A Series in Remembrance

July 06, 2006
Do you remember the chestnut colored bookcase we had in our house in Calcutta? Some of our storybooks were kept there displayed outside and some more in the cream colored bookcase inside our bedroom. One of those books that I read over and over again (I cannot recall if you bought it for us or someone gifted it to us on a birthday) was called Raggity and the Cloud. It was a Russian book and in the preface, the author speaks of how she started writing the book. This was nothing like Pushkin or Tolstoy or the other somber looking books you bought from Russian bookstalls. This was a colorful book for children with pictures on every other page. It was a story of a young servant-girl and a cloud that talks to her (I know it sounds weird now but at that age, it was completely credible). Anyhow, the author’s daughter used to suffer from chronic earache which would come down to the jaws and completely immobilize her in pain. She talks about how difficult it is to divert the attention of a sick child and how she (the author) started weaving stories to regale her daughter for hours on end. Now, I have an ill parent at home (sometimes, more than ONE ill parent) and I wonder what kind of stories would divert his attention from the pain and weakness. Do you remember the stories and essays I would write as a child and make you read them? You would joke about the familiar storyline – daughters and fathers and morbid endings. So, that certainly won’t cheer you up now. Well then, how about the story of the fox you would tell us at night “So, the fox is walking through the woods and he is walking and walking”. Most of those stories would end with gentle snoring – yours of course! So, I can’t take advantage of that tack either. The other kind of story you would tell us would be about the king, his queen and their three princesses. Now, we all know how that story ends. The king is “indisposed” in his royal bed, the queen is coughing and swallowing pills by the dozen intermittently and the princesses – well, the princesses have given up their fancy gowns for swords and men’s clothes (that’s my version, not yours). The best times the royal family shared were around the glass dinner table laden with roasts and desserts (I can almost hear the youngest princess slurping to glory) swapping funny stories from the expensive royal school or the royal court (which is where the king went to work). But, that story can’t be enjoyable either. Because as soon as I start weaving the tale, you will start asking about the advanced degree the second princess is working towards and the visa application for the third princess and how the eldest princess is faring after her latest fancy illness. [You must realize that visas and PhDs have no place in fairy-tales!] There was one more book written by Nehru titled “Letters from a father to a daughter” which (I am pretty sure) you bought for us and none of us really read it. So, there goes the very last book I could have drawn inspiration from! The only story I know is that of a little heroic boy and how that boy never really grew up. The king would tell us this story and we would always clamor for it again and again although we knew the exact details. How the boy simply adored his mother, wore his father’s shirts even when he was told not to (There is a strange resemblance between the king and the youngest princess here – do you know that the youngest princess was remonstrated on numerous occasions by the eldest one for wearing her clothes?) and how the little boy was slapped only one day by his father because he nodded off to sleep while repeating the first line of a poem. I wonder if the poem went: “One morn, I met an old man in the lane, He was close to my farm”. This boy had an elder brother he absolutely revered and adored (therein lies a very loose analogy between the second and the youngest princess although the youngest might beg to differ!) and after the brother died, the little boy taught even smaller kids, in order to earn money for his family. Some days when he would receive the tuition money, he would reward himself with a mutton cutlet or a kobiraji (here I get confused: I think cutlets are the king’s favorites while the queen likes her kobirajis) from a favorite shop in Calcutta. This was a very quiet kid who gave up his shy demeanor when he opted for a career that required him to talk all day long. Numerous accolades, promotions, recognition, mudslinging, legal brawls and illnesses later, the boy hasn’t really grown up. Some days, he is cranky and most days, he won’t eat “food that is good for him”. I have a message from the princesses for the little boy: “Remember the days when we were forced to eat bitter gourd?” Neither the king nor the queen could even begin to imagine how much of that delectable vegetable was secretly flushed down toilets and tucked beneath golden plates. Now, the little boy has neither of those options open to him since he is being strictly guarded by the queen and her trusty aide, the youngest princess. So, the boy is being gently urged to eat his food or else! By now, I have realized (and you would have too) that I have successfully confused the story of the little boy and the story of the royal family. I am so confused myself that if asked to explain the analogies and allegories, I would probably get very annoyed.
August 30, 2006
Getting away from analogies and returning to reality, I spent a wonderful 10 days with you and Maa this time. The good thing about spending smaller periods of time together is that you want to pack in as much happiness as possible – as a consequence, you end up being more forgiving and work that much harder to overcome trivial differences in opinion (and there’s plenty in the house, full as it is with fire signs). Rinki is settling in well here and you should not worry for her. I bought her books for this semester yesterday and her classes have begun from this week. I will visit her the weekend before her birthday since she might be feeling lonely this year, being away from family. Maa seems to be taking everything in good stead – I don’t mind admitting that I was worried about how well she would handle things after all of us moved away. How could I forget that this lady spent the better part of her life raising three hooligans almost singlehandedly and did a pretty good job of it? Good parenting is phasing out nowadays and we have precious few examples to learn from – we can only hope to be as good and patient and selfless as you have. Trust in us and have faith in God. And, please get well soon and return home to us.
Love

Ruma