My 14 dollar Angel

My fourteen dollar Angel!

FOURTEEN dollars to meet an angel! That’s what I paid. The year was 2002- the southern summer of Auckland, and I was a lonely immigrant who moved to New Zealand in March that year.

The little enclave of units nestled off a busy street, yet was a space lost in a time warp of old –world comfort and charm, where folks had time for each other. The common spaces had little strips of lawn lining the concrete drive way, and of course they needed to be mown!

The gentle residents of this cross-lease, had an arrangement for this- a professional mower would mow the lawns and each one paid fourteen dollars in turn to him, said the little angel, and so now it is your turn!

Little then did I know that she was an angel, complete with twinkling blue eyes and a halo of white hair , Trudi permeated the air with mischief, more associated with elves than angels.

As I stayed on, this grand-maternal angel, introduced me to the other fine residents of the enclave, each charming in their own way, from the young Chinese students, to the young Samoan nurse, the Filipino couple, the attractive Fijian single parent to three boisterous boys and the retired Australian builder, the Kiwi couple and last but not the least crusty Charlie, the owner of the cat.

They live in the garden, angels do! Her garden was the best and mine very easily the worst, so this Austrian octogenarian, helped me and my soul by introducing to the gentle art of gardening.

Growing up in the concrete jungle that was Bombay, my spirits were the hard brassy kind, gardens meant flowers or weeds- either visual gratification or pesky weeds that needed removing, and since weeds too have flowers, I did not know which was which.

Naturally, I asked the owner of the best garden, Trudi, and she gave me kindly instruction as to what I needed to remove and what I needed to keep.

As we met another day when she invited me to tea, she told me stories of child hood which had me in splits of laughter and a span of four decades was bridged, instantly- after all laughter is the shortest distance between two people. As enlightenment dawned, I began to see the youth of this lovely person, who had moved to these magical bits of heaven that floated down to earth, to form the isles of New Zealand, just, when I was just a child.

Never did I hear an unkind word about any one, yet she gave me insights of her brave approach to life, as a child who grew up happily in Europe; emigrated from her war-torn continent, in her youth to England; her cheerful struggles with another language, a sojourn in sunny Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia and her stint as a house mistress in Dilworth’s a school for poor children in Auckland.

This friendship deepened during the visit of my beloved mother from India, in the third year of my move to New Zealand, who was another of this kindred of brave women, who face life calmly and gracefully. They hit it off instantly, and Trudi came to visit daily. In one of this visits, she took ill, and I received a call in my office from my panic-stricken mother-who did not know what was to be done. A quick call to the efficient 111 Emergency services saved us from losing her and happily I still have my fourteen dollar angel, Gertrude Bernt!