Autobiography Part 1

First Part of Autobiography


This is until the start of Going to School which is not included here. 

S Kamat, S-1, Sanohitra Apts., Dr Rego Bagh, Alto St. Cruz, Goa 403202.

Mob: 0 77219 23701  

Email: kamatsrinivas@hotmail.com

ITINERANT MEMORIES OF AN INDIAN AAM ADMI

PROLOGUE

Standing on the seashore at Miramar beach in Goa and watching the waves of the Arabian Sea crashing down on the sands with their own unique orchestrated crescendo, one’s mind drifted to a time far back in 1947, where a young man nearing his thirties, with the name of Madhav Narasimha Kamat, stood on the Karachi seafront watching the waves lapping up on the beach from the same Arabian Sea. Those were then tumultuous times on the Indian sub-continent and he was faced with a dilemma. He had been given the option of continuing his job with the Dutch Company, Van Rickem that he was working for in Karachi or move to Calcutta where they had a branch office. Van Rickem was in the newsprint business and was one of the largest suppliers of newsprint and other papers to India at that time. It was a good job that he had got after a long time and he did not want to let the job go. The larger dimension of the problem was the turmoil that was prevailing in India. There were talks of the country being split in two, with the smaller entity being called Pakistan which would be predominantly Muslim. The split would in geographical terms be actually three way. India would remain India having the majority of the country for the Hindus with a fair mixing of Muslims interspersed in it. While Pakistan would have two parts, one in the north-west of India with Karachi maybe becoming the capital being the largest city and preferred by the British, the colonial rulers. This would be called West Pakistan and there would be an East Pakistan when Bengal in the east would see again another split with West Bengal remaining with India and the predominantly Muslim East Bengal being spun off as East Pakistan. Many were the rumours that were floating around in Karachi of the partition, the more horrendous the better. It was not that Pakistan in the lands conceived for it did not have a Hindu population and this more true for East Pakistan with even the Nobel Laureate poet and writer from Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore having his ancestral house in what was to become East Pakistan. There were also rumours that all Muslims in India had been asked to leave India and go to Pakistan which had generated the demand that all Hindus in what was to become Pakistan should leave for India. With news filtering into Karachi, this would affect in a major way the provinces of Punjab where there was already talk of riots near about Lahore. Even in Karachi the Sindhis were fleeing the city to go to Bombay. 

My father had been in Karachi hardly a year and a half when he was faced with the disturbing choice of continuing with his job. He had arrived in Karachi from Bombay on the advice of his paternal uncle, Hanumantha Kamat, who had been there a couple of years as the representative of a book distributor that was headquartered in Bombay. Hanumantha had told my father that job opportunities were more in Karachi than in Bombay and if he did not get a job, he could always join him in the book trade. As for staying they could stay together since Hanumantha Kamat was still a bachelor. Based on these assurances my father had taken the steamship to Karachi as a bright young man to make his fortune. After a couple of months of knocking on some doors for a job, father had found that the job scene was almost the same in Bombay and he started working for his uncle in the book trade. The uncle and the nephew were almost of the same age with the uncle a couple of years older as used to happen in the large, older families. This was at least something to do and keep himself useful. News then came one day that there was this Dutch Co. which was looking for a clerk who had a fair knowledge of English and was at least a Matriculate. My father fitted the bill being a Matriculate and the next day spruced up, he was at the office of the Dutch Co. bright and early. The manager of the Co., Van Rickem must have been impressed with the young man standing in front of him, who spoke and wrote excellent English and obviously wanted a job so that he could do better in life. Result was that father was asked to join the next day at a princely salary of Rs. 25/- a month. My father immediately agreed and over the year or more that he spent in Van Rickem he got himself into their good books. This was the basis on which they were now offering him a choice to either remain in Karachi or go to Calcutta. Hanumantha Kamat had in the meanwhile anticipating the events that were likely to happen consequent of partition had left for Bombay a couple of months earlier. My father as was normal at those times decided to move to Calcutta since leaving what was likely to be Pakistan was more important. He had considered leaving the job and landing again in Bombay and saddling himself again on his elder brother, Harischandra but then thought that taking the offer of the job at Calcutta was better. He would at least have a job and that too in something which he was familiar with. So he told his manager at Van Rickem that he would take up the offer for the job at Calcutta but he would need about a month to join there. At that time my father did not know if in Calcutta there were at all any people from our community there – of the Gowd Saraswat Brahmin (GSB). And after winding up his affairs in Karachi expeditiously set sail again on a steamship back to Bombay. Looking back at the skyline of Karachi from the ship my father must have thought that in a few months maybe at most a year it would be a foreign country. The consolation was that when that happened he could at least tell people that he had been working abroad. Upon landing at Bombay he found more partition rumours among which was that there had been riots in Bengal near Calcutta where the border line between East Pakistan and West Bengal would be drawn and there was every likelihood that the riots would spread to Calcutta. Ignoring this he decided to move to Calcutta.

But before that he had something important to do. Living as a bachelor in Karachi and alone after his paternal uncle, Hanumantha had left was quite a problem what with having to cook for oneself. Since how much could you depend on outside food which was very different from what his palate was used to and then there was the question of wasting money also. And with all that and when his elder brother, Harishchandra, who was married by that time, and based in Bombay suggested that he get married and take his wife along with him to Calcutta. That sounded like a verypractical and acceptable idea and my father immediately agreed. Harishchandra (Hari to the family) also told him that there was some proposal that had come to the family home in Kundapur.  

Kundapur, just north of Mangalore, on the south-western coast of India was home to the Kamats. My father was the third among six brothers and three sisters. Two of the sisters were older than him. Back then there were big families. Even my mother’s family was big, with them being five sisters and three brothers. My mother was second in the seniority list. My paternal grandfather was not a man of very great means though my great grandfather was supposed to have been a tehsildar – a government functionary and in those days supposed to wield considerable influence in land and revenue matters. There was a family provision store in the town that was run by another arm of the family, by one of my father’s uncles, which was not large enough to support two large families; the uncle’s family being equally large. Though from stories heard from my father and uncles, it was my paternal grandfather who had contributed quite a lot to the provision store by being the first in Kundapur to directly get salt (common salt) by ship from Mumbai and also have pre-packaged goods in small weight measures rather than weighing out the smaller measures according to each customer’s need. Very progressive for a store in the early 1930’s setting the trend for today's departmental stores. There were also stories that before grandfather fell on bad times, he had a motorcar and made trips all the way up to Karwar about a hundred miles from Kundapur. There were no bridges then and the numerous rivers you would have to cross by ferries which qualified to it being an adventure. Hari was the eldest son in my father's family who was educated at St. Aloysius College in Mangalore, a premium institution and the only college in that part of the world. He did his B.A. from there and being the eldest had been sent to college with the expectation that he would help support the rest of the family. He did that as much as he could and in my opinion did a fairly good job at it. He was held in great respect by his brothers and sisters and his cousins as long as he kept his financial largesse operational but when in later life he went through bad times himself there were few of the family who went to his support, both in emotional and financial terms. We, Kamats, tend to be rather proud and maybe he rejected any overtures for emotional or financial support. After him was another brother, Keshav, who went and joined the army and died, one is not told whether in combat or what. After that was my father, Madhav and then another three – Vasudev, Pandurang and Jagannath. The youngest in the family was another girl, Sunita. For marriage, father went back to his Dakshin Kannada and married a young lass from Mangalore and brought her back with him to Calcutta. For my mother transferring from a small town atmosphere in Mangalore to a big city like Calcutta must have been traumatic. But she did cope and within five years bore three of us, my elder sister, Malini, me the middle one, Madhukar and my younger brother, Murli. We had a younger sister, Revathi born about 8 years after our younger brother in our family. That made six of us of the branch of the family in Calcutta. 

Among my father’s brothers, the eldest Hari would come and visit us at Calcutta almost twice a year until the late 1960’s, mid – 1970’s when he retired from his job as the India, Pakistan, Nepal and Ceylon representative of the British book publisher, William Collins & Co. We never saw Keshav because he had passed away by the time we were born but his wife Radha Akka we were told had come to stay, after her husband's death,  with us in Calcutta for some time when we were very small. The poor lady had lost her husband just a month or two after her marriage and our family considered it their responsibility to ease her problem and also look after her. I would guess being in Calcutta so far away from the environs of Dakshin Kannada must not have suited her and she moved back to her own family who used to stay in a place called Nagore, quite near Kundapur. She was given a sewing machine by our family, we were told, and stayed with her brothers and their family in their ancestral house there which had paddy fields and orchards surrounding the house. Quite up to the year 2000 we visited her at Nagore though towards her later years she was almost bed-ridden with gout and arthritis. They had a cattle shed adjacent to their main house and our children particularly our son would spend more time in the cattle shed than in the house when we would drop in, feeding the cows and playing with the calves. 

Vasudev was the brother just after my father and one recalls him coming to our home in Calcutta at odd hours. The reason for this was that he was with Indian Airlines as a Navigator or radio operator who assisted the pilots in the cockpit with the communication with the ground during flight. Those were the days when you had separate people for the radio communication and the pilot and co-pilot were not burdened with it. This was normal since sophistication in equipment would come much later. Therefore Vasudev would come to our home very occasionally late in the night. Memories are there of a car stopping and then a huge, burly and fair person dressed in a blue suit and with an overcoat on top of it and wearing one of those pilot caps come in. Very much cloak and dagger kind of stuff to our young and impressionable minds! Father would welcome him and mother would go in bustling around trying to find something to eat for him. By this time we children would be supposedly asleep but the fact was that we are all ears to hear what was going on in the other room. By the time we woke up in the morning Vasudev would be gone since he had to report for duty for the early morning flight. There would be times when he would have a layover at Calcutta in which case we children would get to see him properly and talk to him. He was a bluff, jovial man fond of his drink one recalls and would regale us with his in-flight experiences. But his profession being both mysterious and romantic, we would hold him in awe. Sometimes when he was in a good mood he would allow us to wear his gold braided pilot cap. By the 1960’s Indian Airlines dispensed with the post of the Navigator and he was retrenched. He settled down in Bombay and could find little to do since he was not trained in anything else but handling radio communication. 

Pandurang, the next brother fancied himself to be a carpetbagger kind of person who prided himself on his native intelligence to overcome his lack of education. He was also a matriculate like my father and had not wanted to pursue any higher studies. He had also come to Calcutta we were told to stay with us. He was employed with the book trade and was a rakish kind of character and from his own admission a man about town in the Calcutta of the 1950’s. He left Calcutta after a flaming row with my father, we were told which must have been because of his habits. He left for Bangalore and did well for himself retiring in the 1990’s as Director of India Book House. He married late in life after many a fling both in Calcutta and Bangalore and settled down when he was in his mid-50’s. He was quite the adventurous type and would tell us stories about how he had smuggled gold biscuits disguised as Toblerone chocolates, how he had funded partially the production of the super-hit regional film – Shankarabharanam. How many of these stories were true, one would never know. The Toblerone story could be true since those were the days when our Customs were not equipped with X-ray scanners and things with the Customs would work on contacts and the principle of – You scratch my back and I will scratch yours. Thus my uncle with plenty of contacts and not averse to sharing the cake, could have done some of the things that he said he did. In 1990 he moved to Pune and remained true to character. From him I must have picked up my love for driving since almost up to his 70’s he would be driving down from Pune to Bangalore or to Kundapur. As he became older he started becoming forgetful and would not know where he was. Early stage of Alzheimer's is what was suspected. An incident that happened with him on a visit to Kundapur from Pune, where he was then residing, was that though he was not allowed to go out without supervision, he had managed to slip out and take a bus to the shrine at Kolloor of the Goddess Moogambika. Upon reaching there he was seen to be asking the tourist taxi drivers whether they would take him to Malleswaram in Bangalore where he had his flat when he was settled there. In Kundapur our family was quite well known and added to that all of us as we grew older had the slight build and an almost complete bald head and it was easy to mistook one for the other. Anyway what happened to Panduranga at Kolloor was that one of the taxi drivers from Kundapur was there and he recognized that this old man, well dressed as usual, must be from the Kamat family. So he approached my uncle and said that he would take him to Bangalore and to come with him. By that time uncle had become like a child and if anybody promised to do what he wanted, he would obey him or follow him. So he got into this taxi and since Kundapur falls on the route to Bangalore the taxi driver brought uncle home and left him with the distraught family which was already panicking about uncle’s whereabouts. The illness most probably Alzheimer's that left him quite helpless and towards the last phase of his life he was put in an old age home in Bangalore. He passed away there without anyone from the family with him during his last moments at the time of death. So much for marrying at the age of 55! 

My father’s last brother was Jagannath who had taken the usual career route from Kundapur to Bombay and with the support of Hari, his eldest brother, had got himself educated and become a graduate. He had taken up the profession of a teacher and retired as Professor of English at Mulund College. He was quite the voluble guy cracking jokes as one remembers him when we first went to Mumbai on a visit in 1960. At that time he would come and take all of us children to see the sights in Bombay like Malabar Hill, Hanging Gardens, the Zoo and also buy us ice-cream and balloons making him our most favourite uncle for that time. An incident which happened in 1988/89 comes to mind when I wanted a loan from Canfin Homes (a subsidiary of Canara Bank) when I was working at Delhi but required the loan to buy a flat in Bangalore. I had gone to the Canfin Homes office and was received by the lady responsible for processing the loans courteously and since I had to make a number of visits to the office before the loan was sanctioned and finally disbursed, I found this lady extremely helpful. While complimenting her for the support on my last visit to the office, she happened to mention that I looked almost exactly like someone she knew in Bombay. It turned out that she was a student of my uncle, Jagannath at Mulund College and all the politeness and courtesy she had extended to me turned out to be not because of my charm but because she was a student of my uncle and I shared a remarkable resemblance with him! Upon retirement Jagannath stays at Bangalore where one of his sons is there while the other is based in Chennai.

                                                     The Early Years 

Coming back to father arriving at Calcutta with his newly-wed wife, they had no place to stay and for a few days they stayed with some bachelor acquaintances out of Kundapur and Bombay near Elgin Road. Quite quickly father found a place to stay in Harish Mukherjee Road adjoining Hazra Road. The Harish Mukherjee Road place is the first place that I can clearly remember as having stayed in. It was on the ground floor and had two rooms with one room opening onto the road. Both rooms had large windows and were quite comfortable. Leading off to the back was an open courtyard along one side of which was the toilet and bathroom and adjacent to a landing was the kitchen.   Our landlord was known to my father who happened to be in the paper line and used to trade in paper and newsprint. That happened to be the connection with which we were given the place to stay.

The house at Harish Mukherjee Road was on the ground floor and bang opposite some khatals – cowsheds, if you please, but with more buffalos than cows. This ensured for us not only a relatively uninterrupted and sometimes prioritized supply of milk but also occasionally the free delivery of the special high fat milk when any of the bovines had calved. With this my mother would make a sweet called pos, which was unimaginably fabulous, what with its spongy consistency and heavenly taste. Pos was made by dissolving sugar or jaggery in the milk and then boiling it. Once reduced it would be steamed to set like a idli in the milk vessel or in small bowls. The place that we occupied had its problems, I guess, what with being on the ground floor and my mother having to fend with three small children. All of us were born within a year or two of each other. The memories of the first place are not so much alive now, maybe because one was young and we had not lived too long in the place after one started to understand what was happening around oneself. 

But still there are some linked with the khatal and some others. Those who have had cattle being kept in their houses would be privy to the smell of cattle, their dung and urine as well as the sounds that they would make at all times of the day. But we were the privileged few who would get all this without owning a single head of cattle because of our proximity to the khatal. One particularly remembers apart from the pos, when the gwalas – the minders of the cattle or the milkmen would medicate their herd. Randomly and mostly in the afternoon, slack time for the gwalas since it was neither milking time or time for delivery of the milk, that one would be jolted from your nap or in whatever you were doing by the loud and frantic sounds of the bovine. Rushing to the window one would see the cow being held, front and back, by two or sometimes three gwalas and with one of them shoving a hollow bamboo about a foot and half long down the throat of the bovine. One end would be left outside the mouth of the shrieking animal now partially quietened with the bamboo down her throat, through which the medicine would be poured in. Once done the bamboo would be removed and the relieved animal that an instant ago was fearing for its life would prance up and down, one would believe in relative joy or relieved that it had got off lightly. Looking back one would be reminded of an analogy with this method to the time our father would catch us for the weekly tablespoon of castor oil that would be forced down our little throats. The spoonful would be put in our mouth and our noses pinched shut so that we were compelled to swallow the odious, gooey oil. It was of an indifferent taste, a bit bitter, a bit odd and more importantly cloying, refusing to go quickly down our gullet but going down millimeter by millimeter so that every inch of our throat was polluted with that insipid taste for the next half an hour or so. My father was a great believer in the stomach and its functioning. His thinking was that if you had a good clear stomach and an efficient digestive system there was nothing else that could stop you in life. Hence, the weekly torture with castor oil! 

All three of us, children, were small then and life revolved around things like toys, the occasional visit to the zoo and mischief generally. There was the time when I, the elder brother, ever the adventurous one and consequently get into all kinds of trouble, had put a brand new steel toy pistol down a drainpipe believing that the pistol would come out at the bottom where the pipe met the ground. There were a couple of unfortunate things associated with that assumption. The first was that the pistol belonged to my younger brother and it had been a birthday present. The second was that the drainpipe did not end at the ground level and connected directly to the sewers. Thus inspite of banging away by all of us on the pipe the pistol was not found. In fact maybe our exertions facilitated the faster movement of the pistol into the sewers. My brother was shattered and in tears. He was all of three then and it was natural for him to be distraught with the loss of the pistol that he had newly got. Memories tend to be hazy but the pistol from the looks of it not only looked real but going by the finish of gleaming, shiny stainless steel must have also been quite expensive. Mother had joined in our exertions to retrieve the pistol. She also had to console my brother by promising that she would have the jamadar – sweeper to come and open the sewers under the pipe to take out the gun. But all these I knew were false assurances and the gun was lost forever. The only thing that I had to look forward to was the punishment that would come from my father once he returned from office. Punishment meted out by my father was graded and dependent on the seriousness of the offence. Thus getting off lightly was putting out your palm and getting three raps of the foot-rule or wooden scale on it. In our family the saying that - Rule is a rule, otherwise a foot-rule - was quite common. Though the foot-rule  would sting your palm, leave it rosy and red and bring tears to your eyes, it was still acceptable considering the next level which was getting three raps on the back with a stick that my mother used for washing clothes. This would leave you with welts on your back for a least three days stinging all the while if it came in contact with anything apart from the ache and pain on the first day. The pain would not ease even when mother would massage oil on the welts. And then there was the necessity of having to sleep on your stomach until the welts had healed. 

I still recall an incident which happened at the Harish Mukherjee Road house where I had again received the maximum punishment so to speak. It was winter time. Those days were not the ones where you could switch on an electric geyser wait for a while and then have hot water on tap. Thus for the ritual Sunday hot water oil bath for which my father was a stickler apart from the weekly castor oil dose, we would heat up water in an old kerosene stove in the small courtyard near the rear courtyard of the house. The reason to move out to the courtyard was that it received a patch of sun, it being winter the warm sun helped to ease us from the cold air, at the time we were being massaged oil on our frail bodies or were massaging it in ourselves as we got older. This was for us boys while our elder sister was given the massage by our mother in the privacy of the bathroom. At those times the cooking was done with kerosene stoves which tended to emit fumes and in the confines of the kitchen to have two kerosene stoves emitting fumes was not desirable and hence the hot water stove was banished to the courtyard. We had a largish cylindrical aluminium vessel of capacity of about fifteen litres which was the regulation hot water vessel. This was the time when I had graduated to being allowed to massage the oil myself except for the back which my father would do for me. But my younger brother would still be massaged by my father. On that particular day my father had finished with my brother and had gone into the bathroom to fetch a bucket to transfer some of the hot water in it so that he could start my brother’s bath. As is usual in such situations after the massage of oil and sitting around close to each other, us boys would be prone to mischief. And we were hardly six and four at that time. In that spirit of fun, I had picked a stick that was lying around and after dipping it in the hot water, it was boiling by that time, sprinkled it on my brother. That fellow screamed to high heaven as if I had killed him! There was no doubt that it must have hurt him. My father at that moment was coming out with a bucket and mug in hand from the bathroom to fetch the hot water and I could see his face literally turning various shades of colour from purple to red and finally black. He was furious with anger when the sobbing brother of mine, told him what I had done. I could see in my father’s face that there would be no mercy. By this time my mother and elder sister had also come out into the courtyard hearing the little brother’s shrieks. My father without saying anything snatched the stick from my hand and gave me a couple of whacks with it. Not satisfied with that he dipped the mug into the hot water and splashed some of it on me. It was my turn to shriek since the hot water hurt more than the blows with the stick. I got burned on my chest and back. But from further pain I was saved by my mother who snatched the mug from my father’s hand. The enormity of what he had done dawned on my father after the momentary rage had passed and he went inside the house without saying a word. I carried the burn marks for about a week which a few loving applications of the faithful Burnol by my mother twice a day cured me completely. I knew that I had done wrong but the enormity of the punishment kept me away from playing with hot water after that for life. Coming back to the third level of punishment, would be a few lashings with your own leather belt. For the punishment to be meted, you would have to go in and get your own belt and give it to your parent, whoever was involved, and then accept the lashings with it. These would be given more on the legs and on the back. One must say that our parents were quite considerate in that matter to avoid other parts of the body where the bruises would be more visible. But these punishment were good since being structured one exactly knew what to expect if you had committed any mischief and it also set the tone for our later life where I at least did not commit too much nuisance for others.

It is best one thinks normally to get the negative things out of the way and then start on the happy memories. The Harish Mukherjee Road house had its share of happy moments. A household with three small children, two boys and a girl, one would believe would be full of hustle and bustle. My father during those times had a decent job and would get a reasonable salary as I would recall. It did not let us live a life of luxury but neither would one remember of having wanted something and not getting it. Sundays would be reserved for outings for the family and many a time we would go to the Victoria Memorial or the Alipore Zoo. This treat was made all the more memorable by getting to eat Magnolia ice-cream out of cups and wooden spoon-sticks. The fun was essentially to go out to an open place like the Maidan where there was enough space to play. More often than not we would take a plastic ball or a cricket bat and ball to play with. Father one would remember used to play with us and generally the family would have a whale of a time. The zoo visit was made more exciting in being able to see so many unusual birds and animals of different types. 

                                                The Alipore Zoo

It was tiring to go around the Alipore Zoo because of its sheer size for our little feet then. The zoo at that time was probably the best zoo in the country in terms of the diverse birds and animals it had as well as the general layout and maintenance of the zoo. Thus seeing the giraffe towering over us with its unusual skin, the zebras which you could not tell whether they were black or white and skittish to boot, the ferocious tigers and lions in their enclosures and when they roared it could be heard all over the zoo. There was particularly an old lion with a magnificent mane prone to bellowing and if we heard him while entering the zoo then we would pester father to take us to the carnivore enclosures first. Watching the lion roar was a sight in itself with it pulling in its stomach before letting fly with its open mouth. Then there was the elusive leopard which more often than not refused to display itself and we would have to be content with a glimpse of it having a nap on a higher platform that had been made for it inside its cage. If you happened to be in the carnivore enclosures at feeding time, you could see their keepers going on top of the cages and throwing in chunks of raw meat down. The cats would know as soon as the keeper arrived on top of the cage and mill around where the meat would fall and compete to pick up the first pieces. Once any of them had got a piece of meat, it would scurry away with it to one corner to have its fill in peace. The cats would rarely fight for food since in those times, one would guess that they were relatively well fed and the cats would know that they would get their share. 

Though the cat enclosures were smelly, the smelliest were the enclosures of the bears particularly the black sloth bear. They were also dirty and not good to look at. Similar was the reptile house where you rarely got to see the snake properly except for it to be lying coiled in a corner. 

The monkey and ape enclosures were always entertaining. People would give the monkeys and the larger apes bananas which they would solemnly peel, munch it and nonchalantly throw the skin away. And then ask for more! There were some mostly the smaller monkey variety which upon getting a banana would with an ear-piercing shriek make for the highest point in the cage and sitting there far far away from everyone, would eat the banana and after doing that come back for more. The apes would be fed also with groundnuts which also they would diligently crack the skin and eat the nuts inside. There was also an orangutan in the Alipore Zoo, and quite an attraction he was, who would most of the times or at least whenever we had gone would be hanging from the dead branch of a dead tree in his cage with just one hand. He would then balefully look at you with his appealing eyes as if you were the one on display and he had come to have a look at you!

The most exciting to watch were the birds particularly the birds of paradise and the cockatoo and parakeet enclosures. To see the latter would be to reset your ideas that the parrot family was only green birds with a red pointy beak. 

The most exciting thing to experience at the zoo was the elephant ride where you went up a ladder and got into a howdah with seating of three on each side of the elephant. Once seated and properly held the weaving undulating ride through the pathways of the zoo would start. One would think that as soon as the elephant started, you would fall off in fact with each step you would sway simultaneously in two directions, enough to be thrown off your perch almost ten feet off the ground. No one actually fell because there was a protective rail on the seat that locked you in and which you could hold on to for support. But after some time the elephant that used to carry us around became old and we were told that the other elephants at the zoo were not docile or manageable enough to carry people. That put paid to the wonderful experience of an elephant ride for many children. 

The visit to the zoo was good fun but sometimes marred by the fact that some visitors would tease the animals particularly the monkeys and get too close to some of the animal’s cages. Because of the latter the newspapers sometimes would carry news that one or the other over-enthusiastic visitor had got injured – scratched or mauled by the animals. We were not able to see any such incident when we visited the zoo. 

At the Alipore Zoo there used to be a restaurant. It looked like a genteel kind of place. And for us children from afar it looked like a very unreal or a dream world, what with waiters in smart white uniforms moving around with food trays stacked high with plates, glasses, chilled Coca Cola bottles and tea cups held high above their shoulders. And people sitting at the white painted cane deck chairs and tables laid out on the extended patio. We would watch all this sitting on the lawn which led off the patio while eating our ice-cream. Once or twice, one recalls, my father in a particularly expansive mood would take us to the restaurant and then we would sit at the chairs and tables waiting impatiently for our food to arrive. The restaurant made excellent sandwiches – vegetable and cheese, one recalls, which would be ordered for us along with those special, flaky thin potato chips and Horlicks or Ovaltine while Dad and Mom would have tea. The food at the restaurant run by Kwality’s was considered good but even then it closed down after a while. In later years one was told that it had opened again under new management.  

                                             *******************************

The other thing to look forward when you went for the Sunday outings was to buy balloons. Balloons would come in different shapes and sizes. It was actually the colours which made them more attractive. Choosing a red, yellow, green or blue balloon of your choice was a big decision that we small fellows were put to. Then you had the balloons which were pear shaped, narrow at the top and expanding to a bulbous curved bottom. Then there were the round ones which would be made out in the shape of an apple, pinched at the top as well as the bottom and then the knot tied to these extensions inside to retain the apple shape. Then there were variations of long ones which were almost double our heights. And others where the balloon-wala  or balloon seller would show off their workmanship by crafting a plaited surround to a round balloon and then stick some coloured papers for the eyes, nose and mouth to make a doll. Or twist the longer balloons into a rabbit or a monkey complete with face, ears even extended and a long tail. Thus just seeing a balloon-wala would set off the urge to buy a balloon amongst us. They would come to our locality carrying the balloons tied to a rod with the top wrapped with coir ropes which allowed other small toys like rattles and small kettledrums and castanets. The drums were in dark red colour making them all the more attractive to buy. 

However the balloon-walas near the Alipore Zoo and on the Maidan near the Victoria Memorial had more variety in the shapes of the balloons and also in the colours. So buying a balloon there was much more exciting and fun. In addition with the open space available we would get more place to play with the balloons. Games played would involve something like badminton with us patting the balloon across to each other while standing opposite. Care would be taken to rotate the balloons between what was bought for each of us for use in the game so that they would all age uniformly. Other games would be to tap the balloon over your head and run along tapping it all the while so that it would not hit the ground. This was good fun as long as there was no strong breeze blowing since then the balloon would just take off leaving you to watch it bumping along the ground since however, fast you ran, it would be still a tantalizing few feet away from your grasp. Sometimes, you could get lucky if an elder in its path would pick it up and return it to you. But if there were other children around and they happened to pick it up, then it would be difficult for you to get it back since nobody ever returned a balloon caught on the fly. The parents would not get involved in our balloon games. 

Moreover, they would be far away sitting where the rug had been spread. So when one got stuck into a problem like this many a time one has wistfully stood looking back at your parents far, far away and then looking ahead where a bunch of unknown children just like you, playing catch with your balloon. One could try to seek the return of your balloon from these other boys which would rarely happen. More often than not one would go back to the parents with tears of hurt and disappointment streaming down our cheeks. When asked by your father or mother what had happened. Through the tears you would recount the incident and then be told that – We told you to stay close and play near us.  Or – Forget about it. Be careful the next time. But the hurt remained of not having been done justice with and neither of having done justice to the balloon, in having played with it to your heart’s content. 

At other times while playing the balloons would get blown away and then come under a passing cycle or under a car and burst with a big bang. Here since there was a definite conclusion of the end of the balloon and there was nothing really that you could have done to prevent the event from happening, though the hurt would be there, it would be transient and the disappointment would also be lesser. 

With the bigger balloons like the long ones you could stand around in a make-shift circle and then throw the balloon among us by spinning it on its way in flight. The life of a balloon was at the maximum a couple of hours if it had not burst by then and then you would find it slowly getting softer by slow release of the air inside. Thus as much as a freshly bought balloon would be the harbinger of fun and games, a balloon with its air slowly going out would be the sign of gloom and doom and of good times gone by. This more so the next day when the balloon would have become somewhat wrinkled like an old man’s skin. You could of course try to blow it up again but then it would not be the same as a new balloon which if you ran your fingers along it hard enough it would squeak. 

As we were growing up after some time came the gas balloons. You could spot them from afar since the balloons would be flying about ten/twelve feet in the air and the white string attached to them would lead us to the balloon seller’s cart which had the gas cylinder. This was a squat, stocky cylinder with a conical top ending with a nozzle. It looked more like an armament shell casing and used to be also polished to a shiny gloss, the bottom portion like stainless steel and the top of brass. When the balloons would be filled with gas mostly acetylene, one thinks it was, you would hear a hissing sound of the gas released under pressure and also the dirty nauseous smell of it, poisonous, it was, they said.  You could not get the gas balloons everywhere but definitely at places like the Victoria Memorial and the Alipore Zoo and also at some of the more prominent parks or near the Lakes in South Calcutta where we moved later. These were smaller and mostly of the round shape and came with longer string attached to it so that you could go around with the balloon flying high above your head. The difficult part about the gas balloon was that if you were the least bit absentminded and loosen your fingers around the string, it would slip off and without even saying good-bye would fly up and up and away into the sky until it would become a dot against the sky like a passing airplane. The attraction of a gas balloon was that it would fly high above you but then you really could not play with it and had to be all the more careful while handling it content with the fact that you had a gas balloon in your hand. Thus the regular balloons filled with plain air were better since they gave you more joy as long as they remained intact. The gas balloons were pricier and you could get two of the regular balloons of the same size for the price of one gas balloon. Our parents were quite generous when it came to buying balloons and we more often than not got a balloon each and of the type we liked.   

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                                                  Moving To Tollygunge 

We moved to another house more like a flat in 1958 or thereabouts. For what reason I do not know, but maybe because the landlord was asking for more rent  or maybe because mother wanted a more secure house what with the open courtyard at Harish Mukherjee road anyone could jump into the house over the compound wall. It was the same landlord who gave us this other flat. It was on the first floor with the address being the heavy sounding 63/2 Pratapaditya Road. There were two rooms with a small verandah running along the width of both the rooms but with an access to it from only one room. The rooms opened onto a landing from which led off a work-area and the toilet – bathroom that had only a single door. If there was someone in the toilet you could use the bathroom. But if someone was in the bathroom you could not use the toilet.  Above the work-area and the small corridor leading to the bathroom was a quite extensive loft with two openings. We had to make a temporary partition to segregate the staircase from the landing and provide a door there. This made it into mother’s kitchen and our dining area as also another entrance for the flat apart from the main door. This other entrance was quite useful apart from allowing the maid servant to come in, you could slip out of it without anyone knowing or fetch some snacks from the para sweet-shop for guests who suddenly turned up. 

The flat was in a corner of south Calcutta and though it was geographically in the south, it did not qualify for the relatively ‘sophisticated’ nom de plume of South Calcutta. The reason for this was that the area bordered Tollygunge. Our locality or para, as it was called in those times, was just about a block wide with some hundred houses in it. It was a middle-class neighbourhood. Most of the people living there were holding down simple jobs or involved in small-businesses. At the southernmost end of our area was a railway over-bridge or a road under-bridge, call it what you will, over which the train tracks passed which provided the southern boundary of our para. This was the landmark known as the Tollygunge bridge and though serving as the border for our locality gave a certain ambiguity to the area that we lived in and what it should be called. The tram tracks would pass under the railway over-bridge going on to the Tollygunje terminus on one end at the other end plied up to the centre of the city - Esplanade. After the trams came out from under the bridge on the main road, which was called Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road,  of our locality towards Esplanade  they would travel on a central verge, for both the up and down tracks, until Kalighat when they would merge with the regular road surface. Because of the central verge for the trams the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road in front of our locality where the main traffic plied was very wide with segregated roads for up and down traffic on both sides of this central verge. Pratapaditya Road was an off-shoot of this main road and carried relatively lesser traffic. Opposite to our road on the other side of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road was the road that led off to the South Calcutta lakes starting with the Choto (Little) Lake continuing thereafter into the Bodo (Bigger) Lake. 

Just across there we also had a functional children’s park with a swimming pool where they would fill up water only during the summer. The children of the localities adjoining to the park and particularly those from the near-by slums would have a rip-roaring time during the summer with fun and games in the water. It was no matter that the water was dirty but then for children it did not really matter and they enjoyed it none the less. We would rarely go, maybe just once or twice for the entire time that we stayed there, mostly because none of us knew swimming. I remember the first visit to the pool when we had been taken by Father. Father knew swimming and after a few unsuccessful attempts to teach us the basic routine, he went off down the length of the pool and had a great time. The pool was relatively large, oval in shape and about 20-25 meters in length and about 15-20 meters in width at its widest. At other times when there was no water in the pool we would play tennis or rubber ball cricket in the central part of the pool with the batsman on the higher side of the sloping floor. Running around the pool was also great fun with your hands outstretched at your sides and make-believe like you were a plane and go up and down the sloping sides of the pool and circumnavigate it. 

The children’s park  also had two sets of swings one fixed almost 6-8 feet off the ground which had 2 swings and the other higher at about 12 feet had 4 swings. Both sets of swings swung off iron chains and a wooden seat. The smaller was for the small children while the bigger one was for the older children. Parents or elders would monitor the children on the smaller swings but on the higher swing it was freedom country. The bigger children from the slums would have a great time, going as high as the structure allowed, some ending up at almost being horizontal to the ground at the highest point. It is not that we did not do it but not too often since it was scary. The slum children in contrast would go at it with gay abandon and in trying to compete against each other. This led to some accidents with some falling off at the highest point and getting hurt. There were others who would jump off the swing at the maximum point of the swing to land feet first. Every time it did not work as the children had thought and they would land on an innocent bystander passing in the front. Not only that the empty swing on its return path would sometimes go off-track and hit the adjacent swing which could have a child on it. The swings were set up near the railings of the park and more often than not you would have boys or even men passing by on the road there to stop and stand beyond the railings gawk at the girls if they were on the big swings. These boys and men would wait until the girl's frocks would go up and lookup their legs. But what they would be able to see was not understood since in those days the underwear of the girls used to be the long type that would stretch up almost to their knees. Thus you had the girls enjoy the swings mostly in the sitting position except for some of the daring ones. Even the girls while sitting would have to tuck in their frocks or skirts beneath their legs since the swing while in its upward or downward path would blow the skirts up. This was required since the Peeping Toms sometimes would stand in front of the swings if the girls were on it. So generally you would have the little girls upto about 10 years or so frequenting the swings. But overall everybody had a great time. The timings for the swings to be used was generally 6-9am and then again from 3-5pm or when dusk set in depending on the time of the year. At other times the swings would be drawn to the support structure and locked down with a chain. But over time the maintenance of the swings went to the dogs and sometimes you would find the chain of a particular swing broken or the swing seat would be damaged. Ultimately a time came when you found only the support structure with no swings in between. 

The park had a huge slip almost 10-12 feet high which was of concrete and with the slip surface finished with smooth mosaic chips. Apart from this there was a smaller slip about 6-8 feet high for the little children made of metal. As we grew up the climbing up on the stairs to the top of the slip became quite boring and we would run up the smooth slip surface, get to the top and slide down. The smaller slip was also put to this mechanism by some of the grown-up boys and the slip surface made mostly of thin iron sheets gave way and broke. This left the smaller children without a slip that they could easily use. They would have to wait to grow older and come to the big slip. 

The park was good relaxation for the children and also for adults who on public holidays and Sundays would throng the park with their small children. A diversionary activity from their regular routine for everyone. Children away from their games on the roads to the release of their pent-up energy in the safer environs of the park. For the older people to come away from the cooped up confines of their homes to the open park and see their children enjoy themselves in the open. 

Coming back to Pratapaditya Road, it was not genteel in that sense but then closer to the mid-60’s it saw the arrival of some families who bought into existing houses. These were lawyers and doctors who moved into our para. The frontage of the houses that these families bought and their general condition was rehabilitated compared to the generally drab two or three storied houses that existed in the locality. On the north beyond our locality was Lal Para (or Red Locality - No! No need to mistake it for a red-light area since the name was more derived from the houses in that locality being painted predominantly red). On the eastern side was one of the main arterial roads of Calcutta, the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road as mentioned earlier. On the west, essentially south-west were the railway tracks which took a curve there and adjoining it were some bustees - slums.

There was always the rivalry in any matter with those who resided in the north of the city and those residing in the newer south. The north Calcuttans were the traditionally rich with wealth running in the family for multiple generations and who had seen the horse carriages in their stables being replaced by the automobiles – the Buicks, the Chevrolets, the Bentleys, the Cadillacs and maybe an occasional Rolls Royce and then progressively moving to the staid Morris Minor, the Baby Hindustan and then finally the work-horse Ambassador. Their houses were designed for comfort and privacy. Their hospitality when considered to be proffered to the deserving guest was the story of legend. In contrast up until the late 1970’s south Calcutta was considered the place where people with the new money stayed, generally called upstarts by the north Calcuttans in all matters and mostly about culture. Culture that was essential and the life-blood to the Bengali bhadralok was the monopoly of the north. All the theaters that staged plays or classical music concerts were held in the north. Even the famed red-light district of Calcutta, Sonagachi was in the north. That much for culture! North Calcutta tended to be more congested while the south was more open then with wider streets and more greener. However, as time passed and the money with the North Calcutta bhadralok started to fade away, the South Calcutta people now comprising of members of the government bureaucracy, government contractors, professionals and the like started to come into the money and thus the culture and sophistication balance shifted southwards and has remained so even in recent times. The shops and markets tended to be a bit bigger and more comfortable in the South than in the North. Thus over time the North like an aging dowager retreated into the background and found solace in the fact that the theater district still remained there and the seats of higher learning like the Calcutta University was in the North. The upstart South like a young damsel dressed in her best finery would woo those who came to the city in later times and have them settle down with her with the promise of more comfortable roads, better shopping and newer and more modern houses. However, lately one is told that the city dynamics set off by irregular but profitable economic activity has effectively dispensed with the Calcuttans age-old North – South divide and has had the city grow in all directions. The mall culture has made shopping available in a standard format in every locality and therefore the exclusiveness of availability of one or the other thing in any particular locality is a thing of the past now. However, exceptions remain like hoary institutions like theater houses and special eating places and sweet-shops like K C Das and others which remain in their old locations, though substantially modernized. They, however, dispense through their franchisees their goodies in the newer localities.

Both the houses on Harish Mukherjee Road and Pratapaditya Road for us were on rent in what seemed later as abysmally low amounts. But at the time that my father was paying the monthly rent in the 1950’s and 60’s it would have seemed to be quite reasonable. Because of the pitiful amounts that the landlords got, they would do no maintenance or repair works and the state of the buildings progressively deteriorated. What would be provided by the landlord was the basic supply of water through an electric pump which provided municipal water on tap in the various dwellings of the multi-storied building, typically not exceeding four stories at that time. This was the typical scene among the various dwellings in the city then. Some tenants would make changes and modifications to their dwellings sometimes with or without the consent of the landlord. The way it went was that as long as you paid the rent regularly, the landlord would not bother you and maybe even look the other way if you made any changes to the dwelling. Though the landlord would have no hope of getting back the place, he would remain satisfied that at least some interest was being taken to make the dwelling somewhat better.  I will use the word house for the premises that we stayed in. Since it was not like an independent house but just a few rooms in a multistoried building. The term flat was not in common use then as it is now to define a dwelling. Particularly in metropolitan cities like Calcutta where multistoried buildings were sectioned off according to need, necessity and convenience into multi-dwelling structures. The concept of the flat evolved in Bombay by virtue of necessity and then spread around the cities and towns of India from the late 1970’s or ‘80’s. 

In the early 1980’s when I returned to Calcutta to work with Keltron, we still had the Pratapaditya Road place for which we were paying a princely rent of Rs. 120/- per month with the area being at least 1000 sq. feet. We stayed in the house for a month or so before moving to another first floor house in Lal Para which had four rooms, a dining area, a verandah, a largish kitchen and the usual toilet and bathroom with the rent being Rs. 1000/- for about 1500 sq. feet. We hung on to the Pratapaditya Road place still, subletting it out to a person from our community who was working in a bank and had come for the first time to Calcutta with his small family - wife and infant son. In 1984 after my father’s death we left Calcutta and the Pratapaditya Road place had been vacated, when I went across to the office of the landlord in a lane off Brabourne Road to return him the keys. The old man, K C Paul who had known my father was no more and the landlord’s son was there along with an old retainer who had known my father. The landlord’s son was surprised that I was just coming in and giving the key like that. He said no one would do that today. I was aware that any tenant would expect the landlord to give them a substantial lump-sum for giving vacant possession somewhat like the pagree system prevailing then in Bombay. But I told him what his family particularly his father had done for my father, we could not forget since not one but two houses had been given to us in succession so that we could have a roof over our heads. I also did not recall of the landlord ever pestering us to pay the rent though in later years we were quite prompt. So the least I could do was come in and thank him as the representative of his father and return him the keys. The landlord’s son was emotionally moved and said that he would never forget a Kamat from that time onwards. To part amicably and as much as possible as friends has always been my motto in life.  

The bustees - slums adjoining our para were the source of the locality for the maids who would come in to do the house work and also a haven for unsavoury characters like wagon-breakers and the like. The railway tracks provided a livelihood to the more enterprising of the youth in the slums since with the trains slowing down in that stretch because of the curve in the tracks, these youth would climb on to the open wagons carrying coal and throw the large chunks off by the side of the tracks. It was an organized racket and there was a support team on the ground by the rail-tracks to carry away the coal chunks. Coal was in demand then and fetched a good price since this was the era before LPG and most of the houses in Calcutta used coal in their chullas –portable ovens - as cooking fuel. Thus a market being assured for the coal and with no jobs, this was one of the easier avenues to make money for the bustee youth. As time progressed the pilfering of coal was expanded to cover other items which were in short supply and fetched a remunerative price like steel rods and rice. The wagon-breakers had in the meanwhile improved upon their skills and also moved up higher in the scale of daring and audacity. Steel rods were carried in open wagons like the coal but they were long and heavy which required that the train should stop and there were more hands required to off-load them from the wagons. Therefore what these wagon-breakers used to do was throw some obstacle across the tracks which made the train stop and then swarms of these youth would jump onto the open wagons and loot whatever it was that was their current fancy. This was also the method to loot rice bags which would be carried in covered wagons that were locked and sealed. The train was made to stop so that these miscreants could break the locks on the rice wagons and then pilfer as many bags as they could before being intercepted by the engine driver or guard. Many a time these railway personnel were assaulted by the wagon-breakers which led to the RPF – Railway Protection Force being deployed to not only travel with the goods trains to ensure security but have armed constables of the RPF patrolling the stretches of the railway tracks, like ours, that were prone to wagon-breaking activity. This was expected to reduce this activity but in its own way as is true in India it resulted in corruption. The RPF constables on duty were not averse to making some money on the side and neither were the engine drivers or the guard for stopping the trains at specific locations under one pretext or other. Thus as the size of the cake became larger everyone could have their share since the losses were put on the head of a government entity like the Railways or on the account of the consignee of the goods. The wagon-breaking gangs had become bigger and more organized by then and in some of the areas like Budge Budge, a terminal for goods trains, where rewards being higher, they also had political patronage. The equation here was simple, the politicians needed muscle-power for their work while the miscreants wanted protection from the law. 

These were the 60’s and early 70’s of the 20th century in Bengal which was as the rest of the country seeing turmoil with food shortages, industry not doing well and rampant unemployment. Thus it was every individual for himself and pray to God that you did not get nabbed by the police. For rice there was inter-district movement control and crossing the border of a district could get you a better price, a difference of maybe a rupee or two. But even for that one would find women and young children taking unimaginable risks with their lives to transport some five or ten kilos of rice across the district borders. These rice smugglers, if one could call them that, would hop onto trains keeping a look-out for the police or the authorities and move from one compartment to another of the suburban passenger or EMU trains. They in the manner of the ticketless travelers would avoid a compartment if the ticket checker was there, here it was the police or the other food inspectors that these rice smugglers would have to more avoid. In the regular trains you would find them squeezing under the compartment where the batteries were kept or where the special springs of the compartment were mounted and under it or hold desperately onto any extension of the compartment while balancing themselves on the buffers or any minute space where they could get a foothold between two compartments. With the trains moving at speed the task of remaining on board and that too with the load of a rice bundle which was either carried separately by the children or concealed in the sari by the women, was a tremendous achievement since the part of the compartment that they were standing upon or clinging to at that point, would have all the possible degrees of motion. While concealing oneself in the battery enclosure or over the leaf-springs, one had the risk of the closeness of the rails when in motion particularly while moving over the crossover points of the track, there was the added chance of acid spills from the batteries or electrocution if hands strayed to the terminals of the batteries. These hapless people did all this because they seemed to be blissfully unaware of the consequences of their actions and were not conscious that death was but a hairsbreadth away. To them the five or ten rupees margin that the rice would bring for the load that they were carrying predominated since back at home it was going to be the difference between a mouthful of food and starvation. The more trips you made or more the family members involved in the smuggling activity the more money they could make as a family. There was many a fatality among these smugglers while involved in this activity but it seemed for them the needs of the family were more important than the loss of a single life.

It was a tough life in those times for everyone since the country was going through a shortage of food and general rationing was the order of the day. Everything was supplied through the ration system or the public distribution system - rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene. Later this was expanded to vegetable oil and certain other items. One recalls that in those years for baby food there was a major scarcity. And it would be supplied only upon production of a ration card and the baby’s birth certificate to prove that you did have a baby in the family. But the staple of the rations or the public distribution system were the Big 4 items - rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene. The rice and wheat available through the ration system was barely edible.  If you would find long queues at the ration shops you could be sure that better quality goods had arrived. On the other hand at times we would get rice imported from Thailand which one could hardly even put in one’s mouth and we would suspect that it was not even fit for consumption by cattle or pigs. But here they would give it us to eat and if we protested then we would be threatened that even that may not be available in the future. As for wheat we would wait for the white long grain from the Punjab which was rare and what we would have to make do was the red small grain variety from which the chapattis that were made would turn out almost black. But then the government and the ration shops would put out propaganda that the red wheat was more nutritious than the white variety. Sugar was an irregular visitor at the ration shops and again when it was available you would find long queues snaking around for almost a kilometer with everyone waiting to sweeten their tooth. In Calcutta with the Bengalis already renowned for their sweet tooth rushing to the ration shop upon news that sugar had arrived was very normal. The drawal of the rations was weekly and though you could carry over your allotted quantity into the next week or exceptionally up to a month. This required a written explanation to be given explaining the circumstances rendering why you were unable to pick up your rations for this period. If a particular item like sugar or wheat was not available in a week then the shop would mark it on the card and you could collect it later. The quantity of rations supplied was generally enough and for our family we did not feel at any time that we needed more. But what we did hope and pray was that the quality of the commodities should improve. In the open market you would get these same commodities but the prices were far too high but the quality was definitely better. There was also an organized black-market in these items and they would be available for the asking if you had the right kind of money to pay for it. 

The food shortage in the country had led the government to recommend austerity in all functions linked with food like weddings. The guest list for such functions was limited to not more than a hundred persons. But some of the state governments in the country went a step further. Like in West Bengal, the Bengali who generally thrives on food and considers it an insult not to be able to feed his guests properly, was asked to limit the guests to sixty. It was not only that but the then incumbent chief minister, P C Sen from the Congress, suggested that the menu for the wedding repast should be recast. Where there would be normally three courses of fish and mutton at the minimum for a wedding repast the recommendation by the chief minister was that it should be limited to just one course of either fish or mutton and instead of fish fry or mutton cutlets, guests could be served with cutlets made out of plantains. This trend in the adaptation of the wedding feast which formed the backbone of Bengali cuisine spawned in its own way many new dishes. While in France the ‘nouvelle cuisine’ came into fashion because of the people initiating the change to something more novel, attractive and nutritious, in Bengal it was sheer necessity which initiated a new adaptive cuisine. But this was not to stay for long since even at the height of the regulation people found ways and means to avoid the restrictions by having an austere wedding reception but on another day guests would be treated to the regular feast, mostly held in the home of the host. 

Those days the cooking fuel that Calcuttans used was mostly coal. This was before the ubiquitous red LPG cylinder made its home in the corner of most Indian kitchens. Kerosene was an option but proved expensive and after being brought under the public distribution system supplies tended to be irregular. Coal was bought from the neighbourhood coal store which would also stock charcoal, firewood and kerosene. Those were the days before kerosene went into the public distribution or rationing system to be supplied a specific quantity each week against the ration card at regulated prices. With this the supply of kerosene became more irregular and prone to rampant black-marketing and diversion to the free market. The coal would generally come in large size chunks and then would have to be broken into smaller pieces before they were put to use in the oven – chullah.  This would be actually like a metal bucket  with a cut-out incised about an inch off the floor. The metal bucket would be slapped with mud and shaped particularly the open top. Here the edges would be made out to four soft undulating curves for vessels to be kept on top like you would have seen on an open hearth. Towards the bottom of the chullah would be some metal rods inserted from the sides to form a grill. This was to hold the bite size pieces of coal that would be put from the top. The chullah came essentially in two sizes depending on how much heat would be required for cooking. A large family would buy the bigger one that we also used. But those with fewer members like newly married couples or old people staying alone would buy the smaller chullah which was good enough for two or three people. It was also lighter to carry it back to the kitchen from wherever you had placed it for lighting. The manner of lighting up a chullah was like a special skill. Just the pieces of coal were not enough and what you needed was cow-dung cakes – ghutes which would light up easier. A ghute sloshed with kerosene or some pieces of paper kept in the slot at the bottom of the chullah when lit would start off the process. The way to set up the chullah was to start by keeping broken pieces of ghutes on the grill inside the chullah. And then alternately layering it with pieces of coal, then a mix of coal pieces and ghute and building it up right to the top with the topmost layer being just coal pieces. The first layer of broken ghutes on the grill would catch fire first and they in turn would set fire to the coal pieces. For these to burn it would take a little longer. But then the process of lighting the chullah was a very messy affair since smoke would be emitted in copious amounts. Thus those who lived in the ground floor or for independent houses who had their kitchens in the ground floor, the place to keep the smoking chullah was out in the yard if there was space. For those staying in the higher floors the place to keep was either a verandah or near a big window or a well-ventilated passage near the kitchen or in the bathroom with all the windows kept open. The emission of white smoke from the lighting chullah would last for at least half an hour and all this smoke would waft around particularly into the homes of those staying on the higher floors. Many a fight would have started on positioning the smoking chullah which caused inconvenience for the higher floor residents. But this was a common enough thing and people resolved these differences quite quickly. Since after all it was something that was required to cook food and put in your stomach which was a concern for everyone. Thus early morning or late evening if you happened to go up to the terrace of your building in Calcutta in those times, then you find the white plumes of smoke rising throughout the neighbourhood, some independent rising straight through to the sky, other plumes hugging the buildings as they made their way up. A city of 3 million people at that time in Calcutta putting this kind of emission two times in a day into the skies gives you the scale of pollution that was involved. At that time there was little consciousness about saving the environment and actually there was no choice for the average citizen but use coal as a cooking fuel since but for kerosene nothing else was available and firewood was not convenient for most homes. At the end of about 20 minutes to half an hour the chullah would be bright red on the top with the burning coal embers. This would last you for about an hour to one and a half hour for cooking and if you needed the chullah for more time all you had to do was to put pieces of coal on the top and let it light up. Within 10 minutes or so you would have the chullah bright red again and allow you to cook at least for an hour more. 

For us at home the coal would be brought mostly once a month and stored in an overhead loft that was there on one side of our kitchen. The exception to this was during the rains when about two months stocks would be brought in considering that the coal at the shop exposed to the rains would be wet and harder to light up. During the winter the warmth given by a burning chullah was welcome and many a time we would come and sit at the back of the chullah in our kitchen clasping a steel glass of tea with both palms to ward off the chill. As mentioned earlier the coal would be stored in our loft. The ghute would also be stored in another section of the same loft which was also accessible from the front like the coal so that daily supplies could be picked easily. When stocks of the coal or ghute would be depleting then I or my brother would have to clamber into the loft and bring the remaining stock to the front so that mother could reach out for it easily standing on a chair. At one point of time to make space for ourselves we did consider the option of cleaning out the loft and making it like a room for one of us, actually me. But then we gave up the idea considering that the height of the loft was not more than about four feet which would not allow for comfortable use of the loft space. Added to that there were the practical hassles of climbing up and down and maybe going to the loo in the night. 

Talking about the loo, the chullah would create complications for using the only toilet and bathroom that we had. Mother would get up early and light up the chullah and set it in the bathroom with the door closed and the open the windows for it to light up. Given the 20 minutes it would need to go through the smoke cycle, if anyone had to go to the toilet at that time it was a big problem. Like if you took the risk and went into the bathroom at the beginning of the cycle the acrid smoke would make your eyes water and it would be torture to remain inside since breathing also would be difficult once the smoke from the chullah picked up in volume. All this after closing the door between the toilet and the bathroom. If you went into the bathroom towards the end of the chullah cycle then the smoke would be thinner and blue in colour which apart from the burning in the eyes would give you a more difficult time to breathe since maybe there was more carbon monoxide in the emissions than at the beginning cycle. In both cases you would come out of the toilet after doing what you had to do there with your eyes red and gasping for breath, more of it if you went at the end of the cycle. My experience was that sometimes you would feel dizzy with the smoke and try as much to remain inside with your head tucked into your knees and breathing through your bunyan – undershirt. Sometimes a solution would be made by bringing out the chullah from the bathroom into the small corridor leading to the bathroom which on one side had a window for the smoke to go out. Having one toilet-bathroom for four persons would create all kinds of humorous situations since my elder sister would have to leave by 7.30am to reach school by 8.30am, my brother and I would have to leave home by 8am to reach school by 9am. Father was the last to leave at about 9.30am and only then mother would have peace lasting until late afternoon until we would start streaming home with father reaching last in the night by about 8pm. The morning schedule as is normal for families with so many members like ours would not operate like clockwork and if someone had to reach earlier that day for school we would have to juggle. Thus if someone was to go have a bath and someone else had to urgently go to the toilet then we had situations when it was an all-male cast that one of us would be in the toilet while the other would be in the bath, The person in the toilet would have to remain there until the person having his bath had finished. This led to a lot of arguments and this arrangement was resorted to in completely unavoidable circumstances. In winter the complications were manifold what with hot water being required for a bath since Calcutta could get pretty cold leading up to December – January. We had a copper boiler to heat water but then someone would have to fill it up first with cold water and then mother would have to light it up. Then there were problems since it required charcoal to light up and we would have to stock up on that, an inventory of a different kind than the coal and the ghutes. The copper boiler was placed near the window of the corridor leading to the bathroom so that you could take the hot water in easily. As a back-up system we had an aluminum large open vessel which could hold about 10 litres and mother  would have to juggle her cooking schedule to put it on the chullah to heat water. We always thought that the hot water from the copper boiler was always hotter than from the aluminum vessel. Maybe because in our amateurish scientific knowledge, we believed that copper was the better heat conductor! All in all it was a fun time that we had with one toilet-bathroom, one copper boiler and one chullah. Once LPG came the chullah was dispensed with and cooking became a lot cleaner and there was less stocking to do of the coal and the ghute. 

Food for us Konkani people was a passion and with whatever money we had, we contrived to enjoy the most. Our diet was essentially vegetarian with the weekly splurge on fish or chicken. Mutton was a no-no in the house since mother would have none of it in her kitchen. The other meats were also banned at home. Since we came from the coast the preference for fish was normal. But in the early years it was difficult to get sea-fish in Calcutta except from Hogg Market in the New Market area. There was a market near where we stayed called Southern Market and there you would get all the normal vegetables, provisions, milk products like butter and even processed cheese and obviously fish and mutton, since we were in Calcutta. The fish was limited to what the Bengalis ate that is the fresh water fish and none of us had developed a taste for it because of the large number of small bones in it. Though you would get prawns. For sea fish the nearest market where you could take a chance was Lake Market. This was on the way to the St.Mary’s school to which we all went and was about 20 minutes to about half an hour walking distance from our house. If you were lucky, you could maybe get some pomfret or seerfish on any particular day and more so over the week-end. A further market where the chances of finding sea fish more was at the Gariahat market which was about 30 minutes by bus or tram from our house and nearer than New Market. But here again supplies of sea fish were not assured. We are told now that even the Bengalis have taken to sea fish and the prices have soared. When we were there in the initial years the sea fish was always priced much lower than fresh water fish because of the lack of demand for sea fish. We liked this price differential when sea fish was available at a lower price! If we had guests at home then fish was compulsory for the meal though if it was not available chicken would have to be bought. 

Hogg Market was the market at the back of New Market which sold mainly fish, meat and meat products. My father would take me sometimes on a Sunday to buy fish. We would get on a tram which would trundle up to the Esplanade terminus. The stop before that was for Lindsay Street from which you could go to New Market. We would get off at this stop and crossing Chowringhee make our way to New Market and through it to the Hogg Market. Chowringhee, the wide boulevard of Calcutta would run from Esplanade up to the Birla Planetarium  on the Lower Circular Road crossing which after that became Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road. Chowringhee and New Market on Sunday mornings at that time, about 8.00 – 8.30 in the morning, would be deserted compared to other days except for enterprising people on 'Mission Fish' like me and my father. 

But when you got to Hogg Market there was a dramatic change. Even before you entered the market from afar you could hear the din and bustle of the busy market. Once you got in the number of people around surprised you. It seemed that all of those who had got up from sleep on that Sunday morning were at the Hogg Market. The front stalls were of meat and meat products of which I do not remember too much since we hardly ever bought meat. We skirted these shops and headed directly to the fish section. Hogg Market was by itself quite spacious and with high raftered ceilings covered with glass panels which let in light. Apart from this there were lights dispersed across the hall in the fish section. Raised counters with white marble tops covered the entire hall. There was a lot of water around on the floor which would run off through drains provided for this very purpose. The hall smelt of fish no doubt but it looked bright and clean because of the lights and the marble tops. On each of these counters you would have fish laid out of all types and sizes. There would be some large fish cut up with the open parts covered with blood showing that the fish was absolutely fresh. 

We would make our way to the counter of the Goan fish-vendor called D’Souza. He was a burly sort, fair of face, heavy jowled with pink cheeks wearing an apron over his shirt. On his head was one of those white baker’s caps with a one inch band and the top of the cap flopping down as if it was a cake that had never risen. I remember him always with a smile on his face. Seeing father he would raise his left hand, considering that the right hand always had a cleaver in it, and say, ‘Good morning, Mr Kamat. And what are we buying today?’ In the first or second visits I was always scared of Mr D’Souza and preferred to hide behind father. But afterwards I was freer and as we arrived Mr D’Souza would tousle my hair and ask me, ‘How is the little Kamat today?’ I would mumble something leading Mr D’Souza to break into peals of laughter leading me to feel all the more shy. The later we reached Mr D’Souza’s apron would be stained with blood and his baker’s cap would flop all the more. The smile and laughter would also be forced. My father and Mr D’Souza would talk about which fish was available and I remember buying at different times the range of sea-fish from pomfret to seerfish to ladyfish. My father and Mr D’Souza would talk in some different Konkani which my ears would find funny and I could hardly understand it. My father would then tell me it was the Konkani that they spoke in Goa. For us Mr D’Souza would give special service and reach under his counter into crates there filled with ice and take out the fish that we wanted. The fish that we got was always fresh and we also got priority on anything that was good and that had come in first at the beginning of its season like mackerels sometimes. 

Occasionally the talk would veer to Mantha with Mr D’Souza enquiring about him with father. Then father told me that it was actually Mantha who had introduced him to Mr D’Souza, who also happened to be the fish supplier to the Carlton Hotel where Mantha would stay whenever he came to Calcutta. Sea fish would be available at the Hogg market because being centrally located near the major hotels which got foreigners as guests, the sea fish was in demand, because it had less bones. The central part of the city near the market was also where the majority of the Christian community stayed and who favoured sea-fish. The sea fish would come as Mr D’Souza would tell us from Puri and sometimes even from Bombay. The fish would be packed in ice and sent across by train or truck but coming all the way from Bombay on the other side of the country was I thought a bit far-fetched. After a few years father had problems with his job and we stopped going to Hogg Market since it fell out of father’s priority on Sundays and also it was quite expensive. In later years when I started working in Calcutta and we had some money in hand, sea fish was available in markets nearer to where we lived like Lake Market and a little further at Gariahat Market. Thus going to Hogg Market dropped out and later we heard that Mr D’Souza had also passed away and with his sons not interested to run the fish business, there was no more the Goan presence at Hogg Market.  

For buying chicken Father would go to a shop in Jadu Babu Bazaar on Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road where they would slaughter the chickens and give it you ‘fresh and bloody’.  The shop was about 20 – 30 minutes from our house by tram or bus. By the time I was going on to be about ten years father would insist that I accompany him when he would have to go buy chicken. I would not like that since the process was something that was nauseous to me. The whole thing would start after we reached the shop when the man there, would reach into a cane basket at the back of the shop and bring out a squawking bird through the opening on the basket. He would hold it up by the legs. He would then bring it up to father and would push the feathers on the breast away to show how soft and tender the meat would be. We would always buy a chicken that was about a kilogram to one and a quarter kilogram in weight because the meat from such sized birds was the most succulent. The shop was actually raised off the ground by about four feet with the space below filled with large, round cane baskets full of chickens. There would be an awful stink there of the birds and their droppings. The next thing that the man would do once father approved the bird was to lay it out on a wooden block and chop its head off. The bird would be squawking all the while until its head was severed. Then he would either throw it away to the back of the shop for it to finish its death throes or hold it down on the block until it stopped twitching. The next thing to do was to rip off the feathers until the pink flesh was exposed and then the man would use a cleaver to split the bird through the middle then clean it up from inside throwing away all the offal and the muck and then make pieces for you of the sizes that you wanted. Once that was done the pieces would be put in a black polythene bag and given to you. While paying the money father would hand over the bag to me. I would hold it gingerly and as far away from my body as possible. You can imagine how much this process would affect the mind of a ten year old like me. And it was not just one bird that was being killed. Since we would be mostly going on a Sunday there would be a large number of buyers and at least three to four birds would be slaughtered at the same time. Thus multiply the cacophony of the birds by four times. Thus whenever father asked me to accompany him for buying chicken I would try and hide but being a small house there was no place to go. When I confided to mother my nausea with the whole process she tried to take it up with father but then he turned her down saying that I needed to learn buying chicken, second I needed to be a man and thirdly that if I wanted to eat it I needed to go and buy the chicken. Irrefutable logic that! So having no choice I would accompany father but would stop short from coming near the shop and stand about two shops away with fingers in my ears. Father was nice enough not to insist that I come near the shop selling chicken but would only call me over when the black polythene bag with the chicken pieces was ready. I would then run up and get the bag and go back to some distance and wait for father to come. After these experiences I became for some time a little squeamish about eating chicken but then got over it. Mother made a fabulous chicken curry and in the winter she would put the seasonal vegetables in it like cauliflower and peas apart from the old faithful, potato. One chicken would have only two legs and it was in great demand among us children. Most of the time the legs were shared between my brother and me, leading to our elder sister calling it discrimination and gender bias. Father would eat all the bony pieces like the neck and also the liver, to which I also developed a taste for later. Mother did not like chicken too much and ate only the vegetables and gravy. Her chicken curry became famous amongst our larger family of hers and my father’s siblings and whenever we visited them in Mangalore or Bombay she would be asked to make it.  

The taste apart from the fact that it was mother’s cooking was also enhanced by the fact that we would sit down on the floor and eat and that too in the kitchen. Eating in the kitchen saved mother the hassle of bringing the food outside. Most of the food that we ate was in the kitchen. Thus whoever was ready in the morning would get first shot at breakfast while for lunch and dinner we would all sit together to eat. Though mother and sometimes our elder sister would have food at the end after, we, the men folk, had finished. Though if the meal was at a ceremonial level,  meaning like someone’s birthday or a festive occasion like a religious occasion, then all us in the family would sit together in the middle room, sitting  around all the pots of food that mother would bring out. Mother would give us the first helpings and then if anyone needed more, then they could help themselves. When we had guests again it was the middle room that was converted into the dining room with two rows being set up with floor mats for the guests to sit upon. This system of seating in two rows with space in between allowed mother to serve the food onto the plates or sometimes on the banana leaf. But for us family to eat in the kitchen was something special. Mother would take the hot dosas off the griddle or the puris from the frying pan and the two of us brothers would fight who would get the next hot one. The common rule was that whoever finished what was on his plate first got the next dosa or puri but then what used to happen since with me eating fast my brother would be deprived to get his stuff in sequence and would have to wait longer. Therefore mother decided that alternate system was best after she had started us off with an initial platter of two dosas or four puris. But whenever mother made idlis then there was less of a problem to decide who gets when since each batch from the copper steamer that mother had would put out at one time at least ten to twelve idlis. The fun was also more in terms of competing with your siblings in eating. One needs to say that we may not have had much of what we wanted when we were young but for food we never had a problem. That is about us children since we do not know whether mother had her fill properly after all of us had finished our food. Sometimes when she would be sitting alone to eat then I would just join her for company. That bonding also I will never forget. 

There were some special snacks that were made at home apart from the Diwali specialities. These were mostly vegetarian items like shevain - string hoppers, khotto - idlis steamed in jackfruit leaves of which you stitch together to make a container to hold the dough. These were mainly made for breakfast and mother would require manly help to prepare these items. That is where my brother and I would be called to do kitchen duty. For the shevains mother would make round balls of steamed rice balls like dim sum which would be put in a contraption and we would have to press it down with a threaded screw fitted with a handle at one end and a solid cylinder at the other. The dough had to be put in when it was reasonably hot into the bottom hollow cylinder so that it could be squeezed through the receptacle at the bottom on which a detachable mould could be fitted. For string hoppers you fitted a mould which had close fine holes drilled all round the disc. If the dough became cold then it would be difficult to press through the mould. It was fun doing this, turning the handle and looking down and and seeing the fine white threads of the shevain coming out with wisps of steam around it. The same contraption could be used to make other things like kodbale or sev. The moulds would change with just one hole in the center for the kodbale while for the sev there would be finer holes than the mould used for the shevain. After the strenuous effort we would sit down to eat the shevain, which was had with either the red-hot spicy mix of the raw mango pickle on which coconut oil would be put to balance off the heat or with coconut milk that had been sweetened and given a dash of cardamom to add flavor. For the khotto, you had to get reasonably tender jackfruit leaves the previous evening and mother would stitch together the containers from the leaves and immerse it in water overnight. The next morning you would pour the idli dough into it and get khotto. The difference between the idli and the khotto was that the latter had that faint smell of the jackfruit leaf in it and the shape was pyramidical compared to the round idli. The khotto was again had with the same red-hot spicy mix of the raw mango pickle on which coconut oil would be put or regular coconut chutney that you would have with idlis. The work that we boys would have to do to get khotto is to look for jackfruit trees nearby and obtain the leaves. Rest of the work was mother’s domain. The shevain you also come across in Kerala in the restaurants where you can ask for idi-appam. This is a bit smaller in size compared to what we used to make at home but the threads are finer. The khotto you can get now in the South Indian restaurants that have originated from those owned by Konkani families like Ram Nayak’s in King’s Circle at Matunga in Bombay and notably Café Mysore. 

In sweets, the standard thing that was made was the dudhpak or milk pudding. The dudhpak – milk reduced to a thick consistency and sweetened with sugar mostly with other items added like macaroni, sago or rice and made crunchy with dried fruits like cashew or almonds, was de rigueur for any occasion like a birthday or if a guest was coming because it was simple to make and all you had to get is the extra milk that was required since the other items would be available mostly in the house. A thing about rice milk puddings is that mother learnt to make, while in Calcutta was the one which was made with nalen gud - the fresh jaggery of the date palm with basmati or the local gobindo bhog rice called nalen guder payesh. This was seasonal and could be made only when the date palm jaggery was available which was mostly in the time of winter turning to spring. As the season started this variety of jaggery would come in liquid form in mud pitchers and as the season progressed in large cakes of the shape of a discus and the size of a foot in diameter and maybe about four inches thick. This was the local delicacy of which we also became very fond of since the taste was so fine and the pudding so exceptionally delicious. Whenever we get the nalen gud even now the first and maybe the only thing we do with it is payesh. The famous mishti doi in Calcutta is best made with this nalen gud and also the jayanagerer mua – the small delicious round laddoo that is made with it. Among the other sweets that mother made was Madgale – a kind of payasam made with pulses (toor dal), jaggery and coconut milk with dried fruits like cashew and almonds added for that extra flavour and crunch.

The Southern market was the nearest market for us hardly 15 minutes walking distance. Starting from vegetables to fish and mutton and down to provisions you got almost everything, that you needed for daily necessities. We would get our vegetables from there on a daily basis. Remember that these were not the days of refrigerators and neither could we afford one. The advantage of buying vegetables and fish like any self-respecting Bengali bhadralok would do was that you got everything fresh. The man in the house was supposed to go to the bazaar in Bengali households which would also afford him the opportunity of chatting up with friends and neighbours who would also be on similar missions. The talk would centre on what fish was available and what the person bought or whether any special seasonal vegetable had come. Fish would predominantly figure in the conversation and any random price changes would be vociferously discussed with the sellers and amongst the buyers. Special seasonal vegetables would be the arrival of potol – somewhat like zucchini, kakhrol – xxxxxxxx ?, pumpkin flowers, select leafy vegetables, green peas and cauliflower. The average Bengali tended to be also a gourmet and it was important for him to eat well and enjoy the first taste of the seasonal vegetables and particular kinds of fish which were delicacies and available irregularly because of the seasonality. For provisions there were a number of shops which were patronized by different people according to their convenience and the credit arrangements that were offered. Credit was a part of life with the provision stores and the grocery shops, two of which were nearer our house in the market. We never used to take credit since father’s philosophy is buy what you need and avoid buying anything if you do not have money for it. This practice has served us well which I also follow to this day. 

In the first few years when father was holding a regular job we would get monthly supplies and it would fall on me to deliver mother’s list of necessities to the shop in the market. Then the same day or latest by the next day morning, we would have the mute or porter come with the open cane basket on top of his head with all that mother had ordered. After unloading the basket of the various items on to the kitchen floor and verifying it against mother’s list, he would present a parchi – a long thin sheet of paper which listed out the items, the quantity and the price for it. In fact this was the bill. Some items would not be there because of lack of availability which we would have to pick up later from the shop when they would arrive. The money would be handed over to the mute and the deal was closed. Each shop had their dedicated mutes who were familiar with the households in the para and the arrangement worked well and was comfortable for everyone. Mother got home delivery for most of her monthly needs and the store got apart from the custom, a bulk sale and the money for it. The mute would be given a rupee or two by the buyer as his tip for the work put in, though he would also surely be compensated by the store. As time passed we dispensed with the monthly system and bought what we needed whenever required or when the particular commodity was finished. We also did go to a further shop near Lake Market where mother felt the rates were better and run by a Marwari. Since I was the primary fetcher, being the elder male sibling, of the required items, it made my work more difficult having to lug back a heavy bag from a further distance. 

The ration shop for us was located in the Southern Market only and once rice, wheat, kerosene and sugar came under the public distribution system we commenced our weekly pilgrimage to these shops to buy the necessities of life. Initially the rice that we ate was boiled rice called dhenki – hand pounded boiled rice. This rice had medium sized grains but had streaks of red on it. It was delicious tasting and very nutritious. The term dhenki identified the equipment in which the rice was pounded. Later as we went along there were problems with its regular availability and also maybe because of our straitened financial circumstances we would not afford it and switched to what we got from the ration shop. The ration rice was insipid and had a lot of stones in them, a common method of adulteration then, and sometimes even worms. Finding this difficult to consume we switched back to the open market and bought machine pounded boiled rice or ‘mill’ boiled rice. Boiled rice generally and maybe because the paddy is cooked before processing it was never very white with the dhenki being the most red and others lower down the scale of redness. Thus on the train journeys when we got cooked raw rice that was snow-white, it was a novelty for us and a pleasant sight additionally. Thus the rice would disappear off our plates very quickly. Again at Mangalore at Grandpa’s place or any of the other homes that we would go to it was always boiled red rice which was even redder than our dhenki and the grains were larger but the taste of this rice along with our spicy coconut curries was exceptional. Even today if we get this boiled red rice we buy it and have it with fish curry or any curries made with cereals for that extra tasty repast. 

                                                     Train Journeys

We would go down to our native place Mangalore infrequently. This was whenever there was a wedding in the family mostly from my mother’s side. Father seemed none too close to his family except for his elder brother, Hari. The visits to Mangalore were in those times long and arduous and therefore we maybe did not travel so often. Also there was the question of money for the tickets and the invariable gifts that you would have to take for the family. The train from Calcutta (actually Howrah) was via Madras and then we would have to take another train from there to Mangalore. There was the option of two trains from Madras to Mangalore and you could take a through reservation on the next train from Calcutta itself. The Calcutta – Madras train would reach sometime in the morning and then we would have to catch the train in the evening thus having some 8-10 hours to kill at Madras Central station or if we had got the reservation by the next day’s morning train to Mangalore then we would have to stay overnight at Madras. Father would rarely almost never come with us and for mother to travel with three small children in the initial years, one would think was quite a problem. 

At that time the trains did not have the sleeper class though by the mid-60’s the sleeper class was introduced. I recall going to Mangalore the first time in 1960. We had reserved our seats and come early to the station so that we could appropriate the top luggage rack above the seats. This luggage rack could be used for sleeping and particularly for small children like us, two could fit onto one rack but for the risk of falling down while asleep. But the reserved seats were three on one side and between us we would have only two and a half seats, one full for mother and three halves for us three, with the smallest among us not having a seat. Thus occupying the luggage rack for us alone was more out of the sympathy of the third seat occupant than on the basis of entitlement. Apart from the safety of the three children, there was the question of safety of our luggage. Travel in those days was complicated with your having to carry your own bedding apart from your suitcases. The bedding actually a light mattress and a couple of bedcovers and maybe two pillows were tucked into what was called a holdall made of canvas or some such tough and waterproof material which could be tied down  and then rolled into a tight roll and strapped securely. Once you were in the compartment you could spread this on the luggage rack which was made with spaced out wooden slats or on the hard wooden seats. The suitcases those days were mostly tin trunks since leather suitcases, not that we had any for quite a while, were considered too fragile and prone to scratches and thus unable to meet the rigours of rail travel. The plastic suitcases like the ones that Aristocrat or VIP brought out later were yet to come. Thus the tin trunks which could also be locked were pushed around without any worry of damage. In fact they could cause damage to others, people as well as luggage with their sharp corners. Most of the time the tin trunks would be tucked under the seats. The greater amount of baggage that we would have would require the porters - coolies to carry them. In their red kurta style of shirts and a dhoti with a brass plate as an armband they would not only help in carrying luggage but muscle their way through the crowd and into the compartment to ensure that we got our reserved seats. The brass plate was given to them from the railways to identify them as authorized coolies and carried the name of the railway and the porter number on it. Most of them were from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh and were quite pleasant. Though in later years they took to capturing unreserved seats and selling them at a premium particularly during the summer and Puja vacation rush times. 

Apart from the holdall and the tin trunk, we would have a bag filled with eats to be devoured on the way and also bottles of water since dining cars were non-existent then and getting down at the wayside stations to buy food for mother was difficult with us children to handle. We had to therefore depend on the food that we carried and what came to us at the windows of the train. If the children were small then one would have to carry a thermos flask for milk, the initial stock of which you could replenish at the wayside stations. Thus with all this mother would be squeezed into two seats with three of her children, hugging the eating bag and bottles of water hoping that everything would turn out well for the journey. Once into your reserved seats and with the train having started the compartment would be quite comfortable particularly if you had good company like another family going up to Madras, which we would invariably find. 

Going by train was exciting one remembers the first journeys vividly. With all the luggage and the five of us we would take a taxi from home to Howrah station. It was about 45 minutes by taxi and we would have to cross the Hooghly River passing over the magnificent Howrah Bridge before reaching the Howrah Station. The Howrah Bridge with its tall, overbearing steel structure with overlapping girders was a thing of awe for us then and from inside the taxi I for one would look up while we were passing on it worried that it would collapse and fall on our taxi. The carriageway for the bridge was wide with up and down lanes for vehicular traffic with the central portion used for two tram tracks. On both sides of the carriageway were walkways isolated from the traffic which pedestrians could use. Once past the bridge the road would curve into the Howrah Station porch where we would get off. 

The station itself was a red, drab, squat and extensive building with two towers, one on each part of the building. Both these towers carried large clocks with Roman numerals that you could see from quite a distance. Once you entered the station concourse you could feel the size of the station with its high ceiling and two huge display boards prominently displaying the different trains leaving with their times of departure and from which platform, facing you head-on. Between the two display boards was another large clock showing the railway right time from which you could know whether you were on time or late to catch the train. The main concourse was always full of people coming or going and some waiting at the station for someone or other or passing the time squatting or sleeping until their connecting train would be announced. The station building had the railway offices and also those of the police and fire departments as also retiring rooms. There were two restaurants at the station serving pretty good food and innumerable food kiosks serving tea and other eatables apart from book stalls with the name A H Wheeler prominently marked. 

Howrah Station was used by two railways – the South Eastern Railway and the Eastern Railway. The platforms of the two were segregated by a central road going through the station and coming out at the other end. The road would loop back to the Howrah Bridge to enter the Calcutta city. In the early years the taxis would take this exit route but later the railways stopped this on grounds of security. Platforms 1 to 9 would be used by the Eastern Railway trains which had prestigious trains like the Kalka Mail, the Doon Express and the Bombay Mail via Allahabad. Some of the platforms were allotted for the suburban passenger trains which were ultimately replaced by the electric EMU compartments once the rail lines were electrified. The Eastern Railway was the bigger railway in Calcutta handling destinations like Delhi, Patna and going up north in West Bengal to Siliguri and from there to the North East, Gauhati and beyond. The South Eastern Railway, the smaller railway at Howrah Station, had the prestigious trains like the Bombay Mail via Nagpur, the Madras Mail that we would use, the Puri Express and also the suburban services later replaced by EMU compartments once electrification was done. The train would come into the denominated platform about an hour before departure time. 

We would all be there about one and half hours in advance of the departure time and it was a great sight to see the huge black steam engine come in huffing and puffing away pulling all the compartments behind it that would take us all far, far away. The driver of the engine would blow the whistle upon reaching somewhere near the midway of the platform and we would hold our hands to our ears to stop that piercing sound from going in, which in any case, it did. Once the train came slowly to a halt there would be the hustle and bustle of finding the proper reserved compartment, matching our names against the list pasted outside the compartment. Sometimes you would have the ticket inspector standing at the beginning of the platform with the reservation lists where we would know the bogey number making it easier for us to find the compartment otherwise we would have to go from compartment to compartment looking for our names on the reservation lists that would be pasted by the door of the bogie. Then getting into the compartment, tucking away the luggage safely, getting the coolie to spread our holdall on the top luggage rack, then tucking us children in, mediating on the fights as to who would get the window seat etc. etc., mother had her hands really full. If the people travelling with us on the opposite seats had arrived father would request them to look after us on the way. There would be nods and smiles exchanged in acquiescence. Once this was done father would get down and stand on the platform at the window where our seats were. He would be there checking with mother that she had everything she needed – tickets, money, food, water etc. As soon as the train started moving slowly after having announced departure by a double toot of its whistle, he would wave at us and we would look back at him on the platform getting smaller and smaller and vanish in a dot. We were then well and truly on our way to Madras.

In the initial years we only had one window seat between the four of us and we would fight amongst ourselves as to who would get the window seat until mother would intervene and allot it on a sharing basis with me appropriating the seat for the longest slot. If the seat was facing the direction of travel of the train then there would be a problem since coal dust would be spewed from the engine when it was blowing out the smoke and that carried by the wind would travel far back. If it got into your eyes you would get a burning sensation making it very uncomfortable and with the eyes going completely red and bloodshot. And if a grain of coal got stuck in your eyes that pain was terrible with us turning to mother to blow into our eyes to remove the unwanted intruder and to wash the eyes with cold water. Thus we preferred the window seat with our back to the direction of travel which gave less problem with the coal dust. Getting this kind of a seat was pure chance since the seats were allotted randomly and in the order of booking at the time of reservation. This coal dust problem persisted for some years until the railways converted to diesel using the big diesel engines to pull the long distance prestigious mail and express trains. Sometimes two of these diesel engines would be used to pull the extra long trains like the Madras Mail or the Kalka Mail and others. Around the same time the railways also introduced the sleeper coaches which we used on our later journeys to Mangalore making it very much more comfortable since by that time we had grown also and we had four berths between us preferring the two lower and the two middle berths thus allowing us not to be bothered by the middle berth person wanting to sleep early or get up late and leave us uncomfortable seating options. Getting the two lower berths meant we had two window seats and therefore less fights and less mediation work for mother. Not always did we get the berths that we wanted and sometimes when allotted the top berth which fell to my lot to go up or even climb into the middle berth, I and my brother occasionally were known to fall off and hit the floor of the compartment. We were not hurt much but over time we learnt not to roll around in our berths on the train. 

Since the train would start late evening there was nothing much to see from the windows until we got up in the morning the next day. Then swaying to the rhythm of the train as it raced across the tracks we would see the poles with wires strung from them rushing backwards in the backdrop of parched land sometimes or rocks or the verdant green paddy fields with people working in them. We were told that the poles were telegraph poles which carried telegrams over the wires running between the poles. Then suddenly the engine would blow its whistle, sometimes once, sometimes twice, and we would sense it slowing down. This would mean that a wayside station was approaching. Nearing the station the train would trundle in sedately passing initially some huts, then an overbridge with a road running under it, then sometimes a road running parallel to the tracks with traffic on it. People on bicycles on the road along with a tonga – a horse drawn buggy sometimes and occasionally a car or a taxi, if the town approaching was relatively large. There would also be people walking along the road and they would wave at us on the train and we would wave back. Nearing the station there would invariably be a level-crossing where on both sides the vehicles and people would be waiting impatiently for the train to pass. The train would then slow down further and enter the platform and pull to a stop. As soon as it stopped the activity would begin of those getting down picking up their luggage, yelling for a coolie who would jump in as the train was slowing down upon entering the platform. Then there would be people getting in to commence their journeys. In addition to that you would have vendors come to the windows offering toys of various hues and colours, toffees, sweets and chocolates, fruits and the local savoury item be it samosas or medu-vada or whatever. When these were hot, their just passing in front of the window would have our mouths watering with their heavenly aroma. The vendors rarely came inside the reserved compartments not like these days when reserved is no guarantee for even getting your own berth or seat with people crowding into the sleeper compartments also. 

All stations would have the name of the station prominently displayed on a board at the beginning and the end of the platform which you would find it difficult to miss. The name of the station would be written in large letters in English, along with Hindi and the local state language. There would also be some numbers written next to the letters MSL. We were later told that these numbers specified the number of meters that the station was higher than the Mean Sea Level (MSL) to indicate the height of the place. In addition to the boards at the end of the platform at regular intervals along the length of the platform you would have smaller boards affixed to the wall or to the boundary wall made with white concrete pillars in a palisade or a trellis fence format. Over the exit from the station high up on the wall the name of the station would be written out in the largest size letters. If the station was a small one there would be just one platform leading out to the town and the station master in white uniform wearing a black jacket would be standing on the platform with both red and green flags, but waving a green flag since our mail train did not stop there. Similar was the case with slightly larger towns where there would be one platform leading out to the town and the other platform having the up and down trains stopping on both sides of it. You would also have an overhead walkway going over the tracks connecting the two platforms. Here again if our mail train did not have a stop there you would see the familiar figure of the station master waving us through with the green flag. We could make out a bigger town arriving from the number of houses on both sides of the tracks, the people on the streets if we were passing by any of them and the roofs provided for the platforms. There would be two or three such platforms depending on how large the station was in addition to the main platform leading out to the town. Sometimes the overhead walkway would also provide an exit on the other side of the tracks. In these large stations you would have regular buildings on the main and one other platform housing the offices of the station master and offices for the various departments of the railways. There would also be waiting rooms for passengers – first class and third class - and the rooms for the TTE’s (Travelling Ticket Examiners) and guards along with a left luggage room and maybe one or two restaurants with a few kiosks serving eatables, tea and coffee. Some of the stations would be called junctions where the rail tracks branched out to other places not connected by the main line. A junction station normally had better facilities than other stations. The large stations had so many people milling around, each involved in his own activity of moving out, coming into the train or intent on buying something from the station kiosks before the train left and the occasional man or woman crying out for their lost child who had got down from the train but could not be seen anywhere now. There were others packing up the occasional bench with their family and with their luggage strewn around waiting for their train to come. You could spend hours one thought just watching what the people were doing. But then the maximum time the train halted even at the large stations was about 20 minutes to half an hour and then you had to commence the rattling journey on the tracks once again. 

As mentioned earlier the Madras Mail leaving in the evening from Howrah would not enable us to catch the station names except fleetingly while passing with the lights on them. But the next morning the string of strange sometimes exotic names of the stations, we would pass as the day progressed, left us dazzled. Balasore, Khurda Junction, Vizianagram, Anakapalle, Waltair Junction (where the train actually reversed direction and we would be thinking we were going back to Calcutta. This was also the station for Vishakapatnam.), Tuni Junction, Machilipatnam, Vijayawada (also called Bezwada) until the next day in the morning when we would steam into Madras Central after passing through Ambattur and Basin Bridge stations. These names are etched in one’s memory and in later life I would have an adventure on this route, to be recounted later.

The food that mother would have carried would finish off by the next morning and then for lunch on that day and until we reached Madras, we would have to depend on what we could buy at the wayside stations or order with the meals vendors who would come into the compartments and take your order. The train would mostly reach Waltair by noon and you could have lunch here which could be ordered from the vendors once you were in the station since the train stopped here for about 30 minutes what with the need to change the engine and all that. Otherwise you could have lunch at either Tuni or Anakapalle. 

All these stations were in Andhra Pradesh and the system for delivery of the food was by tiffin carriers. These were gleaming brass carriers with four compartments. One for rice, the other for sambar, the next for rasam and the last for the dry curry, pickle packed in banana leaves, curds in small cups and the crushed papadam thrown in. The tiffin carrier could be locked in on a frame by driving a spoon over the topmost compartment. The top of the frame served as a handle to lift the tiffin carrier. The spoon was also used to take out the rice and other items and put in on your banana leaf. The banana leaf would be rolled and stuck somewhere on the handle of the carrier. Considering that the food was enough for two people there would be only two banana leaves. But the food was quite a lot and enough for the four of us, considering that the three of us were children. It was fun exercise to try and manage the sambar and rasam from not rolling off the banana leaf particularly with the swaying of the train while it was in motion. Not used to having outside food the lunch for us, at least for me was novel and delicious. It was a completely different taste from what mother made though it was heavy on the chili. The food was clean and good and the sight of the gleaming brass tiffin carrier attracted you to the food. 

The two of us, boys would get first shot at the food because finding place to sit was also difficult and once we had finished mother and our elder sister would eat. Mother would split the banana leaves in half so that all of us could have the novelty of eating on a banana leaf. Once we were done mother would pack the tiffin carrier back the same way and place it on the floor of the compartment near our seats. The vendor would come later, sometimes at the next station and collect the tiffin carrier and the money. At the end of it all you would find a happy and satisfied Kamat family grinning from one cheek to another after disposing off the tiffin carrier. 

The night meals would be at Vijayawada Junction which would arrive early at about 6 or 7pm. It was early to have dinner but then you were compelled to since after that there was no other place where you could get food and it would be late reaching the next station, Gudur or some such place. But the food at  Vijayawada Junction would be stunning, the tiffin carriers would have an extra shine, the vendors would be smarter in uniforms and the food taste was exceptional and out of this world! The items would be the same but cooking is what made the difference. Since the halt at Vijayawada Junction was about 30 minutes the food would be delivered at the station and there was enough time for us to finish our food while the train was standing at the station. 

As the years passed, the locations for having lunch - Waltair or Tuni or Anakapalle and dinner at Vijayawada remained the same. By that time stainless steel tiffin carriers were available and you had the option for ordering the smaller carrier which would suffice for one person, two for us kids though the large carrier for two adults was still available. One remembers that though the Vijayawada food did not slip much in standard the food at the lunch stations became less tasty though other factors like cleanliness remained the same. 

Another pattern that one noticed as the train travelled south was that when it halted at stations the cries of the tea vendors – ‘Chai! Chaaa….iiiii!!’ became less and you heard more the shriller cry of - ‘Kapee! Kapeeeeeeeeeeex!’ This told us that beverage drinking in the south was predominantly coffee. Mother liked coffee and she enjoyed the dark, filter brew with a foaming white top flecked with brown in a tumbler placed in another tumbler, wider and shorter than the tumbler carrying the coffee. Both were made of stainless steel. The idea was that you would pour the coffee alternately into the two tumblers to mix it properly, to dissolve the sugar lying at the bottom of the first tumbler and to cool the steaming hot coffee. Mother would sometimes give us a sip but she liked it with less sugar and the bitter concoction I never liked and I remained a tea man for life. Though in later life in Bangalore at the darshinis, I would try once in a while the filter coffee for the strong, exhilarating and wake-up now taste with my morning breakfast. On the train journey, mother depending on her mood would indulge us with hot medu-vadas, half for each of us, and the chutney which was again out of this world.  

There were certain unusual things that one noticed while travelling in trains. The first thing that we would notice upon getting in and settling down in your seats was that notice near the roof of the compartment between the two rows of seats which said – To Stop Train, Pull Chain. In smaller letters under it was written – Penalty for pulling chain without proper reason Rs. 100. This went up to Rs. 500 as the years passed and one does not know what it is today. Above this notice was a red coloured handle kind of thing connected to a chain of sorts, the links of which disappeared into the holes on both sides into the body of the compartment. The question uppermost in our young minds was why the handle and the chain? How could such a small handle stop such a huge train? And if someone pulled the chain how would the guard or the engine driver know who pulled it? As time passed, we became aware of the answers to these questions. The chain was to be pulled only in emergencies that is if someone was not well or there was a fire etc. etc. The handle and chain though small were linked to the vacuum system and when you pulled the handle the vacuum system would be released which the engine driver would notice and he would apply the brakes immediately. All the coaches of the train were interlinked through those collapsible black tubes between the coaches through a vacuum system which made the engine feel technically that it was pulling only one coach and not the thirteen or fourteen coaches that used to be connected then. The release of the vacuum system made the engine work harder which the engine driver would notice and slam the brakes. Each coach of the train had a flap outside at the back of the coach which would flip once the chain had been pulled. This would identify to the engine driver or guard from which coach the chain had been pulled. They would then get in and see which of the handles of the chain was sagging after having been pulled. They would thus localize the chain puller to those eight seats in that particular enclosure or section of the coach. If there was a real problem then the engine driver or guard would attend to it and seek help from the next immediate station where the train was to stop. If it was mischief then they would question the persons present on those eight seats and determine who pulled the chain since one or other of the passengers would point out the culprit. Sometimes the person who pulled the chain would move away from that coach once the train had stopped to escape from being caught. At that time the engine driver or guard would reset the vacuum system and the train would start again after a 15 – 20 minute delay. Later the chain was used by passengers for all the wrong reasons. Coming late and not able to get in with the entire family, then someone from amongst them would get into the coach and pull the chain. The train having then stopped, the whole family could then entrain. The most common reason that one would see particularly in Bihar was that the passenger upon reaching his destination would see his house across the tracks, pull the chain, stop the train, get down and walk home leaving the engine driver or guard fuming. But there was little that they could do about it. 

The other thing that would have happened to almost every one of us sometime on a train journey was when your train would come onto a platform with another train on the next track. Then when this other train started to leave you would have the illusion when you looked up that it was your train that was moving and backwards, too!

Another thing was going into the toilets in the coaches. The first time when looking at the hole leading down to the tracks through a metal chute and with the ground passing at speed and the jerking, swaying train you would feel scared that you would fall through the hole and end up on the tracks. But for mother’s restraining hand on your shoulder one felt that what one was thinking would come true. 

Then as we had grown a little older on our later trips, one would see the notice on the mirrors – This has been stolen from the Indian Railways. You would innocently turn around to mother and ask her – The mirror is still there and it has not been stolen. So why should they write like that on it. Mother was also nonplussed but after some time she told us that was probably if the mirror gets stolen, the thief will not be able to put it up anywhere for fear of being shamed.  

The most exciting thing on a train journey was when the train went over a bridge spanning a river. The longer the bridge the more fun there was. There would be smaller bridges over some culverts, canals, over some roads etc. but these bridges would not have the supporting structure on top and before you knew the train would have passed. Though you would get the kind of roaring sound when it went over the bridge to add to the regular clackety-clack noise of the track, only to vanish so quickly. The bigger bridges would be more fun with the train majestically entering the bridge when that roaring sound would commence which would be interspersed with a staccato kind of sound when the train passed each vertical member of the bridge. Everyone would clamour to be at the windows when a large river came so that one could look down at the serene waters far below with maybe a boat in the middle of the water with a fisherman fishing or some people at the banks absorbed in washing clothes or having a bath. Some of the bridges would be huge with the girders painted rust red more than a foot wide on which you could see the outlines of the rivets that seemed to stitch the bridge together. You could see the concrete pillars with their elliptical cross section at the top on which the structure of the bridge was placed. The girders were quite close to the coaches and we would be all pulled in by mother afraid that leaning out we may bang our heads against the girders. At intervals along the length of the bridge there would be small metal platforms extending outwards enclosed by railings for safety. These were the places were any unwary persons walking on the bridge by chance could stand safely if a train would come across onto the bridge. They could then stand on these platforms which looked like observation points and wait for the train to pass before they made their way across the bridge again. The other use for these could be where the maintenance crews could bring and place their stores and equipment for their work.  Since we would be mostly travelling in the summer some of the rivers would be dry and there would be water, mostly muddy yellow water, in between patches of sand. But then when we reached the Godavari river which was near Machilipatnam there would be more expanses of water, blue clear water with its surface shimmering in the sun with the light breeze blowing across it. This bridge was really long and the train would slow down over it extending our experience and enjoyment of it a little longer. We were told that the trains slowed over the bridge because it was old and weak and it could not withstand the vibrations when a train went over it at speed. The Godavari river was considered sacred by the locals and as soon as the bridge came there would be people throwing coins and flowers into the river. We followed suit pestering mother to give us some coins to throw in the water. You got the most blessings if you threw the coin into the water and if it clattered against the bridge girders then the blessings would be less or if it remained on the  bridge, then obviously you did not get any blessings. On the Madras – Mangalore train journey one remembers only the Netravati river just before entering Mangalore station since the journey was mostly in the night and in any case Tamil Nadu is known to be arid. It was also wide but not as much as the Godavari and the water was grayish maybe because the bridge was near the estuary of the river.  

The railways had or still have a system of acknowledgment that trains had passed which worked something like this. At all stations there was a system of exchanging a ball by the engine driver with the station master. This ball was proof that the train had passed through in an authorized manner. Where the train did not have a stop at the station, one of the staff called a khalasi would hold up an elliptical ring of wicker which had an attachment to affix the ball which the khalasi would hold up at the beginning of the platform through which the train was passing. The engine driver or his assistant would scoop up the ring putting their hand through it. At the same time the ball with the wicker ring that they had picked up at the previous station they would throw on the platform as soon as they came into it. This wicker ring the khalasi had picked up would be handed over to the station master for safekeeping to be used when the next train passed through it the other direction. The exchange was very interesting to watch and feel proud of - how the engine driver and the khalasi synchronized their actions with the train moving at speed.  This system was started by the British when the railways was started which we are, I suppose, using even to this day. If you think about it, it is a sure shot way to confirm that a train had passed the station. 

Once we reached Madras, in the first few trips there were some relatives of my father who used to stay there. They would come and pick us up from the station and take us home. The first time we went these people had a car and we were driven to their house to stay for the day. It was a large house with a table-tennis board in the car park. As I can recall there were no children of our age in the house and everyone was elderly. So we did the best we could with the racquets and table-tennis balls that we were given. That is the first time I touched a table-tennis board which game I was to play in later life during college. The day would pass in a flash and it would be time early morning to catch the Mangalore train. We were again dropped to the station. The next time we were passing through Madras we went to another of father’s relatives. The house this time also was large but there were no fun things like a table-tennis board. It was just a routine transit halt. The Mangalore train was just like the Madras Mail from Howrah but not as prestigious. It would run the whole day and only reach Mangalore early the next morning. Summertime the day journey was particularly exhausting for us children and also on mother. Thus on later trips, only one or two we made after that, we would book our through reservation by the evening train from Madras to Mangalore praying that the Madras Mail would not reach late though we had more than 8 – 10 hours time between the trains. This train would reach Mangalore the next day closer to noon saving us some time and making our Mangalore stay longer by a day. 

At this time the people we used to go in Madras earlier had been transferred or passed away since one of them was with the Post Office which was a transferable job. The stations that one remembers on this route are Kazipet, Coimbatore, Salem, Shoranur Junction, Calicut, Cannanore, Tellicherry, Kasargod, Ullal. After this we would find the train crossing the long Netravati bridge and enter Mangalore junction. Among these stations Salem is one which had the old style arches over the tracks supported by pillars which made one feel that we had entered a house. This is also where on one trip we were met by mother’s younger brother for whose wedding we were going. The train had reached Salem in the evening closer to 8pm when we find our uncle’s face at the window and his hands full with things to eat. He chatted with mother and then it was time for the train to start. We children were confused since this was the uncle for whose wedding we were going and he was still not at Mangalore but in Salem, which seemed far away. But the wedding was a couple of days away and uncle reached the next day resolving our confusion. 

As indicated on later trips we preferred to remain in Madras Central station until we caught our evening train to Mangalore. With the Howrah – Madras mail reaching in the morning we would have to have two meals, lunch and dinner. One of them or both would be at the restaurant in the station though once I recall we went out to the by-lanes next to the Madras station and found many hotels. Some of the hotels had boards saying they were ‘military’ hotels. This was confusing since what we used to know as military was something to do with the army and here it was on hotel signboards. Madras was a purely vegetarian city in the majority and hotel boards would carry the announcement that Brahmin owned or that it was pure vegetarian. In this kind of scenario the non-vegetarian had to announce himself discreetly while at the same time not hurting the sentiments of the majority vegetarian community. That is where the ‘military’ word came in. It was believed that those in the military ate non-vegetarian food and therefore if a restaurant announced itself as a military hotel then it would convey the message of being a non-vegetarian hotel. Moreover it was said that the owners of these hotels were those that had retired from military service and therefore they put out the notice to their brethren in the forces to tell them about the availability of non-vegetarian food and to come and eat there. In any case that day we did not step into a ‘military’ hotel but into a pure Brahmin restaurant and got the most tasty and one must say the most authentic Tamil meal. The parpu – thick arhar dal with hing - asfoetida, lentils actually – was stunning. The raw plantain curry was just right. The sambar and rasam both were out-of-this-world and the white rice on the green banana leaf had with these two items with the crunchy papad and raw mango pickle made for an extremely satisfying meal that ended with the thick curd mixed with the last of the rice to be wolfed down with the tangy pickle. 

                                                    Mangalore Memories

We must have made some five or six trips to Mangalore from Calcutta with the last one probably in 1962. As related earlier these were mostly for weddings of my mother’s large clan. But we enjoyed these trips apart from the exciting train journey to see the different way of life in Mangalore compared to Calcutta and to explore the wonderful places and sights that were there to see in this exciting place. We would go to our maternal grandfather’s house which was where I was born and also my elder sister. Our younger brother though born in Mangalore was brought into this world in a nursing home a stone’s throw from Grandpa’s house. Dr Narasimha Nayak was a friend of Grandpa who had started the nursing home. We would always rib him about it that he needed a doctor to deliver him while we were delivered by midwives. My delivery mother used to tell me was feet first with the umbilical cord getting wrapped around my neck but then I still survived. I would joke with mother that I came out feet first because I wanted to hit the ground running.  

My mother’s father was Udyavar Keshav Rao, by profession a teacher, a Visharad in Hindi, and the first Principal of the newly built Canara High School branch at Urva. Canara High School was a prominent School for our community in Mangalore. This school was just behind the present Mangala Stadium and on the same road that had the Hindi Prachar Samiti office and hall. The school is still there but has gone through many renovations and is today a squat, grey coloured, long building, three stories high. Grandpa’s house was very near in the locality called Pentland Pet (new name Gandhi Nagar) close to the school.

Grandpa was a tall, well-built, fair, bald with a smattering of grey hair on the sides and the back of the head with spectacles on his nose that somewhat hid his twinkling eyes. He was an imposing personality, always dressed in spotless white in his trademark dhoti and a shirt  worn outside that stretched down to almost his knees, with sleeves that one could call three-quarters since they reached just below the elbow. The shirt had a very large pocket in the front on the left side which Grandpa always kept overfull with the head of an ink pen always peeping out over the top. Other than that the shirt had two pockets, one on each side like we have in our present day kurtas. Though you would see Grandpa mostly in white he did have a blue shirt of the same style with faint stripes on it, if I recall correctly. At home Grandpa would favour wearing a lungi, the trademark checked lungi that Keralites preferred and which came in different colours. The two ends were stitched together and you brought it around your waist and the loose portion tied into a knot at the middle over your stomach. These lungis were soft and comfortable for the hot and humid weather prevailing mostly on the Western Coast. Grandpa above the waist would most often wear a banyan or vest with sleeves and again always white. The weather in Mangalore was mostly hot except for a couple of weeks in December -January when a chill would set in mostly early mornings and late night. At that time Grandpa would draw an ochre woollen shawl around him. This shawl came to me through my mother and is one of my proud possessions. It has holes in it now but then Grandpa's memories bonds me to it. With us children Grandpa was always cheerful and I do not ever remember of him losing his temper or being angry. He was also always the one who would have a toffee or a boiled sweet for each one of us children when he returned from school and given to his with his smiling face encasing those twinkling eyes. Grandpa on most days would go to school on his bicycle even though the school was close to the house. 

Grandpa’s house was a sprawling red tile-roofed house done up in typical Mangalore style. There was a compound wall around the property made of laterite stones which had aged having been weathered by the annual rains that would be quite heavy in these parts. The red laterite stones in some places had green moss covering them partly and at other places there would be tufts of grass growing in between the stones or an itinerant plant growing there that had come up with its seed maybe having been carried by the winds to roost in the crevices of the wall. Facing the frontage of the house and at the centre of the compound wall on that side was a gate with a small covered area again with a tile roof over it. The gate had a heavy brown wooden door opening out in two halves from the centre which you could shut from inside with a latching wooden bolt in the middle of the door. Inside were waist-high ledges on either side with space enough for two people to sit on it. 

These ledges were to have maybe the women of the house sitting on them in the evenings taking in the breeze or a vantage position to talk with neighbours passing by or during the temple festival a place where you could comfortably place the paraphernalia of the puja before the idol arrived at the gate. There was also a functional utility of the ledges and that was to comfortably buy the fish when the fisherwoman – ‘jhalke mari’ came along, though more often than not she turned up walking the side of the house onto the back porch where Grandma found it easier being closer to the kitchen to examine the fish and negotiate prices. The ledge was also useful to put heavy loads there of produce or whatever before it could be loaded onto the bullock cart, the primary means of transportation then. It was also a shelter during the rains of anyone caught in an unusually heavy shower between the gate and the front porch, the latter being at least 15 yards away. 

As soon as you entered the gate the garden opened out on both sides and directly facing you was the brindavana where the sacred holy basil plant or tulsi was installed to shower prosperity, protect the lady of the house’s husband and also ensure good times for all the occupants of the house. The tulsi was propitiated twice a day, once in the morning after Grandma’s bath or if she had delegated that exercise to any of her daughters after their bath and then again at dusk in the evening. Both times a plate filled with flowers and with containers for haldi – turmeric and kumkum – sacred vermilion, and some sweets or at least a bowl of sugar along with an oil lamp would be taken to the tulsi plant and the puja performed after lighting the oil lamp. All of us children would line up behind whoever was performing the puja with our eyes shut and with palms joined until it was over not for any religious belief as such but to get some of the sweets that were on the plate or at least the pinch of sugar that Grandma would put on our small palms. 

Beyond the tulsi brindavana were the five or so steps leading up to the front porch of the house with a curved protection on the sides which ended at the level of the first step at the bottom onto a circular pedestal. This pedestal was a nice place for us children to sit since our feet would touch the ground there. The first step from the ground level was the widest leading up to the last step when it met the porch at some eight feet in width. These steps led up to the front porch that was wide supported by two solid pillars on both sides of the steps. There was a waist high ledge that ran off from the pillars on either side until it met the wall at the side. This ledge was properly finished for its top surface with red zinc oxide covering and was a great place to sit both for the elders when everybody had collected on the front porch and for us children to play on it with sometimes one or the other of us falling off it to the ground, almost a 6-8 feet drop. 

On either side of the porch were two doors leading to small rooms. The one on the right was like Grandpa’s study where you would find the musty smell of old books in dusty glass fronted wooden cabinets. There was a table and a chair for Grandpa to work upon whenever he needed to. The table was strewn with Grandpa's papers and books with a pen-stand that had a built-in quaint ink-well in it.  A wooden almirah housed his clothes and personal things. Just outside this study door was a huge wooden armchair with cane netting. It was a spacious and luxurious armchair where you could lean back and by extending the arms that folded out, put your feet up. Grandpa would sit on this armchair in the morning with the day’s paper and again in the evening after coming back from work reading something or other of his official papers. 

When we were there you would find one or the other of us nestling in his lap when he was on the armchair. But the best and most heartwarming sight would be sometimes on a holiday, Grandpa would be sleeping on the armchair with his head thrown back and with arms of the chair extended with one of his legs on one of the arms and the other extended straight along the ground and snoring away to glory. It was a beautiful sight to see him dozing off like that which has remained etched in my mind even today. 

On the left of the porch, the other room was used as a study room for those of mother’s sisters or brothers still going to college. It also had bookshelves with glass fronts, a table and a couple of chairs. Leading straight inside from the middle of the porch to the interior was a large living room. The room was essentially bare except for some rolled mattresses piled up in one corner. This was the room where most of the family would sleep in the night after the mattresses were spread out on the floor. The ceiling of this room was wooden and there was a loft on top for which on one side of the room there was a wooden staircase. All the wood was deep, dark brown. The loft was used to store things that were not required for immediate use and also for dry produce like coconuts, some rolls of coiled coir string and ropes. We would go up there once in a while. It was a bit scary because there was no electric light in the loft and even when you went during daytime, the light filtering from between the tiles on the roof resulted in an eerie play of light and shadow. Unless it was absolutely essential we avoided the loft. 

On the left of the living room there was a door leading to a longish room which had two windows looking out into the garden. The windows had ledges where children like us could sit comfortably. One of the windows gave you the view of a chikoo tree in the garden and the other one a drumstick tree. On the top of this room, at the end on the longer side was a door and a similar door at the bottom. The top door led back to the study room as above and the bottom door to another room used asa store with wooden shelves and finally led to the kitchen. On the right of the living room was another door leading to another squarish room which was where the wooden almirahs were there holding the clothes and other stuff of the family. This room had a window looking onto the other side of the garden which for some reason was always kept shut. Maybe because on that side beyond the compound wall was a service lane where you would have the sweepers and other people coming in and maybe also because the room was used by the ladies to dress up. 

At the back of the living room there was a door leading on to the back porch. This porch running almost the whole of the back of the house was quite wide and was like a stunted L. The smaller side of the L running parallel to the kitchen and serving as its back porch where the fisherwoman would come to talk to Grandma or the maid or Koraga who would work in the garden would have their tiffin and tea or coffee.

Koraga was a Tulu speaking tribal, absolutely dark in complexion, lean and well-built for his age which must have been over 60 then and wearing a coconut fibre cap on his head which was almost like a skull-cap. I had never seen him wear anything on the upper part of his body and he would wind a piece of cloth around his waist which would only extend up to his knees. You could not call it a dhoti as such but it covered his dignity. The unusual part about him was that the coconut fibre cap on his head served as his utensil to have water and even tea or coffee. Those times they would treat the tribals like that and not serve them on the regular utensils used by the family. Food was served on strips of banana leaf which was also the same for us most of the time. This avoided the necessity of having a large number of utensils required by all members of the family and the vacationing guests like us who were there for a short while. The liquid stuff to be given to Koraga would be poured from a height on to his cap by either the maid or one of mother’s younger sisters. Koraga was a good soul and friendly too and would help us to climb walls and trees in the garden and get us the fruits growing in the garden like chikoos or gooseberries. He was like the gardener and odd-job man around the house to fix anything that needed to be done. He would come at the crack of dawn and would go back to his house at sunset. We, children at least, did not know anything about his family or even where he lived since he spoke only Tulu, though he could understand Konkani. 

Grandma’s kitchen was the best room in the house and where all the nice food was made that went into our stomachs. It was long and at the bottom of it along the shorter wall were the open hearths with provision for four pots or vessels that could be placed at the same time. Behind this opening were smaller holes leading off the main hearths where you could keep pots for the food in them to remain warm but away from the direct flame. Cooking those days was with firewood and the space over the hearth was black with soot. Above the hearth and just below the ceiling was a window with wooden slats running all along the length of that wall and over the entire hearth. The window and the wooden slats were also black with soot. The wall perpendicular to the hearth and on the left also had a long window again with wooden slats but at waist level enabling you to see out into the garden when you were seated. Along this wall were wooden shelves where the utensils were kept and hanging from the ceiling were coconut rope harnesses from which ash gourd and magge – a kind of local cucumber called Mangalore cucumber but used as a vegetable, would be found hanging. Above the door leading to the kitchen from the long room was a half-loft where the dry kitchen stores were kept. It had a detachable ladder that could be fixed to it for climbing up and bringing down anything that you needed. This ladder was normally left on the back porch just outside the kitchen door. 

For having breakfast or any of the meals like lunch and dinner we would sit in a row lengthwise of the kitchen. The system was that for the main meals the children would have food first and then the men folk and the ladies last with Grandma being the absolute last. One wondered if Grandma got any food at the end because she remained always a short not more than 4ft. 8ins., frail woman with a lined, kindly oval face. Compared to Grandpa’s towering physique she looked like a midget. But Grandma had a big heart and she always had a smile for everyone, especially for me, because I was one of her favourite grandchild. Early morning if you happened to get up and drowsily find your way into the kitchen. You would find Grandma already up stoking the fires in the hearth. Looking ahead at the wall behind, it would look eerie with wisps of smoke rising up from the fires in the hearth and making it all hazy in the light of the single electric bulb hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. 

Grandma would look back at me standing on the threshold of the door from the store room into the kitchen and say – Come. I would groggily go near her and sit cross-legged on the floor. She would then press into my hands a hot cup of coffee in a stainless steel tumbler – real coffee, fresh and smelling great. Not the coffee mother would give us at breakfast drowned in milk. She would ruffle my mop of hair, smile at me and say – 'Go now and sit on the back porch door and see if that friend of yours, the cock has woken up. He has not been crowing yet.' I would stumble to the back porch and sit there with the tumbler of coffee in my hands watching the day come to light. Slowly people would be getting up and coming into the kitchen and mother looking at me would say – You managed to bribe Grandma as usual. The day had then really started.  The food that Grandma made was out of this world and particularly served on banana leaves it tasted all the more better. There were some of our delicacies that you would get only in Mangalore. One of them was bibbo - raw cashew which would be made into upkari – a sautéed dish with the raw cashew or vegetable tossed with some oil, mustard seeds and red chili. Another was aalambe – mushrooms that would grow in the forest after a thundershower and were available as the rainy season started. They were small round balls with brown skin the size of large cherries which after peeling off the skin and upon soaking in hot water would disclose the white colour inside. They were available for a maximum of two weeks before the rains started seriously but not on all days. Though one must say that my Bab Mam, uncle’s (the one just younger than my mother) wife made the best aalambe curry in the world. 

In between the long room where we children would sleep in rows and the kitchen there was a small square room. It was like a store room with shelves built into the wall. It had a window. This was the room where the goodies were kept. Like I had mentioned earlier whenever we went  to Mangalore it was for some wedding in the family. And weddings meant lots of sweets and other snacks to eat. Those days there were no caterers and cooks would be called in who would put up a make-shift kitchen in the garden. The cooks would be separate – one set for the snack items and another set for the food to be had on the actual day of the wedding – the ceremonial meal. 

The cooks for the snack items would come in about a week before the wedding and prepare all the stuff and go away a day or two before the wedding leaving all the snacks in those old tall square gleaming white biscuit tins with the round lids in the middle on top. Most of the time we would reach from Calcutta only about 2 – 3 days before the wedding so the snacks would be all ready by the time we reached. The tins neatly stacked on the floor of this small square room. Just going into the room you would get the smell of these heavenly delicacies. There would be normally three types of sweets – two halwas, one of wheat flour and the other of the long plantain called nandrebale – this plantain was used only to make sweets though sometimes you could boil it and have it for breakfast by smothering it with ghee and sugar, and the last was a sweet called saat – it was like a hard pastry made with layers of flour dough which was then dunked in sugar syrup and as the syrup hardened you would see the shape of a flesh coloured bowler hat with a sheen of hardened white sugar syrup covering it and sitting on a hard bed of solid crusted sugar. The saat's  were the size of small cup cakes and great to eat – crunchy and sweet, what more could you ask for. In those times during weddings particularly a barfi would be made with besan - chick-pea flour, cashew nut powder and sugar. These would be individually wrapped in butter paper and served on the banana leaf during the ceremonial meal. Even today this barfi is served but does not taste the same as in the days gone by. Another must-have sweet for the wedding was the mithaiye undo or bundi laddoo which used to be soft and not hard like the ones up north and this also would be individually wrapped in butter paper and served on the banana leaf during the ceremonial meal. Among the savoury items that were de rigueur for a wedding or similar occasion were banana chips made of the same nandrebale plantain but unripe, karo – crisp long fried chips julienned off the ripening jackfruit, tukdi – diamond shaped savoury chips made out of wheat dough, kodbale – that used rice dough to make fried savouries the shape of a chunky earring or like a teardrop with a hole in the middle and chudo – a spicy mixture made of beaten rice and sev – thin fried strands of besan dough, nuts – groundnuts and cashew mostly and thin crescent pieces of fried coconut. This room was like a treasure house for us kids as long as the tins were full since we would sneak in and carry away fistfuls of the goodies or make a bag out of the bottom of our shirts and put the goodies in them so that we could run away hide somewhere and sitting down eat to our heart’s content. This we could do mostly after the wedding was over and with the snack items left over. 

At the back of the house separated by a small patch of space was the bathroom and on its side with a different access were the toilets. These were also tile roofed. The bathroom was a cavernous dark room with no ceiling so you could look up and see the tiles except for an open loft just above the entrance door. This was used to store the firewood for the heating of the water for the bath since a hot water bath was kind of a habit here even during the searing heat of summer. On the left of the door were three huge gleaming copper cauldrons sitting on a sunken hearth which could be fired from underneath. The bathroom was also covered with soot from the wood fires and always smelled of smoke. Normally one of the cauldrons would be heated to give hot water while the other two would be filled with cold water. Buckets would be used to mix the water to suit how hot one wanted the water to be which you would have to pour yourself from the hot and cold water cauldrons. For us children, if we were small like my brother on the initial trips mother would give him his bath. But for us she would draw out the water and have it ready in the bucket for us to use. Even then I would reach out and dip the mug into the hot water to get me some more. Whether it was because of the wood heat or because of the copper metal the hot water in the cauldrons was much hotter than what we were used to at home and it also remained hot longer. Like Koraga would fire the cauldrons before six in the morning and even when people went for a bath at noon the water would be hot. Each cauldron from my reckoning now would have contained in excess of 600 litres of water. When there were more people in the house like at wedding times, two of the cauldrons would be fired up to give enough hot water. It was also Koraga’s job to fill the water into the cauldrons by bringing it from the well. These were the kind of odd jobs that he would be busy throughout the day. But later when piped water came to Mangalore and was available in Grandpa’s house, there was a tap provided in the bathroom over one of the cauldrons so that it could be filled. Koraga’s job changed to making sure that all the three cauldrons were filled with water from the tap. But as is usual any new facility that is provided comes with a lot of promise but fails to meet people’s expectations. The water from the tap was not available through the day and being never enough, Koraga had to continue to bring water from the well to fill the cauldrons when the tap water suddenly stopped or did not come on some days. 

The toilets were a difficult proposition since at that time there were no flushes since there was no tap water. Thus there was a row of six toilets facing the other way from the bathroom, each of them where you had to squat to do your business. And the stuff would fall down to the ground. The back of the toilets faced the service alley on the side of the house where someone would come to clean the toilets during the day and sprinkle it with bleaching powder. Even then the toilets stank and we particularly resisted going there. But there being no choice we were forced to use it. Each of the toilet cubicles had a half wooden door which afforded the user some privacy. But the whole arrangement was messy and did not change even when we made our last trip down south to Mangalore. Considering that most of the time you had to use it only once a day, we would pray not to have a stomach upset. With the stink of the toilets and since it was on one side of the back of the house, whenever we or anyone had to pee for that matter, they would go down into the bathroom and pee in the drain that let the water out. Thus if the person had not poured water to flush out the urine, even in the bathroom you would the smell of stale urine.  A quite unsatisfactory and difficult affair on the hygiene scale. 

In a separate shed a little distance from the bathroom was a cattle shed which had place for three to four cows. I do not remember Grandpa having four cows. The maximum I recall is two cows that were there on our first visits. One a very large white one and another black one. The white one was very beautiful and had magnificent horns and was a little frisky while the black one was more docile. The white cow used to give more milk but would not have anyone except Grandma or one of my younger aunts milking her. The black one would allow anyone to milk her and we also would try our hand on it sometime with the maid assisting us. The need of the cows was to get milk since the days of getting it in glass bottles or plastic packets from the government or local dairy had not arrived in Mangalore. And rather than buy milk it was better to keep a cow. Large family that Grandpa had, it made eminent sense to have the cows. The cattle shed was well ventilated and smelt nice, always of fresh hay. With the maid or Koraga supervising we would try our hand at feeding the two cows. The white one was a pain and scary while the black one was fun and would even allow us to touch her. Not like the white prima donna who would shake her head and move her horns at us menacingly but, of course, with a twinkle in her eye. The neighbours at the back of Grandpa's house also had a cow. It was as large as the white one Grandpa had, ochre in colour but tending to yellow. The skin of the cow was always shiny because it was the pet of the lady of the house and she took extra pains to feed it well and keep it clean. It was also friendly and allowed us to touch and fondle it, of course with her mistress present. It was Koraga’s job to keep our cattle shed clean and rub down the cows and also keep them spick and span. Thus you see he had all kinds of varied jobs around the house. By the time of our last trip to Mangalore the cows had gone and milk was delivered at the back porch of the kitchen in plastic sachets. 

Behind the kitchen and nearer the compound wall was a large well which had a diameter of at least twenty feet or more built of red laterite and with a roof over it, tiled roof as usual. There was a harness suspended over the middle of the well for the rope that could allow the bucket to be lowered down to raise water. A couple of steps from the garden led you to the platform where you could look into the well. This platform was only on one side of the well nearer the compound wall. The water would be deep down during the summer at least some twenty to thirty feet below while after the rains the well would fill up and the water level would be just about ten feet from the top. The rope going through the harness was made of coir and thick. It was rough to the touch and when it was being let down fast or if the bucket slipped back while you were bringing it up, the rope running down fast would hurt our soft children’s hands enough to make them red. A bucket tied to the rope was kept on the ledge of the well. Mother had told us to be careful while going near the well, not to peer inside and not go near it unless there was some adult accompanying us. This was because we were from the city and the well was a novelty for us and something unusual the way it was handled to raise water. Peeping into the well was a wonderful sight with the dark, greenish water which we saw from the top becoming crystal clear when it was brought up in the bucket. The water was cool throughout the year and even in the height of summer. But it was very tasty not like the insipid tap water that we used to get in Calcutta. Sometimes in the water we would see small frogs swimming around which made us suspicious that we were drinking the water that the frog would be using as his toilet and letting out his excreta. One of our younger aunts was a science student and she said not to worry since the volume of water in the well was much larger compared to the small frog’s excreta and therefore the dilution made it safe to drink. But we remained unconvinced. Along the sides of the well we would see moss and at some places there would be small plants with green leaves peeping out of the crevices in between the laterite stones used to build the well. The laterite stones must have been red when they were new were now somewhere, black, somewhere maroon and at other places green covered with moss. There was also a money plant growing along the sides of the well at the top overhanging over the ledge mostly on the side where the platform was not there. For dispensing water, it was Koraga’s job to make sure the bathrooms were supplied as said earlier. He also used the well water to water the coconut trees and the other trees and plants in the garden. For drinking and cooking, the water from the well would be drawn by either the maid or one of our younger aunts. While taking out this potable water, they would not use the bucket that was always kept near the well but bring a brass pitcher from the kitchen. They would tie a noose around the neck of the pitcher and let it down slowly with the rope until it hit the water. Then with the rope you had to move the pitcher, that is slosh it around so that it got filled and then draw it up. The pitcher full of water was reasonably heavy and while drawing it up the maid or aunt would put one of their feet on the edge of the well with the other planted firmly on the platform and pull the pitcher up with their arms moving in quick march fashion. It was quite tiring work. But Koraga was always cool and with the bucket being larger than the pitcher he would just stand at the edge of the well and pull up the bucket and as many as you wanted. Tough man was this Koraga! Must be his tribal blood, we guessed. 

The garden was another delight for us city bred children. You had flowers like the shoeflower and the others that were required for the pujas, which were all fetched from the garden. There were small white flowers some with a green stem and others with a red stem. The red stem ones were considered sacred and called parijat. There were others which would be flaming scarlet with long pistules that were called ratnagandhi. These came in different colours like yellow and also pink and were distributed around the garden. Then there was the yellow bell shaped flower called karveer which was not so useful for the pujas. More than the flowers what interested us were the fruit bearing trees. As said earlier there was a chikoo tree as you went towards the well and the brown fruit would be nice and sweet but then it was a problem picking it since the tree was full of those large brown ants with a blackish head called yembo which had a dangerous bite. Once bitten the bite area would swell up and the burning sensation would last for hours irrespective of how much ointment you put on it. But that did not deter us too much and we would have our fair share of chikoo once they were big enough to eat. There was a mango tree on the left of the main porch nearer the boundary wall but I do not recall having any mango from the tree when we were there. There was also a jackfruit tree in between the bathroom building and the cattle shed and they would be heavy with fruit. After Koraga had picked the ones that were required meaning Grandma would require the green or tender jackfruit for her curries while the ripe jackfruit was eaten as a fruit, he would stack them on the back porch nearer the kitchen door. It was the maid’s job to strip down the ripe fruit and take out the seeds that could be eaten raw. But the jackfruit once cut and stripped would let out an odourous smell, perfume for those who liked and an avoidable odour for people like me who did not like the fruit. The smell would suffuse through the house when a number of jackfruits had been cut open and I would go around with a handkerchief tied around my nose and mouth posing as if I was Roy Rogers. I rarely ate the jackfruit seeds. Inside the fleshy seed was the real seed which was hard and called bikand, also used as a vegetable to be put in curries. The ripe jackfruit apart from being eaten as it is, could also be made into different kinds of sweets and also rolled into strips after mashing the ripe fruit, adding sugar to it and then cooking it. This was called pansa saat. This was tolerable for me as long as the jackfruit smell was not overbearing but any day I would prefer mango or ambe saat. Near the jackfruit tree was the gooseberry tree and the beautiful thing about this tree was that you could find some of the ripe fruit fallen on the ground. We would go around picking it up and eating it until we could find Koraga and pester him to pluck some more for us. Thus just being in and around Grandpa’s house we had so much to do that it was never boring. 

                                                  The GSB Konkani Wedding

As said earlier, our visits to Mangalore were linked to weddings mostly of Mother's brothers and sisters. I remember some of them and what has remained in my memory is the manner in which the weddings were celebrated. Those days weddings were celebrated in houses not in wedding choultris or halls. This was more so with large houses like Grandpa had. 

A mantap mostly hexagonal in shape with a wooden frame would be made with each side of the hexagon being open so that the priest and the bride and bridegroom and other members of the family who were to participate in the formalities could enter. The size was about that of a 8x10 ft. room inside. The frame of the mantap was decorated with bright coloured paper both inside and outside and topped with a crepe paper saffron pennant on the top of the roof where the sides of the hexagon were brought together. Multicolored crepe paper buntings would be drawn out from the mantap sides and brought out to be fixed to a nearby tree or wall. All in all it looked very colourful. These were the early 1960's and there was no availability of miniature coloured electric lights and plastic items for use in the decorations. The mantap was placed in the garden of Grandpa's house just behind and on the right of the main gate portico. The ground inside the mantap would be levelled and then plastered over with cowdung paste , a couple of days before the wedding so that it was smooth. Inside the mantap and on the ground were placed some asanas or mats on which the bride, groom, priests and other members of the family would sit at various times when their presence was required during the ceremonies. In the middle would be the havana or sacred fire enclosure made with bricks which was an important part for the various rituals relating to the wedding. 

At the main gate portico young banana stems would be fixed on both sides of the door and with flowers strung up over the top of the door. Inside on the ledges the musicians actually three of them sat, one playing the basuri or flute, another the harmonium and another a kind of drum. As you climbed the stairs to the main porch the entrance was also decorated with flowers fixed to the sloping tiled roof. Flower garlands in marigold and yellow would be strung from the roof rafters over the side ledges of the porch. Looking in from the main gate as you entered the house it gave one a festive atmosphere added on by the live music being played to convey that an important religious function like a wedding was taking place. The festive atmosphere was further enhanced when the Bhatmam or priest would start chanting the mantras and the homa or sacred fire was lit in the mantap and the perfume of the wood smoke, the ghee and the camphor burning in the fire would permeate the entire area.   

The whole house was dedicated to the wedding and everything other than that required for the wedding was put away into one of the side rooms. Folding, wooden chairs light orange or yellow in colour were set up on the main porch along the wall for the menfolk coming in while the women would be ushered into the main living room where a large rug would be spread on the floor for the women to sit upon. We children, of the house and those of the guests, would have a great time with all the doors in the house being open and running about creating a commotion and being a general nuisance until admonished by one of the elders to behave. 

The dress code for the men in those days was spotless white or cream mundus with a half-sleeved shirt on top, again white or cream, sometimes blue, called the bush-coat in Mangalore which we otherwise would call a bush-shirt. Along with this the men would drape a small towel mostly white on their shoulder. Those days there was no ostentation and it was rare to see silk being worn by the men or even trousers. Only someone come from the cities like our father would be seen in a trouser which at that time were the comfortable fitting ones with wide bottoms. But father rarely came for the weddings. With the women it was different since they would come decked up in their best Kanjeevaram or Mysore silk saris and wearing their most expensive jewellery including their latest purchases if any. They would wear flowers in their hair, mostly the fragrant kasturi mogare or jasmine, that would come from Udupi, or a huge bunch of the small flaming orange flowers or abbale. The women additionally would be given a small piece of bound kasturi mogare flowers to put in their hair as soon as they arrived. We, children would be dressed in our best finery. New clothes would be mad3 sp3ciLly to b3 worn on the wedding day. For us boys it was shorts and a bush-shirt on top. For the girls it was the patta-pawada which was actually a full flowing skirt and with a tight fitting blouse on top. The skirt and the blouse would be in matching and contrasting styles mostlymade of fine silk like the silk saris the ladies wore. 

The guests sooner they arrived would be sprinkled with rose water at the main gate and ushered in. The job of sprinkling rose water with the gulabdanis - silver and stainless steel containers was given to us children and we would stand at the gate in rotation performing this onerous duty. Those that we knew well and liked we would sprinkle them generously, literally dousing them with rose water to many peals of laughter and shrieks. 

The guests as soon as they came in were given tiffin which would be upma with sev or chudo mixture as described earlier, sweets like the halwa - the wheat and the nandrabale one along with the saat. The idea was to give more sweets to sweeten people since it was a happy occasion. The snack ended with the rich, strong filter coffee that Mangalore was famous for. One does not remember where the guests were given the food to eat but one suspects it was the long room accessed through the small room which was our aunts and uncles study room. The long room is the primary suspect since it led through the store room to the kitchen which was the primary source for the food coming through. Generally rugs folded over would be placed along the walls on both sides of the room with the guests sitting on them and being served from the middle space. 

The groom and his party would arrive mostly in a car with a close relative of the bride going to the groom’s house to bring them. Upon arrival at the main gate the groom's party was met by the bride's parents. Then a confrontational ceremony called Yedurkanshani  or seeing each other by standing opposite was undergone. The idea for this was like a welcoming ceremony and , one would believe, for the bride and the groom's parties to familiarise with each other and get to know each other. But the manner in which it played out was different. The groom and his father would stand at one place and flanking them and in front of them on both sides would be the womenfolk of both sides including the bride and groom's mothers making a line and facing each other. The seniority or the pecking order of the line after the mothers would be the senior most relative of the bride and groom at the top of the line and going down in order. At most four ladies would be standing apart from the mothers including the sister of the bride or her cousin, if there was no sister, which was a must. They would have platters in their hands with akshatas - sacred rice grains that had been mixed with kumkum - holy vermilion and haldi - turmeric powder, bound bunches of flowers, gulabdanis filled with rosewater  and small boxes of kumkum  with the sister of the bride carrying specially on her platter a small mirror. The music would then reach a crescendo and with the drum beating a frenetic tempo, the mother of the bride would approach the mother of the groom and put kumkum on her forehead and offer her a small piece of bound kasturi mogare flowers. The mother of the bride would proceed down the groom's line and do the same to the other ladies. Next the senior amongst the bride's relatives in the line  would move forward and approach the  groom's mother and offer her more of the kumkum and the kasturi mogare flowers and do the same for the other ladies on the groom's line. The next lady on the bride's line would then offer in similar fashion the akshatas to all the ladies on the groom's line. Then the next lady would go down the groom's line with the gulabdani and sprinkle the perfumed water on them. Last the bride's sister would go down the groom's line with the mirror on her platter and have the ladies get a glimpse of their faces in the mirror. After this it is the turn of the the groom's side to go down the bride's line starting with his mother and the rest of the ladies. They perform the same sequence as the bride's side has done down to the mirror on the platter held this time by the groom's sister or if not available his cousin.  This would complete the Yedurkanshani ritual. In those days the participants in this ritual would be mostly known to each other since marriage alliances would be settled among near relatives and known persons in the vicinity of the town or village. Thus for the Yedurkanshani ritual the atmosphere would be more convivial than confrontational. In more current times with families having expanded, people staying in distant cities there is more competition among the near relatives to be part of the four persons in the line for the ritual apart from the mothers of the bride and the groom and with less familiarity between the families you see pompous, stern visages on the lines making it difficult and formidable to get it over with and move to the next part of the wedding formalities. Sometimes watching this ceremony one would get the feeling that one was at the Pooram festival in Trichur, Kerala where one would have the elephants all decked up standing in lines facing each other and swaying in time to the music. The priest from the bride's side would be present during the ritual to make sure everything was done properly. 

Once the Yedurkanshani ritual was over the bride's parents would approach the groom. The mother of the bride would pour water on the groom's feet which was  then dried with a towel by the bride's father. Once this was finished the groom's party was ushered into the house. Then depending on the priest's advice the groom and his parents would involve in some of the other rituals or go in with the rest of the groom's party and have tiffin as described earlier. The groom needed to eat well so that he was properly fortified to endure a further 3 hour spell of the wedding rituals with mostly the smoke from the havana going into his face. Normally there would be two priests, one from the bride's side and the other from the groom's side. The priest from the bride's side would dominate since there were more rituals that the bride's side would have to go through. 

After this there many rituals like the mama - maternal uncle carrying the bride in his arms and bringing her to the mantap through the assembled guests. Those days the bride would be closer to 18 years or even less  and the would have an easytim3 carrying her. But these days with the girls getting married in their late 20's or early 30's the mama would have to be a pehelwan to complete the ritual. The compromise in case of a heavy bride was that the mama would lead her by the hand to the mantap. Another ritual was the groom simulating his wanting to go back to Kashi with a stick and an umbrella in his hand and a bundle with his belongings slung on his shoulder to continue  with his Brahmacharya or priesthood that he is undergoing after his munji or sacred thread ceremony is completed. As the groom is preparing to leave the father of the bride stops him saying that he will give his daughter in marriage to the groom and for him to come back and accept grahasti or that of a family man.  The groom is supposed to heed this entreaty and return to proceed with the marriage ceremony. In all this the priest from the bride's side assists her father in prompting as to what to say so that the groom listens to him, otherwise  the groom may continue on his way to Kashi! Kanyadaan where the father of the bride would give her away to the groom. Most of the other rituals that were undergone were with the smoke in the face of the bride and the groom and their parents. More so for the bride's side. One of the last rituals that one remembers of  the marriage ceremony is that of the Antarpath where a cloth is held between the bride and the groom who are standing on either side with their parents next to them with the cloth hiding them from seeing each other. The cloth was mostly white with a red swastika drawn in the centre and held in place by the priests of the bride and groom while they would compete to chant the holy mantras in a rising crescendo to be timed with the muhurtham of the wedding. The muhurtham is the auspicious time at which the marriage is to be solemnised as established by the Panchanga or the holy almanac. For most GSB weddings the muhurtham is around noon between 12-1pm. Some weddings are held in the evenings called the Godhuli Lagnam. 

Godhuli is the dust from the ground that rises up in the skies at the time that cattle come home after the day's grazing mostly n the evening closer to sunset. Nowadays there is no question of Godhuli since the the roads are all tarred and maybe after a few years there will be no cows out on the roads also. But Godhuli Lagnam are still held but not very much. 

We have missed out on the eating part of the ceremonies and have left it after the morning tiffin. Once the guests have settled down and the wedding rituals are in full flow, around 10-10.30am guests are served biscut ambade and cold drinks, which could be panaks or rose or orange sherbets. The panaks were drinks made with spices and jaggery which were sweet but had a savoury aftertaste. There were different recipes to make panaks and some of them would be used to cure cough and cold. For the sherbets concentrates would be brought and diluted with water and served to guests. For rose the standard even then was Rooh Afza. For orange there were many options for supply. Nowadays bottled drinks like Coca Cola, Pepsi and Fanta/Mirinda are the order of the day and they are served to the guests as they are coming inside the wedding venue. It is at this time that rose water is sprinkled on them and the ladies are given the small strips or bunches of the kasturi mogare flowers. This job still remains the domain of the family children who take turns to do their duty though it is sometimes outsourced to the wedding planner or the catering contractor. Earlier times the flowers would be distributed to the women guests mid-morning. 

The high point of the mid-morning even as the wedding was going on and the mantras were being chanted, was the fact that piping hot biscut ambade were ready when almost all the male guests and us children would make a beeline for the eating room and ensconce ourselves on the rug. The wafting delicious smell of the biscut ambade would have already sent us into raptures and then they would drop on your cholko - strip of banana leaf, four at a time, round balls of heavenly goodness, uneven sometimes, along with dry coconut chutney. They would be melt in your mouth crunchy delights oozing the oil into the sides of your mouth sometimes. For us children the chutney though very good was not important but the ambades were. We would anxiously look towards the servers for second helpings and would get just two. It was rare to get any more than that since the good stuff had to around and be sufficient for all the guests. The ambades were freshly ground urad dal batter made into small balls that was dropped into boiling oil, coconut oil mostly and taken out when golden. The ambades would be followed by coffee and we would indulge away from the watchful eyes of Mother who was busy somewhere with the wedding rituals. 

Among the GSB community the noon weddings were and are even now favoured since lunch or the wedding feast immediately follows. In earlier times the fare would be served on a banana leaf and would consist of tendle-bibbe upkari (gherkin and raw cashew with grated coconut tossed in oil and sautéed), batate wagh (pieces of boiled potato simmered in a chili hot simmering sauce of red chili and tamarind paste), daalitoi (arhar dal boiled and then a tarka - tempering put of coconut oil, mustard seeds, dried red chili, hing or asafoetida and curry leaves), chane ghashi (boiled chick peas in a coconut gravy with pieces of suran - yam or tender jackfruit floating in it, finished with a tarka - tempering of coconut oil, mustard seeds, dried red chili, hing or asafoetida and curry leaves), avnaas-ambe sasam (pineapple and mango pieces put in thick coconut gravy ) - it is actually a sweet and sour dish with a little jaggery added to enhance the sourness of the pineapple and the mango, rasam (flavoursome boiled dal water with spices like pepper etc. and then tempered with coconut oil, mustard seeds, dried red chili, hing or asafoetida and curry leaves), dudhpak (sweet pudding made with milk,sugar and rice or sago with dried fruits put in like kismis and cashewnuts) or madgane (sweet made with boiled chana dal - split chick pea pulses, jaggery, coconut milk, flavoured with ground elaichi or cardamom powder and enhanced with cashewnuts) and then the usual rice, papad, mango or lime pickles, salt and taak - flavoured buttermilk. The besan-cashew barfi and the mithaiye undo packed individually in butterpaper would be dropped onto your banana leaf as the last item of the meal or given in your extended left hand. With all such goodies on the banana leaf it would make for a tempting and appetising sight. We would go at it with great gusto doing full justice to the food and finding it difficult to get to our feet at the end of the meal. This was also true for most of the guests. Up until the time our daughter got married about 10 years ago, one had not given a thought as to when the bridal pair and their parents and near family since they would be involved in greeting guests, talking to them and bidding them goodbye, would eat. The wedding feast would be kept reserved for the bride and groom's families and they would eat last, all together symbolising the convivial feeling and happy that everything had gone off well. 

During the day of the wedding and a few days before that Grandma's kitchen would be closed. A retinue of cooks would come and take over her kitchen, the back porch and verandah and set up hearths in the open with laterite blocks for the bulk cooking. The cutting of the vegetables and preparatory work would be done on the back porch and the main cooking would be done on the large open hearths that they had set up. Huge vats and karai’s would rest on the fires kindled with wood. A big pile of firewood would be dumped near the hearths. With a lot of guests coming to stay at Grandpa's place before the wedding from the outlying villages and towns and like us from the cities it was not possible for a frail Grandma to manage the cooking along with help from our maternal aunts and Mother. Though some of the people would be staying with our other relatives in the neighbourhood or in the town for all the meals a couple of days leading up to the wedding day, they would all troop to Grandpa's house. At one time you would have 20-25 men, the same number of ladies and then us children sitting in batches for each meal, breakfast and snack time. Everyone would be talking away at the same time interspersed with peals of laughter. We would also contribute to the cacophony with our incessant chattering. Everybody would be having fun all the time. This was as far as the main meals etc. was concerned but a week before the wedding day another batch of specialist cooks would come and make all the snacks and sweets that were listed earlier, put them into the biscuit tins and stack them neatly in the storeroom next to Grandma's kitchen before they went away. 

After resting for a while it would be time for the bride to leave with the groom and his family to their house. This was an emotional moment for the bride and her mother and ladies of the close family like bride's sister/s and aunt/s since invariably the bride and her mother would break into tears. Amidst all the motion there would be entreaties from the bride's side tolook after their little darling etc. These public emotional bursts was valid in earlier times since the bride would be mostly in her teens. But things have changed today with girls getting married in the late twenties or even early thirties and such farewells have become matter of fact. The bridal pair would move off in the same car that had brought the groom with other members of his family following. While the bride's family and near relatives would sit down in the middle room and relax after a hectic day's involvement in the wedding, sharing anecdotes, gossip about who wore what etc. covering both saris and jewellery as also having met someone after a long time. 

The wedding was thus formally over and the daughter of the house had been with due honour sent to her husband's home. At any time this is quite an achievement, to pull off an event of this magnitude where coordination has to be done with many people and agencies and in those days with no cell phones you can imagine the enormity of the task. But one guesses that everything went off smoothly and well since there were rarely complaints or controversies or at least we children did not get to hear of it. 

After the wedding was over and in a few days the bride would come back to her parents house with the groom where the bridal pair would be welcomed with an aarti at the doorstep. This ritual was called Phatipartan and the groom would leave the bride for a few days and then come to pick her up. When the bride was returning to the groom's house this time, there would be less of rona dhona this time since by this time everyone would be reconciled with the fact of their married daughter needing to go even though her return would this time be after a longer time. If the groom was staying in a place other than Mangalore then the break to see each other would be longer for the bride and her parents. After the wedding if the bride was nearby like in Mangalore it was customary for both husband and wife to visit the bride's home for each religious occasion. The main festival though would be Diwali when the bride would be presented with gold ornaments as part of custom which is slowly on the wane now. The next big event for the bride would be the gurbini kappad held in the 8th month of the pregnancy which was held both at her parents place as also her in-laws place with the ceremony  at her mother's place being predominant. Here again gold jewellery was given from both side of the family to the bride. After that there were many rituals to follow which we will relate at a later time as the bride embarks fully on her journey through life. 

Grandpa's house would be generally quiet a few days after the wedding. The workers would come dismantle the mantap set up in the garden. Whatever remained of the crepe and coloured paper from the buntings and decorations which we had not been able to appropriate would be raved and taken away. The outdoor hearths that was part of the kitchen that the visiting cooks had set up was broken down.The cooks while going back had taken whatever paraphernalia like cooking utensils like the large vats and karais that they had brought to cook with. The house would slowly set back to the normal routine of work, play, eat and sleep. But for us children this was freedom time with Grandma and mother allowing us unrestricted access to the snacks in the storeroom that were left over. We would gorge to our heart's content sometimes getting stomach upsets from overeating. 

                                    Bullock Cart Ride & The House At Bunder 

The first novelty from one of our first visits that I can extract from hazy memory was sitting in a bullock-cart. It must have been 1958 or so and there were hardly or one should say no buses to go from one side of Mangalore town to the other. The men folk would go about on cycles and the women would go by bullock cart. Others would walk which highlights the healthy way of life then prevailing. Since we being then in the category of small children to be always accompanied by mother or one or the other women in the family would fall luckily in the bullock cart category. What an experience it was! The bullock cart belonged to someone known to grandfather and it was on call like a taxi whenever it was required. Since my mother’s eldest sister, Shanti Mav (Mav was the respectful form for addressing your mother's elder sister in our community),  used to stay with her husband on the other end of town, in a neighbourhood called the Bunder, next to the Mangalore port. It was some 3 km. from our grandfather’s place. After a few days of our arrival at Grandpa’s house it was decided that we should go to Bunder and visit Shanti Mav. The bullock cart was called for the four of us. After breakfast we were all excited and hanging around the front porch impatiently waiting for the bullock cart. One wondered why it was so late, when actually it was not! It was just our impatience to be off. 

Finally there was the tinkling of bells that you could hear in the distance along with the clunky rhythmic sound of the wooden wheel of the cart on the tar road. The bullock cart came into sight and stopped at our gate. We immediately ran down and clustered outside the gate wanting to get in. Krishna who drove the cart had a small stick in his stand and with it he jumped down. There were two snow-white oxen tied to the yoke. They looked powerful and had magnificent curling horns. Their mouths were pink and they seemed to be chewing something all the time. The cart had two huge wheels which were much higher than us children. The main body of the cart rested in between the wheels with the front jutting over with the yoke. The body of the cart was covered with an inverted U of tough bamboo mats which were fixed to the cart on the sides. This cover did not extend all the way to the front and Krishna had no protection for his head. At the back of the cart for the ladies to get in there were two footrests at different levels so that they could manage to climb in by holding on to the rope that was fixed on one side of the roof. Mother had come out by that time and she seemed to know Krishna. With my elder sister and younger brother my mother climbed into the cart which again had a bamboo mat for the floor. You could sit comfortably either looking straight ahead or from the back or just lean against the sides. After them Krishna who had gestured me being the elder to wait, took me to the front of the cart. He then clambered up and I was the only person still left on the ground. I was getting this sinking feeling that there must be some plot to leave me behind. But then Krishna suddenly reached down and picked me and placed me in front of him with my legs dangling on both sides of the front of the cart which narrowed down. I had the best seat on the cart then and I gleefully looked back at my mother and at my little brother who I am sure would have been a little jealous. Krishna flicked with the rope at the oxen calling out to them and they started off. We were on our way trundling to Bunder. That was one of the most exhilarating rides of my little life until then. 

As we went the cart swayed a little from one side to the other what with the condition of the road and the wooden wheels not getting proper purchase with the road surface. In a little while the oxen settled to a steady rhythm. I was enjoying my ride with Krishna allowing me to hold his stick and letting me to sometimes to flick at one or the other oxen. The oxen would also flick their tails and I felt them on my legs as if they were doing this in retaliation for my flicking them on their backs with the rope. So we were all square. Krishna also allowed me to touch the rumps of the oxen and strangely the skin felt rough. For such magnificent animals I had thought that they would have soft skin. I was proved very much wrong. We reached Bunder and Shanti Mav's house in about half an hour. The road was narrow but pitted making the cart go up and down. In almost the middle of the stretch on the way there were paddy fields with the growing green shoots on both sides of the road until we came to Car Street, the main shopping area, where the buildings started all over again. And my first bullock cart ride was over. As soon as we reached Shanti Mav's house Krishna got down and opened the big, tin gates and then guided the cart in. He then picked me up and lowered me to the ground. Mother had in the meanwhile got down from the back with my sister and brother. Shanti Mav’s house was next to the Krishna Oil Mills which was famous for its coconut oil and was the landmark which we would tell autorickshaw drivers later to reach the place. 

Shanti Mav's house at Bunder was an exciting place, laid out in the manner  of a house cum godown cum factory for timber with new things to find in every corner. Her husband was a timber merchant and would go into the forests to buy trees by auction that had been felled in the different lotsthat had been allotted to him.  The trees would then be denuded off their branches into huge logs and transported to the coast and to their house at Bunder in big trucks. How those trucks managed to get through the narrow roads of Bunder was anybody’s guess? But they still managed to come in. 

They would come into the compound of the house and the sides would be opened from both sides of the truck and the logs expertly rolled down thick planks that had been jammed into the sides of the truck. Watching the men do this work was a wonder for us children peeping from the window of the house that overlooked the front yard. A full truck would contain at least 8 to 10 logs of at least three to four feet diameter and at least fifteen feet long. All this would be unloaded on either side of the parked truck in a matter of half an hour and then the truck would be off. When the big logs rolled down the bed of the truck and hit the ground first there would be a loud thud and then again another thud when they hit another log that had been rolled down earlier and was already on the ground. Uncle’s workers would then with crowbars and rope and pulley winches get the logs into the sheds at the back for processing them. 

There were three sheds behind the office room which was on the right where the front yard ended. The office room was strewn with some tables and chairs with a telephone sitting proudly on one of the tables facing the main doorway. This was Uncle’s table and none of us dared to clamber on to the chair behind it for fear of the grey bushy eyebrows of uncle joining together and his beady eyes focusing on us from his bald, wizened face. He was a kindly man nonetheless but for his rough exterior manner. Even when the family including aunt had to receive a phone call she would sit on the opposite side of the table where a chair had been placed. No calls of a personal nature were made when uncle was in the office not for any other reason but because uncle did not like it. The office room was like a walk-through with a door at the back leading to the sheds. On the landing behind the back door was a weighing scale used to weigh heavy items by balancing some smaller weights on a cantilever extension below which graduated weight measures were printed. When uncle was not there we would get up on the scale in turns and measure our weights. Next to the office room main door was another door to the right which led off to the residential part of the house. 

Past the office room there was a small pathway that led to the sheds at the back. At times when stocks were full there would be logs of wood all over, stacked one on top of the other and only this thin pathway to go to the back. All over you would get the heady perfume of fresh wood. As you reached the first shed you would well in advance hear the electric bandsaw slicing through the logs making long sections about four inches thick. These would again be stacked on the side of the shed. Apart from the banshee wailing of the bandsaw when it was in operation, there was sawdust all over and on the ground. The second shed was mainly a storage shed for the planks of wood hat were being cut but it had the fittings for another bandsaw to be installed there if the volume of business so demanded. The last shed was the fun shed for all of us. Here a plank would be fed into a machine from one side and on the other end there would be blown out hundreds, no thousands and thousands of small sticks. All regular size sticks flying out and dropping into a bin kept at the bottom. This was the matchstick making machine. The operator of the machine would sometimes allow us to touch the stream of matchsticks flying off the machine and dropping into the bin. It felt like a thousand pin pricks at the same time though the sticks left no marks on our palms. It was fun doing this. Uncle would supply these sticks to the factories making safety matches. 

Beyond the third shed the pathway opened out into a flat terrace and beyond that was the river, Netravati. The terrace was surrounded by a small knee-high protective wall on which you could sit and tip yourself to reach down and touch the water. The terrace was about fifty feet in width and hundred feet in length and would extend lengthwise into the river and had water on three sides. On all three sides you could see wooden logs that had been dumped into the water for curing. All these logs belonged to uncle. The cemented terrace floor was the place where the matchsticks would be left in the sun to dry fully. Sometimes when you went on to the terrace you could find the whole place full of gunny or canvas sheets with matchsticks spread out on them basking in the sunshine. At this time there was a strong smell of freshly cut wood and its resin that enveloped the whole terrace. 

The logs in the water were another major source of fun for us in our play routines. Dares would be set as to who could go down onto the logs and go right in front and touch the flowing water of the river and come back. This was a tricky dare since the logs though looking apparently solid from the top were loosely sitting on the mud of the river. Having been in the water for so long there was always a film of moss on them and they were slippery. Thus you needed to know where to put your foot on them. The other thing was that those logs that were closer to the running water were not moored to the bed of the river and were actually floating partially. Thus when you put your foot on them they would spin around tossing you into the river. So it was not so easy a challenge as some may think. But to overcome them was a must if you wanted to win the dare. So with a couple of bruised ankles, and falling into the water and having your hands and feet blackened with slush you could come back to the safety of the terrace – the victor.  Forget that the news of all that you had done would go back to mother and you would get an earful apart from a few slaps on your back or a cuff on the ear for getting messed up and having gone into the river without permission. One wondered if we had told her in advance, would she have given permission! 

In between the logs in the water you would find the small frogs scurrying around and in the water insects flitting up and down and sometimes you could see small fish. When the weather was very hot sometimes you would have hornets buzzing over the terrace and over the water bothering us. The logs would also be chained together so that if the river water rose they would not float away. From the terrace across the river you could see again a stretch of sand like an extended spit and beyond that was the sea. The same stretch of sand we were told that extended right up to Sultan Batheri near Grandpa's house and beyond. Standing on the terrace you could hear the roar of the waves and during the rainy season the sea becoming rough one could hear the continuous roar of the sea inside aunt’s house. Once we got on to the terrace it was difficult for us to think of going back and unless someone from the house either mother or one of elder cousins came out to fetch us we would still be playing around outside. 

Digressing a bit here we will talk of the Netravati and the other rivers on the western coast particularly in Karnataka where the waters never seem to dry up even in the height of summer.  Other rivers all over India and more so even in Maharashtra and Kerala which are on the west coast would invariably dry up during the hot summers. The Karnataka rivers like the Netravati start in the Western Ghats and run down the hills to the coast meandering hither and thither until they come to the coast as a broad expanse of placid water until at their estuary they meet the turbulent sea. All these rivers are rain fed and very few have dams on them but even those which are dammed, downstream they seem to have a good flow of water right through the year. 

On both sides of the river as they flow in the flatlands of the coast you will have curving coconut palms bending sometimes down to the water. All this goes to make a beautiful sight. If you are travelling from Mangalore up to Goa you will have to cross twenty such rivers and in the days of yore when the road and rail bridges were not built, people would have to depend upon ferries to cross the river. These ferries were not like what we are used to today engine-driven and mechanised but large boats sometime two of them joined together with large planks placed across the boats which boatmen would with long poles reaching to the bottom of the river push the boats across the water. They could even carry the occasional car that came along. This made travel tedious. There were also no buses then making the travel by bullock-cart in addition more time-consuming. There were also no trains then since the Konkan Railway has been in existence for hardly two decades now. 

The changes in transportation on the coast that came with time were that first the buses were introduced which could go only upto the first river and wait there. The people would get down and take the ferry across the river and then get onto another bus waiting on the other side. Like this if you were wanting to go up to Karwar from Mangalore it would have to be many such getting down and ups that you would have to sequence. As children when we were told this, we would ask how the bus on the other side of the first river and then the succeeding rivers got there since the ferries could not carry such a heavy load like that of even an empty bus. Then one of the aunts or uncles would give us a cuff on the ear and tell us not to ask stupid questions and not to spoil the ‘fun’ of the journey. But we guessed that there must have been some roads which were longer that you could get across to the other side of the river or maybe they brought extra large boats to be able to carry the buses across. Problem solved, these adults did not know a thing! Once the road bridges were built the ferries faded out of existence except to handle the local people’s needs. Then after a longish span came the Konkan Railway which built the train bridges across the rivers. 

Going from one place to another those days as said was both time-consuming and tedious and journeys from Mangalore to Bombay were all the more difficult. One of the options was that you could go by ship, called steamship those days because the boilers fired by coal would generate steam to drive the ship’s propellers, but the journey would take three days and during the monsoon the sea becoming rough the voyage was suitable only for people with strong stomachs. Sometimes the services by ship would be shut down during the monsoon. 

The other option was to go by bus with its attendant logistics issues of getting down and changing buses because of the ferries at each river crossing and the bus would have to go through the high hills (one cannot call them mountains) in the Western Ghats. The bus would go through the town of Agumbe made famous by the television production of R K Narayan’s Malgudi Days. There was no coastal road up to Bombay those days since Goa was in the hands of the Portuguese and became a part of the Indian Union in 1963 after it was liberated. Thus from Agumbe the road would go and meet Hubli and Dharwad and via the Sholapur route reach Pune and then again descend down to the coast at Bombay. 

The third option was train where you would have to go up to Miraj by the broad gauge and then change trains there to get into the meter gauge trains via Pune and into Bombay. The time taken for the journeys by bus and train was equivalent to the one by ship at three days but all three modes were not for the faint hearted. That is why unless it was absolutely necessary the women rarely travelled and the men would travel also when it was absolutely necessary.

Most of our play along with the three male cousins from Bombay was games like hide and seek. There were plenty of places to hide in between and on the logs of wood in the three sheds. We avoided the sheds where the match making machines and other equipment was kept. 

Shanti Mav’s family, apart from Uncle, was three daughters and a son. The son was the one who would take us for cycle rides. He was the eldest and then the three girls followed, with the last girl having quite a difference in age from her preceding sister. The son was older than us by almost maybe ten tears and then the sister next to him was about a year older than our elder sister making her at least around three years older than me. All of them were wonderful people, very warm and giving and friendly. Aunt’s eldest daughter particularly so who would go fussing around us like a mother hen clucking over her brood of chickens. Making sure that we ate in time and ate well and we had everything we needed for having fun. She would mediate in our small tiffs. Quite the motherly kind she was! 

Their house led off on the right of the office room through a small door which was actually a door in a compound wall open to the sky. Immediately as you entered on the right was a well, smaller than the one at Grandpa’s, but having more water in it since it was closer to the river. During the rainy season the water would come right up to the top and we would be able to touch it without leaning too much. The door actually opened onto a small courtyard open to the sky at almost the centre of which was a tulsi brindavan and on the right was a small landing. Straight ahead from the landing after a step was the first room of the house. To its right was a kitchen and dining area in an L shaped format with the smaller end of the L terminating in a wall behind which was the well. From the landing you could also enter the kitchen. The first room had a slatted wooden window from where you could get a view of the front yard. Leading up from the front room at a raised level of another two steps was another room which was the main living room where we would spend most of our time. It also had a large window this time with iron bars on them that looked over the front court yard as well. This was the window around which we would cluster to watch the logs getting unloaded from the trucks. As for furniture the front room had a wooden easy chair, the one with the cloth strung on it where you could sit, a couple of chairs and a table kept along the left wall of the room. This was the study table for our cousins. The easychair was uncle’s and whenever he was in the house he would sink into it. When he was away we would take turns in trying it out and swinging with the cloth. Once I recall when the cloth was frayed at the point where it was fixed through wooden batons through a slit at the top and bottom of the chair, it tore and whoever was sitting at that time in it, one of us children, was down on the ground with his backside taking a jolt. On the inside room on a wooden bureau was a big radio and it was a favourite of our motherly cousin and you would find it on all the time playing Hindi songs from either Vividh Bharati or the Binaca Geetmala on Radio Ceylon. Behind the upper room there were two other rooms, the one on the left was like a store cum dressing room for the women of the house and the one on the right was like a bedroom with a large cot in it. This is where we would all pile in to sleep at night if we were staying over and not going back to Grandpa’s. This room led out to another room behind it which was completely bare and empty and at the end of it there was a door. That opened out on the street we were told. The house had two entrances one through this door which was never used and the other through the main gate that led to the front yard.

Back to where you entered into the house through the door next to the office room, on your immediate left was another room opening into the courtyard. This was a smallish room with a large cot in it and two wooden almirahs. It had two windows one next to the entrance door and another to the back wall looking out onto the ground beyond which were the sheds where the wooden logs were kept. This was uncle’s room. He would sleep there in the nights and also catch a quick shut-eye after lunch when he could afford it away from his office work. This room had an asbestos sheet roof and when it rained you would find the pitter-patter of the rain play an orchestra on it. Moreover on other days with the hot sun the room was very sultry in the day time. Considering that I was elder among the boys I would be nominated to sleep along with uncle sometimes to make space for some guest or other who had come. I would dread those days since firstly, I would keep my distance from uncle. And secondly sleeping in that room was like a punishment for me. One night when I was assigned to sleep there, it started raining and the noise of the drops on the roof kept me awake through the night while I watched uncle snoring away to glory.

Straight ahead from the outside door at the back of the central courtyard was the bathroom, a large room with two huge copper cauldrons with the same arrangements to light fires at the bottom to heat water like in Grandpa’s place. The room was also dark and the walls covered with soot. To its right was a small cow shed where there used to be some cows but by the time we first started going there were no cows kept there. It was used as a store for firewood and coconut husks that were used for lighting both the fires for the kitchen and the bathroom. Further down were the toilets, the same way as at Grandpa’s place with no water or flush. There was a large cauldron of water with a mug kept at the entrance to the toilets for you to carry in and then wash up after you had finished your business. Beyond the toilets were the sheds where the wooden logs were kept, these were the same that you could see from uncle’s room or that led off behind the office room on the path leading to the river. 

The food that Shanti Mav  made was wonderful and everything tasted nice but specially the dried green peas ghashi – curry that she made. About food at Mangalore, one cannot but not mention the prawn curry made by Mother's youngest sister who was also settled in Mangalore after marriage. It was a flaming red curry which you would cry after putting it in your mouth. It was that hot or savoury. Not only that she used to put the heads of the prawns into the curry making the dish all the more flavoursome. That was one unforgettable dish. Since Shanti Mav’s house was closer to the central part of the city the hotels were near-by. Our male cousin was the one who was fond of eating out with his friends and after having his fill, he would bring some of the stuff wrapped as parcels for the people at home. That is how we got to eat the delectable Mangalore snacks like jeevkadgi baje – breadfruit pakodas, goli bajes – maida pakodas, masala vadas – pakodas made of ground pulses like chickpea and blackgram, gode appo – sweet balls made of a dough of rice and jaggery. As we grew older, in our later trips our cousin would sometimes take us to the hotels like Tajmahal or Mohini Vilas. He used to keep switching between the hotels depending on who was serving what and what was best between them. But wherever we went with him, we would find that everyone knew him from the owners to the man at the cash desk and also the waiters. Thus even if there was a crowd we would get our seats pretty quickly and the service for us was also quick. I remember particularly that his favourite during one of our trips in early ‘60’s to Mangalore was Mohini Vilas. At that time apart from the bajes, ice-cream was coming in fashion in Mangalore and Mohini Vilas had started making them in-house. It was wonderful stuff, served in glass bowls looking like truncated wine glasses which would be dripping with condensation on the outside and with the delectable gooey stuff inside with a steel spoon balancing in it. This small wine glass was placed in a small glass plate and served to you. Flavours extended from the standard vanilla, to strawberry to rose and also pineapple with the bits of the fruit inside. It was great stuff since for us it was a novelty eating Icecream from glass bowls, secondly we got an outing and thirdly we got to go to a hotel and sit down and eat. Our cousin made our trips to Mangalore indelibly etched into our memories with these outings. Later he would make my every single trip to Mangalore memorable but more about that later. 

An aside on all this was for the same male cousin’s daughter’s wedding which I had gone to attend at Mangalore later in the mid-90's and being at a loose end one late afternoon I decided to take a trip down memory lane and located Mohini Vilas. I went in. It was now right in the middle of the market. The place looked a bit seedy and none too clean. But nostalgia made me ask the waiter what is the day’s special. He responded by saying that it is breada upkari – a sautéed concoction of pieces of bread with onions and grated coconut tempered with haldi - turmeric, mustard seeds and curry leaves. I asked him to bring it along and a cup of coffee. It did not taste good. But I finished it for old time’s sake. It was not a happy experience as later events will vouch for. The next day the wedding was at noon and I had my tickets booked to return to Bangalore by bus that same evening. I went to the wedding had lunch and everything was fine. I came back to my hotel wanting to take a nap since on the overnight buses I could never sleep. Getting up from the nap I found that I had severe stomach ache and loose motions. By the time it was coming near to the bus departure time I had no confidence in being able to withstand an overnight bus journey. I did a no-show for the bus and suffered through the evening and night. After sleeping fitfully through the night I found I was in no shape to be able to make an overnight bus journey and there were no day buses back to Bangalore. So the only option was to catch a flight back to Bangalore which I did. The snack at Mohini Vilas that would have cost me less than Rs. 20, actually cost me some Rs. 500 for the airfare. No more nostalgia and no more Mohini Vilas I decided then and there. The people in our family had a good laugh about this episode, saying that breada upkari was something that I never ate at home and I had to go and eat it at Mohini Vilas. Moreover they were splitting their sides with laughter saying what the hotels are normally not able to sell fully the previous day becomes the next day’s special and the stuff I ate must have been a couple of days old. 

The second novelty for us city bred children in Mangalore was the bicycle that Grandpa would use for getting around like to go to work or go elsewhere.Those days in Mangalore, cycle was the preferred mode for individual transport. Though his school was only a stone's throw from the house, Grandpa would prefer to use the cycle. Dressed in spotless white long shirt popular in those days and an equally spotless white dhoti, Grandpa getting onto his cycle, ready to go to school was a majestic sight. The cycle would be brought up to the front porch when he came back from school in the afternoon. It would be put on its stand and left near his armchair. There still remained enough space in between the cycle and the armchair to go in and out of the study. The cycle was a regular adult man’s cycle and the handle bars were above my head. So with Grandpa’s permission I would sit initially on the bicycle after he would raise me on to the seat. Sometimes my younger uncle would lift me. I would have to lean almost flat to reach the handle bars and play make-believe about me driving the cycle. This was on the first visit when Grandpa made an exception and took me for a ride with me sitting sideways on the central bar. Even with Grandpa’s arms brushing my shoulders and his knees my legs and backside on that first ride I always felt that I would fall. On the next visit having grown, my legs would reach the pedals and my arms could comfortably hold onto the handlebars and with Grandpa’s permission I would pedal the wheels of the static bicycle resting on its stand. With the circular lock not put in and the rear wheels of the cycle on its stand, I would get the feel of actually riding the cycle though I remained static all the while. This kind of ride was brought to an end when in my exuberance to pedal fast and in sync with it move the handlebars vigorously from side to side, the stand slipped and I took a tumble. Nothing happened to the cycle but I had a bruised elbow and right cheek and it was then decided that enough was enough and no more static rides on the cycle for me since I had ‘grown’. However, once in a while my youngest uncle or my cousin, who was almost as old as my uncle – this happened very much in the older families – would give me a ride. My cousin was my mother’s eldest sister, Shanti Mav’s son. They used to live at Bunder as said earlier. But because he and my uncle were very good friends and were also in the same school maybe with my cousin a couple of classes junior, he would spend most of his time at Grandpa’s place cycling down every day from Bunder in the morning and going back in the evening. It was on these cycles that my I got my joyrides. This cycle was better than Grandpa’s since it was newer and also had a mirror fixed to the handlebars in which you could see your face occasionally but more importantly the traffic coming from the back. Sitting on the central bar for a ride was great fun since unlike Grandpa these rides were faster and you could actually hear the buzz of the rubber tyre going over the tar road and watch the black surface disappear backwards at a fast pace. Many years later I would learn to ride a cycle but that would be once I entered college. But more about that later.

The third was a visit to the beach. Being in Calcutta we were far away from a beach and the first visit to Mangalore gave us the opportunity to see the sea. In those times you could go to Panambur beach which was the closest while the other beach a bit further away was Surathkal beach. The access to Panambur beach then was direct and not like now where you need to follow the dull, drab grey walls of the Panambur port. There was no port at that time. I still remember my first visit to the beach and to tell you frankly, I was scared. All that water heaving up and down, the waves crashing on the sandy beach, the noise that was almost deafening to your ears, the seemingly endless sea since you could not see no land as you looked out over it, made my little heart cringe in fear. Mother tells me I held onto her sari, and hid myself behind her, peering out at the water during that first visit. Though she tried to take me to the water, I had resisted. My younger brother took to the sea like the duck takes to ‘saline’ water and was called a water baby by everybody for frolicking in the water and enjoying the crashing waters around him as he sat on the beach drawing lines on the sand and watching them disappear with the next wave. The first visit to the beach mother tells me I did not get into the water. It took a couple of more trips when my fear lessened and I was ready to go into the sea. Once I got into the water and with the waves breaking around me, I realized how stupid I must have been not to enjoy this great deluge of waves coming at you with clockwork regularity. Just standing on the beach near the water was fun with the water coming in covering your ankles and while it was going back, you could feel the soft tug of the water to take you out with it. Looking down then you could see the water making two streams around your static leg and the water pushing through between your toes taking the sand with it giving you the feeling that you were sinking in the sand. Sometimes the elders would take us into deeper water when I found out that the waves were quieter but the heaving water gave you the feeling of being unsteady on your feet. How salty the seawater was! You realized that when bending down to pick a shell from near the water line you would have a large wave come crashing in and while you shrieked in surprise little drops of the seawater would go into your mouth to give you a taste of the salt. The Surathkal beach was rougher and more rocky and considered the more dangerous of the two beaches and we children had closer supervision from the elders when we went there. Apart from this there were the standard beach activities that we enjoyed. Like chasing the small crabs back into their small holes in the sand. Building sandcastles and then breaking them with a great hurrah. Or getting into fights by breaking your brother’s or sister’s sandcastle and then getting a spanking from mother for all the effort. Or collecting different types of shells that you find on the beach starting from the flat shellfish kind with ribbing on the back, to the conical spiral ones or sometimes larger ones shaped like a small conch shell. Invariably when we returned home from the beach our pockets would be full of shells. We would wash them out once we got home and put them out in the sun to dry. These would then be taken to Calcutta when we returned after the holiday. 

When you go to a new or different place the tendency of us children, particularly among the boys, is to go exploring. So with my brother in tow and sometimes the three Bombay male cousins if they had also come down at the same time, we would go around near Grandpa’s place. Actually there was not much to see and do but we had to make sure that there were some exciting things to do otherwise we would feel ‘bored’. On top of that there were restrictions from the family mostly from mother, saying don’t go here or don’t go there or come back by such and such time otherwise I will not allow you next time. Down by the river which was a longish way the five of us would troop down late afternoon to what was called Sultan Batheri (this was a corruption one guessed from Sultan Battery, the Sultan being for Tippu and the Battery meaning an empanelment of cannons). By the riverside with one side almost touching the lapping waves was a thirty forty foot circular granite rock structure with crenellated roof on which one presumed cannons could be mounted. But when we used to go there were no more cannons there and an empty terrace with the cutouts where the cannons could be placed. The place was overgrown with grass and creepers but even then we would find our way to the top to see the view. Once on the top and if you went to the side overlooking the river, you could see the Netravati flowing serenely to your right and left with the sun glinting on the small waves generated by the late afternoon breeze. In the distance across the river was yellow sand like on a beach, you could not call it a spit since it ran for miles, it seemed, on either side. This was the same stretch of sand that ran all along to Shanti Mav’s place at Bunder that we would see from the open terrace abutting the river. And on the other side of the sand you could see the roaring sea, with the waves crashing down on an empty beach. Thus for our young minds it was a puzzle as to why Tippu would have built this battery of guns here because the river was in between and it was quite wide and running parallel to the sea. And if any ships would come they would be in the sea and the range of the cannons would not be enough to hit them. But then we concluded that Tippu Sultan knew better and he would not have set up the battery unless it served some purpose. Or over the last two hundred odd years the course of the river may have changed making the battery further from the sea. We left that problem for later generations to solve. 

Coming back to our escapades near Grandpa’s house and just opposite the school that he worked for there was a huge ground on which boys would play cricket or whatever and this is where our uncle and cousin would play their underhand cricket. This ground was later to become the Mangala Stadium as you see it now. A bit further from this ground was a hill called Double Guddo (Hat Hill). In our language, Konkani Guddo was hill and it was referred as such at home during conversations. It was named as such because it was seen to be hill over a hill, the second extension shaped like a bowler hat being put on the head of a snowman that you would build. The hill was actually red laterite with rocky outcrops of granite. At that time there were hardly any houses near the hill and a road would wind up part of the way after which you would have to climb the hill itself. Thus again you would find us five boys, that is with three of our Bombay cousins, styling ourselves on the lines of the Famous Five in Enid Blyton would go off on our very own mountaineering expedition. Five of us strung along the road up the hill chattering away excitedly. But after some time the talk quietened down since the incline of the hill made for our breath to come hard and fast. Reaching the first level of the hill we would skirt around the bowler hat extension to see how we could get on top. This was relatively easy because there were crannies which you could get handholds and pull yourself up. And then you would be standing on top of the bowler hat which was essentially the top of Double Guddo. From that height the whole town of Mangalore at least for a kilometer or two was laid out below us. It was quite a sight to savour and on a clear day you could see the sea in the distance past the Sultan Bhatheri. The Double Guddo later had a regular winding road go up for some way and then apartment blocks came up along the road. With this housing development along the sides of the hill the charm of the hill was lost because the hill itself was dwarfed by the new houses among which were some hi-rise constructions.

The experiences that I had in my Grandpa’s house and my Shanti Mav’s house in Bunder were something that I will always cherish in my life for their warmth, affection and the joy they gave me. I continued the relationship later when I started working and even after marriage but more about that later.

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                                                Calcutta's Monsoon Woes

At Pratapaditya Road, during heavy rains in the monsoon the road under the railway over-bridge on S P Mukherjee road would become waterlogged. Then all traffic on the road on both sides leading to the bridge would stop. The only way to get across at these times was to take one of those man-pulled rickshaws with the poor fellow pulling the rickshaws at the best of times with water up to his knees and at the worst of times right up to his armpits. When the road under the bridge got waterlogged one had no alternative but to wait until the water went down on its own. There was no other way to get across. Though in later years the authorities would pump out the water into the adjoining children’s park making a mess there. The water thus pumped into the park would leave mud and slush making it difficult and dangerous for the children to play. With the rains making it difficult for us to indulge in our normal sport, the pastime whenever the bridge got waterlogged was to stand at our intersection with the main road and watch how people and vehicles would try to get across. With the water at a relatively low level, most cars, buses and trucks would be able to cross. The trams since they operated on electricity getting their traction from overhead wires could not be operated and you could see them standing as silent sentinels on both sides of the bridge with one or the other inveterate hopeful passenger sitting inside waiting for the tram to move again. There were others who would sit inside the stranded trams since it was one way to get out of the rain. The local youth also would sometimes get into the stranded trams and have a session of playing cards. As the water would start to rise, one would find the first casualty to be the cars mostly the smaller ones like Morris Minor, Baby Hindustan, Standard Herald and the Fiat going under since their exhausts tended to be low and the water would get sucked up into their engines. Once that happened the car would stall right in the middle of the water. The exasperated driver or owner would then get down in the knee-deep water and try to see how he could get the car to move. With no question of the engine starting, there would be young men standing on the side waiting to help just such stranded cars. This service would come at a price decided by the type of car, how politely the owner or driver talked to them and how far they would have to push the car. There would be many instances when the amount of money was not clearly agreed upon and the young men would leave the stranded car adrift in the deepest part of the water and go across to attend some other car. The owner or driver clearly distressed and surely harangued by the other occupants of the car would then come out and plead with the young men to help his car to get across the stretch of water. The service charge would then be re-negotiated. These young men coming in from the adjoining slums would make quite a good amount of money at these times. So at the first sign of rain they would pray to the gods for a heavy downpour so that the bridge would get well and truly flooded. After the casualty of the cars, would come the taxis mostly the good-old and sturdy Ambassador vehicle which with a higher exhaust and more proficient taxi drivers would try to get across. However, beyond average knee-high water would prohibit them from riding through the water and come a cropper halfway. Next in line on the casualty scale would be the buses both private as well as the state transport ones which could not manage beyond waist level water-logging. The same would go for trucks. For us watching from the sidelines, the going-ons at these times was like a slapstick comedy with multiple sequences. You could imagine this for yourself. A stretch of water replacing the road where vehicles of various assortments would break down randomly at different points on the stretch blocking the way for other vehicles behind them and the hand-pulled rickshaws snaking their way around these islanded vehicles while the rain continued to hammer down relentlessly. In addition to this we had the young men in the garb of ‘saviours’ who were actually highway or 'road' robbers in their initiatives to help get the vehicles across the water. At these times tempers would be stretched to the limit and you would have many an altercation among the islanded distressed people sitting in their cars and their saviors or their compatriots in distress in other vehicles. We would also take bets on how far an enterprising vehicle would be able to traverse the water on its own or whether it would be at all be able to get across. When we were small and word got around that the bridge had got waterlogged we would all collect in a troop and land up at the intersection for the best vantage point to watch the fun. It may sound improper but we were not the ones who asked the vehicles to go into the water and get stuck and the fun was not at anyone’s expense. There was no real solution to the water-logging problem at the bridge since the road level could not be raised since they had double-decker buses plying which required a reasonable height clearance apart from which the bigger trucks which were then slowly coming into use. The only alternative would be to raise the level of the railway bridge to provide more height clearance from the road level below. Getting that done would be practically an impossible task considering the number of agencies involved, co-ordination between them and the process of getting clearance from one agency or the other. Thus until the 1980’s when we finally left Calcutta, the problem of water-logging during the monsoons continued to persist at the Tollygunje railway over-bridge.

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                                              The Changing of Calcutta 

When we came into this locality in the 1960's there were no or hardly any people of other communities there particularly, South Indians like ourselves. In fact at that time that kind of scenario was true for the whole of the city of Calcutta which may have had a very limited number of families from other communities residing there, maybe, in all not exceeding a thousand. The local Bengali population as is natural dominated the neighbourhoods of the city. Thus our locality was stolidly Bengali. The amusing thing was as regards to the South Indian population even though the average Bengali was considered literate and educated they failed to differentiate among the people originating from the South by their respective States or by the languages spoken by them but categorise them under the broad umbrella of being Madrassi’s – meaning, one would presume, hailing from Madras. This kind of categorization to a certain extent still prevails today even though the average Bengali has travelled out of the State to the South mostly for education and lately for work. It comes possibly from the division of the Indian sub-continent by the British into four Presidencies and most of the present States in the South in some manner or other were predominantly lumped under the Madras Presidency, so anyone coming from the South is a Madrassi was the typical typeset that the Bengali used to categorise all South Indians in. However in the early 1960’s in Calcutta, this kind of categorization was a difficult thing to live with, in daily life. This difficulty was a kind of discomfort by the average Bengali mostly on the streets to see people from a different community coming to their neighbourhood. 

The typical dress at home for an older South Indian like my father was a mundu – lungi. It would normally be tied at the waist and worn long up to the ankles. However, it was customary at times of physical activity or while walking, it would be pulled up to just above the knee to allow for more freedom of the legs. We would jokingly call this the ‘half mast’ mode, amongst ourselves. My father used to smoke then and if he ran out of cigarettes he would go out to buy them from the shop on the main road. He would normally go out for such errands with his lungi in the ‘half mast’ mode. This must have been a rather unusual sight in the 1960’s for the local lads sitting on their rock for adda. As my father recounted to us some of the lads called him over and asked him not very politely to let down his lungi up to his ankles. This clearly was carrying things a bit too far and rather than being more informed about an unfamiliar dress, the boys would take an adversorial approach lecturing my father on how to wear a lungi. This despite the fact that the older Bengalis did wear lungis at home but these were the wraparound types stitched at the ends to look like a cylinder if held up. This lungi would be difficult to raise to half-mast since it would not ride up easily. In contrast our South Indian lungis were actually a dhoti worn as a lungi where the ends were open and you could pull these to move it into the half-mast mode. This one must say was during the initial days and once the boys became aware of us more, their attitude and approach became less confrontational and bordering on the warm. In later life when I had come back to the para after a long hiatus and being employed now, these same boys, men now, would come and talk deferentially. One among them had taken to drink and would come apologetically once in a while seeking money for his daily tipple. 

As I became older, it became my job to get the cigarettes for father. He would smoke the brand Scissors first and then after some time he changed to No.10. So after dinner I would make for the shop on the main S P Mukherjee Road, just behind the bus stop and get the cigarettes for father. Mother had also picked up the habit of having paan after dinner. So with father's cigarettes I would also get the paan for mother. However, mother after some time gave up the habit of having paan since it started becoming costly. 

The dada system that prevailed at those times in Calcutta could be a bit different to what prevails today. Earlier the stakes were small and the needs for people to use muscle was less. Politics was then much simpler than what it is today and the dadas were used by one or the other party to further their ends, of course, at a price. The younger fellows among the toughies would have just managed to scrape through school or be drop-outs who would need money for their tea, cigarettes and occasional liquor parties. They would be called in by the average Bengali, who was otherwise quite capable of handling his own problems, to sort out some tenancy issue like the tenant not moving out or to mediate in a fight between neighbors or girl issues like the girl of the house being courted by some person whom the family thought was ‘undesirable’. The dadas would come in and sort out things either simply for a treat of singaras, sweets like sandesh, rasagulla and tea or for a small monetary fee. These dadas would have an eye on the household if it had grown-up girls with whom they could develop attachments. Thus the dadas would be seen to respond with alacrity for those houses with the most beautiful girls in the para. Other than this the youth would have their own turf wars either with the other gangs of the neighbourhood or amongst themselves over a girl or for disputes over anything for that matter extending to gambling or shares in a deal that had been struck. There was a strict hierarchial system among the dadas, with the younger fellows doing all the physical or legwork while the mindwork was done by the elder dadas. This resulted in the evolution of chamchas – blind followers. These chamchas were those with less of an ability to think for themselves or lacking in brawn would attach himself to a senior dada and act as if he was the dada’s orderly – doing everything for him like getting cigarettes, tea down to even washing their clothes sometimes. 

                                                                  AC/DC 

Electricity though it had come to Calcutta quite early was still in its infancy and we had DC – Direct Current supply at our flat. It was only a few areas then that had AC – Alternating Current electric supply which is the norm now. About DC supply the fans were different and would be fitted with cylindrical rods of carbon, just about a quarter of an inch in diameter and about two inches in length, which mounted through springs formed the contacts for supplying the electric current to the fan’s DC motor. With constant use, the carbon rods would erode and these would then have to be replaced. The older the fans would be, the faster would be the erosion by way of friction of the carbon rods. Thus after we had moved to the Pratapaditya Road house, we had an old, ancient, vintage DC fan which perennially gave us trouble with the carbon rods. The hotter it got in Calcutta during the summer the fan would give more and more trouble. Sometimes stopping off in the middle of the night and one remembers getting up drenched in sweat and then having to stand up on a stool placed in between our mattresses on the floor and fixing the carbon rods or replacing them. Those days were not of sleeping on cots for us. The DC fans, for those of us who will remember, used to really struggle to start rotating and then lumber up further to get on to speed. With our ancient fan we were privy to this experience more than maybe others. Many a time we would have to give that extra zip of rotation to the fan blades with a stick so that it would pick up momentum and start rotating on its own. Thus when the electric supply changed to AC one was pleasantly surprised the way the new, white fans, those days all fans were white, would zip around as if someone was after them and they had to rotate faster to get away from whoever was chasing them. This was the representation of the advantages of new technology which hit you in the face and made you aware that normally change was for the better. An interesting part of the electric supply situation in Calcutta then was that when it was decided that AC supply would be the norm, some of the bigger houses in the posher areas of the city, had both DC and AC supply. The advantage with this was that Calcutta forever plagued with power cuts even then was that the houses with both AC and DC supply could enjoy their electric appliances working partly since both kinds of power, that is AC and DC, would not go off at the same time. The other advantage was that for large houses if the fans had to be replaced with AC fans from the DC variety, it was quite a lot of investment at those times and phasing out the conversion made sense. These small adjustments were no longer valid when the government finally removed the DC transmission lines from the city, once and for all.

                                             The Games We Played

Life when we were young was a perennial circle of games. They used to vary by the seasons. The rainy season was devoted more to football while the winter was reserved for cricket. We would play games on the streets or on the pavements that we called the footpath, which used to be quite wide then in our para – locality, or on any open patch of ground within the para. Overall it was a matter of economics coupled with the need to adapt to playing space and you could say that what we were playing was – modified football or modified cricket or modified whatever.  Every game would be adapted or modified to suit our local circumstances as devised by our little fertile brains. Thus we would create our own rules to suit the playing area or the limitation of the number of players. The disappointment of the lack of regular equipment with which to play with, we would make up with the zeal and enthusiasm of having got some time away from home and the burying of our noses into study books. The frenzy of the game was thus immense. It was extracting the last drop from the game and even fights and disputes were not allowed to get out of hand since it would only reduce our playing time. Fights though were unavoidable at that age and more often than not the person who started the fight would be made to sit out the game. 

It was a pain to go back home when the street lights came on, which was the rule set by most of our parents. This would be relaxed on Sundays or during the vacations when we would be allowed not only to play in the mornings also but also stay back down until it became dark. Thus you would find a game of football or cricket continuing in the vacations long after the street lights had come on and it had become dark. And even without being able to see the ball one would find a bunch of shrieking children going at it as if their life depended on it. The intensity with which these games were played would make one feel that maybe an Olympic medal was at stake. Summer vacations was greater fun compared to the Puja break since with the sun setting later we would get more playing time. We always hated the winter months since the sun set early and by five in the evening we would have to be back home. Remember those days were the days when there was no TV or cellphones which is the standard recourse of present day children when they have any free time to kill. 

Not for us the going to the football or cricket fields since firstly they would be far or mostly in the school. Some of us would not be given permission to stray beyond the boundaries of our locality by our parents. Hence our world would be limited to the streets that were in our para and whatever little misshapen grounds that existed in it. If we went to the school to play then we would have to stay back after class which was a difficult task since we would be rip-roaringly hungry by the time school ended. Again other friends in school had similar issues of staying back. Thus you were not really sure if you would get a full complement of players to start a game. And then not all of us from the locality went to the same schools. While in our para things were different. You could always cobble up a team to start a game be it football or cricket. And you did not need even eleven players to start a game. Four on each side were enough and others would join in as they were released from their homes to come out and play. 

For football, not for us to get into fancy gear with boots and all that to play the game. We managed to play with bare feet, the same way that the famed Mohun Bagan team had done while beating their English rivals for winning the IFA shield at the beginning of the 20th century. For a ball, it was rare that we would get a regular football and even if we got one it would not have lasted very long on the cemented footpaths or the tarred roads that were our playing grounds. Within a week you would see the stitches around the patches of leather, with which the football was made then, coming off at the seams. And then if a sharp stone or a corner of a wall or the edge of the footpath would hit the sensitive rubber bladder inside, the football would burst with the sound of a small cracker and then collapse into a crumpled useless mass. Therefore we would make do with the larger size of rubber balls about four inches in diameter which were available then. These were cheaper though they tended to split open if someone took a forceful shot or while playing if it hit the wall or a corner or any solid object hard. The broken halves of the rubber ball would have some kind of white powder dusted around the insides and would give off a wonderful smell. If a ball burst all you had to do was raise the money from the players and go to the shop and get another ball. Even in the tumble of make-do football if someone took a powerful shot and you caught it on your body, the bruise would stay for a few days leaving you sore. The skill level required to control the rubber ball, almost one-third the size of a regular football, was much more than with a regular football. And if you could play with this ball, dribble and swerve and take shot then it was a cakewalk to play with the big ball. The playing area being smaller it also required that your reaction times be quicker. 

Our playing area for football was a long alley leading to a few houses in the back. The surface of this alley was not tarred, was uneven and running along one side of it was a three foot strip which was partly covered with brick and cement as you went along it. Thus the playing surface was in the majority mud, rough with stones and pieces of brick sticking out and on one side was a rather level surface comprising of the cemented strip, which was rough all the same. Injuries other than ball related were common with us with most of the toes of the feet, mostly the big toe, getting cut time and again. Thus on any given day you would find one or two of the players with bandaged feet but still playing, since the game was what gave them their life. The tonic which made studies tolerable. There was no point actually to sit around, mope and nurse an injury. This was also the genesis of the macho image being built into the psyche of the players from when they were very young. In this playing area the regular football boots were not allowed and everyone was encouraged to play bare feet or at the most with canvas shoes. We had one of our friends, Kalyan come down wearing regular football boots when he came down to play. But the rough ground with protruding stones made it difficult for him to balance and many a time he would come a cropper falling down hard onto the ground. But the more vociferous objection to the boots was from the other players who would get their feet stamped by the studs on Kalyan’s boots and that would really hurt. Thus with the majority of us taking objection to Kalyan’s boots it was the end for him to play football with us. 

Tournaments were held in 3- a side or 5 – a side formats of thirty minutes duration, each half comprising of fifteen minutes with a five minute interval. The idea of the short game was that the energy being intense, it matched the stamina of the players and it got the next match started quickly. The golden rule was – Everybody had to be given a chance to play. These matches were held for players within the locality and sometimes one would have a match with a neighbouring para. Such days were big days and there would be a lot of spectators cheering their own teams. Some of the elders would also come in to watch and it was not rare for a sporting elder to sponsor soft drinks during the interval. We did have a larger ground in the para almost three quarters the size of a football ground. This was reserved for the older players who were in their mid-teens and above. Here you could play with a regular football and boots were allowed. During the rains the ground would get very muddy and sliding tackles risking life and limb were the order of the day. The ground was almost square enclosed on all four sides by boundary walls of the houses leaving access from two alleys on opposite sides. The ground would host matches between paras and then we would sit on the boundary walls and watch the game. These matches would bring out the rivalries not only among the paras but also among the players of opposing sides. There were instances when someone would be brought down with a very rough tackle and immediately the rumour would spread that the player was being targeted because he was eyeing a girl from the opposing para. But the games were played with a rare spirit. And each goal would be greeted with a roar that would resound in the entire para. The celebrations after the match particularly among the winning team was to get drunk on the local brew called ‘bangla’ branded as Kali No. 1 etc. The star players or the goal scorers and particularly the player who scored the winning goal would be feted by carrying him on the shoulders of the team around the para. The tradition was that these star players would get an extra share of the sweets – sandesh or rossogulla that would be distributed at the end of the match among the players. 

                                                          Meshomoshai

While talking about the games that we played one could not help but remember Meshomoshai – technically maternal uncle, but no relation as such to any one of us who used to play in the locality. He was the universal Meshomoshai. He must have been above sixty years, of middle height, completely bald and with a large protruding belly that pushed out the white half-sleeved banyan – undershirt that he wore over his white dhoti, which was again somewhat pulled up to be more comfortable and securely tied around the waist. He looked like an incongruous Hercule Poirot-like character masquerading in the local dress and lost in the streets of Calcutta. We had never seen him in any other dress except occasionally you would see him going somewhere during office hours dressed in a bush-shirt and trousers. Within an hour or two he would be back and that is why we presumed that he must be going to collect his pension. He was always dressed tip-top, the phrase used for being near perfect in dress, whether it was standing with spotless dhoti and undershirt or while going out with properly creased trousers, a well ironed shirt and shoes gleaming with polish. And at all times an oiled and polished head. Generally you would find him standing where we were playing, be it football or cricket or whatever as the informal referee and general advice-giver. We all listened to Meshomoshai because after all he was a good soul. The good soul bit comes because he and his family were the most tolerant people then on the planet. What with accepting the noise and the nuisance that we made just in front of their house. Meshomoshai and his family stayed in the ground floor portion of the house in front of which we played cricket with the edge of his wall as the wicket and the same place was where the goal would be on one side when we were playing football. His house had a collapsible gate which segregated a small landing from where doors led off to the rooms inside. Playing cricket the ball more often than not would slip through the collapsible gates and while playing football, even for cricket, there would be again a huge amount of noise right in front of their house. His family was an elder son followed by two daughters and his wife whom we called Mashima – the epitome of Bengali motherhood. The elder son was a bit older and would rarely come and play with us while the girls were of the same age group as us. While Meshomoshai was of an even complexion, you could not call him dark, Mashima and the children were black as coal. Meshomoshai would be sitting in his landing on a cane chair watching us play or stand at the mouth of the alley which apart from keeping an eye on our game allowed him to see the going-ons on the street. Waiting for our friends to turn up or waiting for our turn to bat, Meshomoshai would strike up a conversation on the merits of the game but ultimately the talk would turn to food. Meshomoshai was originally as we came to know from East Pakistan now Bangladesh and had come over during the refugee exodus after India & Pakistan got Independence in 1947. One would presume he was from Dacca since most of the food examples that he would give was from that capital city. ‘What are the rossogollas you see here? They are nothing! Nothing compared to the size that we used to get in Dacca.’ His right palm would then come up and he would show the actual size and continue his description after having seen some of our eyes go rounder and rounder  – ‘This big!......You don’t believe me. That is because you have not seen them. And that too for one pice (the pice is different from the paisa with six pice making the old anna and 16 annas making a rupee.)’ None of us believed him but it was good to humor him so that the old man did not feel bad. He would then go on about the aroma of the kachoris fried in pure ghee which according to him would waft across the border to India and people would cross over buy them! That was a tall story indeed but considering the geography, maybe horizontally long! Meshomoshai would also buy us a ball occasionally to play cricket when we were absolutely out of money which was the fact that endeared him to some of us. The elder son, Santanu Sengupta, went to IIT, Kharagpur, senior to me by two years, took mechanical engineering and was last heard to have emigrated to the US. He was in the same hostel as I was, Rajendra Prasad, and was like an elder dada for me in the hostel. The sisters, the elder of whom being a batch-mate of my elder sister, were good in studies and must have done well. We lost touch with Meshomoshai after I moved to IIT and even after that and until 1976 when I had picked up a job in Calcutta, he and his family were not to be seen. I again came back on another job to Calcutta in 1982 but by then they must have moved since the familiar figure of Meshomoshai standing at the mouth of his lane was missing. He was one of the bulwarks of our childhood and a figure which encouraged us to play fair and was the epitome of tolerance to children which I have rarely seen in my life.

                                                         **********************

And sometimes when we did not have the ball or bat to play cricket or football, we would while away the time by playing marbles, spinning tops and also carrom. With marbles when someone won, one side of his shorts would be pulled down heavy with the bounty of glass marbles in his pocket. And when he walked there was the tinkle of the glass marbles jingling in his pocket. There would be sometimes embarrassing situations in school where the games of marbles would be played during the lunch-time recess and some of us would come in with a pocketful of marbles jingling up the stairs and into the classrooms and if the teacher had already arrived and looked up at the noise the marbles were making, we would put our hands on our shorts pockets from outside to muffle the sound. Sometimes if the marbles were put in the school bags loose by any one of us and upon the bag getting tipped the marbles would roll through the class room much to the consternation of the teacher and to our utter delight. The only person to get punished would be the boy from whose bag the marbles had fallen which would at the most be confiscation of the marbles. This we thought was generally unfair but rationalized that maybe the teacher had a son our age and the marbles were after all reaching another player. The games with marbles were mainly related to see how good you were with your aim. If your eye was accurate and your fingers supple to drive the marble to the target, you could become a millionaire in marbles. 

The spinning tops was also a game of skill with each one of us showing off how we could get the top to spin on the flat palm of our hand without it ever reaching the ground. The younger children among us would have to spin the top first on the ground and then pull it on the palm with the flick of the string used to spin the top. But those among us older and maybe more dexterous had the talent to catch the top straight onto the palm when it was on the way up after you had released it with the string. It required practice and before one mastered the skill there were many accidents with the spinning top hitting the wielder in the face and even hurting the eye sometimes. But for these telltale bruises who would believe that you were the battle scarred warrior of the spinning top. Tops also came in varied sizes. The small ones came with ordinary nails on which the top would spin but there were bigger ones which would spin on larger bolts with a tetrahedral shape tapering down. These were the ones which on proper impact would split the smaller tops into two. This would happen in a game where one who was not able to shoot his top closest to the centre of a circle drawn on the ground would have to leave his top in the middle of that circle. Then the others would use their tops to drive it out of the circle. If your top split while playing then it was your loss. 

In between the yo-yo came which also became popular with the youngsters including us. Thus each one of us would have a yo-yo with us which we would show off exhibiting our skill to each other and more so when the girls were around. The yo-yo's would come in different sizes, mostly categorised by how much string it could hold and how heavy it was. The heavier ones carrying more string were good to show off your prowess by whizzing it at someone mostly the person's face and bringing it back at the nick of time. Sometimes these calculations misfired and the yo-yo would hit the target. It was not always the fault of the yo-yo wielder but the target if of the nervous type would lunge forward resulting in an accident. However no major hurt or injury would happen. But the yo-yo trend as a plaything was short. Since it was an individual toy and could not be converted to a group game. Thus it found itself relegated into a corner of your drawer after some time. 

Carrom was the game when the rains were in full swing making any outdoor games impossible. It was the genteel way to keep occupied. But the problem with this was that only a maximum of four persons could play at a time. The others had to watch which could get fretful if your turn did not come around fast enough. In carrom not everyone could afford the big boards or what was called then championship boards. We had the small board at home and would practice on that. There was this family in the locality who had a son Bacchu and they had a championship board at home. The family was sporting enough to allow a gaggle of us to come and play at their home on this board. Particularly Bacchu’s father was the bluff and cordial type who encouraged us all to excel in all kinds of sport. The mother dressed always in white sari with a coloured border was rarely seen except when we asked for water. 

Off and on there would be home-made potato chips which would be served at Bacchu's place by his mother and one must say here that those kinds of chips were rarely seen then to be available in shops or hotels. They were crisp on the outside with a hint of salt and pepper on the surface and soft on the inside. More like the potato finger chips that we get today. One never knew what oil was used to frying them but the aroma of that oil and the crispiness still remains fresh as if it was just the other day that we were having the chips. One will forever remember the lady, Bacchu’s mother, as is usual with women for their culinary skills. 

During the carrom season, if one can call it that, there was a tournament towards the end that we would have amongst ourselves in carrom played at Bacchu’s place. More often than not it was me and Bacchu who would end up in the finals. And it more often than not was that Bacchu won. His father would arrange for cups as prizes. And it was always that the larger cup for the winner stayed with them at home and I would have come back home with the smaller cup. One wondered always why I would lose to Bacchu though the finals played as a best of five games would always be tense and go up to the decider. I really did not have an answer and those were not the days when you had match-fixing and all that as we see now and carrom is a difficult game to fix. But then I ended up rationalizing that given the board was with Bacchu at home, he probably got more practice on it since his father was also a good player. The carrom tournaments stopped after a few years partly because of a lack of interest among the majority of us but more because of some illness that afflicted Bacchu’s father due to advancing age. It was a heart attack or something like that which completely closed our access to their house and the championship carrom board. 

With cricket like football, we rarely played with the hard red cricket ball but managed with rubber balls or tennis balls. The emphasis here again was price, availability and suitability to our ground and playing conditions. Since we played with people moving about on the streets and in close proximity of houses, the hard cricket ball was not possible on account of safety. And even if we had played with it like with the football it would not have lasted a couple of days with the seam tearing and the innards being threshed out. Rubber balls best suited us and even if it hit anyone one could always apologise and get away with it. Rubber balls thus was the staple of our cricket; with tennis balls, which were more expensive, reserved for matches. 

Matches would be between two adjoining paras or sometimes between paras that were a little further apart. These matches during the winter season would be scheduled over Sundays or public holidays. The matches would bring out the emotion more than an Indo-Pak match. The entire para would turn out and watch from any of the vantage points and the verandahs would be filled to overflowing for those that afforded a good view of the match. The matches would be held at a particular crossing on the road with the cricket pitch being more often the pavement and sometimes if it was a big public holiday like say Christmas the match would be held right smack on the crossing blocking traffic on all sides. We would also wait for the strikes – hartals which were quite common and frequent those days since then with no traffic on the roads playing cricket right on the road crossing was no risk at all. Matches would generate local inter-para rivalries and there would be among the players some great performers who would be cheered by the local para supporters. The rules for these cricket matches would be close to the standard game but for maybe a boundary declared if the ball hit a particular wall. Our own game of cricket would have more such variations on the run scoring pattern with a single or two or a four declared if you hit any particular area of the playing ground without it touching the ground or ‘one-drop’ – that is after hitting the ground only once. You could also be given out ‘one drop’. In fact these rules made for one to be more innovative in your shots and thus gave you more control over bat and ball which is what is essentially required for the mastery of the game.  

I and my brother would be regulars in our para junior team with me being nominated captain, most of the time. I was an all-rounder, opening bowler who moved to off-spin later, and middle order bat. Being regulars in the team and becoming captain apart from our skill at the game was also related to the fact that our parents were quite generous in giving us money for the balls or equipping us with cricket equipment like bats or stumps. The first stumps in our para were brought in by us as also the hard red cricket ball, which in our lingo, we called ‘dews or deuse ball’. The same went for the cricket gloves and the pads. Later the other family who moved into our para later from whom Kalyan and Kunal, the two brothers would come down to play, would help us along with cricket necessities. Kunal among the two was the better player who applied himself to becoming a good batsman and I have rarely seen anyone lift a ball from a good length spot over the bowler’s head like he did. Kunal and I were quite close on matters of sport and would practice cricket between the two of us if no one else was coming down to play. 

A particular incident which comes to mind was one of our friends was particularly short for his age and was all of maybe a little less than four feet in height. Otherwise he was well built and muscular. You would rarely see a faster mover than him while he was fielding. And he was always very active. We used to play cricket in the alley on the other side of the road where we played football, just below our verandah almost.  This alley was narrower and therefore left you with lesser line of sight on what was coming on the road. Thus when the ball was hit straight or lifted over the bowler’s head it would come onto the street. And one had to be careful to look out for passing vehicles before crossing the road to fetch the ball. This day our friend was fielding at the bottom of the alley and the ball went past him and onto the road. Without looking on either side our friend ran on to the road. A Fiat car was coming on the road and it hit our friend. This fellow rolling with the impact took four or five cartwheels on the road and then dusted himself off and with a wry grin came back to us. We who a moment ago were worried stiff broke out in relieved streams of laughter. The Fiat driver who was also from our locality was also very much relieved that nothing had happened to our friend. In any case the Fiat car was coming at not very great speed. But this was a lesson for us that the accident could have been more grievous and we thanked God for letting us off lightly. After that a fielder was always placed on the other side of the road which was also our boundary but more to keep an eye on the traffic – our look-out for safety. Our friend because of his small size was possibly not hurt too much. And he must have at the point of impact curled himself into a ball. And then his athletic ability helped no doubt. 

The senior team at least in our eyes was very good. The two main players were the captain, Paresh-da and the other Becha-da. Both were bosom pals. Paresh-da squat and balding with specs and a darkish complexion. Becha-da thin, slim, not very tall and fair. It was rare not to see them together on any day. They would be going to each other’s houses with their hawai chappals make flapping sounds as they walked, chatting away all the time and completely ignorant of the world around them. Ultimately Paresh-da married Becha-da’s sister cementing the relationship to become brother-in-laws. Paresh-da was the mainstay of the batting and for bowling from a short run-up generated quite a bit of pace. This was all with the tennis or ‘cambdis’ ball as it was called in street slang in Bengali. Paresh-da's sixes were famous, high and long. Sometimes you would have to fetch the ball from the terraces of the adjoining buildings. Becha-da fancied himself to be a pace bowler and though he was reasonably fast, the lack of height made him less effective. He used a long run-up and would come in for delivery with all arms and legs intertwined, one would get the impression that he would fall, but he would right himself up at the last moment. He was our second best batsman and had a square cut that was flashy, powerful and hard. I have rarely seen any square-cut like that among even regular cricket players on the international circuit. You had only to bowl to him just outside the off-stump and in a flurry of hands the bat would have sent the ball exactly perpendicular to the wicket and not a single fielder would have had the time to move. All of us knew that famous square-cut and when bowling to him everyone would cramp him at the crease bowling to his body. I did make it to our senior team for one or two matches but then I had to leave for Kharagpur IIT which ended my career of a tennis ball Calcutta street cricketer. Those were the good old days.    

Around 1962 my maternal uncle, my mother’s younger brother working in Canara Bank was transferred to Calcutta. The transfer was normally for three years. He was not very old and had a yen for cricket. Those days the banks had not been nationalized so decision making was rather more flexible and he persuaded his manager that they would form a cricket team to represent Canara Bank in Calcutta. There was already an office league tournament in cricket being played in thecity. The bank manager was generous to support this endeavour and sanctioned to buy the cricket equipment – bats, pads, gloves – batsmen as well as wicket-keeper, stumps, bails, balls – the works. My uncle and some of his colleagues from the Bank and also other friends decided that Sunday mornings they would practice near the Rabindra Sarobar stadium next to the Lakes, since most of them were staying nearby. This was also near our house and I and my brother including father were asked to come over since they wanted to make up the numbers initially and we youngsters were needed to get the balls when they were driven hard and far. 

The first day we went to join uncle and his fledgling cricket team, we were stunned. We had never so much cricket equipment all together and at one place in our life. Three - four bats, some four sets of pads, two sets of wicket-keeper gloves, about six pairs of batting gloves (those days the gloves used to come with spiked rubber and later the ones with the stubby fingers became available) – here both kinds were available, stumps which were the real cream colour polished to perfection (the ones we had were the darker shade with iron spikes to be driven into the ground) and with wooden stubs and a box of balls – six of them nestling in the box in their own segregated sections, red and shining with the name of the manufacturer emblazoned on it with gold lettering in italics (one forgets the manufacturer now). One look at the balls was enough for us to know that they were of the best quality and maybe the ones which our Test players used! All this was put in a large canvas bag with two zips on each side running lengthwise and handles on it. All the equipment would go in but then you needed two people to carry it from two sides holding on to the handles because it would be heavy. 

Uncle had made me in charge of handing out the stuff to the players. While doing that I would lovingly caress the bats, wear the gloves – the wicket-keeper gloves were too big for me and reached almost up to my elbows. Holding the ball in your hand, the beautiful red cherry as it has been famously called, was a delight. Just the feel of it made you drool. One could imagine running in and then banging it down on the pitch to see it whizzing past the batsman’s ear. But then it would make the ball all scratchy and dirty. But really there was no choice, was there, if you wanted to play. The first day uncle and his friends had nets on one side of the ground. They played on the back of the Rabindra Sarobar stadium which was essentially a football practice ground but the turf was good and you could play cricket as well. In this ground the stadium authorities were making a pitch in the middle so that in the winter months cricket could be played. The first Sunday for me and my brother went off just like that, with us getting to touch all the stuff and get the feel of it. 

We were eagerly waiting for the next Sunday to go back in for the practice sessions. Uncle was a spinner, legspin. While father would bowl with his left hand and it was with a short run-up, fast medium pace. While uncle could bat a bit, father was not too much of a batsman though he could hit the ball real hard. None of the other friends and colleagues of uncle were regular cricketers. You could make this out from the way they played. But you had to give them full marks for effort and enthusiasm. The next Sunday uncle tossed me the ball towards the end of the session and I was very happy with the opportunity. I raced in and bowled hard but the pitch was too long and the ball had slowed by the time it reached the batsman and my ball was dispatched to the boundary very comfortably. Like this a few Sundays passed. The enthusiasm seemed to fade a bit, though uncle was a regular, some of the others started to drop out. There was also another problem that uncle and his friends had not taken permission from the Rabindra Sarobar stadium authorities to play there and because they had started early in the season there were no other teams using the ground. But then once the college exams were over the local lads started to come in and there was one Sunday an argument between them and uncle’s friends. Among uncle and his friends there were very few Bengalis and with the local lads taking advantage of that, slowly this effort of uncle petered out. For me and my brother, that was the end of a fun Sunday morning cricket. 

However, what uncle started continued with Canara Bank and they got a regular slot for practice with one of the clubs in the Maidan and within a couple of years the bank was playing in the inter-office league. But by that time uncle was transferred and though he got a couple of games to play, he had to leave the tournament midway. For us that was the first grounding to play with the ‘deus’ ball as we used to call it then in Calcutta for the hard red cricket ball. 

A couple of years after that father in one of his expansive moods brought us a complete cricket set with the red hard cricket ball or ‘deus’ ball. We obviously could not play with it on the pavement since the ball would get damaged. Even the bat the bottom of it with constant banging against the pavement would get spoilt. And there were some among us for no rhyme or reason would bang the bat into the ground as the bowler was coming in to deliver his ball. The bat that we got was the one that had not been seasoned and which we appliedand rubbed in with linseed oil over ten days under the supervision of father initially. At the end of that process the surface of the bat gleamed like gold. Towards the end of the seasoning process you had to hit the bat with the cricket ball gently so that the bat got used to the idea that it was born to hit the ball. You did this with an old cricket ball obviously, not spoil a new ball. One would hold the bat in the hand and put the ball on it and pitter-patter the ball up and down on the bat like in the game when you would see how many times you could hit the ball with the bat before it fell to the ground. As you did this you would have to move the ball up and down the length of the blade of the bat so that the entire blade got seasoned properly. 

Next we had to find a ground to play since anywhere inside our para, it was out of the question since there was no cricket pitch worth considering. So we got permission from our parents to go out to beyond the children’s park near the Choto lake where there were a couple of grounds level enough so that the ball would not bounce awkwardly. We would play there taking turns with the bat and ball. We then realized that playing with the tennis ball or ‘cambdis’ ball and the red cricket ball or ‘dues’ ball there was a world of difference. First we were all more or less slightly built and to send the ball down the whole 19 yards was pretty difficult and the ball would bounce at least twice before it reached the batsman. But we got used to it slowly and by shortening the pitch a little to suit most of us, we managed. As for batting you needed the extra power to hit the ‘dues’ ball since it was hard and not like a tennis ball which would fly off the bat the moment you hit it. But then if you got your timing right and you hit the ball with the ‘sweet place’ of the bat, then you could gleefully see the ball flying to the boundary. Then there was the question of the awkward bounce partly because of the seam and more so because of the unevenness of the ground since we would never get a properly level ground. There were instances of the ball rising and going over the wicket-keeper’s head even when he was standing well back when any of the bowlers put in the effort to bowl fast. Other times it would hit the batsman and there was many a sore elbow, bruised forearm and even sometimes a cut lip to show for a stint of batting. Even on the leg particularly since the two batsmen would wear only one pad each since that was all that we had and the bare leg would get hurt depending on how you played the ball. But like they say we soldiered on with the hope that one day we would be good cricketers. 

That hope was belied that same winter because after a couple of balls that split open because of wear and a couple of torn gloves, though by then some of the other boys had got their own cricket gear but not the full stuff like ours, the parents got weary of the funding and our dreams of playing regular cricket petered out. Another reason was, as you know how parents are, there was always the question of a bunch of us with all that heavy cricket gear crossing S P Mukherjee Road which was quite a busy road and whether we would be safe. The worry of safety probably closed the tap of money to fund our regular cricket. But we were rarely fazed and since much of the cricket gear could be used for playing tennis-ball cricket, we became the kings playing with regular stumps, bails and all that since otherwise the wicket would be a stack of bricks. But the pads, gloves and the guard remained idle.Off and on whenever the spark of playing with the ‘dues’ ball was ignited we would still go out to the lakes and try our hand at it. Primary instigator in this exercise was a boy called Bhoji who was well-built compared to us and was an excellent bat. He had also mastered the knack of being able to get his eye in with the ‘dues’ ball and he would send us for a real leather hunt when we went out to play. He had most of the shots in the book and would send them to all parts of the ground sending us scurrying after the cricket ball. Considering that we would be a maximum of 4 or 6 players available it was a lot of running to do. Also in batting we would play twice-out meaning you had two chances at getting out before you had to give up your turn. But with Bhoji not even one chance would get over and we would find us getting no batting. Thus the next time that Bhoji would come suggesting we go out to play cricket we would kind of ignore him. Bhoji did well at cricket I was told and was included in the Bengal Ranji squad but I do not know whether he made the team. But concentrating on cricket paid him good dividends because he got a job in some good company on the sports quota and did pretty well, I was told, playing in the office cricket league.  

                                                          Flying Kites

Just after the rains was the time to fly kites culminating on the day of the Vishwakarma puja when the sky would be full of kites of all colours, designs, shapes and sizes. Looking up one could say that the kites almost blocked off the sun. Actually kite flying would begin about a month or two before the Vishwakarma puja. This puja was actually celebrated by the workers in factories since Vishwakarma was the god of the workshop and of tools. But in Bengal particularly Calcutta the children had appropriated it as their festival of kites, though the regular puja in the factories and workshops co-existed.  

A month or two before the Vishwakarma puja, children like us would go up onto the terraces of the buildings just after the rains when the wind would still be strong and carry the kites soaring into the sky. The terraces were mostly safe with a waist high wall running along its periphery protecting us from falling off. Other terraces would be bare or just have a smaller wall of not more than a foot along the boundary which would lead to accidents with someone or the other falling off occasionally. The routine was come back from school, have a quick bite and then run up to the terrace with the kite, the string on the latai and related stuff. Depending on the wind you would get a quick launch of the kite if it was strong or when it was weak and irregular, you would have to keep trying to send up your kite adding to the tedium of not being able to enjoy the thrill quickly. There were some days in between heavy showers of rain when the wind would be sluggish and it would be a pain to fly the kite and even if you could manage to take it up into the sky, it required quite some effort to keep it flying. At times like this your hands would get good exercise tugging at the string of the kite with regular jerks so that the kite could climb into the sky and catch that itinerant breeze high up. 

While flying kites you also had to negotiate the kite around obstacles on the adjacent terraces which were all close by, mostly radio antennas which were wires strung across the terraces, those days. These would easily snag the kite and then it was the end of all the fun. Once the kite was up into the open sky and with a good headwind it was freedom country. The phrase of – sky’s the limit, was played out to the full.  Flying kites was great fun since it gave you the feeling of reaching out to the sky. The large open space gave you the sense of freedom that you did not get in any ground level game. Thus when you went up on the terrace and looked up at the sky, it would send your spirits soaring. The cut and thrust of the kite in the air was exciting. Moving hither and thither, with almost a life of its own, the kite would go. Now up, now down, now sideways. It could go wherever it liked with gay abandon. The freedom the kite had in going wherever it wanted as long as the kite-flier agreed was the satisfaction that was obtained in the control that one exercised on it. It was almost as if the kite was you, as an extension of your hand, up in the sky moving with complete freedom and sailing on the wind as high and as far as you wanted to go. In this process was the inherent sense of being freed from a restrictive home atmosphere that all children would fret about at that age. It was as if you as the kite had no restrictions but then your parents had the strings in their hands. Do this! Do that! Have you done your homework? If your school exam results were not good, then there would be punishment. And what would that be? You cannot go to play. Why on earth would any sensible parent stop the child from playing? Wasn’t getting physical exercise important for the child? Did they not realize that? Maybe in flying the kite there was a role reversal where we were play-acting the role of the parent with the string in our hands and allowing the kite to do what it wanted, within the boundaries of reason, of course.

This was then the enjoyment one got while flying kites. Like it was a thrill to pull your kite as high as it could go above you and then release it suddenly, letting it play out the string that you had pulled in. The kite would then loll along, in the manner of sea waves, drawing its lyrical patterns in the sky. When the string tautened again the kite would straighten out. And it was time to do your next thing with the kite. With the direction of the wind and its intermittent gusty nature, it would sometimes take quite an effort to control the kite in the sky. Learning to recognize wind direction and to make sure that your kite was pointed the right way to catch the wind or when you needed that extra breath of wind to cut the other kite was all about experience in your journey to be an expert in kite-flying. All this would help develop your skills and make you ready for the kite-fights that would follow. Even after the kite had gone up high up in the sky, there were still risks. As long as the kite was almost up near and high above you, the string would be clear but the moment you brought the kite down closer to the horizon for a skirmish then the string would form an arc from your hand slowly climbing up to reach the kite. This arc would have to be managed so that it would not catch any obstruction in the trajectory of the kite like poles on the adjoining terraces, antenna wires etc. Since then you would not only lose the kite but also a sufficiently large length of string.

There were times when a kite would suddenly come in cart wheeling from behind you in the sky catching you by surprise, and hover above your terrace. In your mind would be the question. Friend or foe? And how should you deal with this intruder? Let it pass or fight? And, if so, who should make the first move? Then again sometimes, when you went up onto the terrace, far in the distance ahead of you there would be one or two kites bobbing up and down. This would be the challenge then, to get into the sky with your kite as fast as possible and participate in the fun. Most of the time you would not even know who was flying the other kites. But then the kinship was in the fact that we were all flying kites. It was the kites who were interacting and not those flying it. The camaraderie would develop once our kites were in the air. Swooping down or making do as we were spoiling for a kite-fight or staying next to another kite, flying guilelessly in line and going as far you could go together. And then suddenly the mood would change with either an aggressor kite coming in and spoiling the equilibrium of our fun or we ourselves would decide that enough is enough and it was time to fight it out. And then it would begin, the fun of engaging the other kite, always remembering that you should win otherwise you would have lost your kite. And then the merriment would all be gone. Despondency would set in to see other kites having fun as the sunset came in and you had nothing to fly with because your kite had been cut and gone. 

Essentially equipment needed for kite flying was obviously a kite, which were available in the shops of various designs and sizes. The kites according to the design were given different names and unusually for essentially a male sport were all or mostly feminine names – like Mayurpankhi, Chowrongi, Petkati etc. The sizes again unusually were defined as adtel, ektel, dedtel and dutel. Tel meaning oil in Bengali had nothing to do with the size that was defined as ad – half, ek – one, ded – one and a half and finally du – two. The adtel would be typically a square foot and in the same ratio the ektel, dedtel were bigger and finally the dutel were huge kites and needed stronger string to fly them. They would be difficult to control in strong winds and were capable of lifting a small child off a terrace as long as the string was strong enough. The prices of the kites would range from 4 annas or 25p for the adtel to the Rs. 2 for the dutel. The fancier designs in the same size of kites would be priced a little higher. There were smaller kites which were for young kids half the size of the adtel which came with a long and colourful tail sometimes extending up to six or eight feet. They looked nippy and beautiful up in the sky, zipping around with their tails making fluttering noises in the wind. The kites also came in a multitude of colours. Thus the sky particularly on holidays would be a riot of colours with kites flying all over culminating on the day of the Vishwakarma puja when it was considered an insult if you had not been flying kites almost the whole day. 

Here we will digress a bit and explain how a kite is made. There is a central member a thin strip of wood or bamboo about which acts as the spine of a kite and runs down it vertically. It is generally twelve to fourteen inches long and a little less than about a third of an inch wide and a tenth of an inch thick. It needs to be firm as well as supple. Just about a couple of inches from the top there would a transverse member essentially a thin wooden stick curved into a convex arc facing the bottom. To hold the arc in place would be string which would be tied to the two ends of the curved member and affixed to the bottom of the vertical member. This mechanism would then be laid diagonally across a sheet of crepe paper sized to the kite’s dimension sticking the vertical member all along its length to the paper. The edges of the paper would be wrapped around the edges of the curved member at both sides where the string was tied to hold down the arc and stuck there firmly with glue. The middle of the arc of the curved member was not fixed on the vertical member but only rested on it free. At the bottom of the kite a couple of inches from the end of the vertical member triangulated papers would be stuck on both sides of the crepe paper, horizontal at the bottom of the kite and with the triangle facing upwards and with little toothpick like sticks supporting the vertically rising sides of the triangle and stuck in between the papers. This triangle was to give weight to the bottom of the kite and to keep it stable once it got into the air. 

This kite was now ready but for it to fly you had to tie the harness to the kite which was tying the string in a particular way which was called kol-bandha. This was done by taking the kite and then laying it out with the plain paper side facing upwards. The vertical and curved members thus would be on the other side on the ground. One had to take a match stick or a suitable thin stick and make two holes diagonally across the curved member where it met the vertical member. Again make two holes across the vertical member at the bottom a couple of inches above the apex point of the triangulated papers. Now you had to tie the kol or the string harness to fly the kite. For this you took a string with which you were flying the kite and doubling it for added strength and passing this through the top holes and tying your knot there so that the two wooden members behind the paper were pulled together. The other end of the string would be tied across the vertical member at the bottom where the two holes had been made. Then a knot would be tied on this affixed string which was like a triangle again perpendicular to the surface of the kite but with its base resting on the paper, being the vertical member of the kite and the string that you had just tied being the other two sides. At the apex of this triangle a couple of inches from the top, one would tie a knot. To this loop at the top of the kol, you would have to tie the kite’s string to fly it. The kol would have a couple of knots at the top making that side slightly shorter in length which was towards the top of the kite and the slightly longer length would be left towards the bottom. This was done so that the kite when it went into the air was properly supported at the top. The shorter length of the kol at the top was given so that when the kite was flying and taking in more string to go higher and further it would rotate through the air in a corkscrew-like spin, almost like a lazy backstroke in swimming. This spin was called the lat. This lat motion would look very nice when the kite was up in the air. But then one needed to know how to handle the lat since you had to know how to take the kite out of its spin and get it back vertical. This was more timing than anything else and came with practice. Since the more you shortened the kol string going up to the top of the kite the more the lat. And with excessive spin or lat on the kite it would make it very difficult to control and fly it. There would be every chance of it spinning down and getting entangled into some obstruction or the other. 

The latai or wooden spindle like looking contraption around which you would wind your string came also in a couple of shapes and sizes. The standard or common type was the one made with split bamboo sticks for the central spindle  fitted with two roughly hewn wooden rings on the two sides to hold the string in and through which two handles emerged which you could hold to wind the string in or use to fly the kite. On the basic design you would have improved quality for the material used and larger sizes meaning that they could hold larger amounts string. The finish of the latai would also be better and the really nice big ones were like a gleaming car for us since they would then be able to launch our kites to the heavens. The heavier the latai apart from the larger amount of string that it could hold was also important while flying the kite since the larger weight when it was rolled with your fingers of both hands on the handle or the restraining wooden rings  the kite would get a very sudden impetus and soar straight up. This would be important particularly in a kite fight where with a good heavy latai you could cut the opposing kite just by rolling the latai fast enough. Then there was another kind of latai which was a completely different format with it looking like a conical cylinder in the shape of a rocket about a foot, sometimes two feet long, with a central stick sticking out of the conical tip of the rocket and from the middle of the bottom of the conical cylinder, that is on both sides for about a foot. The bottom and top of the conical cylinder for about a couple of inches would be serrated into strips. The whole thing would be made of wood and bamboo strips and polished to a rich ebony or a plush brown. They looked menacing to say the least and were the F1 equivalents like the Ferraris of latais. These latais were for the really experienced kite fliers who were used to flying their kites all alone be it for just for fun or for the really serious battles. Most of us with the standard latais had an assistant who would hold the latai while we launched the kite into the air or to wind the string when we were involved in a kite fight. But these chaps with these F1 latais would do all the work themselves with nonchalance and grace making the kite dance to their bidding. One hand controlling the kite while the other holding the latai unspooled the string over the top of the conical end or wound the string around it. It was a great sight watching the panache with which these masters went about the art of kite flying and many were the tips we got from them to improve our own skills. Sometimes during a kite fight they would while pulling the string hard and back in to get that extra momentum on the kite would put the  F1 latais between their legs and hop back some tens of steps which would look very funny. This would happen when they would be flying the kites from the open street below since on the terrace you would not get the space to move back more than a couple of steps. 

The kite string was basically white string that tailors used then for stitching thick cloth or canvas. J P Coates had a monopoly almost on this string which was the defacto standard for kite flying. There were other companies making similar string but their quality was not up to the mark. Their string tended to be thinner and would not be the same thickness along the length of the string which was a problem when you were flying a kite or got into a kite fight since it would tend to break where the string was thinner and your kite would be gone. There was many a time when these defective strings would snap while you were flying a kite in the normal course and then you had suddenly no kite because it would be gone. This kind of thing would also happen with any string if it had grazed against a terrace or the rough edge of a building while the kite was up in the air and some of the strands of the string had broken. With this weakened string unable to hold your kite up with its pulling tension from the wind, it would snap and your kite would float away. Strings of other companies had joints along the length which were considered weak points when it came to using them for flying kites. But the string from J P Coates had a reputation. Their string was strong and consistent and had no joints. That is why it was considered ideal for kite flying. The string came in spools of 500 and 1000 yard lengths. The base string without the manjha – the ground glass spiked coating on it, was soft and silky to the touch. It felt good when you held it. Powerful and desirous of bigger things. And with a promise to deliver joy and exhilaration. But it had to be handled properly since it would tend to curl and get knotted when pulled out to longer lengths. The shops would have the base white string as well as latais filled with different coloured manjha hanging in front. You could touch and feel this manjha before you bought a short length. The manjha would be measured off by counting the number of times it wrapped on the palm between the thumb and the little finger in a reclining figure of eight. In addition you would have longer lengths of manjha like 500 yards or 1000 yards already rolled onto small latais. But these were expensive and would not be affordable for us since it was always cheaper and also fun to make your own. If you bought one of these then the shop would transfer the manjha onto your bigger latai by a mechanical contraption fitted with a motor which rotated your latai at high speed while the smaller latai containing the manjha you bought unspooled into it. What took one about 15 -20 minutes to do manually would hardly take 5 minutes through this machine. You would thus get your manjha spooled properly from end to end with the process completing with a bump of the string in the middle of the latai. 

The manjhas were of different types suitable for both tanha and dheel kite fights and you could choose what you wanted or go by the recommendation of the shop owner who was generally considered an expert. 

Not everyone would have the manjha covered for the entire length of string that they had but just have it for the front 100 yards or so connected to the kite. This essentially saved the manjha since it did not go through the hands each time you flew the kite and thus get progressively eroded making it less effective in a kite fight. This method also gave the kite flier the option to change his manjha whenever he felt like it to serve his objective in a kite fight. But using this method required greater skill on the part of the kite flier since when he went into a fight he needed to make sure that the manjha portion of the string engaged with the opponent kite and not the base virgin string. Since the basic string was easily cut and you would lose your kite the moment you engaged the other kite with its manjha. 

The kite shops visit was an experience by itself. Kites of different colours, shapes and sizes would be stuck on the walls, hanging from the ceiling and stacked on all sides of the shop and latais strung up in the front of the shop with the manjha looping down to the seller who with his rhythmic palm movement would give you many yards of the precious commodity while still yelling to his assistant to give so-and-so his kite or whatever. The shops would generally have two persons sitting inside managing the sales while handling hundreds of queries from young and aspiring kite fliers. Buying kites or manjha like this would be random and to just keep things going since the major event was the Vishwakarma puja day for which we would organize ourselves differently. 

The build-up to the Vishwakarma puja day would be with the preparation for it a fortnight or so in advance. The string to fly the kites which we called the manjha was essentially basic white string from J P Coates, which would be covered with powdered glass in a paste that was made with maida or flour, some glue and arrowroot, it could be coloured if you wanted it. The white string wrapped and spooled around a latai, would be extended at multiple levels between two lampposts, the distance between them being some 20 meters, each level being spaced out by about four inches until the string in the latai was exhausted. Then four of us would get into the act of coating the string with the glass powder manjha. It was an exercise of the fingers, more so just the forefinger and the thumb. The first person would dip his fingers in water and squeezing the string lightly would wet it. The second and third fellows would apply the manjha held in their fist through which the string would be held and any excess removed by the extended thumb protruding out of the clenched horizontal fist which was the job of the second fellow. The third fellow would carry less manjha in his fist and was essentially to ensure a smooth covering of the manjha on the string and to ensure that there were no bare spaces on the string. The last fellow was actually the specialist. He was the chap to hold what was called the teep by squeezing the manjha on the string to form an even coating of the correct thickness on the string. He would hold the string between his thumb and forefinger and either get a thin coating or a slightly thicker coating. The fellow who would do the teep had also the riskiest job since in the process of squeezing the string if there were any small pieces of glass in the manjha there was every chance that he would end up with a cut finger. 

The thin coating of the manjha was required for those who would fight with other kites in the tanha or pulling mode. This is when the aggressor kite appears  near the victim kite and swoops down under it and then with the person flying the kite pulling it straight up, in the process cutting the string of the victim kite. Cutting kites in this manner required more expertise and knowledge and was for the more experienced. It was also easier to do this with the bigger kites since they had more pull or tension in the string being able to capture more of the wind on their surface. The adrenalin high that would after cutting someone else’s kite in this manner was multiplied when in a strong wind the aggressor kite would climb heavenwards with a ripping sound right up to its apex as if it was tearing apart the heart of the sky. The really experienced flyers would swoop down on two kites fighting it out and cut both of them one after another. Or the aggressor kite would come and do a couple of lats alongside one or two kites flying at the same level and then suddenly it would take off horizontally this time cutting down the kites in its way and once done zoom up straight up into the sky cutting a curved swathe in the sky on its victorious path. This required exceptional skill on the part of the flier of the aggressor kite and a lot of confidence in your kite and manjha. While for those who would be just starting off flying kites and not so confident about themselves, they could fight in the dheel mode. This involved in engaging the kites in a genteel way and letting the quality of your string and manjha as also the wind to determine who would cut the others string faster. This required more amount of sky to fight the battle and you needed to be higher in your sky since as the fight progressed it was normal for the kites to lose height and get entangled in obstructions taking out all the fun from the kite-fight. The dheel mode was thus a slower process and for those who were prepared to wait for their thrill to win. When the kites would be cut free of their strings, the victor/s would yell at the top of their voices – ‘Bhokatta!’ This was the war-cry that would resound from almost every single terrace in Calcutta on Vishwakarma Puja day, signifying that the opponent’s kite has been cut free. The string had to be renewed at least once a year since just by storing it would lose its strength and become weak. If your manjha with the latai got wet then again it would lose its strength and you would have to renew your string with a new spool. Thus the ritual at every Vishwakarma puja to get new string and new manjha on it.  

Not everyone among us could afford a kite every day. And when you did not have your own kite then you could act as an assistant for your friend who would have a kite. Holding his latai – the wooden spindle around which you wrapped your string and generally helping him in the process of flying the kite. And hoping that he would allow you some time with the kite when it was up and if your luck was good allow you to participate in a kite fight. There was not much fun in this since you would always have to hang around on someone’s beck and call and in the event you lost your friend’s kite in a fight then you would be obligated to him for life or at least give him your next kite when you could afford one. Thus it was important to always nurse your kite and make sure it lasted until you got your next one. All said and done, managing this was difficult if not well nigh impossible. The kites that you got from the shops were generally good but sometimes the thin crepe paper with which the kite was made, would tear. This would happen if by way of your inexperience you banged the kite against something on its way up or in a fight the opponent’s string tore the paper or whatever. There was thus a need to repair the kite. This was done by taking strips of crepe paper equal to the length of the tear and to stick this paper on the tear. Regular glue was not available then in tubes as it is today. Therefore what we used was some glue that we would make by boiling various things like maida - flour and allowing it to cool into a greenish-blue colour. This would last a couple of months. But putting your fingers into this was nauseating since it would have hardened into the colour of hard snot and also be gooey to the touch. But it served its purpose and held our kites together through the tears and what not. The simpler and easier to use glue was to mash a few cooked rice grains. This was easily available and you could take a little from Mom’s pot of leftover rice from the morning. It was also a lot cleaner. But then for major surgery to the kite when the tear was extra-long or at a place where the wind was the most strong when the kite was up in the air, the adhesive ability of the cooked rice grains came into question. And many a time they would come unstuck. All these interventions with glue and paper to stick tears was all right but you had to consider the kite as a flying machine and you had to remember that balance was everything. The kite could remain in the air and maneuver well only if it was well balanced. A little of weight distribution here or there would lead to the kite veering off at a tangent particularly in strong winds making it difficult to control. Thus a tear would have to be repaired with the minimum of weight added to the kite so that it did not lead to unbalance. To correct this to the other side of the kite, that is opposite to the side with the repaired tear, we would add  some twists of crepe paper or string on to the curved member nearer to its end. This would lead to the kite flying properly and not randomly veer off to one side. These twists of crepe paper or string was called karnik, and they worked very well.   

When the kite would be cut, it would float away in the manner of someone slinking away after a fight looking for its own corner to rest in peace. It would coast down slowly to the ground. If the string attached to the cut kite was smaller, then it would float down faster. While if the kite had a larger length of string with it, then its traverse across the sky would be slower and erratic with the trailing string getting pulled temporarily by one or the other obstruction on the passing buildings or the trees that were there on the roads. These cut kites were the cause of many a problem and many an accident on the roads. The situation was that everyone could not afford to fly kites and even if they could, maybe they could not afford to buy a kite every day. Thus the need for kites for such needs was met by those that would fall to the ground after a fight. Most of the kids who would go after such kites were the slum children. For them apart from being able to fly a kite, sometimes it was a source of money for them since they could sell the kite to some of the richer children at a price lower than what it was in the shops. Catching these kites floating to the ground was a sport in itself with those running after it, vying with each other as to who would be able to catch it. There would be many a fight as to who had the right to the kite, the kid who caught the string first or the one who had the kite physically in hand. This led to scuffles and ultimately the kite would be shredded into tatters. Matters in catching these kites would really get out of hand since those that chased them did not care for anything on the streets, not the obstructions in intervening buildings nor the traffic nor the electric lampposts or bare electric wires. They were so obsessed with chasing the kites that there were many accidents with the children being hit by oncoming traffic unable to stop when a kid suddenly darted in front of the vehicle. Or children falling off boundary walls or verandahs or terraces which they would climb slithering in the manner of Spiderman and in the process breaking a limb or getting more seriously hurt in the head leading to some fatalities. It was also not unusual to have some kids electrocuted while climbing lampposts to fetch a stuck kite or trying to unwind a kite entangled in the bare electric wires with conductive poles or with wet bamboo poles. But even then the charm of catching the stately descending kite never failed. Talking about accidents while flying kites, there were many. The first was that the string coated with the glue and powdered glass was not uniformly covered then there was every chance that you would end with cut fingers mostly the thumb and forefinger particularly if it was new manjha that you were using. This would be nothing serious but the cuts would incapacitate you from flying a kite for a couple of days. Thus you would look up disconsolately at the skies while everyone was flying their kites, you had to sit forlorn with the kite and string by your side, retired hurt with a bandaged cut finger. Other accidents would be people falling off terraces carried away by the enthusiasm of a kite-fight and for just that extra amount of lift at an opportune moment, when they retreated backwards, reached the edge of the terrace which did not have a protective wall, unbalanced and then fell. If there was an intermediate terrace below like if you were on the cheel-chath or eagle terrace then the falling person would be saved with the worst case scenario being a broken limb since the fall would at most about ten feet. But if there was nothing to stop the fall then getting away with your life intact was a problem since the falls involved mostly thirty to forty feet, the equivalent of a three or four storied building. The idea of going up to the cheel-chath or eagle terrace, sometimes with great difficulty, was to obtain the advantage of height since looking down upon the others flying kites, you could feel that you were the master of all that you surveyed and use that leverage to advantage in a kite-fight. Additionally you could catch that extra bit of wind to carry your kite aloft. 

Many were the odd and humorous situations that you could get in while flying the kites. The first was if the kol had come off for any reason either the top knot or the bottom one. When the kite would have to be pulled back in fast. At these times the kite looked like a cat or puppy dog dragged on a leash spinning all the while in the air and at the same time losing height rapidly. The skill was to pull the kite in so that it did not get snagged in any high obstruction which you would be unable to climb and retrieve your kite. Another situation would be that the central member of the kite would snap in the middle while the kite was up in the air. This could happen either because the member was intrinsically weak or it could snap because of the high strength of the wind. It had also to be pulled in quickly but then it would come in while being pulled in the manner of a fighter jet coming in to land.    

All in all kite flying was a great experience. The skill with which you could guide the kite soaring into the skies and then perform intricate and sometimes graceful manoeuvers with it was a very satisfying experience. The ability to come out winners in kite fights and be the 'top dog' in your para or locality was very ego salving.

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                                                         The Cheel-Chath 

The cheel-chath – or eagle terrace was a quaint small miniscule flat portion of the terrace, not more than about fifty square feet, over the door leading to the terrace. It was named after the cheel or the eagle since normally the flying eagle would come and rest on the highest point of the building. This terrace had its multifarious uses. Like for fixing rods to string out radio antennas since higher the antenna, the better was the radio reception. Later when television came, it was the place to put up the multi-rod TV antennas which progressively were phased out by cable television but re-appeared later as dish antennas for satellite TV. However the period that we were talking of, it was apart from being used to support rods for antennas was also used to affix on it a pole with a matrix of split bamboo on top. The split bamboo matrix was used as a roost for pigeons in the Bengali bhadralok or gentlemanly (or shall we say genteel) sport of pigeon flying. There would be shelves with compartments made out in them on the terrace in a post-office cubicle type of format like they use for sorting letters but each slot being large enough to comfortably house a pigeon. The Bengali bhadralok‘s hobby would be exercised early in the morning after the master would have had his morning cuppa of tea and then make his way up to the terrace either to do the honours himself or with his loyal servant in tow. They would let out the pigeons and which would be made to take to the skies. Then the master generally with a long stick would guide them in the skies flying in smaller and smaller circles until tired out they would come to roost on the split bamboo matrix fixed to the cheel-chath. After some time you would have the same circumlocution repeated by the flying pigeons. There was an encore of this performance in the evening again a couple of hours before sunset either with the master present or if not feeling up to it or stuck with his business, the loyal servant would conduct the flying exercises. There would be specialist performances during these exercises by one or the other pigeons, mostly the master’s favourite, which would cavort in the skies in a particular way and its reward was to roost on the master’s finger and feed on some choice roasted split chick peas. The Bengali bhadralok mostly from north Calcutta would indulge in this sport since it required the money, the leisure and the consciousness of maintaining a tradition which the bonedi or traditionally wealthy gentlemen of north Calcutta had in good measure. It is not that the people from south Calcutta did not take to pigeon flying. But the numbers, both in numbers of bird-keepers and number of birds, were much smaller than in the north of the city. 

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                                                  Cricket On My Mind

Apart from playing cricket, I had always been interested in cricket and whenever it was a holiday and a cricket Test was in progress, I would put on our Telefunken valve-type radio and sit glued to the commentary. With no television, we had to make do with the commentary bringing the matches liveto us. The commentators one recalls was Vizzy (Maharajkumar of Vizianagram) and V M Chakrapani. Vizzy would put you to sleep and 

would doze off himself waking up in the middle of the next over making us wonder what happened to the commentary in the middle. You could not say it was entirely Vizzy's fault  since describing Bapu Nadkarni’s way to his famous figures of – 50 overs:46 maidens:10 runs and No wicket, anyone would fall asleep. Chakrapani was the more crisp and workmanlike among the commentators and maybe because of his efficiency in later years he migrated to Australia and one heard him sometimes on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commentating on the Tests played there. The Australia matches used to start at 6am our time when sometimes I was allowed to put it on on our radio at home. Reception early in the morning was better than later in the day with the sun up, the voice of the commentator would do an automatic fade-in and fade-out particularly at interesting times when someone was getting out or getting his century. Play would end in Australia around our lunch time at 1pm. The Indian players that I remember from then was G S Ramchand, the then India captain, followed by the mainstay all-rounder, Polly Umrigar, who in later years was more a batsman than a bowler. From my father, I had heard of C K Nayudu, Vijay Merchant and Vinoo Mankad. This fuelled my interest in following cricket. The English paper of Calcutta, The Statesman that we subscribed was a staunch cricket follower and we would be brought the status of cricket matches around the world between other countries when they were being played. They would also make a compact scorecard which was a treat to read almost as good as a regular scorecard. The photos of the prominent cricketers when published, we would cut them out and keep the clippings in a scrap book. Names from the English team like Colin Cowdrey, Godfrey Evans, Ken Barrington, Freddie Trueman, Statham, Fred Titmus were of legendary status to my young mind. 

My first foray in seeing a Test match needs to be recounted here. My maternal uncle with Canara Bank that I had mentioned earlier would get free passes for the Test matches at Eden Gardens, the famed Calcutta venue for cricket. Once because he could not go on a weekday he gave me the pass. That was something! I had a pass to see the Test match between India and England at the Eden Gardens! I could hardly sleep that night. The next day after breakfast and a bag packed with my lunch and a water bottle I hurried to the cricket stadium. The pass it turned out was for the CAB (Cricket Association of Bengal) Members stand. I went in through the first gate without a fuss. Then as I came up to the stand and getting a glimpse of the lush green ground laid out with the stumps on either side of the rectangular grayish pitch at the centre, I was stopped by an official looking,burly, middle aged man who asked me for my pass. I took it out and showed it to him but then he gave me the shock of my life. He asked me how I got this pass? I said my uncle gave it to me. He asked for my uncle’s name and I said U Ganesh Rao. But then he said this cannot be his pass since we do not have any member with that name. He further added that did I not know that the pass was not transferable? The earth came up and hit my face. 

My first time out at the Eden Gardens and this man was making trouble for me. I was determined to see the match for the day and when the next rush of people were passing this official I managed to give him the slip and ran towards the stands. Reaching the bottom of the stands which was separated from the grounds by a high barbed wire fence, I looked around for the stairs and sprinted to the top of the stands. There I found an empty seat and sat down. Looking down from that height of about thirty feet off the ground at the Eden Gardens ground was like being in seventh heaven. The green of the outfield with the boundary marked with white chalk and the Ranji Block, the only concrete stand right in front. Those days the Eden Gardens had a capacity of about 50,000 and was mostly wooden stands except for the Ranji Block and with the pavilion where the seating was cane chairs. The Ranji Block was where the die-hard cricket fans would go and the tickets to this stand were sold on a daily basis. Some of the fans would queue up from the previous night for the big matches. It had two levels and from the top level you were almost sixty feet off the level of the ground and you would see the cricketers as small figurines going about playing cricket. In later years I did see matches once or twice from the Ranji Block and it was some experience. 

My reverie of getting familiar with these famed surroundings was broken by a tap on my shoulder. Looking up I saw a kindly face of a middle-aged man again but with twinkling eyes. He said – That is my seat. He had his pass in his hand and I could see the seat number on it. The man was right. The next seat was vacant so I slid into it letting the man sit down on his seat. After some time another man came in and claimed the seat I was sitting on. By that time I had told this first man who looked kindly while chatting with him about my plight. He was sympathetic and told me not to worry. But I had every reason to feel worried since while escaping from the clutches from the CAB official I had not bothered to take my pass back. I was therefore in the grounds without a valid pass or ticket. When this other man came in and I had to give him his seat, the kindly man spoke to him and they decided to accommodate me between them. Those days the space given for each seat was quite spacious and I, a 11 or 12 year old at that time could quite comfortably sit between them without putting them to much inconvenience. 

So there I was finally seeing my first Test match at Eden Gardens. England was batting and Colin Cowdrey was at the crease, a burly man who looked lazy not too keen to run the singles but whose sweet timing resulted in boundaries with very little effort. Bowling for us was the pint-sized paceman, Ramakant Desai. Desai had a clean action but slimly built and he lacked pace. The beautiful sight of 13 players on the green ground in their white flannels and the two umpires in their black coats will remain forever in my mind. The day was overcast and the players had to go in when the rain came down. Lunchtime came and I opened my tiffin box and wolfed down whatever there was inside, some chapattis with potato bhaji. The kindly man on my right even gave me an egg sandwich from what he had brought for lunch. 

Sitting for so long at one place had made me want to go to the lavatory but I was scared that I would run into that official. So I controlled myself as much as I could but then I had to pee and could not hold it back any longer. So towards the end of the lunch interval I told the kindly uncle that I would visit the lavatory and be back shortly. Considering it was lunch time there were a lot of people going in and out of the stands and I was sure I would be able to merge into the background. Going to the back of the stands from a distance I saw the official of the morning talking to some people. I waited and made sure he was busy before I slipped past him behind his back. Those early years Eden Gardens during the Tests would put up makeshift urinals and toilets and as the day progressed and the days passed towards the end of the five day Test these would be stinking. That day was the third day of the Test and the urinals were stinking as usual. But I saw some people go under the stands and do whatever they had to do. I followed their example and quickly pee’d and went back to my place on top of the stands. On my return trip I had not seen the CAB official anywhere. The cricket was uneventful that day because of the many breaks in the game and Cowdrey was left on some 60 odd runs. Thus ended my maiden visit to the Eden Gardens.

After that day in 1962, I did not miss a single Test match at the Eden Gardens and would go and see at least a day’s play until I left Calcutta for Delhi in 1976. Tickets could be wheedled from my uncle or after his transfer out of Calcutta, from some of my friends whose fathers were CAB members or just queuing up for the daily tickets for the Ranji Block. Thus I had seen by the time I left Calcutta in 1976 almost all the Hall of Fame Indian and international cricketers. The sights of Gilchrist and Wesley Hall, the famed West Indian bowlers coming in to bowl, the first with his round arm action and Hall with his bulk trundling in on his run-up would put the fear of God in any batsmen particularly our Indian batsmen who would almost leave the crease, abdicate from it before the red ball went whizzing past their ears. They were not at fault and remember at that time there was no protective gear for the batsmen like helmets, elbow, chest and thigh pads like they wear now. Even the quality of the gloves and pads was not up to the mark to withstand the pace of these and other legendary bowlers. Seeing Garfield Sobers on the field was a treat. His lithe, supple frame moving on the green grass made you liken it to a tiger hunting prey. The only Indian player who came anywhere near the presence of Sobers on the field, both in terms of athleticism and personality was Mansur Ali Khan, the junior Nawab of Pataudi. Seeing Pataudi standing at cover on the field and handling the region between mid-off and point was a treat. Very few balls could be hit past him and his pick-up and throw was always fluent. You could almost see a panther on the field looking at him standing there at cover. 

In the first West Indies team that I saw apart from those named, they had Lance Gibbs, Colin Hunte, Butcher, Rohan Kanhai of the ‘falling hook’ fame and their wicket-keeper S F M H Alexander (the maximum number of initials that I encountered in a name till then). Sonny Ramadhin had come that year but did not play in the Calcutta Test. Lance Gibbs had an action like our Chandu Borde with that jump just before delivery of the ball. Alexander standing to Gilchrist and Hall would be almost three fourths of the distance to the boundary behind the wicket. In later years, I had got to see Clive Lloyd who had a similar presence to Sobers on the field but the specs he wore gave him the bookish, schoolmaster face which marred the image. In that team there were Lawrence Rowe, Gordon Greenidge, Headley, Alvin Kalicharan as the batsmen, Dujon as the wicket-keeper, Malcolm Marshall and Andy Roberts as the fast bowlers and Julien as a make-shift allrounder. One does not recall if Courtney Ambrose and Michael Holding were there. Among the Australians, one remembers their captain Richie Benaud, the fast bowler Alan Davidson who had the cleanest open-chested left arm action that I have ever seen, Kevin Kline the spinner, Meckiff again left-arm pace and then the delectable batting line-up of McDonald, Bill Lawry, Neil Harvey and Norman O’Neill. Among the Indian players under Pataudi’s leadership you had Dilip Sardesai, Vijay Manjrekar, G R Viswanath was just coming in, as also Ajit Wadekar. Among the pace bowlers one remembers hardly any since until Kapil Dev burst on the Indian cricketing scene we did not have any serious and real fast bowlers, though Ramakant Desai what he lacked in stature he made up with his big heart. In fact for opening the bowling many a time Gavaskar would be asked to turn his arm over with left-arm Eknath Solkar who one can call was only ‘gentle pace’. The idea was to get the shine off the ball so that the spin trio of Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Venkatraghavan could get into the act. While other teams would try to keep the shine on the new ball as much as possible the Indian team would roll the ball over the grass and along the ground instead of throwing it direct to the wicket-keeper. The intention was to get the spinners to come in quickly. There have been instances in the past where spinners have opened the bowling not like they do now for strategic reasons but because there were no pace bowlers that were good enough to be included in the team. Thus you had Venkatraghavan and later Dilip Doshi who were faster in the air and sometimes even Bishen Singh Bedi open the bowling. The spin trio of Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Venkatraghavan were lethal on Indian pitches backed up by the close catching of Solkar, Abid Ali and Venkatraghavan himself. By the time I started watching matches Prasanna was past his prime and he had also put on weight which had an impact on his bowling. But the loop of his off-spinners was something that all of us off-spinners, I was one myself, tried to emulate but rarely achieved. It was not only us but even the top class spinners of other countries could never get that loop. It was said that Prasanna bought his wickets since he would go for many runs if his length was not very proper. But it was rare that batsmen read him all the time and that is when he got his wickets. 

The one match that I remember seeing at the Eden Gardens was with Pataudi leading India against England, I think it was. It is not important who was the other side since this is about B S Chandrasekhar, the unorthodox right-arm fast leg-spinner on whom Pataudi had the greatest confidence and he would use Chandrasekhar with gentle care against the opposing batsmen. That day England needed some 75 runs when play began and India needed six wickets to win the match. The result could go either way. There were few people in the stands since they had assumed that an England victory was assured. Pataudi tossed the ball to Chandrasekhar to start the proceedings of the day. In the first three overs that Chandrasekhar sent down he went for five boundaries because of his erratic line and length. With runs being given by the other bowler at the other end it was almost a foregone conclusion that England would now win. Pataudi even then continued with Chandrasekhar. In the Chandrasekhar’s 4th over he took a wicket. In his 5th over he took another two wickets. In his 6th over he took another wicket. While at the other end one of the spinners, it was either Prasanna or Venkatraghavan who chipped in with two wickets and India had won before lunch. This was the epitome of Pataudi’s captaincy and the faith that he reposed in his bowlers particularly Chandrasekhar. At the Eden Gardens people had started leaving when Chandrasekhar was starting his 4thover and were cursing Pataudi, and the crowd in Calcutta can get pretty voluble and raucous. When Chandrasekhar took his first wicket of the morning they stopped in their tracks. When he took his 2nd wicket of the morning in the next over they sat down and when Chandrasekhar took his third wicket of the morning they were rapturous and cheering every ball be bowled thereafter until he got the final wicket. But I had gone to the ground early in the morning and remained glued to my seat watching the greatest display of spin bowling of all time. This is what Chandrasekhar could do, turn a match on its head. He was clearly a match-winner through and through.

Gavaskar had come into notice and had notched up some big scores. This was before the much lauded West Indies tour where between him and Sardesai they notched a large number of centuries and double centuries. The news was that Gavaskar was coming to Calcutta to play in a Test. So all of us were keenly waiting for him. Thus when he walked into bat. That slight figure with that mop on his head we had great expectations. But these were all belied since Gavaskar made just some figure in the low thirties. But as long as he was at the crease, he showed off his impeccable technique which indicated to all of us the promise to come from his bat which later captured all the batting records. Gavaskar continued to come to Eden Gardens after that a number of times but it was somehow never his famous hunting ground. 

Apart from collecting photos of cricketers that came in The Statesman and the score cards, at that time there was a sports weekly, if one recalls correctly published out of Madras, called Sport & Pastime. This also had nice photos of the famous cricketers. Remember those days everything was in black and white, the colour had yet to come in even for sports magazines. The articles in the magazine were interesting and particularly so were the tit-bits on the players. We rarely bought the magazine but would crowd around anyone who would bring it to school. The Sport & Pastime weekly went through many metamorphoses until it became the later day, Sportsweek, the glossy magazine that all of us sports lovers would drool over. 

I can proudly say that I am probably one of the cricketers who has played rubber ball and tennis ball cricket in the cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Delhi as also the port town of Mangalore. The opportunities of playing in Bombay came up during one of our vacation trips in the early 60’s. My mother’s younger sister was there and with her husband working in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) they lived in the RBI colony in Byculla. They had a big ground floor flat and we had gone, if I recall correctly, for a longish period of 3 – 4 weeks. Our aunt did not have any children then. Near where they were staying also one of mother’s paternal cousins whose husband used to work with the Films Division. They had three sons and a mentally challenged daughter. The brothers straddled the ages of me and my brother. Their eldest was about a year younger than me and the other two in intervals of two to three years. Their school vacations also coincided with the time we were in Bombay and you can imagine the five of us had a whale of a time. Cricket as usual was the greatest passion and the RBI colony had a grassy oval garden in the middle which the local boys of the colony used for cricket. We joined them in playing together. With the experience that we had of playing street cricket in Calcutta I and my brother were miles ahead of the Bombay boys and our cousins. I as usual was made the captain when we would play friendly matches against the neighbouring colonies in Byculla. With our three cousins we bonded well and I was to meet them again later in Pune where they shifted after their father was transferred there with the Films Division. He went to Poona to be part of the team which set up the Films & Television Institute of India (FTII) and the boys all of them specialized in commerce, with the elder two  becoming Chartered Accountants (CA) and the youngest finishing his M.Com and then joining the ICICI Bank. The eldest preferred the corporate life and worked as a CA for some of the big CA companies and then moved over to some of the big Southern organisations. The middle one continues to practice in Poona and is one of the well-known CA’s there. We continue to keep in touch with the family off and on. Their mother and father have both passed away, the father quite a few years ago and the mother recently. 

But we are drifting since the issue was about cricket. Delhi I played cricket with both the tennis ball and the cricket ball while I was doing my Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFFT) in the mid 70’s. At Mangalore the cricket was played more again during our vacation visits and the way it was played there was different from what we were mostly used to in Calcutta. The cricket played in Mangalore was underhand cricket with a tennis ball on the hard red laterite ground. The length of the pitch was about half the regular cricket pitch and the batting was only from one end. It was played with regular stumps and with fielders strung around the ground depending on how many players there, sometimes five, sometimes seven in each team. The ball would be delivered to the batsmen underhand. For us to see our youngest maternal uncle and one of our cousins, the son of mother’s eldest sister, Shanti mav, dressed in lungis and playing cricket in it with the lungis drawn up at half-mast meaning folded up to knee level and with the bottom of the lungi tucked in at the waist, was a delight.  My maternal uncle and my cousin were almost the same age with the uncle being senior by a couple of years. Both of them were quite senior to us in age by almost ten years. We were curious about this kind of cricket since firstly, it was underhand though the balls came at you pretty fast apart from also spinning hard. And secondly, it was being played by senior boys in their late teens in lungis drawn up to the knees! But these fellows were good and we found it difficult to match their level of play partly because for them it was home ground and they had a lot of practice at this kind of game. Though in Calcutta we played cricket with underhand bowling it was restricted by space and not open as the cricket ground they played in Mangalore. But as we drew closer to the end of our vacation we got the hang of it and did match some of the better players in the team. Our maternal uncle was particularly a good batsman and went on to play for his engineering college and had some good scores to his name. Playing on the red laterite ground was difficult because it was hard and if you fell down on it then you were sure to scratch your knee caps or ankles. The colour would rub off on the ball also and by the time one innings was over the cream tennis ball would be a dirty red. The ball when it hit the ground upon being delivered by the bowler would kick up a puff of dust before reaching the batsman which looked nice. So you can say in me you had a tennis ball cricketer who had played all over India!

The Vishwakarma puja had come and gone. We had had our fill of kite flying. The second term exams were also over. One could now look forward to Durga Puja. The count would now start among our friends as to how many sets of new clothes one would get. It was a common enough custom that for the four days of the Pujas starting with Saptami to Dashami you should have four sets of new clothes, one set for each day. But for some to show off their affluence there would be five, six or even eight sets. Thus when Tabul, one of the boys from our para gang, asked me, ‘How many shirts and trousers are you getting for the Pujas?’  I would reply, ‘Actually Durga Puja is not our festival, we celebrate more Diwali or Kali Puja and that is when we make new dresses for ourselves.’ Normally the Diwali or Kali Puja would be a month after the Durga Puja and that gave us that much more leeway to keep up with the Joneses. But then Tabul was the persistent kind and he continued, ‘But Kali Puja is for only one day, actually just one night and at most you can only get one set of clothes’ Now that Tabul was drawn into the trap you could deliver the coup de grace by saying, ‘You do not seem to understand, Tabul. You see we will get new clothes for Durga Puja as well as Kali Puja. Double celebration!’ But it was a fact that our parents were under pressure from us children for new clothes during the Durga Puja so that we could also go out with our Bengali friends dressed in finery as they would.

For us boys when we were small it would be shirts, mostly half-sleeve which we called bush-coats, and shorts. There was less of the style or fashion factor in this except for whether the fabric was the latest terylene, the polyester nomenclature was not common parlance then, or tery-cot – a mix of terylene and cotton. Readymade dresses were also less available and you had to depend on the nearest tailor. Here again the snob factor prevailed and there would be one or the other tailor who would be reputed to stitch well and also the latest cut of fashion and most of us would flock to this tailor. The resultant effect was that he would have taken a huge amount of work and then unable to deliver on time, you would have to make many trips to get the clothes you had given for stitching. Thus the emphasis on the nearest tailor was developed since it saved you time and effort to get your new clothes. We normally would get our clothes stitched from the same tailor to whom we went for our school uniforms and the joke among our friends was that we looked as we had put on a new set of uniforms. However, the emphasis of style and the cut of the clothes came as we grew up and started wearing full length trousers. Tabul would set the ball rolling as usual on these matters, ‘There is this new tailor that I have discovered who does the best of the narrow bottom pants. I have asked him to do 12 inches. Let us see if he is able to manage.’ Mom would exclaim more often than not, ‘How will you be able to get into those trousers? They are bound to tear while putting them on. And what a waste of cloth!’ The problem was that the fashion for clothes like shirts and trousers would follow what the cinema stars wore in their latest films. Thus trousers went from the baggy to the pencil thin bottoms in a matter of months among the younger generation. What we could best negotiate with Mom was a 14 inches bottom. That was the narrowest we could get. And then there were other issues with the trousers. The fold at the bottom and the double pleats on both sides at the waist had vanished. We wore flat front.  Side pockets were passé and we wore front pockets and two hip pocket which became de rigueur. There was less of a style aspect with the shirts since it was all limited to the kind of collar you would have and whether the shirt would taper down to the waist from the shoulders or not and then flare out again at the hip. The school uniform shirts were a square or rectangular box, all straight lines and no curves. That was around the time that Rajesh Khanna was evolving into a super-star and most shirts the prints and the cut followed whatever he had worn in his latest movie. Thus one would find whether it suited anyone or not people strutting around in Rajesh Khanna style shirts and it was sometimes hard to keep a straight face when coming across these Johnies on the street. Talking about stitching new clothes, that was the only option since in those days there were practically no readymade clothes which would suit our budgets. It was also much cheaper to buy cloth and get it stitched the way you wanted it. 

                                                           Mantha

A landmark in our lives, at least in mine, in the context of getting clothes stitched was in one of the visits of my father’s elder brother, whom we call Mantha as a mark of respect in our community, who was then based in Bombay that he asked us once to come across to the hotel he was staying in Central Calcutta near the New Market. We were quite old by then to travel alone, at least I was considering I was in Class 8 then and my brother in Class 6, and we went there. The hotel was the Carlton’s just behind where the Ritz Hotel on the corner of Chowringhee adjacent to the old cultured lady of Calcutta, The Grand Hotel. Carlton’s was just next to the Roxy Cinema. My brother and I reached the hotel by about 5.30PM and since it was winter, it was getting dark. We had been asked to reach the hotel by 6PM. We were obviously a bit nervous and were immediately confronted by a durwan – security guard at the entrance gate which constituted of two ornate pillars at the sides joined together by a cast-iron gate in an embroidery pattern which were almost as tall as the pillars and curving down from the sides at the top to join at the middle. We mumbled that we had come to meet Mr Kamat. Looking us over the durwan probably thought we were respectable enough to be allowed entry. He said, ‘Andar jao! Aur wo saab baithen hen, unsen pooch lo!’ (Go in! And there is the gentleman sitting, ask him!’) I was quite relieved to have passed the first level of scrutiny. We went into the driveway. 

On the left of the driveway was the wall along which was a verge where there were a number of flowering plants. On the right was a long corridor open to the driveway but at a slightly higher level along which there were shuttered long doors at regular intervals. On top of each of the doors on the wall which was creamish yellow were numbers on a polished square brass plate. These numbers were reducing as we went along the driveway which led to a kind of patio where the corridor joined at right angles. On the patio right ahead were a couple of sofas strewn around on which there were a few people sitting, both ladies and gentlemen having probably coffee or tea, out of porcelain cups. They were all foreigners and also elderly. Behind the sofas in a kind of alcove was a counter and behind it there was a man sitting looking at us. Seeing the two of us, probably looking a scruffy and scrawny pair, climbing onto the patio and passing the people seated at the sofas whose conversation we believed seemed to stop and then multiple pairs of eyes tracked our progress up to the counter at the back. Or at least that is what I thought. This was our first visit to a hotel and we were finding our way through unknown waters. Our feet became all the more leaden and it was taking an eternity to reach the counter. It was like in the movies where suddenly they switch to slow motion and the hero is not at all able to catch the villain. We finally reached the end of the journey and looking at the man sitting behind the counter with a quizzical grin on his face, I said, ‘We have come for Mr H N Kamat.’ The man was surprisingly nice and came out from behind the counter and said, 'Come!’ He seemed to be an Anglo Indian, fair, stockily built, black hair that had been slicked down flat on his head and smartly dressed in trousers, shirt and tie with brightly polished shoes. He smilingly led us off to the left of the counter where I could see that the patio extended and there were dining tables being laid out with crockery and cutlery for the evening dinner. He brought us back to the corridor which we had seen while we were coming up the driveway but the difference was that we were walking on it now trailing behind this gentleman who was saying, ‘Your first time here. How do you know Mr Kamat? He is one of our regulars comes twice a year without fail.’ We were almost running behind him trying to keep pace and I could only blurt out, ‘Yes! We are his nephews.’ ‘Ah! I see.’ – he said, by that time reaching one of those green shuttered doors which was marked – 3 – on top. Knocking smartly on the door, he opened it and we could see uncle sitting at his desk doing some work. Uncle looking up said, ‘Anything the matter, Mr Bowers!’ 

‘No, Sir! It’s only that I have brought your nephews to see you.’ 

Only one shuttered door was open and we were partly covered by Mr Bowers’ bulk between us and our uncle. 

‘Where are you hiding them then?’ 

Mr Bowers in the meanwhile turned and we slipped into the room. 

‘So Madhu and Murli, you have come!’ Looking up at Mr Bowers our uncle said, ‘Thank you very much, Mr Bowers1’

Mr Bowers then excused himself saying, ’It’s my pleasure, Sir.’ It was obvious Mr Bowers liked my uncle and we were getting privileged treatment which I was sure two otherwise unsure and nervous kids would never have got.

To us uncle said, ‘Sit for a moment. I have to finish something.’

Uncle or Mantha that we called our father's elder brother in our community, was dressed in his half-sleeved undershirt and trousers which were held up by suspenders and in slippers over his feet that were covered with socks. The trademark pipe was in his mouth at which he sucked once in a while blowing out tufts of white and blue perfumed smoke. I liked that smoke and had noticed the perfume that was in the room when we came in. The room was big with two cots laid out across the room and perpendicular to anyone entering through the main door. The door itself was in two parts like a double door with the green shuttered outer door to let some air and light in, while inside there was another door, cream in colour, with wood up to almost waist height and then the rest of it to full height was made up of square panes of glass in a wooden frame. Heavy floor-length curtains completed the picture. On the right as you entered almost in the middle of the room was a large desk with a table-lamp on it. Uncle was working on this with the lamp that was on. The bed nearer the door was done up and on this both of us sat gingerly on the edge. The other bed was filled with books neatly laid out on the top of the counterpane. There were small books and big books. There were paperbacks and hardbound. There were thin books and fat books. And because of these books which were all new the smell of new books also filled the room. Among the books we could see some of Enid Blyton that of Barney and his Famous Five. Behind this bed on the left was an alcove for keeping your luggage and a clothes rack for hanging up your clothes which was shuttered off with sliding doors. On the right was another smaller door which must be leading to the bathroom and toilet. Apart from the light of the table-lamp there was another chandelier-kind of light hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room which was illuminating the room and dispelling the shadows.  

My scrutiny as it was getting over heard Mantha say, ’So you made it here. No problems on the way, I hope.’ 

Actually getting to that part of Chowringhee, more Esplanade was no problem since the tram service from near our house came direct to the Esplanade terminus and we just had to cross the busy thoroughfare in front of the Ritz Hotel and come into the lane. I said, ‘No problems, Mantha. We got a tram quickly and it took us just about twenty minutes to get here.’ 

‘Good! You want to have anything or shall we go.’

We had no real clue why we had been called and I said, ‘No. Let’s go.’

Mantha at that response, got up wore a bush-coat the same colour as his trousers, slipped his feet into his brown polished shoes lying at the bottom rung of the shoe rack near the door and said, ‘Let’s go.’ Coming out of the room he saw a liveried waiter hurrying towards the patio and calling him over, he said, ‘Mohsin, lock my room and give the key to Mr Bowers.’

The waiter salaamed Mantha and said, ‘Yes, Sir!’

From in front of Room No. 3 we directly got on to the drive way and strutted out of the gates with the durwan now salaaming Uncle and looking at us in a more kindly light. We turned left out of the gate and then right after the Roxy cinema wall ended with my Mantha, tall, fair and bald man that he was but a handsome man nonetheless, puffing on his pipe leading the way and with his right hand holding the hand of my brother while I walked on his left on my own. Going by the direction we were walking I could make out we were going towards New Market. After going down that street for a while with the shops of New Market starting on the pavement to the left of us, we continued straight up to the next crossing. On that crossing at the corner was Nu York, at that time the best men’s tailors in Calcutta. And almost as if I was in a dream, Mantha was leading us up the stairs of Nu York. Apart from custom tailoring Nu York also used to sell cloth material for the garments that they would stitch. The magnificent personality that Mantha had, the salesmen at the counter came scurrying to us, asking, ‘Can we help you, Sir?’

Mantha said, ‘These are my nephews. I want a shirt and trousers stitched for them. So show me some material that is good and durable.’

‘Yes, Sir. Come this way, Sir!’

He took us to a counter and showed us some excellent cloth. I had never seen such cloth earlier. The cloth for both the shirt and the trousers was so soft and felt out of this world. The colours that Mantha chose for us and for which we wholly agreed with him was a chocolate brown for the trousers and a yellowish-cream for the shirts. Upon consultation with the salesmen it was decided that I would get full length trousers, my brother would get shorts since he was still young. The shirts, however, would be full sleeve for both. The trousers for me were loose fit with the two pleats on either side at the waist and the fold at the bottom and its width at 16 inches, which Mantha did not object but just looked at me quizzically and smiled. The clothes were asked to be delivered to my Mantha’s hotel and with delivery assured in three days the trial for the trousers were waived off. That was one hell of an experience for me. The best cloth, I did not remember which now, and Nu York, the best tailors and a shirt and a trouser for me. I was just out of this world with joy and exhilaration. Mantha sensed this I guess from my glittering eyes and when I thanked him profusely, he said, ‘Nothing to it. And hold your thanks for a while. They have not yet delivered the clothes.’

We walked out of Nu York and Mantha in continuation of the celebratory mood said, ‘This is no time for ice-cream or a cold drink. With the winter setting in, it is already cool. Let us do one thing. Let’s go to Firpo’s.’ I almost stumbled and fell. Just one evening and two stupendous treats. One done and the other on its way. Firpo’s was the best confectionery store and restaurant apart from Flury’s in Calcutta at that time. Their sandwiches and pastries were legendary and worth dying for. You came out of Nu York and on the same side past the New Empire theater, converted to a cinema, and as soon as you hit Chowringhee on the left under the arcade was the Firpo’s entrance. You had to climb the stairs and reach the verandah on top of the arcade which covered the pavement and that’s where Firpo’s was. The moment we entered the steward came running and showed us to a nice table. Must be the way Mantha looked with the pipe in his hand. At that instant I decided that I would also smoke a pipe when I was older. Chicken sandwiches were ordered along with a platter of pastries and hot chocolate for the two of us while Mantha had tea. We were not able to finish all the sandwiches and the pastry and Mantha asked the waiter to pack it up so that we could take it home. Thus sated I for one descended in a daze down the stairs and started walking back to Mantha’s hotel. We reached the Carlton’s Hotel and at the gate Mantha said, ‘It is already late. You kids make you way home. And let us see today is Tuesday. Nu York said they would take three days to deliver your clothes. That puts us on Friday. I leave for Bombay only on Sunday. So what you do is that both of you along with your mother, sister and father and join me for dinner on Saturday. Come at 7PM.’ Looking at me, he said, ‘You should invite on my behalf your father for this dinner. I am counting on you to represent me.’ I was all smiles and gleefully said, ‘Yes, Sir!’ Looking at my brother I could not but resist saying, ‘What’s happening? All that we got today and now a dinner on Saturday at the Carlton’s.’ 

We reached home almost singing with joy and told mother the delightful news and that she need not cook on Saturday night because we were going for dinner to the Carlton’s Hotel. She would not believe us since Uncle whenever he would come to Calcutta for his twice a year visits would always have one meal at our place which would be when we would have fish or chicken, the way my mother made it. This time he had not come home for the meal yet and we were telling her that instead she was going to the Carlton’s. After some time she believed us and then started fussing that she and my sister had nothing to dress for going to such a fancy dinner. Moreover mother was not comfortable about the idea of dinner not knowing to use a knife, fork and spoon which would be mandatory use for the dinner. I hastened to assure mother that she was prone to thinking too much and that she could wear whatever she liked and as for the cutlery use, all of us had the same problem except maybe father. The funny thing was that in the confusion that the dinner invitation caused, the story of our new clothes was completely ignored. Father had not come home yet and I waited to tell him about the Saturday dinner plan. When he came I told him about the new clothes that Mantha was buying for us and his invitation for dinner on Saturday. It was OK with father and he said, ‘His promotion must have come through. Being away from his family at Bombay when the news came, I would think he wanted to celebrate with you boys and with us as a family. We will definitely go’  My  Mantha was the India Representative for the book publishers, William Collins & Sons, UK. The promotion my father told me meant that he would now look after South Asia, that is apart from India look after the business in Ceylon, Nepal and both parts of Pakistan. I was happy for Mantha but more happy that he had got the news when he was here with us in Calcutta.

Saturday came and we were all decked up. We reached the Carlton’s in time. Considering the durwan and Mr Bowers knew us now we went straight from the driveway to Room No. 3 and found Mantha in the room. He was all dressed up and ready. He asked us to sit down and except for father all four of us perched on the edge of the bed that did not have the books on it. Father stood around nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. Mantha must have pressed a bell or something because one of those liveried waiters came to the room. Mantha told him, ‘Ask Mr Bowers if the table I reserved for dinner for six persons is ready? If so, we will come for dinner.’ The waiter came back after some time and said, ‘Your table is ready as well as dinner, Mr Bowers says.’ Mantha looked at us and said, ‘Shall we go?’  We all trooped behind Mantha leading the way, trailing a plume of pipe smoke, down the corridor from Room No. 3 to the dining area on the patio. While in the room I had been looking around and had seen at the corner of the bed some white plastic bags which seemed to have Nu York printed on them along with two other small bags with books stuffed in them. However, I could not muster up the courage to ask if the Nu York bags were our new clothes.

As we walked towards the dining area, we could hear the clink of glasses and the clatter of cutlery on plates. The dining area was one side of the patio and had about six tables. Dinner service had already started since foreigners, who were the majority of the guests at the hotel, ate early just after sunset. Mr Bowers upon seeing Mantha coming, left his station at the counter and hurried across to meet him saying, ‘Mr Kamat, we have given you this table. I am sure you like it. Dinner is exactly like you ordered and I will have them serve you in a moment.’ While saying this Mr Bowers ushered us all to a table for eight. While Mantha stood near the chair at the head of the table, Mr Bowers helped seat my mother and sister by pulling out their chairs and pushing them in after they sat on it. These were the chairs to the right of Mantha at the head of the table with my father giving me the first chair on the left nearest to Mantha. Father then sat next to me and then my brother. Father could then help my brother if he needed anything. There was an implicit protocol in the seating which was achieved quietly and with no confusion. That was the hallmark of my Mantha. He had been the only graduate in the family and he would say that he was a Bachelor of the Arts (B.A.) followed by that hearty laugh of his and gesturing with the pipe in his right hand. 

The dining table was of wood, polished to a shine and covered with a plain cream tablecloth on which place mats of green cloth were kept. The chairs were made of wood same colour as the table, straight backed and without arms. Sooner we sat down two of the liveried waiters came, one for each side of the table and took away the big dinner plate in the middle of the place mat. Leaving just the glasses and the cutlery on the mat. For a moment I thought that maybe we are not getting dinner! There was though a side plate left on the place mat so I thought at least maybe we will get some little dinner. On our right on the place mat at the outermost was a straight glass with a spotless white napkin thrust into it and next to it a wine glass that was upturned.  On the top side of the place mat was first a round big spoon and then above that a large table spoon. On the right of the mat nearer to our hand and before the glasses were three knives, one large and the other small and the last smaller. The larger knives seemed to have a sharper edge while the knife nearer to our hand was rounder at the tip and seemed blunter. On our left on the place mat were three forks placed in order of size, the largest one furthest from us. In the middle of the table were some small white metal, maybe silver, bowls which were covered. There were also two sets of salt and pepper cellars again the white metal colour, one set placed between me and father and the other in front of my sister further down the table. 

While I was looking at the table setting Mr Bowers had come and whispered into  Mantha’s ear. Then Mantha said, ‘No! No! No wine. We will have just your plain water for dinner.’ Mr Bowers went away I thought a little disappointed. Quite quickly we had the waiters come and pick up all the upturned wine glasses and also the table settings for the two extra places which we would not use. Then we saw the waiters come with huge wooden trays with soup plates on each tray with the steam rising from the plates. They placed each of the plates in the middle of our place mats and went away. The placing of the soup plates was done from our left which Uncle said was the custom for all service at the table for the different courses that one would eat. Simultaneous to the serving of the soup we had another waiter come in and place baskets with bread resting on a napkin on one half and the other half covering the breads from the top. Flipping open the napkin, one could see two kinds of bread, the shape of small spheres, and the other like long sticks. One of the breads was with a hard crust while the other was a soft crust. They were nice and brown at the top and cream coloured as you went down. The sticks were intriguing and I picked one upon being offered the bread basket by Mantha. I was looking at the stick a bit funnily when Mantha clarified, ‘They are soup sticks. They are like bread. You have that with your soup. If you want you can dip it in your soup also.’ After that my first class, in fact for all of us maybe excepting father, of handling cutlery and table manners started. The teacher was Mantha.

‘OK. Now that soup has been served, we can begin dinner. The first thing you do is take the table napkin from the glass in front of you and spread it out on your lap. You can also tuck it in into your collar like this. But that is your choice where you want your table napkin to be.’ While saying this Mantha took out my napkin and tucked into my open shirtfront just below the collar with a large part of it falling down the middle of my chest. I took it out quickly and put the napkin on my lap because it was scratching my neck. Mantha continued glancing at me smilingly, ‘The next thing you do is to pick up the big round spoon above your plate. That is the soup spoon. You have to use that to have your soup. Along with soup you start having your bread or like Madhu here, you can also have the soup sticks. Now with the bread if you need to have butter, you have to use the blunter knife placed on your right. Now, Madhu, remove the cover from those small containers in the middle of the table.’ I did as instructed and saw small cubes of butter sitting in the containers. ‘That is your butter which you pick with your knife and apply to your bread. The bread you can cut with the same knife or you can break it with your hand, like this.’ Mantha demonstrated how to apply butter onto the broken bread. ‘After you have applied the butter you return the knife to the side plate placed on your right on the mat.  You can place the knife any way you like but the best way is to put it straight away from you.’ With the first part of the lesson over, we attacked our soup and the bread with it. I could see my mother looking at me and smiling. It was our little secret but she was managing quite well. The soup was a cream of tomato soup and though I did not generally like tomato, I found the soup creamy and not so sour to taste but tangy and nice. Mantha, in the meanwhile, was continuing with his lesson, ‘If you want salt or pepper with your soup, you can put that.’ Immediately three hands including mine reached out for the salt and pepper cellars. ‘Actually when you have the soup, you should not make any slurping noises but gently sip the soup. Similarly when you pick up the soup from your plate the spoon should not make any sound. No clatter. Those who have the best table manners make hardly any sound when they are eating. Though they may be eating quickly or eating while talking to others at the table. You have to become like that as you get more practice and as you grow older. Once you have finished your soup you should lay your soup spoon perpendicular to yourself. Though if you want more you can put it parallel to yourself in the plate, what we call the 3.15 position like on the face of a clock. If you keep the spoon in any other position, the waiter serving you is confused and does not know what you want.’ None of us wanted any more soup and all of us put the soup spoon in the perpendicular position. 

The waiters cleared the soup plates and also brought new baskets of bread but in these the soupsticks were missing. The next course came which was some vegetables along with baby potatoes in a different kind of sauce than the curry that we were used to. It was rather bland and seemed to also have less salt. After Mantha instructed that we had to take the next knife and work for the second course leaving the largest knife and fork for the main course. I took a piece of bread, applied butter to it as instructed and then after polishing off the potatoes and toying with the other vegetables mostly beans and carrots, that I did not like, I put my fork and knife perpendicular to me on my plate. I had finished my roll of bread and was the first among us to declare my intention not to pursue further the vegetable course. I could see that Mantha had given me a glance of approval but whether that covered my leaving most of the vegetables is what I did not understand. The waiter came and cleared my plate from the table and I was happy that I had used the system to rid myself of something that I did not want to eat. Having finished first I had to wait for the others to finish. I could see that both Mantha and my father had polished clean their plates of the vegetables. The others including mother were struggling through their vegetables. I watched their plight with glee.

The next course was the main course and Mantha said that he had ordered fish – a bhetki done in a white sauce. The plates of the fish came, again hot and steaming. The white fish in a white sauce was lying a bed of white rice. I dug into it. The fish tasted heavenly and the sauce with the rice was also very good. It did not take me long to finish it off and I did not bother to take any bread with it. Everyone liked the fish and the general consensus was that it was the best part of the meal. No wonder we hailed from the Western coast of India!

The last course that of dessert which we children always wait for was in front of us. It was pudding, a truncated cylinder of goodness, off-white creamy on the sides and with chocolate sauce dribbled over the top overflowing to the side of the pudding. A pile of goodness waiting to be attacked. The first cut which you gave the pudding from the top slicing the brown and uncovering the gash of cream and then carrying that to your mouth was seventh heaven. The next slices came in  rapid progression and within seconds the blob of gooey goodness was all finished. You could always look for a second helping but then I desisted not knowing how Mantha would feel about it. If he had asked me whether I was interested in a second helping then that would be a different matter. The dessert course was the fastest to finish around the table except for Mother who was toying with it since Uncle at one point of time said that it contained some egg. Before serving the dessert the waiters had come and dusted off our place mats for anything that may have dropped on them and also put the dessert cutlery on the place mats, a small plate with a small spoon on top and a small fork on the left of the plate. The pudding plate was placed on this plate when brought to the table.

Mr Bowers came to Mantha and asked if we would like coffee. To which my Mantha replied, ‘Who’s going to sleep then in the night? No! No! No coffee! Unless you have a program set up to entertain us through the night.’ And my Mantha guffawed again, that open-hearted laugh of his. Mr Bowers getting the message retreated in the face of the barrage. 

Dinner over, the waiters were at hand to move back the chairs for my mother and sister so that they could get up comfortably. We managed ourselves heeding Mantha’s last lesson in table manners that we should push back the chairs in again after getting up. This having been accomplished we sallied down the corridor to Room No. 3 with Mantha and father in the lead talking about something or other. We two boys following them and mother and sister bringing up the rear.

We went in and Mantha declared, ‘Madhu, the Nu York tailors have brought your new clothes. They are on the bed with the books in that corner. Go get that. And while you are at it you will find some plastic bags next to them with books. Bring those bags also.’ I hurried to follow Mantha’s instructions. The Nu York bags themselves were big and the bags with the books were heavy. So it was quite a struggle for me to balance the Nu York bags on my left hand and use my right hand to lug the book bags to Mantha. Having reached him, Mantha took the Nu York bags and gave them to me and my brother saying, ‘These are the new pants and shirts that you chose that day. And in these other bags you will find fun books to read for all three of you. You will have to share them among yourselves when you read them.’ Then going up to his table he reached out for a gift wrapped paper package and calling my sister gave it to her, saying, ‘This is for you. I am sure you will like it.’  That turned out to be nice dress material for a frock for my sister. We did not remain long after that since it was getting late and took our leave of Mantha profusely proffering our thanks for all the wonderful gifts he had given us as well as the dinner.

Actually we wanted to get back home as quickly as possible to try out the new clothes. The tram that we got into was taking like an eternity but we finally reached home. Taking out the clothes and wearing them, it was time to preen wearing them in front of the family. The material was so soft and nice that I held up it to my cheek for a moment, feeling the texture and softness next to my skin. The stitching as expected from Nu York was the best. Mother was also very happy with the clothes particularly the quality of the cloth and when I showed her after wearing the clothes, she said, ‘Now you look like a real gentleman! But you have to take care of the clothes. Do not play in them and get them all stained and dirty.’ My brother’s shorts and shirt were also done well. With the same colour shirt and lower garment we looked like clowns at a circus and particularly from the waist down, like the long and short of it!

Mantha used to come to Calcutta as part of his work regularly to meet the booksellers and promote the sale of Collins books, at least twice a year. We used to look forward to these visits since whenever he came to Calcutta, he would visit us at home carrying some goodies, a cake from Flury’s or chocolates, and definitely books. This was the pattern from as far back as I could remember. Mantha was with William Collins as said earlier and the books of this publisher is what we got. With Enid Blyton writing for them, we grew up on the staple of stories from her in our early childhood.   In fact the reading habit of all three of us started with the nurturing of it from the books that Mantha brought. At least that was true for me. With the books that Mantha brought we could exchange them for other books with our friends at school and that set the chain rolling. This chain kept feeding you with books as you grew up. The school libraries were next and with us at St. Lawrence High School we had a good enough library to keep our interests watered. 

Mantha was a bluff and jovial man with a hearty laugh which was triggered by mostly something he would say or at other times at a joke or if one of us said something funny. You could not imagine him without his trademark pipe in his right hand or stuck in his mouth letting out those sweet scented puffs of smoke. He would sometimes smoke cigars particularly when he was feeling expansive and generous. Thus after a good lunch or dinner at home made by mother, he would go up where he had hung up his trousers (in those days, when anyone from close family came visiting and stayed over for a meal, then they would remove their street clothes and wear a mundu or lungi and if there was a lady, mother would give her a house sari along with a towel for the male guest) ) and reaching in bring out two cigars and a small box containing a cropper and a longish pointed needle. The cigars would be wrapped in cellophane and have on their body just before reaching the rounded end a gold band with the insignia of the cigar company along with their logo. Mantha would hand over one cigar to father keeping one for himself, ‘These are Cubans, you know!’ Then with a flourish he would remove the cellophane which would come off with a crackling noise and then take off the gold band. He would look around for me and then hand it over knowing that I liked to play with the squeaky cellophane and keep the gold bands. I liked the perfume of the cigar that would be retained in the wrapping and going into a corner or into another room sniff at the cellophane and take in as much of the smell into my lungs as I could. Going away was to avoid getting reprimanded for doing something that I was not supposed to do. This was more with my mother who would say that this kind of behaviour would make me pick up the habit of smoking when I grew up. Whoever picks up the habit of smoking cigars in India particularly with the kind of prices that they are sold for? - that's what she would say. Though in later life I did become a cigarette smoker and quite a heavy one at that for some years. Anyway coming back to the cigar smoking. Mantha would have taken the cropper and chopped off a little bit from the end that that you light up and taking the long needle would drive it in through the middle of the rounded bottom on the other side. This was to allow the smoke to flow through smoothly. Then it was time to light the cigar. Mantha would light a matchstick and hold the flame under the cigar tip sucking in and out so that the entire tip was lighted up blood pred. The smoke from the lit cigar even at that time would twirl up from the end as well as the side of  Mantha’s mouth. My father would ape Mantha’s actions. And then the heady smell of cigar smoke would suffuse through the room. Mantha being the eldest among the brothers and the only one in the family who left Coondapur, our native town, and went to Madras for a BA degree was respected by all the brothers. Mantha in turn had helped all the brothers in their education, if they were interested to pursue it, getting jobs and also monetarily if someone was not doing too well at any point of time. For the initial years and for quite some time after that he played the role of elder person in the family to perfection. His house at Bombay was always open-house for the family. 

Even then Mantha’s personal life was not a bed of roses and he had to face a tragedy early on. He had three sons and a pleasant wife who even though being from the smaller town of Kumta, lying on the western coast midway between Coondapur and Karwar, was a friendly sport and loved people. Anyone who came to their house in Mumbai was made to feel at home. Mantha's flat initially was at King's Circle in Matunga and later they moved to Kurla. The three sons were Raya, Pratap and Chandra. All of them went to Don Boscos at Wadala. The youngest was a very good badminton player and was tipped to make it to the State team for juniors. Then tragedy struck. Chandra killed himself, first by drinking a solution of bleaching powder and then hanging himself after he had gone for badminton practice. His parents were shattered particularly Mantha who took it rather hard and one could say that he was  not the same man again after this incident. Chandra was in high school at that time. The family never spoke about the incident and it was nothing to do with any matters at home which was logical since Chandra was the youngest and normally the parents always dote on the youngest. It was rumoured that the suicide was linked to not being selected for the State badminton team which led to Chandra being severely disillusioned and deciding to take his life. Whatever it was it left Mantha a shattered man. The elder sons did not take to education very much and Mantha had set his heart on the youngest to become something in life. However, the tragedy snuffed out these dreams. It was talked in the family that Mantha’s extensive touring around India, he was out at least twenty-five days in a month, which had led to the sons going astray with the youngest committing suicide. Mantha's wife was not able to handle these ebullient sons it was said. However, my personal opinion was it was nothing like that and what had to happen had happened. 

Mantha retired from his job at the age of sixty and moved to a new flat in Kurla. The earlier small flat in Lalit Kunj at King's Circle, Matunga was given to his son, Raya who had married by that time. Raya was unable to hold down any job and then took to drinking. His wife used to work and that was how they could manage house with support also from Mantha. Raya had a son who became a Chartered Accountant and stabilized in life in contrast to his father. The credit for this should go to Raya’s wife who would have guided her son away from the path Raya took. Though Raya’s wife had tried to reform her husband nothing seemed to work for Raya who continued going downhill with his drinking habit until he died of cirrhosis of the liver. Mantha while alive had to see the deaths of two sons which broke him completely. After that the flat at Kurla with like-minded people that he found with neighbours and some from our community became a den for playing cards and drinking. 

Pratap, the middle son, though better than Raya in holding jobs, in later life after moving to the Kurla flat also started getting into problems at the workplace. He also took to the bottle and died again of cirrhosis of the liver but thankfully after both Mantha and his wife had passed away. He had continued to stay at the Kurla flat but had got so far advanced in his addiction that he had borrowed money from the Muslim neighbours in the building who ultimately took over the flat upon Pratap’s passing away. The property thus having to come to Raya’s son was squandered away to fall in the hands of unknown people who made a killing at the expense of the family. We continued to stay in Calcutta and being far away from Bombay and my father beset with his own problems of making both ends meet and us children busy with our studies, we drifted away. I did visit a number of times whenever I was in Bombay either for job reasons or a personal visit but was privy to seeing how actually things had changed for the family from one of eminence and respect to that of avoidance and pity. 

The last that I remember of Mantha was when I had got married in 1980 at the Kurla temple that was near to his flat. Mantha had come for the wedding in a flowing cream silk kurta and white pyjamas and carrying a cane. He was still a handsome man. He had come alone since maybe his wife had passed away by that time, one does not remember. We visited his house after the marriage and before we left Bombay after the wedding, to take his blessings. But the day we went the story was the same. A game of rummy was going on and four or five people were there in the room. A bottle was open. We stayed a while touched his feet and then quietly went our way. When Mantha had money he had helped everyone. Around him there were people mostly distantly related relatives and those of his ‘friends’ in our community who took him for a ride by investing in tile factories back on the Konkan coast which all went into bankruptcy enriching these ‘hangers-on’ but emptying Uncle’s pockets in the process. He was diabetic like my father also was but not to the extent of Mantha. He needed daily shots of insulin. And he passed away because of complications arising out of his drinking and being diabetic. For the Kamat family an era had ended.  

                                                          Diwali & Kali Pujo

Just like doing our own manjha for flying kites, for Diwali and Kali Puja, which occurred together, we went from the bursting fireworks to the do-it-yourself stage as we grew into adolescence. We did not always get a lot of money for fireworks but whatever we got was sufficient and I for one never complained. The fireworks would be bought at least a week in advance and then to the days leading up to Kali Puja we would put it out in the sun on the balcony of our flat to toast them and have them crisp on the day that we would light them up. The sunning or toasting of the fireworks made them light up easily and avoided any of the patakas from fizzling out and ensuring that we got the maximum bang for our buck for them. The fireworks that we went and bought were the standard patakas, kalipatka and dhanipatkas; the rangmashals – the torches that would light up giving the bright electric blue light; the Catherine wheels – both the hand variety (Sudarshan chakras) and the ground variety - Nel Chakra in Konkani; the flower pots – small and big called tubris or phulla paus - flower showers in Konkani, which came in earthen pots and not the paper packaged conical boxes as they come today; the snake boxes, which contained tablet sized pills which when you lit them would grow larger and larger contorting into odd shapes; then the usual sparklers – the standard, coloured and the electric ones – the last were bigger in size and the electric wires in bundles of about a meter in length which you lit one end and held it away from yourself and it would burn out with an electric light to the stub left in your hand; coloured match boxes which gave out red and green flames when struck. There were the cap pistols which blasted caps either individually or with the cap paper feed and it was rare that all the caps made sound. We outgrew these cap pistols by the time we were eight or ten years old and stuck to the standard fare as above and then graduating until sixteen to the double bombs – dodomas and the chocolate bombs called as such because they came wrapped deceptively in shiny coloured paper and packaged in boxes like chocolate – twelve to a box. But these made a deafening sound belying their small size. Later we would also get rockets but these were dangerous what with the close spacing of the tall buildings in our locality, a rocket would get into someone’s room through the open window causing unnecessary commotion and nuisance. With the rockets we would either go up to the terrace of the buildings or into an open ground or  up right in the middle of the street and after putting the rockets in a bottle for their journey heavenward. There was also another nuisance firework siti – meaning whistle. It got its name from the fact that upon lighting it would go up twenty/thirty feet in the air whistling all the while with an orange trail of sparks behind it. The trajectory of these siti’s were uncertain and some of the boys to make mischief would put the siti’s upside down before lighting them making the siti’s go in an unpredictable trajectory which was dangerous particularly for women and girls wearing saris and dresses. 

The majority of the fireworks were to be burst on the day, in fact the night of the Kali Puja day, though we would start with the small fireworks in the morning. Even a couple of days before the Kali Puja we would convince mother to let us open the dhanipatka packets and remove them individually calling them small and not likely to matter or take anything away from the big bang festival on Kali Puja. The dhanipatka were small about a matchstick size in length, half of it being the body and the other half of the length as the fuse. They were called as such since individually they looked like a small variety of green chilli available in Bengal. They made a small flat sound that would not even (or OK maybe) scare a cat, that is when the dhanipatkas decided that they would explode. Many a time they would just fizzle out with an awkward twist. They came tied in flat packs of alternating green and red colours which you would have to unravel to take them out individually. 

The fireworks would be initially bought by father from somewhere near his office. As we grew older we would get them from the nearest shop in the Southern Market which was the main market near where we stayed. There would a couple of shops and they would start stocking fireworks from about two to three weeks before Kali Puja or you could say just after Durga Puja. Initially mother would accompany us for this shopping but later we went on our own. As we grew older coming into Class 7 or 8 the talk among our friends in the locality would be that the prices for the fireworks would be more than half at Canning Street compared to what we were buying at Southern Market. This prompted some of us to get together and pester our mothers to allow us to go to Canning Street for buying the fireworks and also give us the money about two to three weeks earlier. Canning Street was the main wholesale bazaar for Calcutta city where you could get anything and everything. During the time leading up to the Kali Puja and Diwali in a particular lane of the market the shops would switch to handling only fireworks. Three or four of us would land up there with our shopping lists. The prices of the fireworks at the Canning Street shops were jaw dropping, almost half if not more than that, that we were paying for in our locality. We were naturally pleased since we would literally, get double the quantity of firewaorks and all the more bang for the buck! The shops would be selling at wholesale prices and for that they would look for certain volumes of orders to be given for each fireworks but looking at us children coming there the shopkeepers would not insist since any case if they clubbed all our orders then their volume needs were met. You should have seen our gleaming faces after finishing our purchasing and lugging big plastic bags from which the ends of the sparklers or the rangmashal packs would be sticking out and later as the years went by the rocket packets. We would drag these bags as best as we could sometimes with two of us holding each end of the bag and somehow make it to the bus stop on Brabourne Road. Canning Street was an offshoot of Brabourne Road. 

We had a direct bus from there to our locality No. 6 which plied between Howrah Station and Garia. The railhead for Calcutta was Howrah Station across the river Hooghly and to reach there you had to cross one of Calcutta’s most famous landmark, the cantilevered Howrah Bridge. From the Canning Street crossing the Brabourne Road took a turn towards the river and then turning again got on to the extremity of Strand Road and then climbed onto the bridge, on the other end of which was the Howrah station. The Bus No. 6 from its terminus at the Howrah Station would not take long to reach Brabourne Road but once we got on with our precious flammable cargo – the fireworks, the journey home depending on traffic would take about thirty to forty-five minutes. The frequency of the Bus No. 6 was reasonably good and we did not always have to wait for too long. Considering that we would be starting back late in the morning or afternoon, the buses would not be too crowded and the traffic also being light we would more often than not reach home within half an hour. 

The Bus No. 6 were mostly the double-decker type, some of the old models having the driver sit on the left of the bus in his cab which looked like a projecting snout when you looked from the front and on his left the bus body sloped off to above the left front wheel. Under this sloping cover was the access to the engine. If one recalls correctly these were made by Ashok Leyland and there were similar model single-decker buses. These double-decker buses were later replaced with the sleeker ones like you would see in Bombay or London as they show plying in the movies. The buses in Calcutta were not as clean then as in Bombay but back then Calcutta happened to be more congested than even Bombay which attracted its load of dust on the vehicles that plied on the road. The fun with double-decker buses was that you could climb up and enjoy a good view. The seats most in demand were the ones right up front above the driver where you could see ahead as well as on the side. The upper deck was always more comfortable than the lower deck. The latter being stuffy, congested and lacking in headroom for taller people. The last named problem was true also for the upper deck. This common problem with height profiles in public transport was probably because everything was designed for the average Indian male who would not exceed 5 feet 6 inches. 

The conductors would not bother us very much considering our age and the fact that in Calcutta after the Durga Puja everyone generally, back in those days, would always be in good humour. Considering that we were carrying fireworks the conductors played along not spoiling our day. We would get up from our seats a couple of stops before our bus-stop and come down lugging our bags so that we would get off easily. The conductors would be nice to make sure all of us had got off safely. 

Back home the excited babble would start showing off our purchases to the family. From the next day onwards the exercise of toasting the fireworks in the sun would start on our balcony where during the morning and until mid-afternoon we would get a patch of sunshine. The very fact that each day leading up to Kali Puja you could touch the fireworks, lay them out in display and then put them back inside built up the anticipation for the big day. Not only that it led to us to constantly harass mother if we could light up the coloured match boxes or sparklers or the dhanipatka strings, anything. The multiple choices given so that mother could at least choose one. No matter you got scolded but if mother relented then our day would be made for that instant of time when the particular firework lit up to only extinguish itself to bring an end to that sporadic moment of exhilaration. 

The tradition among our community was to have oil bath with hot water the day before 

Kali Puja or Narakachaturdashi, which was supposed to be the darkest night of the year. For this the boilers or large drums of water with fire stoves under them in the traditional homes back in South Kanara district that we belonged to would be tied with flowers with auspicious flowers and mango leaves. Diyas or earthen oil lamps would be lit in the bathroom to signify the auspicious occasion. The fires for the hot water would be stoked very early in the morning and by dawn mostly everyone in the family would have been scrubbed clean for Diwali day. At Pratapaditya Road we had a copper boiler that stood on an iron stand four legs. You had to kindle the fire on a plate at the bottom of the chimney using charcoal or cow-dung cakes and then having the fire last by putting regular coal. The boiler had a central pipe running through its middle which carrying the hot flue from the bottom fire would heat the water. Copper being a good conductor you would get piping hot water from the boiler though for a family like ours with five members we would have to re-stoke the fire twice. This boiler would get the honours of being eligible for being tied with the auspicious flowers and mango leaves and in the absence of any large drums qualifying as a source of water the tap providing water in the bathroom would get the other bunch of flowers and mango leaves. If you look at logic tying the auspicious flowers and mango leaves to the tap was logical since that was the source of water for us. Diyas would be kept near the boiler and in the bathroom. Thus tradition having been taken care of the Diwali day would start with the bath. 

After that the day would be full of goodies made by mother. The practice was to make five types of snacks. Some sweet, some savoury. Thus we would have the tukdis, chakuli, chuda as the savoury items and mostly a barfi made with suji – semolina and a laddoo made with wheat flour for the sweet items. On Diwali day there would be no restrictions on how many we could have of these snacks and we would generally gorge ourselves stupid. There was also a custom to give a platter filled with these snacks to our neighbours. Most of the  neighbours being Bengali, we would get platters of goodies after Durga Puja for Bijoya and on Laxmi Puja day and it would be our turn to reciprocate these on Diwali day. Added to this mother would make something special for lunch and we would have a great time throughout the day. The tradition was that for dinner on Narakachaturdashi, you were supposed to eat fish or non-vegetarian food. Being from the Western coast, it was obvious that among our community fish would be preferred. Meat eating among our community was actually quite less though for people who moved out to metropolitan cities like us, we did start on chicken. In fact in most homes like ours, mother would make fish and chicken dishes at home but would draw the line at cooking mutton in her kitchen. The other meats derived from the pig or cow like ham, pork or beef was not even to be talked about. Though among us children I did try all meats in my travels as a salesman but still preferred fish and chicken with fish being the most preferred. Thus the Western coast tradition for the pre-Diwali dinner among the Konkani Gowd Saraswat community, bangdo – mackerel would have to be made, either fried or as a fiery curry called phannaupkari. When upon retirement we moved down to Goa and settled down we found that just after the monsoon in August – September the mackerel would spawn and then grow to proper size around Diwali and then there would be shoals of mackerel along the Western coast. Hence no wonder availability of the mackerel determined tradition. But for us in Calcutta then it was difficult to get sea-fish since the nearby markets would have only the sweet water fish that Bengalis favoured. For sea-fish one would have to go to New Market and that was quite some distance away and not so easy for us children to go. Father did have a Goan fish-seller D'Souza there known to him there but father would find it difficult to pull out of his work and go specifically to New Market to get fish. Thus our approach became, if we got fish it was fine but if it was not there mother would make do with other special dishes but vegetarian. 

When the big day dawned we would use some of the fireworks in the morning but the majority would be kept for the evening. As soon as the sun set we would set up the diyas on the railing of our verandah while mother and sister would put more diyas near the main door, in the kitchen and the bathroom. We would light up some sparklers and Catherine-wheels, both the ground ones and the hand-held, on and from the balcony. After that we would take the fireworks down to the street, carefully storing it away from any stray spark, either our own or anyone else’s. Everyone remained near the gate of their building to burst their own fireworks and maybe come up to the middle of the road to set off a rocket or a siti or set alight a big flower pot. But once we started running through the flower pots, the rangmashals, the kalipatka strings, the hand-held Catherine wheels, the rockets, the dodomas and chocolate bombs, not even one hour would have been past. And we were left with some kalipatka and dhanipatka strings, some electric wires, sparklers and some of the ground Catherine wheels. There were moments when we would pester mother for some money to buy more fireworks and if she relented, we would hurry to the nearest shop selling fireworks and get some more. But as all youngsters you can never have enough fireworks. However, much you buy you will always feel that they were not enough. And on top of that we need to save some fireworks for the next day when the immersion procession of our Kali Puja would start. Those were tough decisions that we would have take in terms of allocation of the fireworks. Childhood as you can understand was not all a cakewalk and we had to take some real earth and locality-shaking decisions!

As we got older we found that it was more fun to think of making some of the fireworks ourselves. This do-it-yourself approach would work for flower pots – tubris. Thus we got involved in making flower pots from some of the elder boys who had been doing it for a couple of years now and had a tried and trusted ‘formula’ for the mixture. The mixture comprising, and memory gets hazy here, contained charcoal, sulphur, iron filings, potash – potassium chlorate, I guess, and soda – not sure if ammonium nitrate – which needed to be mixed in a certain proportion – this has also been lost in the passage of time from my mind. Work would start a couple of weeks before the Kali Puja when we would go to the potters shop in the market who would sell the casings made of mud and clay. We would get the larger casings which would be about 3 inches high and with a maximum diameter of 3 inches again. The shape was like a sphere truncated to give a flat bottom and pinched at the top with a hole there where the tubris would be lit.  These needed to be inspected to ensure that they were whole and with no cracks on them. These would then have to be soaked in water and then dried in the sun just a day or two before filling them up with the mixture. 

Then we would have to get the soda, sulphur, charcoal and the iron filings from the market for which there were designated shops. These were sold in the granular form for the ingredients other than iron filings. The soda, sulphur and charcoal would then have to be pounded and then ground to a fine powder. The finer the powder the better would be the display, both for colour and force, of the fountain of sparks from your flower pot. The iron filings also needed to be pounded to make them finer which actually was quite an effort. For all this pounding work we needed the hamaldasta – which was nothing but a hollowed cast iron cylinder open at the top with a pounding bar given along with it. None of our families would like to spare the home hamaldasta for preparing our explosive mixture since it would have to be washed thoroughly before it could be used for home use again but more because we could possibly break it. Thus the hamaldasta became a critical and in-demand item. Among our friends, about six of us, we had one hamaldasta that was given for this work by a benevolent and progressive parent but just one was not enough and it was painful waiting for one’s turn. Thus we would end up pestering our parents to spare the home hamaldasta. After a lot of badgering mother would relent and give her hamaldasta with promises that we would have to make of scrubbing it clean with mud first and then washing it with hot water. But the problem was that the home hamaldasta was small in size holding just about half a Kg. of material while the common hamaldasta was bigger with a capacity of about one Kg. But we managed with our hamaldasta until the bigger one was available on our turn and doing the softer material like sulphur and charcoal on our smaller hamaldasta while loading the bigger common hamaldasta with the soda and the iron filings. With all this the powders were finally ready. It would be time for us to measure them out and then mix them up. 

Here again we would run into problems since there was only one small weighing balance which all of us would have to share with the person who owned the balance naturally getting more time with it. It was a small brass weighing balance that looked very nice but more so the brass weights that came along with it running from fifty grams down to five grams with the weights marked on each of them with nice lettering. For our tubris the proportion was very important and in fact critical. Any major distortion in the ratios and there was every chance of a mishap when it was finally lit and set off. The different materials in the mixture had an important role to play in the performance of the tubris. Like sulphur was for the mixture to light up easily. The charcoal was to hold the fire and not let it get extinguished. While the soda was to give it the force and allow the sparks to rise to a good height. The iron filings would give it the bright orange colour and also shape each spark like a flower when it was up in the air. In fact if you wanted other colours you could instead of the iron filings put in the chemicals like aluminium, potassium, barium which would give it the other colours like electric white for aluminum while green, red and blue light, one does not recall now which colour was associated with which material. Once the correct proportions were achieved and the mixture made, it was time to stuff it in the earthen pots. This packing needed to be tight which would ensure that the shower of sparks would not sputter when lit and burn in fits and starts. Once it was filled the bottom was covered with paper and wet, pliable clay was used to seal the bottom of the tubri. The tubris were then put out to dry in the sun bottom side up so that the mud sealing dried. We would dry the tubris on the patch of sunshine on our verandah. As time passed the number of fireworks that we bought were reduced and we would concentrate on the tubris  and maybe buy a couple of boxes of chocolate bombs. However, for our sister we would continue to buy the regular fireworks more of the ones which gave out light than sound. These were bought from the neighbourhood shops. But the need to make the journey to Canning Street every Kali Puja to buy fireworks was dispensed with. There would be tubri competitions in many localities where the flower pots would be assessed for the amount of height that they could reach and spread that the flowering sparks covered on the ground in terms of the radius measured from the flower pot placed at the centre. For us though the fact that we ourselves had made the tubris was more than enough than the fact of winning competitions. Just watching the line of tubris basking in the sun on the morning of Kali Puja on our verandah was enough satisfaction to take us to a mental high. 

It was not only tubris were considered to be made ourselves but also the chocolate bombs. We would open the wrappers of the bombs and see how they were made apart from inspecting the debris after the bomb had exploded. We found an explosive mixture at the centre wrapped in layers and layers of string which was shaped in the form of a chocolate and the fuse was drawn from the middle. We in fact got the formula of the explosive mixture. But what deterred us from making the chocolate bombs ourselves was that stories started circulating that if you put excess mixture and put more pressure while tying up the string then the bomb could go off on its own while making it. The rumour was that some people had got hurt while making the bombs with one or two limb injuries. Brave people that we were, the idea of making the bombs was dropped forthwith! The inspiration for trying to make the bombs ourselves came from a shadowy kurta-clad figure who would pass through our locality starting from the night of Kali Puja and for a few days after that. This man would carry a jhola – cloth bag on his shoulder and take out from it these large tennis ball size bombs wrapped in jute string. He would come late in the night when few people were on the street and most of us were getting ready to go to bed. When he set off the bomb it reverberated through the entire neighbourhood jarring the doors and windows and making our ears pop. The bombs were perfectly safe and did not form any crater or whatever on the ground. This mystery man was probably the best maker of bombs that were used for fun. After the bomb had gone off some of us would rush down to the street but there was no sign of this shadowy man. He was finally seen in a few days by one of our friends and that is how we became aware of how he looked like. We would go looking for his bomb debris and would see the ball-sized lumps of string from which we would keep unraveling string until we would have a six inch pile of string next to us burnt at the ends. But we gave up the idea of following in his footsteps considering safety issues and also with the wave of extremism from the Naxalites just emerging on counts of not getting into trouble with the police. After some times on account of security the larger size bombs were banned. 

An offshoot of making tubris or should one say the next step, we graduated to making udantubris or the flying tubris. These were smaller sized compared to the regular tubris, spherical and an inch in diameter, which contained the same flammable mixture and operated exactly as the tubris. The only difference was that you could make them fly. The process of making them fly was to light them as you would do a regular tubri hold them facing the ground between your middle and fore finger and with the plume of sparks coming out and picking up force, release the udantubri by launching it with a spin parallel  to the ground but at a height of three to four feet. The udantubri would immediately after it was lit make spurting noises as if it was resisting your holding it back, and upon release would float along horizontally for about twenty to thirty feet and appear to be walking along the ground on the plume of sparks coming out of it and then with more force being generated would take off in an arc and make for the skies with a whooshing sound. The thrill one would get with the udantubri taking off perfectly was something out of this world. This was something that you had made which was taking to the skies and in the process giving you pleasure by the sheer beauty of its traverse. 

The udantubri involved more work than the tubris in the last stage of the process that is the filling of the mixture in the mud enclosures. It was also important to seal the bottom of the udantubri well with mud and clay and let it dry out properly since many a time while holding it if the bottom opened out then there was every chance of your hand particularly the fingers getting burnt. It had happened once to me that at the time of release of the udantubri, it wobbled and turned in my hand and flipping over the sparks enveloped my middle finger and burnt off the flesh at the knuckle to show the bone underneath. The pain was excruciating and unbearable but luckily the udantubri did not cause any harm to others since it took off towards the ground and smashed there in a shower of sparks. Like this many an accident did happen either voluntarily or involuntarily. We would be setting off these udantubris on the street and therefore sometimes they would veer off their intended path and smash into some adjoining buildings or open verandahs causing quite a lot of consternation and also sometimes some small fires. The common custom then in Calcutta was that all windows and doors leading to verandahs were kept closed for the evening of Kali Puja. 

With young boys setting off these udantubris, one would be sure that there would exist some element of showing-off in front of the girls of the para. The udantubris would be sent in with it rising just before where the girls would be collected. Sometimes these fine calculations would not work out and either it would smash into the wall behind or go through the girls causing them to disperse like frightened chickens. At these times it was not unusual to have some minor burn injuries. Considering that a small mud pot was being launched into the skies and at the end of its trajectory would contain some embers and that the mud inside would also be red-hot when it would come smashing into the ground, it did generate a number of accidents in its own way by falling on someone’s head or drop on one of those shanties in the slums causing again small fires. But everyone in the convivial spirit of the Kali Puja accepted this little risk in the sport with the minimum of complaints. We used to fantasise then that if a udantubri shell in its downward descent would fall into the large turban of a Sardarji. Initially he would be unaware of it but to find moments later that he was being crowned with a plume of smoke being created by the nesting hot shell burning the fabric of his turban. Then suddenly feeling hot on top of his head, he would take to his heels and immerse his head in the nearest horse-trough full of water! That scene would have been straight out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. 

However, all said and done on a Kali Puja night the sight of a perfectly set off udantubri was an awesome sight and if there was someone setting of the coloured ones particularly red, it would take off bathing the buildings of the para in an eerie afterglow of red light. The coloured udantubris did not give out much sparks and it was just a coloured ball of light floating up into the skies like a UFO. The udantubri was made, as far as I know then, only in Calcutta, since in the rest of India I have never come across this particular firework. Even in Calcutta it was not available as a readymade product in the shops and was only a DIY(Do It Yourself) product from the inventive and enterprising minds of Bengali youth. 

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                                          Christmas, New Year & A Sweet Tooth

After Diwali one would wait for Christmas and New Year. Both festivals were celebrated with gusto by everyone, with the first being the more Christian event though everyone joined in the fun centring around New Market, Chowringhee and Park Street. At Christmas among the mercantile or business community, it was a custom to give baskets or hampers filled with goodies as gifts of good-will and to bring home the feeling of – Wellbeing & Good Cheer. These goodies would comprise of boxes of chocolate, some filled with liquor (if you were lucky or you were part of that upper echelon of business), lots of seasonal fruits, cakes and a bottle of liquor (Scotch, if you were again lucky) and/or wine. The high end gifting was done by and to what was then called the sterling Cos. which were essentially British Cos. that were remaining or taken over by Indian businessmen who retained the traditions of the British masters. Calcutta was known for the pucca, brown sahibs, a breed that you can even now maybe spot at the Tollygunge Club, Calcutta Club, Bengal Club or the Saturday Club, the high society clubs in Calcutta. We rarely got anything more than some bags of fruit and a few boxes of chocolate that father would carry home having been given it at the office. My younger brother’s birthday was on Christmas Day and that would be another reason to celebrate Christmas. Though once, surprise of surprises,  there was the knock on the door a couple of days before Christmas and there was this person, a coolie, with a large basket on his head who enquired whether this was the Kamat household and upon us gleefully saying – Yes, he plunked the basket on the floor and started emptying it in our front room. The smell of the fruit, the cakes and the chocolate was heavenly along with the crinkling of the red cellophane paper in which most of the goodies were wrapped. However, there were no bottles of liquor. But who cared, we also had got something from some nameless well-wisher of father. When father came back from the office we told him and gave him the card that had accompanied the goodies from which he recognized who had sent it. That Christmas was made special for us and in later years we would wait for the knock before Christmas day but it never came. Anyway it was not to worry since we would generally have a whale of a time on our own. Sometimes when we were small, father would take us to New Market for Christmas which would be all lit up. It was like lights were there all over. All the shops were lit up with coloured lights. The lights would make patterns, some running away from you, others spelling out the the name of the shop. When once this was done the lights would be static for an instant then change colour and then run away until the pattern would repeat again after a while. Inside New Market right at the centre there was a round which would be brighter with lights in the night than on any sunny day. The whole of Chowringhee and Park Street would be lit up where the big genteel restaurants and night-clubs were there. After seeing the lights, we would get a treat of an ice-cream or kulfi or a falooda sometimes. Father would also buy us the crepe paper multi-coloured hats which were more like a visor with a band to hold it around your head and plastic horns and whistles enclosed with a paper roll which would go out when you blew in it and collapse after the whistle had finished sounding. Mostly on New Year’s Eve these horns and whistles would be sounded to welcome the New Year. Later in life when I was working in Calcutta, we, a group of college and other friends, would go to Park Street and have some drinks and dinner on Christmas & New Year’s Eve. We had more money in our hands by that time and could afford to splurge a little. 

Celebrating for us at home was more eating and more eating. If it was someone’s birthday,  mother would make whatever the birthday boy or girl wanted. It would end up being either something sweet like a milk payasam (somewhat like a pudding) with either sago or macaroni or rice in it. The standard sweet otherwise at home was sheera – a sweet concoction of suji - semolina and sugar. Occasionally mother would extend her range to make suji barfi or wheat flour laddoos or depending on the season, like in winter, gajar ka halwa (like a carrot pudding) or carrot barfi. 

As mentioned earlier Diwali time was the most sweet for our palates. We also used to like the Bengali sweets like the rossogulla, pantua, sandesh – the soft or naram-pak or the hard – the kada-pak (the difference was that the soft ones were made mostly from palm jaggery and would spoil within a day or two while the hard ones could be kept longer but not more than 3-4 days. Anyway none of the sweets would be allowed to spoil in any case and the box once opened would finish on the same day, with father being the last person to get them, once he had finished dinner after returning from office.) But these sweets since you had to buy meant that there was a limit in how many you could gorge upon while home-made sweets as long as mother was not looking, there was actually no limit until the tin in which they were kept became empty. 

Most of the local sweets you could get it from the local neighbourhood para – corner shop and as long as you knew when he would make fresh stuff, you could go and pick up piping hot stuff like rossogulla and pantua. The para shop had a limit on the range of sweets and kept just about eight or a maximum of ten varieties. In addition, you would get savouries like nimki, kochuri and singaras, again piping hot at about 4pm. The shop would have a glass fronted shelf in which all the sweets would be displayed. The sandesh would be neatly stacked on aluminum or tin trays while the ones which had to float in sugar syrup like rossogulla and pantua would be kept in basins with their tops floating above the level of juice. There would also be variously sized red earthen pots of misthi-doi – sweet curd. The shop would be small but on one side there would be a bench and table where people could sit and have whatever they wanted from the shops. When you asked for the rossogulla and pantua then the shop-keeper would take an open top earthen container, red in colour, and with tweezers pick up the numbers of the rossogulla and pantua that you wanted and then with a ladle put in the sugar juice on top. He would then take a thin white crepe paper and cover the top, twisting it at one end to seal the container. The dry items like sandesh would be given you in small paper boxes wrapped in string (later when rubber bands became freely available they would use rubber bands to cross-bind the paper box). The wet items like rossogulla and pantua, if you happened to buy a larger quantity then they would be given in red earthen pot, looking more like a handi about 10-12 inches in diameter at the top, and a stiffer paper or dried leaves stitched together in a round shape, would be used to cover the top. In addition a thin rope of coconut fibre would be tied around the neck of the handi and a handle made out with the rope so that you could carry it easily. The savoury items would be delivered to you in dried leaves that had been stitched together into round shapes typically 12 inches in diameter and which was then twisted into a cone held together by toothpick size sticks and the hot dry goodies put inside. The top of the cone was also covered with a round dried leaf platter and which was sealed by stitching  the top with thin sticks not larger than tooth-picks. Carrying this dried leaf cone from whose side you could feel the heat of the singaras and with the aroma seeping out of the top into your nose and your other hand carrying a pot of sweets it was like being in heaven just imagining first putting a rossogulla into your mouth with the sugar juice dribbling down the side of your lips and then biting straight through the crispy flour covering of the singara and the hot spicy inside of the potato for that delectable delightful feeling. For us this kind of experience was not often but enough times to make us miss it even now. 

The bigger sweet shops like K C Das or Ganguram’s would have a more extensive varieties of sweets and savouries. In sweets they would have ladikeni’s (reportedly created for Lady Canning by the corruption of which the name was derived), kheer-kadam, rajbhog, rosbhara and special items that they would have created new. Here also you would get the authentic misthi-doi which would be reddish pink in colour compared to the white misthi-doi you would get at your para shop. This was because this misthi-doi was made with palm jaggery while the para shop would mostly use sugar. K C Das with their main shop then at Esplanade East which exists to this day was more known for their rossogulla while Ganguram’s was more known for their misthi-doi. But just watching their array of sweets displayed at the counters would make your mouth water. The shops would always be crowded and you would have to wait patiently to get service. The K C Das shop had been partly modified with a few tables and chairs thrown in also with a pokey upstairs which young couples would haunt looking for some privacy. Thus you could sit and have whatever you wanted in addition to carrying the stuff home and top it off with tea or coffee. In savouries depending on the time of day at both K C Das and Ganguram’s you could get nimki, kochuri and singaras also luchi-aloo dum. Ganguram’s was known for making the more exotic savouries like radhaballobhi which were a big draw. Going into any of these shops you would be sure of becoming very much lighter in the pocket since you always ended up buying more than what you wanted. This was more after starting work in Calcutta since earlier we would not have too much spending money to be extravagant with. In later life when we moved to Bangalore for work we found to our pleasant surprise a K C Das on St. Mark’s Road which was run by a relation of the original family. The quality of the stuff from this outlet was good but not exactly like the parent shop in Calcutta. But a bite into a sandesh or a singara, made with desi ghee, there would easily transport you back in time to your childhood in Calcutta. 

There would also be individual sellers of special sweets like mudir-mua, made with puffed rice and jaggery, and the Jayanagar-er mua, made with khoi or popped rice and palm-jaggery. These sellers would come with earthen pots on their head calling out what they had and when someone showed an interest to buy, they would bring down the pot and place it on the ground. As soon as they opened the cover of the pot the aroma of the jaggery would hit your nose making you drool. The sweets would also include sandesh made with palm-jaggery and coconut. These would be made into traditional Bengali shapes like a small conch-shell, fish etc. making it all the more exciting to gorge on them. These sweets had a relatively lesser shelf-life and would spoil unless quickly finished. But the taste of the Jayanagar-er mua was heavenly, soft to bite in and then the juice of the jaggery enveloping your tongue and sliding down slowly down your throat with the popped rice giving the taste the much needed texture. One is told that it has been declared as a heritage sweet and they have taken a GIS on it for Jayanagar in West Bengal where these have been made traditionally for a very long time now. 

                                                   Noises Of The City 

The interesting part of knowing a city is that if you had time on your hands and could dawdle the whole day at home, like for us during school vacation times or the day of our weekly off, then you could familiarize yourself with the noises of the para and the various hawkers and vendors who would come or pass by. 

The first thing in the morning closer to 6AM were the Calcutta Corporation workers who would come and open the water hydrants connecting long canvas water hoses to them to wash the streets. The water in the hydrants was the yellowish river water from the Hooghly. They would come back again in the afternoon closer to 3PM for a second round f cleaning the streets. The morning session was something that we were not privy to since it was rare that we would be awake at those times except maybe occasionally before exams. Only when any one of us would be sent out to get milk then we would find the roads wet without there being any cloud in the skies and we would presume then that they had washed the roads. The afternoons we would be privileged to watch the exercise and also play in the water with the workers sometimes hosing us down or we would play in the jet of water going across and about the street. As we became older the workers would sometimes allow us to wield the hoses. It was only then that we realized the skill required to handle the hoses since the water would come out at great pressure and if not managed well the hose would have a mind of its own and go off in all directions. Unfortunately this system of washing the streets stopped with the afternoon session dispensed off first and then the morning session. No reasons were given and then the khaki uniform clad workers in their shorts who would come with the coiled canvas hose under one arm and then upon reaching the hydrant, attach the hose to it and then uncoil the hose and only then open the hydrant to release the water, went missing. Calcutta became none the cleaner with them gone. 

After that would come the conservancy workers again of the Calcutta Corporation with the coconut fibre brooms attached to a stick, the idea was to make it longer to increase reach and also allow the workers to do their work without having to bend. The litter and refuse thrown on the streets would be swept and dumped at a nominated street corner in the para where a round tin enclosure was kept for garbage to be dumped there. These workers were both men and women and were quite regular in the initial years when we were growing up but then that breed also vanished. One does not know whether sweeping the streets was no longer important or we just stopped looking since we were absorbed in other and better things to do. The garbage dumped at the nominated street corner would never be put always in the drum and quite a large part of it would spill over sometimes onto the street. It would be the first target of stray dogs and cows in search of some morsels that they could find. The system was supposed to be that the Calcutta Corporation’s conservancy trucks would clear the garbage from the drums every morning and also sometimes late in the evening. Initially the evening schedule stopped and the morning pick-up’s also became irregular. On the days the garbage was not cleared the particular street corner you would have to give a wide berth because it was stinking to high heaven or should it be hell! Irrespective of Calcutta around that time getting the tag of being the dirtiest city in the world the garbage clearing system continued to operate irregularly.

Milk initially was delivered at the door-step by the boys who would be working for the delivery contractors who were the agents for the government-run dairy – the Haringhata Dairy. Milk would come in glass one litre bottles which would have colour coded paper seals for the top. These seals were disposable. There were two kinds of milk – toned and full cream for which the caps were white or silvery grey and yellow for the full cream. The delivery boys would carry the milk on bicycles in canvas bags strung on both sides of the handle. They then would carry smaller bags to climb up to the multi-storied houses, not exceeding three stories normally, with the bottles clinking against each other and deliver the milk bottles while collecting the empty bottles on their way back. Thus the clinking sound was more prominent when the delivery boys were returning with the empty bottles than while coming to deliver the milk. This system required that the consumer buy the empty bottles equivalent to his daily volume of milk, keep it outside the front door so that the delivery boys could do their work easily. Being glass there would always be breakages either with the delivery boys or at the point of delivery or within the house. The glass bottles also made the delivery boys load heavier and unmanageable. That is why over a period of time the Haringhata Dairy dispensed with the delivery contractors since the whole thing was becoming impractical. Plastic delivery pouches had not become vogue. Thus then the milk would have to be collected from the Dairy nominated outlets in each locality. They would give us a monthly card which was obtained by prepaying for the whole month which would have to be presented at the counter while collecting the milk while the attendant would mark the quantity of milk collected. The cards were colour coded for the type of milk: toned or full cream. You could collect additional quantity for sudden needs by paying cash as long as a larger quantity of milk was available on that day. But overall the system worked well. The outlet in our locality was quite near our house. So it was not a big problem except during the winters. The timing of the outlet was typically from 6.30 – 7.30 AM and in winter it would be cold and dark at this time. It used to be my job to get the milk and winters were quite difficult to perform this chore. Sometimes there would be snags when the milk truck may not have delivered the milk or the attendant was late. The first you could make out from the furore at the outlet from the consumers who would get really upset since this was Calcutta! The greater frustration responsible for the problem was that there were few alternative sources for milk than the Haringhata Dairy and even if they were there, they were not close by. On days that the milk did not arrive the attendant would mark it on the card and you would get a refund while taking the next month’s card. The greater problem, as said earlier was getting alternative milk. Anyhow, we managed. The dairy outlet was normally a small garage like shed which suffered from spillage of milk and broken bottles which led to a sour, foul smell in the garage. One wondered how the attendants would be there for even that one hour of the day. However, the attendants would try to keep it clean and if we were passing the outlet later as they were closing, you would find the attendants giving the place a good wash. At that time in Calcutta, there were private dairies and the informal milkman or gwala who would bring fresh milk to your door-step. The private dairies supplied the better off localities in the city and therefore the fall-back was with the gwala. Here you could have a choice between cow’s milk and buffalo’s milk but both suffered from the same malady and that was of the delinquent gwala. The problem with milk from the gwala was that the measure was faulty most of the time and the milk was more water than milk. Considering that the gwala had to price his milk a little below the Haringhata Dairy, he was left with not much choice except be a little liberal with the water. But the advantages of this supply was that it was at your door-step, there were very few times that the gwala would not turn up and you did not have to get up early in winter to fetch milk.  

The newspaper – The Statesman – would be delivered to us by about 7am. The paper boy would come around on his cycle with a whole lot of newspapers slung over the handle bars. He would stop under our verandah, roll the paper tightly and swiftly tie it with some twine in the middle and this roll he would throw unerringly, day in and day out, rain or shine onto our verandah. On days that I got up early or there was something special in the paper, like some interesting news or the cricket scores, I would stand up at the verandah and catch the paper coming in. It was quite a thrill doing that. Though sometimes when you missed the catch and by chance fell back to the ground, the paper boy would not like it and frowning would send the paper back up again but away from where I was standing. It did not matter really because we were friends and you had also to understand his position because he had many houses to deliver paper and if he dawdled then he would get fired by some customer down the line for delivering the paper late. But these paper boys were good and I would watch them send that paper roll higher and higher with impeccable aim right up to third floor verandahs some thirty feet off the ground. During the rainy season though the paper boys would keep the paper dry under polythene sheets, our verandah would be awash with water and the paper would become wet mostly the outer sheet or at most two sheets. We would then dry it up by spreading it under the fan or toasting it over the chullah. 

Our parents would encourage us to read the paper and we would gratefully oblige concentrating on the sports and comics pages (they were called cartoons much later!). Sometimes scanning the headlines one would know about important events like the Chinese incursion into Arunachal Pradesh (then it was called North East Frontier Agency – NEFA) in 1962, John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, closely followed by the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in the same year and then the Indo-Pak war of 1965 when our Indian Air Force jets – the Gnats ran rings around the US made Sabre jets F-84 (I think it was?) and our Russian tanks under General J N Chaudhuri made deep inroads into Pakistan territory in the Khemkaran and Sialkot sector, again against the US made Patton tanks. 

Jawaharlal Nehru’s death was a sorrowful event and for a thirteen year old like me at that time I felt that twinge of sadness and the feeling of what would happen to the country now that he was gone. Similarly again the day I saw the newspaper announcing John F Kennedy’s assassination, tears welled up in my eyes. One does not know for what but John F Kennedy’s youthful image, the feeling of promise that he generated in your heart and the fact that upon being beaten in the race to put a man in space by Russia, he had vowed to put a man on the man on the moon ahead of the Russians and in a decade, was what endeared him to my young mind then. With that dream NASA got its impetus and that’s how finally Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon’s surface long after John F Kennedy had died and uttered those famous words – One small step for man, a great leap for mankind, which summed up the fact of the lower gravity force on the moon’s surface apart from the tremendous technological advancement that the step implied. Unfortunately John F Kennedy could not hear those famous words himself. 

At that time history was being made and The Statesman was bringing it to us and into our homes. Our parents would take us to see some of the dignitaries that would visit Calcutta then. In the 1960’s with hardly a decade and a half having passed since Independence there was a lot of patriotic fervor going around, and instilled in us children in quite a large measure. Apart from that, our leaders at that time were held in high esteem like Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan among others. Thus when once Nehru came to Calcutta in the early 60’s we were taken to see him from a distance and wave the Indian flag. 

One of father’s friends used to work with Carl Zeiss, known for their microscopes then, and their office was on Central Avenue, which would be part of the parade route. Bengal then had a Congress government with the eminent Dr B C Roy, both as a physician and an administrator, who pulled out all the stops for Prime Minister Nehru’s visit. You had people lining the streets from the Dum Dum Airport to the Raj Bhawan which was on one side of Esplanade with small India flags and the crowd was mostly children, considering it was Chacha Nehru coming to visit. Central Avenue was hardly a kilometer from the Raj Bhawan and we would get to see Nehru at the fag end of the parade. It was expected that there would be crowds on the pavements and therefore it was planned that we would go into the Carl Zeiss office which had two large bay windows, from where we would be able to get a proper view of Nehru. Thus we reached the office well in time and moved some chairs near the window where the elders would sit and we children would hang out peering over the edge of the window. At the other window there were the other people who worked in the office. At that age any outing was fun and to see so many people on the streets holding our flags was a spectacle in itself. People had collected on both sides of Central Avenue whose pavements had been barricaded by bamboo poles with policemen in their spruced up white uniforms with the pointed helmets on their heads patrolling the street itself which had been kept free for Nehru’s parade. Occasionally there would a jeep filled with some policemen passing by on the empty street leading to a roar that this was the beginning of the parade. But it always turned out to be a false alarm. We must have been there for almost an hour and a half, when a larger roar than usual sounded and we children perked up thinking – That this must be Nehru. Everyone was looking down the street and in a couple of minutes a lone policeman on a motorbike came into sight. He was driving slowly. Behind him was a jeep with policemen, the same kind that had gone by sometime back, and then behind that was Jawaharlal Nehru in an open white car, standing in the space in front of the back seat holding onto some kind of support that had been attached to the back of the front seat. There were quite a few police motorbike outriders on both sides of the car. The car was driving slowly and Nehru was waving to the crowds on the street as well as those that thronged the overlooking windows like us. I clearly recall him looking up and waving at me! He was wearing a white Gandhi cap on his head. A cream bandhgala later to be named after him as the Nehru coat with the now common red rose in his lapel pocket. Sitting next to him was the severe looking Dr B C Roy, West Bengal’s Chief Minister with his prominent horn-rimmed glasses. People were cheering and we also cheered. People were waving the tricolor and we also waved the flags. People were throwing flowers on to Nehru’s car but we had none. That experience must have lasted just about five minutes from the time we first sighted Nehru’s car until he passed us below on the street. There were more cars following Nehru’s car and they all passed quite fast. But we were thrilled. This was our first sight of a historical personage of someone whom you found the name in the newspapers almost every day! 

The next similar experience was when Nikita Krushchev visited India again in the 60’s and came to Calcutta. It was the time when India was getting closer to Russia who were helping us in setting up our steel plants which were expected to accelerate the economic development that India badly needed. We went to get a sight of him, again from the same Carl-Zeiss office and returned after seeing the fat, squat sight of Kruschev in a dark suit with his prominent bald and shiny head. 

The next time we went for such an outing was to see Yuri Gagarin, the Russian and the first man to have gone up into space. This time father’s friend in the Carl Zeiss office had been transferred to Bombay and we had to mill in the crowds on the street, again on Central Avenue, which was all good fun. But we did not get the grandstand kind of sighting that we had got the earlier two times from the office window and one remembered Gagarin as a smiling officer wearing a dark blue suit and one of those pilot’s hats that our uncle Vasudev would wear when he would come home. Since we were on the street the sighting of Gagarin was less than a minute and that too snatched between the heads and the bodies of those milling around ahead of us.

The interest in news, people and personalities that we developed was sated by Calcutta’s then flagship paper, The Statesman. Though the Amrita Bazar Patrika was another English paper available then in Calcutta, it lacked the finish, content and style of The Statesman. The Statesman itself went through some re-organisation at that time and launching of some new initiatives. A number of editors had changed at the paper in quite quick succession but it had no impact on us since the quality of news and reporting did not change for us to be able to notice it. Among a new initiative that was conceived was the launching of a weekly magazine style paper for youngsters called the Junior Statesman, which quickly got known more by its initials – JS. When it came out it was packaged attractively with colour photos and printing on glossy paper and was delivered as a folded paper imitating a magazine. The size if one recalls was slightly larger than a tabloid and folded in the middle so that it could be tucked into the main paper on a Sunday, when the JS would be brought out. We were immediately big fans since whatever The Statesman did was something that we blindly followed. The JS was the brain-child of Desmond Doig, who was its editor at the beginning and from the present day journalists who cut their teeth in Calcutta on The Statesman and the JS is Jug Suraiya, now with The Times of India. The JS (not Jug Suraiya!)started with a lot of promise in terms of content but its extravagant print costs were not recovered from sales revenue and within a year or two it died a slow death. Desmond Doig who was rumoured to be gay took the blame for the JS debacle and left the paper. Among the contributors to the JS from our school were our seniors – Arindam Basu and Kalyan Roy who wrote poetry and who were published regularly in the JS. These were the guys who got less than 45% in English for their Higher Secondary Exams! That's speaking of the quality of examiners of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Examination!x      

There was no television then and the radio was the dominant centre of attention in each household. Some had the old and trusted brands like Philips, Murphy or Bush. The radios would range in size from a small cabinet to a largish box. There would be some built in a vertical format that would seem to tower over you when you went near it while others were the sleek horizontal format which would appear as if they were lying down on the table. Since transistors were yet to be invented all the radios were made with valves or what was called tubes, since they looked like glass tubes with a framework of metal sealed into them and with pins sticking out of the circular bottom. There were radios which were AC, DC and also AC/DC (And I am not talking of anything but Direct & Alternating Current!). Upon switching them on the radios would take a long time to come on since the valves inside would have to light up. But once up they would give you crystal clear sound. Much better than the transistor radios that followed later. If you opened the back of a big valve radio after switching it on you would see it like looking at a city from the air with lots of lights all over which were actually heated filaments driving the valves. 

There were other models called radio cum record players which would include a turntable on one side and with the radio on the other with speakers on the bottom all encased in a plush wooden cabinet with special cloth trimmings and the size of a drawing room cabinet showcase, and in any case that is where it was kept. It had a sliding top which would go back into a recess with the wooden front panel sliding down into the cabinet to display for you the radio and the turntable. These were pretty sleek and the sound coming out of it was good. But it was more useful for those who were very much into listening to music with the black bakelite records for 78rpm initially and then switching to the smaller size vinyl discs for the 33 rpm and 45 rpm which came later. And then there was the question of cost, the radio cum record players cost a bomb which in any case we could not afford. 

For us a plain radio was fine and the day father brought home a Telefunken radio we were all ecstatic. We had to go up to the terrace to fix the antenna between two bamboo poles and then run down the wire to our balcony and then take it inside to be plugged into the back of the radio. The mechanic who came to install the radio like these days they come to do the installation of the cable TV hook-up or set up your satellite TV line, were important people. He would tell you the benefits of good earthing for the antenna and for that another wire with pure copper strands would be taken and securely wound around the nearest metal GI pipe used for plumbing those days outside the verandah. The radio would have typically three bands – MW (Medium Wave), SW1 (Short Wave 1) for the 13 meter to the 25 meter channels and SW2 (Short Wave 2) for the 31meter to the 49 meter channels. The MW channel would be prone to disturbance irrespective of how good your antenna was with crackling sound and the regular staccato beat of an old fan giving sparks. The fan need not be in your house in which case the sound would be more but also from your neighbour's house. The sound would also be higher if there was DC electric supply around since then there would be sparks from the fans when the electric brushes touched the contacts. The SW channels were clearer particularly in the winter with problems relating to fading in and fading out of the channels more during the summer and rainy season. It was a treat because we could also become like other families hooked on to the radio. 

The All India Radio (AIR) service would commence at 6am with its typical signature tune lilting its way through the airwaves into each house. Then in the morning you would have Vividh Bharati, the Hindi radio station that carried songs and particularly in the morning you would get the Bhule Bisre Geet (The Forgotten Scattered Songs). On Wednesdays at 8pm you could tune in to Radio Ceylon (had not become Sri Lanka then) for the Binaca Geetmala – a hit parade of the top Hindi songs for the week. This was compeered by the famous Ameen Sayani whose wonderful voice remained the signature of the Binaca Geetmala for years and years. Binaca was the toothpaste brand which we used as a gesture of loyalty to the program for many years before we shifted to Colgate. The MW channel would have the Calcutta radio station of which there was only one channel initially and then in later years a Calcutta B channel was also started. We did not much listen to the Bengali programs of the Calcutta radio station but for the English news at 9pm. My father was particular to listen to this news broadcast and whenever he would get home by that time from work he would ask me to put on the radio and tune into the news. In fact the Bengali news was at 7.30pm on the radio and if you were returning back from anywhere and walking down the street during this time or at 9pm, you would hear the beep-beep sounding the beginning of the news broadcast and then the full news that would run for 15 minutes. The English news would be broadcast nationally from Delhi and the local stations would tune saying – Over to Delhi now for the news in English. The Bengali or local news was generated locally. There was also the Hindi news broadcast at 8.45pm from Delhi which was not so popular which the Calcutta radio station would also relay. But not so the Madras State (now Tamil Nadu) since for them Hindi, the national language was anathema, and they would want nothing to do with it, going to the extent of even scheduling the Tamil news at the same time. This continued when the country switched over to television and Tamil nadu would have none of the Hindi news broadcasts and would telecast their own Tamil news at that time. So much for national integration. When the Calcutta B station was launched the English news and other English and Hindi programs were shifted to this channel leaving the Calcutta A station exclusively for the local language – Bengali. The Calcutta B station was advantageous both for the broadcasters and for the listeners since during the times of the Test matches when earlier the commentary was transmitted on Calcutta A it would get interrupted at the time of the news bulletins or for any programs that the station people thought it was unavoidable thus making us miss the commentary for long periods of time. But once the Calcutta B station was launched the cricket commentary was shifted to this channel and except for the English news at 1.30pm, there was practically no interruption in the commentary. The Calcutta B station also carried some western music programs particularly on Saturday evening and at lunchtime on Sunday where a compere would select some of the latest hits and play them on listener’s requests. I was not a great one for western music but our elder sister was quite fond of them and you would hear the voices of Pat Boone, Cliff Richards and Harry Belafonte echoing through our house. The Beatles were yet to arrive on the scene while Elvis Presley had just arrived then. 

Nearing ten o’clock in the morning after the office and school rush was over, you would have alternate cries of the bashunwali and fruit-sellers. The bashunwali was like an institution in middle-class Calcutta where you could exchange old clothes for cooking vessels. Initially the vessels carried by the bashunwali were made of aluminum and later stainless-steel as trends changed, the bashunwali keeping pace. They would take any clothes but would prefer saris and woollen clothes and the housewife exchanging could be assured of getting a good deal. A lot of haggling would go on, back and forth until a deal was reached. My mother would occasionally get involved in such exchanges since you were getting a useful thing like a cooking vessel for clothes that were unnecessarily taking up space in the almirahs or rotting in tin trunks. The bashunwali would take these old clothes and after minor repairs, where necessary, sell it in the second hand bazaars that would dot the slums of the city. The concept was nice since what one discarded could be of use to someone else. In that sense the bashunwali was doing a social service.

The fruit sellers would be big, muscled men mostly from Bihar or UP with luxuriant moustaches who would carry a large open basket on their heads filled with fruits of the season. Apples and oranges in winter, moving to the kuls or berries as Saraswati puja would be nearing, then it would be time for the mangoes and the litchis. The best litchis would be from Muzaffarpur in Bihar and would start arriving by late March early April as the summer was setting in. With mangoes from the fruit sellers basket you could plot a chronology of how they arrived through the season. The first to arrive would be the himsagar – sweet and cloying and ideal for aamras, then the beganphalli from Andhra – the big yellow mango somewhat indifferent in taste but you sure could get a mouthful, then the langra would come again from Bihar where the best ones were grown though North Bengal also had a variety and then finally the fazli as the first drops of rain would be falling in June. Once the rains had set in then the flesh of the mangoes would get stringier and fibrous and the taste seemed to be rather diluted maybe because it was raining! Then it was time to stop eating mangoes. The up-country varieties from the north like the dusseri or the alphonso from the west, one would get in the markets. New Market would have baskets of Alphonsos displayed and you could get a good rate too. But for those of us who were in Calcutta at that time the king of mangoes was the langra. They were small in size and with a completely green skin which would have tinges of yellow to show that they were ripe. The taste was awesome and you could easily have two or three in one sitting. The detractors of the langra would talk about the acrid after-taste of the resin near the stem and skin but for those of us who were die-hard fans, we had got used to it. The fruit sellers would become regulars to visit you with the fruits at the beginning of the season and when they were the best. But our family would not buy regularly and we would call the fruit sellers whenever mother decided we should have some fruit. Otherwise occasionally whenever we went to the market we would get fruit that was at that time in season and selling at possibly the lowest price. 

Those were also not the days when you had the refrigerators at home which would allow you to keep food longer without spoiling. Talking about refrigerators when they first came in Calcutta, they were normally the large white ones and the first sight that you got of these were in chemist’s shops and doctor’s chambers or nursing homes. This was to store medicines, in particular injection syringes and other medical supplies that required refrigeration. A slightly smaller refrigerator still white than the large white one started to appear in homes a little after that. These were driven by kerosene and later driven by electricity. They came in variants operating with DC and others with AC. The standardization in AC power supply made refrigerators easy to be available for everyone and gradually prices started dropping. Otherwise if we had gone visiting anywhere, we would prefer to go to those houses who had a refrigerator particularly in summer since the least we would get is a glass of cold water and if we were lucky a cold sherbet either plain lime or the ones made with orange juice or the yellow pine-apple juice or the exotic mango juice. There was also a local fruit - bel, which had a hard exterior like a coconut but pulpy yellow-orange flesh inside, which made for good sherbet. It made its appearance just before the summer and was available through the hot season. Bel was also supposed to be nutritious and cooling during the hot, sticky summer. Though we did not have a refrigerator at home we exhibited our preferences of things cold. 

Talking about cold immediately after spring ended sometime mid-March you would find the wooden ice-cream carts trundling through the streets with a man pushing them. This would continue through the summer and until the rains really settled in. The two major brands then were Magnolia and Kwality. They would have their own colours for the carts with the name emblazoned prominently and designed to attract attention. This ensured that customers would not mistake one for the other. The quality of the ice-cream of both was at par and the flavours initially were just vanilla and chocolate with ice-candy sticks of orange and pineapple, and mango when in season. One remembers that a ice-candy then cost 10 paisa and a small cup of ice-cream of either kind  was 25 paisa. As the years progressed slowly the flavours expanded to what you have today. 

One particularly remembers the Kwality ice-cream stick with vanilla inside and coated with a thin layer of chocolate. For us children it was difficult to handle but being a novelty and the fact that you got two flavours on one stick was a big attraction though the price was double that of an ice-candy. The problem with the vanilla-chocolate stick was that once you bit off the chocolate from the top the vanilla depending on the weather would start flowing out with summer time accelerating the flow and if you were not fast enough to lick off the glaciers of vanilla coming out, they would fall to the ground through your fingers and get wasted. Though you could lick off your fingers but they still left them sticky with the ice-cream. But then like children do, we learnt quickly to handle the vanilla flow. 

Having an ice-cream was considered a big treat. With the wooden carts stationed outside school at closing time sometimes we would buy an ice-candy and share with a friend or sibling. At home during the holidays, in the afternoons closer to 4 pm we would be straining our ears to hear the call of the ice-cream seller – ‘Mag……nol……..iaaaaaaaaaa’ or ‘Kwal…….iteeeeeeeeeeee’. And if we had managed to convince mother for the money we would rush down and buy our ice-candy. We would stop the hand cart and tell the seller what we wanted. He would open the square cover on the top of the box which would let out the wisps of condensed water smoke and peeping inside we would see all the cups and ice-candy cozying up to each other covered with crusty white ice. The ice-cream seller would take out what we wanted and if it was a cup we would get a small plywood stick shaped like a stunted oar that he would keep tied with rubber bands on a box-like attachment on top of the cart. Once having got our ice-cream we would come up to our home blissfully happy. There were other brands of ice-cream mostly local which would at the most stick to the ice-candy variety and their ice-creams would not be creamy but contain ice particles and the flavor was also not true. The greater concern was the hygiene issue with cholera scares common then in the summer which stopped us from buying these varieties, though the prices were much lower. Gradually as time passed as with the expansion of the number of flavours, the carts were replaced by bicycle-carts, with the cart with two wheels on either side in front and the seller riding the cycle with one central wheel at the back. These carts also had a canopy painted in bright colours and the company's logo on it. The carts had become bigger which were required since they had to carry more flavours and allowed the sellers to cover more ground by going on longer routes. By the time these cycle carts came out the sellers were also given uniforms and a Gandhi cap to wear. The Kwality uniforms were dark grey shorts and a bush-shirt of lighter grey making it similar to our school uniform at St. Lawrence but more of that later.  The uniforms was all part of making the experience of having ice-cream from these carts  a cleaner experience. But the cry of the two big brands of ice-cream in Calcutta remained the same – ‘Mag………nol……..iaaaaaaaaaa’ or ‘Kwal…….iteeeeeeeeeeee’ – to have the children streaming out of the houses to buy ice-cream like a less intense version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

As for other places where you would get cold stuff, there were shops near the New Market that would serve the shaved ice cones in a glass flavoured again with red, yellow, orange and green colour concoctions, standing one would believe for raspberry, pineapple, orange and green no one knew what, which were all sticky, sweet stuff. Having this was all right except the time just leading up to the rains and during the rains because of the cholera scare. But as time passed and when we were in college taking in a movie in Central Calcutta or sahib para as it was called, was incomplete without a visit to a shop at Esplanade next to the Hotel Ritz Intercontinental. This place served the most unimaginably, fabulous tasting kulfis which were given in a small bowl after the server would open the kulfi right in front of you from its mould and taking it out from a large earthen pot which had a red cloth wound around its open mouth at the top. On top of the kulfi they would dunk some very thick sweetened milk which had in it soft noodles like macaroni. But the speciality of the shop was actually rose flavoured sherbets. Next to the kulfi serving guy at the entrance of the shop was another guy standing behind a table stacked with the bottles of red rose essence. You could ask for a plain rose sherbet which at least for me was too overpowering both in sweetness and the strong rose essence. But they also served rose milk where instead of water they would use cold milk. This would moderate both the sweetness and the rose essence and make for a heavenly drink particular summer evenings. When you talk of summer evenings, you cannot resist but talk of masala soda and masala Coke. The same masala would be put in a glass containing either soda or Coke along with lime. The masala was a concoction of various salts like rock salt, pepper and God knows what which would make half the soda or Coke spill out of the glass while pouring it in and which the shopkeeper would hurriedly hand over to you along with the remaining drink in the bottle, which you were to put in after you made space in the glass with your initial sips or gulps.  When you sipped at it the tingling sensation on your lips was a superb experience making for the oppressive, cloying heat of the Calcutta summer vanish for that instant. 

The best masala soda for us was from the shop opposite our adda at the crossing of Rashbehari Avenue and Lansdowne Road near Deshapriya Park. Here the masala soda or Coke was served with a flourish and with the potency of his masala, the shopkeeper did roaring business through the year except for the winter. We were regular customers for his special drinks. The shop was actually a combination one, selling pan, bidi, cigarettes, cold drinks, soda and sundry other things like boiled sweets, churan etc. As was common then the shop was owned by a Bihari. The paan-cigarette shops in Calcutta were in those times quite garish and bedecked. Garish because the fluorescent tube light had just come in at that time and these shops would have installed a number of them to come across as a bluish-white beacon at a crossing, one would assume to attract customers. 

The shops would be stacked with cigarettes and cold drinks on shelves all around on the inside. In some of the shops the back of the shelves would have mirrors. This would make the shops all the more brighter with their fluorescent glow. Most of the time the shops would be raised from the pavement level by about 4 feet. The space at the bottom would be shuttered off to stock the wooden drink crates and other items. Most of the shops were family owned and belonged to Biharis as said earlier. The seller would sit on one side of the shop with a marble topped stool about 6-8 inches high in front of him. The stool would have on one half along its width, betel leafs covered with a wet red cloth. The paan or betel leaves needed to be wet to keep their freshness and taste. The other half of the marble top would be free for the seller to make paan on order by the customer. This made a pretty picture with the white marble top and the betel leaves in green with their red cloth cover. Next to the stool on the right would be a shining brass crucible about one - one and a half feet in diameter filled with water. The paan leaves needed be wet and the seller would occasionally sprinkle water from the crucible on the red cloth. On the right side again and below the crucible would be two shining brass lotas - jars which contained the lime paste and the khair with small wooden drumstick kind of implements in them. The implement in the khair jar would be like a miniature dumbbell. Next to the jars and nearer to the knee of the seller would be the bowl with plain supari pieces.  Behind the stool would be a small wooden stand stacked with tins and small bottles of the ingredients that would go into the paan like the sweet supari, saunf - fennel, miniature silver spheres which were actually sugar encrusted spices covered with silver warq - foil, zarda - dried, perfumed tobacco and the other condiments. Once a customer came and asked for a paan, the seller would take out the paan from under the red cloth and clean the inside surface with a brush of his palm. The shiny green side of the paan was always on the outside. Then with a flourish and a twang he would twirl the implement in the lime paste and apply a swathe of it on the paan. The same action would be repeated with the khair and then the pieces of broken supari would be put along with the other items that would go into the paan. He would then fold the bottom of the pan to seal it and then fold it again and then tuck a part of the leaf at the top to seal the contents. He would then hand it over to the customer. Depending on the taste of the customer he could ask for extra plain supari or zarda which the seller would give him on his palm, the zarda being sprinkled from a small tin where a small hole would have been made in the aluminium foil seal of the tin.

Paan's would be of different types, like sada, mishti or banarasi paans, with the leaves for them also different. The banarasi paans, if one is not wrong, were the ones which were naturally yellowish and not green, like the others. The sada paans were the simplest of the lot and used just a dash of lime paste and khair on it with small pieces of plain supari or betelnut thrown in. It used to be bitterish in taste and was liked by the regulars who craved more for the taste of the leaf than what was put in it. There were some who liked the zarda to be put in the paan. The would give you a heady feeling being dried tobacco and was only for the regulars. The mishti paan was what the women and children favoured since it was stuffed with apart from the lime paste and khair on it,  sweet supari along with various sweet condiments that included finely diced copra or coconut. The mishti paan was supposed to transport you to swarga or heaven with the first bite exploding the combination of flavours of the different items in your mouth. The slight bitterness of the paan and then the crunch of the sweet supari and added to that the cloying sweetness of the other condiments which enveloped your tongue and finally the fine copra giving the experience a beautiful texture and lending its own sweet flavour to the experience. The banarasi paan experience was similar to the mishti paan but considering the paan was coming from Banaras or Kashi, it had its own emotional advantage. The seller would emphasise that the banarasi paan had just that day been brought from Banaras! On a scale of bitterness for the betel leaf, the sada paan was the most bitter followed by the mishti paan, with the banarasi paan being the least bitter. The paan without the zarda was actually considered good for health since it acted as a digestive. So after a heavy meal people would eat a paan and it was de riguer to be given a paan when you came out of a wedding feast. The South Indian version of the paan was a little different both in shape and content. In shape it was twisted into a cylinder shape about an inch high and locked in with a clove. In content it was closer to the mishti paan, though the condiments could vary a little but the finish was with a topping of white copra. They would look beautiful stacked on a plate in the shop near Komala Vilas Hotel, Lake Market or at weddings when they were offered after the ceremonial lunch with the dark green of the betel leaf contrasting with the white topping of copra. 

The paan shops on the shelves around the shop would have cigarettes and cold drinks on display. The cold drinks would range from Coke, Fanta, Pineapple which were standard and the regular sodas. After some time Icecream soda and then Limca made an entry. The local brands of Campa Cola and Thums Up also came in. Some of the local brands were also there and one forgets the names of these. All the cold drinks then came in glass bottles which were re-circulated to the bottling Cos. in wooden crates upon becoming empty. But across the country in the range of cold drinks one remembers at Bombay where Vimto, Orangeade was available, while at Delhi Campa Cola being a northern brand ruled the roost. 

Down in Mangalore you would get the major brands of cold drinks and in addition guliye soda or marble soda meaning instead of the regular tin cap on the bottle, the soda would be sealed with a marble in the constricted neck. When you asked for the soda, the seller would take out a circular wooden hollow cap kind of thing which at the centre had a protruding wooden member. This would fit on top of the soda bottle and the seller would bring his hand sharply on the back of the cap making the marble drop with a popping sound thus allowing the soda to be released. For us visiting Mangalore, it was quite an experience to hear the soda bottle go 'pop'. But most of the time it was available at normal temperature and not iced. Thus after the novelty of the 'pop' wore off we moved back to our regular soft drinks. Our maternal cousin staying at Bunder about whom we had talked earlier was a regular with the guliye soda saying it was good for digestion. 

Coming back to the drinks in the paan shops, they would be iced in boxes mostly red in colour emblazoned with the Coca Cola or Coke logo. This metal box about two and a half feet by one and half feet and about two feet high would sit on the other end of the shop from the seller behind his marble top stool with an iron bottle opener hanging from a string reaching down to the box. If you asked for a cold drink the seller would get up and come across to the box, take out the bottle, open it with a 'pop' and give it to you after putting a straw in it, which were at first paper and then replaced with plastic. Or the seller would have an assistant standing on the street to whom you could tell which cold drink you wanted and he would serve you. Stacked on the street would be wooden boxes sectioned off into partitions in a matrix format where the empty bottles would be put in. Once the boxes became full they would be stacked up awaiting pick-up from the bottling Co. trucks. The trucks would be painted over to advertise the Co.'s cold drink and one remembers the Coca Cola truck bright red in colour with its open sides where the boxes of the bottles could be stacked both full and empties. 

The paan shops as said earlier used to stock cigarettes stacked around the shelves of the shop on one side. The popular brands then were Charminar, No. 10, Scissors, Red & White, Panama, Wills Regular, Wills Plain, Capstan and Goldflake. As time passed variants of these cigarettes came like the Wills became longer and was called Wills Kings, a different flavour though, and they introduced another brand which name one does not remember now. New brands also came in like Cool, a mentholated cigarette, and Classic. All the Indian brands would nestle cheek by jowl on the shelves with cartons of foreign cigarettes like 555, State Express, Marlboro and Dun Hill, all being filtered cigarettes. This was actually in the big shops in the commercial areas like the business district or shopping areas like New Market or Park Street. The seller would also have open paper cartons of the popular brand of cigarettes near him. He would reach into these if a buyer wanted a full pack or from a stack in front of him, he would give whatever quantity of loose cigarettes the buyer wanted. With money being scarce with us as students, we would mainly buy cigarettes in 2's. We would light these up with a lit coconut rope that would be dangling at the side of the shop.

The Charminar was the poor man's cigarette and also the college student's brand. It was not filtered, the cheapest and also had the strongest and most acrid flavour. It was made by the Vazir Sultan Co. which was then was the only Indian co. making cigarettes in the country. The other Cos. were all foreign owned like ITC (Imperial Tobacco Co.) operating out of Calcutta but with factories across the country, National Tobacco and Godfrey Philips based at Bombay. As time went by the Vazir Sultan Co. was gobbled up by ITC, though one thinks  the old Co. was allowed to retain its name. The No. 10, Scissors and Panama were all non-filtered and had their taste and flavour aficionados and also were the more reasonably priced. The Wills Regular, Wills Kings, Goldflake and Classic were all filtered cigarettes from the ITC stable. Earlier one remembers the cigarettes would come in circular tins containing 50 Nos. or 100 Nos., one does not remember now. When you opened these tins which were sealed to retain the flavour of the tobacco, it was a beautiful sight with the circular bottoms of the cigarettes lying next to each other in neat circles covering the whole area of the top of the box. You would see big shots walking around with tins of 555 or State Express along with lighters in their hands. Aping that pattern ITC also introducedCapstan and Goldflake in tins. But with the passage of time that trend of cigarette tins vanished. Cigarettes like Cool came and went since once the novelty of the menthol wore off, the brand died a natural death. 

The cigarette market was dog-eat-dog and that is why the number of mushrooming brands that came and went with each Co. trying to price their products at price points where they thought the buyer was comfortable. This problem was further compounded by the fact that the government was always taxing the cigarettes year by year to raise revenue since with smokers being addicted to their brands, it was easy pickings to raise resources. I stuck to the Wills Regular brand with its distinctive red and white pack as long as I had money for it and at other times when the pockets were not that full switched to Charminar. Though I tried some of the brands like Panama, No. 10 and Scissors somehow they did not make the grade with me because of their taste. The Wills Regular brand had the wording of the owners of the brand originating in the UK printed on it which read - W.D & H.O. Wills, which in a manner of levity was said to stand for - Wife Desires & Husband Obliges. Sticking to the brand may represent the underlying fear of letting oneself be left underperforming in married life that was to follow!

Similarly lighters were in fashion for some time. They started with the petrol filled with wicks that were lit by small tinder stones that would be placed near a serrated wheel that you would have to smartly flick to generate the spark. These kind were clumsy and dirty with the petrol filling being a problem and spillage/leaks occurring. They were quickly replaced by the imported gas filled lighters coming out of China and Japan which were easy to maintain and you could buy aerosol cans of gas to refill the lighters.  

In Calcutta then the majority of paan shops were owned by Biharis. Similarly almost all the rickshaw pullers, cobblers, coolies who worked in the markets both commodity or otherwise,  milkmen who managed the cow and buffalo sheds and the supply of milk in the para, were again Bihari. Calcutta was the magnet or lodestone which attracted the people from Bihar who were either landless, without a reasonable holding of land to make the family ends meet or with persistent failures of the harvest or for any reason whatsoever would make a beeline for Calcutta to earn a living, improve their lot or to get into business looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For them the streets of Calcutta were paved with gold, what with it being the capital of the Calcutta Presidency under which most of the eastern India States would be a part and then for a short while the capital of India. With Bengalis with whom they were familiar in the Presidency and who were also generous to them, the Biharis arrived in droves. They lived in packs either linked by family, village, caste or profession. Living in Calcutta pursuing their livelihood, they would maintain their links with Bihar by celebrating their festivals. Thus off and on, you would find the place where they stayed erupt with the sound of the dholak and hear the voices raised in a group singing bhajans - devotional songs.  This would be for almost a full week mostly in the evenings after their day's work was over with the Holi festival being the most important. It was not unusual to have someone from these Bihari groups come up to you with a sweet box and offering you one. When you enquired what it was for, the man would smilingly tell you that we was blessed with a son. But then when I told him that you were saying the other day that you have not gone home for more than two years and how much you miss your family. To this the man would blithely reply, 'Its God's blessing, Sir! You see my brothers are there still at home with the family!'