My family and other people

I've been writing forever for fun, and for comfort. In general it's a benign activity. Most often private, than not. But on at least three occasions, some mischievous spirit took possesion of me and got me into trouble....I think every one of those times I was bored and looking for excitement. The first time was when my friend Gopa and I were studying for our class ten board exams. The school year had ended in December and there was a study break until March, when the exams were supposed to be held. By February, we were heartily sick of studying the same things over and over again - you couldn't stop because then you'd forget the stuff. One day Gopa and I were sitting in my house, staring at our books with distaste, when we started talking about Saraswati pujo which was around the corner. The neighbourhood pujo was being organized by the boy next door and his friends (he had two sisters and a brother and I used to be so jealous of their large family). Gopa, who is ver...

I thought of it as the place where the air smelled different. Santiniketan, where my paternal grandfather built a house after retiring, was my only green childhood place. Kolkata was a crowded city. Kolar, my small town southern birthplace, had wide open spaces, vast silences and low hills visible on the horizon from every location; but it was relatively dusty and barren (like R.K. Narayan's Malgudi - in fact it's in the same geographical area on India's Deccan plateau). Santiniketan was the only place where I spent time in friendly proximity to trees, flowers, leaf-scents and bird-sounds. You could run around bare feet all day and your feet would never turn black, only red, the colour of the local soil. I had this mental game that I played on the way there. I would have an imaginary friend traveling with me. When we alighted from the train at Bolpur station, my friend would look around with dismay at the crowded town and say "this is Santiniketan?" I would say ...

Throughout my school days, I was starved for books, I never had enough to read. Our house had very few books. My father was not a reader and my mother read sometimes but hardly bought books. My uncle always gifted me McMillan classics, that I mentioned before, but I'd get through them in a week and be hungry again. Libraries would only give you 2 or 4 books every few weeks. Most people who had books never wanted to lend them and with good reason - books and umbrellas are the two most not-returned things that people borrow. I would stare at people's bookshelves longingly and hope that they would notice and say "do you want to take a book home to read?" (That's how I got into the habit of rereading favourites, like visiting old friends. One book was the complete novels of Jane Austen. Another one was Rabindranath's "Gora" in Bengali. I have no idea why I found that book so fascinating. It contained a couple of love stories and a startling revelation at...

The earliest books I encountered were a few illustrated volumes of nursery rhymes and fairly tales in English and Bangla (these are all the exact editions, I recognize the pictures - the internet is great!).         The Bangla books came as gifts from our relatives in Kolkata. For the book about ghosts and kings, my mother asked me to write a thank you postcard. "Write, your book made me scared and happy. Then draw two pictures - one of a scared face and one of a happy face." I obediently came back with the drawings half an hour later. "Wonderful", she said, "this face looks so frightened and the other one looks so excited." "But ma, that one was supposed to be the happy face", I said, pointing at the one she thought was scared. But she totally ignored me and has ever since told the story as evidence of my incredible drawing skill at a tender age. Reading became a joy, an escape and a deeply felt comfort only when I...

My parents lived in hospital quarters or rented houses all their lives. It was only late in life that they accumulated enough money to buy a small flat in a newly developed housing complex in Salt Lake, an up and coming, mostly residential suburb of Kolkata. My mother, with commendable foresight, chose a ground floor flat, although the upper floors were considered more desirable. "I'm not going to be able to climb stairs all my life," she would say, "besides, I have an extra living room just outside my door." Outside my mother's door was (and is) a raised square patch of grass, not more than 25 ft x 25 ft. The kind hearted designers of the complex had provided this play area for children with two swings, a metal slide and a merry-go-round. The people in the neighbourhood optimistically called it a "park". What turned it into a living room were the four concrete benches placed at the four corners of the square. About four people can sit comfortabl...