The Princess and the Pauper

 

The happiest moment after beginning campus life arrived a few weeks after our academic term began. The sky was overcast that morning; a wet wind announced the onset of happy rains, blowing away twigs and shrunken leaves accumulated over a long dry summer. As we were reluctantly preparing for college, the news came it would be a day off for the entire university. Moreover, it would be a day of outing, an English word I hadn’t heard.

Soon, hundreds of boys and girls began walking away from the campus, along gravelled roads, across barren undulating red laterite grounds called the khowai, many singing in groups. Our destination was the River Kopai. The horizon beckoned us as dark clouds above turned the ground below into a darker shade of crimson. An outing was a part of the campus life in Santinketan. An event to usher in a new season.

Whoever had thought of the event was a teenager at heart. Apart from being close to nature, it was the first time I was in proximity with so many young girls. After nine years in a boys’ school that was as barren as the sands of a seashore, spending half a day with so many beautiful girls was a delight. Countless glances would have been stolen that morning, and I guess some hearts would have been exchanged, or just given!

I gave my heart to a girl who smiled at me. She was beautiful, slender, and exceedingly fair. Let me quickly add that she would have been beautiful in everyone’s eyes, not just to a seventeen-year-old yokel. She looked like a princess. Most unfortunately for me, she was actually a princess! Of an Indian princely state.

I never mustered up the courage to speak to her, though I rehearsed the opening lines of a never-to-happen dialogue in my head millions of times. There was some chemistry whenever our eyes met on the campus. There was also a hint of a smile on her lips, or maybe, I imagined it. In our dining hall, I noticed her a couple of times, looking dejectedly at the steel plate with rice, watery dal, postor jhol, and maybe, an egg. Her grandfather might have been an admirer of Rabindranath Tagore, but it would have been cruel to expose her to the food served by the kitchen of the university set up by him. She left after a few months.

A huge burden was off my chest.

Bengaluru, March 2025

Remembering Suhita-di

Suhita Sinha Roy, Suhita Saha before marriage, was two years my senior at college. A bright student, she was tall, slim, beautiful, and a basketball player. But more importantly, she had a beautiful mind. I consider myself fortunate to have found a place among the circle of her close friends. I called her Suhita-di.

Suhita-di did exceedingly well in MA a few weeks after her father passed away after long illness. I think adversity brought out the best in her, just as it does for all strong and capable people. From her MA until her passing, Suhita-di battled multiple incurable diseases. They were so serious that—I believe—lesser mortals would have given up long ago. But Suhita-di kept working at government colleges in different places, managed the family alone when her husband was away on a foreign posting, and managed to do a PhD when she was in her forties / fifties after doing rigorous field work in rural Bengal. Her life came to an end when she was in her early sixties. 

A fascinatingly well-written recollection of memories by her daughter Mallarika, which I read just now, did two things. It brought back the poignant memories of Suhita-di, and threw light on an unknown facet of her beautiful life. 

Here is a lightly edited translation of Mallarika’s story followed by the original in Bangla. By the way, Mallarika followed her mom in the academic world. After doing her PhD from Oxford, she taught at a Danish university before coming back to teach at JNU. I have a mild suspicion that she won’t sue me for lifting her story without permission.

*

During the three months my mother lived after her retirement, she ran a free elementary school in our parking lot, which is the entire ground floor of our apartment building. The nursery began with story-telling sessions for just one child, the five-year old son of Sandhya, our domestic help then and now. The boy was so hyper-active that Sandhya could neither leave him at home nor take him to the homes she worked in. 

Ma began to engage him by telling stories, so that Sandhya could work in our home in peace. In a few days, our caretaker’s four-year-old daughter Bulti joined, pulled in by the stories. Then ma decided to teach them a few nursery rhymes, which allowed Sandhya and Bulti’s mom Aparna an hour more of freedom. The message spread in the neighbourhood; four more kids of working mothers joined Ma’s nursery soon. 

Post breakfast, Ma would sit down on a chair in the parking space, as the children sat before her. Ma would drink tea; the kids would munch biscuits. The teacher was a Dida to all the kids. The grandpa was then tasked to bring in slates, pencils, and cloth seats for the pupils. Ma used to teach them Bangla vowels, got them to memorise rhymes, and told them stories. At the end, the children would stand up, join their tiny hands in a namashkar, and sing a hymn: “In this promising morning, let’s go to our Father’s home,” or “We are all kings in the kingdom of our king.” As the half a dozen kids sang with all their might, it created quite a racket in the neighbourhood. 

Their mothers too knew it was time to take the toddlers home.

Ma was an atheist. After her passing, we did not perform any religious ritual. There was a memorial meeting attended by ma’s friends and colleagues, where songs were sung and people recollected their memories of Ma. 

On the following day, Baba, my husband Baidik, and I invited Ma‘s little students and two of my nephews of their age for luchi and sandesh. We pushed the sofas to a side of our drawing room and spread a sheet for the guests to sit down and eat. At one side of the room, there was a framed photo of Ma with a garland made of white flowers. Every one of the pupils joined their hands to pay respect to their dida and sat cross-legged on the bedsheet to eat luchi, tearing them with both hands with much glee. The little angels also sang for their departed dida. I have rarely experienced the happiness that I felt during that miniscule party.  

Two days later, I was to return to my place of work. The nursery had to be closed down. Dad said he didn’t have the expertise to keep little children engaged. The mothers of the children were sad. As I was packing my bags, our caretaker’s daughter Bulti came in with a clean-shaven head. When I asked her mother Aparna why she had had shaved her girl’s head when the summer was months away, she said after some hesitation, ‘You don’t believe these things, but we do. Bulti’s dida was close to us all, wasn’t she? We called a priest and offered a small puja through Bulti, and got her head shaved as instructed by the priest.’

I kissed Bulti’s clean crown and thought, beyond the world of her mother’s beliefs, her dida would have accepted her offerings happily. And for me, my atheist mother, after having gotten merged with the elements, came in as a gust of breeze in the early spring to sway the red oleander tree in front of our home.

*

আমার মা রিটায়ার করার পর যে তিনমাস বেঁচে ছিলেন তার মধ্যে তিনি একটি অবৈতনিক পাঠশালা খুলেছিলেন আমাদের ফ্ল্যাট বাড়ির নীচের গ্যারাজে। পাঠশালা শুরু হয়েছিল একটিমাত্র পড়ুয়াকে গল্পবলা দিয়ে। আমাদের বাড়িতে সন্ধ্যা ঘর-মোছা, কাপড়-কাচার কাজ করত (এখনো করে) এবং সে ছিল আমার মায়ের সব কাজের ডান হাত। তার ছোট ছেলেটির তখন বছর পাঁচেক বয়স। সে এমনি দুরন্ত ছিল যে সন্ধ্যা তাকে না পারত বাড়িতে রেখে আসতে, না পারত সঙ্গে নিয়ে বাড়ি বাড়ি ঘুরে কাজ করতে। মা তখন শুরু করলেন তাকে গল্প বলে বসিয়ে  রাখতে, যাতে সন্ধ্যা আমাদের বাড়ির কাজটা নিশ্চিন্তে করতে পারে। মায়ের গল্প বলার এমনি গুণ যে কদিন বাদেই আমাদের কেয়ারটেকার অপর্ণার চার বছরের মেয়ে বুলটিও হাজির গল্প শোনার জন্য! মা তখন ঠিক করলেন ওদের মুখে মুখে দু চারটে ছড়া ইত্যাদি শেখাবেন আরও অন্তত ঘণ্টাখানেক ব্যস্ত রাখবেন যাতে সন্ধ্যা এবং অপর্ণা নিজের নিজের কাজের বাড়িতে কাজ করে আসতে পারে। এই বার্তা ধীরে ধীরে পাড়ায় রটি গেল। আরও জনা চারেক গৃহশ্রমে কর্মরত মায়েদের দুষ্টু ছোট্ট ছানারা মায়ের পাঠশালায় ঢুকে পড়ল। মা সকালের খাবার খেয়ে এক খানা চেয়ার নিয়ে গ্যারাজে বসতে লাগলেন সকলকে সঙ্গে নিয়ে। মা চা খান, তারা বিস্কুট খায়। খেয়ে নিয়ে পাঠশালার কাজ শুরু হয়। মা সবকটি শিশুর 'দিদা'। শিশুদের 'দাদু' কে প্রত্যেকের জন্যে একখানা ছড়ার বই একটি করে স্লেট পেন্সিল এবং একটি কাপড়ের আসন কিনে আনতে হল। মা তাদের স্বরবর্ণ শেখাতেন, ছড়া মুখস্ত করাতেন, গল্প বলতেন আর সবার শেষে সবাই উঠে দাঁড়িয়ে, দু-হাত জোড় করে চেঁচিয়ে গাইত 'আজি শুভদিনে পিতার ভবনে' অথবা 'আমরা সবাই রাজা'। ছয়-সাতটি শিশুর প্রাণপণ গান গাওয়ায় পাড়ায় বেশ শোরগোল পড়ত আর তাদের মায়েরাও তখন পাঠশালা ছুটি হয়েছে বুঝে এসে তাদের নিয়ে যেত। 

মা মারা যাবার পর আমরা কোন ধর্মীয় মতেই কোন পারলৌকিক কাজ করি নি। মা নাস্তিক ছিলেন। একটি স্মরণসভা হয়েছিল। মায়ের বন্ধু এবং সহকর্মীরা এসেছিলেন। গান আর স্মৃতিচারণ হয়েছিল সেদিন। 

তারপর দিন আমরা, অর্থাৎ আমি, বাবা আর বৈদিক মিলে মায়ের পাঠশালার বাচ্চাদের আর তাদের প্রায় সমবয়সী আমার দুই বোনপোকে লুচি সন্দেশ খাইয়েছিলাম। আমাদের বসার ঘরে চেয়ার, সোফা সরিয়ে চাদর পেতে মাটিতে খাবার আয়োজন হয়েছিল। ঘরের এক প্রান্তে মায়ের ছবিতে মালা দিয়ে রাখা ছিল। পাঠশালার পড়ুয়ারা সবাই এসে ছবিতে নম করে মাটিতে বাবু হয়ে বসে দুহাত দিয়ে লুচি ছিঁড়ে ভারি আনন্দ করে খেয়েছিল। সেইসব শিশু ভোলানাথ-লক্ষ্মী-সরস্বতীরা তাদের দিদা র জন্য গানও গেয়েছিল। আমার জ্যাঠতুত আর পিসতুত দিদি লুচি ভেজে দিয়েছিল। তাদের ছেলেরা একসঙ্গে পঙক্তি ভোজনে বসে দিব্যি লুচি-সন্দেশ খেয়েছিল। ঐ ক্ষুদ্র ভোজ-সভাটির মত আনন্দ আমি খুব কম পেয়েছি।

এইসবের দিন দুয়েক বাদে আমি কাজের জায়গায় ফিরে যাবো। পাঠশালা বন্ধই করে দিতে হল। বাবা বললেন অতটুকু বাচ্চাদের মনোযোগ আকর্ষণ করে রেখে গল্প বলে যাবার পারদর্শিতা তাঁর নেই। পড়ুয়াদের মায়েরা আমার কাছে এসে দুঃখ প্রকাশ করলে। যেদিন ফিরে যাবো বলে বাক্স প্যাঁটরা গোছাচ্ছি সেইদিন দেখি আমাদের নীচতলার বুলটির মাথা নেড়ু মুণ্ডি! কি ব্যপার? তার মাকে বললাম এই ফেব্রুয়ারিতেই মাথা না কামিয়ে গরম পড়লে কামালেই হত। বুলটির মা অপর্ণা একটু কিন্তু কিন্তু করে বললে, 'তোমরা তো এইসব মানো না, কিন্তু আমরা মানি। বুলটির দিদা তো আমাদের সকলেরই আপনজন, তাই পুরুতমশাইকে ডেকে একটা ছোট পূজা দিয়েছি বুলটির হাত দিয়ে আর পুরুত মশাইয়ের কথা মত ওর মাথা কামিয়ে দিয়েছি।' 

বুলটির ন্যাড়া মাথায় চুমো খেয়ে ভাবলাম  বুলটির মায়ের বিশ্বাসের যে পরপার সেইখানে বুলটির দিদা প্রসন্ন হাতেই বুলটির পূজা গ্রহণ করেছেন। আর আমার নাস্তিক পঞ্চভূতে মিলিয়ে যাওয়া মা প্রথম বসন্তের এক ঝলক বাতাস হয়ে রক্তকরবীর গাছে দোল দিয়ে গেছেন।

Translated on 23 May 2023

Hosur, Krishnagiri District, TN

Santiniketan, a famous author, and two bright kids

 

Rabindranath Tagore had set up his ashram-school in the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite perpetual paucity of funds, he managed to recruit a galaxy of eminent teachers (including some from abroad). Or maybe, it was the other way round. A galaxy of brilliant people gravitated towards the greatest thinker and visionary Bengal has ever produced. Rabindranath’s idea was to recreate the past Indian tradition of educating children in the midst of nature, where teachers and students lived in close contact. Where facilities were basic, but children grew up unfettered by regimentation, where they could expand their inner world. The experiment worked. The eminent Indians who evolved in Santiniketan included Ramkinkar Baij, KG Subramanian, Mahashwheta Devi, Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen, and many more.

The glory days of Visva-Bharati was gone long ago, but if a tradition of excellence is built up over decades, it takes time to destroy it. Here is an anecdote written by Palki, who grew up in Santiniketan in the 1980s. It is about her meeting with Annada Shankar Ray.

Annada Shankar was a curious combination of an ICS officer, an essayist, and a writer of children’s rhymes. (He left ICS midway to become a fulltime writer.) His twenty-five-line poem “Teler shishi bhanglo bole khukur pore rag karo” has been a landmark in Bangla literature.

Moving back to Palki, she was a precocious child of 10 who had read everything Annada Shankar had written for children and a little of what he hadn’t written for children. At that time, she was seriously considering a career in writing and naturally, she had decided to leave an everlasting mark in Bangla literature, like Annada Shankar, who she had anointed as her literary idol.

Therefore, when she heard that her idol would visit Santiniketan to receive Deshikottam, the highest award conferred by the university, she was quick to hatch a plan along with her bosom buddy Susmita. A day before the award function, when Annada Shankar had arrived in Santiniketan, the two little girls barged into the university guest house where important visitors stayed. In Palki’s words, Santiniketan hadn’t become Securityniketan then, and nobody bothered that two girls—who had no business to be there—were there. Palki and Susmita covered the long treelined driveway to the circular guest house with much excitement. When they got off their cycles in front of a covered balcony and looked up, they saw Annada Shankar in a cane chair, drinking tea. Palki had no difficulty in recognising him as she had seen his pictures.

The girls had grown up in freedom, they were not to be cowed down by the proximity of great men. They breezed up the stairs leading to the balcony and bent down to touch Annada Shankar’s feet before he knew what was happening. But he would have discerned the purpose of his little visitors in a moment and got talking with them. When he asked them their names, they furnished not only names, but also which school and grade they studied in. By then, Annada Shankar’s wife Lila Ray joined the party. Incidentally, she was an American who had spent years in Santiniketan. Another round of feet touching. Asking them to sit down, Lila Ray gave them biscuits. But the girls were becoming impatient. When they brought out their autograph books, Lila Ray asked, ‘Why do you want autographs?’

You might think it would be a difficult question for ten-year-olds to handle, but no! The children of Santiniketan explained in detail why they thought getting autographs was a good idea. Lila Ray then asked them to recite a poem. The girls quickly finished their biscuits, wiped their faces and stood up. And flailing their arms and possibly their plaits too, recited

For breaking a bottle of oil, you take the child to task,

But you grown-up kids break nations. Why, may I ask?

After such a performance, they naturally got what they came for. Mission accomplished.

* 

I do not know Susmita, but Palki’s mother, who left at an early age and her father, both have been senior friends. Palki hasn’t become a literary sensation (yet). She has just done a PhD from Oxford and teaches at the finest university of liberal arts in India. She is young and I do hope she will achieve her childhood dream someday! All the best, Palki.Picture of the open-air classroom from Mallarika Sinha Roy’s Facebook page

Little boy with a young mother in burqa

 

Little boy with a young mother in burqa,

Please look at me, I want to talk to you.

You see, I’d be older than your grandpa—

Long ago, my eyes too had wonder

Just like yours, but

That’s not what I wanted to tell you.

Old men often lose their way,

You’ll soon find out.

 

I wanted to tell you that when I saw you,

A vague, overpowering fear gripped me

As I tried to see you ten years into the future.

Will you be in a school that teaches you

To love every human

And hate nothing, except

Selfishness, violence, and blind faith?

 

Will you be in a school

That teaches you to question

What everyone believes is true?

A school where you’ll learn

That humans, whales, and butterflies

Are all made of atoms,

In fact, particles even tinier

That might have been parts

Of stars and galaxies once?

That you and I are no different from

Moondust or the fiery sun?

That is a brief summary of human knowledge,

But please don’t take my words for it.

Read, think, and find out.

 

Fifteen years into the future,

Will you be in a college

Where fools won’t try to teach you

About borders, barbed wires,

And why you must build walls?

 

Fifteen years down the road,

Will you have lots of friends,

And maybe, a girlfriend too,

Whose religions or kinships won’t matter

In the relationships you make?

 

Will you grow up to live

In a middleclass mohalla where

Narayanans, Kalams, Mukherjees, and Murmus

Live side by side? And no college

Bars entry to your sister

Because of what she chooses to wear

On her head? Or maybe, she will

Choose not to cover her head?

 

Little boy with a young mother in hijab,

A vague, overpowering fear gripped me

When I looked into the future

And tried to find you.

In your journey through the years

Will you rediscover the land

Where your grandpa and I lived

Long, long ago?

It was

A highly flawed place even then,

But those days, hatred wasn’t state policy,

And nobody had to wear

An invisible yellow badge on their chest.

 

Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu

15 September 2022

 

 

 

 

 

Three questions in the time of cholera

I was born in a middleclass Bengali family in the early 1950s. “Middleclass” those days meant the glass was always half full. But the more important aspect of my family was the modifier “Bengali”. We spoke Bangla at home and everywhere. Listened to Bangla songs and watched Bangla films. We read Bangla alone, with the exception of an English newspaper, The Statesman. Being Indian was important, but it was in the background; the everyday reality of our life revolved around Bengaliness.

Gentle reader, you would have noticed that I have described the time of my childhood without a religious marker, without telling you what religion we belonged to. Such was the time. My parents didn’t care much for religion either. My father never participated in the somewhat perfunctory pujas offered by mother—without the aid of a priest—to the goddess of learning Saraswati and to her older sister Laxmi, the deity of wealth, once a year. Besides, every Thursday, Ma would read a hymn before the framed picture of Laxmi. (The picture was a bit worn out, like the financial state of our family.) But I believe these acts were less about religion and more about culture, like the community Durga pujas, or making pithe with powdered rice, jaggery, and cocoanut, a practice that continues to this day as a trace of the harvesting festival in the distant past when most people depended directly on farming.

The Hindu religion played little role in our life. Religion was never discussed at home. However, my parents were not irreligious. In fact, both of them deeply believed in, ignoring every evidence to the contrary, a supreme power somewhere above that worked relentlessly for the good of humanity. Anyway, the bottom line was that our religious identity didn’t matter.

Also, although my parents had lived through the violent Hindu-Muslim riots of 1946, never ever did I hear them say a word against Muslims. They knew neither community was holier than the other, and more importantly, an-eye-for-an-eye could only lead us to a kingdom of the blind.

Seventy years later, I am not only being constantly reminded that I am a Hindu, I am also told that “my” religion is in danger: “Hindu khatre me hai.” Hindus of India, 80% of the population, are destined to be overwhelmed by the other 20%, in particular, by Muslims who are under 15% of the population.

Looking around, I don’t see any truth in the bizarre yarn. No Muslim has attacked another community in recent memory, barring isolated incidents like the Mumbai train bombings in 2006 in which 209 innocent people were killed in a most brutal manner. (What happened in the same city on 26/11/08 was a barefaced undercover operation by the Pakistani state; it had nothing to do with Indian Muslims.) Secondly, there is absolutely no evidence that the Muslim population has been increasing as percentage of the population of India. Finally, in every significant profession under the sky, from the judiciary to the academia, from the armed forces to the medical profession, clearly there are very few Muslims. Far fewer than the percentage of the community in India.

How on earth are the 15% threatening the 80%? I would request you to stop and ponder over the question. And there are other questions too.

Since the BJP government came to power in 2014, there have been relentless attacks on Muslims, both physically and otherwise. The Wikipedia lists 22 incidents across North India between 2015 and June 2017 in which 28 Muslims were lynched by cow vigilante mobs. The situation continued to worsen. On 2 September 2021, the BBC summed up a report* with these words: “Unprovoked attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs have become routine in India, but they seem to evoke little condemnation from the government.”

Since then, the process has taken a more insidious turn as the entire Muslim community is targeted through a range of laws and communal messaging that spread like wildfire in the time of a cholera called the social media. For example, it is bizarre to contemplate that Indian Muslims have collectively decided to somehow make Hindu girls fall in love with Muslim boys, but our ruling dispensation would like us to believe so through the “Love Jihad Laws” passed by several BJP state governments. The powers that be do not want Muslim vendors to come anywhere near Hindu festivals or temples. As the discourse in TV channels revolve around hijab and halal, communal riots are planned meticulously, intensifying the relentless effort to corner and marginalise the Muslim community both socially and economically.

In April 2022, there have been multiple communal clashes in mostly BJP ruled states like Delhi, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. These riots followed an exact template. On the festival of Ram Navami, processions led by Hindutwawadis would pass by mosques and through Muslim areas. There would be aggressive slogans and abuses against Muslims until there was protest or retaliation from the other side. Then the Muslims would be beaten up and their homes and businesses would be burned.

The central government and BJP-ruled states used to be silent spectators to similar violence in the past, but now, the state has become a major actor in the hate project. Destroying Muslim lives and livelihood is no longer left only to the indoctrinated thugs. Following the violence, the state sends bulldozers as in Jahangirpuri in Delhi to Khargaon in Madhya Pradesh, to demolish homes and businesses in Muslim areas giving no notice, claiming those were “unauthorised structures”.  

A bulldozer during a demolition drive in Delhi's Jahangirpuri area on Wednesday (20 April 2022) | Shahbaz Khan / PTI | from the Scroll

While this goes on unchecked, there is carpet bombing of anti-Muslim propaganda. BJP leaders, including ministers, publicly call to shoot Muslims. The most widely articulated political sentence since 2020 is possibly “Deshki gaddaro ko, goli maaro saloko.” A bunch of saints—rather, thugs in saffron—believe India is an Islamic state and call for “genocide against Muslims and other minorities in the name of name of protecting Hinduism.” [Wikipedia, accessed on 30 April 2022] The government cares not, the courts turn their head away, and the media spreads the lies peddled the government and ruling party.

All this is bound to have an impact. Many Hindus, who were impeccably balanced and open minded all these years are nowadays heard to say, “I agree, but about Muslims, …”

That brings us to the second question. What does India gain through this insane project to marginalise and torment a section of our own citizens?

The third and final question that comes to my mind is: Can you name a country that has progressed by attacking and marginalising its own citizens? If you need any clue, please think of Pakistan in 1971 and Sri Lanka between 1983 and 2009.

* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58406194

Night Out >>>

Whoever believes Hindi is the Indian language that has the most colourful profanities hasn’t met my friend Subroto Hajra. Subroto—friends called him Bonu—could reel out an astonishing array of Bangla swearwords at breakneck speed. But only if someone rubbed him on the wrong side; otherwise, he was a genial soul.

This innocent practitioner of graphic language had acquired the nickname I have just revealed in a rather strange manner. A beautiful and quiet girl in our class was Anusri, who generally kept to herself. A year after sharing classrooms with her, one day in some context, Subroto referred to her as Bonosree. It was outrageous that one of us would be unaware of the name of one of the most beautiful girls around. That day onward, everyone began calling Subroto Bonosree; in course of time, the moniker mutated into Bonu.

Behind his apparently abrasive exterior, a poet lived in Bonu. He didn’t usually smoke, but sometime during his stay in Dashachakra Hostel, he acquired a few packets of long Kent cigarettes that had white filter tips. He hid this treasure securely from predators, but at times, when the night was particularly beautiful, he would ask me to accompany him on a walk. But the pretext would be different; he would always say, borrowing the manufacturer’s slogan: ‘Let’s have a Kent!’

Once, in a cloudless full moon night, Bonu proposed that we go out for a long walk after supper. The two of us armed ourselves with a flask of black Nescafé and set out. It was a foolish thing to do because the time was early 1970s when—as I’ve written—the Naxalite movement had spread in our district, people were being killed randomly. Armed policemen patrolled roads at night. Among them were specimens who would shoot a suspect before talking.

We walked across the old fairground and then towards north as the world slept on either side of the empty road. After crossing the irrigation canal near Shyambati, we turned right. The vast empty tract of undulating land in front of us was washed by a gossamer silvery light as water gurgled in the canal flowing alongside. We crossed the empty patch of barren land that served as an open-air crematorium for the villages around. Scattered remains of burnt wood and memories of the few men and women who we had accompanied in their last journey during our brief adult life made our feet heavier.

A few dim electric lights were seen in the desolate Prantik rail station far away on the other side of the river Kopai. The station had hardly anyone even in daytime. We walked along the pathway beside the rail track until we reached the river. Kopai lay much below with a stream or two of gleaming molten silver shining in the moonlight. The absolute silence wasn’t broken by even a bird’s warble. It was pure bliss; we were not going anywhere; our only aim was to cross the bridge and go as far as our legs would take us.

The narrow bridge across Kopai was just a single rail track on girders supported by piers. There was no superstructure, no truss, not even railings. There was no pathway alongside. To cross the bridge, one had to walk on wooden railway sleepers. As we were crossing the distance of about a hundred metres, gusts of wind swept our faces. 

And when we were half-way down, we saw a train hurtling towards us from the opposite side at a tremendous speed. The circular headlight of the engine almost blinded us. The riverbed lay 30 to 40 feet below. There was no way we could turn back and outrun the train. Should we jump off?

On bridges like these, the railway constructs small square platforms by the side of the line at fixed intervals. A friend who is a railway engineer told me later it is called a trolley refuge; it is used to keep push-trolleys when required. A little ahead of us on the left there was such a platform, which was the only possible refuge for us, that is, if we were destined to see another sunrise. We ran towards the oncoming train as fast as we could, looking directly at its blazing cyclops eye. We had to reach the platform before the train did, all the while hoping there would be no missteps. It was perhaps the longest 10 seconds in my life, but we managed to reach, as you would have guessed.

But reaching the trolley refuge was not the end of our trouble. The platform was shaking violently, with an amplitude of maybe, a foot. We would have been thrown off if there hadn’t been a steel parapet on three sides of the platform. We grabbed the railings and hung on for our life.

It was a goods train, which means it had at least 40 wagons. It took an eternity to cross the bridge as we danced hip-hop on the platform. However, before we could breathe out a sigh of relief, a new problem arose. A strong beam of torchlight fell on us and we saw—to our horror—two armed policemen standing on the ledge behind the guard’s coach, one holding the torch, and the other taking aim at us with a rifle. We jumped and lay down as fast as we could. Bonu, an avid NCC cadet, said under his breath, ‘Three-naught-three.”

Whether he was correct or not in identifying the calibre of the gun, as we ducked, we would have been hidden from the policemen’s view. 

Before returning to our hostel, we did see the sun rise! h

 

01 August 2021

 

Goodbye, Apu Mama

 

Apu Mama, my mom’s younger brother, left us on 11 July. He was as fortunate in his death as he was in life (ultimately, after long struggles). He died at home, peacefully, with his wife Jana and daughter Monica by his side. His long guerrilla war against dementia ended when he was 88.

It’s difficult to write about people who are close to you because it is a bit like writing about yourself. I wish instead of writing this I was with Jana and Monica today.

I have been thinking of you, Apu Mama, over the last five days. We miss you. We will miss you. Pranam.

*

I shall try to use as few adjectives as I can because of what I have just said, but I can say this without hesitation: if one word could describe Apurba Ranjan Pal, Apu to his family and Ron to his friends, it would be “affectionate”. He was genuinely affectionate, despite being an angry young man all his life.

As he left India for Denmark when I was little, I have almost no childhood memories of him except that mother used to be deeply saddened by the absence of a darling younger brother who was struggling to make a living in a faraway land. (Their mother had died when they were kids; so my mother was a bit like a mom to Apu.) A few years later, Apu Mama crossed the North Sea to move to England, where over time, he would settle down in a quiet neighbourhood not far from the airport at Heathrow.

Moving back in time and towards East Europe, in the aftermath of the Prague Spring in 1968, Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Russian army, as many as 650,000 of them. The people of Czechoslovakia put up an unarmed resistance for eight months, says Wikipedia. The forces on either side would have been as asymmetric as in Vietnam, but for some reason, we didn’t get to hear much about this struggle. Wikipedia also says, a “massive wave of emigration swept the nation.”

Among the émigrés was Jana, a maths teacher and a stunningly beautiful Czech woman, who came to London. Apurba Ranjan met her and after some struggle with the Communist bureaucracy, they managed to get married in Prague. I have always thought my uncle (and our family) was among the biggest beneficiaries of the failed rebellion against Russian Communism. Czechoslovakia would become free much later, in 1989.

Sometime in the late 1960s, Apu Mama managed to visit home for the first time, maybe after a gap of 10 or 15 years. I was in college then. He travelled with me to my hostel, and together, we explored the campus and beyond. We went around in overcrowded public buses to the Masanjore Dam and maybe to a few other places too. In those few days, an unknown uncle became lifelong friend.

Thereafter, from time to time, I would receive a warm letter from Apu Mama with an international payment order for a few pounds. The amount, a minor treasure for me, was “biri khabar poisa,” that is, cigarette allowance.

Thereafter, he and Jana would visit us infrequently and we always looked forward to the visits. Meanwhile, I got married. My wife, Arundhati and Apu Mama had deep reciprocal admirations. Arundhati for the uncomplicated handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair who always spoke his mind, and he, for the shingaras and koi macher jhol that she would always prepare for him. Apu Mama obviously missed shingaras, which he called the national food of Bengal.

Much later, when my wife and I visited him in London a couple of times, Mamu was in the autumn of his life. He used to be quiet. I would still go out to a pub with him, but I missed the raucous arguments with him over many topics ranging from Satyajit Ray to the state of the nation, which had been the usual interaction pattern between uncle and nephew. (He was a rare Bong who was not a Satyajit Ray fan.) When we visited him, he would insist on his copy of the Guardian every morning, but wouldn’t be able to read much. He would sit quietly or sleep.

My wife and I stayed at their home. We would usually go out in the morning and go around. Jana would pack our lunch, complete with two soft-drink cans. What she gave would be more than what we could eat. But when we took leave, Apu Mama would invariably pick up two apples or oranges from the dining table and give us. I will remember my uncle by these small acts of kindness: IPOs for a few pounds and a few oranges or apples.

Over the last few years, uncle’s condition deteriorated. He might forget if he had had breakfast. More worryingly, when he went somewhere with family, he might suddenly start walking aimlessly, or try to get off the train at a wrong tube station. Jana and Monica took tremendous care of him. I haven’t seen anyone taking better care of their ailing husband / father.

16 July / 29 July 2021

Just One Circle >>>

In Bangla, dash (it rhymes with bosh) stands for ten and chakra, for wheel or circle. (Remember the Sudarshan Chakra, the spinning-disc missile in the hand of the Hindu god Vishnu aka Krishna? Or its modern version in the hand of Vijay Amritraj in the James Bond film Octopussy?) Chakra also means conspiracy. Together, dashachakra means a conspiracy hatched by a number of people, that is, an intrigue, machination. However, the Dashachakra Hostel, where I moved in in my second year of stay in Santiniketan had nothing to do with intrigues, neither did it have 10 circles. 

It had just one circular courtyard at the centre shaded by two old mango trees, around which were 10 double rooms and a bathroom block. The rooms opened into the central courtyard. Between the door and the courtyard, each room had a tiny attached veranda too. The oblong rooms had two beds and three windows each. One of the windows was in the far wall, directly opposite the door; the other two were on either side. 

The wheel-shaped building stood as a beautiful work of architecture about 50 feet off a straight road on which only cycles and cycle-rickshaws plied. The foreground was barren. A slightly raised path of red gravel connected the hostel to the road.

On the other side of the road was the main playground of the campus. So, from the entrance of the hostel, we would see an enormous open space which merged into the greenery on the far side. 

Behind Dashachakra, there was another small boys’ hostel called the Punjabi House – a reminder of a time when Santiniketan was a cosmopolitan place – and a few staff quarters, where university teachers lived with families. Behind them were paddy fields. The proximate presence of profs was a nuisance; we, the inmates of the hostel, couldn’t make as much noise as we would have liked to. 

As the three windows in each room opened outside, our hostel was airy and light. In fact, wind swept through it all the time. Thanks to the mango trees in the courtyard and super air circulation, the summer afternoons were quite bearable there, but the winter nights were c-o-l-d, when the temperature often dipped below 10° Centigrade (plus the windchill factor!).

I was in a different hostel when I first went to Dashachakra in a frigid night to meet someone. Shivering in the cold draught despite two layers of woollens, as I walked towards the hostel, I saw a hairy man standing outside, looking into the distance, with nothing on his upper torso, and a printed red lungi below. I thought he was a madman. But he was not. He was Dilip Paul from East Pakistan, a few years my senior. 

Dilip’s roommate was Anuttam, who was a normal person, meaning he could feel hot and cold. But to share a room with Dilip, he could close only one and a half windows on his side of the room whatever might the temperature be and however piercing be the wind outside. I do not know why Anuttam accepted the deal. Maybe, it was his Buddha-like tolerance or maybe, Dilip Paul had some special charm? The answer would be bits of both, I guess.

In the two years I lived there, I would have shared the hostel with about 25 boys. I can recall most of their names and faces. The circular architecture of the building meant there was certain openness amongst its inmates; we would interact with each other closely. Did it contribute to making the place a more friendly one? I think yes. I do not recall an instance of discord in the two years I was there. 

As I look back, I find it surprising that the hostel had such a motley crowd. Let me begin with my roommate, Gautam. He was the badminton champion of the university and played football brilliantly despite smoking like a chimney and doing no physical training. Generous to a fault, Gautam would shower gifts on people whenever he could. If he was sharing food with a friend, say a cup of tea or a cutlet, he would surely part with the bigger “half”. On the other hand, if a girl was hosting us for tea and snacks at our self-service canteen – which wasn’t rare – Gautam would volunteer to get the food and afterwards, he would tell the host in a serious voice, ‘I’m keeping the change.’\

Gautam also had a fine sense of humour, to which I will come back in a moment. Turning back to the hostel with 20 boys, two most disciplined and likable guys were Shil Chand and Nikhil, who were roommates. Besides participating in the National Cadet Corps drills diligently, they studied. They would study till late into the nights, they would be the last to go to bed; next morning, they would be at their desks before anybody else got up. Maybe, Shil and Nikhil considered it a moral obligation to make up for the lack of efforts by some of their friends. Soumitra and Tapan were two of the gentlest souls I have come across. Soumitra’s handwriting was printed cursive writing and Tapan was the default tabla player at musical functions at our department. Dilip Paul, who studied chemistry, used to read widely, including impenetrable essays on philosophy and religion. He was much older than his age and we would refer to him as Sri Paul, which would have been quite a weighty name for a twenty-something. Kaushik and Siddharta were two adorable younger students. Kaushik had a whacky sense of humour and Siddhartha, who studied English, was an excellent a tenor. Both of them would migrate to the US.  From there, Siddhartha has gone to a place much farther-away. Bishu was a sad fellow, with a melancholy look pasted on him at all times. We used to say that whenever some sadness flew by, Bishu would shoot it down to have it with him. Badru didn’t have to live with the mystery that we all were condemned to suffer from. He had been married. 

Above all, there was Anuttam, an unusual person and a brilliant singer and poet, who I will come back to.

Gopalda, a very old man, was one of the 464 (?) casual labourers who had been given permanent job by the university. He looked very old and it seemed he was way beyond the age of superannuation. We often quizzed him about his age. And he would put on a serious face, ‘My dad had written down my date of birth on a chit of paper, but I’ve lost it.’

Anuttam’s younger bro, Gautam Biswas, who we called Bulti, moved into the hostel a year later. He initiated a process to beautify the barren patch in front of our hostel. He didn’t actually plant any trees. Instead, he wrote long letters to the university gardening department, containing detailed wish lists in convoluted officialese. He said there had to be at least one hereby or thereby, or preferably both in an official letter if it was to be taken seriously. And to add more weight, Bulti actually got a peon book, numbered the letters, and sent them across through Gopalda. And he insisted on a stamped acknowledgement for his missives.

The gardening department didn’t bother initially, but Bulti would send reminders regularly: “It has been noted with serious disfavour that your goodselves do not consider it necessary to look into the pressing aesthetic obligations to beautify the ugly barren patch in front of Dashachakra Hostel, and thereby betraying a lackadaisical attitude …” Etc. etc.

After some time, either because of Bulti’s nerve-racking letters or because of the peon book, the gardening department sent a cartload of manured soil and about 20 saplings and got them planted on either side of the path in front of our hostel.

Missioned accomplished, we soon forgot about them and one day I saw Biren holding an uprooted plant upside down and observing it closely. I asked him what he was doing and he answered, in all seriousness, ‘Checking how well the roots are growing.’

The playground in front of our hostel would have a lot of activities in the afternoon, but would fall asleep after dusk. On certain nights, it would become a sea of moonlight. In such nights, a girl sometimes pushed a wheel chair with her boyfriend, a paraplegic singer and a senior student in Sangeet Bhavan, to the edge of the playground. M, who is a well-known singer now, would sing khayals or thumris that would submerge area of our hostel in soulful music. We would speak in whispers in those times. 

Postscript: When I visited Santiniketan recently, I didn’t find Dashachakra. It seems the building was first allowed to go to seeds. Banyan trees grew from its unattended crevices as plaster and cornices fell off. Then the university authorities decided to demolish the structure. Fortunately, no authorities can ever demolish memories. 

Bengaluru / 12 July 2021

A Reverse Roll Call

 

When we were promoted to Class VI, the half-sleeve white shirt remained the same, but the colour of our school shorts changed from white to khaki. We also moved to the secondary section of the school which began in the same premises at 11 in the morning. (The primary school got over at 10.30.) 

     I have just narrated the story of an extra-ordinary human being and teacher we met in the secondary school: Umapati Kumar. We had a number of other wonderful teachers. For example, Big Sunil Babu, who taught us English beautifully, together with dollops of affection. The qualifier Big was used as there was a Small Sunil Babu too, who was much shorter. Big Sunil Babu was always in Dhoti, Kurta, and covered shoes with socks, for which reason he was also referred to as Socks-wearing Sunil Babu.  

     However, as Horace said: nihil est ab omni parte beatum, there are no unmixed blessings. Unlike in the primary section, not all the teachers of our senior school commanded respect, naturally, or otherwise. I was in two minds whether to write about them because there is a saying in Bangla: Criticising a teacher is the worst possible sin. (গুরু নিন্দা মহা পাপ।) On the other hand, the brilliant Bengali writer, Syed Mujtaba Ali shared this doggerel:

যদ্যপি আমার গুরু শুঁড়ি বাড়ী যায়, / তদ্যপি আমার গুরু নিত্যানন্দ রায়।

My guru might drink bootlegged liquor / But Nityananda Ray is my teacher.

So, after some hesitation, I have decided to describe the darker side too. For example, our first history teacher in the secondary school was the opposite of Big Sunil Babu as far as energy was concerned. He would ask us to study a chapter at home and in the next class, we would have to reel out – one student after the other – whatever we had managed to memorise, beginning at one end of the first bench. By the time the first speaker finished, the teacher would be snoring peacefully; the second student would pick up the baton. Every one of us would eagerly wait for Sudipto’s turn to come, because he would speak from memory – on whatever the topic was, and sometimes beyond it – the chapter(s) from Kiran Chowdhury’s undergraduate history textbook, every word of it. Sudipto would continue until the bell rang and so, we could indulge in whatever pastime we enjoyed, reading storybooks being a primary one. (We would graduate to pornography in due course, but that would be much later.)

Sudipto had a memory that could be compared to the magnetic tape of the Grundig tape-recorder that I was fortunate to see in action. His other intellectual faculties too matched his memory. He left the school two years later, when his father, a renowned economist, took up a teaching job at a New Zealand university. Much later, thanks to another classmate Tushar, I spoke to Sudipto for a few minutes and then exchanged a couple of emails until he died in his early fifties. He had been a professor at London School of Economics then. After his passing, I read Sudipto’s CV on the LSE website. It was breathtaking.

Academics was not my forte, to put it mildly. Neither was I good at sports or music. I think the only area I was reasonably good at in school was painting. It is therefore natural that our fine arts teacher would leave a deep impression on me. He had been a topper of his class at Calcutta Government Art College. Much later, after a painting exhibition organised by him, a critic lamented (in the Bangla magazine Desh) that school teaching had destroyed the artist in him; he could have become a top-notch painter.

We couldn’t have known his level as an artist, but he thrilled us by quickly drawing brilliant landscapes in our drawing notebooks. He taught me how to use the oil pastel. I copied his style with the reverence that a pre-teen can have for a guru. When my work at a sit-and-draw competition was judged the best in school, someone complained I had smuggled in one of his landscapes torn off my notebook and submitted it as my own work. Sadly, my idol too believed it was actually his work!

So, a good effort by me led to the ignominy of being labelled as a suspected cheat. After repeating the pastel drawing while the teacher sat in front, I told him, ‘Sir, I won’t accept the prize.’

The prize – which incidentally was sponsored by him every year – was a silver medal with his mother’s name inscribed on it. He was taken aback by the cheeky protest and quite possibly, felt bad about his error of judgement. He also knew that in the land of Gandhi, I couldn’t be punished for taking a moral high ground. After much melodrama over the next week or so, I was cajoled into accepting the medal in the prize distribution ceremony that followed.

I am not sure if I still have the medal, but its memory stands for a lesson I’ve tried not to forget: to be fair when I had the power over other human beings, however small it might be. It also feels great that I have been a pioneer in the field of “award-wapsi” long before it became a fashionable form of protest in India.

Patro Babu’s speciality was a subject that was finer than fine arts: physics. He was easily the most exciting teacher we had in school. One had to be really dumb not to get a concept that he explained. Besides teaching brilliantly, his other speciality was that he had worked out the physics of hitting errant boys in a way that maximum impact would be made with the least effort.

The redoubtable teacher had an unfortunate clash with Shakuntala Devi, who mesmerised the world by doing long arithmetical calculations (like multiplying two thirteen-digit numbers) in her head. At the University of California, Berkeley, she worked out the cube root of 61,629,875 and the seventh root of 170,859,375 under controlled conditions even before the psychologist who was testing her could jot down the numbers. (She could do it possibly because she had no formal education in her childhood; she was the daughter of a trapeze artist and lion-tamer in a circus.)

When Shakuntala Devi visited our school, she was at the peak of her fame. We, all the students, sat down on the floor of our auditorium, armed with results of long calculations in our notebooks which had been checked multiple times by multiple people. (Electronic calculators were in the womb of a distant future then.) On the stage, where Shakuntala Devi sat, there was a black-board. A senior student would write down the task on the board and Shakuntala would give the answer almost before he could finish writing. The student who had prepared the task would confirm the result.

We were awe-struck, but not Patro Babu. He wrote a complex sum on the board, not a long arithmetical function. Shakuntala Devi hadn’t claimed she could solve every mathematical problem under the sun. She looked at the black-board and asked for the next task. To this, Patro Babu wrote on the board – “Could not be solved”. We were not impressed by this crude exhibition of vanity. 

Vanity would be an unthinkable character trait for Subhankar Babu, who taught us chemistry. Anther brilliant teacher, Sir wouldn’t raise his voice ever. That doesn’t mean our stupidity and lack of application didn’t hurt him. But for him, the most violent form of admonition was a wry smile.  

Although I opted to study science in high school, I was most impressed by three high-school English teachers: Suprabhat Chakraborty, Ajit Babu, and Sailesh Babu. Besides being exceedingly well-read, each one of them was a minor rock star; there was never a dull moment when they were in class. Ajit Babu directed three of us in a play based on the Irish Independence struggle: Lady Augusta Gregory's Rising of the Moon. It was an unforgettable experience.

Suprabhat Babu, who genuinely loved us, could get violently angry. Every time he hit the ceiling, we felt he would suffer brain hemorrhage. One day, when someone did something reprehensible, Sir started from a corner. Standing menacingly in front of the boy he asks, ‘Did you do it?’

Student 1 stands up: ‘No, Sir.’

Sir (at the top of his voice): ‘Are you sure?’

Without waiting for an answer, Suprabhat Babu lands three hefty blows on the fellow and moves on to next in line, ‘Did you do it?’

Boy 2: ‘No Sir.’

Three smacks and then to the next row.

The same words and action were repeated until the teacher was completely exhausted. I haven’t seen a more even-handed, socialistic in distribution of punishment ever. The people who abolished corporal punishment in schools had no idea how entertaining it could be with teachers like Suprabhat Babu around. During the rest of our school days, if we wished to hit a classmate, we wouldn’t forget to ask ‘Are you sure?’ before action.

Ramaranjan Adhikary, who taught us Bangla, had a whacky sense of humour. He regaled us with stories and anecdotes even when he taught grammar. Thanks to him, we learned grammar could be genuinely entertaining. 

Ramaranjan Babu passed away in May 2019. Umapati Babu and Suprabhat Babu had left us earlier. And surely, some others too would have gone. But they continue to live in our collective memory. Teachers, like parents, continue to live even after their death.   

 

Tuesday, 08 September 2020

The Digital Divide

The graphic above is true and so sad! If anything shows our government’s complete indifference – if not disdain – for ordinary people, it is the COWIN app. Our rulers have made internet access almost a precondition for the life-saving vaccination against COVID-19. The poor in India don’t get anything easily, from ration card to medical aid. Now, a vast majority of them who don’t have internet access have an even bigger handicap vis-à-vis the vaccine.

However, India was not like this always. When I was a child, once a year, our whole family would visit a nearby corporation office for the small-pox vaccine to be administered with a bifurcated needle that would make two parallel punctures. It was open and free to all and the government advertised it widely to encourage people to get vaccinated. In fact, the efforts were much more than mere publicity. The University of Michigan Library website says:

“[In India in 1974] During a six-day period each month, health workers visited every one of the country’s 100 million households. Supervised by about fifty international advisors and an equal number of Indian officials, some thirty-three thousand district health personnel and more than 100,000 additional field workers conducted house-to-house searches in a total of 575,721 villages and 2,641 cities.”

Clearly, a much poorer India had wiser and better educated leadership that invested scarce resources into public health programmes thanks to which India has been able to kill to demons: small pox and polio. The second graphic has captured our past beautifully.

But today, we have a government run by idiots with phoney degrees and charlatans who promote unscientific, so-called ayurvedic cures so that fellow crooks can make a quick buck even in the middle of a devastating pandemic. More importantly, the government invested nothing except on the 3^rd stage clinical trial of the vaccine developed by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and Bharat Biotech. Even Covaxin, the vaccine jointly developed by ICMR, they didn’t license to other manufacturers. Contrarily, the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine is going to be manufactured by six companies in India. Why did the government restrict production of Covaxin to only a small Hyderabad-based private company? If you know the answer, please tell me. Questions galore. Why do the owners of the biggest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India have to run away to England when they should try to augment their manufacturing capacity to help millions of Indians?

Since the middle of 2020 the USA (even under a madman president) and Europe have been investing heavily into private companies for researching vaccines; many governments bought millions of doses of vaccine much before they were tested or produced. But our government ignored warnings from the scientific community about an impending second wave and didn't pre-book a single dose of the vaccine. What were they doing with the thousands of crores reportedly received in the completely opaque PM Care Fund if they didn’t utilise it for vaccines?

Our government has messed up every aspect of the problem whether making digital access a priority or the pricing of the vaccine or the age-group to which it should be given first. It has come out with a series of seemingly random decisions which has helped none. But these acts of stupidity pale into insignificance when you consider that in the humongous machinery called government and its adjuncts like the Niti Ayog, there was nobody to compare the number of vaccines required and the available production capacity in the country. Did they actually forget to do this when they were gleefully celebrating their stupidity as late as in March 2021? Can anything be more bizarre?

*

I belong to the privileged minority that has much better access to scarce resources. I personally have access to most of the ladders shown in this graphic. Therefore, anything I write on ordinary people not getting the COVID-19 vaccination would amount to hypocrisy. I accept the charge, but that doesn’t alter facts. We have a bunch of moronic rulers who are destroying the country.

The PM must resign. If ever a national government was needed with the best talents available in the country, it is now.

 18 May 2021

 

Smriti Pishi

I was fortunate to be born in a family that had several strong, professionally successful, and exceptionally gritty women. Given the kind influence they had on me as a child, I was destined to be a respecter of women, if not a gynolator. One of those rock-solid feminine figures was Smriti Pishi, Dr. Mamata Chaudhuri.

Smriti Pishi, my father’s younger first cousin, was also a childhood friend of my mom in Karimgunj, a small town in Sylhet. If you look at the map of Eastern India, you will find Kolkata and Karimgunj on opposite sides across Bangladesh. Her father was a school teacher, a remarkable man who thought it fit to send his oldest daughter to study medicine in faraway Kolkata in the 1940s. Daughter didn’t fail him. She graduated, became a successful physician, married a brilliant doctor, and inspired her younger siblings. Rare would be a family in entire Bengal those days that produced three doctors and three engineers. Smriti Pishi had three other sisters who too were successful in different fields.

Dr. Mamata Chaudhuri specialised in paediatrics from the USA. As a child, I saw her driving her black Baby Austin (or was it a Morris Minor?) to hospital, where she also taught paediatrics. My sister and I were under her care as infants and so were my children. Smriti Pishi was a strong votary of breast feeding and detested commercial baby food. A schoolmaster’s daughter from a small town, the reality of an indigent India was at her heart. She would always tell my wife about the sources of nutrition for infants from everyday food that was equal if not better than tinned products. She was also a no-nonsense person. One day, my wife got an earful from her for putting kohl on our daughter's eyes. That day, the paediatrician began her prescription with: "No Kajal" (underlined).

My peripatetic job took me to different parts of the country, but I re-established contact with her as soon as I returned to Kolkata about 20 years ago. In her late 70s, she had left active medical practice then. Over the following 15 years, her mobility got restricted gradually, but her intellect was razor sharp. She read not only newspapers, but also serious tomes on a range of subjects. She and I shared a fondness for Amitav Ghosh. She was the one who told me about Madhusree Mukerjee’s pathbreaking book “Churchill’s Secret War”. After a visit to her home, I would come back with a sense that I had got to know something new. I believe her decline started when her eyes failed her and she couldn’t read beyond newspaper headlines. She was not much of a screen person, I believe. I never saw her watching TV.

Smriti Pishi was admitted to a hospital around the middle of April. The gritty woman that she was, she managed not to contract COVID-19 even after being in a hospital for two weeks. She was discharged by the end of April and breathed her last at home on 8 May at the age of 98.

In my dear pishi, I had a window to the past, the 1940s in particular: the life in a medical college then, the Bengal Famine, the grotesque Calcutta Killings of 1946, and my father as a young man who was her “friend, philosopher, and guide.” With her passing, the window has been shut for good. I will have to live with the many questions I didn’t ask her.

10 May 2021

 

 

 

 

Swapan

This morning has brought bad news to me. Like it would have to thousands of Indians I do not know. 

My childhood friend Swapan is no more. 

We studied together from Class III to XI, always in the same section. So, Swapan is an important part of my childhood memories. Dark, on the taller side, with curly hair stuck close to head thanks to generous use of oil, the most significant aspect of his face was his sparkling, ever-smiling eyes. He seemed happy at all times. Would never get into a fight, one of those rare boys who Fate decreed shouldn’t have an enemy.  

Swapan was consistently near the top, but never at the top of our considerably strong class. He would come to the top much later and I will  get you there in a moment. 

Swapan lived in Park Circus, a middle-class locality in Kolkata. We set up a library on the first floor of the building where Swapan’s family were tenants on the ground floor. (Swapan would have cajoled the owner, Anal-da, a few years older than us, to give us the space to us for free!) We named the library – quite pompously – the “Fellowship League”. The "Fellows" were in high school then, Swapan being an active member. Baren, Dhurjoti, and Jyoti, who lived in Park Circus, were part of the gang. Siladitya, Anup, and I were from other parts of the city. I do not recall who else were with us.. 

After school, Swapan joined St. Xavier’s College, one of the finest colleges in Kolkata, to study physics. Soon, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement that was sweeping the campuses in Bengal then like a maelstrom. He was expelled from St. Xavier’s, but managed to complete his graduation from another college. Once branded as a Naxalite in the books of a blood-thirsty Kolkata police, Swapan had no choice but to flee.

In New Delhi, Swapan found some rudimentary accommodation and for years, earned his living by offering private tuition. When we touched base much later, Swapan told me that after paying rent and bus fares, those days, he could afford to buy only powdered Bengal gram, the Kolkata rickshaw-puller’s staple, chhatu, and beaten rice which we call চিঁড়ে (chnire) in Bangla. According to Swapan, those were the two cheapest foodstuffs available in the world. For a year or so, he survived on these and whatever snacks the kindly mothers of his tuition students would offer. Simultaneously, Swapan joined a college – if memory serves me right, in commerce. 

Then there was no stopping him. He did masters in Economics from Rajasthan University (how?) and followed it up with a PhD in public finance. He rose steadily in career and became the HOD Finance in the International Management Institute, a leading private management school in India. That was the time I reconnected with Swapan sometime in the aughts. 

By then, Swapan had married his long-time girlfriend and set up a beautiful home in New Delhi. His wife’s step garden on the terrace was fascinatingly beautiful. They had a lovable son and a daughter. Swapan was as successful as a husband and father as he was in career. But whenever we met, whether in his house or mine in Kolkata, he was the same old chirpy self with apparently all the time in the world. Success clearly hadn’t gone into his head, or manners. Over time, the demand for Swapan Kanti Chaudhuri, the consultant grew and he left the teaching job to focus on financial consultancy fulltime.

He was so absolutely unpretentious and humble that I found out the following about him only this morning, from the website of IFIM, another management school he joined in 2019 as a senior professor. 

He had been a visiting scholar at Kellogg Graduate School of Management (North Western University, USA) and Manchester Business School (UK). In India, he had been a faculty member at two universities and Professor of Finance in MDI Gurgaon. At another major business school, IMT Ghaziabad, he was a "Distinguished Professor of Finance". From 2007 to 2017 Swapan ran his own international consultancy firm. 

From the same source, I discovered that as Team Lead or Key Expert, Dr. Swapan Kanti Chaudhuri had worked in over 70 consultancy assignments funded by national governments and international organisations like the World Bank, UNICEF, EU, ADB, the Department of International Development (UK), USAID, etc. etc. in South Asia and Africa. 

His expertise and research interest included a range of areas from corporate finance to security analysis and investment management to derivatives and risk management to infrastructure project appraisal and financing. And a host of other fields. I have only a nodding acquaintance with the subject of financial management, but I can understand that Swapan became a master of so many segments only through extreme discipline and hard work. 

A few years ago, when I called Swapan on his Delhi number, he had been in Nairobi. Being the fool I am, I had a leisurely chat with him without recognising he was on international roaming and the incoming call would have cost him a bomb. That was the last time we talked. The next communication from his phone was a text message from his daughter, Sohini, on 21 April 2021. Swapan had been in ventilation with both lungs affected by COVID. 

The gutsy fighter lost his final battle yesterday. 

Swapan reached the peak of his professional field. But if you consider the point from which he had begun his climb, you will see that his journey was much longer and tougher. Equally importantly, he continued to be the happy soul that I knew as a child.

Rest in Peace, my friend.   

01 May 2021