It was the road I have walked the most, kicking whatever came in the way, fraying the toe ends of my Naughty Boys much to my mother's consternation . It stretched from the bus stop to my house , zigzagging gently, the road with no name.
First from the Bus Stop End to our left was Chhotki and Nadu Da's kiosk , buzzing with activities revolving around cutting chai, paan, adda, radio commentary and thathha. Then the house with a Beware of Dogs growl which put away the jamuns out of our reach. A little further down on the opposite side as the road dipped stood a huge peepal tree whose leaves I would pick up to place between the pages of text books . Its huge girth was colourfully threaded by young married women in bright ghunghats circumambulating under the vigilant supervision of their mothers in law.
Under the shade of this tree was the yellow coloured temple with a hooded Nag on top. It had once played host to to an itinerant Khadauaa baba or the Standing Sage who was liberal with his chillum to all those who cared - otherwise, the temple's medium sized red cemented verandah would be the venue for many late night noisy kirtans. Abutting the mandir was the Corporation water tap from where the bhaar wala , braving women in all stages of dress and undress , fights and arguments, collected potable water for our homes in two 16 kgs tins hung at the ends of a bamboo rod slung across his shoulder.
Continuing on the same side was the Fair Price ration shop which would liven up when the queues were longer and supplies short. Then the house of Prof KK Sharma of PK Roy Memorial College whose boundary wall would be studded with the cycles of students attending his physics tuitions. Across this stretch lay the quadrangular football field, bordered by the row houses of clerks of CPWD on three sides and a Community Hall on the fourth. One then trudged along the road, dodging splashes of cow dung and a few regular bovines and canines. Just before the road forked out, one found Dadu's shop on the right hand, It was located below our first floor house in the 5 cottah estate of Mr. Das, answering to the postal address of c/ o Brooke Bond Office, Post Box No 22, Dhanbad.
I did not know Dadu's name. Everyone called him Dadu. Not an insubstantial space his shop was housed in , but it wasn't very swanky . A glass case in the front which supported a small weighing balance with weights, ranging from 10 grams to 5 kgs , neatly piled up like the stones of the pithhoo game we played. A till located in the glass case opened inside, padded with a piece of cloth under which he kept notes of higher denomination. Dadu would sit perched on a small four legged 'tool' and get up with an unenthusiastic effort whenever a customer came.
Behind him was a much larger cupboard, spanning across the breadth of the room, with many shelves holding a large number of boyyams or glass jars stocking different goods. An old 165 litre Allwyn fridge was stocked Cadbury's chocolates and Amul Butter. A dirty old ceiling fan, a palm leaf pankha and a small cot were the other valuable possessions.The overall look was dull, the lighting insufficient, a few boyyams were always almost empty. There were no plastic pouches nor tetra packs- just boyyams, sacks, tins, bottles and packets of very basic grocery, toiletry and tobacco products.
Dadu was a thin, wiry man. I thought he was at least 30 years older than my Dad who was around 35 at that time. Constantly masticating, probably on ajwain and saunf, his jaws would dance on the fixed hinges, and the veins around the temples would protrude and recede in rhythmic cycles. Always dressed in a dhoti and Panjabi , he smelt of fish kissed with a distinctive odour of early decay. Probably his eating preferences also informed, as I believe many with similar dietary proclivities, his responses which were pythonic and unhurried even when on the rare occasions more than two customers thronged his shop. And typical of such people, he took snuff or 'nus' also, noisily shoving small pinches with the ends of his right thumb and index finger every now and then into the hairy ends of his aquiline nose.
We would watch him cycle in ( sometimes holding aloft an umbrella), roll up the shutter after a finger flourish across his forehead and heart. He would then lazily open the locks, switch on the light and fan( if there was electricity), dust the shelf top, light two incense sticks and wave them with a practised circularity in a small prayer to start the day. There were not many customers to keep him busy through the day- and that was good. He could leaf through his Jugantor when it was delivered around 4 p.m, just after he would wake up from his siesta of around two hours. Thursdays and Sundays ( Lokhibaar and Robibaar) he was closed.
He was not a friendly man but not very hostile either - infact,he was friendlier, in a silent sort of a way with Tiger, the adopted stray dog of the street who would loll in the verandah in front of the shop. I did not like Tiger . Once it had once chased me for a good 50 yards after I had merely stomped my feet playfully while he was enjoying a snooze. Dadu was also part of that audience absolutely delighted at my discomfiture and disappointed with th escape velocity of my sprint. Later when I had lumbered back tearfully, he even scolded me for provoking Tiger.
"Tumhara school mei nahin sikhaya ki Let sleeping dogs lie? " he squeaked through his irregular dentures.
But I remember Dadu for two incidents which have remain etched in my mind ever since. There was one boy of my age Tuhin whom Dadu suspected of buying toffees and cream biscuits with money stolen from his parents . One day, Tuhin came to the shop waving a big hundred rupee note and asked for quite a few chocolates and toffees and Phantoms and Chiclets and what not. Dadu just took the note from him and shooed him off.
" I shall hand over this to your father when he returns later in the day from office ," he said to a protesting and tearful Tuhin.
The second incident involved an uncle of mine. He was an IAS officer, posted as Coal Mines Provident Fund Commissioner, and had come visiting our house. Wanting to buy some Dairy Milk bars for his two daughters, he went down to Dadu's.
'Give me two bars of Dairy Milk for my two daughters, ' he placed his order.
Dadu got up, took out two bars from the fridge.
" Two bars for two daughters? Can't they share from one?"
There was a heavy silence. Dadu's indulgent twinkle disconcerted my uncle who was dumbfounded. I looked up in admiration at Dadu.
" Two bars for two daughters? Can't they share from one?"
There was a heavy silence. Dadu's indulgent twinkle disconcerted my uncle who was dumbfounded. I looked up in admiration at Dadu.
My uncle just mumbled, " Thank you, but give me two."
He handed me one bar and walked away to his home in Jagjivan Nagar with the other for his daughters.
Engrossing. Left me with a smile and happy wala feeling.
ReplyDeleteSumi, thanks.
ReplyDeleteBut I refuse to believe such persons are not there anymore :)
Oh that road!!! How very vividly captured. Hugely nostalgic. And now my two bit contribution unearthed from a fading memory enlightened by this blogpost. This road was about 300 meterish, sloping up from Brooke Bond Office, Post Box No 22 to the bus stop. It made the return journey from the bus stop to home much less tiring. And the morning run to catch the school bus in time that much more demanding. There is one memory that just refuses to fade despite the passage of 45 years. That was the time when I went to a different school than the writer of this blog post and returned home from school slightly earlier. I would stand in the biggish balcony (is balcony the appropriate choice of adjective to describe that place I wonder) awaiting your arrival from school and the only question you would ask , looking up from Dadu's, was ki "paper aa gaya"? You had got hooked to Indian Nation quite early in your life. Is that why you write so beautifully??
ReplyDeleteThanks Vikas for butting in with the Indian Nation comment . This newspaper was another institution that fell by the way in the March of times . The years you are talking about are 1971 and 1972.
DeleteMy worst days were not Mondays or opening days of the school terms but the days following the national holidays when no paper would be published . But to get the facts right , it was only the last page of the newspaper which mattered to me : the Sports page. Yes, briefly during the War of '71, I did search out for the losses tally of the two nations on the front page .
its noteworthy for the new generation .... sir you have written in picturesquely manner. i have never visited bihar but still i can take aroma of that place from this blog.
ReplyDeleteHats off for the vivid imagery. Haven't read a better one since the Malgudi descriptions, indeed.
ReplyDeleteBrought back the flood of memories of my own growing up days in sleepy little Saharanpur.
Stern shopkeepers like Dadu shaping our worldview is something, sadly, my daughter shall miss. Dadu and his likes (tau ji in my case) teach something that modern retail should do well to learn. Retailing was always about people and not products, as is wont today.
The quintessential elderly man from the east with worldly wisdom and the know all attitude was really reminiscent of the past.I remember a quaint elderly man during my childhood days in siliguri who would become an indespensible part of a para volleyball match because he had become the official custodian of the watch of the most valuable player of the team.Its another piece how i also in a quiet way would vie for the honour of holding the watch.He had created a place in the minds of all the parar chele and only a peripheral position in the hearts of his own family.Even at that time in my unadulterated mind it had unruffled me and i thought he was relegated to such a state because of his unorthodox take on life. The newspaper addiction also reminded me how in Guwahati in the 80s i would be preoccupied in my minds and literally throw fits in the evenings for laying my hands on Aajkaal and invariably would turn to the sports pages as the Kolkata maidan football would occupy the centrestage.Those were the heydays of the nigerian Cheema Okerie, iranians Jamshed Nasseri and Majid Bhaskar and our homegrown Prashanta Banerjee and Krishanu Dey.Those were the heady days and the cursory and sneak look into the evening paper away from the prying eyes of my father was mandatory before digging into the school books.Its another story how i gradually and emphatically drifted away from Aajkaal to The Telegraph with intermittently retaining somewhat of a semiloyal readership of The Statesman as my father would urge me to look up the editorial of the latter which later i started relishing. As you rightly said the non circulating days would be like days of mourning. I must compliment you in succesfully capturing the small town imagery so vividly.
ReplyDeleteDear Vivek,
ReplyDeleteOnce again, an enjoyable post. Your story telling skill is sharpened by a narrative with which most of us can identify. You definitely specialize in creating a mental imagery. I almost walked with you on that dusty road back from bus stop, pulled back my nose at the fishy smell of Dadu, and ran for my life just behind you when the Tiger chased. And while travelling down your memory lane, I had parallel images running in the background of my mind about my own childhood memories, the neighborhood Kirana shop, its sindhi owner in a cotton vest with a huge pocket stitched in it and of course several stray dogs on my Bus stop. Thank God I was never chased. The wonders of childhood can be understood only by a child, thank you for bringing out that child in all of us for a moment. You make us pause and hold the hand of that abandoned childhood.
In our lives there are a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but etched in stone or stamped with a die. It seems most of your experiences are cast in a die, as you bring out the flavors so well even after long years, you call them up in great detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them is brought anew. Its good to know that unlike some of us lesser mortals, you photographic memory is great, age it seems hasn’t touched your mind. Do you ever forget anything Vivek?
Thank you Asma for walking the road.
DeleteMemory is a funny entity. Certain things that go back ages you can remember, but probably be at a loss to recall what happened yesterday at the office.
Research has shown so far, though without claiming it to be the final truth, that even though memory appears to be fragile, malleable and prone to errors , there are people with a highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM.
[HSAM individuals] probably reconstruct memories in the same way that ordinary people do but why they do better than others is a secret researchers have yet to explain. I think it could also be because the way even other constituents of the limbic system work defy logic.
The way memory ,culled from the hippocampus which is a part of the limbic system, unfolds differently we have just talked about. Coincidentally, the way smell works, being primarily derived from the olfactory bulbs ( again part of the same system) is also logic defining. My friend Dr. Mukherjee once wondered "Smelling smells, intrigues me! One can "smell" one's "way back" ( or "way to") in a manner that beats logic. Further, this smell causes the memory to arrange or/and re-arrange to conjure powerful emotions (passion maybe!) I mean, do we stop to even think about what a complicated process that could be?!"
By the way, I haven't forgotten my wife's birthday. As yet:) I think the darned thing also operates on a carrot and stick principle:)
Your ' road' made me walk a long distance, Vivek, on a day when there was heavy shower here !!!! Cheers !
ReplyDeleteThanks Sanjay. Days of heavy shower would often see us trudging back with shoes strung around necks on the laces and school uniform caked with mud of the football field . The walk would be slow and gingerly to avoid the odd pebble hurting the soles but a couple of winces would always accompany the difficult walk.
DeleteFrom the date of posting I see am a couple of days late , but your writings are so vivid that it keeps the flavor. Lovely, as always. I haven’t been to all residential neighborhoods in Dhanbad but developed a clear image. By the time I finished reading it, I thought, do I want to visit the places you described? Probably not, because the reality will never match the impression I developed in my mind. So let it be.
ReplyDeleteThe stories of Dadu and his shop with the neighborhood you described is good script for a short film.
As I started reading through this, I was going back to those days we walked to school and back home, somewhat envying the folks who took the bus and talked about the fun aboard the following day (the stories were always juicy). We would walk by the dusty road into the colony, left through the third gate, with the avenue flanked by ‘kadam’ trees (literally, not in literary sense ), the bungalow that hosted DNS first, past the lakes, the hostel, vegetable and meat shops (of Kashi and Habib), left to the road that led to my childhood abode, the last building in the colony. Some days we would sneak through the paddy fields and Mohalbani village and enter the colony by braving the high brick boundary wall. That vintage beauty stays in mind though.
Feeling refreshed after reading. May I add rejuvenated into the 1970’s?
Ah! this reminds me of the walk to Union Club across farmlands and Golf Ground from our home , presenting different challenges in navigation depending on the season.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of Malgudi!
ReplyDelete