I used to come here where I live now. Ulhas. Those days this place was a vast expanse of greenery. Those days mean when I was a school boy. I with my handful of friends came here cycling all the way from Nutanpally in the days of Choitro as daytime broadened after being held captive in winter briefly.
It was a city outskirt. The Grand Trunk Road bisected paddy fields. There was a row of dhabas. (Now they have extended poignantly.) Three dhabas, in all, stood here on the northern end of G. T. Road. They were actually three simple rooms that had some cots in front. Truck drivers sat cross-legged on them, bit raw onions and tore rustically up rutis and munched them noisily after dipping them in spicy hot egg tarka.
Kundu Hotel was in the middle; the other two being Goldy and Joy Hotel. We used to come to Kundu and sit in the garden that was actually its courtyard in the back. The garden overlooked rail lines and running trains far off where the long spread of green field ended in the north.
We generally took ruti and tarka. We found the place full of wind that hissed and rustled in the leaves of an enormous banyan tree. The tree looked a timeless occupant just outside the boundary wall. Sparrows came in shrill boisterous groups and spun overhead before they retired to the banyan tree for the day. Two soaring kites, always two, were in their home-bound unhurried flight as sun was dropping silently among a cluster of coconut trees.
Simul, palash and krishnochura lined up G.T. Road some distance away near a brick-coloured building that read Shoilen Mukherjee Deaf and Dumb School on its clinky gate. The fallen flowers left the street a riotous red and smashed orange as heavy traffic mowed them. After lip-smacking tarka and fluffy ruti we used to sit under the indulgent trees. Shoktigar-bound bus passed us every few minutes. The buses were crowded. Office-goers were returning home in busloads.
Those trees were a bus-stop. Conductor opened the door as the bus slowed down and jumped on the road. Alisha. Alisha. He would shout thumping on the body of bus. Some passengers filed down. New passengers got in. Sho—kti—i-i-go-o-r, the conductor would shout the destination from the top of his voice; then he slammed shut the door and the bus would move on.
After some small rush of moments, it was back to quiet twilight all over again. From a make-shift tea stall on the other side of road, a transistor radio was playing: Chole jay mori hay basonter din chole jay…
It was a record of Hemonto Mukherjee from a radio station, Yuvo Bani, I think, that was celebrating the arrival and departure of spring.
A slice of moon was right above our head. The heat generating road cooled down a bit. The unwieldy wind stirred the leaves. From nowhere a lone cuckoo gave a long last solitary call.
We got up and rode our cycles. The song meanwhile moved on to its interlude where the music rose up, stayed there a little, then quivered and came down sharply. It repeated itself maddeningly.
Years back, those trees were hacked down to make room for road expansion to accommodate rising number of cars.
Days back, the banyan tree was chopped off to make way for a building.
Paddy fields shrank down for burgeoning private school and college buildings to come up.
In absence of shelter, the regenerating sparrows left the area for good.
Spring now comes and goes in calendar pages. The paint-coated buildings stand indifferent to nature; as are the dizzy dazzling cars.
Rabindrosangeet now gives way to raucous cacophony.