#1

There was a red bicycle. A shorty, fit for the naive kids to learn cycling. My maternal grand uncle had gifted the bicycle to my brother on his 5th birthday. The gift turned out to be a boon for the other neighbourhood kids as most of the interested ones learnt to cycle in that very red, shorty and humble one. After its varied interesting adventures, the cycle was kept in our verandah and I grew up to a 9 year old seeing it stationed in one position until one day Baba came with a pair of balancers. They were fitted to the either side of the rear wheel. Baba summoned me and presented the boon again. My joy knew no bounds. Every evening, be it a hot one, rainy one or a cool one, my red cycle will be out in the playground. Well, the rider was still struggling with her pedalling skills, though. Then a day came when off went the balancers and the cycle sped and wandered from one corner of the neighbourhood to the other. The red bicycle now got an elder pal who got a resting place just next to it. The pal was a straight handled mountain bike which was bought for my brother as he needed one to go to school. After a few years, I, too started learning to ride in that big one. The problem with the mountain bike was one could not do ‘half-pedalling’ and one would have to take it all the way to a slopy land of the playground to brace herself up to the lofty seat. Well, it took a long time to tame the bike for the young one while the elder one happily rode it to school. The young one loved to get ‘double carried’, though and would wait outside her school get to look for the bike rider coming to pick her up.

Days went by. Some one came to request for the red shorty for her kid. We gave it away. Little did we know that the red shorty won’t come back to us again. With it, its old pal also went. Don’t know what really happened to it, maybe it ended up in a recycle garage after stumbling for a few times. They went away. Their first rider also went for higher studies. The vacant space of the verandah was taken by a second hand ladies’ bicycle. When I saw it, I fumed. I was not ready for a second hand. I detested it and started walking to school. The cycle sulked alone till my Baba started riding it. I too, soon followed the course as I realized by that time, that Baba wanted to celebrate my adolescenthood by gifting me a cycle like the way he did for my brother, but he could not afford a new one as he took a voluntary retirement from his service because his company wanted him to.

#2

There are days such as today, when the floodgates of the old memories open up, reminding me of the the times when life tested my family members. These surging memories do not let me forget the 17 months when my father was recovering from a fracture and could not join his work resulting in this 17 month long period of ‘without pay’. This was the time when my mother single handedly managed the house, our expensive studies and her workplace. Now, I shudder to think of the possibilities which could have happened if my mother did not have her job. Maybe we could not boast of our rich educational background then as we do now……………….

Throughout their life as parents, my father and my mother, have always thought about investing on us, their children, rather than investing for their future lives. Whatever money they could manage to save at the end of their job lives (they could not serve till their usual retirement ages because they worked in a sick industry which closed down before they could complete their tenure) were chosen to spend on our higher education and better future prospects. No, they never complained. They only tried to make us realise the value of their hard earned money.

There was a time when we used to think about returning the money they spent for us. We used to calculate how much we had made them spent……now I realise how foolish were we. Though, both of us, my brother and I, manage to earn much more than they spent on our education, we can never return the time, the knowledge, the unconditional love they invested on us. How can we return the scorching heat or rainy evenings they had spend on sourcing second hand books from college street? How can we return the exhausting train journeys from Durgapur to Kolkata and back? How can we return the pain they took to carry the heavy loads of second hand books back to us? How can we return the smiles which radiated on their faces with our smallest of achievements? How can we return the days when they walked more and ate less to save every hard earned penny?

The only savings they have, are us. They did not judge us while investing diligently on us so that we turn into perfect human beings in the true sense of the term ‘human’. I don’t know whether their investments are successful. The sole regret I will be taking back with me to my grave is that by the time we could gift them some happy moments as a token of gratitude for all that they have done for us, they chose to leave us all alone to travel to the land of no return.

#3

In the moments of anxiety and apprehensions, my mind tends to retrace back to the Durgapur evenings when my parents used to sit together to have tea and ‘muri makha’, their friendly banters, beaming faces and the Durgapur mornings when my mother used to roam around the garden watering the plants and my father would be busy mixing manures and soils………those mornings and evenings reassure me of their omnipresence in my life..they reassure me that nothing has lost and brace me up for the new beginnings. My soul puts the faith back in me that my parents as well as guardian angels continue to shower their love and blessings on me, every single time….

#4

The setting: Baba reading a book on his table and I fidgeting here and there composing my dialogues. Finally the impatience gets the better of me.

Me (making a goody and coyish face): Baba, Please tell me.

Baba (without looking at me): What?

Me: Baba, pleeaaaase, you know very well what I am going to ask you.

Baba (fake expression of displeasure): No…..What do you want to know now? I need to complete reading the book today. Don’t you have any other work? Did you do your music riwaz today?

Me: Baba……I am tensed.

Baba (looking serious): So you wanted to ask me how you will fare in your annual result?

Me: Yes. Shall I pass and get promoted to the next class? What do you think?

Baba: Do I look like Nostradamus? How can I say?

Me: Baba, but whatever you say, that happens…..please say whether I will fail or pass?

Baba: What…how ridiculous! That’s just a wishful thought..it might or might not be true….so did you write your exams well?

Me: Yes….but…

Baba: Which subject is the ‘but’ dear?

Me: Baba…I wrote well….but I am doubtful in Maths and Chemistry…I don’t know whether I will pass in those.

Baba: Huh….those 2 problem makers…eh…aren’t they?

Me (on the verge of breaking down): Yes…….I don’t know whether I will manage the pass marks in these 2.

Baba (suppressing his laughter): I am also doubtful. Ask me tomorrow…I will predict then…

Me: No…no…I want to know today…….

Baba: What’s the big deal….fail once..then you will know how many rice grains are there in how many paddy bundles..

Me: No, I don’t want to fail…….

Baba (fake expression of anger and the voice tone pseudo-serious): You should have thought about this day before when you were whiling away your time reading storybooks during exams.

Me: Baba…I wasn’t just reading storybooks..I was building up vocabularies….there’s a difference…isn’t it Baba? I hate these 2 subjects…..

Baba (laughing heartily over the honest confession): Ha ha ha ha…Don’t worry, you might pass this time…

Me: Baba…why ‘might’? Please tell me with full confidence, Baba.

Baba: Ok…mone hochhe you will pass…

Me: mone hochhe? thikthak mone hochhe to? 

Baba (suppressing another laughter): That I can tell you tomorrow…

Next morning, just in front of the school gate…

Me: Baba…you promised me that you will tell me what your mind is telling you about my result.

Baba: Just go in…..tenetune ebare utre jabe….(laughing again)

So, every year, I managed to pass somehow and Baba would award me by buying my favourite ‘Nikhunti’ sweets. I would carry the report card in one hand and would make tall promises again on studying well, preparing hard and so on. Baba would hear them, laugh again in his own distinct style as he could already foresee me whiling away my time with storybooks in the next session and say in his usual style, “Hey..did you complete the second volume of Rabindra Rachanabali? Look forward to finish the novels this summer.” And I would nod affirmatively pacing down towards home together.

#5

As I recline and write in my room now, the sun outside is in its full might. The summer heat’s trailer show promises an uncomfortable season ahead again and made me go back to my childhood swimming days. My father used to take me to the township’s swimming club every summer evening since the time I didn’t even knew how to swim. The first object there which attracted me was the water fountain. Invariably, after reaching the club I would run straight to the fountain and sit close to it. The water would gush out falling over me and I would be jumping with joy. All these childish trysts with the fountain and pool water underwent a massive evolution one day when my brother accompanied me to the swimming club. He took me to the mid of the 25 m pool and forcibly separated my hands from the supporting side rods designed for kids like me to perfect their leg strokes. For a few seconds I could see nothing. My only focus was to breathe properly. By the time I thrusted myself back to the surface of the pool, my brother swam towards me  smiling. I was angry. I refused to talk to him but then he quipped, ‘Hey, you now know how to swim.’ I beamed with a newly acquired confidence and swam the entire length of the pool with my brother before heading back to home together. For the remaining 10 years of my stay in Durgapur, I had been a regular in the pool. The joy of plunging into the pool waters in the scorching summer months then couldn’t ever get matched to the calm days spent interiors with a super efficient AC machines now.

#6

Today, when I look back to my growing up days, I re-visualize some not-so-happy incidents which wrecked a havoc on my soul then.

My father helped me with my school homework till the day he met with a serious accident. He had to be hospitalized and underwent a surgery for compound fracture in one of his legs. Though the surgery went on to be successful, the recovery period was long, precisely 3 years. I was in class 2 then. In the midst of all other uncertainties about our household and my father’s career, I decided to help myself with my school homework.

The results of this decision was not rosy. I started failing to cope up with the school lessons. Though I managed to see through classes 2 and 3 without anyone’s help in my studies, I started giving up in class 4. I couldn’t understand most of the lessons and started to avoid the tougher chapters. A few of my benevolent classmates gave their notebooks to me so that I could copy the daily homework. This arrangement failed to work during the terminal examinations and I started failing miserably. I remember, once, I couldn’t submit homework notebooks for a week. My class teacher took me straight to our then principal. She called my mother and sternly told her that if I fail to cope up with the backlog in the coming months I would be thrown out of the school. The principal also remarked that I wasn’t a ‘Carmel’ material. I can only imagine now how my mother must have felt then with an ailing husband recovering slowly in the hospital, a son studying his +2 and an obstinate daughter on the other hand.

On the other hand, the teachers who taught in my class started to judge me. I was punished most of the time without any substantial reason. I had no friends to support me. I felt myself drowning in a patch of quicksand. When a person drowns, he/she starts fighting back for life. I started to do that. I could barely breathe inside the school but my injured soul was determined to win. I managed to get promoted to the next class, class 5.

Class 5 was a happy start for me. My father came back home with a huge plaster. He joined work and walked with a pair of wooden crutches. His daily struggles inspired me somewhere deep inside my heart to go on against all the adversities. Though, I had a happy home then, my school environment did not improve. All my subject teachers except the ones who taught Bengali and English, continued to be judgemental. To them, I was a blacklisted student who have already travelled to the Principal’s room. To them, I was not worthy enough to be taught by them. I was so scared about them that I often visualized myself walking through a dark tunnel without any torch to guide me.

It is said that when you experience the darkest hours of your life, you are bound to see the rays of hope just after. This was same for me. I could sense that my class teacher, one who also taught English treated me differently. Her name was Veena Jaya. Each of her lectures was inspiring. With her way of teaching I started to love what I studied. She could successfully instill the love for studying in me. In one occasion, when she had to choose and send a few students from her classroom to visit the school library (the junior sections weren’t allowed then), she chose me too. It was a moment of honour for me. This incident made me realize that she could see some hope in me too. The incident was an unimportant one but it helped me to catapult back.

I started studying harder. My sole goal was to become a worthy student to all my teachers. The scores didn’t improve much, though. The poor marks on my answer scripts made me strong every time I saw them. My determination saw me through and I got promoted to class 6. As Veena miss handed out the report card to me on the Result Day, she quietly remarked, “well done, Parna!” I looked up to her. She was smiling.

I won’t forget that smile on her face, ever. It was the fitting answer to all the teachers who found me unworthy of the school’s name and fame. As I look back, I still visualize the smile and thank her to be my guiding light. The light which gave me hope and reassurance of my capabilities. When I feel down at times, I re-visualize these days back in school. I quietly say to myself,”You had proved yourself. You will prove, every time.”

# 7

Since the time my senses began to support my being, I had been an observer and a participant to the ancestral ‘Laxmi-Alaxmi Puja’ annually organized during Diwali Amavasya (the day of the new moon during Diwali) in our household. I was told that my grandmother entrusted my mother with the rituals since her marriage to the Basu household. And, my mother kept her word till the year she died making sure that all the rituals are religiously followed. In the later years of her life, she used to get worried that the puja might end with her although everytime I assured her that she need not worry as we can handle the responsibility equally well. On her last year, she was contented with the way we – my brother, sister-in-law and I organised the puja. What I could not tell her was that I have secretly been an agnostic like my father and learnt to keep this choice of mine a secret in the little world of mine from my father himself. He never used to brag about his beliefs and hurt other God-believers. This secret of mine might have hurt her.
Like my father, I am simply concerned about taking care of what she had left with us – our roots, our family traditions and the religious rituals. The religious rituals which we follow during this worship is logically unappealing to me. I do not feel any arousal of respect within me for the family deity but this puja makes me bow down my head for my parents – one devoutly dedicated to theism who chose to follow all the ancestral rituals perfectly, and another, a dedicated agnostic, who supported her in her followed path.