I wrapped up my things in Bombay and I was ready to come home for eating some of my mother’s good cooking, and getting some long-delayed rest. My two college buddies from Gauhati happened to be in the city. I met them at our institute when they came to see me. We decided that we should go home together in a joyful group of old friends. I put them up at my hostel for a few nights before our scheduled date of departure.
We had already booked train tickets in advance. Then, this humongous storm of incessant rain, wind and gusts came from the ocean. The city of Bombay, which was flooded, came to a standstill. Coming to Victoria Train Terminus from Powai to catch the homebound train seemed like an impossible task because the institute’s legendary shuttle bus service to Vikroli wasn’t in service.
Then, in the midst such quandary, I saw a taxi pull up in front of our hostel. It was ten o’clock in the morning and our train leaves at six in the evening. Talking to the Sikh taxi-wallah, I realized that reaching Bombay was doable through the submerged area-roads but it would cost us more money. ‘Wahe Guru, Nainihal’, I said and raised the right hand to my forehead in obeisance. That pleased the taxi-driver or he got scared. He said he would wait for us in the taxi.
We packed our things, and came hurriedly down to get into the waiting taxi. Powai is a hilly area. There was no water logging in the neighborhood. We saw rising waves over salt-mining dunes in the seashore. After that, it was altogether a different story. Ghatkopar was submerged in knee-deep and higher water. ‘I know a different road in the area’, said the taxi-wallah. He turned back and took a different route. Sure enough, there was a little less water. The taxi-wallah did that kind of probing, retreating and recharging maneuver throughout the submerged areas all the way to the city. He must have been a military man or was naturally smart!
Finally, we arrived in the heart of Bombay. Then, my friend Probin Barua had a brilliant idea - he would buy a ‘just out in the market’ Phillips radio. He had seen that radio in Femina or some other girly magazine. The ad must have enticed him. So, we went in the taxi to get us to electronic shops in Marine Drive amid torrential rain and gusts. The main road in the Marine Drive was impassable. The giant waves crashed on the drive ignoring the wave-breakers.
In Bombay, rain doesn’t fall vertically. It comes horizontally changing the angle of impact from this instant to that instant. While we waited in the taxi, Probin went into all the different fancy stores. He likes fancy things in fancy stores. Finally, he came out with a radio hugging his slim tummy. He was beaming with joy like he was holding the woman in Femina.
What was the cost? A cool seven hundred and fifty rupees. Jobless me shuddered at the thought of Probin shelling out that kind of money for a simple radio. My second brother bought a transistor radio for our house at Gauripur to get the news only. He wasn’t into music. Sheelabhadra got one radio as his marriage gift (joutuk). That joutuk got my brother in lots of trouble for no fault of his own or his wife’s.
You see, Mrs. Indira Gandhi became a diehard, dye-in-the wool believer in State-controlled economy of the country. Her father’s five-year plans weren’t enough. She decided to levy service-taxes on many ordinary things. Radio was one of them. Television wasn’t there yet. If you owned a radio, you were a bourgeois and paid taxes on its ownership. Never mind, when in New York, Mrs. Gandhi always found time visiting Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and other high-flying stores for the high mighty in the city. That information came out of reporters.
Anyway, one mid-summer day when we were sweating in the sweltering heat under the tired ceiling fans, there was a loud knock on the door. There was a man at the door. He said that he was from the Department of Revenue or something. After questioning my brother for an hour or more on the ownership and operation of the blooming radio, the man handed my brother a stiff fine of several hundred rupees. My brother said to me it was several month’s of his salary.
How my brother got out jam, I don’t know. But, remnants of that mind-set of our government of rigid control of the economy was very much there when in 1978, a member of the Planning Commission showed up in Jogighopa extolling the virtues on central planning for economic growth. When I asked the venerable member ‘When does planning stop and free-enterprise take over?’, he was none too happy with that type of questioning. He was the big man from up there, and ‘moyno ki kuta’. He must have known that my mind was polluted by living in America.
Well, being a lover of music, any music, I spent every evening, for entire four years of my college listening to Hindi songs standing in front of L P Gogoi’s music store at Pan Bazar. There was an additional attraction - the bevy of very attractive mekhela-clad girls (they all looked attractive and extremely desirable) from the hostels of Handique College and Cotton College - came out in small groups of three or fours and paraded through the stretch of street from L P. Gogoi’s music store to the Sikh Mandir
The girls, they must be the ‘gariashi’ grandmothers now like I’m an ugly grandfather now, stopped at Jamatulla’s, Sheik Brothers, Delight, Western Book Store, the money-making book store and the pharmacy or any other store of convenience and suitability. None of them stopped at Durga Cabin, which was across the street from Jamatullah’s
Anyway, we said good-bye to our savior, the taxi-wallah, and lugged whatever we had to our platform at the Victoria Terminus. There was hardly a soul in the virtually empty station. The crows and pigeons had a field day. They flew around without a trace of fear. The railway tracks were submerged in plenty of putrid water. We took our turns to eat at the cafeteria upstairs in the station. It turned out we had collected some additional umbrellas. We didn’t know where they came from. My own ownership of an umbrella never lasted more than a month or two till I bought a new one or grabbed one from someone else…
…
Well, the train started. We three were the only occupants of the huge sleeper compartment. When the train reached Kalyan, Probin, always on the lookout for something funny to say, woke up from slumber to say ‘We’ve reached you, Kalyan! You have a place named after you. Very soon, you will have a country named after you’. ‘Go back to sleep, Probin!!’, I said.
Several people boarded the train at Kalyan. When they got off the train a few stations later, the umbrellas were gone too. ‘Good riddance’, I said when Probin discovered their disappearance. But, that didn’t prevent me to say some choice words. ‘Teri maichi khat khat’, I said recognizing to the disappearing thieves in the station platform. They responded by holding their crotch and doing an upward and downward jerky motions of the crotch. I said, ‘ongo peti dhenguta’ not realizing that was for the same act in Telegu from another perspective. It was great fun but on the raw side of it. I had no chance to say that in Assamese. I could’ve shouted, ‘khekar-kowar putek hat’ but it would have been tame. We, the Assamese, are ‘bhaza machti khete janena’ type.
Years of traveling by train made me an astute or a careless traveler. I instinctively knew when to eat, when to sleep and when to enjoy the beauty of the landscape. We reached Alipur Duar at noon after two days of traveling. This was our own territory now. We didn’t know how the time passed. Many army soldiers got into our compartment. Some civilians did the same thing too…
Food-vendors appeared in the platform. Some wearing white tunics and black pants. We were discussing where to eat our big meal. You may well have guessed what was the preference of Probin. A mousy civilian in the compartment chimed in, ‘khawaota okhanei bhalo’. When a man speaks Bengali, I talk Bengali. So, I began talking to the man asking where he was going and all that stuff, and I found him quite friendly.
When we returned to our compartment, everything that belonged to Probin was gone. Asking around for the missing things, we realized the grand scheme of things. A soldier pointed his index finger at me and said, ‘Apka dost mujhe bola ki uhlok doshra compartmentme baithega’. Then he said to himself, ‘Hamara commander har wakth bolte hay ki civilianse bohut dur rakho’
I got some friendly ribbing from Probin for the instant chumminess with a complete stranger who happened to be a rotten thief. Probin got back his certificates minus the radio and other valuable things. That saved my friendship with him. That’s a whole story by itself.
If you have patience with my weird style and wilder rendition of facts, I will tell you that story and more. By the way, our friend came along too. He didn’t like publicity. He finished his entire teaching career almost incognito. That was a long time to spend being nobody except cashing the monthly government paychecks...
- Kalyan Dutta-Choudhury, California
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