The Homecoming

 

It was Durga Puja time at Calcutta, and the music was blaring out loud- one of those gaudy songs with inexplicable words that had become the rage of the season. It didn’t matter whether the words were in Hindi or Bengali- it was equally irritatingly loud and blasé’. Sample: “ Tomar mukhta ki shundor, aami bolboi bolbo .”(Your face is so beautiful, I will definitely say). It was incomprehensible how the Puja season could provide an excuse to irritate other peoples’ senses with an arbitrary choice of loud music, no doubt on the insistence of some overenthusiastic Para dadas (neighbourhood toughies).

Quite unlike the other years, this time it had rained during the Pujas, thus effectively putting a dampener on the plans of quite a few people, effectively impeding Puja Pandal (shamiana) hopping. After the cursory visit to the local Pandal, one sat at home, chatting, reading newspapers, seeing television, whiling away time with hot cups of tea. There wasn’t much to do, really, when it drizzled like this, adding a shade of gloominess to the usually boisterous festive mood, and slush filled the streets, hampering the plans of those who intended to show off their latest fashionable wear. Mrs. Chatterjee was just back from her latest visit to France, and eager to exhibit the results to a supposedly naïve (she thought so) captive admiring audience, but alas! When Varun devata ( God of rain) goes against you, what  could even Mrs. Chatterjee do?

Arko was at home for the Pujas . Seven years was a long time to miss the Puja season at home for a Calcuttaphile like Arko, but fate had effectively intercepted his homecoming attempts during Puja season in the intervening years. First Bangalore, then Bombay and finally Gurgaon- his job had taken him on a whirlwind tour of the country that he did not quite cherish, but then…. life had to be led, willy nilly.

Arkoprabho Sengupta was a long name; sometimes in the context of his professional life in an environment where everyone was “ Neil” or “ Sam” or “ Bud” ( abbreviations of Nileshwar/ Sameer/ Buddhadev) , he felt tempted to shorten it to “ Ark”, but how would that fit? It would bring up corny comparisons with Noah’ s Ark , and his experience at school  where his name was commuted to “ Ark, Ark, Hear him bark” was still fresh in his mind. He had tried it; once bitten, twice shy.  It was of course, an intensely Bengali name, and helped him to connect in an instant to other Bongs when outside Calcutta. As Baba (father) had explained patiently , “ Apu   (his nickname) , everything has its good and bad points. Take it that way.” Sound logic; he could not disagree, in any case, there was little he could do or wanted to do about it.

Pujas went on with the same fervour every year; the idols got bigger and tonier and the Pandals swisher with every passing year. This year someone won the Sharodiya (Puja season) prize, someone else the next year.  Prizes for everything- the best Idol, the best Pandal, the best decoration, the best lighting, the best creativity.There were so many competitions and prizes that creativity vied for attention at every corner of the city. But Arko wished there was one for the best food, because that was what he really pined for, holed up in one corner of dusty Gurgaon, where he missed Egg rolls, Sandesh (sweets), Calcutta-style biryani (he always maintained that biryani in Delhi-NCR was merely rice with chicken or mutton) and sundry other delights of his former life.

Five days of pure madness, delirium- children went Pandal-hopping; their elders went on an extended session of their favourite sport- Adda ( extended chatting sessions), and everyone went on with their favourite past-time of munching; egg rolls, cutlets, biryani, ghoogni, it didn’t matter- it was the time to gorge . At the end of it, after five days, the usual lethargic pace of the city caught on, and a lot of people, who chose this time of the year to be startlingly wide-eyed and awake, went back to their usual torpor and lazy slumber. And in the shadow of the great metropolis, life went on.

The concept of “Theme Pujas” , where the Idols and the Pandals were organized according to a particular theme or idea, had caught on, for the past many years, and this year, people were startled on seeing Cleopatra , the Pharaohs and various Egyptian gods staring at them from the Puja Pandal, the theme being Egypt. There had been a lively debate in the neighbourhood on the virtues of tradition versus moving with the times, but the youngsters, who were determined in their resolve to usher in  new-fashioned norms, had won. They had to win anyway, because they performed the bulk of the work in the arrangement of the Pujas.

One almost expected the Jackal God Anubis and the mummies with their tombs to be there , accompanying Cleopatra and the Pharaohs ; mercifully, that was spared. Change, they said, is the spice of life, so the gods and goddesses had been altered to suit the changing tastes. Times had moved on, and the year held surprises for everyone.

The priest was duly and piously horrified when he saw the face of the diety ( Durga devi camouflaged as Cleopatra) for the first time.

“I cannot feel any bhakti (faith). How can I do the puja?” he asked.

“ Kaku ( Uncle) , gods are gods- whether Indian or Egyptians. What difference does it make? On the other hand, we are promoting the unity of nations. It’s a noble initiative”, retorted one of the young, enthusiastic organizers. Sound logic indeed- it could not be countered.

The firm resolution of the Puja organizers was that bhakti had to be summoned, willy-nilly. It was merely one of that innovations that everyone did these days, and the priest  really should fall in line, he had no choice, really ....the poor guy agreed, but not after some more grumbling and some palm-greasing; bhakti has its own price tag, after all, and the priest was not immune to making some more on the sly above his usual fees.

Baba burst out when he heard all this, “This is Kali Yug ( modern times) Where have the Pujas of our childhood gone? All gimmicks and no faith!.” Arko had to nod- he had become kind of passive in front of his father these days.

He was on extended leave from work, and it was the second day of his stay. Pujas were the perfect time for homecoming, and the atmosphere compensated for everything. The sheer delirium and the outpouring of energy that one witnessed in these few days was a phenomenon in itself.  All around, the Pandals  were  there in all shapes and forms- here, an old colonial mansion, there, a cave ( all in the name of Theme Pujas) , and then the fairly plain ones that stuck to the same form year after year. The Gods came in different denominations too- here, the traditional ekchaala (single-structure) form of Durga and her children- Laxmi, Saraswati, Ganesh and Kartik, all together on the same pedestal; and there, the innovations- Durga suspended in the air, Durga as Mother India , Durga doing the latest jig from a movie ( again offsprings of Theme Puja ideas), and so on. There was something for everything, to suit everyone. It was a shutterbug’s delight, and as an avid photographer, Arko enjoyed it all.

What he missed was the zeal of his childhood when he  would stay up nights with his friends to rehearse for the cultural programmes that were always put up- the inherent simplicity of a festival that was essentially a social leveller, for it brought everyone together, regardless of social or economic status- the NRI doctor rubbed shoulders with the office clerk, all was well for a few days, rivalries were temporarily suspended, love and courtship were in the air, quite a few matches were made, and people went about earnestly celebrating a few days of insanity. The revelry was very much there, but what happened to those days when the Pujas were not about competitions of big, better and best but simply about having a good time? After all, in Delhi, at certain places such as the Karol Bagh Kalibari (Kali temple), he felt the same fervor and simplicity of his childhood during the Pujas, devoid of the machinations of an intensely competitive environment. To him, Delhi was gradually becoming more enjoyable during the pujas than the myriad big pujas of Calcutta, which had an intense eye on bagging the first prize in everything. Of course, the competition bug had hit Delhi and its environs too, and it would probably not be long before the same fervor engulfed the Pujas there. It was a matter of time.

What was vaguely bothering his mind was that his relations with Baba showed no signs of rapproach.  Baba still hadn’t forgiven him his indiscretions. It was understandable, of course; Baba was the morally upright kind-  strong, determined , with gold -rimmed glasses, and an imperial moustache which he said he had inherited from his father, his favourite grey chequered shirt and flannel trousers, pipe firmly in place. Dr. Rajendra Sengupta was an intangible, fascinating mixture of affability and imperiousness, just the picture of the old-world professor who had taken part in the freedom movement in the 1940s as a child, and had been taken in by the British police for this ; he wore this incident like a badge upon his chest, and his patriotic fervor was present for all to see.

Arko had been taken in by the police too, but under vastly different circumstances, four years back. It had started with the whirlwind affair with the Punjaban (Punjabi lady) whom he had met at the India Habitat Centre. She was a colleague of one of his friends; the bored kind who was doing a job for the sake of it, husband a businessman who spent most of his time outside the country. He had no intentions of doing anything, really, and he was definitely not in love with her; but the way it progressed, he gave in to his desires, probably egged on by the loneliness of the great and desolate city.

What he did not know (and she understandably did not reveal) were her husband’s political connections, which were revealed after he lodged a complaint at the local police station. And for one who has not been subjected to the brutality of the Delhi police, the details are better spared.Arko did not have to be taken to the hospital only because his old friends from St. Stephen’s , ensconced in the high altitudes of the Delhi bureaucracy, intervened in time. Baba’s long sessions at the police station, and the glowering rage thereafter, after he had to fly down to Delhi at very short notice, were still fresh in his mind. Despite being a nationally well-regarded academic, it had taken Baba all his persuasive powers to convince the police inspector to let off his son, after apologizing to the lady’s family. He had been let off with a subtle message that any further such episodes would be detrimental to his son’s professional and personal well-being. The guy, who was not much interested in his wife anyway, and had enacted this episode merely to harass her and the other persons involved, enjoyed sadistically from the distance, and the matter was settled.

After this episode, Baba had not forgiven him. It was the final breach after years of cold war, first starting with his refusal to study Engineering, as Baba would have liked him to. Baba had not quite forgiven his choice of career, “Advertising is for those who want to peddle cigarettes and booze “(and, Arko wanted to add, “ condoms”, but could not do so in front of Baba). This was compounded by his refusal to stay in Calcutta, even after Maa (mother) passed away five years back, and the Delhi affair was the final betrayal- the confirmation that everything was wrong with his son. It had taken all of his relatives, most of all his elder brother whom he could not disobey, to persuade him not to disown his only son.

Arko had, inevitably, gained a kind of notoriety, and thus his social circle in his neighbourhood had dwindled. It was kind of hypocritical, Arko maintained, because he merely did what many of his friends in Calcutta always had a secret desire to do – have a torrid affair with a “ hot” girl from Delhi, but only he dared ( so he reasoned) to do so. Only his confused mind did not allow him to register that it was probably a circumstance which was not entirely conducive to his long-term mental and physical well-being.

But poor Arko had never really been the focussed kind. Right from the school days, as his friends maintained, “his balls were in his head.” He was easily misled , misguided, and as for overtures from the opposite sex, well, he was like clay in the hands of an expert potter. Despite his sessions with dope, extended hangouts with his muses  and his single-minded aversion to his books, he had managed to drift to St.Stephens to study English Literature, but there ended his engagement with formal education, which he decided, was harmful for his long-term growth. First a teaching job in an obscure college in Bangalore, then a shift to a stint of script- writing in Bombay and finally an advertising assignment in Gurgaon..… his life , he imagined , was like that of a flower child of the ‘60s , blowing in the wind. Psychedelic Pink Floyd music rubbed shoulders with melodious Rabindrasangeet in his room; the Bible (an inheritance of his missionary school days) found a place of pride beside the Gita (a forcible implant by Baba). His friends had given up trying to figure who he was.

But, all said and done, he was the lovable and amiable kind, who held on to his friends dearly, missed his former sweethearts and tried to connect with them from time to time, and for whom emotional bursts took precedence over pelvic thrusts. No one held a grudge against him, really; he loved people, which explained his group of small but fanatically devoted friends. He did his stoning sessions and boozed from time to time dutifully , had affairs ( only two after the last painful episode), - but he was no junkie, alcoholic or womanizer-  it was all in his peculiarly egalitarian way of living his life the way he wanted, to the fullest, and letting others do the same. And the fact that he was successful in his profession, attracted more than his fair share of the fairer sex to him. It was difficult not to like him, or at least, to relate to him, for he made people feel at ease by his openness.

He was back from the morning session at the Puja pandal, enduring the drizzle, where he had performed some hurried incantations before the diety, chatted with a small group of people who had assembled there, and determinedly pushed aside Mrs. Chatterjee’s flaunting of her latest hairdo . Sitting at home, he was reading “ English, August”, one of his favourites, to whose protagonist he connected in a tangible way. He was quite like Augustya- indisciplined, used to enjoying his vices and thinking incoherent thoughts. He was smiling at the mental comparison.

“Apu, come for lunch”, Baba was calling.

 Lunch these days were short and sweet, which was merciful, because Arko could not stand the long moments of silence. It was kind of awkward to eat in silence. The maid-cum cook -cum housekeeper was , of course, only to happy to wrap it up first- she wanted her lazy afternoon siesta.

After lunch, Arko was rambling through the cluttered but rambling mansion that Baba called home. A long rectangular living cum dining room, with an antique television set , sofas, dining table and the omnipresence of Maa as she looked down from one of the portraits, bedecked with a simple garland,  from the wall. Somehow his feeling of homeliness at what was supposedly his house, had declined considerably since her death- all these years, she had pampered him despite all his follies, as all mothers  do, much to the chagrin of Baba. It was never the same thereafter, and even Baba maintained that his son’s final decline had much to do with her untimely death. Not that he sought to do much about it other than moralize. Bringing up children, even fully grown ones, was in his view majorly the responsibility of the lady of the house, as most Indian husbands, in his view, must necessarily think. But it was impossible to deny that he missed his wife dearly- he was the kind of person who would hold on to his fond memories till his last day- it was probably the absence of anyone to share this loneliness with , which had made him cynical and unhappy over the years.

The phone rang. It was Shishir, his childhood friend, who had similarly come over from Bangalore to enjoy the Pujas.

“Are we going out this evening?”was Shishir’s single-minded quest.

“ Probably. Only if you agree to shed some moolah at the Pink Elephant.” was his retort. Going to a  disc on a Puja day was not incongruous – it fitted in perfectly into Arko’s scheme of things.

“Ok. Seven o clock then”, Shishir disconnected. It was characteristic of their friendship- often monosyllabic, at times garrulous, but always intense, short and sweet.

Arko slumbered off into the lazy, late, humid afternoon, recollecting the stoning session at Badhkal Lake last year, when, braving the Haryana police, he had managed to sample the marijuana that one of his friends had procured from Afghanistan. They had driven out to the dried lake which was once supposedly pristine, stoned themselves high, and then managed to sneak back past the police checkposts. Arko had become an expert in evading the law after his painful episode four years back, but then , he did not do it for the thrill, but merely to maintain what he saw as uniquely his way of life.

The long, languid afternoon coalesced, from his recollections of stoning, half-mindful memories of his former life in the same house, many years back, and then on to  slumber and dreams. Arko’s mind was drifting……..It was a Sunday, and Baba’s ideal way of spending the Sunday morning was to relax, reminiscence, and in general be happy with the small pleasures of life- the cup of tea, the newspaper , his family and the music from the radio- the latter a huge contraption, with protruding dials, controls and buttons,  that held the place of pride in the living room, and was decorated suitably . Gradually, his family joined him- Arko, all of five years old, flush from the exertions of prancing around on a Sunday morning;  Mrs.Sengupta, just out of her morning chores; and sometime later, even the maid who freed herself for half an hour from the kitchen, sat in one corner of the room, on the floor, and perhaps not understanding the music, listened keenly. This was the most wholesome form of entertainment for all of them.  They were soon joined by others- Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohd Rafi, Kishore Kumar, K.L. Saigal …..…and soon the room started reverberating with the latest and the oldest melodies wafting around. Baba’s favourite was “ Aaye mere vatan ke logon “ by Lata Mangeshkar, which he said, never failed to move him to tears. He had heard the song in his youth, and his patriotic fervor had taken a huge liking for it. Indeed, it moved them all…… even though Arko did not quite understand the words. Music was Baba’s way of rekindling memories, and feeling nostalgic. Bengali folk songs reminded him of his childhood days; the film songs took him back to his carefree youth and college days; and the occasional classical music that he heard, invariably took him back to his single encounter with Pandit Ravi Shankar at the Calcutta airport in 1965. His mind was used to neatly organizing and classifying things. And so, his family had organized their Sunday lives around the juke box, sharing good times together, as a happy and contented family.

The door bell rung with a loud jingle, and Arko, who had slept off in the living room, woke up. The afternoon maid had come. He opened the door, yawned, let the maid in, tried to go back to sleep, then seeing the time, decided against it. It was four in the afternoon, and he fixed himself a strong cup of coffee. Baba was still having his extended afternoon siesta in the bedroom.

Seven o clock seemed so far away. Not having anything better to do, he rummaged through the house, moving from room to room. It seemed such a vast waste of space, when compared to the DDA flats in Delhi. The furniture was probably several generations old, but Baba wanted it exactly that way. This was his ancestral house, and he would die with his memories around him, he maintained.

Foraging through the house, in one of the rooms, he came across a contraption in a huge old wooden almirah. It looked vaguely familiar. A wooden box, knobs and controls protruding; it wasn’t something that looked commonplace. Certainly the thick layer of dust on it indicated that it hadn’t been used for a long time. For a moment, he was taken aback wondering what it was and how it came here. Even by Baba’s standards, it looked pretty antique.

And then, in a flash, it came back to him. It was Baba’s pleasure box, his once-precious possession - his radio.  He vaguely remembered that, not being able to maintain it, for old instruments needed constant nurturing, he had given it to one of his cousins many years back, and had settled for a modern music system, with FM radio, CDs and the works, albeit reluctantly, and after extracting a solemn promise from the latter that he would take good care of it as if it were one of his own possessions. The cousin had a sudden demise three years back, and that explained the presence of this instrument back to the house.

Heart thumping, Arko put his finger on the music box and furrowed out his name on the layers of dust. “A..R..K..O.” It took some time to finally shed off the years of dust, but when he finally did so, the instrument stood out. He connected it to the electric socket, and was amazed to find that…. the indicator light still worked!

Arko turned the knobs with bated breath, but there was only a whirring sound. He tried all the controls, to no effect … the whirring sound continued. It seemed like a big let-down!

Just as he was about to turn it off, Arko could suddenly hear a faint melody coming out. He adjusted a few more controls here and there … all in the faint hope of resurrecting the contraption. And finally, after all this effort… the radio , sputtering after the long period of coma, came into life, humming out a song that was instantly recognizable and brought a lump to his throat.

It was the evening special programme from Akashvani. After all these years, Lata Mangeshkar was again crooning “ Aaye mere vatan ke logon.” He was hearing the song after ages.

Outside the house, blaring through the window of the room, the sound of the Pandal loudspeaker belting out the latest Matka Jhatka numbers would have been in other circumstances, overbearing, but it seemed at that moment as nothing more than a minor irritant. Wading through the years of dust which had deposited themselves on his memory, Arko had finally reached one of those moments of ecstasy which was as precious as it was rare.

As he turned around , he saw Baba in the doorway …there was a far-away look on his face…. he was melancholic and ecstastic at the same time…Arko could tell instantaneously that he had been mentally transported back in time. He listened with rapt attention, not moving, and as Arko came nearer him, he saw that tears had welled up in Baba’s eyes.

As Arko tried to pass by him to move into the adjoining room, Baba stopped him and held his arm, tightly. Despite the pain and the suffering that he had seen in him in for all these years, and the anger and despair that always seemed to engulf his relations with his son, Arko saw him smile, for the first time since he had come home.

“Thank you, Apu.”, he whispered in a hoarse voice.

The lump in his throat tightening, Arko muttered out a silent “thank you” in turn to Lata Mangeshkar for the small moment of ecstasy. It was one of those rare moments that one lived for.