This was the city, where I was born. The city, where I learnt to walk and then run, clinging to my father. We both ran for our lives. Don’t remember the year. It was those violent and turbulent 60s.
I was small and had gone to a Durga puja pandal with my father. Suddenly, there were shouts, screams, and before I could realize what was happening, my father pulled me and started running. Everybody was running. From what I didn’t know. Only thing I knew that I had to run. Sensing, my steps were too small to flee from the danger closing in, he picked me up and kept running. Then he slipped and fell. He threw his body over me, to save from a near stampede, which could probably have crushed me to death.
It was over as suddenly as it had began. I remember, when we reached home, my father’s hands were bleeding profusely. I still can remember the sight of blood, dropping from his hands and blood on my shirt. It took sometime, before he could recover. Later I was told that that a group from another locality had attacked our area and were hurling bombs (called "peto" in bong slang) and soda bottles. In Kolkata, clashes between two groups in the mid 60s (this was also the time when naxalism began taking roots) had become a ritual. Kolkatans learnt to live with it.
Today I again stand before him. He can barely see. His can barely move. Those hands, once saved me from being crushed to death, can scarcely hold a glass. My mother-- I used to be so scared of her, can barely shout. My brother-- After his birth, when the nurse was going to take him for a wash, she accidentally dropped him. He hurt his head. He is what the world calls-mentally retarded.
My Park Circus house, once used to an endless stream of visitors, have only three trembling shadows moving about. The ears, which can barely hear, wait eagerly for the door bell to ring. My father sits in the balcony, trying to read the morning newspaper with a magnifying glass and my mother waits for the maidservant to come, cook and to talk to her. My brother does not like watching television anymore. Life has slipped him by. He looks around, when children play and people go to office. He comes in and sits down.
Life is passing me by too. My job, my struggle to survive, chasing a better life has finally taken its toll. In the race, I realize there is nothing much that I could gain. Neither I could breast the tape, nor could I get out of the track. I simply ran in the middle.
In the 70s, hounded by the naxalites, our family fled to Delhi. My father had refused to pay up the naxalites and they struck back by burning down his showroom-“Carpentry and Colour House.” My father had a furniture business, which once did well. He was a Leftist, supporter of Revolutionary Socialist Party. I still remember the day, when in 1967, the Left parties (then called Juktafront-now its called bam(left)front) came to power in Bengal. It was one summer afternoon, my father rushed in beaming.
“Juktafront jite gechche (United Front has won),” he shouted. “Lets go”, he asked me to dress up and then tied a red handkerchief round my collar and a red band on my wrist. I was his little Marxist. The taxi took us to Brigade Parade Ground. I had no clue to what was happening. I was happy because my father was. But the sudden roar of “Inqalab Zindabad” scared me. Say “Lal salam” my father put me up on his shoulders. I raised my fist and screamed, “inqalab zindabad.” As the red sun went behind that huge podium, flaming torches, thousands of them, lit up the approaching darkness. The reds had come to Bengal.
“Can you do something for my freedom fighters’ pension,” my father these days asks me in a shaky voice. He was in jail with the then RSP chief and the man who had contested Presidential poll, Tridib Chaudhury. I have not been able do anything, nor I think I can ever do anything. It’s the Marxists government, (for which he once dragged me to Maidan) sitting on his files. I know, he needs the money. And I know I cannot do anything. I send him, whatever I can.
But, I know, the man, who once stood tall, gave his children the best possible life and often said, “This head would never bow before anyone, I will never ask for a favour,” bleeds slowly.
Often the feeling of not being able to do anything, gnaws you. It gnaws you slowly. Sometime, I see myself bleeding. Only I can see the blood. I put my hand into it. No my hands do not turn red. They turn pale.
I was small and had gone to a Durga puja pandal with my father. Suddenly, there were shouts, screams, and before I could realize what was happening, my father pulled me and started running. Everybody was running. From what I didn’t know. Only thing I knew that I had to run. Sensing, my steps were too small to flee from the danger closing in, he picked me up and kept running. Then he slipped and fell. He threw his body over me, to save from a near stampede, which could probably have crushed me to death.
It was over as suddenly as it had began. I remember, when we reached home, my father’s hands were bleeding profusely. I still can remember the sight of blood, dropping from his hands and blood on my shirt. It took sometime, before he could recover. Later I was told that that a group from another locality had attacked our area and were hurling bombs (called "peto" in bong slang) and soda bottles. In Kolkata, clashes between two groups in the mid 60s (this was also the time when naxalism began taking roots) had become a ritual. Kolkatans learnt to live with it.
Today I again stand before him. He can barely see. His can barely move. Those hands, once saved me from being crushed to death, can scarcely hold a glass. My mother-- I used to be so scared of her, can barely shout. My brother-- After his birth, when the nurse was going to take him for a wash, she accidentally dropped him. He hurt his head. He is what the world calls-mentally retarded.
My Park Circus house, once used to an endless stream of visitors, have only three trembling shadows moving about. The ears, which can barely hear, wait eagerly for the door bell to ring. My father sits in the balcony, trying to read the morning newspaper with a magnifying glass and my mother waits for the maidservant to come, cook and to talk to her. My brother does not like watching television anymore. Life has slipped him by. He looks around, when children play and people go to office. He comes in and sits down.
Life is passing me by too. My job, my struggle to survive, chasing a better life has finally taken its toll. In the race, I realize there is nothing much that I could gain. Neither I could breast the tape, nor could I get out of the track. I simply ran in the middle.
In the 70s, hounded by the naxalites, our family fled to Delhi. My father had refused to pay up the naxalites and they struck back by burning down his showroom-“Carpentry and Colour House.” My father had a furniture business, which once did well. He was a Leftist, supporter of Revolutionary Socialist Party. I still remember the day, when in 1967, the Left parties (then called Juktafront-now its called bam(left)front) came to power in Bengal. It was one summer afternoon, my father rushed in beaming.
“Juktafront jite gechche (United Front has won),” he shouted. “Lets go”, he asked me to dress up and then tied a red handkerchief round my collar and a red band on my wrist. I was his little Marxist. The taxi took us to Brigade Parade Ground. I had no clue to what was happening. I was happy because my father was. But the sudden roar of “Inqalab Zindabad” scared me. Say “Lal salam” my father put me up on his shoulders. I raised my fist and screamed, “inqalab zindabad.” As the red sun went behind that huge podium, flaming torches, thousands of them, lit up the approaching darkness. The reds had come to Bengal.
“Can you do something for my freedom fighters’ pension,” my father these days asks me in a shaky voice. He was in jail with the then RSP chief and the man who had contested Presidential poll, Tridib Chaudhury. I have not been able do anything, nor I think I can ever do anything. It’s the Marxists government, (for which he once dragged me to Maidan) sitting on his files. I know, he needs the money. And I know I cannot do anything. I send him, whatever I can.
But, I know, the man, who once stood tall, gave his children the best possible life and often said, “This head would never bow before anyone, I will never ask for a favour,” bleeds slowly.
Often the feeling of not being able to do anything, gnaws you. It gnaws you slowly. Sometime, I see myself bleeding. Only I can see the blood. I put my hand into it. No my hands do not turn red. They turn pale.
2 comments:
Awesome post! I can almost feel the pain -- rather the helplessness -- of watching life slip like sand from the fist.
Eugene O’Neill said,”The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers.”
Continue to lead your life fullest as possible-paint, dance and laugh because there is too much to weep about.
And the sweetest songs are the saddest ones on earth, no? Do sing, for you have a good voice too.
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