THE BOOK AND THE BOY

It was a Kolkata summer evening in the third week of April, 35 years back, when I'd got caught in a blinding dust storm aided by strong gusty Norwesters, that preceded a heavy downpour. I remember everything getting flooded quickly in the low lying pocket of the South Calcutta neighborhood I'd grown up in.

I'd taken shelter, deeply inhaling the smell of moist earth, under the portico of the grandest house in the neighborhood, and one of the oldest too. It belonged to a family one of whose members had the word 'Lord' prefixed to his name -- something that used to puzzle me more often than not because the school version of the word didn't agree at all with what I used to observe while coming back from school 5 days a week.

Minutes later a known face peeped out from the 1st floor balcony, calling out my name. A boy of the same age as mine, Shunu (Shaunak in the school register) came from the grand family (he felt grand about it too, and visibly so). Shunu had an enviable collection of books that were kept neatly stacked in his own room, and very often he used to gift me 10-12 minutes of 'book-gazing' with royal indulgence, when I used to go to the grand house in excited anticipation, a couple of days a week, during the dusky hours.

He told me to come upstairs, and I was in his room in a flash, instantly prepared for yet another gratifying set of ten minutes that was perhaps awaiting my arrival. That day he took out a book and let me feel the cover, for the first time ever (which was incidentally the last). Almost choking on my rapidheart-beats, with goosebumps all over, I touched the hard bound cover, 'feeling' it deeply, my fingers wandering over one of the most beautiful stormy sea-scapes I'd ever seen, that adorned the cover. I knew the famous name, and was thrilled to hear that the 'Lord' had gifted it to Shunu, on his grand-nephew's birthday.

At that moment I wanted to turn over the hard cover so badly, I really really wanted to..but the indulgent prince ruled that my 'book-gazing time' was over for the day.

At the age of eight, I was pretty much one of those archetypal quie, meek, unconvincingly gawky types, non-demandingly content with whatever gifts my parents got for me on a regularly biannual basis - birthdays and the Durga Puja. But that night I did ask my father, for the first time in my life, whether he would buy the book for me.

I wouldn't copy his answer word by word here because I might get biased if I try to qualify  paternal care and advice, but he did convince me quite sternly that it wasn't a good trend t all to 'ask' for gifts, leave alone such "expensive" ones, which were not supposed to exist in rented one and a half room flats, like the one we lived in.

Somehow the entire episode around that book stuck to my memories, that rainy dusk when I'd touched it, and that quiet night that felt so still after I learnt yet another truth -- I don't know why, because the episode doesn't have too many spoken words.

I've moved on from that rainy evening. I've traversed quite a distance over uncertain terrains to rech this very moment that finds me typing these insignificant pronouns and articles. And the book disappeared too from the conscious mind, being replaced by a variety of its lot, more illuminous lot.

Well, that was till thirty five years later. I was roaming around in a newly opened mall not very far away from my house in Mumbai. As I passed by a bookshop, I 'eyed' its interiors as usual (an old habit that has become a reflex). And I stopped still. In one of the racks close to the entry glass-door, under a template that read "Children Fiction : Adventure", there it was.. the name in prominent print, the letters reading from up downwards, oriented horizontally with a mild slope, as the book leaned lazily on its less illustrious neighbour with an air of dismissive royalty. Or so I felt at that moment.

I slowed down to let my family move ahead, and quietly pushed in through the glass door.

You know how it feels -- memories crashing down on you like the breakers on a lonely beach -- everything else in the universe stands quiet while the sound of the sea breaking upon the shore rules your senses completely with its eternal unrest. The damp moist smell, the dusty gale, the fading lights of that stormy evening came crashing upon me, and every single moment of that evening rushed past, of that silent night, right up to that last moment just before I had fallen asleep. As I stood before the cash counter to pay, I eyed the cover of my glorious purchase. The beautiful stormy sea-scape didn't fail to fascinate me one more time.

It happens. It happens to all of us -- Life is strange. Of course it is, and that adds to its charm big time. Yet some events, as a matter-of-factly, perfectly normal events, just happen, when you expect them the least. They churn your senses inside out, briefly before things get back to normal. But the 'strange' tag somehow gets attached to normal events. I find that more stranger than what intellectually gifted minds qualify life as, over vague, philosophical musings (much to my awe and empty-headed admiration).

As I said before ; It happens -- nothing remarkable about it. The night before last, as I proceeded to take the book from its row, I wanted to enjoy it, the spoils of my final conquest. But I stopped. I felt so afraid....

What if everything turns out to be a big disappointment? Shall everything be worth it -- every memory, every emotion I soaked in? And I've been thinking since..

I am not afraid at the moment. But I won't read the book. I'm sure that the magic that lies inside it is the same, it hasn't changed one bit. It is me who isn't the same anymore. That eight year old boy that I used to be once, who deserves the magic of the book, and whom the magic of the book richly deserves is no more.

The book doesn't deserve me anymore. And I don't want to disappoint it. Surely there shall be someone who shall be the deserving one. Let its magic wait. I'm sure it would want to.

ANATOMY OF REMINISCENCE

Sometimes those evenings come when you keep thinking about songs and you keep painting pictures in your mind with the melody and words, one after another. And you suddenly stop painting in your mind because you just don't want to proceed even if it is a half finished eccentric jamboree of colours - the notes of melody impress upon you, not exactly in harmony. Yet you stop right there, upon an incomplete, imperfect, ill - comprehended drop of impatient emotions. And the imperfect 'nothing' seems to be agreeing to whatever you speak to your own self silently.

I have observed it in private solitude and tried to get to the root of it - a kind of deja vu that doesn't disappear but drags along,  lasts for more than half an hour. To get to the root of the seductive mystery you have to move retrograde. When I indulge in starting a long trek, I see a path, unreal and rarely trodden, but with vibes so powerful. It's like a thread that runs through beads of memories- sweet or sour, happy or forgettable, placed in near perfect chronology.

I don't agree with the established explanations in psychology books, that qualify modes of reminiscence as linear and retrograde. It might be explained via mathematical equations, perfect and solved. But man himself  is imperfect, his attitude and approach are imperfect so memories have to be imperfect too.They do not always orient themselves in a nature which is chronological. It is us who place them one after the other so that in times of dire necessity, falling back might find us in a much welcome harmony. So when we reminisce, we do not loose objectivity and sanity.I find memories scattered randomly, and at times merged with each other to an extent, even recent and old ones.It is an irregular cluster of the ecent and the old that tells us that a continuous thread does run to our roots. And when one stops, leaving a half painted picture, it means you have chanced upon such a string which goes long back, not four weeks or months, or four years.

Memories stream by. One moves back and back, and it's a question that motivates you, something like those half-hearted silent nothings you mutter to yourself ending with a question-mark each time, once again.

If I was asked why 'once' 'again', I still don't know. I mean, I might come out with a signing off sentence, but I know that I am still ignorant about 'once', just as I am about 'again'. Still it makes sense if I plead ignorance putting 'once' and 'again' together, despite me being aware that it's not an answer. And I am weary now.

I've been living all alone since a long time. There used to be more signs of life around me then, and nothing ever suggested that a time like this might come. It helps you, keeps you motivated to look towards tomorrow with something in mind. I am not pondering over right or wrong, it's just looking back over the 'presents' and the 'absents'.

Why do I feel like putting up a response then? It just adds to a list of questions, and that doesn't do people like me any good - people who seem to be all over the place all the time and it is hard not to notice the jamboree and the elaborate vacuum that actually sounds so empty.

But that always makes a sound for you. It's a sound alright. It's the part of the real life. At times that sound tells me that I've taken a long time to accept a fact, and I have erred. All this while, I have been searching for an answer without understanding the question.

I realize that with time the question has changed into a fact of life somewhere out there, and I didn't notice when. It's not about answers as to why. The fact is - there won't be any answer ever for me, because the question has ceased to exist in its primal state, and so it is thus best to keep them where they are and move on.

As I have written -- once again. 

I am a happy man now, eager to dream.... the dreams seem  eager to be dreamt too.. And doesn't that make every single day my day? It does!

And my signature line, which Frank Sinatra crooned over a Sunday afternoon Phlips radio to a 7 year old me and gave me goose-bumps as i choked on "Wow, that's a dreaming croone!" whisper, shall not change. And I dream too, as I write - WHATEVER I DID, I DID IT MY WAY..

LETTERS TO MY DAUGHTER : YOU ARE FREE

"If you are looking here and there while reading this, looking for Baba & wondering why he isn't there, stop. I'm just there around you. I can see through your eyes, I can breathe fresh air as you take a breath. You are never without me. So don't ever feel lonely when you are alone. Right?

Here's another day from Baba's life which I thought you should read. It's just a story from the myriad of stories we are always writing, as we exist. Every story has some significance no matter how small & unfinished it maybe.

It is one of those moments that you feel guilty, for everything you notice - a painful, hurting luxury one can afford to indulge after eating, quenching hunger and thirst. "what am I supposed to do actually in life?" This question started to echo from one part of my brain to another, when I found out for yet another time that it's impossible to make everybody happy at the same time.

Whatever you do, or refrain from doing, will hurt someone or the other. You don't want to, but it happens. It is impossible to make things happen in another way, under another set of rules. You can stop making a sound, but you cannot stop an echo. You have to wait till it dies out..

As I asked this question, throwing it to the wind I had this wrong hope that the wind will carry it to places you haven't thought of..It's all about survival. It's a battle. Yet even when you prepare yourself for a battle, you find out there is no code which limits the battle.

Right from school to walking the pavements picking up crumbs, I was taught so many things. To equip myself with the necessary informations so that I can live when I grow up. But it's not only about learning. Each day, each year, each class, You are impressed by a unwritten "code" - how you use this knowledge.

Society as an institution survives each day by commission and omission too. To commit what is correct, and omitting everything which is not. It's not only Action but also the calibrated Inaction that makes our tomorrow,Here is where the emotional fool, the pseudo idealist trips again. You find that it's just not about reaching the finishing line.

A luminous voice tells me that it's about everybody. Everybody is doing the same thing as you are. Struggling to survive. Still you see that struggling to survive is not only to stride ahead. It's also about making sure that others don't. You shove and push others who are running in the race.
It is Cheating. They cheat you. They exploit your idea of a healthy competition. Is it a race which doesn't have any rules? No gold standard is there that will ensure that it is fair, no cheating is allowed? Are our lives so unscrupulous? The voice assures me - no cheating is not part of your survival. But saving yourself from being cheated is. Life is not unfair. It always leaves an option for you.

That figures. To save yourself from being cheated is part of the struggle to survive. It's not just a job. It's a part of your existence. Do everything to survive. To survive famines and psunamis, to survive holocausts and mass genocides to survive to keep your identity in a family or outside that, a community.

It is here where the question 'WHY' loses objectivity, it becomes a subjective exercise. There can't be no answer ever because the question itself is flawed. I can't go to Wikipedia or Google search just because nobody answers my question. It's a flawed question.

We all have to fend for ourselves. That is of course a different story, a different life. You have to look inward, not outside for help, for. Moments which give you courage, direction and focus to whatever you are doing.

I guess I got part of the answer I was seeking. I have to find the rest myself. Doing that is Survival."

A CHILD : A GENIUS

If somebody asked me about my childhood in general, I seem to have carried forward certain aspects through adulthood now reaching mid forties which are not common.

Seeing man slipping on the same banana peel for years together ultimately has made this unique omnipresent, numero uno accident a philosophical protagonist of Sheer Amusement - of the mind of man who errs.

But to err is human no? Well I'm talking of the banana peel...

I was a regular child, in a regular family, with regular health, studying in a regular school and have a regular aptitude. This is the best way (ironically the dumbest) I can describe my childhood. A regular little of this and a regular little of that : and you add them up in a regular time-span to make a regular concoction that a 24 hour day is. One is welcome to do things to live life his/her way, but when you have got a child's mind to play with, you have to earn the responsibility to carry it out.

A child's mind is not an empty vessel of nothing where we go on putting in our daily shares, regular doses of heady mixtures. And we wait for the mindless mix to blossom out of the poor little creature.

A child's mind is a dense forest with an amazing variety of flora and fauna. The first thing you can do is just enter it to look around. You just have to guide a child in a way forward through the forest, let him enjoy, let him fall down and have bruises which you can always take care of, let him stop to take a pause, and then let him run. There's no hurry, there's plenty of years, just let him soak it all in. Those are the ingredients a child's mind is made up of, he will mature his mind in his own way using these ingredients, you stand just to be there to guide him.

The worst thing you can do is to start moulding the doughy brain with bare hands (& make it look like the way you want). You will just create Pulp Fiction.