BROTHERS DEAR

While most Indian communities celebrate Rakshabandhan, Bengalis usually prefer to celebrate the brother-sister bond on Bhai-Phonta, which comes a day or two after Diwali.

There are certain disadvantages. Rakhis for Rakshabandan can be couriered, and there are even virtual Rakhis that can be e-mailed. But Bhai-Phonta is when the sister has to touch her brother's forehead to apply tika three times, and it cannot be done long-distance.

With brothers and cousins staying in different cities and countries now, the bhai-phonta is a more a memory than an occasion for many of us. This year, I did manage to have one at my Ma's home, where some of my cousin brothers were present. But not my Bhai (brother).

When we were young, Bhai-Phonta was a much-anticipated event, full of promise of exciting gifts and being the centre of attention.

Mornings would begin very early, to try and catch the shishir (autumn dew) that had fallen on the grass overnight. We would usually leave out thin squares of muslin cloth on the grass the night before, and would collect these before sunrise and wring them out to fill up a small brass bowl with dew.

Then we would be made to rub the sandalwood stick over stone to get chandan (sandalwood paste). And then put it in another brass bowl. After that we would make kajal, by rubbbing ghee (butter) on a leaf and blackening it over a 'pradiper shikha' (flame). We would also take dhaan (unhusked rice grains) and dubbo (trident-shaped grass stalks).

Arranged on a thali (platter), it all looked so good and festive. Proud of our handiwork, we would dress up in gaudy finery (from our recently-received Durga Pujo stock of new clothes). Ma and the aunts would be in charge of the food arrangements - which would be quite formidable but the end results would be totally mouth-watering and worth-the-wait.

Bhai (my brother) was the youngest of the cousins, he would be at home. But the other cousins would arrive, along with uncles (my mother's and my barama's brothers) and granduncles (my grandmother's brothers). Throughout the day, the house would be a-bustle with guests, and full of laughter and happy talk, and the smell of luchi-mangsho (puris and mutton-curry) would linger in the air along with the incense-stick fragrances.

The brother would sit, self-important and cross-legged, on the ason (carpet) laid on the floor. The sister would put dip her finger into the dew-then-sandalwood-then-kajal and each time she would put a mark on the brother's forehead, muttering rapidly the prayer which roughly translated into a wish for a long, long life for her dear brother. The elder sibling would then take the rice-and-grass and bless the younger one who would touch the other's feet.

And then came the nicest part. The brother, especially if he was employed, would put his hand in his pocket, take out his wallet and ruefully shell out some money as a gift to his sister. Of course, many sisters, like my mother would received elaborate gifts of crockery. Grandmother would usually receive saris from her brothers. Grown-up sisters would give gifts to their brothers as well, a shirt-piece, a watch...

But for us kids, it would be cash. And we would count out blessings, and our stash, at the end of the day, happy with love and flush with cash. Who said Money can't buy you Love???

HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO GET YOUR BROTHER/SISTER TO GIFT YOU SOME CASH?

A BAG FULL OF MEMORIES

As a young girl, rummaging through my Dida's (maternal grandmother) almari (cupboard) on a summer noon, I came across a stiff, boxy, bronze-coloured 'ladies' bag' with a short shoulder-strap, the kind carried by yesteryear heroines like Nanda and Asha Parekh, swinging it along with their hair and hips when the handsome hero serenaded them.

I was completely unable to visualize my rotund and grey-haired Dida looking even remotely like those buxom heroines. Why is it always so difficult for children to imagine old people to have ever been young? Now, at my age, it is so much easier!

Much later, I saw some faded sepia photographs of my Dida in fancy winged glasses and back-combed bun of hair, wearing a nice sari and posing beside my dashing Dadu (in a formal suit and tie) before some party. It was only then that I was able to connect that bag with my Dida, who otherwise had always seemed to be a cloth batua (hand-made bag) kind of a person.

To my great delight, the twist-to-open knob of the bag twisted open to reveal, apart from some old coins, a fancy hair pin (the kind you plunge into a really big bun or a really evil villain's heart) and a defunct gold-plated watch (Swiss made, with real gold) with a tiny rectangular dial and, sadly, one hand only.

The watch and the pin became useful accessories in all kinds of role-play, including espionage dramas.

And that bag became my faithful companion in countless hours of playing teacher-teacher, being boxy enough to hold all my old notebooks and ink-less pens, and also sturdy enough to last through the temper tantrums of a very ill-mannered teacher prone to throwing down her bag at the slightest provocation of her imaginary students.

It might have been a big comedown from the ball room to the class room, but the bag adjusted with the grace of a true lady.

WHAT WAS THE BAG YOU COVETED AS A CHILD?

SOUNDS OF HARMONY

A very familiar sound of my childhood, especially in the evenings, when we would all return home after a few hours of brisk and boisterous play, was the equally brisk and boisterous sound of young voices confidently, if rather unmelodiously, belting out Rabindrasangeet, all the while briskly and boisterously fanning the bellows of their harmonium.

The rather whining and petulant bellowing sound of the harmonium was considered an essential support to train fresh young voices when they learnt their musical basics (Sa-re-ga-ma) and the harmonium would also be an inevitable accompaniment when the singer, having mastered the scales, graduated to Rabindrasangeet... the highest-possible pinnacle of melody (according to all Bengalis).

We had a heirloom harmonium, an ebony rectangular contraption that belonged to my Barama (aunt). After her exertions, the harmonium had been vigorously flapped by both my cousins (Didia and Didibhai). Both of them sang rather well, and the harmonium was happy in their hands.

Unfortunately, I was/am a very pathetic singer, and I can well-imagine the venerable harmonium being absolutely horrified when I would bawl out "Aakash-bhara shurjo tara" (A sky ful of stars and suns - one of the first - and few - Rabindrasangeet I was forced to learn), all the while torturing the harmonium (and the ears of Kanudi - my suffering singing-teacher).

It was a rather painful phase of my growing up, but I (and the harmonium) was forced to undergo the tuneless indignity because of the misguided notion that all good and cultured Bengali girls must learn at least a dozen Rabindrasangeet if they wanted to impress prospective in-laws and marry a rich and handsome husband.

Fortunately however, better sense prevailed. And both the harmonium and I were spared further torture when, after a bout of chicken-pox, nobody suggested I resume my interrupted music classes. I sighed with relief and returned to my books and my badminton. And the grand and indignant harmonium returned to its heavy wooden box and rested for a few years till my Didia took it away, and put it to better and more melodious use.

WHAT MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DID YOU PLAY / WERE FORCED TO PLAY WHILE GROWING UP?

OVERHYPED UNDERARMS

Blame this on the sun!

But switch on the T.V and you'll find a long long line of ads for deos. All of which will have in-your-face, cringe-inducing shots of pretty/hunky movie stars flashing their underams as they spray on the deodorant that'll apparently keep them smelling of roses 24 x 7.

There's the dishy John Abraham and his Garnier. There's the svelte Asin and the effervescent Genelia. And...you get the point?

I guess raising you arms above your head and flashing your underarms with abandonment is perfectly acceptable nowadays. I'm sure to be labelled old-fashioned if I crib too much about this.

But I grew up in a time when underarms were called armpits. Not without reason. They were meant to be hidden, like all pits. Or at least lowered. Of course we saw lots of men and women wearing sleeveless clothing, including almost all of my family members. But that did not mean they jumped about raising their arms all the time.

In fact, when my brother started going to school, he was so enamoured of his Kindergarten teacher, Miss Joshi, who always wore dainty sleeveless blouses (with saris, that is), that he cried and cried and finally persuaded my Maa to switch over to sleeveless blouses, just like "Aunty Joshi". And my Maa was converted for life.

So you see, I'm not ethically anti-underarms. In fact, I wear a fair amount of sleeveless stuff myself - although my fat upper-arms demoralise my endeavours quite often.

My objection is aesthtic. Male or female, sweaty or fragrant, toned or not, polished or not (beauty parlours often have a service called UNDERARM POLISHING that I'm rather curious about), depilated or not, I still believe underarms are best lowered if they are uncovered.

Of course, if they are covered, you can merrily go about raising them and doing your own thing - like shouting slogans and picketing. I'm a Bengali from the land of the Red Comrades and the Red-faced-because-she's-mostly-shouting Mamata Banerjee, so I've met millions of raised and angry and protesting underarms. But they are covered.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

MY FIRST JEANS

When we were kids, jeans were not the ubiquitous youth-gear they are now. The only jeans brand that I can recall was AVIS (a spin-off from LEVI'S???), which sold out of a glass-fronted shop in the centre of Kolkata's iconic New Market. On the rare occasions that we stepped into the hallowed portals of New Market, I would gaze awestruck at the Avis Shop-window, so engrossed that I would nearly bump into the old canon that stood in the middle of the market courtyard. My cousin brother, Dadabhai, then studying to become an engineer at Jadavpur University, had a couple of pairs of stylishly faded indigo Avis-es. But he was a rare creature, orbiting our ordinary existence from his distant hostel life; so jeans were also something like Halley's comet, rarely seen, but never worn.

My first jeans was a hand-me-down from my cousin Tinnididi (who thankfully grew at a faster pace than me for all of twelve years, so I got lots of coveted second-handstuff. Unfortunately, she resolutely stopped growing after twelve, and my chief source of clothes ended there and then.). It was indigo at its indigo-est, with brown cord piping around the pockets. My legs being considerably longer than Tinnididi's, it was never really a comfortable fit, but I mulishly insisted on getting as much mileage out of it as I could, although I could barely sit down in it.

My first very-own, true-blue, first hand pair of jeans was gifted to me when I was twelve or so, by another cousin, Didia (who was my fashion inspiration for a long long time). It was a 'foreign' jeans - Didia stayed abroad with her husband and returned home once a year laden with goodies for all of us - so its NRI-status upped its fashion-quotient considerably.

It was hideously stone-washed in the fashion of the day, and horribly baggy, also in the fashion of the day.But baggy had its advantages - I could sit/lie/run/stretch in it comfortably. However, it was too precious for me to treat it like a second skin. I wore it only on special occasions - like on visits to cosmopolitan Calcutta and to birthday parties and suchlike. T-shirts were not good enough for my only pair of jeans. I wore it with pintuck tops and lace-embellished shirts. I even remember wearing it to my Mama's wedding (mother's brother), with a shot-grey full-sleeved pearl-embellished favourite top.

I might have looked like an awkward fashion disaster, but I sure felt awesome in my jeans.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST PAIR OF JEANS LIKE?

TRAIN TO THE HEARTLAND

Staying in Barrackpore and having lots of relations in Calcutta meant that short train journeys (about an hour and a half) were a regular part of our holidays. Trains meant a mix of excitement and apprehension, clutching tightly to Baba's hands on the crowded platform, the pleasure of standing in front of the window with the wind whipping my hair into my eyes, seeing the fields and houses tush by, getting warned every now and then not to put our hands out of the window, buying candies or fruits from the hawkers on the trains. And getting the yellowish cardboard ticket as a keepsake after the journey.

But my first really l-o-o-o-n-g overnight journey on Indian Railways was when I was seven years old, and we (Maa, Bhai and I - Baba had to go to 'office') accompanied my Dadu (mother's father) to Bhopal to visit my Mashi (mother's sister). Bhopal is 1356 kilometers away from Kolkata and we went the distance in an ordinary (not air-conditioned) second-class compartment, in the summer vacation when the temperature outside was often more than 40 degree celsius, in a train that had a coal-engine (which multiplied the heat-factor considerably) and which took two nights (if I remember correctly) to reach Itarsi (the station where we alighted, 77 kilometers away from Bhopal city). But being children, being middle-class, and being part of the frugal-seventies-generation, we never felt the heat or the discomfort. We didn't know any better. Maybe that is a good thing.

Dadu was a meticulous planner, and Maa was his able ally. So we got up on the train accompanied by, among other things, one kunjo of water (earthenware pot) in a wooden stand (to get deliciously cool water - beats refrigerated water any day), unlimited home-made cakes (to last the entire journey and beyond), limited luchi-mangsho (unleavened bread and mutton-curry, for the first night's supper, in such enormous quantities that it could feed an entire coupe of people), and one bedding-roll.

Why bedding-roll? At night, Dadu slept on the lower berth, taking an air-pillow and a two bed-sheets (one to lie upon, one to cover up), Maa and Bhai (then a three-year old enfant docile) slept similarly on the middle berth, and I was put inside the bedding roll with a pillow under my head and the straps tied over my body and bundled up onto the top berth. Despite being strait-jacketed to sleep, I loved the novelty of my high vantage point and spent a large part of the daytime sitting up on the top berth, reaching up to touch the ceiling every now and then.

Only the lure of the window got me down. Travelling through the vastness of India, with its changing terrains, soils, vegetation, cultivated and barren fields, villages, crowds and miles upon miles of empty spaces was an eye-opener. Except when the coal-engine belched extra-vigorously and the sooty smoke wafted into our eyes.

Faces black with soot, tummies full of a constant supply of food, mind replete with a multi-sensory experience of a lifetime, we got down at Itarsi station past midnight, the darkness adding to the mystery of the new place. Maasi (aunt) was waiting for us, and we travelled through the dark and long 77 kilometers to Bhopal clip-clopping in a tonga (horse-drawn carriage). But that's another journey, and another story.

DO SHARE YOUR TRAIN OF MEMORIES WITH US.

STAMPED ON MY MEMORY

My elder daughter has to do a class project on stamp-collection, and we were sadly unable to find any in the house. Finally, we had a kind friend who procured some stamps of foreign countries from the Post Office. At a cost, of course.

When we were young, we went through various 'collection-crazy' phases - from stamps to coins and even matchbox covers (where it helped that my Baba was a heavy smoker and enthusiastic contributer to the cause).

Stamp collection was a hobby much-lauded by grown-ups because it was supposed to be an educational pastime. Many kids were budding philatelists, including yours truly. One cousin, coming from a more affluent family, had a proper stamp-album with sections on different countries, ready-cut pieces of special adhesive to stick the stamps therein, and whole sets of stamps purchased at a price from post-offices.

My collection was more humble, in a used school-notebook. The stamps were painstakingly collected, one-at-a-time, off torn envelopes and air-mail covers, and stuck with ordinary gum but extra-ordinary care.

I had a lot of the usual brown 25 paise Gandhiji-stamps, and another lot of one-penny (or was it five?) pastel-Queen Elizabeth stamps of England. Indian stamps dominated the album (but of course), but there were quite a few interesting ones from foreign shores, taken from letters mailed by relations abroad, or from abandoned stamp-collections of uncles and older cousins. There were triangular, colourful stamps from Bhutan and Nepal, functional-looking stamps from the glamorous U.S.A, and stamps where the letters and numbers were in foreign languages.

The true erudite philatelist would rather have one rare stamp ( a Penny Black, say) than a hundred humdrum ones. But we were philistines rather than philatelists, and for us quantity mattered as much as, if not more than, quality. So, collections were fiercely guarded and frequently counted. Exchanging stamps was a serious and competitive business, much like the Stock Exchange today.

Bright, bold, silent but eloquent, the stamps united the world in my grubby little stamp-book. In the midst of shifting from house to house, and from city to city, somewhere I have lost it. But it is a loss that I deeply regret. Because I believe although I collected stamps with a zeal as a child, I would have learnt a lot more by studying them now as an adult. But those tiny messengers of diversity and variety - speaking of lands far away and peoples long ago - have been forever lost in transit.

WHAT DID YOU COLLECT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?

A SOAP OPERA

The other day I was looking at some communication for Yardley Soaps, and I was struck by the irony of the quaint, ye-olde-English nineteeth-century Yardley brand being bought over by the tech-hep 21st century Wipro. But then, big-business reality is often stranger than soap-opera fiction.

I tried to recall the soaps which we used as children. Lux is still very much around, although, the stars endorsing it have changed from Hema Malini to Aishwarya, with even a Shahrukh Khan in a rose-filled bathtub (shudder!!) in between. But I prefer a gracefully-ageing Hema to a nauseously-simpering SRK any day.
Liril is a soap which has fared better, I feel, and its lemony zingy appeal is quite fresh, especially during the long, sweaty summer. Even Cinthol’s deo-range, despite the masculine magnetism of Hrithik Roshan, does not compare.

But Rexona has disappeared. While the standard pink Lux was the staple soap in our home, the green Rexona regularly graced the soapdish in my Mamabari’s (mother’s maternal home) bathroom. It was a very ordinary soap, leaving the skin woefully dry in winter, but I have fond memories of Rexona just because of the Mamabari-connect.

In summer, when sweat, itching and prickly heat attacked, Maa would sometimes get the green medicinal Margo neem soap. And though the bubbles would taste bitter if they somehow entered my mouth, Margo enjoyed a sanctified status as a "GOOD SOAP WHICH CLEANSED AND CURED", so we never complained.

My especial favourite were Lavender Dew and Mysore Sandal, because they were special-occasion soaps bought during festive-seasons and suchlike. And because they had such lovely lingering fragrances. Lavender Dew, delicately mauve-coloured, smelling of gentle lavender, is now only a faint memory, but Mysore Sandal, with the more aggressive, exotic sandal-scent is still available, enduring where the former has evaporated.

There was the big and spherical Moti, which looked like a monster-pearl and which always slipped out of my grasp when I was a small girl. But it was a costly affair and lasted a very long time, which is probably why my Chhotopishi (father’s sister) seemed to favour it.

Winters, of course, were for glycerine soaps – the pure and tranparent Pears for the more affluent homes, and the murkier Chasme Glycerin for modest homes like ours.

And now, although I love my Dove and my Nivea and other post-thirty necessities, sometimes I wish I could get back those lavender and sandal days when the skin was younger and the soap seemed gentler.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE CHILDHOOD SOAP?

THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

I was initiated to the eternal battle of the sexes – the tug-of-war between MAN and WOMAN – very early in life, when as a child I witnessed the almost-daily frictions between my Dadu and Didu (grandfather and grandmother).

They were never direct all-out-in-the-open kind of lung-busting quarrels (the kind I have with the spouse, unfortunately). Dadu and Didu’s fights were more oblique, masked in poiteness, full of snide repartees and subterfuge, and guerilla-like. They would usually fight over absolutely trivial matters, usually if gregarious Didu got too caught up in talking to somebody and forgot to serve Dadu his food on the dot at the appointed hour/minute/second. And taciturn Dadu would invariably strongly protest if Didu abandoned him for a few hours and went off to see films, at the local cinema hall (the now-defunct Chitrabani).

But Dadu was so dependant on his wife that he never made frontal attacks. Instead he would make increasingly incensed snide remarks about the vagaries of the female sex, especially of women belonging to ‘sambhranto paribar’ (respectable families).

We children (my brother and I, and our cousins who would come over during the languid long summer vacations) were vociferous supporters of Didu. For one, she took us all along when she went to see films. She also told us long and exciting - and more importantly unending - stories about her own childhood and marriage (which actually coincided, as she got married when she was twelve). She often gave us pocket money to buy sweets and stuff. Above all, she allowed us to play with her thinning white hair and pluck off as many as we wanted to.

Although my peace-loving brother would sometimes plead with Didu to stop arguing (“Chup karo, chup karo”), I, being the more argumentative sort, would lustily egg Didu on (in the manner of rowdy football fanatics) with cries of “Narad, Narad” (Narad is the Hindu god who loves to incite debates and arguments).

Confident of our loyal support, she hardly ever deigned to reply to Dadu’s digs, smiling benignly and uncaringly going on with her work, which mostly consisted in looking after her cantankerous husband.

But it was not as if she did not take her revenge. Her way of retaliating was by making herself absent. In this, the TV set was her daily ally. Our television set occupied a place of honour in our upstairs drawing room. And every evening, without fail, Didu would wash and powder and her face and neck, wear a freshly washed and ironed white saree, tightly braid her more-salt-less-pepper hair (the evening beauty ritual of every lady of the aforementioned ‘sambhranto paribar’ – respectable families) and, politely-but-gleefully taking leave of Dadu, would go upstairs to watch whatever Doordarshan would dish out on the black-and-white TV set for over three hours. Meanwhile, Dadu got more and more restless and furious, sitting agitatedly on the bed which he refused to leave. In fact, so keen was she to punish him for his daily meanness, that she would watch incomprehensible programmes on farmers’ welfare and suchlike, just to spite him back.

And Didu had a brahmastra (the deadliest weapon of all). If Dadu became especially difficult to manage, she would pack her bags and, bidding a sweet and apparently-fond goodbye (which concealed a below-the-belt-punch), she would take off for a week or so, to visit her daughter (my Chhotopishi) in Calcutta. Dadu, quite knocked out by this sucker punch, would protest feebly, complaining of possible negligence in her absence (“Who will look after me now that you are gone?”), but Didu would go unworried and unperturbed, because she knew that my mother would take as good care of Dadu as she herself did.

Distance definitely seemed to make the cranky old man’s heart grow fonder. Because the only time we saw Dadu fussing over his wife was when she returned from her trip, rising from his bed (a very rare and miraculous happening) to welcome her at the door, taking her bag from her hand, and even switching on the fan for her to cool down after the journey (this was also a rare miracle, as Dadu belonged to the pre-electricity generation who was extremely frugal about electric consumption. In fact, he would spend a considerable time gazing in stupefied agony at the slowly ticking/rising electric meter outside his window).

The next day would be a different story though, or rather the same story, as Dadu and Didu, rested and refreshed by the break, would be at loggerheads all over again.

You know what? I think they actually relished being at each other’s throats the whole day. Some things never change!

SO, WHEN DID YOU FIRST LAND UP AT THE BATTLEFIELD OF THE SEXES?

THE CURMUDGEON AND HIS COMFORT FOOD

My Dadu (father’s father) was a rather cranky old man. He would not budge from his position and from his habits. He and my Didu (grandmother) shared the downstairs room, which multi-tasked as their bedroom as well as the dining room (sounds strange? But then we had five rooms – apart from kitchens and bathrooms – and a dozen people, so we had to ‘kindly adjust’.)

For, as long as I can remember, he would spend his entire days (and nights) on the bed. He would sit on it during the day, peeping out of the half-opened bedside window, frowning from under bushy white brows at anybody who entered the house and making sundry disgruntled comments at the gone-to-the-dogs ways of the modern world and the 'faltu' (useless) frivolity of the modern generation. At night, of course, he slept on the bed – the only problem being that his ‘night’ began quite early. So it meant we all had to eat our supper by 9.30 pm and vacate the room so that Dadu could put off the lights and go to sleep.

In fact, the few times that he left the bed was also quite fixed – to take his bath once a day and to go to the bank and collect his pension (he was a retired school-teacher) once a month. And, of course, to eat his meals.

The times and contents of his meals were all pre-ordained and fixed – and he would not allow any alterations or adjustments – come hell or high water. He loved milk, and one invariable component of his supper was ghano doodh (condensed milk).

Now, this was not the tinned Milkmaid stuff that I loved and often stole from the fridge. Dadu’s ghano doodh was the product of almost an hour’s daily toiling over the coal unoon (stove). Didu/Maa/Sabitadi (grandmother/mother/our daily help) would put a saucepan of milk on the stove, add a lot of sugar in it and stir the boiling concoction continuously to get the desired thickness and sweetness. Sometimes, they would cheat a bit by adding a few spoons of milk-powder to make the doodh denser.

And then they would pour out the rich creamy sweetness into a big steel bowl to cool. Dadu would have it with some rice at the end of his meal, taking his time over this daily delicacy. Even when we had things like khichdi (a preparation of rice and lentils, tempered with CHILLIES and SALT) for supper, he would insist on his ghano doodh, adding the sweetened milk to the khichdi and eating with apparent relish. God only knows how horrible that hodge-podge of milk-sugar-rice-lentils-salt-chilly must have tasted; I suspect it was just his stubbornness that carried him through the taste-ordeal. He obtinately clung to his comfort-food even in the most uncomfortable of menu-situations.

And we? My brother and I would hungrily and eagerly wait for Sabitadi/Maa to finish the cooking and pouring of the ghano doodh, so that we could scrape the saucepan and have the crusty-sweet almost-solidified remnants of the thickened milk from the bottom and sides of the pan. Using spoons and, finally, fingers and tongues, we would lick the pan clean. The creamy-sweet taste was my idea of ambrosia!

DO SHARE A MEMORY ABOUT YOUR GRANDPARENTS.

LADIES WITH THE LAMP(S)

Power-cuts (load-shedding in local parlance) were a regular part of our daily routine when we were growing up (it still is, in most parts if India). Now we fight the darkness with generators and emergency power supplies provided by the housing societies. Then, our weapons were kerosene lamps wielded by the ‘ladies’ of the house. The men would usually sit still, or, at best, provide match-boxes or fumble for torches. It would usually be Maa (mother) or Barama (aunt) who would move sure-footedly to the window sills and light the lamps kept there, dispelling the darkness like Goddesses of Light.

There were three types of kerosene lamps used in our house.

There was the all-glass lampha (lamp), where the glass chimney was supported only at the base, which was also of thick glass. They gave a clear unhindered glow and were kept in the sitting-room, dining table and bedrooms (which doubled as study-rooms for us, with a wooden table placed in a corner next to the bed for that purpose). Being regarded as rather fragile and easily breakable they were generally not subjected to too much movement, but remained in their appointed place and shed a bright yellow light which allowed us to read or eat (and pick out tiny bones from fish-pieces, served with curry at supper) without taxing our eye-sight.

Then, there was the sturdier ‘hurricane’ or lanthan (lantern), where the glass chimney was encased in a supporting criss-cross metal wire, and which had a metal base. This wire formed shadow lines where the light fell and so it was not the preferred choice for light-intensive activities like reading or eating. It had a handle which could be held (and swung a bit, when the elders were not looking) and it was used in the kitchen and for going to the bathroom or toilets.

If the authorities did not deign to deliver us from darkness at bed-time, and the power-cut continued beyond that, then the lamphas would be extinguished or the lanthans left to burn very dim with the wicks lowered. Sometimes, Maa would light a small kupi, which had a tiny tin base and a small chimney and which gave a very faint light, which was regarded as a frugal compromise with the darkness at sleep-time (I could not find any suitable photo of this economical object which is still very popular in West Bengal villages).

The flames would inevitably lead to a gradual accumulation of soot which would darken the chimneys. A weekly job was the cleaning of the delicate glass chimneys with soapy water, gently patting them dry and fixing them back on the lamps. This ‘handle-with-extreme-care’ chore was performed only by Maa and Barama (or Sabitadi, the household help) and we would watch fascinatedly from a safe distance. We were allowed to move nearer when the lamp-bases were refilled with kerosene. As Maa unscrewed the base caps and poured the flammable liquid through a dingy green plastic funnel, I would bend low and inhale deeply. It might sound slightly crazy, but the sharp smell or virgin kerosene was (and is) one of my favourite smells (along with boot-polish, so now you know what an olfactory idiot I was).

One of my distant relations (the elder sister of my uncle’s elder daughter’s husband – if you want the Indian happy-extended-family exact definition) lived in a flat in Kolkata crammed with beautiful antique objects. On one of my several visits there (accompanying my cousin sister – in the approved Indian extended family tradition) I noticed, and immediately coveted, a blue Chinese porcelain lamp. But such delicate contraptions were for decorative display only. Because when the inevitable power-cut happened, it was the nondescript Indian-made sturdy lanthans that helped us to battle even the sophisticated South Calcutta darkness.

ANY MEMORIES OF HAND-HELD WEAPONS OF LIGHT? OR ARE YOU LUCKY ENOUGH NOT TO NEED THEM AT ALL?

A FLOOD OF MEMORIES

The recent super-cyclone Aila which devastated large swathes of Kolkata and neighbouring areas (including my hometown Barrackpore) was something I watched on TV and heard on the phone from afar, being in Mumbai and Bangalore when it happened.

But when I was a child, I had a real-time experience of the Great Flood which happened in the Nineteen-seventies (Google says 1978 – I was five years old) in Bengal. A mind-probe brought up a lot of scattered memories.

I remember heavy, seemingly-unending rainfall and perpetually-dark skies.

I remember water collecting and rising above the ground, rising to submerge the streets and the garden, rising to cover the stairs leading to the house, to the exact level of the ground floor balcony. I thought the pond beside our house had overflowed, but somebody told me that it was the river Ganga, about two miles away from our house, which had broken its banks and spread out so far. I thought what it might feel like to live underwater, if our house would be submerged like the lost city of Atlantis (story told to me by my father), and then many many centuries later, people would find us and we would wake up (I think I mixed up the Atlantis story with Sleeping Beauty...I was a confused child living in a secret dreamworld half the time).

I remember the people of the neighbouring slum areas, who lived in small one-storey brick-and-mud houses which were partially submerged, come over for shelter to larger two-storey houses like ours. I was bundled off to the upper floor, so I cannot recollect any specific faces. My Dadu (grandfather) refused to leave his bed (his bedroom was on the ground floor) and I remember him sullenly and defiantly glaring at the rain as if willing it to stop before the water flooded his room. Which it did, actually!

I remember my father and uncle and other grown-ups in the neighbourhood wading through the water with torches at night, patrolling the streets (we called it ‘nightguard duty’) because, apparently, the flood had brought about an influx of thieves braving the rains and water, looking for an opportunity to loot the deserted defenceless houses.

I remember sitting with my father on the staircase which led to the first floor and watching the water rise slowly but surely till it reached the level of the balcony at least three feet above the ground. A small jaldhora snake swam up and took shelter on the slippery-with-rain balcony. I was scared but my father reassured me. Anyway, the snake slithered busily away into the water soon.

I remember the rain lessening and then gradually stopping after what seemed like weeks-without-end. The roads were covered with poli-maati (the typical silt-clay found on the banks of the Ganga), the garden was a mess of dead and rotting plants, and there were some unrecognizable carcasses (cows or goats, or maybe street-dogs) on the streets and playing fields.

Strangely, I do not remember anything about the suffering and shortages of food/electricity/water that we must have undergone. My mother was calm and unruffled (at least in front of us), she gave us meals on time, and despite being school-less and outside-play-less for several days, I do not remember feeling bored or irritable. It was all new and different. I remember feeling rather Noah-like. It must have been frightening, but with all the grown-ups in the house (schools and offices being closed for days), the excitement won over the fear. Maybe children, unless they are directly affected by a calamity, have a different perspective of Nature’s excesses than adults.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY NATURAL DISASTER WHICH YOU HAD WITNESSED AS A CHILD?

HEARTBREAK HOUSE

It began life as a piece of land sold to my grandparents. It was the 1940s, that turbulent decade when India was pulling free from the British yoke. Bengal had already been ripped into two. Many Hindu families, originally from East Bengal (later East Pakistan; now Bangladesh), were fleeing to the West (West Bengal, which remained part of Indian territory). [The opposite – Muslim families moving to East Bengal – was also happening.]

Dadu and Dida (my father’s father and mother) were part of the thousands of families that came, looking to build a new life. They came to Barrackpore, a small town near Kolkata, because my Dida’s father lived here (he was a District Magistrate). They bought middling plot of land by selling off some of Dida’s gold ornaments. [The ornaments would stand our family in good stead through hard times – right down to paying for my father’s engineering college fees.].

Some more sold-off-gold helped to build a small two-bedroom house with a red cement balcony. There was a haphazard garden with a well at one end. My grandparents moved in with their four children – my Jethun (uncle), Pishis (aunts) and Baba (my father, the youngest).

Over the decades, the house changed shape many a time, swelling to suit the needs of its inhabitants. When my father got married a room was added on top, and the house officially became a do-tala baari (two-storey house), enhancing its status in the para (neighbourhood). One of Baba’s promotions resulted in the creation of a proper drawing room and an attic.

Dadabhai’s marriage meant another bedroom. The red-tiled kitchen at the back got a change of roof; new bathrooms were added, as were balconies. Gradually, brick by brick, the house metamorphosed into a sprawling seven-roomed house. What it continued to be, for over six decades, was a HOME to all of us living there. My home.

But, the residents also changed. Some grew old and died – my grandparents – some died before their time – my aunt, father, uncle. Some grew up and left – my cousins. Finally, my mother, brother and I, too, shifted to a new apartment, near the railway station, for convenience and easy conveyance to the city. The lure of the city won over our loyalty to the home.

The house, lonely and left behind, brooded into decrepitude. A family of distant relations stayed for some years while we followed our destinies elsewhere. The termites had an uninterrupted banquet. The memory- heavy rooms, once witness to our evolving histories, remained dark and shut. Cracks grew in the walls and weeds grew in the cracks. Creepers, intertwined with echoes of our laughter and quarrels, grew over the vacant balconies. The trees in the garden cast longer and longer shadows and began to hide the house like Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

My grandfather had left behind a lot of memories, but no legal will. So, the amicable and consensual transfer of the rights of the house to Dadabhai, my cousin, took a long time – more than a decade – and endless visits to the court.

Now the knots of legalese have been unraveled. Dadabhai, who stays in Bangalore, told us last week that the house has been handed over to some promoters, who will break down the old structure and build a multi-storeyed apartment (what else?) in its place. My daughters will never be able to visit it and see for themselves the rooms and garden that shaded and shaped me.

Ironically, each flat in the new building will have two bedrooms - which are what the house originally had, to begin with.

Maybe the happiness I felt there will be transferred to the new owners, multiplying as the rooms have multiplied in the flats, making the residents cherish their homes, just as I did, so long ago.

ANY MEMORIES OF LOSING A HOME?

THAT MYSTERIOUS SPACE UNDER THE BED…

…has all but disappreared in this age of box-beds, where all the beds in my space-cramped flat have inbuilt boxes under them to store blankets and bed-sheets and other prosaic stuff.

Not so when we were young. Under the bed was a magical space accessible only to us children, out of bounds to most adults at most times. It would provide a cosy hiding place, especially if the bedcover was pulled down over the side. We would hide expectantly during lukochuri (hide-and-seek), emerging at the right moment all flushed and with the tops of our heads covered with cobwebs, to cry, “Dhappa” (Caught you!). My parents’ bed, with its low cramped space where you had to bend double or lie flat on your tummy to wriggle in or out, was a good hidey-hole.

My grandparents’ old-fashioned bed, which was raised high by placing a couple of bricks under each foot, offered another kind of sanctum. It was high enough for us to crouch comfortably, and many a secret meeting of us cousins was held on long summer-vacation afternoons with dadu (granddad) snoring blissfully above us. These meetings, chaired (rather, crouched over) by me and including my Bhai (brother) and Antu (my aunt’s son), would usually centre around some idea for tricks to be played on the aforesaid unsuspecting granddad. But, to keep him unsuspecting, we had to conduct the entire meeting in phish-phish (whispers), which added immensely to the mysterious attraction of the place.

Sometimes, we had to share the space under the bed with dozens of coconuts or betelnuts or mangoes plucked from the trees in the garden and laid out on the cool green cemented floor under the bed before they were either eaten or distributed among relations and neighours.

And in moments of deep distress, the best place to cry my heart out (an activity which I did frequently and fervently) was under the bed. I would lie on my tummy, put my head on my arms and bawl and sniffle away to glory, emerging red-eyed but refreshed (and completely de-stressed).

WHAT DID YOU DO UNDER THE BED WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS OF LONG AGO: PART II (AT HOME)

Sorry for the diversion into dark and sweet (and forbidden) chocolate territory.

When I was young, birthdays were celebrated at home in the evenings. The pampered ones had balloons and streamers put up on the walls (with a glittery golden cutout HAPPY BIRTHDAY in the background) and specially baked cakes with frosted icing (shaped like Mickey Mouse or a house in the woods or a cricket pitch - this was before the invasion of Cartoon Network), which would arrive in a white box from some shop (strictly untouchable with an invisble handle-with-care sign).


Being a more frugal sort, we neglected the wall decoration bit and concentrated on the food - not 'ordered from out' but home-made. Maa and Didia (my intrepid cousin) would bake two round cakes with holes at the centre in the trusty Murphy oven. They (the cakes, not the oven) would be full of bits of cherries, petha (a white candied bottlegourd), and kismis (raisins). One cake would remain plain and plump brown (this was held in reserve for second servings) but the other one, meant to be displayed and cut, would be decorated with white icing sugar, mixed and poured through a paper cone. My Didia's painstaking effort in writing my name on the cake would usually result in illegible semi-transparent squiggles on top of the cake. She moped, but we were happy because we got to break off the stiff pieces of icing sugar and suck them even before the cake was cut.


A few of my close friends in the neighbourhood (Mampi and Soma, Sujata and Sonali, with their plaits and pigtails neatly combed and oiled for the occasion) would come, as would my cousin J and her family. I would go ooh and aah over the gifts [faking my surprise, because they had all told and 'consulted' me before buying the gifts - pens and pencil boxes, a jhola/shoulder-slung-bag, crayons and water-colour sets, Amar Chitra Katha-s (comics about Indian history and mythology), inexpensive Bengali storybooks]. One grand present (costing the princely amount of Rs. 40) was a Tintin comic-book given by my Dida (mother's mother) on my tenth birthday - it occupied the pride of place in my bookcase for a long, long time.


The cake-cutting would be a swift and perfunctory affair, with some half-hearted attempts at singing the birthday song (I suspect many of my friends and family were uncomfortable with all that singing in English). The gusto would be reserved for the food.


There would be hot just-fried luchis (puris/ fried hand-made flour pancakes), alurdom (potato-curry) and chicken-curry, followed by the cake ( a nod to our colonial heritage) and payesh (rice cooked in sweetened condensed milk - a traditional Bengali birthday treat).

I remember a certain birthday when the payesh was replaced by a complicated caramel custard (from a recipe in Chic - a popular 'women's' magazine which was diligently devoured by Ma and Didia). My grandparents were slightly dismayed at this deviation from tradition, but everyone else enjoyed the novelty. Later on, in the nineteen-eighties, when Chinese cooking was making incursions into Bengali cuisine and long blue packets of egg-noodles were showing up on grocers' shelves, the luchis were replaced by chicken-chowmein-Bengali-style. But it was all still cooked at home. And after eating (surely the focal point of all Bengali celebrations), the grown-ups would settle down to a round of adda (conversation, often extremely animated) while we kids would be left to play (and sometimes fight) on our own. Unsupervised by any DJs or event-managers or hired men in grotesque Mickey-Mouse-looking-like-Gorilla costumes.

In these hard times, maybe it would make a lot of sense to revert to those simpler celebrations of yore.

WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS? SELF-SUFFICIENT OR DJ-DEPENDENT?

THE GREAT CHOCOLATE DIVIDE

When we were young, many many moons ago, chocolates were not as plenty on the ground as they seem to be now. Now, every passing guest will bring a gift of chocolates to my two daughters; the fridge is full of yet-to-be-unwrapped Dairy Milk Chocolate bars and other goodies.

The overabundance of chocolates have made them mundane and deprived them of the luscious magic of the past. For us, chocolates were magical stuff to covet and lust for. When they came into our possession, we relished the joy of ownership and the pleasure of anticipation for a long while (almost till the chocolate itself was in danger of melting because of being clutched in our grubby hands for a considerable time). And then the unwrapping of the shiny silvery foil and gazing into the sweet delights of the best brown colour in the whole wide world. And the love affair continued at the first bite …and the next…down to the last licking of the gooey mess in the folds of the foil or the tips of the fingers.

It was understandable when we learnt in college that the word chocolate had its roots in the Mexican ‘xococatl’ – a fittingly exotic origin for an out-of-the-world flavour.

The appeal of chocolates was all the more because we got to eat them on rare occasions, and then usually it was a small Cadbury’s éclairs or a 5-Star bar that had to be divided with great care and eaten with great relish.

So, you can understand our (my brother and mine) round-eyed, open-mouthed delight when my maasi (aunt) once gifted us a whole set of chocolate bars. The Amul company had then recently launched chocolate bars in different flavours, and maasi had generously given us the entire range!

We felt like monarchs who had been given the entire earth to rule over. There were orange-flavoured and coffee-flavoured chocolate, bars with nuts-and-raisins, rice-crispies, butter-scotch, peanuts, a dark chocolate one and a regular milk chocolate one.
Just the weight of the carry-bag and the feel of the rectangular bars (worth more to us than gold bars, at that moment) transported us to a kind of ecstasy.

And then came the difficult part. Like most monarchs who have to divide and rule, we too had to divide the booty to eat our share. Easy-peasy – eight bars, each neatly sectioned into sixteen cuboids. So what was the problem?

The problem was me. I was the glutton, gobbling my share in a matter of an hour or so, OD-ing on this unexpected bonanza, blissed out, but not satisfied. My prudent brother had a bite here and a bite there, and had kept the rest of his stash in the fridge, planning to enjoy his bonus a little at a time.

If only I would let him (Boy proposes, greedy sister disposes - this was the rule in our house). I remember coaxing him and cajoling him, then threatening him so loudly that my mother had to settle the sweet-dispute. Finally I used the pacifist-but-extremely-discomfiting ploy of sitting right in front of him when he would take out a bit of his hoarded treasure, and staring at him with starving-eyes, till he would be forced to shell out a cube or two (being a soft-hearted little fellow).

Ah, bliss all over again. Chocolate enjoyed through ill-gotten means tasted even better than the legally-devoured stuff.

DO SHARE A CHOCOLATE MEMORY.

P.S: THANK YOU, SCRIBBIT, FOR THIS MEMORY CALORIE-TRIP. (This post was written for Michelle’s Write Away contest).

WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE…

...a teacher. That’s what I always said when I was very young (I don’t remember saying so, but have to believe hearsay evidence from the family).

A lot of time was spent on rehearsing for the future profession. I would come back from school, take an ancient handbag belonging to my dida (granny), wrap a black orna (veil) around my head to simulate long black hair tied up in a bun and persuade my mother to drape a saree on me.

Then, frequently tripping over the voluminous folds of the saree (which would have to be double-folded to fit my childhood height), I would start taking lessons with various imaginary children. Sometimes I would scribble comments on last year’s used notebooks (Good, V.Good, Fair, V. Fair, Poor, V.Poor; the difficult-to-spell Satisfactory was avoided, and the equally-complicated Excellent rarely awarded) with a red pen kept for this very purpose.

I would teach lessons loudly and earnestly with a lot of imitative gestures like tossing of the head and raising of the eyebrows in the approved teacher-like manner (learning the syllabus myself in the process), praise a few students (whose names were those of my real life class-friends) and vigorously scold a few non-existent poor chaps (with names of classmates I did not like). A boy called Rajeev regularly received severe beatings from a wooden scale – my mother says that the patch of mattress which was supposedly Rajeev was quite worn out because of my strict disciplinarian nature.

I did not tire of playing “teacher-teacher-khela” (teacher role-playing) even when I was nine or ten. Sometimes, my cousin J, who visited frequently, would join in and then we could jointly and gleefully make life miserable for the make-believe students by imitating the classroom-manner of the most fearsome of our teachers. Not all the time, though, because we would also take turns in pretending to be our favourite teacher of the moment.

My Barama (aunt), who was a real-life school-teacher, would sometimes give me stubs of white chalk and I would scribble profusely all over the grey-painted door (which served as a blackboard – scribbling on the walls was forbidden). Once my mother bought a whole box of coloured chalks, and I was over the moon for months. Just as our real school-teachers did, I would draw complicated scientific and geographical diagrams, happily explaining related concepts to my invisible brood of students. In fact, in hindsight I feel it was a brilliant idea of my mother to encourage this role-playing, because it definitely made learning lessons a very attractive game.

Later on, I switched loyalties and wanted to become a journalist. Still later, I compromised by becoming a teacher in a college myself, and getting married to a journalist.

WHO DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?

MY MOTHER’S FAVOURITE PUJO

Of the millions of gods crowding the Hindu pantheon, my mother’s personal favourite is Saraswati, the Goddess of learning. In true Bengali tradition, she reveres knowledge above all other virtues, not just as an end in itself, but also as the means to other ends, like money, career, and – if wishes could be horses – fame.

Which is why, Saraswati Pujo was always celebrated very sincerely in our home when we were young. Some days before the auspicious date, we would all troop to the market and select a suitable Saraswati to grace our home from the idols on display at the market place. Some years she would be a traditional doe-eyed white-skinned beauty with flowing fake jet black hair and a bright saree made of real fabric; on other years it would be a more artistic rendition completely made from clay, with her earthen locks coiled in a knot sideways on the top of her head. Whatever her attire and hairstyle, Saraswati was recognizable by the veena (sonorous musical string instrument) she carried and by her pet white swan nestling near her feet.

A portion of our bedroom would be cleared to place the deity, and baba (father) and Didia (my cousin) would brainstorm to give Saraswati a suitably artistic abode. The backdrop would usually be a saree from Ma’s or Barama’s (my aunt) collection, sometimes decorated beyond recognition. Once, I remember, my over-enthusiastic Baba swirled an entire saree in a tub of mud, let it dry and then made a backdrop of brown mountain peaks for the Goddess. Ma would stoically bear the brunt of all such creative experimentation, no doubt a small sacrifice for the greater cause of erudition.

Didia would enlist our help for the menial tasks, while the grand scheme of decoration would emerge from her brain. We would sit up late, cutting strips of thin coloured paper to make endless paper chains (the adhesive would be a homemade concoction of water and flour) which would hung all over the walls and ceiling. The floor would be decorated with elaborate intricate patterns of white alpana (a traditional method of decoration). The various brass and stone utensils ritually used in pujos (idol worship) would be brought out, washed arranged in front of the deity. Fresh flowers would be piled on a brass thali (platter) and incense sticks and diyas would be lit. As a finishing touch, we would all keep some of our books near the deity’s feet. My pile always contained, apart from other things, my Mathematics book, because I felt I needed divine help most in that particular subject.

Ma would be in charge of the prasad (food offered to the deity). Various fruits would be washed and cut, sweet narkol-narus (coconut-jaggery sweets) prepared and other uniquely prasad offerings would be prepared, like chal-kala (moist uncooked rice with sugar and banana) and moong-narkol (grated coconut and soaked yellow pulses). There would be khichuri (rice-lentil mash), cauliflower-curry and topakul-er chutney (a sweet-sour concoction of a type of plum).

Saraswati is worshipped in Basanta (spring) and so mostly, we would wear Basanti coloured (yellow) clothes. We would wait patiently with folded hands as the Purohit (priest) completed his rounds of chanting mantras (hymns), interspersed with all of sprinkling flower-petals at the Goddess and the tinny ringing of the small brass bell. Maybe the elders prayed for abstract ideals like wisdom and insight, but my fiercely muttered prayers (with my eyes squeezed shut) were directly related to the coming class examinations.

The next morning, we would take the patkathi (jute straw) which served as a pen out of the clay doyat (inkpot) and use the milk within (in lieu of ink) to write the name of the Goddess three times on the small belpata (leaves of the bael-tree, used in religious rituals). A truly tricky test of spelling and calligraphy, befitting the Goddess of Academics and Fine Arts. Needless to say, we could never do it neatly enough, though we were allowed to eat the narkoli kul (sweet plum-like fruit) placed atop the inkpot as a reward anyway.

WHAT RITUALS DID YOU CELEBRATE IN YOUR HOME?

FREEDOM DASHED

"Cycling and swimming are things that, once learnt, can never be forgotten." - or so they said. My parents were keen bikers, and they gifted me my first BI-cycle (as opposed to TRI-cycle - that safe, sturdy, secure, sweet little mode of childhood transport), when I was about eight or nine.

The bicycle fascinated my dad, because its colourful contours were so different from the plain outlines of his own boyhood bike. It fascinated my brother, because it promised reckless speed and wind-in-the-hair freedom. It scared me for that very same reasons. The colourful contours appeared wobbly and shaky (there were no supporting training-wheels). The promise of speed was more a threat of an ignominious fall-flat-on-my-face-as-I-crashed.

But in a family of enthusiastic bikers, when even my saree-clad mother got up on the bike to demonstrate see-how-easy-it-is, I couldn't voice my misgivings. And so, the lessons began, in the not-so-smooth grass meadow near our house. At first, my father would push us from behind, then as we learnt to gather speed and the balance automatically came, he would let us go on our own, free and flying on two wheels (a lesson in how to take one's steps in life's journey as well).

My brother picked up the rudiments early on. As for me, I was too conscious of the surroundings to enjoy the wind-in-my-hair and the whirl-under-my-feet. The stones and bumps in the meadow rattled me, the children playing at the side rattled me, people behind me rattled me, and I was so distracted by all of these that I banged smack into the brick wall at the end of the meadow. The front wheel was damaged, but not as much as my pride.

Till today, I cannot get up and get down properly from a bicycle. Only if I get an unlimited unhindered expanse of space will I attempt to ride a bike into the dizzy unknown. Otherwise, I prefer my own two legs, thank you very much.

P.S : Needless to say, MY FIRST BIKE very soon became MY BROTHER'S FIRST BIKE, to my chagrin and my parents' disappointment.

P.P.S : It was Michelle's monthly Write-Away contest at Scribbit which made me write this post of ignominy.

DO YOU HAVE ANY BIKE MEMORIES TO SHARE?

BARBER - NAMA

When I was very young, my father’s barber used to cut my hair. He, or rather they, were local barbers who made housecalls. They were a pair of brothers, one short and slight, called Shanti, and the other burlier and taller, whom Baba (my father) called Ashanti (the opposite of Shanti/ peace) for the sake of rhyme and rhetoric. Shanti, true to his name, was more timid and patient, and I preferred him.

He would usually come on Sundays, carrying his small wooden box with a top handle, and one of the straight-backed dining chairs would be brought out in the open cemented courtyard, ready for all the family members (men or children) who wanted a shave or a haircut or theirs nails trimmed (for the stubborn male-nails, not for our tender-tips-and-toes, which were cut by Maa)

My Dadu (granddad) would sit first, and Shanti would carefully trim his scanty white hairs (on head, ears and nostrils – which fascinated us) and shave his wrinkled-wobbling cheeks tenderly and reverentially. Then Baba and Jethun (father and uncle) would come, and Shanti (or Ashanti) would be more robust and talkative, swiftly stroking the sharp blade down their cheeks and chin and briskly wiping the lather on a flat piece of leather, neatly paring their stubborn nails and giving them a joint-hand, chop-chop-chop head-banging massage.

Bhai and I would be the last, and we would sit under the sun, with the sparrows and magpies watching us warily from the trees in the garden surrounding the open courtyard. We would be wrapped in a huge white cloth tucked around our scrawny necks and Shanti (but never his brother) would chop away merrily with his scissors, giving us a brain-rattling massage at the end, and we would look down ruefully at the shiny black locks of hair fallen on the ground, and then up at our reflections in Shanti’s small spotted mirror.

These reflections would be unvarying – Bhai was always getting a crew-cut (which meant that merely a millimeter of his curly hair would remain on his head) and I would get a “boy’s cut” (inch-long curls all over my head).

I had to wait till almost my teens to enter a proper parlour, but that’s another story.

DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR HAIRCUT-EXPERIENCES AS A CHILD?