Heart Stop

Levitating

I had gently dozed off reading Chekov's The Nose, observing the choice of adjectives to describe our 'major' Kovalyov, the clerk at the newspaper desk or the police inspector and readying myself for Saunders' dissection, when the captain announced: we are cruising at an altitude of 37000 feet. From my 30F seat window the day outside looked back at me. Streams of Stratus clouds floated past in a lofty radiance high above the army of a million Cirrus. And further down an ensemble of Cumulus partly hid the thin strip of sandy coastline of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha that put a stop to the striated waters of the Bay of Bengal. The complications of the mind and the heart that enveloped my unplanned solo travel to Kolkata home seemed to ease a little with this zooming out of our world below.

Seated next to me, the woman in her early fifties, after a brief attempt to nap, had also gone back to her mobile game of bubble matching, crushing colors to squeeze out streaks of points. Suddenly, there was a spate of panicked knocking from inside the adjacent lavatory. Someone was struggling to open it. I presumed it to be a child or one unaccustomed to the workings of the airplane slider latches. The neighbor woman seemed unfazed, and gently called out to the person inside, her husband, to stay calm. As the cabin crew helped him get out, I realized, he was somehow unable to speak. Wearing a keffiyeh like cloth around his neck in the manner of a bib, this person's large and round spectacled eyes and a permanent hint of smile around the mustached lips held a manner of quiet ease. I went back to my book and the runaway nose.

We flew over the sea, some of the clouds growing stormy and looking stark in the afternoon sun. A new PA system aboard this plane seemed to remind seat-belt wearing instruction five times in a row - just like my mother-in-law ends her phone conversations invoking the name of goddess Durga. The gentleman now started to make some wheezing sounds which put my neighbor on high alert. With one hand she opened his keffiyeh-bib and with the other she unzipped a pouch bag full of medical artefacts to get some sterile cotton gauze. With expert hands she removed his tracheostomy tube and started cleaning it, all the while soothing him with casual banter. His condition worsened, eyes bulged a little more with each draw of breath, but the smile did not fade. It took a while to put the tube back in place, cleaned, but the woman kept her calm, asking him questions, and finding answers in his eyes.

The screen hanging above the seats, several rows ahead, showed the plane now crossing over to Bengal. Below I could spot only green swaths of land cut into a million pieces by crisscrossing rivers, thin and wide. The color of land soon started to change, more signs of cultivation now and pyramidal metal grids carrying electricity started showing up. As cabin crew prepared for landing, and my neighbor now back to raking points, I was starting to lose my thirty thousand foot view of the life below and readied for its embrace.

Makeover season

It is perhaps just me, and my lookout for a newness in my beloved, but it does appear to be a season of renewal.

Of course, it is only a month to Durga Pujo and after several years of Covid jitters and last year's city-wide eruption at the horrendous rape and murder of a young on-duty doctor, pandal work at every nook and corner is starting to reach a feverish pitch. But that is just being back to business.

Take the ABP Ananda TV Talk show with our renowned Suman. For as long as I remember, I have only seen politicians and experts utter a line or two and then gloves come out to make it entirely a shouting match. It appears now people are allowed to speak for 4-5 minutes to make a decent, concrete and coherent speech, without an interjection or rebuttal.

For that matter, take old brands like Rollick. On billboards and TV ads, it is trying to sell flavors of tender coconut, packaged as Bengal's own ice-cream. Or, chatGPT. It is on bus-shelter neon-signs, offering anxious kids to be their story coach to practice for their first school presentation.

Even the traffic police in the East Kolkata Township of Bidhan-nagar have gotten a new livery. Dressed in all white now, just like their more illustrious cousin, the Kolkata Police, they seem to have become immensely more commanding, instituting random checks and issuing violations. And EVs. They seem to have bred faster than bunnies in the last eight months.

Some residual bouts of monsoon rain punctuated this otherwise sunny afternoon. Every time I see these rain drops, almost elongated like six-inch candles and darting down as spears, I actually hear them first falling on the corrugated roof of our garage. Like my good friend N who never leaves his home without an umbrella, I waited for the spell to cease and set out with a black Mohendra Dutt for the second nearest Post Office in order to gather postage stamps. This walk along the Rash Behari Avenue is something I usually do with A, several times in a day, as we are usually always visiting our city together.

A Ganesh puja pandal radiated devotional songs, proudly displaying a banner of local traders' guild. Perhaps this is not their first year, but a change my memory now records. Crossing the Triangular Park junction, whose fairs are forever etched in the childhood memories of both my brother and me, a new glass facade building with red outlines startled me.

It was the Dabur House. Dabur was founded in Kolkata by Ayurvedic practitioner S. K. Burman in 1884. In the mid-1880s, he formulated Ayurvedic medicines for diseases like cholera, constipation and malaria. As a qualified physician, he went on to sell his medicines in Bengal on a bicycle. His patients started referring him and his medicines as "Dabur", a portmanteau of the words daktar (doctor) and Burman. He later went on to mass-produce his Ayurvedic formulations. Many years later in the heydays of trade union activism in Bengal, Dabur moved to Ghaziabad. It felt good to see the company redeveloping a 100 year old building with care, part office, part museum, and making an attempt to reconnect to its roots.

But I had just passed my destination, the Post Office, and understandably so. It was now housed in a renovated building with posh-looking brickwork exterior. The inside though, I found, has remained unmistakably late 90s. Dimly lit, not painted in decades, with old files and equipment saved for posterity. Two counters worked: one that booked parcels had a twisted queue of people of all ages and degrees of frustration, and the other that updated savings account passbook had a white-haired crowd peering over each other's shoulders. I presented a unique problem, request for postage stamps to be affixed to post cards and sent to Europe, America and Bangalore. This needed research, consultation and looking for actual stamps. All that was done, with candor, time and a steady dose of passed around youtube shorts.

Pilgrim trail

Growing up, the best monsoon days used to be the ones when the amount of fallen rain was enough to flood the streets, but had not fallen early enough that the morning session of our school could be canceled. So, with water level holding steady or rising, we, the afternoon-ites, would wade our way in Duckback raincoats only to start getting ant-like communication about our session being called off. But we would still make our way to the school gate, just to confirm, and have a full walk back. How every time I had wished for seeing fish swimming in that water and dreamed of there being a need of boats to ferry us around.

This morning, when the rain restarted and I watched it splatter with gusto on the cemented surface of our roof, from a shed, now fully converted into a barsati, and watched puddles grow bigger in a matter of minutes, I was reminded of a trick I used to play as a kid - I would gather big leaves or some scrap paper, and artfully place them in the iron grills of all the rainwater drains of this roof, and see the water accumulate.

I grew up in a household that was rife with rituals. My father's mother or thakuma was a collector/hoarder of many things, but most notably new gods and practices. During the day, after her afternoon puja was complete, she would go for a neighborhood stroll, visiting four or five temples on a set route. Days when I did not have school and had nothing else to do, I would be her companion.

I set out this afternoon to start with the nearest - Shankardham. Housed neatly with a decorating company's office (also called tent house in other parts of India), it seemed to remain as sleepy as I remembered. Ona sign-board it now claims itself to be a Radha-Krishna temple, but I somehow recall the Shiva worship, and the name definitely corroborates this perception. I skipped going to either of the Kalibari's of thakuma's route, each one now a part of multi-storied shopping complexes, and walked towards a secret alley, a short-cut, to the most enigmatic of the temples - Gupinath Mandir. I circled around the area where it used to be, but could not locate the smallish entrance that opened up to a walkway, leading up to the sanctum sanctorum. The courtyard was huge in my eight year old's memory and the glorious tiled floor always felt cool to my touch. I would ring the bell much more than I was appreciated for, and that young lady, Bela, would peer out of the living quarters on the left, slightly miffed, but never rude. But this afternoon I could not find the entrance or the temple. Desperate, I called my mother, and casually asked her. She guessed what I was up to, but did not indulge in a questioning I refused to answer straight. With a little help from her, I found a white multi-storied building with a red iron gate. Some hand-made signs, plastic flowers, a few potted plants, donation box and some information board lay strewn in front of Gopinath and his Radha. An old hunched-up lady opened the inner gates and started readying for the evening arati, just like I remember Bela's mother doing it. In this democratic country even gods can become refugees in their own land, I thought. I continued to the Dakat Kali Bari, home of the Kali that the dacoits worshipped. This apparently has gotten some continued patronage, the sacrificial altar looked shiny, but it now housed a Hanuman temple in the same compound that was still dotted with 50 feet tall trees. In my thakuma's route, we would end up going to the Bharat Sevashram Sangha, where we would sit beside strangers who had showed up for a free hot meal that time of the day. And then, we would take the 24/29 tram back home. That tram route is now discontinued and I did not want to reopen that memory trail.

Chasing pavements

The pujo shopping deluge hasn't hit Gariahat yet, the people who fuel it might still be waiting for their month-end payday or bonuses to be handed out. But there is an uptick of activity in anticipation - more lights to shine on the newest fashion, louder music to grab the shopper's attention, pedestrian control gates being assembled at the crossings. I am to meet N at the Acropolis mall, on the way back from his day at the city's IT hub. But I am delayed by the piled up books at the roadside booksellers of Golpark. Sylvia Plath and Elif Shafak dazzle in their cellophane jackets with Banu Mushtaq and Ankur Warikoo, but I kneel for the old ones propped up on bricks, barely managing to stay dry from the inevitable waterlogging this season. The seller notices me, lets me scan, and then gently starts handing me copy after copy of Bengali authors. Gotten these fresh, from a house that was emptying near Ruby, he says. I pick close to a dozen, mildly wondering when these again will change hands. I hand him a price that is less than what he asked for, but much more than he would have expected in a bargain of equals. A plans to do a book restoration workshop this weekend, may be she can do better justice to these.

A local Pujo Committee is in its 75th year, and has rented the shopping mall ground floor foyer to kick-start its celebrations with a theme song release by an ensemble of minor celluloid starlets. The MC is passionate and the loudspeakers reverberate too much for a conversation, so we decide to step out. Over ginger tea N is livid about his visa denial. His Brazil trip, carefully planned over a year with fellow wildlife enthusiasts, has been ruined. As kids, we would always be in opposite football camps - he chose to be a Mohan Bagan supporter, and I remained that East Bengal fan by birth. He was Brazil and I was Argentina. More than the money he lost, he was perhaps hurt at being spurned by an old love, this way.

The chat meandered from our forever falling out with a good friend (an ever-flammable misfit) to life-planning for alternative livelihood in the shadows of the closing in AI gallows and to how a school alumni initiative to socialize with aging parents in the city is sputtering. Soon N had to go and check in with his mother, still rehabilitating from a paralyzing stroke and I had one more day left in this trip.

I had arranged for a Chinese dinner at home, ordering from a different restaurant, slightly different menu. It is challenging to make my father partake in these break of routines, but he does this time with some coaxing. The entire day he keeps himself busy with property valuation, taking breaks at preset times. My unannounced presence has been a little ripple of joy that faded soon in his flow of work. My mother is chirpy and keeps agonizing why A and her grandson couldn't make it. But she soon drifts off to the topic of a family wedding this coming December and worries if we three will be able to make it. She keeps complaining she has not seen sonumonu for a long time. I remind her we are only in Bangalore now. But they prefer to keep to their three year cadence of visiting us. My aunt, who lives in the same household, is happy to go shopping for Ilish. She had made taal-kheer with date-palm, milk and coconut, so I got something leftover from the Janmashtami celebrations I missed by a few days.

Earth crawl

Rocky called in at seven sharp. Being Rocky, he has pushed out his own family engagement for the evening back by a few hours to accommodate my last minute request to chauffer me for a day trip to Jiyonkathi. This is our self-sustainable farm's thirteenth year of running. Only a few of the founding members remain meaningfully engaged now. Save T. Going through an estrangement with his wife (which I know only as a hearsay) and the unexpected loss of his father, he seems to have held on to his affable humor as much as his belief in Jiyonkathi. We pick him up at Dankuni before cruising for hours on the Durgapur expressway.

After the soothing stretch through a Sal forest and a little before the final right on the mud road, we see Arun loading freshly milled rice from Jiyonkathi into an electric Toto. He is beaming at me, as we meet after nine years. Inside our mud-hut headquarters, Prabir is wearing an undershirt that stretches over his pot belly, is frying fish and getting rest of our lunch ready. Kaka cannot stop talking about the birth of three kids, only yesterday, taking the goat count to eleven. The trio has been with the farm since inception, giving it roots.

T invites us over to the house he has built for his weekend stays in the farm. He turns on his induction plate to heat up water for his coffee. Along with the fan and the lights, this one is also powered by the 100 KWh solar installation that is grid connected now. The big white board, T tells me, is used for a second group of students who use his home as classroom when the designated room is full. Along with periodic health camps and snake awareness campaigns, this tutorial initiative, now running for more than two years, has given Jiyonkathi some credibility in the surrounding Pratappur village. Attendance has a big seasonal variance but seems to be encouragingly skewed towards the girls.

We don our straw-made tokas and set out for a zamindaristic tour. The fields open up right behind T's living quarters as we walk past one of the smaller ponds we have dug. With a plate of sweets and jug of water, Arun is walking along a parallel aal, the mud separators of adjacent plots. T remembered to bring sweets for the five women who are doing nirani this glorious Saturday morning, taking out weed and grass from between the rows of growing paddy. T points to the chemical infused dark green and stunted varieties on one side, and the brighter, taller, happier ones - ours - on the other. This year, we are growing mostly Jasmine, Tulsimukul, Kataribhog and Khaodok, and a smattering of Manipuri Kalobhat mostly for the beaten rice, but the conservation work for seeds is happening on more than a dozen variety. The millets are not looking promising, T tells us. Yet he is smiling; his theory of growing saplings and hand planting seems to have beaten Arun and company's theory of seed spreading, and he is itching to document this. Rocky's face exudes an abundance of joy and a harvest of calm, as he is clicking through his mobile phone camera.

Back in the cooler recesses of his den, T passes around a piece of hollow concrete block, used to build the walls, and asks us to estimate its weight before actually feeling it. Mohua, brewed by Kaka with locally collected and dried flowers, fuels a torrent of conversation - impossibility of agriculture to meet the aspired life of a farmer household in India to how humans could perhaps start using energy credits instead of money as a medium for exchange of goods and services, thereby realizing and exercising the climatic impact of their choices.

T was to spend the night at Jiyonkathi, but I needed to be back in the city. Kaka went around to gather some oal (taro root) and kochu (elephant foot yam) for me to take back; Arun, packing some of that milled rice for us, recounted the Covid days in the village. Prabir had left for the day already. With the setting sun on our back and the being of a day sinking in, I play my Bollywood favorites from Barfi and Rockstar. Rocky sings along and says, all of these are his favorites, and he has not heard them in the last five years. He says he misses his gang that used to play soccer with, in his teens, and now only give a perfunctory nod when they see each other, though everyone keeps a tab on what the other is doing in his life. During our drive this morning, he had shared his exhilaration of seeing the Bhutan Hills from Jayanti on his recent work-trip to Alipurduar. Now, in the darkness of NH19, Rocky talks about his fallout with his mother and only sister and let it slip he was named Biman Mondol, and that is what everyone calls him on his father's side.

Up again

A single cloud and its shadow on the waters of the Bay below looks like the core of an apple eaten from all sides. A solitary boat, or a ship perhaps, leaves a trail that is barely in motion, at this great distance. Even the waves are held in static animation along the unending eastern coastline.

Back in my book, Saunders slowly opens my eyes to help me see the majesty of the shards of life that Gogol arranges - one that is beautiful and funny only in the moment, never quite adding up as a whole, just like life -

Kovalyev... goes to the right places, petitions all the right people, and everyone is perfectly polite... these people say all the right things (they express concern and sympathy, they're cordial and curious, they want to help, or at least be seen as helpful), but they can't help, because they are not (not yet) living the nightmare he is living... Each of them stays strictly within the bounds of what they're allowed to do and expected to do..

And yet, life runs on its crutches of fragments, and gathers a beauty beyond the meaningless of a greater purpose. Funnily enough, I get reminded of the local saying T shared the day before, when we were looking at some of the young date palm trees - neither the grandfather nor the father gets to enjoy its shade. I am also perhaps here only to bite that apple and throw its core, with care.