My first address
Mahua Roy
c/o Mr Ajit kumar Roy
Qtr.no. J-41,Sagarbhanga Colony
Durgapur 713211
The address where my school friends wrote me letters, where brother Kevin wrote me so many letters ( maximum letters I received from a person in school life). This was the place where my parents came after their wedding ( I have to check with maa once). Here my choto pishi (Jayanti pishi) got married to Tapan pishemoshai. My parents and jethu and jethima lived here together for some years (.....). My grandparents came and stayed here with all of us. I have heard from maa that there were no windows panes when she came here, there was not gas connection, no refrigerator, no cot,no mattress.
The design of the apartment is as follows: there are two rooms and a dining room and kitchen and a bathroom. Oh and the balcony! I liked the balcony which was more wide open, now it has iron grills covered all around due to safety I guess. It is in the second floor. When my parents were very just married, they had spent golden moments here. Our neighborhood was very friendly. Our block were full of kind people. On the ground floor lived Moitro kaku and kakima and later one came Shibu da. I was very scared of kaku because he was very huge, he had a very heavy masculine voice and he used to cuddle my cheeks a lot because I was very chubby. Moitro kaku was baba's best friend ...so he is much loved now. He was even very possessive about baba..Maa says! Next to them lived Bishu kaku and he still lives there with his family. On the first floor lived Opu dar maa . Maa was very closed to kakima. They all did experiments with cooking. They used to exchange dishes. Opu da's family was from East Bengal. So maa used to get the shutki mach from them. She used to cook only the rice and kakima used to pass on the dried fish to maa. Next to Opu da family stayed Karmakar kakima. I think that was the first time I heard Bangal language (the bengali language of East Bengal). I liked it very much.I think I learnt that bengali can be spoken in different dialects from their family. Secondly I learnt that there is a word called 'business' because there had a Gold shop in Ghosh market. I still meet Karmakar kakima when I visit Durgapur. I like the way she still carries herself at this age. The funniest part was our next door neighbour! That kept changing like seasons. I really dont remember many of them....let me brainstorm..may be didibhai will throw some light upon this later on...
Madhu dir maa, Renu kakima, Bidhan kaku, Banerji kakima...thats all I remember. We had very good relation with Renu kakima and Munshi kaku and Babu. Babu addressed me and didibhai as Chordibhai and Bordibhai. He was a very cute boy.Later on they shifted but still we used to visit frequently to learn how to play chess. Maa was very particular about all these parts of our developing age. So Munshi kaku taught chess, kakima was very pretty and she used to cook awesome during Eid. My next close family was Bidhan Kaku's family. They were a family of 4 - Dadu, thakuma, Bidhan Kaku, Kakima and Mathur kaku came sometimes and also Shyamoli pishi with her family. Mathur kaku got married during their stay here. Dadu and thakuma were very loving. Kaku was very witty and Bubu kakima had long hair and she was very quiet. Mathur kaku never spoke while he ate food. All these little things were so exciting for us that we kept going there to see kakima's long braided hair, Mathur kaku eating silently ( how impossible was that). Bubu kakima gave birth to Habla ( name was coined by maa). Habla was fed many times by maa because kakima was not able to handle that little fellow. I hardly remember our two main doors closed except nighttime. Such was the bonding. Until one day at 4am morning kakima knocked our door to call maa baba and said that kaku was drunk and he was lying down somewhere near the garden downstairs. The word "drunk" was so horrifying to us. I can associate the word with fear, hatred,illness, liver, cancer, death. Kaku had deep respect for maa and baba. He apologized to them and it took sometime to make things normal. Didibhai and I were also shocked and it was like ' How can Bidhan kaku drink alcohol?' Then we imagined that he will have a liver problem and then he will die...what will happen to kakima and Habla...bla bla bla. Overthinking can start from that age.
So this flat of ours is a witness of numerous episodes of so many lives. Our birth, our childhood, our teenage, teenage crushes,infatuation, the transitions of all the phases, board exams, educational developments, sicknesses, deaths of elderly people, wedding, child birth of the third generation. In short whatever incidents can happen in a lifetime. It´s an institution to be precise. We saw love, hatred, birth, death,celebrations..too many to list here.
Death is an ultimate truth of life. I realized when baba left his body that nobody takes anything and that too the realization came more when we were in the burning ghat. Some words that I will never forget..Jamaibabu saying that we will never ever see this person in our life. Secondly in the burning ghat we all were sitting and we all were talking normal conversation. At the back of my mind I remembered that I had heard this before....you dont cry in the burning ghat. It´s so strange but it´s true. When any human mind is fighting a battle just visit the ultimate visual destination of life. The ashes of baba is the picture in my mind which teaches a lot. Everything is temporary in life. The happy moments as well as the sad moments. We sisters had a childhood which was almost like a learning ...we had the rivalry moments because of our society, our parents who compared us a lot. Sometimes I was on the top and sometimes didibhai. But while growing up we kept discussing incidents and classified the different taboos of our society. We laugh over them now and we are healed. We dont want to repeat the same with our children and we dont do it consciously.
I have loving memories of this address that at any point of time each and every corner, the walls, the furniture, the smell, the fans, the floor and the ceiling will win over any other mansion. This is not an attachment, rather gratitude. Gratitude to my parents and my sister. It will remain forever.
Mahua Roy
c/o Mr Ajit kumar Roy
Qtr.no. J-41,Sagarbhanga Colony
Durgapur 713211
The address where my school friends wrote me letters, where brother Kevin wrote me so many letters ( maximum letters I received from a person in school life). This was the place where my parents came after their wedding ( I have to check with maa once). Here my choto pishi (Jayanti pishi) got married to Tapan pishemoshai. My parents and jethu and jethima lived here together for some years (.....). My grandparents came and stayed here with all of us. I have heard from maa that there were no windows panes when she came here, there was not gas connection, no refrigerator, no cot,no mattress.
The design of the apartment is as follows: there are two rooms and a dining room and kitchen and a bathroom. Oh and the balcony! I liked the balcony which was more wide open, now it has iron grills covered all around due to safety I guess. It is in the second floor. When my parents were very just married, they had spent golden moments here. Our neighborhood was very friendly. Our block were full of kind people. On the ground floor lived Moitro kaku and kakima and later one came Shibu da. I was very scared of kaku because he was very huge, he had a very heavy masculine voice and he used to cuddle my cheeks a lot because I was very chubby. Moitro kaku was baba's best friend ...so he is much loved now. He was even very possessive about baba..Maa says! Next to them lived Bishu kaku and he still lives there with his family. On the first floor lived Opu dar maa . Maa was very closed to kakima. They all did experiments with cooking. They used to exchange dishes. Opu da's family was from East Bengal. So maa used to get the shutki mach from them. She used to cook only the rice and kakima used to pass on the dried fish to maa. Next to Opu da family stayed Karmakar kakima. I think that was the first time I heard Bangal language (the bengali language of East Bengal). I liked it very much.I think I learnt that bengali can be spoken in different dialects from their family. Secondly I learnt that there is a word called 'business' because there had a Gold shop in Ghosh market. I still meet Karmakar kakima when I visit Durgapur. I like the way she still carries herself at this age. The funniest part was our next door neighbour! That kept changing like seasons. I really dont remember many of them....let me brainstorm..may be didibhai will throw some light upon this later on...
Madhu dir maa, Renu kakima, Bidhan kaku, Banerji kakima...thats all I remember. We had very good relation with Renu kakima and Munshi kaku and Babu. Babu addressed me and didibhai as Chordibhai and Bordibhai. He was a very cute boy.Later on they shifted but still we used to visit frequently to learn how to play chess. Maa was very particular about all these parts of our developing age. So Munshi kaku taught chess, kakima was very pretty and she used to cook awesome during Eid. My next close family was Bidhan Kaku's family. They were a family of 4 - Dadu, thakuma, Bidhan Kaku, Kakima and Mathur kaku came sometimes and also Shyamoli pishi with her family. Mathur kaku got married during their stay here. Dadu and thakuma were very loving. Kaku was very witty and Bubu kakima had long hair and she was very quiet. Mathur kaku never spoke while he ate food. All these little things were so exciting for us that we kept going there to see kakima's long braided hair, Mathur kaku eating silently ( how impossible was that). Bubu kakima gave birth to Habla ( name was coined by maa). Habla was fed many times by maa because kakima was not able to handle that little fellow. I hardly remember our two main doors closed except nighttime. Such was the bonding. Until one day at 4am morning kakima knocked our door to call maa baba and said that kaku was drunk and he was lying down somewhere near the garden downstairs. The word "drunk" was so horrifying to us. I can associate the word with fear, hatred,illness, liver, cancer, death. Kaku had deep respect for maa and baba. He apologized to them and it took sometime to make things normal. Didibhai and I were also shocked and it was like ' How can Bidhan kaku drink alcohol?' Then we imagined that he will have a liver problem and then he will die...what will happen to kakima and Habla...bla bla bla. Overthinking can start from that age.
So this flat of ours is a witness of numerous episodes of so many lives. Our birth, our childhood, our teenage, teenage crushes,infatuation, the transitions of all the phases, board exams, educational developments, sicknesses, deaths of elderly people, wedding, child birth of the third generation. In short whatever incidents can happen in a lifetime. It´s an institution to be precise. We saw love, hatred, birth, death,celebrations..too many to list here.
Death is an ultimate truth of life. I realized when baba left his body that nobody takes anything and that too the realization came more when we were in the burning ghat. Some words that I will never forget..Jamaibabu saying that we will never ever see this person in our life. Secondly in the burning ghat we all were sitting and we all were talking normal conversation. At the back of my mind I remembered that I had heard this before....you dont cry in the burning ghat. It´s so strange but it´s true. When any human mind is fighting a battle just visit the ultimate visual destination of life. The ashes of baba is the picture in my mind which teaches a lot. Everything is temporary in life. The happy moments as well as the sad moments. We sisters had a childhood which was almost like a learning ...we had the rivalry moments because of our society, our parents who compared us a lot. Sometimes I was on the top and sometimes didibhai. But while growing up we kept discussing incidents and classified the different taboos of our society. We laugh over them now and we are healed. We dont want to repeat the same with our children and we dont do it consciously.
I have loving memories of this address that at any point of time each and every corner, the walls, the furniture, the smell, the fans, the floor and the ceiling will win over any other mansion. This is not an attachment, rather gratitude. Gratitude to my parents and my sister. It will remain forever.
