Shonku

 

As I am on the wrong side of 75, information about a friend’s death comes to me almost regularly. A large part of our world is made of friends; with every passing, our personal world shrinks a little: the smile that I won’t see ever again, the phone call that will never come, the bottle of beer that will remain unshared.

My childhood friend Shankar Bose, fondly called Shonku by friends, passed away yesterday after a few days of final suffering.

The message took me back to 1959, when he and I entered the same classroom and would be classmates for many years to come. Shonku was among the most low-key students in our class. (How painful it is to write about a dear friend in the past tense!) He was shy, would talk in a small voice, and wouldn’t be seen in large groups. He would never shout, nor would he stand in front of the class to deliver a speech. But from close quarters, he was just charming. Close friends knew he was a simple soul with a fine sense of understated humour. As we grew up I came to understand that Shonku believed in the American adage “Don’t take life too seriously, you won’t come out of it alive.” He didn’t take life too seriously. I wouldn’t possibly be wrong if I said that Shonku went through the usual phases of life, college, employment, getting married, having a child, and getting old, almost absent-mindedly.

We lost touch after school as our lives moved along two non-intersecting trajectories. Much later, I met Shonku again at the wedding of a friend’s daughter. Finally, when I left my first job and began my second innings in Kolkata, I reconnected with Shonku properly. His naughty smile hadn’t changed in fifty odd years. His behaviour, the way he talked, hadn’t changed at all. I felt he was still the child that he had been in school. A better way of saying that would be, Shankar had managed to keep his childhood alive within himself, something that only a few can do.

When we met again, I came to know that Shonku and I both suffered from a particularly nasty kind of rheumatoid arthritis which begins in one’s early twenties and for which there was no treatment in India until maybe, 2015. Until then, that is, over forty years, one of the main missions of my life was bearing terrible pain and coping with the debilitating disease. The disease was possibly less virulent in my case. While I have been reasonably mobile despite it, Shonku used to suffer a lot. When we met again, he carried a walking stick, although he would laugh off his illness. I believe true to his carefree nature, he didn’t take his problem seriously and didn’t really take adequate care of himself.

But all that is irrelevant now. Everyone lives their own life and Shonku lived his. A simple soul who would never have had an enemy. Goodbye, dear friend.

Bengaluru / 16 August 2026

 

 

My Friend Pradip

 Last Thursday evening, as I sat through idleness and incessant rain outside, there was a phone call from an unknown number. It was one of those Bengaluru days when dampness reigns supreme and you tend to look more inward than outside. The call was from Kaberi, my friend Pradip’s wife. Kaberi said, ‘Your friend has left us today.’ The line was bad; I could catch little of what else she said.

I hope I won’t live long enough to receive many more such phone calls. But I won’t say it came as a shock, neither will I say I was devastated. What I can honestly say is this: since that moment, a dull, impalpable sadness has been hanging around me like the all-encompassing mist in rural Bengal in an evening in Hemanta, the often-unnoticed season between autumn and winter.

The phone call took me back to an indeterminable date in mid-1969 when Pradeep and I sat in the same classroom for the first time as undergrad students. Pradip, good looking and exceedingly fair, was mostly in kurta-pyjamas-slippers. His kurtas were invariably in light pastel shades, I didn’t see him in flashy clothes even as a teenager. We became friends easily, although we were very unlike. Pradip was quiet, never gloomy or angry, and always smiling, none of which adjectives fits me. In Bangla, Pradip means an earthen lamp. It won’t be an exaggeration if I say Pradip radiated happiness, which too is a kind of light. I believe Pradip never fought with anyone. I haven’t heard anyone say one negative word about him. That, in substance, was my friend Pradip Brahma.

While I lived in hostel, Pradip lived in a rented house with his mother. For some reason, I never visited their house in Santiniketan, although after graduating, I went to their Dhakuria home a number of times. It was a simple no-frills middleclass home.

Pradip was a disciplined hard-working good student. He did well at studies, but his BSc marksheet was unspectacular, as far as I can recall. After graduation, he didn’t join the Master’s course like most of his classmates. He did want to study further, but his family couldn’t afford it; he had to find a job quickly.

Back in the early 1970s, job opportunities were a negative number in West Bengal, which was going through the bloodbath of a failed revolution. Simultaneously, several economic factors including militant trade-unionism combined to drive away capital from Bengal. Major, century-old companies shifted their base away from Calcutta: Britannia, Brooke Bond, Lipton, ICI, to name a few. Thousands of manufacturing units, including a leading company, Metal Box shut down. The once thriving industrial estates in Howrah, which had begun under pioneers like Alamohan Das in the previous century, was turning into the death-valley of small industries that it is today. “Wagon breaking” would soon become an industry in itself. In front of their Chowringhee head office, jobless Metal Box workers sat under a red flag on a rug, shaking Bourn Vita tins partly filled with coins with a slit on its lid. Bourn Vita boosted their lives in the most perverse way then. They sat on the rug until death did them part, while the states whose names uppity Bengalis pronounced with disdain moved past. “Madrasis” had stopped coming to Calcutta for penpushers’ jobs; the reverse migration of Bengalis to South India for livelihood was yet to begin.

As unemployment stared at me, I had no idea how I could even look for a job, barring responding to rare adverts of job vacancies. But Pradip believed it wasn’t a problem. One just had to try hard. I was with him in one of his acts of trying hard when he and I barged into the office of the India Meteorological Department in Alipore with our CVs in plastic folders.

Although we were unsuccessful that morning, Pradip did find a job by trying hard. I don’t recall what kind of work it was, but I am sure it would have been one of the lowest paying sit-down jobs an educated person would accept. [After reading this, Pradip's daughter Rupsa told me that her father actually worked in a rice godown. It was far away from Jadavpur University, where Pradip would attend classes after his day's work. Rupsa also told me that her father had never even scolded her.]

Many in such a situation would spread roots under their desk and retire as a grumpy old man after wasting 35 years of their life. But Pradip enrolled for a three-year part-time MSc in Physics at Jadavpur University where he attended classes in the evening. If you don’t know how enormously difficult commuting was in Calcutta then and how tough physics is at the Master’s level, you won’t perhaps appreciate what impossible an unspectacular Pradip achieved in three years of work plus study.

Then he did his PhD from—if memory isn’t playing me false— the Indian Institute for Cultivation of Science in Jadavpur. He joined as a lecturer Sir Gurudas College in the city, from where he retired 10 years ago. There too Pradip showed his academic commitment. Instead of watching TV serials in the evening, he kept working on Solid State Physics through his college job and even after retirement, when he once told me, ‘I have published at least one paper every year since I began research.’

He need not have.

My transferable job took me away from Calcutta and I lost touch with Pradip soon after graduation. We picked up the thread in 2000, when I left my job and returned to Kolkata. Pradip was happily married then, his wife Kaberi, herself a highly competent person, too taught at a college. Their daughter Rupsa studied engineering and got a job at campus placement which took her to Japan. She and her husband work and live in Singapore now with their little son.

While Pradip did exceedingly well in his career and personal life, a neurological condition troubled him in the last inning of his life. Neurological medicines, which are invariably toxic, slowed him down and added kilograms to his once fine body. When I saw Pradip moving with difficulty, I recalled he was one of the finest table tennis players among us. And like in his life, he was never aggressive while playing table tennis. He would block all your smashes with infinite patience until you hit one into the net or go beyond the table.

He blocked the relentless aggression of a neurological disease for ten years or more until 7 August 2026. But ultimately, everyone has to lose the last match.

Goodbye, my friend. At last, you have managed to draw a few drops of tears in my eyes.

Bengaluru / 12 August 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

A fine tribute to Vikraman Nair

There is little chance that you met Gopalan Vikraman Nair, a Malayali from Alappuzha who went to Santiniketan to study English literature in the 1950s, but never returned to Kerala. However, if—by a rare stroke of fortune—you had seen him from close quarters, you would possibly remember him as a man of rare brilliance. Vikraman Nair, Nairda to his countless admirers, was a polyglot who not only knew more than half-a-dozen Indian and foreign languages, but had also read an enormous volume of literature in all those languages. He is perhaps the only Malayali who worked as a Bangla language journalist and wrote (in Bangla) two of the finest travelogues I have read. If you have had the good fortune to have met him, you would also remember him as a dazzling story teller, who would unfailingly captivate small audiences with hilarious anecdotes from his multicoloured life. You would also recall him as a man who could argue on any social / political issue and establish his views with precise evidence selected from his vast store of knowledge and information. 

In the turbulent West Bengal of the 1960s and 70s, he joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and then leaned towards the Naxalites. As the Naxalbari movement degenerated into thoughtless cold-blooded murder of perceived class enemies, Vikraman Nair left them soon. Unlike most city-based communists, he was not an armchair revolutionary. He actually worked among peasants for many years.

My friend and Nairda’s close associate, Manas Bhattacharya has written a wonderful memoir on Nairda in Bangla. I have too much affection for Manas; I won’t try to write a review of his book. But I can tell you that I have read Manas’s 174-page book in less than six hours, so gripping his narration is. Congratulations, Manas for your lovely lucid prose. Let me also do what I can do a little: translate a few pages of Manas Bhattacharya’s eponymously titled book: NAIRDA—Three Decades with Vikraman Nair.

*

[Nairda could make friends easily with children, and his little friends were exceedingly fond of him. Manas tells us that unlike most people, Nairda neither changed his voice nor his body language when he talked with children. He was his usual self. Here are a few lines about Nairda and his little friends.]

Let me first talk about a little girl, Fultusi, who Nairda used to tutor privately. She was in the seventh grade then.

One afternoon when Nairda had a day-off, Debashish and me were chatting in a low voice in a corner of Nairda’s room. Fultusi had come for her lessons. She sat on Nairda’s cot, while Nairda was in front of her on an armless chair. Perhaps Fultusi couldn’t answer a question, suddenly, we heard a suppressed growl, which was immediately followed by a full-blooded smack on Fultusi’s chin. Debashish and I were stunned. How could anyone hit such a lovely girl (who was a good student too)? That too, it wasn’t a casual hit, it was a robust slap. Fultusi’s hung her head; silent tears began flowing down her chins.

After punishing his pupil, the teacher continued with his lessons, but the flow had been impaired. Nairda ended the class after a while. Watching the crude exhibition of cruelty, Debashish and I were angry with Nairda for days.

Fultusi’s home was on the other side of the tramline, barely ten minutes’ walk from our boarding house. After an hour or so, a domestic help came from Fultusi’s house and said, ‘Fultusi’s mother has asked me to tell you that Fultusi won’t continue the tuition.’

Without showing any emotion, Nairda said in his usual gruff voice, ‘Thik achhe.’

A week passed. Debashish and I felt sorry about the charming little girl. But there was no change in Nairda’s behaviour. Then one day, Nairda returned to the boarding house in the evening and declared with a smile, ‘Fultusi will come from tomorrow.’

I said enthusiastically, ‘Good, Fultusi must have got over her anger. Please stop beating your students.’

Nairda said, ‘You know what happened? Ratna (Fultusi’s mom) declared, ‘My daughter won’t go back to that barbaric teacher,’ but Fultusi stopped going to school. Her demand, she would study only with Nair Kaku. Ultimately, Ratna had to accept defeat. Barun (Nairda’s friend, Fultusi’s dad) came to my office to tell me.’

A little later, perhaps referring to my view on physical punishment, Nairda added, ‘Children don’t learn unless you give them a few smacks.’

It isn’t Fultusi alone, all the children from the large circle of Nairda’s friends, without exception, are ardent fans of Nair Kaku. When Nairda goes to their house, their faces light up in happiness. Depending on their age, with some, Nairda would just play; to some, he would be a teacher; to some he would talk like an equal. During the chats, the topics could be anything from literature to history to politics to anecdotes from Nairda’s life. For the last one, one could hear frequent bursts of loud laughter from the room. Soon, the entire family would gather there.

…

Nairda has many little pupils. Every year, he takes them to the zoo once, and to the Kolkata Book Fair at least twice. They look forward to these days with tremendous excitement. Once I had the good fortune to accompany them. The joy and excitement I saw was among them was unbelievable.

If their parents or uncles wanted to take them, they would refuse. They would go only with Nair Kaku. Can there be so much fun with anyone else? When they stood before the chimp’s cage of before the elephants, who would tell stories about chimps and elephants so beautifully? Even if they had read the stories before, they would love to hear them again if the raconteur was Nair Kaku. Soon a crowd of random visitors would stand around Nairda and start listening to his tales. And needless to say, not all of them are children.

 

Kolkata / 18 Feb. 23

Swapan Sarkar >>>

Goodbye Swapan-da, my friend for over fifty years. 

I haven’t met anyone who was more handsome than you. If I had been a woman (or gay), I could have easily fallen in love with you. 

Neither have I met many people who have such intense passion for life. 

We hadn’t met over the last five years. I missed you then. I miss you now. I will keep missing you. 

*

Swapan Sarkar, who lived in Bolpur and Kolkata, set up a small-scale industry, Fresseynet Prefabs*, on (I think) a two-acre plot of barren land at a distant corner of West Bengal in 1974-75. The factory manufactures prestressed concrete poles and concrete pipes. 

He was a charming young man of our generation from a small town with ordinary college education, a few thousand rupees in his pocket, and NO godfather anywhere. Yet, he dreamed of setting up an industry in the moribund economy of West Bengal. He would go on to fulfil his dream. 

Although he came from one of the most illustrious families of the district, I have just come to know from an obituary written by Bharatjyoti Roychowdhury that his father Narayandas Sarkar had been a communist who used to sell Marxist literature on trains. So, it would be reasonable to say that Swapan-da didn't get any worldly wealth from his old man. His mother had passed long ago. Swapan Sarkar was a self-made man who had to make do without father’s support or mother’s love and nurturing. (Although he and I spent hundreds of hours together and talked about everything under the sky, he never mentioned his parents to me even once.) Incidentally, like his father, he too was a communist in his youth which showed—if Bernard Shaw is to be believed—he had a heart. After leaving the Communist Party of India (Marxist), he joined a group of communist revolutionaries. And that brought us together. 

I saw him from close quarters when, in 1973-74, he was trying to find his way in the killing mazes of government offices and banks to secure the necessary permits and funds to set up Fresseynet Prefabs. His grit and self-confidence were to be seen to be believed. (*If you are stumped by the name of his firm, Eugène Freyssinet was a French engineer who invented the technology of prestressed concrete, a process that uses much smaller quantity of steel to give equal or more strength compared to conventional concrete.) 

His passion for new technology wouldn’t ebb. Much later, he would set up a factory that manufacture bricks from fly ash, something that thermal power plants produce in thousands of tonnes and is a perennial environmental problem around thermal plants. It was possibly the first such unit in Bengal. 

Swapan-da went to China several times before importing the brick-manufacturing plant. Generally, he was fond of travelling and went to lots of places including to Siberia on the trans-Siberian train. One of his trips was to Venice when the (only) film produced by him (PAAR, directed by Gautam Ghose with Shabana Azmi and Nasiruddin Shah) was shown at the Venice Film Festival. Incidentally, Swapan-da’s finances bottomed out by making the film.

Just as time couldn’t wither Cleopatra’s beauty, it could do little to Swapan Sarkar’s handsomeness. Neither could wealth change his persona. He remained the same person, his warmth and wit undiminished. Always ready to share a drink till late into the night as a quiet music filled the background. (He was someone who frequently changed his caller tune with beautiful clips of Rabindrasangeet or Bengali folk songs.) The only difference that I saw in him over the years was that his circle of friends expanded manifold. He could make friends easily. Till the very end, he was filled with what the French call joie de vivre. 

On 29 August, some of us old friends were to meet Swapan-da and his second wife Nasreen at a common friend’s place. As I hadn’t met Nasreen, I was looking forward to the meeting for two good reasons. But they couldn’t come as Swapan-da’s condition turned for the worse.

Swapan Sarkar passed away in his sleep two days later, in the early morning of 1 September 2022. 

Bengaluru 05 

September 2022

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

 

 

 

 

Let’s Celebrate Prashant Bhushan’s Punishment

It is 20 August 2020 today.

A few days ago, the highest court of India decided that Mr. Prashant Bhushan has, in fewer than 280 letters of the English alphabet, humiliated the august institution so much that the honourable judges cannot carry out their work of dispensing justice with dignity. How sad!

The court has also decided that Bhushan be punished; the quantum of punishment will be announced today.

Mercifully, the law of the land doesn’t allow cutting off the tongue that lashes out against honourable judges. Or giving the owner of the tongue 50 lashes in a public square. So, the disturbed judges will have to be content with imposing a fine or sending the man to jail. They may even show him forgiveness perhaps, cowed down by the deluge of protests from all over the world. Who knows?

Personally, I believe Mr. Prashant Bhushan, who has spent his life as a brilliant civil rights lawyer and exposing corruption in high places (including the 2G and the coal block allotment scams during UPA-2) will be sent to jail today. I will be pleasantly surprised if he isn’t.

If it actually happens, I would feel sorry for him and his family, but I will also be extremely happy. Why?

Because it will tell us, with a sense of finality, that India today is in a situation that in many ways, is similar to our colonial past. That our hard-earned freedom has been usurped by a bunch of uneducated, cunning, ruthless people (mostly men) whose sole political capital is spreading hatred towards Muslims and Christians and creating a false fear among 82% of the population that the remaining 18% will somehow finish them off. Clearly, a lot of people have started believing in this bizarre proposition. In 1857, the British began colonising our land. Since 2014, the Sangh-BJP combine has been colonising our minds with their ideology of hate. They have sucked life out of our democratic institutions. They are extremely incompetent too. In just six years, they managed to destroy our economy even before the COVID-19 struck.

We have two options before us.

We can sheepishly accept a Hindu Pakistan, with its denial of democratic rights, muscular suppression of all dissent, bidding farewell to science and scientific approach to education, and ascendance of Hindu mullahs, all of which have been happening already.

Or we can choose to wage a new freedom struggle to reinvent our democracy and regain the values enshrined in the Constitution of India.

On which side will you be?

Maybe, unknown to you and me, a new freedom struggle has already begun to redeem the soul of our Constitution. Already, a large number of our finest men and women are in jail: from the 80-year-old poet Varavara Rao to the civil rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, who gave up her American citizenship and many privileges and gave her life to help poor Adivasis in their legal battles against a repressive state in Chhattisgarh, to the young Pinjra Tod activists, who began their journey to obtain equal rights for girls in Delhi hostels, and went on to protest against the regressive Citizenship Amendment Act.

Just as India could not have become independent without Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose going to jail again and again, I don’t believe India will ever achieve freedom from these internal colonialists without Prashant Bhushan and many others going to jail.

In this new freedom struggle. 20 August 2020 might prove to be a watershed moment in our journey towards a new 15 August 1947.

Sometimes, gigantic historical events are foretold in one man's tale. Do you recall how the First World War began? Let us celebrate Prashant Bhushan's punishment!

Anuttam

The rainy season wasn’t gone, but that evening, there were no clouds in the sky. As we trudged along, we didn’t feel the sultry Bengal summer. The kash hadn’t arrived on the fields yet, but there was a hint of autumn in the air. For as far as we could see, the flat plains were washed by a soft but unusually bright moonlight seen when the sky clears after rains. A full moon was high up in the sky, it was beyond midnight in the sleeping villages around.

Three of us, Anuttam, Shyam, and I walked grimly along the uneven village path behind the bullock cart. A kerosene lantern was tied under the carriage. Working like a projector lamp, it threw mysterious long images of the wheels one moment, and in the next, as it swung the other way, the abstract figure of light and shade on the ground became short. The mythical little movie went on as none of us talked. Absolute stillness reigned, except for the monotonous grind of the wooden wheels without bearings.

We didn’t wish to talk possibly because all of us were thinking – in our own different ways – about the only passenger on the cart, a beautiful girl of around fifteen in a cotton sari, sitting with her head on her folded knees. Shyam’s younger sister.

She would die soon. She had been discharged from a hospital a few days before; there was no cure for her condition those days. Why Anuttam and I were accompanying her on her last journey in this world is another story. Maybe, I will come back to it some other time, but today, I am trying to write about Anuttam. …

Minutes after we crossed Goalpara, we could see the River Kopai at a distance. For most of the year, Kopai has ankle deep waters. But that evening, she was a wide brimming stream of molten silver shining under the full moon. In that out-of-the-world evening, Anuttam sang the Manna Dey song,

আমি যামিনী, তুমি শশী হে, ভাতিছ গগন মাঝে
মম সরসীতে তব উজল প্রভা বিম্বিত যেন লাজে

I’m the night, you’re the moon
Shining in the sky,
Your image on my crystal mirror
Is trembling, blushing shy.

We had originally planned to bid goodbye to Shyam and his sister from this side of the river. But Anuttam, immersed in his song, kept walking across, following the cart. I joined him. The water rose almost to our chest and then fell.

Anuttam’s mellifluous voice overflowed two sides of the river; spread beyond the horizons in moon light … and added another intriguing layer to the magical evening. As Anuttam sang, the thought crossed my mind that I had never experienced anything like that ever.

I was young then. I didn’t know that such ethereal moments came but once in our lifetime if we were fortunate. “এ পৃথিবী একবার পায় তারে, পায়নাকো আর।” This world comes across her only once, never again.

*

If you asked me to make a list of the most unusual, special men and women I have come across in life, Anuttam Biswas would definitely be in it. My friend for over fifty years, Anuttam passed away on 10 August 2019. So, he would have been just over 70. His brother Gautam, younger than him by a few years, died maybe, a decade ago. The brothers, different as they were, were both unusual, fascinating specimens of humans. Both would often sing aloud as happiness overflowed their souls. Neither of them would pick up an argument with anyone. They never had an enemy. Rather, they were two people who were loved by all who knew them.

Anuttam had an unusual pet name, Bhondul, which in Bangla means topsy-turvy. I bow to the prescience of the person who named him Bhondul. He did look at the world differently, he followed his own rules and perhaps had the insight to see how confused and upside down the real world was. Once, I spent a day at his home in a small market town in rural Bengal. He taught at the only college there.

Both Anuttam and Sreela sang and we talked nineteen to the dozen. In the evening, the men felt a drop or two would make the evening even nicer. However, in that hypocritical small town it was unthinkable that a college prof would buy drinks from the only liquor shop in the town in full public view. Anuttam told me, ‘No problem, come with me.’

He took me along to the only bookshop there and, after handing over a small chit to its owner, he said, ‘Please see if you could get this book.’

‘Yes, Sir’, said the bookseller deferentially, ‘of course.’

The name of the book was “A Bottle of Old Monk”. It was faithfully delivered to the professor’s home a little later.

*

The child of a broken family, Anuttam had no home to go during college holidays. He used to stay at our hostel and eat wherever he could. We spent a lot of time together, we were in a hostel that had just ten rooms around a courtyard. His songs were captivating, and he wrote some of the most beautiful poems I have read. There was a time when I could recite a few of his poems, but now, only isolated lines come to the surface of my cluttered mind. Perhaps he got his literary genes from his grandma on the mother’s side, who was one of the first Bengali women to have published a novel. The elderly lady used to visit our hostel from time to time. A sanyasin, she wore saffron. Her older grandson too was weary of worldly attachments.

Anuttam was both exceedingly popular among friends and at the same time, a loner. The combination is not easy to handle, but Anuttam wore both the hats effortlessly. At least once he ran away from home; the loner in him perhaps had got the better of him.

As I have said, Anuttam did not, at least tried not to, follow given patterns in life. He was not someone who would go out of his way to keep in touch with friends or send new-year cards. Neither am I good at it. So, from time to time, we were out of touch for years together. But when we met, we picked up the threads as if we were meeting after a week. The last time we met, it was by pure chance.

Arundhati and I discovered him at a toy store in a shopping mall four years ago. Anuttam had come to look for a specific board game for his grandson. The way he was talking to the storekeeper, it seemed they were old friends. They possibly were. Anuttam made friends easily, and people fell in love with him perhaps even more easily.

Following the chance meeting, he and Sreela came home and we spent a glorious day together. It happened on 27 April 2015. I can tell you the date because my phone, quite unemotionally, recorded the date when I took a few pictures that afternoon. We parted with promises to meet soon and with lots of plans. …

Anuttam was diagnosed with brain tumour in 2016. He would be no more in three years’ time.

Anuttam’s death didn’t bring tears to my eyes. His passing means I will have a void, a dull pain buried deep in some corner of my being for as long as I live.

If you are fortunate, you come across someone like Anuttam only once in your lifetime, never again.

Bangalore
Thursday, 24 October 2019

Stand calm and resolute

Statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Pietermaritzburg

These verses are from the The Mask of Anarchy by the English romantic poet Shelley. Gandhi once recited them to a Christian gathering in India.

As I woke up this morning in a country where hatred has become the dominating force in just a few years, I thought of the great man, and the lines which sum up his political creed.

Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute,

With folded arms and looks which are

Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,

Let them ride among you there;

Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;

What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise,

Look upon them as they slay,

Till their rage has died away.

Then they will return with shame,

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak

In hot blushes on their cheek.

Rise, like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number!

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!

It seems for us, Indians, the old chains of colonialism have been replaced by new shackles of meanness and mutual hatred. India always had many fault-lines like religious, social, and economic, which Gandhi managed to join, not seamlessly, but effectively nonetheless. And I believe our success, rather, our survival as a federal country largely depends on how well we manage these fault-lines on a continuing basis.

Astonishingly, at present, some Indians are working overtime to widen these fissures like never before in recent history. In fact, they are dividing the country far more effectively than our ruthless alien rulers could, except for the last two years of their miserable rule.

One hundred and forty-eight years after Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born, I think recalling these lines once again would be a fine way to pay tribute to the flawed genius, who perhaps was more a human with multiple failings (like you and me) than a Mahatma.

Bengaluru

2 October 2017

[Photo courtesy news24.com: Statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Pietermaritzburg. It is at this place in South Africa where Gandhi, while travelling to Pretoria, was thrown off a train at the instance of a white-man who objected to his travelling in a first class compartment, though he had a valid first class ticket. Did the makers of the statue "return in shame"?]

A beacon of hope

Farhaz, flanked by Abinta (left) and Tarishi (Photo courtesy CNN)

Yes, and how many times must a man look up / Before he can see the sky? / Yes, and how many ears must one man have / Before he can hear people cry? / Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows / That too many people have died?

In just about a week, there has been suicide attacks in Istanbul to Baghdad to Dhaka, in which terrorists killed hundreds of innocent people, including children. In Baghdad, lots of children, who did not know they were Shia Muslims and therefore had no right to live.

A grotesque dimension of the Dhaka attack nearer home is that the terrorists had not been recruited from the backwaters of Pakistan or Syria or some other cesspool of poverty and illiteracy. All the seven attackers were from middleclass or well-off families and had been to top schools and universities. “The parents of these boys are normal and have secular credentials”, Bangladesh Information and Broadcasting minister told NDTV. According to CNN, they “seemed like normal, middle-class men” who would hang around in cafés and lead “normal” lives even the other day.

What makes such “normal” young men take the lives of people they do not know? What makes them believe that anyone who doesn’t share “our faith” must be killed? What makes them throw their lives away to achieve such a thoroughly useless goal?

If I may enlarge the question, is the world losing its battle against hatred and violence?

Any attempt to find reasonably correct answers to these questions must begin with complete rejection of the stupid argument popular with our Indian Hindu Jihadists that Muslims are at the centre of every problem and Islam is a “violent religion”. (Islam is as much or as little violent as any other religion, maybe, with the exception of Buddhism and Jainism.)

The two biggest terrorists of our time are M/s Bush and Blair, who have killed – based on completely false, manufactured pretexts – at the very least 30,000 people and destroyed a thriving country. Yet no one call them “Christian Terrorists” and quite rightly so. And no one seems to remember that they virtually fathered what is known as ISIS today. Had there been no invasion of Iraq in 2003, there would have been no ISIS today. Simple, period.

Coming back to my original question, what makes ordinary people like you and me embrace hatred and violence? Is it a virus of our time, from which some of us have no escape? And at the end of the day, will madness win over sanity?

I certainly do not know the answers and there are fleeting moments when I feel despondent. But a young boy from the other side of death tells me not to lose hope. Let me end this chaotic piece of writing with his story which I have pieced together from a number of credible sources.

Faraz Ayaz Hossain was – as his name suggests – a Muslim. He was 20, a Bangladeshi, and a student at Emory University in the US. He was one of the twenty hostages killed in a Dhaka restaurant. But he died a hero’s death.

Earlier that evening, Farhaz had driven two of his friends, both girls, to Holey Artisan Bakery of Dhaka. One of them happened to be Tarishi Jain (19), the only Indian who died in the attack, and the other was Abinta Kabir, 18, an American who studied at the same university with Farthaz. Tarishi was at the University of Barkley.

They were caught in the terrorist attack in the night of 1 and 2 July. The terrorists let go Bangladeshis and Muslims, who they decided were Muslim enough. New York Times reports:

“Early in the morning, the gunmen released a group of women wearing hijabs and offered a young Bangladeshi man, Faraz Hossain, the opportunity to leave, too, said Hishaam Hossain, Mr. Hossain’s nephew, who had heard an account from the hostages who were freed.

“Mr. Hossain … was accompanied by two women wearing Western clothes, however, the gunmen ... refused to release them, and Mr. Hossain refused to leave them behind, his relative said. He would be among those found dead on Saturday morning.”

It would be impossible for anyone who hasn’t been through such hell to imagine how much courage one must have to accept certain death just to stand by one’s friends who were going to die in any case.

Could anything be a stronger statement of human values, values that are infinitely more fundamental than the colours of our skin and the shapes of the buildings we pray in?

Bangalore / Monday, July 4, 2016

Beyond pain

Shun Fujimoto

[I stumbled upon this while rummaging through the Net. I am sure you'll like it.]


Before the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Japan had won the team gold in in gymnastics in all the four previous Olympics. So one can say that the Japanese were the undisputed champions in men's gymnastics in the 1960s and 70s. Naturally, they were contenders for the gold in Montreal too.

Shun Fujimoto, a member of the Japanese men’s gymnastics team at the Games, broke his right knee while doing floor exercises in the finals.

Shun ignored his injury, knowing that if he withdrew, his team would lose out to the USSR in the overall tally. He did not even reveal the magnitude of his hurt to his teammates, fearing that it would impact their performance adversely. Despite terrible pain, he managed to complete the pommel horse routine, and quite miraculously, scored 9.5 out of 10. He then faced the rings, his final event. Shun performed extraordinarily, without getting distracted by the thought of the inevitable effects of dismounting from a height of eight feet with his broken knee. After completing his routine, he hurled himself into a beautifully executed somersault dismount.

When he hit the floor, he felt excruciating pain, but kept his poise and raised his arms in a perfect finish before falling down. He had scored a 9.7, his highest-ever score on the rings. And he won the individual gold for the event. But the dismount dislocated his broken kneecap and tore ligaments.

His superb performance in the face of physical agony enabled the Japanese team (576.85 points) win Gold, beating the USSR by a margin of, hold your breath, 0.40 points! After winning the closest gymnastics team competition in Olympic history, Shun joined his team at the victory stand to receive his gold medal, and he did it without assistance.

He stated that he had not wanted to let his team down by revealing his injury. Later, when asked whether he would do what he did again, he replied frankly, “No, I wouldn’t.”

This simple statement shows that Shun is human after all, but a very special kind of human. And Shun Fujimoto is a revered name in Japan today.

[Source: Wikipedia, http://gymnasticszone.com and other Internet sites. The picture is from Wikipedia.]

Biswaranjan Ghosh

Biswaranjan Ghosh passed away on 8 Feb, 2012 at Kolkata after just a day’s illness.

How easily I have written these harsh words! For Biswaranjan was not only a dear friend to hundreds of people in Trivandrum, but also the very personification of life itself.

He joined Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Trivandrum in 1973 as a rank-holder from Bengal Engineering College. In later years he made a significant contribution to welding Technology for steel; a technology that is still being used for all launch vehicles of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

He was one of the most active members of Trivandrum Bengali Association. He was there everywhere in most of the activities. Endowed with a God-given voice, he has regaled us with his songs on numerous occasions. His Rabindra Sangeet in a resounding voice mesmerized people here for over thirty years.

He sang folk songs very well too and his ‘Hey Dola, Hey Dola’ is remembered even today. When he sang ‘Jago Tumi Jago, Jago Durga …’ (an invocation of Goddess Durga) hearts stood still for a moment. Such was the magic in his singing. His last song in Trivandrum was ‘Peyechi chuti biday deho Bhai, Sobare ami Pronam Korey jai.’ (The toil is over, it’s time to go. As I leave, I bow to you all.)

Biswaranjan was also a regular in all the dramas enacted by the Association. His playful leg pulling of friends made rehearsals a lively event, often better than the staged drama itself. Our Puja Pandal lit up with joy and laughter whenever Biswaranjan made his entry in the Pandal. Children chased him shouting  ‘Kaku, Tombola! Kaku, Tombola!’  His humorous banter while he conducted Tombola made it the most enjoyable off-stage events in any Puja. Biswaranjan also conducted Mukta Mela (a food fest) most regularly. His great one-liner comments evoked peals of laughter and added so much fun to Mukta Mela.

He left Trivandrum for Kolkata after opting for voluntary retirement in 2007. I haven’t met him since and it pains to think that I never will. However, Heaven will now be a very lively place indeed! 

Santanu Dasgupta
Trivandrum Bengali association

[Biswaranjan Ghosh was an exceedingly lively person, always smiling, ever-ready to break into laughter. It is difficult to accept his sudden and most untimely death. Thank you, Santanuda, for sharing this. Santanu]

Meeting Joe after long

I met with Joe last night. It was during the yuletide under a starry sky, with Santa hovering unseen somewhere in the background. Curiously, Joe gave me a leather-bound copy of the Bible as a Christmas gift. Equally strange, I felt it was a perfectly normal gift to have from Joe.

And of course, it was normal to dream about a friend who died a few months ago.

What is curious about the gift of a Bible at Christmas? Well, although religion was a subject we never discussed, I don’t think Joe was seriously religious. While we lived close to each other in the same city, I never saw him going to church on a Sunday morning. In short, in the real world Joe giving me a Bible would be as absurd as me gifting him a copy of the Geeta.

Joe and Catherine got their elder daughter admitted to one of the finest Jesuit schools in Trivandrum, a school where securing admission was tough, and parents would consider themselves lucky if their children did manage the feat. Aarti was a lively child with curly hair and sparkling eyes, and I wouldn’t imagine any school refusing admission to such a bright five-year old. But Joe said, ‘You know, at times like these, I turn into a devout Catholic. It helps!’

As I write, lots of insignificant memories flash through my mind. I know not if they would be of any interest to anyone else, but let me write, simply because I love to recollect them.

Once, I went to Joe’s family house in Changanecherry while he was there. While returning from Trivandrum to Calcutta, I reached Changanecherry in the morning with a plan to board a long-distance train from there early afternoon. In those days of glorious uncertainty without mobile phones or Google maps, I had just taken a chance. After getting off the train, I started enquiring about Joe and his dad, a retired professor of English. Soon, I was walking through a drizzle in a laterite country with quaint tiled houses peeping out of green foliage on either side of the road, accompanied by a man in a lungi and followed by a pack of suspicious stray dogs. Joe had to be woken up.

The morning went past like a flash of electricity, and we started waiting for the lunch with a tinge of sadness. It was still drizzling, and getting rather late for my train. After enquiring in the kitchen, Joe came back and said, ‘Looks like you will have to make do with vegetables, the chicken is still alive.’

Instead of a salt cellar, on the dining table there was a small bottle of saline water with a curved nozzle. I don’t remember if the chicken had been dead by then, but I do remember Joe’s mother laid out a fabulous lunch for us. A kind of lunch for which one should gladly miss trains. Later, a couple of times, she sent us home-made fish and prawn pickles through Joe. They were heavenly.

She must be quite elderly now. Why did she have to suffer this cruel blow?

There was a time when many of our friends were posted in Trivandrum at the same time.  All the offspring of our friends were great fans of Joe, who reciprocated their affection in abundance. I do not how Joe struck up such easy friendship with kids. Maybe, he had kept the child in him alive and would let the young fellow out when he was in company of children.

One day, Joe came to our home with Aarti on a Sunday morning. My children, Doel and Tatai were in primary school then, and Aarti was yet to begin schooling. Joe had planned to take the children to the zoo, but wanted to give Aarti a surprise. So he told Doel, ‘Get ready. We are going to the Ized-o-o’, imitating the Mallu pronunciation of z to make sure Aarti didn’t get the drift.

On another Sunday, Joes (his second daughter hadn't arrived then) and us went to the backwater lake at Veli in the outskirts of Trivandrum. After the usual boat ride and fun and frolic, Aarti got over-friendly with a puppy and picked up a scratch in her hand. It was just an affectionate nibble and nothing serious, but we couldn’t take chances. Joe consulted a doctor, who advised him not to worry. Still, Aarti’s parents continued to feel uneasy, naturally. The next Sunday, Joe and me drove down to Veli once again in Joe’s elderly green Ambassador, armed with two large packets of thin-arrowroot biscuits. We gathered all the mongrels of Veli that afternoon and after making sure that Aarti’s friend was hale and hearty, returned home, relaxed.

A few days ago, I was in Bangalore. We had just moved into a flat on the fourteenth floor, facing the east. On the first morning, I woke up early and went to the balcony. As an icy wind ran a shiver through me, I saw the blue darkness giving way to a dull light as the sun rose gingerly through a mist over a huge city dotted with countless buildings. Numerous windows were still throwing out light. It was a panorama where the day met the night, life met death. I thought it would have been great if Joe had been behind one of those windows. He could have been.

Kochuthresiamma Joseph

Kochuthresiamma Joseph (KTJ to her friends) passed away in the night of 8/9 November. Although her husband Joseph Mathew and I were colleagues, I never met her. Yet, when I opened a common friend’s text message carrying the news of her death in the small hours of the morning yesterday, I felt a deep sense of bereavement … a sense of loss made more poignant by the stillness of the night.

I came to know her long after Joseph Mathew and I ceased to be colleagues, through her somewhat mysteriously titled blog “Pareltank”. Later, she wrote she had named the blog after the road in which she had lived with her husband and children in Mumbai: Parel Tank Road. Maybe, when she named the blog, she was in that phase of her journey when one prefers to look back, rather than looking ahead.

She taught English at college(s) and wrote beautifully about her friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbours, tailors, in short, the ordinary people she came across. And they came so alive through her writing! While reading her blog, I would be touched by her sensitivity, eye for details, sense of humour and her candour and courage.

She also wrote about the colossal social evils that we have agreed to live with, without losing much sleep. And in these pieces, she came out as a different kind of writer: tough, no-nonsense, and brilliantly incisive. I didn’t agree with her always – needless to say – but I was always impressed by the well-informed analytical mind that was behind the fingers on her keyboard.

I didn’t know Kochuthresiamma Joseph personally while she was alive. Now that she is no more, I know that Mother Earth has lost one of her wonderful daughters. I bid adieu to you, my unknown friend! And my heart goes out to your husband, children, and other close relatives.

=========================================================================

Here are the links to three of KTJ's many lovely articles:

Autograph  /   Fair & Lovely   /   Narendra Modi's letter to Anna Hazare