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The Mush Register

LOVE KNOWS NO BARRIERS Advocate C. Lakshmi Narain with wife Rita

Lakshmi Narain

Her office was on the ground floor, and mine on the first. While climbing the stairs, I would direct my attention towards her, to the relative exclusion of all others. During one such early morning ritual, I lost my balance and fell. The cycle bell served as a means for expressing my love. For no rhyme or reason, I would press it and proclaim my arrival to her. One day, she had reached work too early and was waiting for the keys to arrive. I tried chatting her up, "The door is still locked?" She answered in monosyllables. Within a week, she thawed and I asked her out. We were painting the town red; we have not left a single park unvisited. While we were spending an evening at Rajaji Hall, clasping each other in our arms, the watchman took exception to our `indecent behaviour', as he put it. He reported us to the police and we were marched off to B1 police station. I played advocate and wriggled out of the tight corner. I asked Rita to tell the police officer, "He is my fiancée. We were sitting there and chatting. This man demanded a bribe. When we refused, he made up this story." The police officer gave the watchman a dressing down and apologised profusely to us.

Rita

There was opposition to our match on both sides. For ten years after marriage, my parents would not touch me with a barge pole. As an Anglo-Indian from Kerala, I could not simply walk into his house either. His mother opposed the match tooth and nail. Initially, his father also would not have anything to do with us. He just extracted two promises from me — "Don't force my son to have non-vegetarian food unless he wants to. Don't desert my son at any cost." However, all his siblings possessed a disposition to tolerate and accept people from different backgrounds. We were married on the terrace of his elder brother's Hyderabad house. His mother underwent a change of heart when his sister, 14-year-old Bamini, died of tetanus. His mother wailed, "Because I did not recognise the Lakshmi that came to my house, the Lakshmi in my house has been snatched away." Nat (as she calls Lakshmi Narain) gave me a nickname — Bezawada Lakshmi Prasanna Pedda Venkata Subbamma — and call me Subbi. So accepted have I become that all others in his family insist that he call me `Rita'. "It's a nice name," they say. My acid test was the extended family — "Would they accept me?'

To make me acceptable to them, he taught me how to prostrate before elders, to sing Thyagaraja keerthanas, play the veena and wear the madisar. They were surprised to learn that my maiden name was Rita D'Coutho.

(AS TOLD TO PRINCE FREDERICK)

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