Power-Cuts & Stories

May, 1983. Santiniketan, West Bengal.

Load shedding in the evenings is a norm of life. The heat is oppressive. Kalbaishaki (the summer storm) is still in the other town. Occasional lightening streaks the sky and thunder rolls by. My grandparents live in a small dilapidated house surrounded by a garden. Calling it a “bungalow”, as my dadu (grandfather) does, is really stretching a point. It is a relic of lost glories.

The dining room is buzzing with activity. Evening tea is just wrapping up. The kerosene lamp is spreading a dim light around the dining table. As my mother clears the dishes away, thamma (grandmother) sits down with her box of betel leaf and tobacco. She starts making a paan and looks at me through her glasses.

She says,”…ki re, golpo sunbi?...” (Do you want to hear stories?)

I nodded meekly.

I can barely contain the excitement as thamma picks up the palm leaf fan and thus began another evening of stories.

”…this is before your father was born. We were in Digboi. War had just started, WWII to be precise. Mira and Manju (your paternal aunt and uncle) were still very young. Our house stood on a hill top and we could look down on the town below. Being an oil producing outpost, bombing was constant. As the sirens wailed, Mira and Manju were wrapped up in Rani’s (i.e. the nursery maid) arms and rushed into the bunker in the garden. Packets of food, buckets of water and candles were already stored there”.

“Where were you?”, I asked.

“I never went into the bunker. I wanted to see the planes. As our dairy farm was on a hill top, the planes seemed to graze by the roof. I could see the planes dropping their bombs in the distant. The ground shook as explosions rocked the town. Fires lit up and fire brigades rushed out to contain them. Then the RAF planes would chase the attackers into the horizon”, thamma continued.

“Weren’t you afraid?”, I asked totally awed.

“No! One dies only once. No point of being afraid. I reasoned the enemy was not foolish enough to waste a bomb on a single woman and some cows standing on a hill top. So, I was really never in much danger. But the thrill of watching the war unfold before your own eyes is an experience to live for”, thamma said as her eyes twinkled with excitement at the memory.

“In those ‘wild’ days, danger was not only dropping out of the sky but also popping out from the nearest hedge. Tigers were everywhere. So, hunting tigers was a routine of life. Tiger sightings were constantly discussed and hunts analyzed over tea and vegetable chop. Your dadu was a good shot and stopped quite a few tigers in their tracks! So, bragging rights were duly earned. With the heat, kerosene lamp and endless mosquitoes in this dining room, one can feel right in the heart of the jungle where your dadu stalked these menacing tigers”, said thamma as she burst out laughing.

Another paan began to meander its way from the box to thamma’s mouth. With bright red lips, she continued.

“Those were the days to live,”she said after some thought.”I was quite a beauty and most importantly educated. Your boro dadu (grandfather) took one look at me and decided I was the right match for your dadu. I was a catch as much as your dadu was coming from an affluent and well established family with a degree in dairy technology. The eldest son had been a disappointment in the marriage department. He had gone to USA to pursue agricultural research and had refused to get married. In reality your great grand uncle was married to an American philosophy professor and did not inform his parents about it. When Mira was born, presumed to be the first grandchild at the time, your boro jethu (great grand uncle) had written home to inform that sadly there was another granddaughter already three years old. The letter was one of those dramatic turning points in the family. The rejection and acceptance of a foreign bride in those days of nationalist fervour is a story for another day. Possession of the letter is still viciously fought over as family heirloom. But I have it and you will have it after me.

As a young bride - I was married by age 16 - these were exciting times. Your boro dadu had insisted that I continue my education after marriage and left no stone upturned to secure rare and expensive books. But freedom of a honeymoon was unheard of these pre-independent India days. Trips to Puri and Banaras were a tradition in your dadu’s family. So, your boro thamma (grandmother) accompanied us, the newly married couple, to Puri. Time alone for us was few and far in-between, what with endless socializing and worship in the temple town. Your boro thamma would not-so-subtly inform me that she would retire after early dinner and won’t be up till late morning the next day! Walking hand-in-hand with your dadu on the moonlight Puri beaches with the waves gently lapping against the shore was the sweetest honeymoon I could ever dreamt off!”

I could hear dadu grunting his disapproval over such stories as he sat in the veranda.

Thamma continued nonetheless, “Despite these avant-garde freedoms, marriage at 16 was stifling for a spirited girl like me, especially being a city-girl from Qumilla (now in Bangladesh) and married to a Mazimdar’s son in Hobigaung village (now also in Bangladesh). How I longed for the city and friends I left behind? And how I hated the village life? Soap was unheard of in the village and as the sweat smelling fragrance wafted through after a bath in the river, villagers came to your boro dadu for explanation for this new phenomenon. Your boro dadu explained to the villagers that it is something girls in cities did now-a-days!”

She fell silent and was lost in her reveries as the Kalbaishaki had finally reached the house. Lightenings shrieked through the skies and thundering deafened us all. With another paan in hand, she suddenly spoke up, “Bani (her classmate who was now a neighbour) must be running to Aam Kunj in the Visva Bharati University campus to gather the mangoes. How we craved for these unripen mangoes. Salt and sour mangoes are a combination thats hard to beat. You, city-children, don’t know the fun in things. It strengthens the body, mind and soul”.

I looked guiltily at my mother but she kept quiet. She was pouring over the budget for the month. I decided to take the moral route.

“Isn’t that stealing?, I asked.

“Yes, but that’s the fun. You have to be mentally agile to keep an eye on the guard and quick on your feet when he comes chasing you. Running with a sack full of mangoes is no mean feat,”thamma continued in the usual droll manner.

“So, you want to hear the stories or not?”, cried thamma impatiently.

I nodded meekly again.

“Trip home to my parents meant traveling in palki and a retinue of male guards. There was constant danger from bandits along the way. A newly-wed bride meant lots of gold jewellery. Such news traveled fast. But a motor-vehicle was not far behind. By the time 1947 arrived, a car was taking me to the hill top bungalow in Digboi when I fell out of the car at a bend in the road. The car door was not locked properly. I was eight months pregnant with your father at the time. That is why he is such a buddhu (i.e. dunce).

All my father’s idiosyncrasies have since then been blamed on this toppling out of the car – be it his quite nature or his constant business ideas to his choice of a bride (i.e. my mother, though it was an arranged marriage).

“Did you join the struggle for independence?”, I asked.

“Nationalist fervour gripped our family as well. Your dadu wore only khadi and dhoti instead of the “suit-boot” of the English. Your boro pishis (grand aunts) voted multiple times across polling stations to oppose the partition of Bengal. Students of the family went to study in Visva Bharati University and Banaras Hindu University as opposed to English-run institutions. Your great grand uncle’s USA rendezvous was a matter of pride nonetheless. USA, after all, had also fought against the English. Therefore, American were kindred spirits, even if distant, was the reasoning. Those were the good days”, thamma sighed. She didn’t want to repeat the family’s inheritance of loss. I knew better and did not press the matter.

But "good days" did not last forever. Independence brought partition and betrayal. Brother against brother and neighbour against neighbour. Dadu had to decide very quickly to dispose of the property in East Pakistan and move to India. But his effort to sell his share of the inheritance was frustrated by his brothers. And finally when he was able to get a buyer, the neighbours exposed the plans to the authorities and dadu had to escape in the night through the very jungles he had braved to kill marauding tigers, this time escaping marauding people fueled by blood lust.

With the vacations over, such evenings were few and far apart. We moved to Shillong, (Meghalaya), soon after and the distance in the relation grew. Dadu passed away in 1988. Thamma, however, lived to be a handsome 86 years. She not only pioneered the soap in the village but couldn’t live without Sunsilk shampoo in later years and in the last days of her life, Nivea cream was a favourite. She lived through unprecedented times and those vivid memories are forever intertwined with dark, hot, mosquito filled, summer days with the seemingly interminable power-cuts. Sometimes, I wish those days of would return, if for nothing else, but to be a little closer to thamma and those memories of long languid story telling sessions.