Tender notice

Tender notice

My sister thinks it’s ‘tender — hooks’. “Why have you kept me on tender-hooks?,” she asks plaintively, when she’s tense about something. My friend Sheila calls the area she resides in Tender Loving Khar, and between them, exist a whole universe of people who cherish the tender moments that Life has afforded them.

I am referring to loving, caring, kindhearted, gentle, warm and sweet moments of life, which we have experienced, at some time or the other. This column’s about them and the people who create them. And I’m naming names this time. Because tenderness is a dying art, and its practitioners must be recognised.

The gracious and warm Sue Sharma was in a book shop recently, when she noticed a neighbour’s daughter, hovering near a copy of Julius Caesar. The girl would pick it up, put it down, and come back again to it.

Sue did not want to embarrass her, so she quietly bought the copy, and remembered to give it to the girl’s father the next time she saw him. “I didn’t know whether she was short of cash or what. But it’s so rare to see a young child interested in Shakespeare” was all she said when she presented the copy. /R It happened. Just like that. In the city of Mumbai. Some one had the time to stop and notice.

I was having a manicure when a parcel arrived for the manicurist. A pair of Scholl sandals. My manicurist’s face broke into a broad smile. “Dipti’s sent me these because she noticed that I have to stand long hours and my feet hurt,” she said. (Dipti Salgaonkar, daughter of the late Dhirubhai Ambani)  It happened. Just like that. In the city of Mumbai.

Then this about mrs Irene D’lima, who worked as the school’s seamstress and whose son went to the same kindergarten we did. The teacher asked all of us children to bring a boiled egg the next day for a lesson on peeling.

Because he couldn’t afford one, the boy brought a potato instead. Some of the kids laughed, but the teacher did not shout or make him feel small. “What a wonderful example you have brought!” she said. “ I should have thought of it myself.” It happened. Just like that. In what they call the hard city of Mumbai.

Many decades ago, a mother cutting up her favourite and only good silk sari stayed up all night to stitch a salwar kameez from it for her teenaged daughter, who was going to be taken to the wedding reception of a famous actor by her friend, the next day.

The same actor, who had forgotten in his moment of triumph, to invite the mother and her husband who had been his oldest friends. The hum of the sewing machine. The memory of the mother’s sacrifice. And the daughter’s excitement on wearing the outfit.

My mother on the sewing machine. And my sister wearing the outfit. So many of Life’s sweet and tender moments. May your life too, be abundantly full of them And may all the hooks you hang on, only be ‘tender hooks.’

s_malavika@dnaindia.net