This tale gives you a small glimpse into the lives of local
calcuttans - simple people, slow life and fish. The air has culture, good music,
books and smiling faces. The taxi driver (we respectfully call as ‘dada’) will
be updated with the latest political scenario and aware of his own rights. You
will always be welcome to this city, doesn’t matter where you come from. Here’s
a small tale from the city of joy.
Rita woke up to her day at 6 AM, her mother had called her
twice and the third would be dangerous. Ma was always worried if Rita missed
waking up at 6, her day would be wasted, a logic she never understood. Baba was
attuned to Ma’s logic and followed the same. Her house was falling apart
financially each day and she often thought it would the last day in her father’s
inherited house on the tiny Kali lane. Contractors had made various offers and
they contemplated each of those against their memories of Didun (grandmother)
and none of them were good enough. How could they be? Last 6 generations had
been living here and dying here. The memories run deep in their blood.
Rita was a PHD in microbiology and she went off to various offers
with her small file to end up rejected. They said they needed her to know the
computers well or they couldn’t pay enough. They never needed her knowledge and
yet that’s all that she knew. She’d probably compromise with the work but the
city was slowing down, falling apart, most of her friends were jobless and
flying out. Didun’s memory never let her consider that. Maybe she would some
day just go away to save Didun’s house. But today was not that day, today she
would just wait it out.
She pushed away the CV file by nudging it a little with the
corner of her arm and sat up on her bed. It was a 3foot high bed with wooden
carvings on the head and it had four support pillars going up creating a
rectangle for the mosquito net. It was made of pure Mahogany and this used to
be Didun’s bed. Ritu slipped into her slipper and walked to her favourite place
on earth – her Varandah.
It was a small potrution from the main house into the lane
(possibly illegal by the present land laws) with tiny little flower pots and a
parrot swinging mightily with the breeze. The little garden was Ritu’s creation
of her travel adventures. She hadn’t seen the world but she wanted to. She had
read of it and she imagined each place in her head. How Sherlock’s Baker Street
would have been like. How the baboons from Africa (Chander Pahar) would be
like. How wild animals in Africa ran. How the most dangerous mountain was like.
How the valley in Holland would look with a full bloom. She wondered sometimes.
Other times she would look at her little garden and think she’d be there
someday and brush her palm against the rose.
Maina, her parrot (ironically Maina is the name of another
bird) was named by Didun. It was a joke her grandfather made of. He would say
that all of Kolkata’s people always dreamed so small that they would name a
parrot with the name of another ordinary bird, scared it would fly away, just
like a parrot should. He was a scientist in the Saha Institute and was forcefully
retired due to false allegations that never got proven or resolved. Didun
however was no less, she hailed from a little town in Kalna, had completed her biochemistry
from the Bardhaman University and that was it. Her marriage had got in the way.
Didun kept writing and helped Dadun (grandfather) in the lab work whenever she
could. Ritu always looked upto her ability to manage both sides of the
household. Ironically, Didun had slipped on the Verandah due to wet floor and
had a sever hemorrhage ending in her sudden death. It was widely discussed in
the joint family whether the Verandah was unlucky and if it should be broken
off. Luckily the current laws required them to first make it a legal part for
working on it. There were some complications and work needed to be done before
it could be brought down. Procrastination must have orginated in Calcutta
(Kolkata) Ritu thought. Any work that needs work can be assumed to never be
done by the Calcuttan. She smirked. Her little cat pressed her skin on her feet
and she caressed it. Her little world was just perfect.
She could hear her mother call her for the breakfast. She
would have to help her, so she scurried her way quickly to the kitchen,
glancing at her little Verandah again, her heaven, her little breath of fresh
air.
-Inspired by the new film ‘Verandah’ by Rituparna Sen Gupta
