i still don't know why the tears refuse to come. it's not like i didn't love her enough, for god knows that i loved her. i didn't know her enough and i wasn't always that close with her. but then she was the sort of person anybody could fall in love with even in the shortest span. i have seen her only a handful of times in my life. not like my maternal grandmother who lived 2 minutes from my house and i used to meet her every day, a number of times. she lived at the other end of the state, in Gangarampur. now, gangarampur is my village, the way we say it in india, woh mera gaon hai. although, i have never really spent more than 10 days at a strech in that village it still has its roots somewhere in my blood. i guess it has something to do with all those stories my dad used to tell us of his childhood of a place so radically different from where we grew up. every time i went to the village my dad became a new man. he was in his elements, so to say. he would romp around, clad in nothing but a wet towel and a pair of chappals. he would take that fishing net of his, he says they call it khapla jaal in the village, and go for fishing in the ponds. he would take the old cycle out and go around the village meeting old friends and acquaintances, catching up on lost time. he was lucky in that respect i must say, for when i go home today there isn't anybody i know, barring a couple who have remained. the draught of jobs in rural bengal, as well as in bengal as a whole has forced all the young men and women to seek greener pastures elsewhere.
it was on those short trips that dad used to make annually to the village that i came across my grandma. its very easy to miss her as she is one of the quietest persons i have ever seen. not once in all my experience have i seen her raising her voice or complaining about anything under the sun. besides she was very short too. at just 4'10", she looked really comical next to my grandpa, who at 6'4" towered over almost all who were present. they are, in fact, the most lopsided couple i have come across till date, and i have come across quite a few of them i must say. he was boisterous, to say the least, and as stoic as they come. he was unbending like the willow, even till his last days, which also soured his relationship with many people, including his progeny. he was one of the freedom fighters of yore who survived the ordeal. he went to prison during the days of the revolution and bore the scar marks to prove them. he was awarded with the bronze plaque by the president of india in memory of his great service to the nation. he was a staunch supporter of the congress party and worked tirelessly in his many capacities, starting from local councilor to party bigwig. many a story i have heard from my father, who despite his unresolvable disputes with his father never ceased to admire him, of his honesty and unbending faith in principles. he was a politician from a different time and mould, one that we, who are accustomed to toady's corrupt and self serving lot, find it hard to place.
it was the political difference between my dad and his father which led to my dad leaving his home after my dad had completed schooling. he left his village and came and settled in kalyani, at his uncle's place. it was in kalyani university that completed his studies and went on to become a prominent leader of the local CPI(M).it was also in the portals of this same university where he met my mother-to-be. theirs was a rather short lived love story. they fell in love one spring time and got married by the time winter hadn't completely left bengal. my mother was one of the most brilliant students in her region. she had topped the school boards despite being admitted in the hospital at the time of her exams. she was tuoted for great things in life and almost everyone who met her had advised her to take up science and become a scientist. women of her calibre were rare in the country in those days and she was slated to rise high. yet, there was one teacher, the headmistress actually, who felt that her favourite student was better cut out for arts and advised her to take up the arts. personally, i feel she would have dome great wherever she went, but science would probably have been the better option. you wouldn't realise it looking at her now, but domesticity of the past 27 years has changed her a lot. i remember the scatter brained young woman who had just got a job as as assistant teacher of english in a local school, and was trying hard to balance her job and her domestic life. i have heard innumerable stories of her as a young woman rushing to school, her saree only half draped and the pallu dragging in the dirt behind her. she might have done much more in a lab where she would probably have found may people of her ilk. even aftre forty years of wearing a saree, she still doesn't know how to drape that pallu so that it doesn't drag in the dust and dirt behind her. it is incumbent on the person behind her to carry the pallu, quite like a vassal carrying the hem of a queen's dress. she does look quite dignified today when she sits in that headmistress' chair, with her spctacles and all, and i think that her students and some of the junior teachers are actually afraid of her, but somehow i can't reconcile myself to that fact. she is still that sweet and scatter brained woman to me who dithers every time she has to make a decision and makes life all the more difficult for me.
TO BE CONTINUED...........
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