During the years when his health steadily deteriorated, Samar
would promise to the man who came to collect chanda that
he would donate an extra ten rupees to the Puja fund if ‘Ma’ granted
him life to see the next Puja. He slowly went down with mounting
problems of blood pressure and a weakening heart. One day, he
didn’t return home on the afternoon truck that brought back all
the airmen from the office in Cottongreen. The anxious children
ran to the uncles who knew their father, but nobody could tell
them anything.
They only assured them, ‘Don’t worry. He may come a little
late.’
But Basanti and the boys were worried, afraid that he may have
met with an accident or some other mishap. Later that afternoon,
an army ambulance pulled up near the house and a uniformed
airman delivered Basanti a letter from the officer commanding. The
boys read it and explained to their mother that Samar had taken
ill, and that he had been put on the DI List. The ‘DI’ in the list
actually stood for ‘dangerously ill’, but the children interpreted it to
be the ‘death list’ and they began to cry. Basanti too was weeping.
The airman who came to deliver the letter was awkward at their
breakdown and tried his best to convince the children that their
father was all right—that he had come to take them to see him
in the hospital.
‘Please don’t cry, he will be fine,’ he assured.
But Kalu was sure this was the last time he would be seeing
his father alive.
On the way to the Ashwini Naval Hospital in Colaba, the
airman explained that Samar had been at his desk in the afternoon
when he suddenly began to have pain in his chest. He also began
sweating profusely. Luckily for him, a taxi was soon hailed and he
was driven to the hospital on a supply of oxygen from the local
Medical Inspection Room.
‘It was a heart attack.’
It was the first of a series that would follow later.
Samar was asleep when his family was allowed to see him in
the ICU. A red bulb glowed outside the ICU and they had to take
off their shoes before entering. At the sight of tubes and pipes stuck
to her husband’s nose and arms, Basanti immediately began to cry.
The nurses had to show them out, with whispered assurances that
he would be all right soon. That evening the family returned home,
without having spoken to Samar since he continued to be under
sedation. At home all was quiet, as they silently went about their
chores. They went to bed early, after eating a sparse meal. Early
the next morning, Basanti and the boys returned to Colaba in the
military ambulance that travelled regularly from the camp, ferrying
serious patients to the hospital. Samar recovered after a few days,
and for a while after that all was well again. But the family got
worried each time he was late to return home; and true to their
fears, every now and then he would land up in the hospital bed,
instead of coming back home from office. Once he woke up in
the middle of the night, complaining of a pain in his chest. The
rest of the family slept on, but Basanti and Kalu were awakened.
She massaged his chest until Samar felt better. Kalu had nothing
to do, but he could not go back to sleep that night, fearing that
his father would die. To add to his fears, Samar spoke to him as
though bequeathing a responsibility.
‘My son,’ he said, ‘you must do well in your studies, so that
you can earn a living and take care of your mother.’
Kalu kept wondering why his father was saying all this to him,
when Samar added, ‘I will not live for long… You must be a good
boy.’
He looked at his father sitting next to him in the bed, vaguely
visible in the darkness. And soon his father would be dead. Kalu
felt lonely and terrified. He wept silently. From that day, Kalu was
in constant fear of losing his father. In his prayers to God, he always
begged for Samar’s life. God must have answered the little boy’s
prayers, for Samar lived to be seventy, even though for the last
three years of his life he remained in a vegetative state of coma.
He had suffered a cerebral stroke.
One evening in 1968, Borda did not return home at all. Late
at night on the next day he made a quiet appearance at the back of
the house. By then the younger brothers had finished their studies
and supper. Borda, hiding from their father, came to the window
and said something in hushed tones to Basanti—about someone
having died in a certain Cyril’s family, which was the reason for
his staying out. In the darkness outside, they saw the silhouette of
this Cyril, who had come along with Borda but wouldn’t come in.
When the news was conveyed to Samar, perhaps because of
the news of death, he said no more about his eldest son than, ‘I
will not allow him into my house!’
Moreover, he had to catch the early morning train the next
day, for he was going on his annual sojourn to meet his mother
at their village in Chakdaha, some sixty kilometres from Calcutta.
Samar stuck to his threat. That night Borda and Cyril slept outside
the house in a charpoy. His brothers quietly sneaked out a rug
and a bedsheet for them. The acts of kindness were prompted as
much by affection as out of fear of reprisals in the future. The two
were also hungry, but Samar had issued orders that they were not
to be given any food. Since Basanti could not have pumped up
the noisy Primus stove without bringing it to Samar’s attention,
she wondered if she could get something cooked at a neighbour’s
house. But then it was too late in the night, and if the Vermas found
out the reason, their family would be brought into disrepute. So
Borda came to the kitchen window and his brothers smuggled out
to him whatever was left over of their dinner. All of this happened
with their mother’s tacit support, Samar having no inkling of what
was going on behind his back. Kalu went to bed that night feeling
sorry for Borda. At the same time he envied his eldest brother for
the freedom of sleeping outside the confines of home, under the
open sky.
A Larceny and A Gift
Next morning, after Samar left early to catch his train, Borda
swaggered into the house with authority. A sumptuous
breakfast of scrambled eggs and parathas was arranged for him
and Cyril, who lived in the MES quarters at the other end of the
camp. After that they were held up in the living room for quite some
time, until the younger brothers’ curiosity wore off and they went
away to play in the neighbourhood. When they returned a while
later, Borda and Cyril were missing from the house. Their mother,
who was visting other women in the neighbourhood, was informed.
Suspecting something, she came home running and headed straight
for her trunk.
Finding it without the padlock she let out a scream, ‘Oh ma!’
She began frantically rummaging through the contents of the
trunk. The boys did not know what she was searching for, but at
the end of it she let out a desperate and resigned cry, ‘My jhumka!’
The children knew then that her large gold earrings had been stolen.
As a last resort, she came to the window and shouted desperately,
‘Taposh! Taposh!’
By then the two young men were nowhere within hearing
distance. Basanti was in tears—the earrings were among her only
valuables, bequeathed by her parents during her wedding. And to
think of it, they were five sisters in all. The jhumkas were a precious
part of the dowry she had brought years ago.
For the next two days there was no trace of Borda. A heavy
silence hung in the air of the house as they waited for him to
return. But then adversity they say never comes alone but in pairs.
On the third day of Borda’s absence, Kalu came back from school
feeling ill and with a watery boil on his belly. The women of the
neighbourhood, who inspected his body, pronounced that it was
chicken pox. Basanti immediately took him to the doctor who
lived in the officers’ bungalows. He confirmed the suspicion. The
next day Basanti took Kalu to the MI Room (medical inspection),
from where they were taken in an ambulance to the other end of
Bombay. It was an exciting journey sitting in the military ambulance
as they drove along the Marine Drive and finally entered the sedate
precincts of the Ashwini Naval Hospital in Colaba, where Samar
had earlier been admitted. Here Kalu was examined by another
doctor who looked stern, wore white shorts and sported a beard.
A sailor who was also an attendant at the hospital finally escorted
him to the Isolation Ward, which was at a remote corner of the
hospital complex, facing the sea. By now a lot many boils had
appeared on his body and he felt weak and feverish.
With Samar on holiday, Borda absconding and Kalu in the
hospital, Basanti felt lonely at home with only Babu and Bappa
for company. Kalu also felt very lonely at the hospital, despite the
fact that the ward was full of soldiers from the navy, army and
air force wearing striped shirts and pyjamas—the patients’ dress.
He was the only child inmate of the ward, and since the hospital
uniform would not fit him, he was allowed to wear his own shorts
and shirt. A couple of uncles—Bengali seamen—became friendly
with him, but they were soon discharged. Two nurses in white
flitted about the ward during most of the day. One of them, a
cheerful South Indian lady, came up to him after the first night
and asked, ‘Who is Bai?’
Apparently, as often happens with chicken pox patients, Kalu
had started hallucinating the previous night and called out for help
to the Bai—the maid who scrubbed utentils at their home.
In the mornings, after the doctor’s round, Kalu would sit
near the gate of the ward compound beyond which they were
not supposed to venture, being patients of the Isolation Ward. He
would watch the long black road leading from there, waiting for
his mother to come. At around eleven she would appear—a small
speck in the distance, carrying a bag in which she brought him
home-cooked food and other goodies. Sometimes Babu or Bappa
came along with her. Basanti would stay for about a couple of
hours, after which it would be time for the ambulance to return
to the camp in Kalina. In the evenings when most of the patients’
families visited for a second time, Kalu felt lonely and sad as his
mother could not come. He would go and sit on the wall facing
the sea, watching the ships pass by in the distant horizon.
One morning, Kalu woke up to find a brown-coloured packet
on the small table next to his hospital bed. At first he thought
somebody had left it there by mistake.
But the patient in the next bed said, ‘Somebody had come to
see you last night; you had gone to sleep by then.’
Nobody was able to say who it was. Kalu tore open the packet,
and to his delight found it full of black grapes, bananas, oranges,
biscuits, ‘chickies’ and also a new shirt. But more than delighted,
the gifts intrigued him. He just could not understand who the
‘Santa Claus’ was. When his mother came to visit him the next
morning, the mystery of the packet was unravelled.
‘Your Borda has come back; he had come to see you last night,’
she said.
Kalu’s adoration for his Borda grew even more.
Another morning, as Kalu gazed at the road waiting for his
mother, it was his father who appeared instead. Samar had returned
from his holiday. Among the things he brought for Kalu was a small
bottle of wood apple pickle, which his grandmother had especially
sent for him. The incarceration in the hospital lasted for twentyone
days. At the end of it Kalu felt like a free bird, but he was also
sad to leave behind the few friends he had made in the ward. The
‘sisters’ were particularly sorry at his departure. It was Samar who
accompanied him home in the ambulance.
Everything seemed to have changed when Kalu went back
to the camp. Even their house looked different. A Bengali family
had arrived on posting from Kanpur and settled down in the
neighbourhood, with three sons about the same age as Kalu and
his brothers. On reaching home, one of the first things Kalu did
was to go to the back of the quarters and inspect the ber tree which
was in fruit at that time of the year. To his not-so-pleasant surprise,
he found a strange young lad gathering the ripe ber from under
the tree. Kalu had never seen him before and soon realized that he
must be one of the new Bengali boys who had arrived. He reacted
with anger at this young stranger. His anger was incited from the
fact that the boy looked back at him with an air of defiance, as
though Kalu, and not he, were the intruder. He felt threatened.
The Biswas boys believed that all trees within the camp, particularly
the ones near their house, belonged to them. Anybody plucking
or picking fruits without paying some kind of obeisance to them
was resented, particularly when it was a stranger as in this case.
Kalu glared at the boy and nearly came to blows with him. He had
recovered fully from chicken pox.
Another stranger had arrived in the neighbourhood. He was
an artist, the brother-in-law of one Sergeant James, who lived in
the blocks opposite their house. Kalu was very intrigued by the
appearance of this man and was very curious to see his paintings.
The only other artist he knew and admired was a boy called David,
his elder brother Bappa’s classmate in the eighth standard, who he
thought painted exceeding well though he was mostly interested
in designs. Even in that early stage of life, Kalu vaguely nurtured
the ambition to be an artist. So when an artist came to stay with
the James family, Kalu felt very excited. The problem, however,
was that their family was barely acquainted with the Jameses. Only
Basanti had occasionally spoken to James Aunty, who hailed from
Madras and barely understood Hindi.
‘Ma, please go and tell Aunty that I want to see the paintings,’
Kalu pleaded with his mother.
The lady was more than happy to give permission.
‘Come sonny, what are you ashamed of?’ she welcomed him in.
The artist himself was an aloof sort, but he was impressed by
the little boy’s curiosity.
‘Do you paint, son?’ he asked kindly, to which Kalu nodded.
The paintings were beautiful. But even though he fell in love
with the paintings, Kalu was disturbed to see the artist from close
quarters. He was a sickly man, a bundle of bones who was coughing
all the time. It was rumoured he was suffering from TB. Apparently
he was also poor and had come to live off his sister. After a brief
anonymous stay, marked by violent coughing, the artist departed.
Soon news came that he died of TB.
After learning of his death, Kalu’s romanticism about becoming
an artist was somewhat dampened. He imagined that if he became
an artist, he too would never have enough money to eat and die
of TB. Perhaps his father was right in chiding him when he said,
‘Don’t waste your time painting; it will not give you food.’
‘Bombay the Last’
There came a time when the Biswas children were tired of living
in Miltry Camp, particularly after Ashok and Nimmi moved
out to another part of the camp, far away from where they lived.
After that Major Xavier was posted out, taking with him Peter and
Benny, the only officers’ children whom they played with. Over the
years other close friends of their father were also transferred, and at
times Kalu too wished he had gone away to another town, another
school, new friends. By now they were among the oldest residents
of the camp, but with so many newcomers they sometimes felt like
strangers. One afternoon, the lady of a newly arrived family hailed
Kalu when he was on his way to fetch milk. ‘Arre bhai, how much
do you charge for a month?’ she said churlishly.
She had mistaken Kalu for one of the several boys from Kalina
who would fetch milk from the booth for a small monthly premium.
Outraged at the insult, Kalu just measured her up with a cold gaze
and moved on.
Later the lady apologized to his mother. ‘Sorry Behenji, I did
not mean to hurt the child,’ she pleaded. The incident convinced
Kalu that he was indeed a lowly-looking fellow. His brothers
actually laughed at Kalu when he recounted the incident. Adding
insult to injury, Bappa said, ‘Poor lady, I don’t blame her. You look
just like that, after all!’
The opportunity to leave Bombay finally came.
One afternoon, after coming back from office, taking his usual
bath and sitting down to his meal on the floor, Samar announced
to his wife, ‘I have been posted to Allahabad.’
A news as momentous as this was conveyed without betraying
any emotion.
Basanti said incredulously, ‘Really? You must be joking.’
When there was no response from her husband, she knew it
was true. Samar was not someone used to banter or frivolity. Not
when eating, at least. Eating was a solemn affair for Samar, who, bent
over his plate, his left hand resting under his right armpit, hungrily
gulped down his food. Eating was too serious a business to be
interrupted by talking. If Basanti happened to ask a question while
he was eating, he would only grunt a monosyllabic ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
When Basanti broke the news to her children, they were
delighted. Soon they had spread the news to all and sundry in
the quarters. Suddenly their friends in the neighbourhood became
solicitous and the boys from rival gangs became less belligerent.
Overnight the children’s little rivalries and petty politics seemed
irrelevant. All of a sudden they felt marginalized—as though they
had no stake in the future of what had been their neighbourhood
since birth. When it was his last day in school, Kalu’s class teacher
announced his departure to the entire class. She gave a moving
speech, regretting the departure of such a nice boy. She actually
chided some of the more naughty boys, saying to no one in
particular, ‘I wish some of you had gone away instead of him, poor
boy. We’ll miss you.’
The entire class clapped their hands. Everybody came up to
Kalu and shook his hands. By the end of the day, there were tears
in his eyes at the thought of leaving all his friends from St Mary’s.
Walking away that day, he looked back at his school building for one
last time and felt weak in the knees for the rest of his journey home.
As the days wore on, the departure bore down heavier on
the children. Earlier, they had not quite realized that they would
have to leave forever the house they lived in, the neighbourhood,
the trees and the fun. The entire camp was their playground. And,
to think of it, they had one of the two biggest houses—the envy
of the neighbours. The moment it became known that Sergeant
Biswas was posted out, there was a flurry of lobbying among the
flight sergeants and warrant officers to lay their hands on Quarter
No. 55. Meanwhile, the women in the neighbourhood turned all
their attention to Basanti.
They would tell her, ‘Arre Behenji, what will we do when you
are gone?’
The pretended concern made Basanti more bitter: ‘I know it’s
all lies, behind our backs they all want us to leave. They were all
jealous of the quarter we had.’
But many of their neighbours were genuinely saddened by the
news of the Biswases’ impending departure. As their days at the
camp neared their end, every day one or the other of the neighbours
would invite them over for lunch, dinner or high tea.
For the children it became a guessing game, ‘Guess who will
invite us tomorrow.’
But soon they ran out of invitations. And to think of it, there
were still two days left to go. With most of the household goods and
utensils been packed away beforehand, Basanti did not quite know
how she would rustle up a meal. She had hoped that some of the
neighbours would feed the family on the last two days. That was the
norm. But there was still hope. The two Bengali families there were
yet to invite them. Even though they were not the closest of family
friends, they were Bengalis after all. ‘You mark my word, they’ll
invite us this evening,’ Basanti told her doubting sons. Perhaps it
was an oversight, they thought. The mother and three sons—for
Borda was in Banglore by then, training as a catering assistant for
the air force—would talk among themselves, ‘What a shame, our
own people have betrayed us.’
Yet at the back of their minds, they were sure that sooner or
later the call for lunch or dinner would come.
It didn’t.
With just hours left for their departure, it was Rajan Aunty, the wife
of the master warrant officer, who saved their day. Basanti, smarting
under the insult from her Bengali friends, was very reluctant to
accept the invitation. But Rajan Aunty would hear none of her
feigned protestations. She pampered the Biswases with a breakfast
of idlis, dosas and vadas, apologizing for not being able to organize
a proper lunch.
And she confessed to Basanti, ‘If only I knew about it… I
thought your Bengali friends would be organizing lunch’.
There was no bitterness or sarcasm in her lament. It was just that
people from your own state naturally took care of such things. The
Biswases’ love for their own community, never quite overflowing,
had evaporated, turning into hostility.
‘Did you see, these Bengalis, our own people, have cut our
nose,’ Basanti said.
Samar, never much of a socializer, silenced her with, ‘Will you
shut up!’
Some time in the future, at leisure, a post-mortem of this lapse
on the part of the Bengali neighbours would be done.
But the Biswases, particularly Basanti, could never really
fathom why this had happened; nor could they get over the insult
for a long time.
But when it was time to leave, all the bitterness was forgotten. By
the time the posting truck that was to take them to the railway
station arrived, a big crowd of men, women and children from the
quarters had assembled around it. Ashok, Nimmi and their mother
had also come over from the other end of the camp. Bappa’s friend
David and Gilbert had come all the way from Kalina. Even their
Bengali neighbours turned up, somewhat self-conscious with their
guilt. Some of the women from the neighbourhood began to weep
openly. Basanti, too, was crying. Kalu and Babu could barely hold
back their tears. In the melee of hugging and parting words Kalu
and Babu ran back to their vacant house, looked at the bare walls,
and wondered if they were leaving for good. All this time it had
not quite dawned on them. Then they scribbled their names on
the wall and the date.
It was 17 August 1969.
When the posting truck revved its engine, they waved
frantically to the waiting crowd. Some of their young friends ran
behind the posting truck for a distance. David was the last to trail
the truck on his bicycle. Soon he, too, disappeared. There were no
more known faces behind them. It was evening by the time the
train rolled out of the VT station. There was hardly any room in
the third-class compartment, every nook and corner taken up by
their wooden boxes and steel trunks, the bed-holders and sacks of
knickknacks—the worldly belongings of the Biswases.
When the glittering lights of the city were finally behind them,
the children waved their hands to the city, ‘Bombay, the last…
Bombay the last!’
Their tryst with Bombay was over.
