The Chair at the Head of the Table

In 1965, my brother became the first member of our family to pass the Central Civil Services examination. His first posting was in Eluru, a quiet town in Andhra Pradesh. My grandmother went to visit him that year, and somewhere in the middle of that vacation, she told him she wanted to see where he worked.

He obliged without hesitation. In a small town like Eluru, government offices were not fortresses. No permission slips, no visitor passes, no one at a gate asking questions. You walked in, and you were welcome.

She stepped inside and slowly looked around. File cabinets lined the walls. Racks held files in neat stacks. More files sat on my brother’s desk. And there, behind the desk, was his chair, a swivel chair with a clean towel folded and spread across the seat. In those days, that was a mark of the man who sat there.

My brother ordered coffee for her. She did not eat or drink anything prepared outside the home, except coffee. That was the one exception. She held the cup and looked around the room, taking it all in. A government office. Her grandson’s government office.

When she finished, she looked at the chair and asked if she could sit in it.

He laughed. He got up, walked around to her, took her hands gently, and settled her into it.

She was delighted. It was the first time she had sat in a swivel chair. She moved it slightly, rocking it once or twice to test it. Then she straightened herself, folded her hands on the table in front of her, and looked across at my brother, who had taken the visitor’s chair on the other side.

They talked for a few minutes, easy and unhurried, both of them in the local language. She had no English and needed none. This was her world, too, now, in a way. Her grandson had arrived somewhere, and she had come to see the place he had arrived at.

Then, out of the blue, she asked him something. I do not remember what it was, only that it embarrassed him enough to startle him. He got up and told her, sharply, to get out of the chair.

She froze. She had no idea what she had said wrong. It had felt, to her, like an ordinary question.

My brother stood there for a moment. Then something shifted. He caught himself, and he started to laugh.

She exhaled. The room became itself again.

I think about that afternoon sometimes. Two people on opposite sides of a desk, neither of them quite in their usual place. She was in his chair. He was in the visitors’. One conversation, one wrong turn, one laugh that put everything right. It was a small moment, and it was complete.