The Repaired Staircase

The broken stairs stood repaired at last. Shivshanker Rai Bahadur stood full of anticipation looking up at them. Though his name was a long one bestowed upon him by his family according to their princely traditions, he was still a teenager of nineteen years. He had been orphaned in his infancy in a yachting accident in which both his parents had died, leaving him under the care of his paternal grandmother who lived with them and had been widowed even before his father had graduated from school. He belonged to the ancient, princely family of Bhawanigarh and his aged but authoritative grandmother had raised him in strict discipline befitting their traditions.

He had grown up enjoying all the benefits and paying all the prices of his lineage as a scion of the once feudal lords of Bhawanigarh. He had had the best of governesses and tutors at home and when he was eight, he had been sent to one of the best boarding schools located in a famous hill station. He was pampered with all the appropriate gifts when he was growing up….a sleek horse, two ferocious mastiffs, an all-terrain jeep, a golf course and numerous electronic gadgets of the day. But he did not know a mother’s caress. He had spent the first six months at the boarding school, crying himself to sleep nearly every night and putting up a brave face in the day fighting homesickness. He learnt to be smart and worldly wise by observing, watching and fighting it out. He had friends, but they too came of a rich and aristocratic stock like himself where emotions were frowned upon. When he finished his schooling, he went on to attend a prestigious arts college in Europe. Till now, he had never confided his innermost feelings to anyone nor did he know how to.

Shivshanker had returned home about a month back when his grandmother died suddenly after a brief illness. He had to return to perform the funerary rites and to complete the legal formalities of his inheritance. Thus he came to possess the huge family mansion that had housed generations of his ancestors for the past two hundred and thirty odd years. In this mansion, he had played in or explored all the nooks and corners except this broken and unused staircase to the roof of the three storied left wing housing the ladies’ chambers. These stairs stood inside an end passage of the left wing that was kept locked with the keys under his grandmother’s custody. Whenever he had questioned her about it she had evaded the subject with her usual coolness that forbade its further pursuit.

After the customary mourning period was over, he had to look into the affairs of the estate before he could return to Europe. It was then that he decided to repair these staircases and the end passage containing them. Now that they were repaired, he ran up the flight of stairs through all the three floor levels but could find nothing noticeable. When at the top, he opened the door to the roof and the bright day light rushed in. Then he suddenly noticed an old and dusty wooden chest fitted with brass trimmings in the corner of the landing facing the roof-doors. He slowly went and knelt in front of the chest. It was unlocked. He opened the lid and threw it back. A faint smell of dust and mildew mingled with the odor of naphthalene balls rose from the contents. Inside were kept with the utmost care, all his childhood clothes neatly folded. Also kept with these clothes was his favorite rag doll Bozo, who had been his constant companion till he was five years old. As he was fumbling among the clothes, he suddenly uncovered a silver box tied with a golden silk tassel. He gingerly picked up the box and undid the silk binding. Inside the box were kept all the letters he had ever written and sent to his grandmother since his boarding school days. Only recently he had stopped writing home after he had gone to Europe as he got used to calling directly on the phone. All his letters were rolled up in small bundles and tied with white silk ribbons.

Tears welled up in Shivshanker’s eyes in spite of his best efforts to hold them back and his vision went hazy. He truly felt his grandmother’s love for the first time in his life and he truly mourned her loss for the first time since her death.