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?

SIBLING RIVALRY

Since my brother is visiting us along with his family for our annual bout of sibling revelry, here's a reminiscence about the daily bouts of sibling rivalry that occured when we were young and together.

Anything and everything edible given to us had to be shared equally. I was the more pugnacious of the two, and would set out complicated rules and regulations dictating the terms and conditions of the partition of every single morsel that came our way.

If there were two separate but similar things, like say, two toffees, then, obviously there were no problems. Each one eat one - was the rule.

If it was one piece of something which had to be divided equally, like say, a piece of cake, then the rulebook (authored by me) said - one of us would divide the cake (or cutlet, or...) and the other would choose his portion first. The rule was scrupulously fair in its nitpicking - the person cutting the piece would be very careful to cut it equally, because otherwise the other would get to choose the bigger piece.

The even more complicated rule for things that came in uneven sizes and in larger numbers (a bunch of grapes, or a bowl full of berries, maybe) was : the first person would take only one, the second would take two, and then the first would take another. Then this cycle would be repeated again and again till the entire loot was evenly distributed. WHY this particularly complex process, you may wonder. This was because the first person would usually end up getting the biggest piece (chosen first) and the fourth-largest piece, and the other one would get the second and third-largest piece. Now 1+4 equals 2+3, and although we never had weighing scales, we never had any complaints about unfairness either.

Ah, the deviousness of dharma (justice/righteousness)! Later on, when I read/saw the Mahabharata, I was amazed at the complicated routes taken by the righteous to achieve the victory of virtue. And, of course, I felt completely vindicated in my rule-setting, although everybody else felt otherwise, including my brother.

DID YOU HAVE ANY SUCH CONSTITUTIONAL RULES LAID DOWN FOR YOUR SIBLING?

FATHER’S DAY: TWO FANCY-FULL MEMORIES

When we were children, my mother provided the steadfast, solid, supporting fabric of our daily lives; while my father’s role was more of an embroiderer of fanciful and fantastic tapestry on this fabric. She taught us how to face the facts of life; he would tell us stories of whimsy, whisking us away from the cares of life.

There was a very big house near our childhood home: a huge mansion surrounded by large grounds full of tall trees and a pall of darkness and gloom (I never saw any lighted windows). There was a high wall encircling the house, cutting off a clear view but whetting our curiosity. Whenever we would pass by, especially if night was approaching, my father would tell us fantastic stories about the house actually being Count Dracula’s castle. I would shiver delightedly and listen, awestruck and wide-eyed, to baba’s (father’s) supple and succulent re-telling of the legend, longing-but-not-daring-to look at the looming, surely-haunted house out of the corner of my eye, my small hand seeking re-assurance in his. I would be scared-thrilled, and would demand a repeat-narration every time we crossed the house, especially after dark. And my father obligingly provided the goose-bumps, vivifying my imagination till it was on auto-pilot and could re-create the thrills for myself.

Another time, he took my brother and me on a Sunday picnic. Ma packed us off with sandwiches and boiled eggs, and we wandered around the picturesque banks of the Hooghly river on a summer’s day as bright as unshed tears. After a walk on the river bank, we strolled along the Riverside Road and, following my father’s restless, adventuresome fancy, discovered the cave of Phantom (the Ghost who Walks) in the middle of some unkempt bushes at a corner of an empty field. My father convinced us that THIS WAS PHANTOM’S INDIAN HIDE-OUT, and we ate our staid picnic lunch garnished with the spice of this thrilling discovery.

Baba was like that. He would pluck an off-beat leaf from the mundane book of life and fan the flames of our fancy. Thank you, baba, for igniting my imagination.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY. DO SHARE A MEMORY ABOUT YOUR FATHER WITH US.

THE PLEASURES OF READING LETTERS

By ‘letters’, I am particularly thinking of the blue inland letters. Whenever the postman used to rap on the iron-gate, the sun glinting on his bottle-thick glasses and dusty khaki uniform, I would go out to take the letter(s) expectantly, and would be absolutely thrilled if there were inlands addressed to me.

The beige postcards never gave the same thrill, being too brief and open-for-everyone-to-see. Though I liked to look at picture postcards, they were even briefer, and always seemed to be dashed off in a hurry.

It was the sky-blue double-folded inland letter which held secrets-waiting-to-be-read, with only the back flap indicating the letter-writer’s name. (This back flap also contained public service messages and pictures: Donate Blood and Save a Life, Protect Yourself from Malaria…some were special issue letters: Asiad 1980 or having the five-ringed Olympic logo).

The joy of opening it, the care taken not to tear-away-even-a-word-of-what-lay-inside struggling with the nimble-urgency of eagerness, the hurried first reading and the leisurely subsequent ones, savouring each word, mood, question…that was the peculiar pleasure of the inland letter.

And then, of course, there was the anticipation and preparation for sending the reply. Searching the cupboard for blank inlands (non-availability would bring about an immediate emergency trip to the post-office), ensuring that no one would interrupt or interfere. Then the thought-filled, lip-chewing, lengthy, cramming-words-into-all-available-blue-space reply, usually with a fountain pen, usually in Bengali interspersed with English. Then the sealing of the secret with gum (or boiled rice, or, at a pinch, saliva), and the short journey to the rickety no-longer-red postbox to drop the letter.

The busiest letter-giving-and-getting period of my life was when I was studying in Lady Brabourne College for my Higher Secondary (Plus-2), and staying in the hostel.

During term-time, I would dutifully write weekly letters to my parents, each letter beginning “Dear Maa” (my friends were surprised that I did not use the more traditional Bengali greeting “Sricharaneshu – at your feet”, but I hated its obsequiousness and its tough spelling), containing carefully-censored snippets of hostel-life and progress-in-studies, and, more importantly, demands for this and that. But my mother had an uncanny knack of reading between the lines (She read the ‘lines’ equally thoroughly and once replied to my brother’s letter by mentioning and rectifying each and every of his Bengali spelling mistakes. Thereafter, he wrote in English.).

During holidays, there would be the usual flurry of letters to and from friends. The precious-50- paise inlands were reserved for the close friends, the not-so-close ones merited much-cheaper-at-15-paise postcards.

The thrice-folded blue aerogrammes, bearing news from cousins settled abroad, were few and far between, and never thrilled me like the inlands from my friends because they were usually addressed to the entire family. Replying to them was also a family affair: a chain of small missives from my dida (grandma), aunt, mother and ending dutifully with us (Dear So-and-so, How are you? We are all fine here. It is very hot. Our studies are going on well. When are you next coming to India? With love, …).

John Donne said that “letters mingle souls for, thus, friends absent speak”. I still have bundles of fading inlands, speaking to me of days long past, in voices long distant. My daughters have never even seen one. The postman’s arrival today no longer thrills me – it’s only bills and bank statements. First issued by the Department of Indian Postal Services on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth-date, 2nd October, in1950, the inland letter is now as dead to urban India as the man whose birthday it shares. R.I.P.

What letters are stamped in your memory?

SOWING, REAPING, REMEMBERING...

My growing-up garden was also a hub of human (and other animal) activity.

Every morning in the holidays, I and my brother would take the phuler saji (flower-basket) and gather flowers for my mother and aunt, who would use them for the daily pujo (worship) of the thakurer-ashon (the seat of the gods).

We were strictly instructed to collect the more plentiful flowers (shiuli, jaba, tagar), and leave the roses and the lilies alone. I remember my mother and Baroma (aunt) diligently emptying the discarded tea-leaves from the tea-strainer at the foot of the rose-bush, trying to coax the sullen plant to bloom more often.

The coconut trees needed no coaxing – every year dozens of heavy green coconuts would grow at the top, and dadu (granddad) would caution us not to play under the coconut trees lest the nuts fall on us and crack our skulls. Every year, dida (grandmother) would call the coconut-tree-climber : the dark, lithe man who would tie a piece of rope around his ankles and skim swiftly up the coconut trees to chop off the nuts with his scythe. Two coconuts were part of his fees for the job, and then my dida would distribute the rest of the hoard among various aunts and uncles and their families. The coconut leaves would be dried on the roof to make brooms for the house (sadly, gifting brooms was not socially acceptable).

In summer, whenever there would be a kalboisakhi (tropical summer storm), we would rush to the garden to collect unripe green mangoes falling from the trees (from our tree and from the neighbour’s tree which peered into our garden), getting wet and then relishing the storm-scarred, sour fruits with salt and red chilli powder.

Not all was rush and bustle, however. I loved to wander about in the garden, watching the slow movement of the snails on the lichen-y brick walls. I also liked to see the earthworms wriggling about, forming curly soil-mounds after the rains.

I remember taking the dry brown betelnuts, scraping off part of the outer covering and drawing faces (the remaining cover looked like a shaggy fringe) on them to make heads for home-made dolls (medicine-bottles made the bodies). Baba (father) showed us how to blow bubbles with papaya-stems and soapy water, and to boil the orange shiuli-stems to make yellow-dye for dolls-clothes.

I had always wanted a swing in the garden (who doesn’t?), but there was no tree suitably-branched or sturdy enough, so my father made one with jute rope on our staircase-landing, perched on which I could glimpse a part of the garden. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine I was in the garden, swinging under the sky.

WHAT DID YOU LIKE TO DO IN YOUR GROWING-UP GARDEN?

HAPPY NEW BLOG

Today is Poila Baisakh, which is the beginning of a New Year for Bengalis. For me, it is the beginning of a new blog. Not an all-in-one mommyblog like my other one, but one with a more specific purpose, to catch and share memories of growing-up. I grew up in Bengal, India, during the 1970s -80s. Memory shifts and slips away so fast; I am trying to use the net to catch these fleeting memories and pin them down to a post.
So, please share your memories of growing up (wherever, whenever) and let us build together a house full of the warm past. If you grew up in the same time or space, we'll recapture a zeitgeist; if not, we'll construct a bildungsroman anyway.