All these years have passed, but Arin still wonders, as though it were the earliest memory of that lost era that had been profoundly entrenched in his mind, as he couldn’t shake the feeling of where his childhood friend Piku Mama went and where all those days had gone. Piku Mama... O Piku Mama...
To this day, Arin often finds himself quietly longing for Piku Mama’s one-year sojourn in 1987 at the Trishul Park residential housing, which has since redefined the course of his life, his personal history, so to speak, redeemed by months of learning how to paint, cycle, or play Cricket in all the best ways imaginable.
The everyday ordinariness of life possessed stirring sublimity that inspired an overwhelming feeling of love and longing for the era gone too soon.
This is a story of a friend whom Arin never forgot and has always remembered ever since, a friend of long ago, really long ago.
--∞--
Piku Mama was an intensely good-looking gentleman with a fine sense of modesty and humility that few of us possess.
Fascinatingly patient, thoughtful, and gentle to a fault, this Kolkata artist was quite the painting virtuoso with a God-gifted natural genius woven deep into his DNA: the double helix bound together by his master-level technical finesse he achieved in creative painting—be it landscapes, oil, etching-style drawings, murals, or even portraits—motivated by endless hours of intense practice and early abortive attempts at creating something fruitful, useful and delightful — a feeling that had then been long adrift, since his childhood days perhaps, in his mind when he worked night and day to create great-looking oil artworks like legendary old masters of yore for home or gifting. An air of quiet charm about him made Arin admire him as a friend, soft-spoken and impeccably polite.
A graduate in fine arts from Kolkata (then known as Calcutta), he rarely had a three-day stubble beard because he liked shaving regularly but every alternate day. Or liked to ‘harvest the ripening home-grown crops’ ‘gharer chaash’ home cultivation, as he’d say, every other day, with a single-blade 9 o’clock steel razor and his staple white-lathered green-and-yellow lime fresh Godrej shaving cream that went for months, and still be good for another two months.
Piku Mama’s personality comes through naturally; no put-ons or making fashionably contorted faces to display an unnecessary emotion while having a conversation. He enjoyed articulating funny Bengali stock phrases whenever the situation demanded, such as “Bekhappa,” “Jaak babba!” “Heavvy,” “Oo babaa!” to give a distinctive cadence to the context surrounding the conversation while he played cards or lay on his back on the cool cement floor listening to music or reflecting on a past happy memory, with Arin and Raja in tow, hanging on to every word, look, or a smile he sent their way. There’s a sense of quiet peacefulness surrounding him that permeates everything he discusses or conveys a perspective, whether it is music being played on the newly bought stereo system, new original oil paintings currently being made, or anything that comes up in their regular long conversations from morning to afternoon, especially on a holiday or during Sundays. He was a congenial artist who painted a variety of aesthetically luminous pictures—in oil, acrylic, watercolour, or pastel colours—during his entire sojourn at his jamai babu’s (sister's husband) Trishul Park dormitory, where Arin frequented long enough to know that it was going to change his life, yes, forever. Piku Mama didn’t leave any space for his painting to flourish, his imagination writ large everywhere in the house: Old kerosene drums, wine bottles turning into flower vases, small portions of drawing or bedroom walls painted with urban-style geometric accents illustrating garden flowers with long blades of grass sprouting among them, and even painted on the portable wooden box in which that yappy little barker, Roxy, one of their three house pets, resided.
Sometimes Mithu Pakhi would holler from above in the veranda, “Aije, ki hochche?” Hello, what’s happening?
Piku Mama would glance overhead and say, “Painting korchi, Mithu” I am painting, Mithu.
The parrot would respond again in a light-hearted banter, "Aaahaha... haahaa... Paintingg kochii…, Mitoo!” “Paintingg kochii…, Mitoo!”
And then again, “Pikoo…” “Pikoo…” “Pikoo…” “Pikoo…”
Raja, his little nephew of 6 or 7 years of age, also learned how to paint, as did Arin, a few years older than him, in their spare time after school hours, which was nearly plenty. Piku Mama became their mentor friend, attempting to teach these two youngsters, showing active eagerness to paint, cycle, and play taash—cards. Days went by so fast.
During the school holidays and often on Sundays, Arin, Piku Mama, and Raja (Piku Mama’s nephew) would indulge in playing cards (taash) relaxingly, as they listened to music on their new Philips stereo recorder. Piku Mama taught them how to play cards and to paint as well. Arin painted (or smeared!) only watercolours and acrylics; not most, but all of which turned out to be scandalous eyesores, prompting hearty laughter out of everyone who happened to even as much as dart a look at his senseless horror-house madness that had been going on with Arin and Raja since the last few days of learning how to paint landscape pictures on white bond paper. When Arin hung them on the wall of his dorm’s drawing room, they post-haste wilted from the corners, and the watercolour paints faded in the shortest amount of time imaginable. When the strings attached to these sheets of paper slackened, they plunged behind the chairs, vanishing under them in urgent shame. Thankfully, no one was discoloured!
--∞--
One time, when Piku Mama was wearing a shirt to go out cycling with Arin, Arin couldn’t help but notice how much body hair he had on his chest, shoulders, and back, exactly like the Hindi film star Anil Kapoor in the movie Woh Saat Din. Piku Mama explained, merely out of polite habit, that his body hair pattern was a natural trait: a genetic characteristic that he likes the way it has always been since his childhood days. He sure looked nicely groomed, manly, and was elegance personified.
Like everything else during those days in Trishul Park, Piku Mama, who was several years senior to Arin, was lost to the past, too. Like all good things, it must come to an end. After 1987, Arin never saw his beloved, soul-brother-like mama again. With the heartfelt, innocent idealism of his youth, Arin exchanged postal addresses with him, but he never received a reply to his letters, more like epistles, written in a smattering of piecemeal Bengali and innocent school-level English embroidered with loads of grammatical corrections his handwritten letters could make room for, which was all he could manage. Two full letters were sent by postal service, but no reply ever came. Maybe they never reached him in the first place. Slowly, that old hope for long-lasting friendship had extinguished. Raja was just a school-going lad, but Piku Mama, oh so dear he was to Arin, was never coming back to Alwal.
Piku Mama went back to Calcutta (now known as Kolkata), likely establishing a full-fledged painting and sketching art school there, for he was, at that point, in Alwal, more than a budding artist. His oil paintings of Austrian and Russian landscapes from one of Arin’s many Embassy of Austria and USSR books had received well-regarded compliments from family, friends, and other discerning kinsfolk who saw them whenever they came over to the Saha household for the pleasure of having tea over a pleasant chit-chat.
Life’s memories are not life’s history, but the original work of an unseen artist – Rabindranath Tagore, My Reminiscences
Calcutta for him was not just a city where he was born and brought up in but an emotional ache of nostalgic longing tied to the charming attachments he has in that historic ‘city of joy’—that’s how he related to Arin in that long afternoon when he was readying to pack up his luggage with thick paint brushes, bottled oil paints properly sealed air-tight, a foldable easel stand that was difficult to fold, three to four blank canvas boards packed in a longish faux leather cloth bag, clothes among which were his prized multi-coloured batik-printed and checked Calcutta lungis, Sando banians, shirts and pants. He started missing home, being away for a year from his painter’s alcove back in his Kolkata residence a little distant from the eastern banks of the river Ganga serenely flowing past the city was enough, as he had become homesick when he moved out of town, pining to embrace the familiar sights and sounds of this part of Calcutta: the aroma of matir bharer cha (tea in an earthen clay cup), adda (hangout), thoughtful conversations with family and friends, the smell of painted canvasses, among many other things. Time stands timeless still in Calcutta.
Shortly after his one-year sojourn at Trishul Park ended, he probably got married as he moved back to Calcutta, a city Arin loved spending time in. His leaving was sad enough for Arin, though not for the first time had he to embrace the grieving curve his boyhood life had dealt him.
Just when he thought his warm, close friendship with Piku Mama—who had, as Arin reflected on reaching the end of his memorable days with Piku Mama, good enough emotional intelligence, humility, and maturity for a man in his mid-20s—had started to strengthen and go on lifelong, Piku Mama had to leave Trishul Park permanently before handing out his Calcutta address to Arin, and saying, “Do write.” Arin stood there, unmoving as he took the address from him, already feeling overwhelmed by the impact of his absence; getting used to this change would definitely make him terribly anxious.
It meant that the days of their playing cricket in front of the Saha dormitory with Raja, Piku Mama’s school-goer nephew, joining them, Piku Mama and Arin, with childlike glee that was only young children’s prerogative, came to a close. The cricket bat, when he (Raja) held it, appeared in size bigger than him, and the ball, no doubt, must have seemed the size of a football in his eyes! The little dynamo, akin to an Energizer bunny power-packed, played valiantly and hit a couple of fours and sixes to apparently slow spin bowling: The ball ran on the downward slope of the meadow ground, went across the road in a jiffy, and hit the lower dormitory wall on the opposite flank and came to rest there for them to pick it up. That’s how hard-hitting batsman Raja had become, my God, over the past few months! The three of them also played cards incessantly, often until mid-afternoon, the hour of lunchtime, when Arin had to tear himself away from their infectious camaraderie and go home to get ready to complete his homework and study while also waving a ‘hello’ to his beloved friend Rajveer (Raju) if he happened to be on the balcony of his first-floor dormitory.
Cycling in the Sub-Area; listening to film songs; or generally lazing around the Saha household on Sundays while Piku Mama sometimes cooked Drumsticks (Moringa) Curry (Sojne Datar Chorchori in home-made Bengali style), in a rich mustard-coconut gravy and poppy seeds ground to a paste; with him chatting about his memorable experiences that old Calcutta accorded him during his school and college years; his mostly self-taught painting beaux-arts. Life in the ‘nillionaire’ slow lane, as it were, of 1980s-era Calcutta was uniquely different, nothing exactly like it anywhere in the country.
His passion for painting was obviously a high point of their conversation; it was his lifeblood. When Arin and Raja got hooked on painting, mostly doing watercolours, thanks to Piku Mama’s enjoyable method of facilitating gentle learning about shading and blending techniques, they often changed course to discuss Rabindra Sangeet that Piku Mama played when he rendered an exquisite Russian or Austrian landscape or a deeply impressive picture of Indian village life, Hindi film songs, and new Bengali songs, such as from the 1987 musical romantic drama film, the songs of which are still etched in Arin’s heart, Guru Dakkhina. Or the lovely songs of the 1987 Hindi film Khudgarz, especially “Zindagi Ka Naam Dosti,” “Log Kehate Hain Ke, Pila Chand Hai Sabse Hasin…,” alongside “Aap Ke Aa Jane Se” and “Yahin Kahin Jiyara Hamaar.” That was how they spent most of their days, back in the day. Raja, Piku Mama, and Arin would prefer to sit on the cool morning floor, and as they sipped slowly, taking small, delicate mouthfuls from tall glasses of lemonade, they enjoyed listening to these romantic songs playing on their precious Philips stereo.
When Piku Mama’s year-long sojourn at Trishul Park came to an end in 1987, Arin’s emotional state became one of existential despair. Feelings of dispiriting sadness crept in. There was something life-altering about Piku Mama’s looming departure. He remembered philosophizing as his teenage mind could muster, as if someone from his own family had gone away and his days of happiness would all be over. Sitting in the easy chair at home, he read the first page of the novel The Guide (by RK Narayan), which he bought for ten rupees from his pocket money; he began to weep, as tears welled up in his eyes for some time. He was a teenager who wept easily. And tears came frequently those days. He understood that Piku Mama would be gone to a place that would become permanently unreachable. After Piku Mama’s departure that day, he took a deep breath and somehow made up his mind to accept the fact that Piku Mama and the Saha family would have to move on, and gradually over the long afternoons after coming back from school he turned reluctantly to the immediate purpose of life that as a school student it was time now to look at it with a renewed consideration. Perhaps his days of fun and frolic were over, and now was the time to get back to studies and other things that needed his undivided attention.
Going back to things felt self-consoling to figure out, even as he faintly understood that Time would, if at all, heal the loss of Piku Mama not coming back, nor the Saha family. Still, Arin found it tough to stay focused on a life that now seemed, after Piku Mama’s going, to have taken a pivot—for better or worse. So, in view of the stark shift in his circumstances, he listened to his inner voice and mentally relived those wonderful moments for long years. Retrospectively, it wasn’t easy to let go of his prodigious days with Piku Mama, Raja, and Mr. and Mrs. Saha. Only a mortified consolation remained: people may go, memories don’t. Maybe, at the end of the day, memories were supposed to be enough for him to move forward in what suddenly seemed the iffy terrain on which he must now begin to tread. What else is there in the trick of this human life? None that he could think of.
Feeling isolated and even more demoralized—despite his dearest friend Rajveer M. (Raju) being there with him (for another year or so) before he too went away, if memory serves, to Baroda (Vadodara)—while also surrendering ultimately to the, in effect, rocketing new changes of the 1990s, the bringer of a small circle of new friends in the town, scilicet Subramanium Strong, Satish Gupta, Bhale, and himself, who were a part of the whole new generational shift that had replaced the unforgettable ‘80s decade immediately after with a cultural mix of post-liberalized sociological and economic landscape, Arin knew he had irreparably lost a truly wonderful person, lovingly nicknamed as Piku Mama, whom he regarded with special affection as a younger brother would. Wish Arin and Piku Mama had somehow been in touch with each other, but it was not agreeable to fate that they do; it didn’t allow it. And Raju, too, was lost in the new decade that was inbound soon after. Friendship and change don’t go together.
Piku Mama never returned to Trishul Park, not for another sojourn that not just Arin, but everybody in the Saha family would have rejoiced with great joy, as it was already time for Mr. and Mrs. Saha and their son Raja, their distinguished pets: Roxy, the yapper Dog; Binky, the carrot nibbler Rabbit; and Mithu Pakhi, the talkative teaser Parrot, to give up possession of their dormitory of a few years, following their posting to Gwalior. Possibly it was after the first quarter of 1988, Arin can’t recall when exactly, after Raja, their only son studying at a Kendriya Vidyalaya school, had written his final exams for the current academic year, the year after Piku Mama left, when the Saha family finally moved.
After 1988, and a few years into the 1990s, Piku Mama slowly became a distant memory. Far removed he may be from the present, he was never forgotten, and Arin, for goodness' sake, could never make that long-pending yet long-forgotten journey after he grew up and pursued a career, to his residence in Greater Kolkata, despite having saved his address to this day. He was thinking about the letters he posted to him, all of which went unacknowledged; maybe he (Piku Mama) never received them in the first place because of the faulty postal address or something. On second thought, would it be right on Arin’s part to just arrive at his doorstep without informing him ahead? What would’ve happened had he done so? At the very most, Piku Mama in his trademark lungi and banian would’ve welcomed him with a big hug; his paintbrushes stuck in his fine fingers. Such quiet contemplations led him to relinquish that important journey that he somehow could not take.
Not even once could Arin meet him... Oh! Not even once. Sigh. He now understands what the word ‘life-altering’ means. God bless you, Piku Mama, wherever you are in life. Arin still misses you and those beautiful days of Trishul Park.
(To be continued…)
(End of part VII)
By Arindam Moulick
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