This is the 400th
post on my blog. Seriously, I had never thought I would make it till here. Long,
long back there used to be a brown diary where I used to write terrible poems. Thankfully,
it no longer exists (probably). Maybe someone had wrapped fruits or jhalmuri
in some of the pages.
Maybe someone has
preserved it, at least a single page.
I do not miss my diary
anymore. Diaries cannot be preserved. You can get all sentimental about diaries
and letters and dry flowers inside books, but, well, you cannot stack them up
neatly in Google Drive. You cannot use F3 or Ctrl + F when you want to, badly.
But I digress, as
usual. This is my 400th post. I wanted to make it stand out. I thought of all
sorts of 400s — of Brian Lara, of the fact that it is the square of 20, of HTTP
status code 400.
I also realised
that it reads CD in Roman, which meant I could write on compact disks (no, not on
compact disks, for they are too small; I could write something on the topic).
Then I decided to write
on my grandparents. There is no logic behind that, barring the fact that the
number has four hundreds and there were four grandparents. Neither of my
grandparents lived till a hundred, so writing about them in a 400-themed post
makes no sense.
But then, blog-posts
need not make sense; not always.
More importantly,
someone has to chronicle about these four remarkable people.
***
My grandparents
were seriously interesting and diverse — all of them — way more than my parents
or brother or I have been or are (am) or will be.
Let me start with
Guru Prasanna Roy Chowdhury, my maternal grandfather, a man whose roots lay in
Faridpur, Bangladesh, but he loved Kolkata so much that he did not take up a
promotion (he worked at DVC) because it would have meant leaving the city.
I had no clue why
he cared so much for me, for I was not the quintessential lively kid. I read,
and I read a lot. When I was at his place, and both of us were in the same
room, hours passed by as I read on and he played solitaire, the Phillips
transistor radio on, tuned in to irrelevant programmes.
In other words, he
rarely communicated with me when I was busy. He respected my space.
And yet, when he
took me out for a walk, he was full of conversations, of Kolkata of the 1940s
and 1950s, of my mother’s childhood, of how Durga Puja has evolved, of Congress
and CPM, of Gavaskar and Kapil Dev.
He was always the
same. He would wear a white punjabi and dhuti; there would be a walking-stick
in his right hand; my right wrist would be clutched very tight; and there would
be long, very long, tireless walks that always seemed to get over too soon, for
he never ran out of insights and information and trivia.
Those evening walks
taught me more of Kolkata and her history than books.
In the monsoon months
he took me to Potopara, a locality where they make idols of Durga. I could not
understand why he, an atheist to the core, used to do this. I kept asking him,
but he never told me till I was about ten.
“You have seen what The
Goddess actually is. I will not influence you, but make up your mind on God’s
existence.”
I wish I could be a
teacher half as good.
He never believed
in exuberance. He did not speak a lot. But when he did, the words were
profound, and made an impact.
My brother and I got
admitted to Kyokushinkaikan karate. In late 1980s or early 1990s you always had
to learn something. Karate had perhaps to do with the fact that my
father loved watching movies on martial arts (just a guess).
It was exciting,
especially those first few days. We visited his place after class, one day. He was
reading a newspaper.
“We are learning
karate.”
He nodded sadly,
very sadly. He looked at me from behind his thick glasses and said, “Pipe-guns
— they are everywhere these days. So many innocent people get killed every day.
Can you help them?”
I got decent marks
in my 10th. Everyone assumed I would take up science, barring this man. He called
me, separately, and asked me to do what I wanted to. He would stand by
me if it came to that.
“It does not matter
what you study, or what you do. If you are good at it, and if your heart lies
in it, the subject does not matter. You will never get these days back.”
Two years later he
asked me the same question. I chose to study statistics, not engineering, after
my 12th.
Two years later he
was no more.
There are too many
memories to share as my glasses are getting thick, almost thick as his. And yet,
what stands out in memory is a retort aimed at my mother:
“Baba, tuck in your
mosquito net properly. The malignant malaria-bearing mosquitoes operate only between
two and three at night.”
“Yeah, right; they
have watches.”
[হ, অগো হাতে ঘোরি আসে।]
We kept his last
wishes: we donated his body to Calcutta Medical College; and there was no
funeral.
***
Latika, his wife, was
a curious, most singular character, one of the liveliest and most energetic I
have seen. They stayed on the fourth floor, and well in her late eighties she
would climb the staircase with ease, going to market, to ‘gas booking’ if there
was an issue with LPG cylinders and the phone was not working, and more.
My father helped
her with banking and other similar activities, but she was generally fiercely
independent. At an age when most mothers are happy to stay at their daughters’
(she had two), she refused to do the same. Seldom did she stay happily at our
place, or my aunt’s.
She had her
idiosyncrasies. I remember an occasion when I was supposed to pick her up at
10. She called me at, about, 9.20, enquiring why I had still not arrived. When I
pointed out that there was still forty-odd minutes left, she mentioned that she
was ready by 8.30, walked downstairs, waited till 9, then 9.15, got irritated, and
walked up all four storeys to call.
[I have
double-checked the times while writing.]
She was powerfully
(but harmlessly) patriotic, and used to salute a photograph of Netaji Subhash
Chandra Bose on January 23 till well into her final years.
That was probably
normal.
She had expected me
(in my early twenties), my brother, and my cousin (both in their late teens) to
stand in a queue and welcome the arrival third millennium.
That was probably not
normal.
But it did not
matter, for she did not give a, well, you-know-what to what the world thought
of her.
She lived till I
was thirty-five, which meant I saw a lot of her. By then I knew more about life
than I ever thought I would, at thirty. And I marvelled at the resilience of the
woman who went on about everything with a near-toothless smile.
This was the woman
who introduced me to Ramayan, and generally, to mythology.
This was the woman who
waited at the doorsteps, and applauded me all the way to the bedroom when I
visited them the day after I passed my 10th.
Do you realise how
embarrassing this was?
This was a woman who
had seen, lived, and conquered poverty.
This was a woman
who had seen her youngest daughter pass away; and overcame it.
This was a woman
who used to panic when she saved fifty rupees at the end of the month (from her
pension), wondering how she would spend all that money. This was fifty rupees
in the 2000s, mind you.
This was a woman
who could not be conquered by age or grief.
And today, as I
approach forty, I wish she was here, to applaud me all the way at achievements
as insignificant as passing an examination.
***
Sova Mukherjee was the
ubiquitous grandmother (Achala Sachdev, not Zohra Sehgal). She was kind, she
walked at the pace of about fifty metres an hour (okay, I exaggerated that), was
blessed with a nice smile, and was extremely grandmotherly.
She mothered three
children. Since both my parents were working, she almost ‘mothered’ my brother
and me as well.
She ensured we were
well-fed (or, in my case, a bit too well-fed).
She used to talk to
tea (yes, you have read that right). She remains the only person I have seen
who consumed two cups of tea simultaneously, one in each hand, sipping
alternately, taking out time for words of praise: “Oh, tea — the person who
discovered you must have been a genius! Can you tell me his name?”
She never
understood a word of Hindi, but used to get extremely excited whenever the
climax of a Bollywood movie approached on Doordarshan and the hero had managed
to rescue the heroine and corner the villain: “Maar! Maar!”
And then, “The
movie got over? Just like that?”
“What else were you
expecting? The villain went to prison, the hero and heroine got together...”
“But there will be
a wedding! They will ‘do shongshar’! What about that?”
She loved her shongshar.
You can probably visualise her, in her black, broad-rimmed glasses, keys tied
to her white, cotton aatpoure sari — keys that always announced her
arrival.
She had little
formal education and could barely write her name, and yet could tell whether
there was an Enid Blyton inside my history book: “your expressions gave
it away.”
My mother once told
me a story about her. A didi (my neighbour and second cousin) was once walking
outside the terrace of our neighbour’s, grabbing the perilously fragile-looking
cornice. A hysteric yell would have been catastrophic. She kept her calm,
whispered to my didi’s mother (my something, do not ask, it is very
confusing), telling her everything and asking her not to panic.
And my grandmother
masterminded the rescue in the matter of minutes, by having the right people in
right places.
She was religious,
and was extremely prejudiced when it came to religion. And yet, there was no real
issue when my parents had an inter-caste love marriage.
More importantly, when
Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, she went out of her way to accommodate
a Sikh family in our house.
That was the second
lesson in religion from a grandparent.
But, most
importantly, she was the mother when my mother was away on her day job.
Her health
deteriorated quickly after my grandfather passed away. She had slipped once, in
her last days. I had picked her up and put her to bed. She seemed light, very
light. I wondered how she had carried the entire household on her shoulders all
those decades.
She was about to
breathe her last when I was in Washington-Dulles on a seven-hour layover, for
the British Airways flight had been delayed.
She breathed her
last by the time I had landed in Heathrow. I never got to know till I landed in
Kolkata.
All that waited for
me was a photograph and incense sticks. My grandmother was somewhere else, they
said, embalmed, waiting for me.
When I finally got
to see her, she was not smiling anymore. Embalming had not helped.
***
This leaves me with
Satya Charan Mukherjee, probably the coolest individual I have known in real
life.
My dadu worked
as a car salesman. He had a way with his words, which meant that he topped the
charts every month in his organisation. This was not unexpected, for if his
gift of the gab was even a fragment of what it was in his late eighties, he must
have been phenomenal.
But then, he would
not leave Kolkata, which was hardly unusual in our family.
What was more, he
would not compromise with his siesta. This meant that he left for office in the
morning, came back at one, had his lunch followed by his afternoon sleep, and
never returned for the day.
And yet, he topped
the charts, month after month.
His boss obviously
told him one day that he could not leave office that early every day.
My grandfather
showed him the sales charts.
His boss mentioned that
the company had decorum to maintain.
So my grandfather resigned,
went to a rival organisation, and announced that he was available. He was hired
instantly.
Note: This is
a verified story.
My grandfather used
to participate in car-rallies and win awards, and made his way to newspapers.
For a long time the
hat, the whistle, and the baton remained a mystery, but I got to know that he
was a part of the police special force.
I cannot sell a
car, drive, or fight crime to save my life, which are among the many reasons
why I thought he was cool.
He had once caught
a fraud astrologer red-handed, and, well, did not let him get away with it.
He watched cricket
with my mother. The two of them gave me cricket.
He made sure I had
a library membership at a very young age.
He cooked mutton
the way few chefs can.
He kept odd hours,
going to bed at eight at night and waking up at half-past three. He was back
from his morning-walk by five. When the clock ticked over to 7.45 at night, he
made sure the bedroom was cleared.
He made sure my
aunt became a Company Secretary when married teenage girls seldom pursued studies,
let alone a professional course. This, despite taking immense pride in
announcing that he was a “matriculate by chance”.
He was the first
guardian to reach my school to collect his ward the day Mrs Gandhi was
assassinated.
He made sure I
accompanied him to market. By six I could tell fresh, soft ladies’-fingers from
their stubborn components, or how to identify a desi potol.
I got my first job
a year before he passed away. I had a choice between a handsome package in
Hyderabad and a moderate one in Kolkata. I told him.
“Who leaves Kolkata
for money?”
I did, eventually. Not
for money, but for a job, for they do not have many back there anymore.
***
They were cool and jovial,
perseverant and bizarre, smiling and radical, compassionate and protective. They
knew the thin line between encouraging and spoiling, all four of them.
When I was young I was
tired of everyone telling me how fortunate I was to have all four of them, not
only alive, but healthy. It took me years to understand why.
As my thirties come
to a close, memories swarm my mind. I do not have photographs of them with me,
or at least, hard copies.
But meeting them is
never far away. I am blessed with an above-average memory, you see.
