AN INNOCENT ENTRY INTO POLITICS

The current disenchantment with, and ire and fire against, politicians makes me remember my first brush (or should that be scrape?) with politics.

I forget the exact time, but it was before the general elections after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. There was a huge sympathy wave for the Congress-I, led by Rajiv Gandhi, the son of the assassinated Prime Minister. But, West Bengal, as usual, was a red bastion, a Communist (CPI-M) stronghold, or should that be strangle-hold?

Hectic campaigning was going on, with regular evening marches by the contesting party-members and their supporters (mornings were presumably too hot for slogan-shouting). Almost every available inch of wall-space was partitioned between the Congress-I and the CPI-M for wall-painting and poster-pasting, with, expectedly, the red-party hogging the major share.

My friend Mampi and I deeply felt the injustice of this unequal distribution. Why should CPI-M’s Tarit Topdar have his name written all over the place and why should Congress-I’s Debi Ghosal languish in (comparatively) lesser space? All our adolescent sympathy gushed over for the underdog (who was also the perennial loser in a chain of previous elections, and, like all losers, reputed to be a ‘good man’).

There was a dilapidated wall encircling an empty field opposite our houses, ignored by the political paintbrushes for its unprepossessing appearance. To redress the imbalance of political justice, Mampi and I took some white chalk and some broken pieces of red clay-tiles (we could not find the green favoured by the Congress-I, so we had fall back on the red colour of the 'enemy'), and, with painstaking effort, we etched the legend “VOTE FOR DEBI GHOSAL” in somewhat uneven handwriting all over the discoloured wall. We scripted the letters as big and as bold as we could make them, scraping over and over again to make the letters legible from a distance (feeling decidedly ‘un-bold’ at our own daring – we would drop the chalk and run away as soon as we saw someone coming, returning to our task only when the lane was clear). We also drew a large and rather misshapen HAND – the election symbol of the Congress-I.

And so, this was my first idealistic, if anonymous and unsung, contribution to the political circus of the elections. The Congress-I won on a landslide of sympathy, but Debi Ghosal, as usual, lost with good grace. Mampi and I, however, felt that our efforts had been vindicated because the margin of loss had reduced considerably.

DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST BRUSH WITH POLITICS?

MEMORIES OF TERRORISM

My first awareness of terrorism was in 1984, in October– when Sikhs demanding Khalistan assassinated our Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. I remember a sense of unreality and disbelief, a sensation of being out of my ten-year old body. There was no continuous cacophony of television channels swooping in on newsworthy tragedies, like they do today. Only an eerie, tense silence, a suspension of activity for a long, stretched out moment.

In retrospect, it surely did not happen that way. The grainy black-and-white pictures on the state-owned Doordarshan repeated over and over again, the slow stumble and fall, the rumours spreading like a forest on fire.

The vehicles spontaneously stopped plying, the shops willingly downed shutters. Our school was declared closed, and we walked back home, saucer-eyed-apprehensive. A cousin who went by train to a school in Kolkata trudged back 25 kilometers on foot. She remembers the blisters on her feet. Our minds were blistered, too. The known, familiar social order had been overturned (we had grown up learning in our schoolbooks and from the newspapers – which we were just getting into the habit of reading daily – that the iron-willed Indira Gandhi the leader of our country, it felt that she had been so for ever) not by the ballot, but by a bullet.

What shocked my childish self most was the betrayal – the bullet which killed Indira Gandhi was shot by one of her own body-guards. As a ten-year old, loyalty came very very high on my priority list of values.

And then began the tearing apart of order and sanity. The anti-Sikh riots left us shaken. It was one thing to feel angry with the Khalistanis for trying to rip apart India, to feel enraged at the assassin’s betrayal in killing the hand that fed him. It was a totally different thing to see innocent Sikhs being pulled out of their homes and killed.

We had a Sikh family living in our para (locality); the husband was a strapping, jovial Sikh married to a Bengali Hindu wife. Of course, it was a love marriage, and of course, it seemed a very romantic and daring thing to elope with and marry a person from a different culture, defying your parents. Our young hearts were captivated by this love story. What fascinated me was the apparent ease with which this Bengali lady had adapted to her husband’s culture. She wore the salwar-kameez (not the then-ubiquitous Bengali saree), tied her hair in plaits instead of a bun and spoke in robust Punjabi to her family (switching to Bengali if she was talking to one). I remember peeping many times into their walled house which had a friendly, always-open narrow door, giving a view of the open courtyard which seemed full of bustle and people.

During the riots we were not allowed to go out-of-doors. After the bloodbath, when school re-opened, I remember gazing in grief at the disconsolate open door of their hastily-abandoned house, half-torn from its hinges. The empty courtyard, to which they never returned, spoke of another kind of betrayal – the betrayal of neighbours who had long pretended to be friends but who had nursed xenophobia in their hearts.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST AWARENESS OF TERRORISM?

MAMPI

Mampi was my first friend, my fast-est friend, and is my firm friend still. She lived next door to my old Barrackpore home, and was a frequent visitor to my home, as I was to her’s. A few months younger than me, she and I met when I was two-years and she was a year-and-half. None of us, of course, remember that meeting, but we do remember hundreds of others, spread over three decades of playing and secrets-sharing, voluble speech and comfortable silence, growing up and growing apart, and then reconnecting through the Internet.

I don’t remember quarrelling with her at all. Which is quite strange, because being a hot-tempered, opinionated little person, I usually flared up at the slightest provocation. But she never provoked me, and her dainty, fair and docile presence (in complete contrast to my fierier nature) always had a calming effect.

We would play harmoniously for hours on end. On weekend mornings and rainy afternoons, we would invariably be with each other, either at my home or hers. None of us were too fond of dolls, but we loved make-believe games, and would often play out our versions of Rama-Laxman (from the epic Ramayana) and Krishna-Sudama (mythical exemplary frinedship between a divine and a mortal being), or cook elaborate meals with shredded leaves and vegetable peels in our little clay and aluminium pots and pans.

Out of doors, in the green field and cemented courtyards, we would gang up with our other pals, Soma and Sujata (and a whole pack of others), and play gully-cricket and net-less-badminton in winter, skipping and kitkit (hopscotch) in summer. We would run amok in the winding bylanes, playing chhoa-chhui (tag) and luko-churi (hide-and-seek) – simple games full of speed and sweat which we would sometimes complicate by accusations and counter-accusations of cheating and unfair practice.

But never against each other.

We went to separate schools. She studied in a Bengali school, I went to an English-medium school (the language of instruction was English). Maybe the seeds of divergence were sown there.

When I grew up, I moved to Kolkata to stay in hostels and guesthouses and study in colleges and universities in the metropolis. Mampi remained rooted to our small town, studying in the local college, and even getting married to a local guy (whose house could be seen across the pond bordering our – and her – backyard). She quickly became the stay-at-home mother of two boisterous boys, reveling in her domesticity. I got married much later, shifted out of Kolkata, and till date am playing the balancing game between work and home.

Our interests and destinies may have diverged, but when we did meet this year (after a gap of over seven years, courtesy e-mails and cellphones), I was hurtled back into my childhood for an hour of giddy, catching-up, packing-years-into-minutes conversation. Sharing similar memories, I realised how different we had become from each other.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY SUCH SPECIAL CHILDHOOD FRIEND?

THE SOW-ING MACHINE

No, that wasn't a typing error. I'm thinking of the sewing machines of yore which would occupy pride of place in many households, including ours. They would be symbols of thrift and creativity, and my grandmother and mother would spend hours with them, lovingly sowing hand-sewn labours which we would reap.

My dida (father's mother) had an antiquated black hand-turned sewing machine, which, I think, travelled across the border during the Partition of Bengal, but arriving none the worse for wear. It was a sturdy little thing, not too fancy but it did its job well. Since dida had the usual eyesight-handicaps of the elderly, I would be called upon to thread the needle. I also loved to turn the wheel-handle which would make the needle race in and out of the cloth, leaving behing a trail of thread. I was allowed to do this only because the most menial of stitching jobs would be done at dida's machine, like stitching together old saris to make the softest and most comfortable blankets, or hemming the borders of bedsheets or dhotis (a rectangular piece of cloth worn by men around their waists - the cloth is simple enough, though it is tied in intricate ways).

The more fancy sewing jobs were done at my ma's more advanced sewing machine. It was a Singer sewing machine, with a foot pedal as well as the hand-turned wheel, and I would watch my maa pedalling away furiously during the long afternoons, stopping now and then to turn the under-construction garment this way and that, or to change the colour of the thread. Then she would add finishing touches to her creations by hand, stitching on buttons and appliquing patches, or embroidering little patterns on the garments. She always loved creating things, and the house was filled both with pattern-books and garments made according to these patterns, embellished with original touches.

And of course, we were the happy receivers of her creations. Thr process began with us importantly posturing as she took measurements with a threadbare measuring tape (which we often used as a multipurpose toy - skipping rope/prisoner's chain, etc on the sly)and wrote them down (I remember only that my waist was 18" once upon a time - those were the days).

Then she would go about her work with pursed lips and furrowed brows, and we were shooed away if we bothered her too much. The agonies and ecstacies of CREATION were shared only with my cousin, Didia, who was the resident fashion designer and consultant.

And then, finally, on D-day, we would be called upon for the fitting ceremony. The garment would be pinned to our shoulders at the back, to check the variuos esoteric aspects. There would be a lot of tch-tch-ing, and mumbled conversations between ma and didia (because of assorted pins and needles and tapes in their mouths). A few nips and tucks later, the product would be declared finished.

And then the preening and twirling in front of the mirrors and the happy uplift and thrill of wearing a new dress.

DO YOU HAVE ANY MEMORIES SEWN ON TO YOU?

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

In our old higgledy-piggledy house in Barrackpore, there was a chileykotha (attic), built atop the bathroom on the first-floor landing. Unlike today’s lofts, which are prosaic tiny spaces atop bathrooms/kitchens where every manner of rubbish is hidden behind closed doors, our chileykotha was a full-fledged room (in length and breadth, if not in height) of wonderful secrets accessible only to us children (because adults had to crane their heads very uncomfortably to stand in that low-ceilinged chamber).

And there were no doors barring our entry, either. We had to climb on to the huge black bookcase-bureau in the drawing room and lift ourselves behind rose-patterned curtains to enter the attic (the unplanned rooms of our house would horrify any architect).

And what an attic it was! Full of stuff that spelt history, wove magic to us as we poked and pried, discovering treasures abandoned by matter-of-fact adults.

There was an old sofa with its cover torn and springs broken, a perfect place for a secret meeting (of us cousins pretending to be detectives, referencing Enid Blyton – that stirrer of fantasies) or a solitary cry-my-heart-out (emerging with tell-tale eyes as red as the roses on the attic-curtain).

There was a stack of framed pictures with broken glasses, each a testimonial to the artistic talents of my father, uncles, grand-uncles and other cousins, each relegated to the attic as better (and newer) pictures were painted and framed and hung up on more-viewed walls.

There were many many rusted iron trunks, full of dusty delights. Moth-eaten velvet bags holding mystery-histories, tattered silk clothes to dress up our fancies, bent-and-chipped utensils for our make-believe kitchen…

…and, most excitingly, there was a whole trunk-full of handwritten family-magazines. These magazines had been written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by members of my father’s huge joint-family in Naogaon in what-was-then East Bengal (now Bangladesh); each poem, essay, witticism neatly calligraphed (is that the right verb?) between bound covers. There were contributions by my uncles, granduncles and other hoary ancestors who I never knew except by our common surname. This treasure-trove of family history and familiar literature had travelled all the way to Barrackpore, surviving the toss-and-turn-and-trauma of the Partition and had found its way into our chileykotha. Not all the editions were there, of course, some must have travelled with other members of the family when they parted ways after the Partition of Bengal.

I spent hours and hours poring over the fading ink on the sepia pages, not caring about the uneven literary merit of the writings, thrilled only to be able to literally touch my family’s past.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY SUCH ROOM ESPECIALLY FULL OF WONDERFUL SECRETS?

THE CINDERELLA DRESS

Every little girl has a Cinderella dress. Something which transforms her into the prettiest princess that ever lived, at least in her own mirror.

The other day, the copy-kitten (my younger daughter) went to a Diwali party at her playschool wearing a white satin-and-chiffon full-skirted dress with silver-and-yellow flowers scattered all over the bodice and skirt. She twirled and pirouetted, as enchanting a little Cinderella as her elder sister, the Lil Cat, to whom the dress had originally belonged (It is actually a gift from a favourite cousin, Didia, who picks up the most delicious dresses from Dubai each time she visits us).

I remembered my own infinitely-humbler-but-equally-cherished Cinderella dress. The material was a coarse khadi (handspun) silk from the local Khadi Gramudyog Bhavan, patterned in beige with maroon roses. There were no thorns, as befitted a princess’s party-attire. It was stitched with a plain round neck, a skirt which swirled a little when I spun around, and a sash which needed Ma to tie it behind my back. And when I wore it, I left all the thorns of awkwardness and shyness behind and could hold my head high and match steps confidently with my other friends and cousins, clad as they were in their soft-and-satiny boutique-bought expensive dresses.

I had only one, my precious Cinderella-dress, but that dress transformed me whenever I wore it. That’s the magic of a Cinderella-dress.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY SUCH MAGICAL DRESS OR OUTFIT?

THE FRAMED GHOST

My daughters have grown up with three grandparents. They have their dadu and thamma (my husband’s father and mother) in Kolkata. And then they have their dida (my mother) in Bangalore. If they’ve ever wondered at the lopsidedness of the grand-parental-equation, they’ve never let me know about it. But then, children seem to have their own logic of working out these things.

Some time back, I was cleaning my clothes-cupboard when the two nosey-parkers poked their way in. Fiddling and flopping about on the clothes lying scattered all over the room, the lil cat (my elder daughter) dug out a framed photograph of my father from under a pile of sarees.

It was a twinkly-eyed photo of my father, taken during my uncle’s wedding, a huge happy celebration on a hot and happy day. Somehow, the photo always made me cry in remembrance.

“Who’s this, ma?”

“That’s my father, your chhobi-dadu (picture-grandfather)”.

“Where’s he now?”

“He died long back, long before you were born.”

“Is he a ghost then?” asked my elder one. “Is this a photo of a bhoot (ghost)?” echoed the copy-kitten, my younger daughter.

Bhoot in Bengali means both a ghost and the past. So I explained how my father was an inextricable part of my past, how I had grown up with him, all the little-big things we had done together, and how he was no more a part of our present lives, how he had gone away to a far, far place, away from all of us.

“But, ma, look, he has not gone away,” said my elder daughter, perhaps to console me because the happy-sad tears were flowing unchecked, “he’s there in the picture.”

“Yes, ma,” added the copy-kitten, “he’s the ghost caught in the picture.”

P.S: Thank you Scribbit, for your wonderful write-away contest which unlocked this ghost from the cupboard.