Kolkata Diary 1 / A mother is born

If you have a sweater under your jacket, a woollen flat cap to cover your head, and if your feet are in comfortable shoes, a January morning in Kolkata can be enchanting. 

After many months, we returned home last night. Although I am not an early riser, this morning I ventured out at six to get milk for our coffee and a Bangla newspaper. The sun was yet to be up, the lake in front of our home and the trees around it were under the blanket of a mysterious fog that never fails to bewitch me. A few die-hard early-morning walkers around the lake looked like health-conscious ghosts in the semidarkness. If there was heaven on earth, it could only be in Kolkata during the winter. 

As I approached the newspaper vendor standing behind his bicycle on which piles of newspapers carrying terrible stories were neatly arranged, a man standing nearby casually threw his empty paper tea cup on the road. Chalta hai! 

The newspaper man asked me with a smile, ‘When did you come back?’ Face recognition ... a pleasant homecoming. A woman sitting with vegetables on the other side of the road called me, ‘E dike eso baba, tomay diyei bounita kori. Come here son; let me begin my day’s business with you!’ 

I was happy to be called son. My mother had passed away 40 years before. Besides, no one can say No to such an endearing request. Her merchandise wasn’t much, some coconuts, bananas, and banana flowers. The last product, which we call mocha, is a delicacy. But removing the sap between the petals of a mocha is a painstaking, time-consuming job. When she held out a mocha for me, I said, ‘You want me to get an earful from my wife so early in the morning? Who would remove the petals?’ 

She said, ‘Don’t worry son, I came here at five o’ clock so that your wife doesn’t have to bother.' And she proffered neatly packed mocha petals in a plastic bag. 

She had come from Amtala, a place 20 kilometres away, which means she would have started latest by 4 in the morning. When I asked her if I could take her picture, she quickly covered her head and broke into a beaming smile. 

One doesn’t have to go to Paris to see a smiling woman! 

 9 January 2023 / ©Santanu Sinha Chaudhuri