Daddy cool!!

Dear friends, I want to dedicate this piece of writing to the four men I have in my life! Not a regular testimonial though but this one is a heartfelt stream of appreciation and thankfulness for these men without whom I would not have been what I am, today.

My father was the first person who taught me that as a girl child, I did not have to feel inferior to any boy. He planted his faith within me, guarded like a knight when I needed to be protected and let me fly when I spread my wings! I remember my mother advising my father, “Meye boley kotha…kichu taakaa jomaa kortei hobe, biyetey taakaa dite hobe!” This means, “She is a girl, we have to save enough for her dowry!” My father believed that one day I will be independent enough to fend for myself and in addition take a stand not to support dowry. “Je baaritey pon nebe, she baaritey amaar meye biye korbe na (my daughter will not marry into a household which demands dowry).” In his life, my father taught me the science of balancing the goods and odds of life and in his death, he rendered to me, the art of detachment. Now he is no more within his mortal body, but resting in eternal peace ‘somewhere up in star land, where the corner is cosy and blue’. He is as far as beyond the unending skies and as close as deep within my heart, like a lamp lit for the rest of my life!

My brother, whom I have always known as a little boy, is a hero now! Before I knew it, he grew up to be a very responsible, upright and a successful individual. And friends! Is he a woman’s man! I remember the lazy afternoons when his wife and I would wake up to find steaming hot grilled cutlets waiting for us, along with the chai! And by the way, he cooks better than me. My mom has trained both of us equally and he happens to have led the way in culinary skills, as also in all other skills, be it art, music, academics, whatever. To this quintessential gentleman, here is 'three cheers' and all good(est) wishes!

Since I am a foodie, most of my testimonials will bear references to my delightful experiences with food, lovingly dished out by these men! So friends, read on…

I am married to a Tamil household; to a family that carries many legacies of social changes that the previous generations have tried to bring about during a British ruled India. My father-in-law, reared in that milieu, is the epitome of social and gender equality. I have found no bias within him, neither social, nor gender bias. The law makes him a father-‘in-law’ but to me, he is like a doting mother and the dearest friend. Between him and his children (includes me too), there is no generation gap! Actually there is no generation gap between him and his grandchildren either! I am in total awe of this person who is a cheerful playmate to my child, a rock for me, emotionally and also in the mundane duties of life. He is a chat-room partner (not virtual please!) for his sons, nephews, daughters-in-law, neighbors (young and old)…list goes on…and arena varies from politics to craft to Urdu shayari to Naushad to Saigal to Dinkar..and on and on and on. Well, and how well we sing the old classic duets…provided you do not judge us by your ears, our duets are timeless!

And now, meet my hubby, the man I went ‘round and round’ the fire, taking vows for being partner throughout cheer and gloom. He reinforced what I had learnt from my father. He planted his belief within me and here we are, together in the journey called life, in a caravan called comradeship… And friends, no one cooks a better rasam than he does, either! And pakodas..and sambhar…and cookies…Wow! What a great cook he is and he is a better cook than me, a very stylish at that, too. My Mr Dependable, he is the earth for my roots as well as the wind beneath my wings. I leave it to my daughter to write a longer testimonial for her dad and save my further words about him for my personal diary! :) :)

And to all of them,

“Jeet hee lenge baazi hum-tum
Khel adhooraa chootey naa
Pyar ka bandhan, janmon kaa bandhan
Janmon kaa bandhan tootey na…
Pyar kaa bandhan tootey na”

Therefore, friends….let us join together for three cheers for the men in our lives, your, mine, everybody’s lives! There are not enough words for their testimony; but in the words of the generation which my child belongs to, these men, across the generations, are just TOO COOL!!!

From this moment forward.........

It was a warm and humid afternoon during the month of May. The sun shone outside like a fireball and it seemed as if every living being was deep into a spell and refused to move! But the interiors of the church offered all the tranquility and sanity one would need.

Gracy prayed, in quiet solitude, eyes shut and mind as calm as a quiet lake at dawn. Gracy, in her late 30s, would be stepping into a new role, soon. This was a moment she has been waiting for, since the past two long years; this was the moment towards which her hands were stretched in dire desire, her lips never stopped praying and her belief never ever swayed.

Gracy was bearing in her womb, the image of her love for her man. In her womb was the bloom of crimson hopes, with the wings for her dream. A dream, which defined into her crave for a complete family, her crave to be called a mother; her desire for a souvenir she would present to her man, wrapped in all her aspiration and worship.

Gracy was the wife of Thomas, a wealthy businessman who had everything he could ever want: name, fame and heritage. But everything in life is not bestowed just by wanting and reaching out! Thomas was clueless as to who would carry forward the heritage which his forefathers had built and which he had meticulously preserved and added. In other words, Thomas wanted to be a father!

Gracy was the second wife of Thomas. Thomas was previously married to the beautiful, charming and cheerful Stella. Together, Thomas and Stella had once weaved the dream of a nest which would be built high among the branches of aspiration, rooted deep in faith and stretching its hands towards the boundless sky of delight, contentment and benevolence.


Providence had other plans for the young birds, which were still busy gathering twigs and grasses for their dream nest! Stella died during the childbirth and just after an hour, the newborn was also on its way to join its mother!

With them, died the soul of Thomas, leaving behind a body, moving around, aimlessly, with the remains of the scattered nest in his shivering palm, wandering why the storm was so violent! How could he put them together again!

Time is the best healer, the wise say! In another five years, Thomas picked up the pieces of his broken and scattered life, one by one and gathered courage, to gather twigs and leaves for a nest, yet again! And that is how Gracy came into his life.

Not that Thomas was new to Gracy. Being part of the same commune, Thomas was not a stranger. Gracy had, from a distance, been a silent spectator of whatever was happening in Thomas’s life, all these years, since Thomas was a University student. So, it goes on to say that Gracy always loved him but never had the courage to speak up.

After their wedding, it did not take Gracy long to realize that Thomas searched for Stella in her. Gracy knew, that for Thomas, she was nowhere like the Stella whom Thomas has carried like a crown! Stella lived in his heart and dreams and he was in an effort to find a living Stella in the mortal Gracy!

Thomas wanted to be father, craved to be a father, although he did not say a word about it. Even though no words came from him, Gracy was not oblivion of this. After all, she knew him since years and all these years she had always waited for one single careless glance from this man and now the man was hers! All hers! This would often strike a melody in her thoughts and body although she knew that when Thomas looked at her eyes, he looked at Stella!

Gracy had, thus, started believing that once she is the mother of his child, he would start noticing her as a different woman. She herself yearend to bear the child of the man she loved. She would not let anything bar her from being a mother.

She carried the belief, all alone, in her heart and as if her prayers were heard, with powerful recommendation from the soul of the beautiful, benevolent Stella, at God’s doorstep, Gracy found herself on her way to having her first baby!

Thomas, though very caring, could not often accompany her to the doctor. However, he had employed a fleet of chauffer, attendants, full-time nurse and care-giver to take care of Gracy and pamper her during the special nine months. Gracy could see a happy Thomas, for the first time, like this, in the past two years of togetherness. She could see a change in Thomas’s eyes, the way she smiled at her, the way she took her fingers in his hands and the way he brushed aside her playful locks from her face. This Thomas was her man, and she was his, for the first time!

Sometimes, she would wake up in nightmare, fearing if anything would go wrong! She clutched her hopes and happiness, all in a bundle, near to her heart and could not afford anything to snatch it away!

So, on this sunlit afternoon, Gracy rested in the cool milieu of the church, like a tired child on the lap of her mother!

Just two days prior to the due date, her blood pressure was abnormally high. What she had hidden from Thomas and all others was that she was, before pregnancy, warned against bearing a child at that instance, due to her low weight and anaemic condition. She did not pay any heed to it, did not ever talk to Thomas about it. She was head-on her path to bear the child, bear the child for Thomas and in return, demand what she was waiting for, always! A small niche in his heart! Together, they would make a ‘family’ and how she savored the very thought of it!

Her blood pressure was not normal and she ran into many complications. On her way to the labour room, she managed to whisper into the doctor’s ears, “Doctor, even if something happens to me, even if I do not survive, let this baby see the light, let it survive; his father awaits him…..”

A frenzied Thomas walked up and down the lobby, with fingers clutched in prayer! The moment had arrived!

The doctor rushed out of the labour room and explained to him that there was serious complication and a threat to the life of the mother as well as the baby. Though she would try the best of the best, the doctor announced the cruel truth that only one of them could survive and not only that, after this delivery, for sure, Gracy could never be a mother again!

The cruel fate looked up with a crooked smile once again, at Thomas! Time froze again and his feet were like heavy stones and he felt hollowness in his entire body. The fate’s finger marked an icy line down his spine. There was Thomas, a lost man, all set to lose again….

The doctor added that Gracy had wished for the life for the baby but as ethically….

Thomas did not wait to hear her explanation.

The suddenly composed man, in his decisive voice, told the doctor, “Doctor, I want my Gracy to live….I want my Gracy….!”




Anindita Baidya

मासूम

पापा! फिर सुलाओ मुझे
कहानियों के तकिए पर
फिर गुनगुनाओ कानों में
परियों की कहानी कोई

खिड़्की से हाथ बढाकर
भरो चाँद को मुट्ठी में
और मेरे कमरे की कीलों से
लगा दो उसे

फिर सपने दिखायो
सात घोड़ों पर सवार राजकुवरों का

मेरी गुड़ियों का नाम सोचो
करो तैयारी उन्हें विदा करने की
किसी मासूम शरारत पे तुम डाँटो फिर
मैं मुँह फुला लूँ तो
तुम मनायो टौफियों से मुझे

जो बड़ी हो गई
ज़माने ने दर्द भी बड़े दिये
खिलौने टूटने का वो हसीन दर्द
लौटा दो मुझे

मैं चलूँ ज़िन्दगी
नन्हें कदमों से
तुम्हारी ऊँगलियाँ पकड़के
तुम सँभालो मुझे
डर लगता है बड़ों की दुनिया में

अपनी पनाह में
पापा! छुपालो मुझे

अनिन्दिता 31.03.1996

Photograph source: internet

अर्ज़ किया है...

ये पहाड़, ये वादियाँ
ये फूल, ये पत्ते

पहाड़ों के गले से लगकर
मचलती ये नदी

रंगों का ये हसीन खेल
ये पंछी, ये तितलियाँ,
ये बरगद, ये बेल

सब देखना चाह्ती हूँ,
पर तुम्हारे साथ..

देख रही हूँ, महसूस कर रही हूँ
ये सब बसे हैं
जैसे तुम्हारे नस-नस में
छेड़ रहे हैं ये तुम्हारे मन के सुर-तान को..
जब देख रहे हो इनको तुम,


मुझे भी दिखाओ,
क्या देख रहे हो तुम
क्या महसूस कर रहे हो,
मुझे भी महसूस करने दो

खोए-खोए से, इन नज़ारों को सुन रहे हो तुम
और हलचल सी हो रही है मेरे मन में..

कहाँ हू मैं, तुम्हारे ख्यालों में?
इन फूलों के साथ, हवाओं के साथ
इन नज़ारों के साथ,
मुझे भी तो शामिल करो अपनी ज़िन्दगी में !


अनिन्दिता 16.12.2002

Photograph source: Internet

The Guardian Angel

The small pilgrimage town of Deogarh in Jharkhand, 2010. Pallavi, the professor of organic chemistry in a sub-urban Women’s college has a lot to reminisce about. She has a fulfilling life, a happy family, a caring husband, doting in-laws and two beautiful twin daughters.

Looking out of the window of the small but well ventilated staff room, she feels a maddening familiarity in the air. The climate, the sunshine, the spring leaves and the fragrance of the air are all very familiar and brings nostalgia and madness to the otherwise calm and composed Pallavi. This, she has been experiencing since years.

The familiarity of such days of spring, time and again, takes her to her teenage years, spent at the posh three-storey bungalow of her grandfather in Daltonganj, the headquarters of Palamau district. She has always been in love with the beauty of that place. She loved her Palamau. Her forefathers have been aristocrats in the district since the British regime. Her grandfather once told her that Pa-la-mau stands for the three blessings, which nature has bestowed to the place: Pa for Palash, La for Lac and Mau for Mahua. And thus the intoxicating, beautiful Palamau. And in this backdrop, bloomed the love of a coy, quiet and introvert teenager.

Good in academics though, physics and chemistry were the subjects she needed help in. So her father hired Dilip, a young lad, belonging to the neighboring Chhatra district, as her tutor. Dilip was a student at the Science College, staying at a nearby hostel.

Dilip was just her opposite. A very cheerful person, he was an outright extrovert and loved to talk, although he maintained a composed persona whenever he visited Pallavi’s mansion. He hardly talked to Pallavi’s mother, grandmother or aunt; he would rather nod in a tamed way to offer ‘thanks’ when one of the ladies of the house would place a cup of tea and two thin-arrowroot biscuits before him while he helped Pallavi in solving the chemistry or physics problems. He would look so embarrassed while accepting the monthly tuition fee from Pallavi’s wealthy father that Pallavi wondered whether accepting wage for one’s labour was a sin!

Time flew during those years. Pallavi was a student of Std VII when she made Dilip her mentor for chemistry and physics. As years passed by, Dilip became her mentor not only for these two subjects, but for practically all the aspects in her tiny life. Dilip was the toughest critic of her literature works, the essays, short stories which she wrote and Dilip was the most lenient guardian when she came home with a hopelessly low score in chemistry.

He showed her different ways of looking at the world; he explained to her why her mother was so very vigilant about her during her teenage years. Sociology suddenly meant a new interesting subject to her and she was awakened to the terribly hard life which the peasants in her Palamau, faced. Dilip showed her that the world was totally different across the high walls of her grandfather’s bungalow. Now and then Dilip would also talk about some uprisings by some people, here and there, aimed at, according to him, a better livelihood and opportunity for them. But Pallavi hardly could make out anything out of these incidents. Her life was restricted to the high school, her three or four girl friends and her family. Apart from the men in her joint family, Dilip was the only man she knew and interacted with.

During her first year in the Government college, Pallavi met Subhash and fell in love with him but the relation was destined to break in a year’s time, when Subhash’s father was transferred and the family left the place. Subhash bid good bye without any promise for future.

Pallavi was left heartbroken and lost. It was then that Dilip narrated the tale of his own love affair with a girl from Chhatra and how she was married off to someone else and how Dilip coped and life moved on. Dilip explained that life has to move on and it is okay to carry on with one’s life even when someone leaves you mid-way. ‘Good girls’ can break their relation too, it is okay. There is no point in lingering the relation at one side only. Therefore, Pallavi regained herself slowly. She knew, if her mentor could have had a relation which did not materialize and still carry on with life so cheerfully, it is not wrong for anybody to leave behind the past. Later, she learnt that Dilip had only cooked up the story of a girl from Chhatra, just to help her out of the dilemma!

By the time she was in the third year of Chemistry honours, she had developed an affinity for Dilip. She did not know whether she wanted to spend her life with him; but she knew that Dilip was a perfect person. She unknowingly imitated him and unconsciously picked up his mannerisms. Whatever his thoughts were, to her, those were the ultimate truth. For her, Dilip was the best philosopher she ever knew.

Gradually, Pallavi realised that she loved him and also believed that one day he would ask her to marry him. When, she did not know; but she knew that it would happen. She never spoke it out before anyone, not even mentioned it in her daily diary but she was his, she knew.

During a trip to her cousin’s, at Bokaro, she collected some dozen Archies’ greeting cards for him, thinking, one day she will hand them over to him. While at a college trip to Puri beach, she bought a delicate decorative peacock made of sea-shells, knowing that one day it would be her gift of love to Dilip. And her collection grew as her love grew and the wait grew longer. She did not know whether Dilip even had one iota of knowledge about her feeling.

During the spring seasons, Dilip would insist that they sit at the balcony of the second floor to have the feel of the fresh air and listen to the cuckoo while solving the chemistry equations and sums. Those special moments made a permanent place in her mind.

During her third year, as the final exams were approaching, Dilip’s visit became erratic. He would be absent from Daltonganj at a stretch and then arrive for a day or two. The family wondered why this person, now in his early 30s, having helped Pallavi in tiding over all these years of academics, now was being so infrequent when Pallavi was to just finish her graduation.

Her university exams finished and she all the more longed for Dilip. Throughout her examination, he was absent. Now that she was almost a graduate, her family already had started searching for a suitable groom for her. Pallavi did not know what her stand should be. If only her guardian angel was near her to help her solve her dilemma.

On a similar spring afternoon, as Pallavi was seated at that same balcony, she heard the panicked voices of the ladies of the house. She rushed down to the ground floor, only to find her aunt beating her chest and mourning. Pallavi’s brother, with a pale and frightened face told her that there was a landmine burst at the police station where her uncle had been recently posted and that her uncle along with most of the persons in the station had lost their lives.

Pallavi’s uncle, a respected high official in the police, was recently posted at a station near Betla as a member of a special force, in an effort to combat the attacks on the police and government offices, which had in some past years become rampant. Pallavi doubted if these incidents had anything to do with the uprisings Dilip would, at times, passionately talk about some years back. In past two years Dilip did not mention anything about those.

The grief of death covered the house like a shroud. Her uncle’s body was identified only with the help of the gold chained Allwyn watch he had been wearing. Her family was struck with a mixture of grief, anger and feeling of revenge. They wanted the worst of punishments for the persons who had committed the crime and this aristocratic, influential family would use all its power to ensure it. Pallavi again yearned for Dilip. How much she wished he was by her side!

Just two days later the grim silence of the mourning mansion was yet again torn by the panicked voices of the men of the house. Two of the persons who were apparently involved in the landmine blast were killed in a combat. The newspaper had published the pictures of the dead. Pallavi waited for her turn to look at the newspaper.

Like a sudden landslide, the news article cruelly snatched the piece of earth from beneath her feet! She saw the photograph of Dilip, an injured and dead Dilip, with eyes shut and blood oozing out from the head. Whatever she could gather from the print in the newspaper, before losing her consciousness, read like this: “Dilip Kumar, the area commander of the warfare group from Chhatra and his companion, who were apparently involved in the landmine blast two days back, have been killed in a combat, near Hazaribagh, last night……”


Anindita Baidya
08 April 2010