SWITCH ON A MEMORY

Nowadays, we take pains to camouflage electrical switches. Small and insignificant, they are usually set in a white plastic panel which blends right in with the pastel wall paint. And the wires and stuff are all hidden out of sight, under the plaster, as if they are something to be ashamed of.

Not so earlier. When we were children, our home in Barrackpore proudly displayed its electrical connections. The switches were round-bold-black-on-a-white-ceramic-base, and they were set in a wooden box-board which arrogantly jutted out of the whitewashed walls. There were eye-catching lines of wires from each and every light and fan and socket, proudly criss-crossing the walls to meet at the switch-board. Electrical wiring of yore was like networking of today – the mantra being “Flaunt your connections”.

These switches had a life of their own, and could give you nasty surprises and shocks if you touched them with wet hands. They demanded respectful treatment, and we were taught to be very very careful and dry our hands and wear rubber slippers before touching them. As an extra precaution, the switch-boards were usually positioned almost impossibly high on the wall to avoid pesky children from fiddling with their dignity.

And the queen of the switch-board was the fan regulator. Not the piddly little white knobs of today, thank you. We had big, bold rectangular beauties with prominent knobs marked very clearly ON-1-2-3-4-5-OFF. They had a don’t-mess-with-me attitude, and required a certain amount of force to be, for want of a better word, regulated. They were also extremely temperamental, in true diva-fashion. Sometimes they would coyly refuse to move beyond 2 or 3 in the midst of sweaty summer heatwaves. Or stubbornly remain stuck at 5 even though the autumn breeze had turned chilly.

The only force which could subdue the arrogant switch-board and make it redundant was the LOAD-SHEDDING (powercuts). These were frequent whimsical occurrences (then, as now, some things don’t change) lasting from anything between one to six hours. During their duration, the switch-board lay in a neglected shadow, with only one switch left on to inform us of the return of electricity.

When the electricity did return, we were usually informed by the lone left-on light-bulb as well as by a general HURRAH of joy that echoed through the neighbourhood. And the primacy of the switch-board would be restored, with all the adults rushing to it in supplication and relief to put on the lights and fans and the fridge.

DO SWITCH ON A MEMORY AND SHARE IT WITH US.

A MERE BAGATELLE…

Actually, I learnt the proper pronunciation and meaning of the word ‘bagatelle’ much later in life, when I was studying literature.

When we were children, we used to call it ‘bagaduli’. Which was the ‘Bengalification’ of an old (going back to 1777) and regal (Louis XVI, if I am not wrong) indoor game.

Our ‘bagaduli’ was a small semi-oblong shaped flimsy board of wood with numerous pins stuck on it in intricate circular patterns. There were a few round metal globules which we had to push with sticks along these pinned alleyways in an attempt to get them trapped in the pinned circles, each of which had different points (10, 20, 25, 30, etc). Obviously, the player with the most points won.

I cannot remember ever getting the hang of this game, and cannot recall ever playing it competitively.

Oh, there were many indoor/board games which brought out our fiercest competitive instincts, with improvised tournaments and league-matches played during every vacation – summer, Puja or winter. We cousins would stay up half the night playing card games (hellbent on winning or cheating), and then challenge each other again in the morning across the carom board. Even ludo was competitive, before we graduated to Chinese chequers and then to chess (not for all of us, though).

But the ‘bagaduli’ usually languished in a corner of some be-curtained wooden shelf with the other outgrown stuff. Only to be taken out when I was alone and had nothing better to do. Only to be dusted, toyed with half-heartedly (I still remember the faint ‘ping’ sound of the metal balls hitting each other), and put back into shadowy obscurity.

Only to be remembered, in a half-forgotten way, when I came across the word ‘bagatelle’ in college, when I was struck by the irony of its meaning: ‘a trifle’. Of so many such trifles our past is made, and so many such trifles slip away forever through the memory-sieve. I felt so glad that I could retrieve and reconstruct this particular ‘bagatelle’…

ANY MEMORIES OF GAMES THAT YOU NEVER PLAYED?

‘THE MALE GAZE’

Feminists might crib about the ‘male gaze’ and how it reduces women into commodities to be consumed, possessed or bartered.

When I was a just-turned-teen, we cared two hoots for all that feminist rant. We were all too busy being ‘feminine’. The ‘male gaze’ ruled our thoughts and dreams, in fact, the more males, the merrier.

‘How to attract the male (s) gaze (s)’ – was one of the most important problems of life. Elaborate strategies were planned and executed. We would spend hours hemming up our skirts to show more leg. My school-uniform-skirt had begun life as two-inches-below-the-knee, but when I passed out, it was an-inch-above, and all through strategic sewing. To achieve the same purpose, socks were compulsorily rolled down. Only the goody-two-shoes-type wore knee-length socks.

As visits to beauty parlours were supervised by strict mothers and were usually for haircuts only, we waxed our legs and tweezed our eyebrows at home, often with rather uneven results.

Resourcefulness was the key in our strategic preparation. One carefully purchased lipstick (after prudently saving on pocket money) would multifunction as eye-shadow and blusher. Shirts and T-shirts would be filched from fathers and brothers to give the fashionably appropriate ‘baggy’-effect on top of tight short skirts. Acrylic fabric paints were used to give old outfits a new zing. Hair-scrunchies would double-up as wrist-ornaments. And mismatched earrings (one dangler, one stud) were surefire eye-catchers.

Festivals would send us into flirting frenzies. The preparations were elaborate. Often, we would spend three hours dressing up for an half-hour jaunt. Much of the preliminary discussion would centre around who would be wearing what. Outfits were co-ordinated, but not duplicated. And it was all a friendly competition - we would help each other with the ‘getting ready’ businesss.

Armed to the teeth in an 'array of loveliness' (our natural loveliness considerably enhanced by the careful applocation of a whole lot of artificial aids), we would descend into the warzone of the battle-of-the-sexes. And then, the swagger in our strut and the covert, swift look back to see who noticed whom. The flutter of the eyelashes and the disdainful look away (if you wanted somebody to notice you, you ALWAYS looked AT and then AWAY).

Boys, hapless under the carefully-planned onslaught, would fall for our constructed charms like ninepins. We would sometimes do a tally on the number of scalps in our belts. Reverse feminism, in a way: we just regarded the poor fellows as so many notches on our victory registers.

It was all great fun, and completely frivolous. Serious relationships were few and far-between and would usually come much later in the day. For the rest of us, the ‘male gaze’ was enough.

WHAT ABOUT YOU? ANY ‘GAZER’ OR ‘GAZEE’ MEMORIES?

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?

MEMORIES OF FORGETTING

The first time I forgot something was a long time ago. When I was five years old, to be specific. When I was sitting in a classroom, writing a Mathematics class test, to be even more specific. Mathematics, in those uncomplicated childish times, meant a simple progression from number 1 to number 100. No arduous additions, stupefying subtractions, maddening multiplications, devious divisions or other complicated calculations that continue to haunt us in later life.

But even then, as now, I was numerically challenged. The very shapes of the numbers challenged me, especially that of number 3. I was confused: were the pointy bits on the left and the rounded bits on the right, or vice versa? Frowning and chewing my pencil (most of my pencils looked like they had been attacked by woodpeckers), I tried to visualize the shape of 3. But like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the shape of the mystic number eluded me.

Not willing to give up without a fight (Maths was, and continues to be, Academic Enemy No. 1), I came up with a solution. I had to write from 1 to 50, so I had to write the number 3 a total of 15 times ( I just checked it out twice, counting on my fingers). Each time, I meticulously alternated the sides of the pointy and the rounded parts, so that 33 ended up looking like an 8 broken down the middle.

Needless to say, my score in the test was unmemorable, and I have duly forgotten it.

Though I remember my first instance of forgetting in photographic detail, the subsequent instances and too many and too frequent to remember.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST FORGOT SOMETHING?

COLLEGE-COLLAGE OF MEMORIES

College is such an important part of growing up that it is sure to leave behind deep imprints in the road to self-discovery.

Some lucky ones, like Chetan Bhagat, write books on their college days (Five-Point Someone) and become rich and famous.

Not being Chetan Bhagat, however, I hope to write about my college memories in this blog. In bits and pieces, fragments and filaments, as is my wont.

Pritam, the very resourceful editor of the e-magazine Pentasect, very kindly allowed me to indulge in an all-expenses-paid nostalgia trip back to my college days in Presidency College of what-was-then-Calcutta. If you want to come along for the ride, do click here.

DO SHARE SOME OF YOUR COLLEGE MEMORIES WITH US.

SUMMER RAIN

In Mumbai, the sun and the rain are like a quarelling Page 3 couple, they never appear together. It is always an either-or situation, either it is swelteringly hot (as it is now), with summer stretching for endless weeks; or it is raining, in drip-drops or deluges, for months without any sun in sight. I know that I am exaggerating, but that is what it feels like.

When I was child in Bengal, the sun and the rain had a different relationship, especially in summer, more especially in April. They were like an amorous couple, chasing each other throughout the month. The daytime would see the sun, all melting-concrete-hot and blinding-eyes-yellow. Coming back from school would mean a long walk in the sapping afternoon heat, when the sweat would seem to drip from our eyelids into our eyes and the schoolbag would leave a wet patch where it stuck to our backs.

But in the late afternoon, the white wispy effeminate clouds floating in the sky would be replaced by black billowing clouds which meant serious business. Even as the sun would hurry to the western horizon, the clouds would hustle the winds to sway the trees and rustle the leaves. In relief and gladness, we would come out into the balconies and courtyards, feeling the wind lift our hair and dry the sweat on our brows.

And then, riding on the back of the wind, would come the rain. Blessed, beautiful rain would pour down in huge drops on the parched soil and the hot rooftops, cooling us all. This was the Kalboishakhi, the summerstorm which was Nature’s own relief-measure and heat-control mechanism.

Sometimes, we would be allowed to get wet in the rain, especially if we had prickly heat rashes (as the first rain was supposed to be a miracle-cure for itchy heat-rash). Sometimes there would be hailstorms, and the roofs and gardens would be white with hailstones. Some would be tiny, melting in our hands as we tried to gather them. Some would be as big as golf-balls, which we would reverentially gather in bowls. Their cold crunchiness was a delight to taste.

Another epicurean delight of the Kalboishakhi were the green unripe mangoes which would fall off the madly swinging branches of our neighbour’s mango tree (which overhung our garden wall). We would rush out with laal gamchhas (thin red towels), unmindful of the fruits pelting down on our heads, eager only to collect as many fallen mangoes as possible before the rain became too heavy.

After discarding the tiny inedible ones, we would then peel the rest of our booty, and sit with outstretched legs in the balcony, eating our stolen goods with salt and red-chilli powder, watching the rain pour down. The next morning the sun would be back, in all his fierce glory.

The word Kal in Kalboishakhi probably refers to the 'black clouds which bring the rain', but as a child I always thought that Kal referred to 'tomorrow', and that Kalboishakhi meant that there would be another summerstorm tomorrow, to take away the heat in the evening and give us some more green mangoes.

ANY MEMORIES OF STORMS IN SUMMER?