RELATIONSHIPS|SELF
My Air Hostess Room Mate
Roommates are cute and irritating
In 1971 when I first started working in a corporate organization, I stayed in a working women’s hostel called Adya Jha Hostel. I was staying in a ground-floor room which had a lot of problem with noise. Whoever came in, would come with a bang.
When the first-floor room was vacated, I shifted upstairs. This was a three-room set. Two were occupied already but one remained.
We were two claimants, Evon Phillip and me. So since all the rooms were supposed to be sharing except these three on the first floor, the management asked us to share the room.
Evon Phillip was delighted because she did not want a single room as it was very expensive.
We shifted in and all was at peace. Evon was an air hostess with Indian Airlines. She was witty and lovely and she used to bring wonderful eats for me from her flights. They were a real treat as hostel food was pathetic.
During those days air hostesses got so much food that instead of wasting it because they could not finish it they were allowed to take it home with them. Most often, I was a beneficiary because she would go out with her boyfriend quite often and eat out.
Evon was irritating also. All her flights used to operate early morning. Her taxi would come at 2.30 AM to pick her up. She would not be organized because she was forever going out.
Ah! my hairpin! My hair spray! where is my eyeliner? she would go on. On most flights, she had to wear a saree the Indian costume and she would take so much time to put a pin here and put a pin there and make a lot of noise.
Many years later I met her in the college where I was a professor at Jesus & Mary College at New Delhi (India). She came to get her daughter admitted to the college. She had married her boyfriend and I also got married and left the hostel and we had a reunion after so many years. We hugged each other and spoke of the days together and how much we cared for each other.
I have never met her again.
Thank you Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) for the prompt
©Dr. Preeti Singh, 2021. All rights are reserved by the author.
