SURAJ

Suraj was  employed  to look after  Tanu's mother.  She was an old lady of advanced age, yet  all her faculties  were intact  and with no threatening disabilities barring the old age health conditions.  She was dominating  by nature and at the same time  strong willed and  terribly self opinionated  to the extent of being self deluded.It was very difficult to  make her see any  sense.

Suraj  was a  reliable worker though somewhat tardy for his age. He  was in   middling  thirties, of short built, squat  with his  head always  drooping  and  shoulders bent  which gave him a melancholic look. He dragged his feet while walking and lurked sideways. Tanu lectured him on his skewed gait and encouraged him to walk with head held high ,he would give an awkward  smile showing his yellowing  teeth and follow the advice but for a short while only. Somehow Tanu found Suraj somewhat queer.  He  was always at loggerheads with the other female servant in the house.  It was  perhaps  the  male chauvinism inherent  in the male ego of any class  and creed to dominate the other sex and feel superior.  The constant bickering of the two disrupted  peace  in the house. 

It was perhaps after one such  bouts, the female servant  blurted in  excitable state,  that  Suraj was  in relation with some other male servant in the neighbourhood.  Tanu was flabbergasted and everything about the servant fell in place. His creepy movements and his suspicious demeanour  was now self explanatory. It raised disgust in her. The very nomenclature  of this deviant sexual condition always repulsed her. She saw the servant  as  a slimy creature  spreading  filth in the house  since he was a permanent  servant and lived with the family in the same house. He would call his friend to his room  whenever he found the right opportunity.  She couldn't  bear to see him in  the house anymore,   but before she could  confront him and  think of  removing him  she had to ask her mother's consent.  Tanu approached  her mother  in a highly agitated state and revealed the whole thing  yet  wary of seeing her mother shocked.  But  surprisingly her mother  remained  unruffled. She brushed her off coolly taking it as the figment of her  imagination and refused to let the servant go. 

Tanu knew her mother's obstinacy  and her  moral inaptitude which somehow had blunted her conscience and no reasoning  with her could help in the situation.

Tanu put down her cudgels and all the same avoided Suraj as she would a leper.