This happened when I was the Rural Development Officer (RDO) in Syndicate Bank, Kotagiri, Nilgiri District. The job of the RDO was not only assisting the bank in appraising loan applications of farmers and planters but also in having an equal footing in canvassing deposits, follow-up of customers, recovering loans, agricultural extension activities and development of adopted villages. Recovery work was more of rigmarole – meeting the same customers again and again and looking forward to trickles of amount coming back in instalments.
It was some day in 1987- 88. Armed with a list of loan default customers I planned to cover the area from Aravenu to Tuttapullum. After completing Aravenu, I reached Gottacombai, a locality predominantly occupied by households of plantation workers. I was in search of a lady by name Ms Kamala (name changed) who had availed a business loan way back in 1982 and had not repaid for quite a long period. Earlier, a scrutiny of the account in the ledger at the branch had shown regular payments from the next month of availing the loan but had stopped abruptly after about 8-9 months of regular payment and her individual file showed that no one from the bank had approached her after the loan repayment was defaulted.
A person at the roadside petty shop guided me to the path leading to the lady’s house. Climbing a few crudely placed steps on a steep gradient, panting for breadth I reached the portal of the defaulter’s house. The house looked bigger than most other houses of the plantation workers in the vicinity. There was no kennel or a bark of any dog- that was one important deterrent for loan officers like me in most houses in Nilgiris. With an air of safety assured, I stepped forward to tap the door. There was absolute silence all around. With no response coming in I tapped again. This time the door opened and there was this lady Ms. Kamala with more of salt and less of pepper hair in an unkempt cotton saree. She should have been in her late sixties, I guessed. She invited me with a gracious smile – a smile which would have been probably different if I had disclosed that I was a recovery officer of a bank. Without even asking me who I was, she asked me very politely to take a seat, as she was briskly wiping her wet hands with the pallu (free end of the Indian saree). “I was washing my dishes” she said as she rushed back to the kitchen. I gazed around the room and found many photos framed and hanging on the walls. Most of them were in sepia tone. She came back with a glass of lukewarm water which I accepted immediately. My panting was put to rest. I introduced myself and surprisingly there was no reaction from the lady whatsoever. I was put off for I had expected a sense of fear on her face. Instead the same smile continued. “Who else stays here with you?” I asked inquisitively, realizing the silence prevalent around the house. “I am alone here, my son” she said and looked at me with a tinge of tear wetted eyes. The serene smile was lost. The ‘my son’ inclusion in her reply and the sudden change in her mood touched me. The next lines of her conversation put me at ease as my job was made easier. “I know that I had availed a loan. It was availed for my son and he had been paying it regularly as long as he was with me. Ever since he got married to that girl he has probably stopped paying the loan” she said with an air of remorse in her voice. “Please let me know the balance and I shall clear the entire loan next week” she said. At this stage my job was over and I could have exited like most other officers of the bank. I stay put.
Somewhere in my conscience I felt that she was going to pay for someone else’s mistake. Curious to know if she had a source of income to pay her dues, I asked her, “How are you going to pay this amount?” She started weeping and started wiping her eyes with the pallu. I felt embarrassed. What a fool was I to ask this question, I thought. She got up from her seat and drew my attention to a photo. “This is my husband’s photo” she said as she was wiping the tears and squeezing her nose. “Our family is a huge one. After successively having six daughters we had a son. We were one of the early planters in this area and owned many acres of estates in Tuttapullum. By Gods grace my husband and I had married away all our daughters before his death. I live here alone”.
I was just wondering what had happened to her son when she opened up the next part of the conversation on her own. “My son was taking care of me and our estates for sometime till he married that girl” she uttered with the same remorse in her voice. “My son Rajagopal (name changed) fell in love with an Anglo-Indian girl and is living with her family” she said sporting a sheepish small smile. This smile was not the same as the earlier ones. I understood her grief. The conversation continued. No where did she seem to be angry with her son or ‘the girl’. “We both had never met since his marriage” she continued her angst on the turn of events and blamed the local community for not initiating any reconciliation process. I saw signs of anger on her face for the first time when she cursed her fate and criticized all those who were known to both her and her son for not trying to patch up the differences. She broke down again and this time I could see tears dripping incessantly. Every drop spoke volumes of her love for her son. Her only cherished son who was gifted by God after successive birth of daughters. “Forget about his friends, my friends, her friends for none had thought of the love for my son. What prevented my son from meeting me? I came to know that they have a baby too” she questioned and seemed to end her conversation. By that time I understood that she was venting her intense love for her only son and was not able to digest the fact that though she and her son were near but yet too far.
The name of her son Rajagopal rang a bell in my mind. The name and the mention about her son’s coffee estate in Tuttapullum struck a chord. I asked her to show me her son in one of the photos adorning the walls. My God, it was the same person I had in mind. I got goose pimples seeing the photo. I refrained from showing any excitement in recognising her son. I went into an instant flashback and recollected how this character had approached me a couple of months back for a loan. The Rajagopal I knew was a sober looking soft spoken gentleman. He came to me with a proposal for conversion of his coffee estate into a tea estate. He had got swayed away by the attractive prices tea was fetching then and like many others in Nilgiris he also got carried away by the fast buck from tea and had decided to join the band wagon of the quick-buck tea planters. As a strong adversary of the monoculture in Nilgiris, I remembered having given Rajagopal a brainstorming session on the need to have multiple crops in ones land and had vehemently criticized the mad monoculture of tea spreading throughout Nilgiris. I remembered him telling me that he had about 40 acres of coffee, cardamom and pepper in his estate. I had successfully convinced him in not going for a fresh loan for tea. The lady’s voice interrupted my flashback, “You might have seen him in the town.” I did not react. It was when she then asked me if she could come the following Monday that a great idea popped in my head. I told her to come to the bank at exactly 10.30 am on Monday. As I bid farewell to Rajagopal’s mother I could see the relief on her face. She seemed to thank me for my patient listening.
The same day I contacted Rajagopal and concocted a situation. I told him that he and his wife may have to come to the bank to sign some documents pertaining to their savings account. I expected them to come with the kid as both had to come. I fixed the time as 10.30 am on Monday and asked him to be punctual.
On Monday at the fixed time Ms Kamala walked in first. She was given a seat in front of my table. Her back was facing the entrance of the bank and she could not see who was entering in. In a few minutes Rajagopal, his wife and their kid walked straight to my table. The mother and son were surprised and hugged each other. Tears of happiness rolled from both the mother and the son. Ms Kamala exchanged pleasantries with her daughter-in-law and lifted the kid from her and started fondling the baby. All three of them realised that I had arranged this meeting and thanked me profusely.
As I saw the united family walking out of the portals of the bank I heaved a sigh of relief. My friend Ravichandran who was close to me was a witness to this real life drama. He was all praise for my effort. Choked with emotion he said, “Sir, you have today done a great service and this mother’s blessings will always be with you.”
For the bank an old irregular loan got closed. For me, I had the satisfaction of having gone the extra mile in understanding human relationships, going beyond the call of the regular duty to arrange a rendezvous of an affectionate mother and a craving son.
P.Uday Shankar
It was some day in 1987- 88. Armed with a list of loan default customers I planned to cover the area from Aravenu to Tuttapullum. After completing Aravenu, I reached Gottacombai, a locality predominantly occupied by households of plantation workers. I was in search of a lady by name Ms Kamala (name changed) who had availed a business loan way back in 1982 and had not repaid for quite a long period. Earlier, a scrutiny of the account in the ledger at the branch had shown regular payments from the next month of availing the loan but had stopped abruptly after about 8-9 months of regular payment and her individual file showed that no one from the bank had approached her after the loan repayment was defaulted.
A person at the roadside petty shop guided me to the path leading to the lady’s house. Climbing a few crudely placed steps on a steep gradient, panting for breadth I reached the portal of the defaulter’s house. The house looked bigger than most other houses of the plantation workers in the vicinity. There was no kennel or a bark of any dog- that was one important deterrent for loan officers like me in most houses in Nilgiris. With an air of safety assured, I stepped forward to tap the door. There was absolute silence all around. With no response coming in I tapped again. This time the door opened and there was this lady Ms. Kamala with more of salt and less of pepper hair in an unkempt cotton saree. She should have been in her late sixties, I guessed. She invited me with a gracious smile – a smile which would have been probably different if I had disclosed that I was a recovery officer of a bank. Without even asking me who I was, she asked me very politely to take a seat, as she was briskly wiping her wet hands with the pallu (free end of the Indian saree). “I was washing my dishes” she said as she rushed back to the kitchen. I gazed around the room and found many photos framed and hanging on the walls. Most of them were in sepia tone. She came back with a glass of lukewarm water which I accepted immediately. My panting was put to rest. I introduced myself and surprisingly there was no reaction from the lady whatsoever. I was put off for I had expected a sense of fear on her face. Instead the same smile continued. “Who else stays here with you?” I asked inquisitively, realizing the silence prevalent around the house. “I am alone here, my son” she said and looked at me with a tinge of tear wetted eyes. The serene smile was lost. The ‘my son’ inclusion in her reply and the sudden change in her mood touched me. The next lines of her conversation put me at ease as my job was made easier. “I know that I had availed a loan. It was availed for my son and he had been paying it regularly as long as he was with me. Ever since he got married to that girl he has probably stopped paying the loan” she said with an air of remorse in her voice. “Please let me know the balance and I shall clear the entire loan next week” she said. At this stage my job was over and I could have exited like most other officers of the bank. I stay put.
Somewhere in my conscience I felt that she was going to pay for someone else’s mistake. Curious to know if she had a source of income to pay her dues, I asked her, “How are you going to pay this amount?” She started weeping and started wiping her eyes with the pallu. I felt embarrassed. What a fool was I to ask this question, I thought. She got up from her seat and drew my attention to a photo. “This is my husband’s photo” she said as she was wiping the tears and squeezing her nose. “Our family is a huge one. After successively having six daughters we had a son. We were one of the early planters in this area and owned many acres of estates in Tuttapullum. By Gods grace my husband and I had married away all our daughters before his death. I live here alone”.
I was just wondering what had happened to her son when she opened up the next part of the conversation on her own. “My son was taking care of me and our estates for sometime till he married that girl” she uttered with the same remorse in her voice. “My son Rajagopal (name changed) fell in love with an Anglo-Indian girl and is living with her family” she said sporting a sheepish small smile. This smile was not the same as the earlier ones. I understood her grief. The conversation continued. No where did she seem to be angry with her son or ‘the girl’. “We both had never met since his marriage” she continued her angst on the turn of events and blamed the local community for not initiating any reconciliation process. I saw signs of anger on her face for the first time when she cursed her fate and criticized all those who were known to both her and her son for not trying to patch up the differences. She broke down again and this time I could see tears dripping incessantly. Every drop spoke volumes of her love for her son. Her only cherished son who was gifted by God after successive birth of daughters. “Forget about his friends, my friends, her friends for none had thought of the love for my son. What prevented my son from meeting me? I came to know that they have a baby too” she questioned and seemed to end her conversation. By that time I understood that she was venting her intense love for her only son and was not able to digest the fact that though she and her son were near but yet too far.
The name of her son Rajagopal rang a bell in my mind. The name and the mention about her son’s coffee estate in Tuttapullum struck a chord. I asked her to show me her son in one of the photos adorning the walls. My God, it was the same person I had in mind. I got goose pimples seeing the photo. I refrained from showing any excitement in recognising her son. I went into an instant flashback and recollected how this character had approached me a couple of months back for a loan. The Rajagopal I knew was a sober looking soft spoken gentleman. He came to me with a proposal for conversion of his coffee estate into a tea estate. He had got swayed away by the attractive prices tea was fetching then and like many others in Nilgiris he also got carried away by the fast buck from tea and had decided to join the band wagon of the quick-buck tea planters. As a strong adversary of the monoculture in Nilgiris, I remembered having given Rajagopal a brainstorming session on the need to have multiple crops in ones land and had vehemently criticized the mad monoculture of tea spreading throughout Nilgiris. I remembered him telling me that he had about 40 acres of coffee, cardamom and pepper in his estate. I had successfully convinced him in not going for a fresh loan for tea. The lady’s voice interrupted my flashback, “You might have seen him in the town.” I did not react. It was when she then asked me if she could come the following Monday that a great idea popped in my head. I told her to come to the bank at exactly 10.30 am on Monday. As I bid farewell to Rajagopal’s mother I could see the relief on her face. She seemed to thank me for my patient listening.
The same day I contacted Rajagopal and concocted a situation. I told him that he and his wife may have to come to the bank to sign some documents pertaining to their savings account. I expected them to come with the kid as both had to come. I fixed the time as 10.30 am on Monday and asked him to be punctual.
On Monday at the fixed time Ms Kamala walked in first. She was given a seat in front of my table. Her back was facing the entrance of the bank and she could not see who was entering in. In a few minutes Rajagopal, his wife and their kid walked straight to my table. The mother and son were surprised and hugged each other. Tears of happiness rolled from both the mother and the son. Ms Kamala exchanged pleasantries with her daughter-in-law and lifted the kid from her and started fondling the baby. All three of them realised that I had arranged this meeting and thanked me profusely.
As I saw the united family walking out of the portals of the bank I heaved a sigh of relief. My friend Ravichandran who was close to me was a witness to this real life drama. He was all praise for my effort. Choked with emotion he said, “Sir, you have today done a great service and this mother’s blessings will always be with you.”
For the bank an old irregular loan got closed. For me, I had the satisfaction of having gone the extra mile in understanding human relationships, going beyond the call of the regular duty to arrange a rendezvous of an affectionate mother and a craving son.
P.Uday Shankar
