apa, aaj kya tuta?” was the way we started greeting her.
These perpetual accidents led her to take some heavy doses of pain killers, which resulted in ulcers, that eventually caused heavy internal bleeding which got her admitted to a hospital earlier last month. When my mother informed me that she was in the ICU, I laughed it off. Its Iqbal apa, I reminded my mom, she’ll be fine. A week later, she was dead.
Its been one of those years. Mostly good, with an occasional but stark reminder of the bad.
Rest in peace, Iqbal apa. Inna Lillahi Wa Inna Illayhi Raje’oun.
.. and to the rest of you, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.