Monday, September 03, 2007

Memories from yore...

My life in Kolkata has always evoked mixed feelings. Even though I was brought up in Kolkata and stayed there for a good fifteen years (1984 to 1999), yet I remained relatively unaffected by the stereotypical Bong culture. This was primarily because, I was brought up in a cosmopolitan environment. Since my Dad had a job which could send him off to far flung places, my parents thought it wise to have me study Hindi instead of Bangla.

My school is one of the biggest schools in Kolkata - South Point. At one point in time, it had a student strength of about 13000. My class consisted of a veriety of students from all corners of India. This was the only class which was cosmopolitan. All the other classes had only Bengali students. Ours was the only class in which Hindi was taught as a second language in addition to English. In all the rest, Bengali was the secondary language next to English. We had the most spoilt kids - Marwari brats who had pocket money running into hundreds even in those days, a few Tamils, a few Gujaratis, a few Mallus and us - a handful of Hindi learning Bengalis.

Anyway, the point is that because of such an environment, I never had any Bengali friends except an occassional one or two who were also in my class. So, I never got to interact with any one who actually was bred in Bengali culture. For a good part of my life, I couldn't read or write Bengali. I tried painstakingly to learn the language by trying to read the billboards, the movie posters, Anandabazar Patrika - the leading Bong daily etc and asking my parents for clarifications. After years of effort I finally managed to scroll my first letter in Bengali to my granny. She was more than happy to get it even though it may have been 99.99% wrong in spellings.

Some of my best friends in school were non-Bengalis. There was S. Ramdas - a typical Tamil guy, Kalaimani Kartick - another Tamil, Abhishek Dhingra - the Punjabi 'bong' :-), Nitin Jain - the frail looking sweet Marwari boy, Prakash Parakh - the little girly Gujarati lad, Rashi Agarwal - the ever studious Marwari girl, Rachna Saha, Bijal Kamdar, Arati Bhartia and my only Bengali friend of those times - Priyadarshi Sarkar - the topper of the class. These are the people whom I grew up with. They went out of their way to help me in times of need and I reciprocated in equal measure. Among all of them, Kartick, Ramdas, Nitin and Priyadarshi deserve special mention.

As part of the curriculum, we are supposed to learn Sanskrit for two years in Standards VII and VIII. We, as Hindi students had no option but to choose Sanskrit. But Bengali students had the option to either choose Hindi or Sanskrit. So, we suddenly found a set of new classmates who had joined our class for Sanskrit lessons. Most of them were Bengalis. During the Bengali lectures, they used to leave our classroom and go to some place else to attend their Bengali periods. Even though, we had new classmates, I never was too close to any of the Bongs around. Neither did I feel the need to bond with them.

Around this time, my cousin came down to study in Kolkata. She became one of my best pals around at home. We could discuss anything, we could laugh about anything! It was she who introduced me to the world of English fiction. It was she who inspired me to be confident of myself. She spent a good 3 years with us till her graduation was over. It was her presence at home that made my home life more colorful and cheerful than ever before.

I remember a very funny incident from Std. VIIIth. It was a Physical Training period and the boys were supposed to attend the same in shorts. So most boys used to wear shorts inside their trousers and get them off during the period. I hated the idea of undressing in front of all these guys and girls and so mostly, I used to wear only shorts on PT days. So, anyway, on that day, all the girls had left the classroom as usual and the boys were in various states of undress. Soon, most of the boys also left and only 5 including me remained. I was putting things in place and arranging my school bag. Even I was about to leave. There was this rowdy group of 3-4 Bong guys who had joined recently and they were the ones who used to discuss birds and the bees quite openly in the class. These guys were fooling around and suddenly, their discussion turned to the 'size'. I felt my ears turning crimson in embarassment. These guys huddled in one corner of the classroom and were flashing their 'stuff' to each other. I dashed outside when I suddenly saw a girl running wildly towards the classroom. I signalled to her not to go inside but she didn't really understand what I meant. I waited outside the classroom to see her reaction. She went inside, stood for a second and did an about-turn. When she came out she was visibly shocked. I smiled at her and we started laughing our hearts out. For the remaining time during the PT class, we were constantly giggling. A good ten minutes later when the 4 guys joined us in the PT class, their faces were flushed red. It was a hilarious sight.


Durga Pooja - the primary Bengali festival was spent amidst a lot of fun! We used to run off to our granny's place on most occassions. It was great fun there! We didn't see too many Pujas in Kolkata. We spent most of the Pujas in Midnapore which was about 120 kms from Kolkata - a small idyllic town akin to Malgudi of R.K. Narayan! :-) We were pampered a lot there! Infact, most of our long holidays like the month long summer and Puja vacations were spent in Midnapore.

It seems funny that although I spent a good fifteen years, I seldom went to places of interest in Bengal. We neither went to Darjeeling nor to Shantiniketan, nor to the Bengalis' favorite get away - Digha. Plans were made on numerous occassions but they fell flat on their face! It's also queer that I seldom roamed around Kolkata on my own. Infact, the only time I went to the much hyped Kolkata Book Fair was in 1996 when a huge fire razed it to ashes!! I had just gone there to take a look at the trail of destruction! I never went inside Victoria Memorial. The only time I saw the Indian Museum or the Botanical Gardens at Shibpur was because the school took all of us on educational trips. I visited Dakshineswar, Belur Math a couple of times, Kalighat probably 3 to 4 times!!! And that was all. I still don't know more than 75% of the places in Kolkata. :-P At one point in time, I used to squirm at the thought of going to places like Garia or Behala or Tollygunge! My Kolkata began from Ravindra Sarovar and ended in New Market! :-D

Anyway, back to school days! Things changed in Standard IXth. In Standard IX, all students are divided according to the additonal subjects they choose. Most of my non-Bengali friends settled in for Economics. I selected Biology. So, suddenly I found myself in a completely new environment. We were just 3 or 4 Hindi students in the class of 60. The rest all were Bengali students. For months on end, I felt completely disconnected. We, the Hindi students used to stick together and we hardly made any new friends in the new class. The only guy whom I knew among the Bengali students was Ranjan. I had known Ranjan since Standard VIIIth, because we took the school bus from the same bus stop. We had started talking since then and instantly became good friends. Over the next 4 years, Ranjan became one of my closest buddies. Infact he was probably the only Bengali friend whom I could open my heart out to. We used to go to tuitions together, catch movies together, explore about the birds and the bees together and go for evening walks together and engage in constant 'PNPC' that Bongs excel in. (PNPC = Poro Ninda Poro Chorcha - in layman's terms, it's a polished word for Bitching ;-))

I remember another anecdote vividly. This was in Standard IXth. There was this Bengali guy in our class called Adhiraj Ghosh. He was extremely cute and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he was my first serious crush at school. I secretly admired him and wanted to be friends with him, but I didn't really know how to approach him because that would have looked rather silly. Anyway, the opportunity presented itself in form of Friendship day. I decided to give greeting cards to a few selected people whom I wanted to be friends with. This was just a conner. I had to hide my obvious interest in Adhiraj and that's why I deliberately made it look like that I was interested in making friends with some other guys too!!! After mustering enough courage, I finally walked upto him and gave him the card. He accepted it. And soon enough we became good friends as well. I could never tell him what I actually felt for him but just the fact that he was around me made me happy. Since I was one of the brainy chaps in class, he used to come to me for notes etc. I was soon a regular at his place. I got introduced to his mom, his dad and his elder sis who incidentally shares her name with my sis as well. :-) It's sad that we couldn't keep in touch though! He moved to Bangalore right after 10th. Later I heard from one of his cousins that he had gone off to the UK. Ever since that, I have tried to find out about him but to no avail.

Standard XIth and XIIth were a roller coaster ride, quite literally. After scoring moderately well in the Xth boards, the science subjects of Standard XIth were too much to comprehend. So, much so that the 'never happened' actually happened. I flunked in Physics in one exam, Chemistry in the next and Mathematics in another!! But then, I was not the only one. That was the plight of a majority of the students. We were all promoted to XIIth with warnings to improve our performance. A flurry of new tuitions one for each subject kept all of us on our tenterhooks for the next two years. I particularly dreaded Mathematics. It never made any sense to me especially the solid geometry and calculus parts! Ranjan was equally apprehensive of the subject. Both of us had the same Mathematics tuitions. It's a miracle really, how we managed to clear all the subjects with good grades in the XIIth boards! :-)

1999 was a turning point in my life. I finally bade farewell to Kolkata leaving behind a past and looking forward to a future. My days in Kolkata taught me a lot. The trying circumstances at home taught me how to be hopeful in even the most adverse situations and how to make the most of it. It taught me that life is too valuable to be spent brooding over the past. We must live every moment and learn to live every moment like that moment is gonna be the last moment of our mundane lives! If we succeed in doing so, then when we grow old and look back we would not have any regrets! :-)

People say that Kolkata is a dying city! A city full of contrasts - the city of filth, a city where the poorest of the poor live! Yet, it has given us some of the best luminaries of all times like Tagore and Ray to name a few. It is a city where an octogenarian toiled till the very last days of her life to serve mankind. Even though I never had any special feeling for the city while I was there, it is only now that I feel a sense of belonging to the place. I want to go back to my roots over and over again!!! Never have I felt so much connected to the place. It leaves me with a sense of pride to belong to a place which once was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire!!!

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