Twenty years back, right the time I am writing this column, I lost someone who was very close to me and is and will continue to be until I breathe my last. That “someone” is my father.
Today is the day of clouds. Sun succumbs almost totally. Rain comes in ragingly. There is a literary term: objective correlative. The external reflects the internal. Nature mirrors my mind perfectly today.
In my childhood I was afraid of two subjects: Maths and English. The logic of Maths still confounds me. On Sundays when I go out to Neelpur market for weekly buy of fish and vegetables in the morning, I am reminded hilariously of proverbial mastermoshai of maths in “Gnosai Baganer Bhut” Of Shirshendu Mukhopadhaya who leaves the job of counting the exact costs to the sellers as mastermoshai finds it a tall order to calculate the odd amounts like two hundred seventy five or eighty grams!
Father never taught me English. But sometimes he asked me to narrate what was happening around me in English. As I found my stock of vocabulary badly wanting in, he prescribed to read The Statesman. It is the only newspaper he bought. No vernacular daily was allowed, though he himself was a teacher of Bengali. I could go through the sports page, only that part which narrated goal scoring. Matches of East Bengal or Mohan Bagan were brought live in running commentary to sports lovers from Akashbani Kolkata just the previous day; so I could understand smattering of words or expressions like “scored goal/goals” “spectacular save” “outstanding performance”. In the case of cricket I started getting acquainted with “hitting a ton” “scintillating shot” etc. For a student of primary class, coming to know some high-sounding words gave me a feel of being a cut above the rest. But I was weak in grammar. My subjects hardly could agree with verbs. I found placing a right preposition was a very tricky issue. ’You have to put the ball on the table. If the ball flies off your racket, your effort comes to naught.’ A table tennis enthusiast, father, said when he occasionally checked my English writing and found holes in every sentence construction that boasted of flamboyant words.
On a rainbow afternoon after a norwester, father opened his scale-changing harmonium and taught me “E ki e sundor shobha…. .” Incidentally I was then learning raga Bhupalee from Dr. Dhruvo Tara Joshi. Father gave an example of how Tagore improvised that raga in that song. On a moon-lit evening of Holi, he taught “Ke rang lagale bone bone… .”
Father once organized a Rabindra-sondhya at Academy of Music Joshi ji founded where he invited Professor Joshi’s students to participate. He gave each of his students a raga-based song like “Kaar milon chao birohee”, “Rakho rakho re”, “Moharajo e ki saje”, “ Mondire mamo ke” etc. On a final day, his students failed to perform properly. Some missed notes while some even misread taal. On behalf of his students, Joshi ji apologized to father, saying ‘Rabindrosangeet is not my cup of tea’. He thus effectively drew an end to a long-drawn debate he had with father over supremacy of Classical Music over Rabindrosangeet. Father opined that Classical training did give a clear edge but that did not guarantee that the singer could sing Rabindrosangeet flawlessly. The inherent notational discipline and stricter keeping of time may prove difficult to even a seasoned Classical performer as he is used to shorten or broaden time-space to suit his hitting the “som” (the thrust of song) after doing various permutations and combinations of notes in fast-paced “taan”. After facing fast bowlers of marauding pace, batsmen tend to get out to innocuous spin. Rabindrosangeet is that spin and Dr. Joshi had realized it; and hence the apology.
Father did gardening from the early morning after sipping a cup of hot tea. He dug out earth with a small khurpee. He trimmed out wild branches of Rangon. He sprinkled water on rose plants. Whenever he went to his friend’s house or someone paid him a visit, he greeted them with flowers of his garden. He loved to see his garden smile with blossoms from outside at him as he sang on a simple bed in a large front quaint room bellowing his harmonium.
Father in his spare time told me stories of his youthful adventures with his bosom friends like Shanti uncle, Antim uncle and Solil uncle to the forested outskirts of town. I believe, not without reason, that his place of adventure is now our dwelling place. He remains a stitching being between his past adventure and our present venture of shifting residence from Nutanpally to Ulhas.
The then ruling party attacked our house over a family issue that was pending in court and was scheduled for final hearing after much effort to stall it by the blockers was removed by a protracted costly legal battle. The attackers were the supporters of a revolutionary party who took out processions over “US imperialist attacks” on nation/nations they knew well from their party mouth-piece at the drop of a hat during evenings. They held a khap panchayat in the very room father sang and effectively hijacked the court case. That revolutionary party had made a record of hijacking highest number of court cases in the country within fifteen years of their coming to power. For more than four hours the revolutionaries went on the rampage and vandalized our home and garden. The revolutionaries were successful (as they had been in their more than three decades of stay at power). Father died within months. The Taj Mahal variety of rose he took special care of every day gave a fitting farewell by blooming to its every branch in scarlet brilliance. Flowers are not ungrateful.
Today I went back to those evenings emotionally when father would sing with his signature style – Tomay notun kore pabo bole harai kshane kshan o mor bhalobasar dhon…