MY HUSBAND IS LEAVING ME FOR DEMENTIA

"Nowadays, it happens to me so many times," Bhaiyya said, putting a flame from his Zippo to a cigarette he had been holding between his lips for a full minute before realising he had to light it.

"What ?" I exclaimed , not quite getting him, a bit distracted also by the din of a noisy party on a Mandeville Garden rooftop.

"I dial someone's number, take the phone to my ear and then even as the phone is ringing , I am seized with a mild panic," he went on, blowing the first cloud of smoke . 

"Panic? On dialling a number?" I spat out my surprise .

" Yes, I just forget the number  I dialled  and my mind goes completely blank , " he explained.

"And you then look at your own phone screen to confirm  the number," I almost shouted back excitedly , suddenly remembering that this happens with me so many times. 

"You got it," he smiled, and then went for the finger snack of celery stick and dip sauce which suddenly floated in front of him.

I took a sip from Jacob's Creek, pursed my lips, closed my eyes for a moment and  took a quick journey to many such instances when memory has played weird games- embarrassment at forgetting a person's name while introducing her, absence of recall of the food or even the mode of return journey after the previous night's binge, searching for keys even while holding them in the hand,  and many such moments. 

The world is now seeing  a surge in the number of memory related diseases. Paradoxically, it has been the longer life expectancy owing to improvements in the health care that has also resulted in an increase in the number people affected with noncommunicable diseases, including dementia, whose most common form is Alzheimer's Disease or simply AD. 

The first  instance of AD I had heard was when it struck a former Chief Justice of Patna High Court whose son was a class tennis player in my college days. Then it was Renu Chachi, in her days one of the leading gynaecologists of Patna,  and with whom I shared a special bond in that I was her "first child" - yes, the first child she had assisted independently in childbirth. My good friend Mrityunjay 's father's life was also wasted by AD towards the end and so was one of my senior colleague's mother in law's.. Lately the father of another friend of mine has been afflicted, she watches him helplessly as a patch of Exelon is stuck in different  places on  his back every other day, and every passing day the disease thunders deafeningly in what she describes as  the  "stillness of my parents'  house". 

I had once checked up on this disease after reading my friend's article in Huffington Post.  Dementia is a syndrome, usually of a chronic or progressive nature, caused by a variety of brain illnesses that affect memory, thinking, behaviour and ability to perform everyday activities and is  one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people worldwide.  The total number of people with dementia worldwide in 2010 was estimated at 35.6 million and was projected to nearly double every 20 years, to 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050. The total number of new cases of dementia each year worldwide is nearly 7.7 million, implying one new case every four seconds! 

Dementia is expensive as it reportedly cost the world US$ 604 billion per year in treatment and care in 2010. If dementia care were a country, it would be the world’s twenty-first largest economy, ranking between Poland and Saudi Arabia! Most European countries are spending about 1% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on dementia - Sweden spends over 2.5%.  Families and caregivers who are required to provide care and patients affected by dementia also pay a high price in terms of their quality of life - my friend confided that she could handle her father's physical ailments but what devastates her is " the void his intellectual space has become". 

So many solutions have been prescribed for treating memory disorders. Generally, modern medicine treats them as per the cause of the dementia, so if it is due to medicines, then change of medicines, if due to nutritional deficiency, then nutritional supplements , if depression then medicines to treat depression, if due to hypertension then BP medicines, if it is stroke related, then therapy, and so and so forth. But not all memory disorders are reversible, and Bhaiyya was wondering whether this could be prevented , or at least we could do something to make ourselves less vulnerable to it. It was this stage that he spotted Dr. Ram, a psychiatrist with Apollo Gleneagles, who had just entered the room and broached the topic of forgetfulness and dementia and asked him what could be done to prevent these. 

" And don't ask for giving up single malts and cigarettes," Bhaiyya spelt out his conditions for taking advice.

The Doctor smiled, told Bhaiyya he cannot take the risk of recommending something so drastic to him. He  had built  up a reputation for speaking in riddles to tease his friends, and this time it was no different.

"It may be music to your ears, but the solution could well be lying within your fingers, " he smiled and excused himself, promising to return shortly.

Both, Bhaiya and I , smiled , only to camouflage our inability to crack the riddle at the first go:Music, finger, ear- what did he mean?

A competing engagement drew Bhaiyya away from me , and I sat alone, reflecting over what the Doc had said. 

I sipped some more wine and looked at my fingers to launch an attack to crack da Ram Code. The finger is the most inquisitive and friskiest organ of the body, as it flits from one orifice to the other , sometimes of self and at times of others, in constant animation. Once, during an orificial probe, it had created a tehelka in the world of journalism.  At times the finger is dreaded, ask any  cricket batsman. It has an auto disciplining mechanism so that when you point one at someone, three are pointed back at you.

The sensation of touch in a child is the first to develop, ahead of vision, sound, taste , smell or balance. Through its  fingers,  the child experiences its first contact with the world as it feels the skin of the mother.  Fingers have enabled even the visually challenged to read , and most amazingly , as any person who has has been diagnosed by the ancient technique of naadi nidaan would admit, it is with the help of their fingers that the vaids read and listen to your pulse with a thoroughness and accuracy which are normally achieved in modern medicine after a clutch of tests.

I recalled from my school biology lessons  that our fingertips are densely packed with thousands of nerve endings, which produce complex patterns of nervous impulses that convey information about size, shape and texture of objects, and our ability to identify objects by touch and manipulate them depends upon the continuous influx of this stream of information. Recent research has revealed that since the nerve endings in our fingertips perform complex neural functions locally and not in the somatosensory cortex of the brain, the touch processing pathway of the brain has been effectively outsourced by the brain to the finger, just like it has aspects of visual processing, e.g., motion detection , to the retina. But still I could not crack Dr. Ram's riddle and I settled with the next glass to mull about music.

"Music is the most famous language," said Psy of  Gangham fame. And it is not just quite a language, it is almost life itself. Nina Kraus, a prominent brain researcher at Northwestern University said, music training does for the brain what exercise does for body fitness. Learning music has the ability to change the brain chemically and physically, it imposes a high working- memory load and thereby expands the working memory capacity which in turn improves the ability to think, as manifest in high IQ scores. I was suddenly reminded of the point made by Prof. Anil Gupta of IIM A that the highest mean IQ amongst students, as per the PISA test for many years,  was in Finland which also has the most extensive system of music instruction at school levels!

But still I could not connect all these with fingers and hit on the nail what Dr. Ram was talking, gave up and moved on to watch the launch of  a huge phanush or paper lantern when both, Dr. Ram and Bhaiyya resurfaced suddenly from just nowhere. We sat down and he asked whether I could make something of what he had said. I told him that I knew about the fingers' connectivity with the brain through the neural pathway and about the ability of music to stimulate the brain to the extent of effecting chemical changes , but was not getting the last mile connectivity to his cryptic remark.

"Well, just join your findings and you will get the answer because you are almost there," he said,

He explained that auditory learning which is implicit in music learning enhances listening, thinking, and learning abilities and that music practice enhances quicker movement of nerve impulses, grey matter growth and fibre formation of brain structures involved in the specific musical task. 

" Now let me connect this with fingers. The benefits of learning music on brain and brain memory is significantly augmented when you practise an instrument with your fingers because practising an instrument involves assembling, storing and constantly improving complex sensory and motor programs through prolonged and repeated execution of motor patterns under the controlled monitoring of the auditory system, " he added.

" So if at all I can advise anything in this matter,  I would say that all of us to should learn to play a musical instrument if not already done after we reach the age of 50," Dr. Ram signed off for the evening. Bhaiyya was happy , he was an ace percussionist, had played the guitar in his younger days and had taken to learning the keyboard recently. The problem was with me, and it set me thinking which , if you ask me,  is well begun, which itself is half done.  Not bad!

SANSKARI BOND

“Euphemisms persist because lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.” 
― Bergen Evans

It was many years ago, we were playing cricket with a cork ball and bat when a boy, not very well known to us, went down, clutching his groin. It was a situation which  we really did not  know how to "handle" .  Actually, we were tongue- tied about  how to make polite enquirers about the poor boy's injured organ.  The Hindi slang words we knew and used amongst close friends ( one happened  to be the name of a University in Sweden and another the first name of the Self Control singer) we thought were way too offensive to mention, too unpleasant to suggest.

As he lay there, curved fetally like a sea horse, writhing in pain, a passer by who was watching the proceedings, came over, shook him and asked , ' Tumhara tam-tam thheek hai na?' This immediately lightened up the proceedings, the boy also got up and smiled,  and assured that "it" was indeed all right. I had never heard the word tam -tam or a  horse drawn carriage ( also the tanga as in Basanti's tanga in Sholay) used  to refer to male genital but in the situation, one easily understood what was being referred by it.

Well, tam-tam is what is called a euphemism, a kind of an innocuous word or expression, to mask obscenity or profanity , prurience, uncomfortable realities like disease and death though sometimes to amuse as well, and sometimes,  as R.W. Holder put it, as  "the language of evasion, hypocrisy, prudery and deceit." Derived from the Greek word euphemia or the use of words of good omen, it is opposite of blaspheme or evil speaking - the third monkey of Gandhi's triad. For those who like to see in shades of grey, euphemism ( sweet talk) is a mean between orthophemism ( straight talk) and dysphemism ( harsh talk) 

One of the first areas where euphemisms came to be used was in references to the profane. Goddam,  Jesus, and even Hell were worse than fuck and shit - a rectitude powered by religious and royal decrees - the prohibition imposed by the Cretan king Rhadamanthus against swearing by gods was a precursor of sorts to the later strong Puritan interdictions . Cock stood not so much for penis as much as a euphemism for God (kokk , gosh, and gogg) - so much so that Ophelia could pun in Hamlet :'Young men will do 't; By cock they are to blame.' 

But the area of the taboo which has been the largest centres around the sexual if one goes by the sheer size of euphemisms- there are 1,200 terms for 'vagina', 1,000 for 'penis', 800 for 'copulation', and around 2,000 for 'whore'.  Talk of sex and womanhood  , especially between the opposite sexes, was a big taboo.  The supremely inventive and ravenously insatiable Mrs Burnham of Amitav Ghosh's Flood of Fire told Zachary "a woman, may be bawdy with a woman, a man with men, but never the one with  the other". The act of fornication was also discussed, and  conducted, in a hush hush manner for " coupling is merely matter of dropping the chatty in the dawk; it is done with a quick hoisting of nightgowns , and that too when all the battis ( lights)have been  extinguished". Actually, such were the restrictions woven  around sex that sexual feelings were often communicated in the language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, through tussy- mussy( a small round bouquet) .

Being a direct outcome of sex, the word pregnancy was best avoided. In Victorian England , euphemisms like " to be expecting" or " to have a bun in the oven" were used. I doubt my mother would ever allow the word to come on her lips when she could easily say " good news". Contraception and abortion, for long declared illegal by law, spawned a large number of euphemisms to dodge the law as well- the best example being the popular female contraceptive from 1930s to 1960s Lysol disinfectant which was advertised as "feminine hygiene "product and Vatican Roulette which bore a definite stamp of the Church's only known approval of birth control, also called the rhythm method. 

Menstruation, too. "It was only when she found that her blood had begun to flow that  it occurred to Jean Lousie that she was a girl and after all these years of reckless, pummelling activity; fighting, football, climbing……she must now go to a world of femininity,"writes Harper Lee in her second novel.  If menstruation was taboo, then so was masturbation and Mrs. Burnham, who knew what " soaping the sepoy or jerquing the jamandar" meant and  had had spied upon  Zachary "polishing a pin",  never mentioned the word masturbation directly to him and instead sent him books on ill effects of Onanism which included such chapters as  Mr. Graham's Lecture to Young Men on Chastity.

Other forms of body expulsions have been covered by euphemisms as well-  to have the vapours, kill a duck , step on a frog have been used as references  for passing gas though the most used , and puzzling, is break wind , first used in 1603  - from the polysemic Anglo- Saxon verb brecan which also meant move. Why only body expulsions, even the first threat of body protrusion of the tam tam would be met with a swift Selling Hot dogs or Letting the Horsey out of the Barn. In Patna we simply said , " post box khula hua hai".

When my friend was informed by the doctor that she had Koch's disease  as he did not want to break her heart by uttering the dreaded word tuberculosis, her problem was not about  knowing what it meant, but  of telling others because of its embarrassingly penile pronunciation. Venereal diseases were generally couched in colourful and innovative euphemisms like Blue balls,  Rhea sisters, Pissing Razor Blades, Venus's curse, lobsters' tails,  The French Disease ,  French Gout, Pissing Pins and Needles. 

In a paper titled The Use of English Language as a Weapon and Shield in Human Resource , Management, Prof. Asma Rizwan of Peole's University, Bhopal talks about euphemisms  which have evolved as per the demands of the industry.When A&T fired 40,000 workers they were just carrying out a force management program aimed at reducing an "imbalance of forces and skills through reduction of force",  while P&G once made its intentions very clear by announcing that it anticipated 6000 enrolment reductions. Some obfuscate by rather perplexing terms like decruit, lateralize, waive. 

To scrub clean all traces of gender associations, secretary came to be called administrative assistant while titles were made to sound important, some called it "sentimental equalisation", so that garbage collectors became sanitation engineers and barbers came to be called stylists. Most firms resorted to title inflation and the banking sector had a fondness for Vice President is evident from titles like Executive Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, Associate Vice Presidents, Junior Vice Presidents, etc. 

But there is of course this sordid state of affairs where euphemisms emerge not as disguises for truth but rather the enemy of it. Over the years, bureaucracies have spawned doublespeak - sunshine units for contamination of radioactive isotopes, collateral damage, ethnic cleansing, enhanced interrogation, transfer of population or rectification of frontiers, pacification, etc. One of the seminal expositions of this has been George Orwell's Essay , 1946 :"Politics and English Language".

No less interesting has been tracing the zig zag path of the evolution of euphemisms as words have been formed, mutated, borrowed, combined, loaned, particularized, generalized and spun around. So if you wanted to come down on the Scoville scale, you conveniently mispronounced.  I would say "you basket" instead of "You bastard" to avoid a sock in the  eye from the school bully, or use the first letter What the Eff or suffix "word" like " the F word ". Of course, you could simply go the acronymic way by saying SNAFU or SOB. One could innovate with the slangs  - the reverse slang like epar for rape,  the rhyming slang like Bristol ( breasts)  which was shortened form for Bristol cities which rhymed with titties and even use a full throated slang like screwed up for fucked up.

You could combine two individually innocuous words hand and job for masturbation or  derive a more palatable word like fellatio from a foreign word like Latin fellare ( to suck) or add a  smiley to the harsher Saxonic words by borrowing from French so as to write affair(e) in place of sexual engagement or lingerie for underwear or from Latin so that instead of excrement one could say faeces. As an  expert wordsmith, you could use satisfaction and innocent in particular contexts for orgasm and virginal respectively or just imply contextually a word like loose which means unattached for sexually available.

A  whole world of metaphors like red ( for menstruation), globes, lemons and brown eyes for breasts would lighten up communication while following the 'general-for-specific' metonymic path , you could use "it" for sex  and "thing" for male sexual organ or even construct  onomatopoetically bonk [sexual intercourse] or piss ( urinate) .Ironically, blessed came in for damned and enviable disease for syphilis . Understatements  have softened the blow when used as sleep for die or not very bright for stupid. Of course, you could overstate with hyperbolic jumps so that fight to death hid a reference to death or call yourself Personal Assistant to the Secretary  ( Special Activities ) and yet cook daal and roti for your boss! 

Expert wordsmiths like Austen made  Kitty a euphemism for  a prostitute while D.H Lawrence left John Thomas and Lady Jane as words of genitalic reference . This did  not stop at proper nouns and many geographic adjectives sprouted up as euphemisms - Italian way for anal sex, French letters as condoms and Essex girl for sexually available woman. Interestingly, much as they evolve as substitutes for taboos, euphemisms devolve into  taboos ,  jogging on the "euphemism treadmill" -  an 18th century euphemism toilet which came in for House- of - Office came to be deemed as inappropriate by the 20th century and came to be replaced by washroom and restroom!

Why do we use euphemisms? There is an interesting Face-Work Theory, developed by Brown and Levinson, propped on the fundamental idea that people living in a society do their best to save face and not to lose it, both of themselves and the persons with whom they communicate. The fear of lawsuits or liticaphobia had impelled  HR offices to remove the word  firing so that  no one is fired but is actually laid off and funnily enough,  the man in charge of firing people in Citigroup is called Head of Productivity.

Political correctness has resulted in negroes being called Afro- Americans, German Shepherds as Alsatians during WW I while shell shock of WW I vintage became combat fatigue during WW II to be now called PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in sync with our " current effete sensibilities". Of course, there have been moments in history which probably set the euphemism manufacturing machines working overtime like the Victorian Age when in the company of women, reference to male animals such as buck and stallion was considered downright impolite, when words which had 'cock' in them were changed so that haycock became haystack and cockerel a rooster. 

It does not look as if prudery was a monopoly of those times . If it has its way, the CBFC could unleash a large number of euphemisms in Indian films- that most enduring and popular of the Made in India brands in the world. Even though the ban on 32 cuss words had to be revoked, the latest axe has fallen on  the iconic James Bond. In a swift climbdown, Bond who was once acknowledged as a "cunning linguist" when he reported about "brushing up on a little Danish", the Secret Service Agent now will have to   mouth  euphemisms like "idiot" instead of "asshole" and "bighead and cats" instead of "bastard and balls" for   Welcome to the Age of Sanskari Bond!

PARADISE ON EARTH

"Gar firdaus, ruhe zamin ast, 

hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin ast."

If there is ever a heaven on earth, it's here, it's here, its here. 

You just cannot miss Kashmir-   a crown as well as a thorn for India.  Despite the bloodiest communal carnage in history, the Indo-Pak partition occasioned no major dispute between the two countries except Kashmir - Pakistan felt that the reason for which Hyderabad was integrated with India should have been good enough for Kashmir to go with them. The Kashmir problem has accounted for huge armies and defence expenditure on both sides, and the angst of losing out Kashmir probably drove Pakistan into the hands of its army.  Kashmir gave us two full fledged wars and much cause for celebration and chest thumping which sustained us even during the first decade of resumption of cricketing ties from 1977 when we lost more than we won on the cricketing grounds. 

Kalhan's Rajtarangini has chronicled the region's history. The climate of Kashmir has drawn pilgrims, tourists, emperors and Prime Ministers over the years. Its fruits are famous- apples, peaches, plums, apricots and many varieties of berries and nuts which you probably read only in Enid Blyton books.  Its saffron is  prized, its gardens the most beautiful. Kashmir's natural beauty has been celebrated in the many films shot there and a beautiful woman in often called Kashmir ki Kali in this country obsessed with white complexion. In every household whose members  had visited Kashmir, a photo of the lady of the house in her younger years, decked in a phiran, a head cover, and imitation jewellery is a prized frame displayed in the drawing room. 

But somehow, the place would give me a miss. As a probationer at NPA, Hyderabad, I had two chances to visit the state -  during the Bharat Darshan in 1989 and Army Attachment in 1990. But the state , sucked into militancy after the "rigged elections" of 1986,  had become too hot for probationers to be taken on an excursion while the draw of lots sent me to Tenga Valley in Arunachal rather than Ahknoor where a few of my luckier colleagues were sent for the Olive Green attachment. My luck with Kashmir remained kind of mixed.

When I visited it for the first time in July this year, covering Srinagar, Traal and Pulwama  in a straddle across two days, the beginning was  a let down. The roads were about the worst I have seen on highways ( and I am sure this has nothing to do with paucity of funds)   in recent years. The apples in the miles of orchards I passed by hadn't ripened as yet. My CRPF colleagues were abuzz with the tales of unprecedented damage in the floods the previous September , a spurt in militant activities and intensification of organised protests. The Indian government was not particularly popular, and the Kashmiris routinely indulged in pro- Pakistan posturing,  though my gut feeling is that it was being done more to extract concessions than to secede to Pakistan.   People in general were warm and polite towards the tourists .

The following day when I alighted from the gondola  at Gulmarg, I was clearly disappointed. Gulmarg in July is an absolutely over- rated destination, slush accompanies for over eighty yards after you alight  and for the next eighty the dark and dirty material looks more like sludge than snow.  I am sure, however, it would be a fantastic destination from November to May and I do intend to send my daughter for a skiing course there.

After the disappointment of Gulmarg, the sun shone on my luck even as it set across the Dal Lake which I hit just before 5.30 pm.  It sank,  a perfect ball of crimson without breaking,  leaving a glow of red above, lovely to behold through silhouetted paddle boats, shikharas and houseboats. As darkness fell, the waters of the lake, over and under which the Zabarwan hills had been clearly visible a few moments ago, shimmered with the lights of the hotels on the Boulevard which clasps the Dal as well as that of the houseboats. A few Single Malts and a dinner of Rista and Goshtaba in the stimulating company of my Everesteer batchmate Atul Karwal completed a perfect day. A round of golf at Royal Springs the following morning provided the icing on the cake. 

But luck once again did a flip flop when I took my family for our first ever family trip this month. Probably it was the wrath of Goddess for running away from her in Kolkata. The sky on 18th instant in Srinagar was overcast, we were denied the sun  throughout  the  250 odd  steps climb to the Shankaracharya temple or the  visit to  Chashmashahi where my wife and daughter did the customary Kashmiri Ki Kali photo shoot. The Dal Lake appeared to be filled up with weeds, sad looking and empty houseboats, the  shikara rides were fewer in a leaner tourist season, and there was much less hustle and bustle . The chinar, the state tree, whose leaves after the autumnal shedding are also used as a fuel in the kangris during winters, had yet to turn yellow and orange to rival the American or European Fall.

In the long series of disturbances that have come to punctuate life in Kashmir, one more was added during our stay. A boy, Zahid, conductor of a truck, succumbed to burn injuries sustained in a

"politics of hate" attack at Udhampur by a gang led by an ex-constable. This triggered prolonged protests marred with severe stone pelting and were denied the pleasure of visiting Pahalgam where we had been booked for two nights in Pine and Peak, a resort by the Lidder and reputed to be as fine as any out there. I was especially  looking forward to visiting Aru Valley, recommended by my friend Zulfiquar, and a round of golf at the Pahalgam Golf Club. 

During such flare-ups, the time after ten in the night to about seven in the morning is normally considered safer for travel since stone pelters rule the roost for the rest of the day  but we were just unlucky.  Contrast this with Bengal, whose poorer work culture rubs off on the  bandh enforcers as well - they don't start their business before ten in the morning and are spent by six in the evening. A saving grace here is that tourists are not harmed, contrary to popular notions prevailing amongst many Indians. 

Anyway, we were back in Srinagar and  tolerated a bad first half with rain and indoors on the 19th. I spiced up the proceedings with some Kingfisher Ultra, but was  still feeling low. Even the second ride on the Dal which included a visit to the CRPF guarded Kabootar Khana with an approach through a green carpet of water lilies did not cheer me up enough, though I did make a note of spending a night here during my next visit. 

But Durga is a benevolent goddess. She cannot remain angry for long, and appeared before us in the form Bilal,  seconded to me from Atul. Bilal suggested a  visit to Sonamarg and make the best of a bad bargain. We brightened up and even the kids obliged by being ready to move by 8.30 in the morning.The Google will tell you that Sonamarg or Golden Meadow lies about 87 kms on the NH1D from Srinagar, is situated at  the head of Sind River and is also a gateway to Ladakh. It is the base for treks to Harmukh range via Nichnal, Vishensar Lake, Gangabal and on to Nara Nag , and the pilgrim route to Amarnath Cave as well. Besides, it is famous for trout fishing.

The trouble with Kashmir is that its beauty has been so hyped up about being heaven on earth and being even more beautiful than Switzerland that comparisons can never be avoided. The stretch of first 50 kilometres was disappointing-  the road was bad,  the sides were strewn with garbage and construction debris or boulders stacked for repair. In the small hamlets in Ganderbal district we went through, the air was kind of melancholic- sad men in their phirens, their empty sleeves flailing about them;  cheerless women covered in various types of headdress; the school children in smart uniforms but with solemn faces. The only saving grace was the Sind river that flowed to our right on its rocky bed through the ranges-  here terraced, there dotted with small tin shacks of the shepherds who would have probably left them by now, the slopes somewhere clawed a dirty white as the scree piled up in heaps at mid height levels. 

However, things brightened up after we crossed Manigam (which houses the Police  Subsidiary Training Centre at Manigam and doubles up as a the base camp for Amarnath pilgrims) and reached  Gund to have some much needed kahwa and the children to spend some time with furiously playful dogs of the local CRPF camp. The sun shone with its friendliest welcome brightness , and about twenty kilometres before Sonmarg, the mountains just burst out to leave you awestruck. The taller mastiffs and crags glistened with fresh snow from the previous day's fall while downward streaks of snow was visible  on most of the hills - in a couple of months, they  would claim the  slopes fully and even freeze the stream and block traffic to Leh.  A few resorts by the river which one marked to drop in during our return and soon we were in Sonamarg. Sonmarg town is a ribbon of about a couple of kilometres in length and not more than two hundred meters in depth, dotted with two-three storied hotels cum restaurants, none very upmarket but still bright and cheerful, and possibly welcoming. 

But first things first. We had to go its most famous been- there- done- that place, the Thajawas valley, glacier and range. Up above a circular road that went past a golf course and the Sonamarg Club we motored to reach a small bazar where the horses and their keepers awaited the tourists with much anticipation. We , too, hired horses, though I can tell you it is not really needed.  Hardly ten minutes on the horseback , negotiating two streams of freshly melted ice on a rough bed with a few driftwood strewn about , I was hit head - on with a site more beautiful than whatever I had seen previously  in  Lucerne or Mt.Titlis or at Interlaken  way back in the summer of 2005. 

The valley snaked for miles it seemed, the whiteness of its bed broken by moraines lying here and there hiding small rivulets, shrubs of itching plant and plenty of large boulders to rest and get clicked.  Much nearer on both sides, the steep hills were white and green , the deodars standing in their full majesty, quite like inverted water sprouts , the slopes clearly defined against an azure sky. The snow line was rather tame and gradual  in many stretches, much like the ones you could draw in your junior school drawing classes, but somewhere much afar, the gentleness was replaced by a craggy sharpness, as a series of thin peaks dotted the horizon- like  icicles, in different shades of white and grey, hanging from the sky.

You can trust Indians to pollute places with impunity. It was no different here. The shacks, built around deserted cloisters of shepherds, were topped with dirty blue plastic sheets and offered kahwa , soft drinks and somewhere a fire for a cosy huddle but there no trash bins and people merrily flung the plastic cups and tetra packs. Some locals offered a sledge ride  which I refused after my Gulmarg experience.  We walked in as far as we could, negotiating small cracks of water that came up every fifty feet or so, listening to the locals talk about the places's most famous moment - the locale for shooting of Bajrangi Bhaijaan. We spent an hour there and returned to the bazaar, settled the money for the rides after a bit of amiable haggling, and journeyed down through verdant meadows where horses grazed lazily, their only visible activity being the occasional swishing of tails. 

After placing  order for lunch at Sonasar, we travelled to try our luck at trout fishing but the facility was closed for the day, then suffered a bit of jam around trucks which carried boulders of the Sind nullah, sped past the base camp of RR for the Amarnath  pilgrims, along clear waters to spend time in the vast meadow and to take  more snaps. Sonamarg was not done as yet. At Sonasar, the mutton khuruma cooked in curd and ajwain and saunf was by far the most delicious of the dishes we had eaten in Kashmir,  spread across plates of rogan josh, rista, goshtaba, tabak maaz and many others. 

The following morning we spent at Dachigam ( ten villages) National Park at the foothills of the Zabarwan Range .  The highlights included a stroll in the garden whose walnut trees had  recently been plucked, a walk on a path cushioned with pine needles up to the View Point , breathing in the sharp smell of pine,  a visit to the  lovely Meditation Point by a fast flowing mountain stream where Indira Gandhi spent long hours in silent contemplation and relaxation and  a small stop at the trout breeding centre. We rounded our trip with some leisurely time at the impossibly beautiful Nishat gardens  and some shopping before returning to the heavily guarded Srinagar airport.

Bilal hugged and left us only after extracting a promise of visiting Pahalgam the following year - the "unfinished agenda of Kashmir " he seemed to say. He had already organised a crate of the best Shopian apples for Rs. 500/- from the local mandi and assured to send more. 

" Come during May, that is the best time ," he said before waving a final goodbye.

THE OLD SCHOOL IN THE NEW AGE

The Chief was getting worried by the day. Times were "a changin'" for his khaki police force. The RoE or Rules of Engagement with the public were earlier so neatly laid out. Police regulated meetings and processions to the point of banning them, it enforced bans on some or the other book, newspaper or a political organization  and made a show of enforcement of the odd economic regulation pertaining to supply of essential commodities like rice or levy cement and the like. It also investigated cases when they were registered.

In the process it made a few arrests, did not discriminate between the sex of the protestors and evaders, nor between night and day. A bit of third degree was a given, disconnecting electricity and blocking newsprint supply to errant media elements was par for the course, and if the fellows on the streets became too uncontrollable , there was nothing what a good cane charge or even firing in the air , or for that matter even at the crowd , could not achieve. Besides, people were not expected to raise too much of hue and cry over missing persons. 

With the passage of time, quite a few practices of this Old School had changed but it had not rattled him much. Okay, you could no more allow people to go missing as courts were getting transfixed with this habeas corpus hocus pocus. The charm of the old handcuff was gone and he tried hard to recall the days when it was so easy for a mofussil police station constable to manacle and walk down the road with  two arrestees  or even carry them,  sitting on their haunches on the foot of the rickshaw, to the court . Arrests now entailed a lot of scriptural work , what with issuing of arrest memos and medical reports of daily check up. Conservatism had set in, and now male constables could not arrest women nor herd them together with the males in the same lock-up. You could not disturb a person's nocturnal privacy, privileges and pursuits and arrest him just like that, you had to wait till his body stirred and bowels moved.

The DoUF Directives of Use of Force had also undergone a change in the New Age policing .  No protest could ever be termed as violent because venting anger was a legitimate right of the public. The good old firing with muskets was now a big no- no -- whatever be the provocation. There was an Ucch Nyayalaya judgement which declared the  police regulation on procedure to open fire at an unlawful assembly as unconstitutional because the court refused to believe that the firing party commander could have  such an accurate and  telescopic vision so as to identify  the main instigator from a distance. As a result, police could now fire only in self defence which was not quite the same thing in affording legal immunity as would firing to disperse an unlawful assembly would. The new mantra was risk- averseness rather than risk -taking and the Principle of Minimum Use of Force was increasingly being sought to be replaced with one of No Force. 

But what had really got the Chief's goat was the emerging trend of PP or "photography policing", not insubstantially influenced by one of the new Western BPs or Best Practices . The police of a European country had decided that it was not quite worth it to open fire and maim or kill people when they burnt cars and shops because these things were insured and the victims could justifiably seek claim from the insurers. They just filmed these acts , started cases and requested the courts to issue summons.  One of his bright colleagues who had returned from a training course abroad and was now  heading the police force in a BIMARU state did precisely that when supporters of a caste leader went berserk during his funeral procession. Police restraint in the face of such expected and prolonged provocation was effusively complimented by various human rights groups and all criticism of police inaction was termed as reactionary, unfortunate and insensitive. 

PP made its way to police training curriculum and modernisation plans as more than riot drill, video recording of agitations came to be taught in PTCs or Police Training Colleges and more than riot drill equipment , video and other cameras came to be purchased  entailing such procedural irregularities that even the friendliest auditor could not help handing over a slew of paras in the annual audit reports. Soon a new brand of photographer policemen became the new poster boys of the department , filming violent protests rather than curbing them, and the more entrepreneurial ones, especially the Selfie experts,  took to filming couples in parks and seedy hotels, and became intrepid extortionists in the process. The Chief had intense dislike, and even morbid fear,  of PP because it had led to a sunderance within the department - all kinds of disgruntled and devious characters were shooting scenes of robust interrogation, extramarital dalliances in police quarters, pithhoo drills  and even colourful Mess parties that immediately made way either to the media or to the government.

But even these the Chief took in his stride. He knew that despite the New Age policing practices that had corrupted the majority and diluted the efficacy of the organization , he could still expect to gather around him a substantial number from the Old School  and stand in between violent, warring factions and rampaging crowds. But what was giving him sleepless nights were the activities of the  NWPs or the New Wave Protesters and the MORPOL or Moral Police , the restlessness also exacerbated by the gnawing feeling that these elements were infiltrating the police force as well which he also felt was due to extensive coverage given to them by the News Channels. 

Earlier, bans or sanctions were decreed and promulgated by the government , but now prohibitory orders could be passed by non- government actors like the MORPOLs. Some of them had  issued orders against kissing  and all forms of PDAs or Public Demonstration of Affection, some had started to raise awareness against the evils of indecent  dressing and also prescribed dress codes for women in line with Sanskriti, Sabhyata and Shariat. While many complied out of fear, a very large number borrowed from western forms of protests which were flowing freely on the cyberspace . Soon a train of hokchumban kisses hooted past the streets , the city promenades and boulevards  reverberated with footfalls of SlutWalk and when LGTB issues also got entwined like serpents in heat, colourful processions of NWPs with colourful placards and body paints and tattoos lit up the towns and energised the TV channels to become more of an audio medium than visual.

It did not end there. Novel protests  to raise awareness of gender issues  dotted the country and what were earlier whispered in hushed tones monthly  were now displayed as protest symbols almost daily. Protestors were writing slogans on sanitary napkins and hanging all kinds of linen on gates and walls of public buildings and lamp posts. The Chief particularly disliked asking his men to remove such objectionable items as these were converting dour faced cops into a bunch of teenage gigglers with all kinds of double entendres flying about, especially when there were women police also around. 

After one NWP went about wearing a bra written Khuli Khidki  during a protest against a Vice Chancellor , similar cup cards soon replaced the placards in most campus unrests . The Chief's police once had a particularly harrowing time when, to placate the MORPOLs, it intervened to stop an act of "bra obscenity" by a few boys during a campus protest.

When the police party reached to seize the objects of "nuisance and indecency", the girl students demanded, through rings of cigarette smoke,  of the police to show where it was written that men could not  wear bras, in which legal statute the bra was mentioned as obscene , and if wearing it was obscene, why were the policewomen wearing it, and if at all bras  were to seized, were the police trained to alphanumber, label and pack them. Finally, inspired by lofted notions of gender equality, the girls said that if the bras were to be seized from the person of the boys, they had to be seized from the girls as well, and inspired by TV footage of Jal Samadhi protests, they locked their elbows with the boys and formed a ring. Naturally the police, both male and female, not used to opening bras in public, bid a hasty retreat amidst raucous catcalls and wolf whistles from the girls and disappointment writ large on the boys.

Incidents like this were happening all too frequently, the Press ridiculed, the government fumed, and the PP poster boys increasingly upped the pressure to yield to their brand of "No Action, Only Photographic Prosecution" policing. Then one day one of his batch mates , now retired,  came over and asked him to hang up his boots and walk in the sunset.

" Yaar, why don't you opt for premature retirement. I am sure the police will also get a favourable OROP if they protest properly, which should not really be a problem for them," Gopu told him one day at the Mess  where a small batch reunion was in progress.

" No, let me just dig in and stay," he said to no one in particular, and just stared at this cellphone, an old one without a camera. 

THE SMELL OF PUJO

When is a good time to flag the Durga Puja , or simply the Pujo, in Kolkata? Since  I don't leave Kolkata during this period, I am not off to a quick  July-August start , firming up the travel arrangements,  like so many others. Unlike many,  I don't quite  consider the Vishwa Karma puja as the trigger- even though it has the elements of chanda, pandal( to rhyme with candle) , thakursthapana  and visrajan.  Earlier, when I used to stay in a government housing estate in Ballygunge Circular Road, the residents' committee whose secretary was my wife would start early to organise and I would be sucked in, but now I don't stay there any more. For the last few years, the on-your-mark-get-set-go gunshot has been either  the publication of Pujo articles in newspapers or Sharadiya Sale graffiti on shops or sometimes even a  bad traffic jam on account of roadside pandal construction. 

This year , it has been a Whatsapp forward a couple of days ago in the form of a delightful ditty  that has  brought in the heady scent, sights and sound of the Pujo. Somehow I had never heard it before. It is a song composed by the late maestro Salil Choudhary O Aaye  re chhute aaye, pujor gondho esechhe ( Hark , the smell of pujo is here) which was sung by his daughter Antara way back in 1977 but has recently been remixed . The remix is an animation video , and I sometimes wonder whether the frames were inspired by sketches which the incomparable composer  would draw  in his spare time.

The animation is wonderfully evocative -  blue skies with the odd race of clouds, green paddy fields dotted with the white kaash phool at the edges,  cascades of shiuli blossoms , dance of the bees, excitement of children as they watch the short train of the flutist, the cymbal boy and the dhaki go past. A line in the  first stanza is lyrically onomatopoeic- dhang kur kur dhang karakur, batti bejechhe. Yes, despite the united colours of pandals and pratimas, Lal paar sarees and panjabis, the tarpan and the mesmeric rendition of mahishasur mardani , the triumph -of -truth- over- evil didactic , the smell and sight of shiuli and the dhunucchi, sindoor khela and visarjan and the gastronomic excesses,  Durga Puja for me is also a Festival of the Sound of the Dhhak. It announces, attracts, engages, energises  and strings the Pujo proceedings.

My fascination for the dhaak goes back to October, 1989 when as a young trainee, bunking training at Barrackpore, I had reached Sealdah Station along with my batch mate, the irrepressible Herman Prit Singh.As the two of us emerged out of this mad mad  Sealdah station building , we were struck, almost like a bolt of lightning, by a terrific crescendo as hundreds of  drummers went about their business. It appeared as if the whole was gripped with a singular activity and purpose - of every drummer or dhakia announcing himself loudly in unison. The dhak is the large drum that men hang around their necks and play with two thin sticks to infuse the frenzied rhythm into listeners.

So captivated were we that we postponed our purpose of bunking- I to meet my young wife tucked away in Ballygunje Circular and he to visit his Mamaji in Elgin Road.  Instead, we  bought two bhaands or earthen cups of chai and sipped slowly to let ourselves soak in the atmosphere. There was no urgency to get away. Besides the fury of sound was the riot of colours of bird feathers that were attached to these huge drums and the plumes on the dhakis' headresses - animal rights  activists had not made their presence felt fully by then. We found out that these dhakis had come from different villages and hamlets from Midnapur, Birbhum, Bankura, North 24 Parganas and even Murshidabad. - and were just displaying their wares to be picked up by the many Pujo organisers. Enquiries made, music and madness enjoyed, tea finished, the trance broken, we went away.

But the dhakis never left us. Wherever we stayed, Burdwan, Barasat, Durgapur, Siliguri, Krishnanagar, and finally at Ballygunje Circular , the dhaki and his assistant, a 'bell boy' ( playing the bell metal or cymbal) would wake us up to the smell of shiuli or harsingar flowers that wafted intoxicatingly during those early , and moderately nippy , hours - a bit like the azaan .

And while the morning perambulation of the duo was accompanied by slow rhythmic sounds, the tunes would become faster as the days proceeded - to ramp up the more energetic ceremonies of Durga Puja like chokkhu daan (eye presentation), patha boli (goat sacrifice), bisarjan (immersion ceremony), sandhya arati (evening offerings), sandhipuja (worshiping at the conjunction of two phases) and the dhunuchi dance.The annual farewell to the dhaki was always after the Bhasan or Visarjan to which the duo accompanied me each of the eight years I personally went to Babu Ghat. From Shashthhee to Dashami, the two were part of the para - just like the pandit and his assistant. 

I would chat with the dhaki. He was from Birbhum, a short, thin, wiry, dark and surprisingly quiet for a man who could bring his dhak to a frenzied pitch. His ancestors were dhakis on the rolls of Malla kings of Bishnupur. Daily pujas were organised for the deities in the palace and the dhakis played a significant role and besides, there was a custom of making announcements of various government programmes through beating of drums - dhol shaharat. But now, the practitioners of this hereditary profession were leaving due to the small performing season and competition from electronic music and bands. And a day would come, he prophesized, when the rising cost of mango wood would push the dhaak makers to use aluminium instead. It will no longer sound the same. This is one doomsday prophecy I would never wish comes true.

THIS DOES QUITE SOUND LIKE ME

In any known association of people, be it a large organisation or even a small office , a school, college or a club, a dak bungalow or even a regular bus or ferry route, tales of "characters " abound. Most of the clubs carry stories about some legends, be it the Oldest Member at the Nineteenth Hole  of Wodehouse's golf stories or Dadi Mazda of Royal Calcutta Golf Club after whom the Club's famous Mazda toasts are named or even Salim Bhai, the head barman of Calcutta Cricket and Football Club (1792)   who was as famous for his  rum toddy as for his geniality in the most trying times when members jostled to beat the bar closing jingle bells. In formal organisations, such characters are elevated as "institutions" and books are written about or by them : JRD, Russi Modi, Lee Iococca, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, et al. 

In uniformed services, such "institutions" are generally more colourful, irascible and temperamental , their memories fermented more with tales of  their idiosyncrasy  than  normality. But usually these people are  extremely cerebral, profoundly well read, professionally sound, fiercely protective and passionately concerned about their subordinates. Probably we tend to speak more about them because we find such people become rarer by the day. In West Bengal  and Calcutta Police, I doubt anyone commanded more stories or merited so many glasses of whiskies to keep the huddles going than the late Ranjit Gupta IP. He was Commissioner of Police , Kolkata and later on became the Inspector General of Police, West Bengal from where he was moved out before the end of his term. He is credited with suppressing the Naxalite movement with a heavy hand and was generally in trouble with the political dispensation of the day. He was also a scholar and an anthropologist. 

Lots of stories about him continued to float for years after his retirement.  But the story no.1 connected to Ranjit Gupta was the L'affaire Teen Kauri which I first  heard from the  then Range DIG Sujoy Chakraborty during the inspection of the office of Addl SP, Asansol over several cups of lebu chai and fried cashew nuts. Readers are requested to remember this anecdote because I shall come to it again.

Well, it runs like this. There were two DIsG in Barrackpore, one in charge of Training and the other of Armed Police,  and Teen Kauri was one of them. Sometimes in early 1970s,  he was reported to have shot at his wife in a fit of anger and true to his dismal record at the range, had missed her completely.  It is said that the feisty lady ran to Barrackpore PS more in agitation than in fright and demanded of the OC, Barrackpore PS that a case of attempt to murder be recorded against her husband. The poor Badababu goldfished  copious quantities of air at such an outrageous and unheard of request . Afraid that his Adam's Apple could pop out of fright, he pleaded with SDPO, Barackpore to come over. The ink of indecisiveness of police in such matters shot up in a capillary action through to the Addl SP, skipped the Superintendent of Police 24 Parganas who was way too dangerous to be woken  up at an unearthly eight in the morning and finally nudged the other DIG at Barrackpore who was requested to come over. 

Naturally the DIG had to show more flair and decisiveness. To be fair to him, he did the best thing in the circumstances . He rang up the IG Ranjit Gupta .

" Sir, Teen Kauri shot at his wife, but luckily the bullet missed her. She is now at the police station demanding an FIR against him," the black phone trembled as he explained the situation with such misery and remorse that for a moment the IG thought it was the informant DIG who was the culprit. 

It is said that the IG who did not like to take a decision which an OC was capable and competent to take,  thought for not more than a second .

"Oh, Teen Kauri was always a poor shot,"  the IG laughed and hung up to work on his pipe, tea and the day's edition of Statesman. 

There were many more but the problem with recounting tales of moth - balled antiquity is that  inaccuracies creep in and events and the dramatis personae get mixed up. Some of the stories could be apocryphal as well.  For a long time I thought that the story of sergeants of Calcutta Police escorting an ex- Commissioner of Police from Lalbazar to Writers' Building in an arrowhead formation on their motorcycles and handing over the Sergeant Security of Writers' Buildings with a "diye gelaam, ei baar maal ta ke bhujhbey" was about Ranjit Gupta only to be corrected that it was about another Commissioner of police who had been elevated as an IG! I will limit myself to my own encounters with him. 

Even after retirement in the first half of 1970s, he never lost his sense of authority. He was used to deference and it was quite common for senior officers much later to see Ranjit Gupta walk into their office and say, " I want you to do  this" lacing his talks with his takiakalaam " now  you listen to me ". He remained the star invitee at important police functions, be it the Combined Police Parades,  or the Sesquicentennial celebration of the Calcutta  Police or the first Mess Night of all retired IPS and IP officers at the IPS Mess. He was a living legend during his service life, famous beyond West Bengal and the sheen never quite wore off . 

It was sheer fate that placed me before Ranjit Gupta, forty six years my service senior. It so happened that he was drawing less pension than he thought was due to him and it rankled him. He wrote to many of his old service colleagues who, too, had retired by this time, asking for assistance/ suggestions in drafting a suitable petition to the government. By this time he had been detected with cancer, had a pacemaker implanted and lost his wife. He had tended to become forgetful and would often harangue an officer for the same thing thrice a day without realising it at times. 

One such victim was SK Singh, an officer 15 years his junior and 31 years my senior who had retired within a couple of years of my joining the service. During his younger days, SK Singh was as outstanding as he was outspoken and after a short run of brilliance, fell foul  of the political dispensation for two thirds of his career. Apart from other things, he was the person to whom all IPS officers turned to whenever they would receive show causes and vigilance inquisitions . It was he  who would draft replies and charter the course of defence. But now he was old, his health was failing, and unable to outrightly refuse his former IG, he did what is now taught in Management schools- he outsourced this problem to me. I was the IPS Association Secretary,  played tennis better than him,  had fitter knees and had probably impressed him by  writing an exceptionally vitriolic letter to the IPS members against the proposed amalgamation of a few areas falling under West Bengal Police with Kolkata Police.

One day I got a call from Mr SK Singh to go and meet Ranjit Gupta and help him get his pension enhanced .

" I am quite sure I will not be bothered again, and let me tell you, he had enquired whether you drink or not, and I have said that you love the spirit" said SK Singh.

I obeyed for three reasons: it gave me a chance to meet the legend, I admired SK Singh a lot and , I had no choice. 

So one fine evening I went to meet Ranjit Gupta at his flat in Ballygunge Circular Road. He was extremely courteous and met me at the door rather than asking me to be ushered to his study which could have been just as fine with me. His was a slight frame, now bent with age, he required a bit of an assistance while walking and as I shook his hands, now gnarled with age, I felt not the the exaggerated grasp typical of swaggering policemen but a warm clasp, just short of limpid but overwhelming in affection.Sunken cheeks, a face lined with creases of age, a pair of  thickset glasses with heavy lenses, tailored clothes hanging loosely on a considerably shrivelled body- yes, he looked every bit of a man who would turn ninety in a few months. But when he spoke, I could get a hang of his legendary authority. The voice had a slight, ailment- inflicted slur but it rasped out firmly, it was not thin but authoritative, and it was not aggressively polite which actually makes me wary.

"Ah Vivek ! you have come. Let's go," he said and he led me, with a shuffling gait, to his study. 

It was a small room, filled with books, a few chairs, a table and a desktop. He informed that he was working on a book, the progress was slow because his ill -health came in way of giving regular dictations. I started to meet him quite often and every time his eldest son Indrajit would remain present. The father and son stuck out quite well but the patriarch still worried about his son even though the latter was definitely well into his fifties. Quite often, the son would correct his father and offer a helping hand whenever  fading memory would play games.  The two would sometimes talk about Peloponnesian War which was quite Greek to me. Ranjit Gupta's strength would drain out after some time and more than once, he would leave after barely nursing a small whiskey which would be poured for him.

"You must excuse an old man like me, you people carry on," he would say and walk away.

We talked about his pension. Forget a DG's pension, I realised he was not even drawing an IG's pension but only an Addl. IG's. I told him as much and said that we have to first get back his IG's pension. On  Day One itself, he shoved a sheaf of papers at me, typed copies of drafts and suggestions by officers who had retired by that time.

" Please go through them, take your time, and come back to me when you can," he said but by the following morning he rang up and enquired about the progress.

Anyway, I worked at it, and he, too, would remind me time and again, sometimes twice within a span of an hour and then apologise for his forgetfulness. The maverick was turning out to be one big delight and I quite liked talking to him. I drafted an RTI petition and within a few months, the government restored his pension to that of an IG, though  I think it was to a large extent due to the Old Man's personal visits to Writers' Building. I am extremely grateful that the then Home Secretary and the West Bengal AG took the correct view and it was done with. But Ranjit Gupta was a hard task master and after a small celebratory drink, he spelt out his next target. 

" Vivek, you see I was IG when an IG was the Head of Police Force. Now a days it is the DG. So I must get the pension of DG. It is not the money, but the acknowledgement of parity of the chair. Now you work on it," he ordered me as I eased myself into a chair in his study. 

Hearing his tweaked version of a kind of OROP, I smiled and commented that  an ex -Kerala IG had already moved the government. But Ranjit Gupta had neither a sense of the value of ordinariness nor an engaging modesty. 

" You forget that chap, and see that mine becomes the precedent," he snapped.

Nothing came off it.  I moved to the Centre and left Ballygunge Circular Road while he also became inactive as his health deteriorated further. 

When I recall the time spent with him, the six seven occasions in his study, a couple in the IPS Mess, a few things remain etched in my mind. One was his longingness for his late wife. He missed her terribly, and in the late autumn of his life, it was very pronounced. It was during my second or third visit that I took my wife to meet him at his invitation. It was just as well. I think he required the comfort and ease of company of a woman to talk about her.

Even as he welcomed us in the living room, the first thing he did on being introduced and after apologising for a kind of disarray his house was in, was to show the framed picture of his late wife- a strikingly beautiful photograph , the fading sepia not diminishing her beauty even one bit. As we moved inside his study, there was more on her. With great fondness, he took out a photograph which had been sent to his house before their marriage for match fixing, showed it to my wife and looked at her for her appreciation and admiration.

 " She handled everything in the house, including my finances, I am absolutely clueless , and quite alone,"  he said looking at no one in particular.

"Those wooden chairs you see," referring to four simple and elegant Burmah teak chairs with cane netting on which we were sitting , "were gifts during my marriage," he added with a sigh. He then proceeded to recount some tales concerning his wife of the years of his mofussil postings- it set my wife at ease and he accessed a rapt womanly attention over stories of his beloved late wife, his eyes shining as the spools of his life played out before him as he spoke.

The second thing was that he had moved on in years, rancour was much less and though agitated at  times, he was not whining and querulous over the fate that met him in the twilight of his professional carer. I had expected him to be bitter about Siddharta Shankar Ray, his college mate at Presidency College who later became the Chief Minister and after some major professional disagreements, showed him the door as IG. He never discussed them. If at all he took a dig at his old friend, it was as a friendly banter. He remembered with glee how Siddharta and Maya had , after their marriage, gone to meet him in Barrackpore. 

" He came as a bit of show- off in his foreign car ( I forget the make ) but ultimately had to return to Calcutta  in my jeep after their car broke down ," he seemed mighty pleased as he said, the smile not being lost to anyone of us. 

On the other hand, he related a few things quite lovingly about his old friend.

"I was from East Bengal, slight in frame, and the city boys would try to bully me. But Siddharta, a big boy, urbane, athletic and hugely popular would shield me. He helped me a lot" he once said.  

I thought he was very conscious of his slight built, and took to polo deliberately as the equestrian sport hid his puniness . About his polo matches with his colleagues he would talk a lot, sometimes detailing events chukker-wise.

His manners were faultless and he could go to great lengths to make his guest feel comfortable and wanted. Once he invited us for dinner at his house. He called over Indryajeet's wife so that my wife had the company of a woman. After a few drinks and some reminiscing about his days in North Bengal, we went over to the Hall for dinner. I love Bengali food and Ranjit Gupta's cook did not disappoint. I thanked him for serving, among other things, kasha mangsho and pabda curry.

" I am glad you liked it," he said and went about slowly with his dinner.

But I saw my wife and Indrajeet exchange a smile. After we returned home, I asked her about that.  She said that a few days ago someone had come from Ranjit Gupta's house enquiring from my house NVF about my favourite food,  and Jogo, the NVF had told him, "Pabda and mangsho".This was Ranjit Gupta- making discreet enquiries about his guest's food choices before their arrival. I was simply amazed , and very touched and then I remembered  SK Singh telling that the Old Man had enquired whether I drank alcohol or not before calling me over the first time.

Finally, what would remain my most abiding memory of the legend was his sense of humour. For this, we must return to that mangsho and pabda dinner. The Old Man was in an expansive mood, being quite chatty about some of his superiors and was absolutely smashing it up. This is when his son, who must have heard the rants many a time, cut him short and humorously prodded. 

 "C'mom Paps, you were no angel. You had been a big devil during your days, and there are so many stories about you," he let go. 

"Well, I was a bit of stickler but I was never unfair," the Polo player defended himself, hooking his son's mallet.

"Besides, there are hardly any stories about me," he counter attacked.

" Sir , but there are indeed many stories about you " I said and proceeded to narrate  L'affaire Teen Kauri and rounded off with my version of mimicking his "Oh, Teen Kauri was always a poor shot" .

He adjusted his hearing aid and listened intently as he sat at the head of the table.  As soon as I finished, he closed his eyes, made a great effort to remember, arched his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and even grimaced.  The he put down his knife and fork, closed his fists, looked up at the ceiling, then looked at me, threw one glance  at his son, then turned away to look down at his plate. Finally he clasped his hands, brought them close to his heart and looked at everyone. 

"I can't quite remember, but this does quite sound like me," he exclaimed after a moment's silence.

Postscript: The two had so many things in common.  Living into nineties, abrasive during their peaks, both were given a short shrift in their death. When Ranjit Gupta died, even though the Kolkata Police provided the Guard of honour,  I could not see anyone, save for the  DIG HQ and the SP South 24 Parganas, from the West Bengal Police Directorate come over to Keoratala to be present in the legend's last journey  even as a clutch of old, now retired colleagues,  friends and close family members had come over. While Punjab flew its flag at half mast in memory of the man who was its Governor during the peak of militancy, the state, as reported in some newspapers, where he was Chief Minister, offered no such gesture to Sidhharta Shankar Ray.