Sometimes friends are like magic tricks. Momentary and colourful. I could never cut an entire body in four symmetrical halves, or present a pigeon from a big hat. I never tried swallowing a coin. I was sure; I’d never find it behind my ear. But the Magician could do these things. He could do a trick, and do it again. I used to sit in the front row amongst sweaty, excited children, just to see how he could turn a rose stem into a candy bar. I was awestruck as a little girl. I was always handed that candy bar after each magic show ended. Then at bedtime, when I bit into it, that candy bar always turned out to be rubber.
STAGE ONE : CLASS 3 - 9
The friendship germinated in an awful Bengali class. I’ll call her ‘Yellow’. Yellow and I were as thick as thieves. We jumped on jungle gyms, shared icy bites of orange stick, devoured the five-rupee chow and religiously made pretty friendship bands every year. Over chatar-matar and jhaal chips, we have also had serious conversations about how boys were dirty and mean. Yellow was my first best friend. She was fun, smart, she could draw well. We hardly had anything in common, but we were soul sisters. I remember sometime in class 4 or 5, we had a Christmas Fete in school. I had around 15 rupees left. Enough to buy lots of goodies - a five rupee papri chaat, a five rupee aloo chaat and a five rupee orange stick. We gallivanted to the last stall in line.
It had a lot shrieking and activity. I saw the hullaballoo was over a Rahul Dravid poster. Yellow was a big fan of Rahul Dravid. But for 15 rupees, Rahul Dravid was expensive. Well, I didn’t mind spending my 15 rupees for her then. She was very happy and she gifted me a really cute badge. It had Winnie the Pooh on it, and it said: “You are special”. I still have it. I think. Yellow was always more mature than I was, she always had the better idea, the better taste in music, the better advice. I enjoyed Dunston Checks In, she enjoyed Animal Planet. While I giggled over a newly learnt word called sex and repeated the word over and over again, she thought it was improper. I was impulsive, uninformed about the world, stupid and emotional. But I knew one thing. I could do anything to make my best friend happy.
Class 9 onwards, the constraint became slightly noticeable. Yellow found better friends who were more mature with finer sensibilities. Well, by then our friendship had gone beyond repair. I missed her, and I could never understand why someone who knew Richard Bach could not be friends with someone, who didn’t know Richard Bach. We went to the same high school, where things never got back to the same. I forgot about my scratches, hits and misses and lost friendship bands. I met a new colour.
STAGE TWO : Class 11 – 2nd year college
I’ll call this friend Brown. Brown and I got talking because we were in the same carpool. The telephone helped us become fast friends. We chatted for hours, dissected every little detail in our past, went for lunches, had our share of coffee conversations, truth and dare games, and confession nights.
We were apparently tackling a stage – where we had liberal views about live-in relationships and contract marriage. We had similar opinions about our parents, who were then agonizing.
On her 18th birthday, I decided to do something special. I remember I had painstakingly made 18 cards for her, writing hard enough to roll out a tear-drop. I had also baked a cake. It was also the first time, I was cooking. My first meal, which wasn’t for family.
I remember writing a million pages for her in her school diary when we left school. Well, that was expected. The best friend had the best memories, the best times, knew the best secrets. Brown and I, didn’t have too much in common either. The first big difference was - she was a science student. Her men were dark and lanky, mine we charming ones, who could never be trusted. She understood The Beatles, I was beginning to like Jim Morrison. She could whip up great dishes, I was happy with Maggi. She was an introvert, I was comfortable with strangers. Trouble began when she roped in a boyfriend. Trouble doubled when the boyfriend fancied me. Thus, the tears came pouring down. She wouldn’t believe I didn’t like dark, lanky men. And I didn’t believe, she’d accuse her best friend. Suddenly movies were not fun together, conversations finished before the coffee, we stopped sharing and we stopped caring.
Soon enough, she thought I didn’t know too many guys, didn’t know how to dirty dance with that good-looking prefect, afraid of tattoos and always nervous about sipping a beer. Times had changed. We had grown up. We were part of a change, that wore pink bras under white kurtas, we were part of a change where bhadro bangali boys knowingly had beef at Oly Pub, we were part of a change where we thought, larger the love-bite the braver the woman. And as I saw Brown, blend into the crazy, vacuum world, I still couldn’t do a dirty dance or get a tattoo. As she says, ‘Madhura, you’re going to die an old maid.’
And then, when the Magician placed a row of eight eggs on a giant wooden box, we wondered what the next trick could be. It was a new trick. He covered the box with a huge cloth. And as we prayed for a rainbow, or Humpty Dumpty, he whisked the cloth roughly and a galaxy of eight colourful stars shot up. They were beautiful – red, yellow, blue, green, brown… and as they twinkled on the ceiling, I realised, without that brown star there, and that yellow star over there, I would have never enjoyed the magic show.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
ATYPICAL BONG - (fiction)
New York had made my mother more “English” according to her self analysis theories. Being a Bengali herself, she exultantly snubbed other Bengalis, and labelled them in general, “typically bong”, for everything they did, or mouthed.
“Lots of keys, rice, and illish maach”, is what she usually associated them with. Therefore she preferred appointing white skinned freckled babysitters for me, when she traveled a thousand miles to work. Miss Scott, always ensured strict discipline at home. Fried eggs toast and juice, is what she usually propagated as a nutritional and low-fat menu card for all meals. My mother fired her after a week, when she discovered, an extra dozen of eggs missing quite strangely
.
Reluctantly, she decided to have me put, at our neighbour, Mrs Chatterjee’s.
They were a couple,only a- -year-old, settled in New York, who found comfort in simplicity. Mrs Chatterjee, appeared to me, as a symbol of the extinct. Her hair was neatly braided, with a fine straight line of vermillion, parting her hair. Her sari,was wrapped in exact folds, and she wore a bunch of golden bangles on her left hand. Her apartment was warm, flushed by radiators. Her sofas, and rectangular carpets were mostly mismatched. Her table was messily covered with a white table cloth, stained with yellow patches, upon which perched a happy plastic jar of butter cookies. As my mother chalked out the hours I had to be with Mrs Chatterjee, the only response I heard from her was “Yes,yes”, as she stressed on the last syllable of the word, in a funny accent. I assumed, she did know a bit of English. As my mother left, leaving the large wooden door to close on its own, Mrs Chatterjee walked up to me. She ran her fingers through my hair, her eyebrows twitching at the lack of oil. She climbed on to the tallest bookshelf, balancing effortlessly on a chair, and snatched out comic books of 'Feluda'.She never harped on any healthy menu card, nor did she mind, if I picked my nose, but she always had one eye hooked on me, and the other on her lentils. I felt comfortable as I sprawled out on her carpet,flipping through her album on Durga Pujo.
“Its different, you know,” she said, “Its different when people are engrossed in puchka races, and the entire city is lit with tiny rice bulbs, and your getting dolled like a bride”, she laughed. She spoke of how fish was mandatory in every Bengali household, and how her uncles use to burp proudly, after every meal. To her, unlike my mother, Tagore and “Topshe maach”, were not the same, and nor were the streets of Park Street or North Calcutta. I loved to see, how Mrs Chatterjee, was so drawn to her roots. She loved talking about Kolkata, she laughed with full force, quite unabashedly and ate without any calorie fret.
Every time, my mother came to pick me up, Mrs Chatterjee offered the left over lunch bit. With a practiced smile, my mother agreed to oblige her.
“It’s excellent”, she squealed, as she mistakenly swallowed a small fish bone, her eyes turning bloodshot. As we walked out of Mrs Chatterjee’s
my mother complained that the dal had too much oil,and the fish had too many bones.
Tuesdays, would be great fun at Mrs Chatterjee’s. We use to walk to the park, and carry a little tiffin box with dry fruits to munch on. We spent hours, imitating relatives. She sat on the grass with me, her sari stuffed messily in the center.
I remember, a couple of teenage boys jeering at her, when she asked me to take a picture,as she posed with big sunglasses and a cowboy hat. The hat had caught her fancy, in a fair last year, and since then, it had been one of her great claims. The young boys clung onto their stomachs and broke into peals of laughter.I couldn’t really do much, besides complain to my mother that night. She cared little and gulped her beer, nodding at intervals.
The next day, with the help of our charwoman, I neatly placed a few chicken fillets on the chopping board. I draped a floral shawl around me and drew a thick perpendicular line of red with my felt pen on my forehead. I giggled, at my own sight, somehow feeling beautiful secretly. I tried hunting for a maroon lipstick, couldn’t find one.My charwoman, fried the chicken fillets and I arranged them on a plate. I brought out two little bowls and poured out tomato sauce in one and Tabasco in the other. The meal looked grand and I was proud of my innovation.
As I softly made my way into my mother's room, with the meal in hand,I was disappointed to find her awake.
And she was disappointed to see what I was wearing. Without a word, she pulled out a large suitcase. I sat on her bed, tears trickling down, as my plate lay untouched and her silence pricking.
She emptied her cupboard, and mine too. Stacked up her files, her laptop,music, my toys, and we drove, somewhere far away.
…
It had been two years since I visited Mrs Chatterjee’s. My mother got a new job, and we had a new life ahead. We walked to the sea-side to celebrate. The large stretch of the turquoise ocean was spectacular. My mother yelled, “Say cheese!”,and I put on a pair of sunglasses, with a funny cowboy hat, and smiled.
“Lots of keys, rice, and illish maach”, is what she usually associated them with. Therefore she preferred appointing white skinned freckled babysitters for me, when she traveled a thousand miles to work. Miss Scott, always ensured strict discipline at home. Fried eggs toast and juice, is what she usually propagated as a nutritional and low-fat menu card for all meals. My mother fired her after a week, when she discovered, an extra dozen of eggs missing quite strangely
.
Reluctantly, she decided to have me put, at our neighbour, Mrs Chatterjee’s.
They were a couple,only a- -year-old, settled in New York, who found comfort in simplicity. Mrs Chatterjee, appeared to me, as a symbol of the extinct. Her hair was neatly braided, with a fine straight line of vermillion, parting her hair. Her sari,was wrapped in exact folds, and she wore a bunch of golden bangles on her left hand. Her apartment was warm, flushed by radiators. Her sofas, and rectangular carpets were mostly mismatched. Her table was messily covered with a white table cloth, stained with yellow patches, upon which perched a happy plastic jar of butter cookies. As my mother chalked out the hours I had to be with Mrs Chatterjee, the only response I heard from her was “Yes,yes”, as she stressed on the last syllable of the word, in a funny accent. I assumed, she did know a bit of English. As my mother left, leaving the large wooden door to close on its own, Mrs Chatterjee walked up to me. She ran her fingers through my hair, her eyebrows twitching at the lack of oil. She climbed on to the tallest bookshelf, balancing effortlessly on a chair, and snatched out comic books of 'Feluda'.She never harped on any healthy menu card, nor did she mind, if I picked my nose, but she always had one eye hooked on me, and the other on her lentils. I felt comfortable as I sprawled out on her carpet,flipping through her album on Durga Pujo.
“Its different, you know,” she said, “Its different when people are engrossed in puchka races, and the entire city is lit with tiny rice bulbs, and your getting dolled like a bride”, she laughed. She spoke of how fish was mandatory in every Bengali household, and how her uncles use to burp proudly, after every meal. To her, unlike my mother, Tagore and “Topshe maach”, were not the same, and nor were the streets of Park Street or North Calcutta. I loved to see, how Mrs Chatterjee, was so drawn to her roots. She loved talking about Kolkata, she laughed with full force, quite unabashedly and ate without any calorie fret.
Every time, my mother came to pick me up, Mrs Chatterjee offered the left over lunch bit. With a practiced smile, my mother agreed to oblige her.
“It’s excellent”, she squealed, as she mistakenly swallowed a small fish bone, her eyes turning bloodshot. As we walked out of Mrs Chatterjee’s
my mother complained that the dal had too much oil,and the fish had too many bones.
Tuesdays, would be great fun at Mrs Chatterjee’s. We use to walk to the park, and carry a little tiffin box with dry fruits to munch on. We spent hours, imitating relatives. She sat on the grass with me, her sari stuffed messily in the center.
I remember, a couple of teenage boys jeering at her, when she asked me to take a picture,as she posed with big sunglasses and a cowboy hat. The hat had caught her fancy, in a fair last year, and since then, it had been one of her great claims. The young boys clung onto their stomachs and broke into peals of laughter.I couldn’t really do much, besides complain to my mother that night. She cared little and gulped her beer, nodding at intervals.
The next day, with the help of our charwoman, I neatly placed a few chicken fillets on the chopping board. I draped a floral shawl around me and drew a thick perpendicular line of red with my felt pen on my forehead. I giggled, at my own sight, somehow feeling beautiful secretly. I tried hunting for a maroon lipstick, couldn’t find one.My charwoman, fried the chicken fillets and I arranged them on a plate. I brought out two little bowls and poured out tomato sauce in one and Tabasco in the other. The meal looked grand and I was proud of my innovation.
As I softly made my way into my mother's room, with the meal in hand,I was disappointed to find her awake.
And she was disappointed to see what I was wearing. Without a word, she pulled out a large suitcase. I sat on her bed, tears trickling down, as my plate lay untouched and her silence pricking.
She emptied her cupboard, and mine too. Stacked up her files, her laptop,music, my toys, and we drove, somewhere far away.
…
It had been two years since I visited Mrs Chatterjee’s. My mother got a new job, and we had a new life ahead. We walked to the sea-side to celebrate. The large stretch of the turquoise ocean was spectacular. My mother yelled, “Say cheese!”,and I put on a pair of sunglasses, with a funny cowboy hat, and smiled.
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