Phire Dekha (Looking Back)

Reminiscence..recollection..recall..replay..remembrance and the Calcutta night make an odd sweet tonic. Calcutta anywhere beyond 1 in the night is a neon urban wilderness. The streets devoid of its teeming millions of faces and metal alike, the suave breeze and lonely roadways are like photogenic
back drops to introspection and memories and long walks and fond memories. Here are some remembrances that occurred on “La nuit Calcutta”.

The Memories Of December

“..let us be lovers and marry our fortunes together..laughing on the bus..playing games with the faces..”

We were travelling around aimlessly through the many streets of the city. It was eight odd by my watch. She looked pretty and more importantly very happy. We boarded a tram from somewhere around Elliot lane. The tram wobbled along on its cobbled stone path with occasional bumps and power glitches. We were around Royd Street when a long power glitch halted the tram and ushered the coach into darkness with the street neons invading the black. We looked up at each other, eyes resounding in anticipation, a shade of fear and skipping beats and then suddenly there was a rush of the faces and with equal promptness the lights turned back on. We quickly shrugged away but the scandalised, jaw dropped, annoyed expression on the conductor's face was priceless!

“..shei pothe pothik joto nobin probin, haashi-kanna khela shomo ullashe dube jabe ononto jole..”
“..all we are is dust in the wind..”

It was around eight in the evening. I was attending Karmayatra, a high profile school fest of Calcutta. Bikram Ghosh was performing and the infectious effervescent revelry of seventeen was sweeping across the open air concert. That particular day, a Saturday, our land-phone and my father's cell phone were both out of order. My phone was the sole link of connection. That Saturday morning my mother asked me to leave my phone at home in case of an emergency. I didn't leave the phone behind. The friends needed to stay in touch. It was a gala fest after all. The priorities of being seventeen...
At around nine I received a call. It was my uncle. My grandfather had expired. He had been suffering from bone cancer for quite sometime but his condition was nowhere near fatality. That particular Saturday he suddenly deteriorated and then he was no more. I stood silent in the sprawling field overflowing with that infectious effervescence of seventeen. I hired a cab and rushed back home. I met my father on the way back. He said, “ Don't tell her, he's no more..she'll totally break down. Tell her that he is in a very critical condition and in all probability we won't reach in time..”. I refused to lie. To me it was a lie. I was already charred with guilt..I couldn't lie. My father tried to convince me otherwise. He said that it would be too much of a shock. I couldn't lie.
Today I realise that its difficult to be face to face with such excruciating loss. People have blood flowing through their veins. It's not about lying, its about easing the confrontation of facing loss.
I will never forget the expression on my mamma's face. Shock..overwhelming grief..emptiness..void..sickening weakness.. I don't know what it should be called.
It was my second visit of the burning ghat. There is an eerie tranquillity in that place of extreme mourning and death. All our relatives stood there in tears..some cried,some sobbed, a common site amongst many others.

“ Don't bother I won't die..promise you won't ever see me crying..the ring you gave will soon lose its shine”

“And I went down to the sacred store where I had heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn't play.
And in the streets the children screamed, lovers cried and poets dreamed. But not a word was spoken..”

One Saturday night last winter I was heading towards Nahoum's. A Jewish bakery shop in New Market, Calcutta. A few hundred feet away was this little shanty of a bakery run by a Goan Portugese family. They sold some of the best pies and cookies one could ever taste. My father was especially fond of the shop. I would come to the shop with him as a child. The shop was anachronistic in a Calcutta bustling with multi-national brands and cuisine. I was about make the bend round the corner and see the time stained “shanty of a shop” that had very lovingly fed me and family the best bakes of the house. But it was not there. I looked around trying to assess the error in navigation. I thought it was the wrong lane. But it was not. I asked the street vendors around the bend. From them I learned that the proprietor was no more and the sons had sold the shop.
It was a strange feeling. I would never taste those cookies again. It was gone and no one noticed. To feel the bite of grief, loneliness, exasperation and indifference amidst a bustling market of faces unable to spare any thought..riddled with overwhelming tensions of their own, is very unnerving.

Phire Asha (Homecoming)

I have always loved flying kites. It was an August of some year in early 90s when I saw my neighbour fly a kite. A red paper kite with a blue tail. I had never seen something like that before. The breeze drifted southwards with the promise of rain and the fragrance of aging mangoes. He let the kite down from his terrace and tugged at the cord for a while. The kite and the flier were both waiting for the right moment. I kept wondering about how something as weak as paper dangling in a pitiable drift could fly. My neighbour looked nonchalant and gazed southwards. And then suddenly “swoosh” with a strong heave he lifted the kite in the air. Within seconds the kite was a good twenty feet in the air. I looked up to the south sky. The kite now guided by my neighbour drifted like red confetti etched against August's blue sky. I watched spellbound at the majesty of the display. I saw the freedom in my neighbour's eyes. Freedom of a kite? I saw that once the kite was well endowed with breeze from the upper strata it refused any tugs from my neighbour. It had a will of its own now. It drifted amicably in the breeze that was now a gust.

A good five years from that day in August I flew my first kite. A red one with a green tail. I saw freedom. For years I would go up on the terrace in the morning of 15th August and stay there until it was evening. My father built me an elevated terrace that was specially suited for flying kites. But by that time I had reached the upper strata. I had a will of my own. Like all families, my family has had issues. Issues that have no solutions but yellow pages of history attached to them. I have fairly been an obedient child on the daily basis but when it came to critical decisions I have always distanced my parents from taking them. I have often misplaced my anger and used it fuel myself rather than discussing issues openly. However, I finally confess that I have occasionally been a sore wound for my parents. Everything always just had to be about me. My space..my life..my wishes..my will. But somehow all I want to say is that today I realize it was nobody's fault...kites and gusts and free wills and cords and strings are what make the concoction of the family.