Eating, it seemed, was Capt. Roy’s favourite pastime—his chief joy in life under all circumstances, apart from riding his old, elongated Lambretta scooter in the heyday of his long Army career.
From being healthily pot-bellied, “a little paunch is welcome,” he’d heartily quip, he went on to incur unpleasant health consequences upon himself within a few years of his retirement: A humongous, obese body had emerged, acutely inflammatory from the inside, perhaps to the point of no return. A few years thereon, probably in 1996, the once most socially active, hale and hearty, good-humouredly jovial, come-what-may happy man had sadly passed away from complex health issues that were harder to endure for long.
Binge eating had taken its toll, and a few of us had witnessed its first deathliness up close. Medications did help him, but only so much. Sadly, he entered eternal rest in his late sixties; maybe not an ideal age to enjoy perfect health, but had he lived longer—say into his 70s or even 80s—the Roy family’s history from the late 1990s onwards might have been quite different. Capt. Roy would have continued regaling, riding his Lambretta into town, and writing an inordinate number of letters to the ex-servicemen’s association. Mrs. Roy and her son Pinku would not have migrated to Pune. But under the circumstances, they had little choice but to accept the painful reality of leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of memories: among close friends, shared meals, laughter, and their cherished first-floor south-west corner apartment home in Alwal.
Capt. Roy’s beloved old Lambretta scooter was never seen again on the familiar roads, lanes, and by-lanes of this unforgettable locality. This small town, as its earlier diasporic residents had known it for decades, within a few years, just after the major turning point of the millennium, 2000, had turned strangely unfamiliar, alien, for lack of a better word, unrecognizable, as though stripped of the natural, fresh, and clear beauty it had once warmly breathed.
Quiet roads and avenues—with their cherished open spaces and breezy grounds—are now dense with asphaltic concrete, glass, and an all-pervading pollution that has slowly embittered the emotional comfort of familiarity we once treasured. Busy lifestyles and loud traditions came to control the lives of all its residents. Over the years, like all other towns and cities, it became oppressively overcrowded, overbuilt, congested, and chaotic.
Capt. Roy sold his beloved old scooter: the two-stroke, blue-and-white classic vintage piece of old-world steel which was the backbone of his household in Meadows Barracks and later in Trishul Park until he retired from service. He sold it to someone who didn’t care for its vintage quality. This clueless, ignorant hombre rode it for a year or so before getting rid of it to someone else who preferred to cavort on a popular new-age, contemporary scooter with several gears, scrapping an antiquated Lambretta that had once, in its long life, seen glory days under Capt. Roy’s most caring upkeep. Oh my God! It’s never gonna ride back into his life. Once it’s lost, it’s lost forever. Those days have long passed.
Much has happened in the decades that arrived early. The first loss was the sweet old feeling of freedom and happiness—the kind that immersed one in life—vanquished by urgency, responsibilities, and everything else. Arin and his friends, Subramanium Strong, Satish Gupta, and S. Bhale, had no idea what the future held because it never mattered to them. Perhaps a job would be fine, and everything else would fall into place. For Arin, however, going abroad on a work visa, specifically to the post 9/11 US, would never happen, not even to Lakshadweep! Subramanium Strong completed his master's and shifted to Delhi after clocking a few years of experience in non-IT (yeah, that’s how they’d like to differentiate between IT pros and non-IT pros); Satish Gupta hit an exciting milestone when he acquired a master’s degree in Economics and Accountancy and had been jobbing ever since, settling down to a normal life, sidestepping unnecessarily ambitious activities that the mind perpetrates! And S. Bhale, the Goan lad, whose sarcastic viewpoints were as stinky as a… skunk, took off to being a Medical Rep before he could complete his bachelor’s degree, during which his grandpa had tragically died falling into a water well at their rented house.
India’s multicultural cum multi-religious civilizational blessing has lately been in good stead. Though a tsunami of political and economic troubles has persisted since independence from foreign imperialism, the new Indian dispensation of ‘shining India’ has ensured that such escalating crises are better understood in the context of opening up economic possibilities for all societies, and likewise to be seen through the lens of the lives and livelihoods of the millions in our country, concretizing real development that defines capitalist growth. But unfortunately, Capt. Roy (Ray Kaku) was no longer alive to see, or ‘feel good’ about (or be unmindful of), the blinding changes in today’s data-driven, info-driven, tech-driven society: technologically fluent and digitally savvy. He’d no longer ask Arin to write a few official letters for him because he’d ping messages, type emails, or browse websites instead—all done digitally, tapping away from his handheld device. He died in 1996, too early to get familiar with the Internet, Google, computers, or the alien invasion of AI (artificial intelligence) now. The general takeover is already here, and even the funny-looking robotic humanoids that jab at you, do human tasks, and, surprisingly, dance! That last part leaves everyone in stitches!
(Those are going to be mean machines; they say they can “exterminate humans within the decade.” True or not true, no one knows.) What have we come to? OH GOD ALMIGHTY!
No one to tell those stories of valour, puns, and one-liners from his Army days. Sadly, his scooter was sold and taken; it was his last ride. Thirty years have passed, and not everyone looks back. Nostalgia is hard to accumulate. Many years have passed. Capt. Roy, Alwal’s greatest foodie ever, is gone to perform the rites of death. And now, Mrs. Roy has departed, slowly fading from memory. The tears begin anew, mourning her elderly presence in the former world: the world that has gone on.
Mrs. Roy was devastated when Capt. Roy passed, more so because she thought destiny had struck a blow so early in her life that she might not be able to come out, as though condemned to live a widowed existence that would grow lonelier by the moment in her two-bedroom apartment, filled with the indelible yet haunting food-blended fragrance of her husband’s longing for food refreshments, even as he entertained guests and socialized pretty often. For Mrs. Roy, it was a cruel reality to abide by, coming to terms with a patriarchal death in the family. She felt hard done by fate, which could have turned out differently for her, because her spouse was only in his late sixties, destined to enjoy retirement before fate struck a sudden blow.
Ever since then, Capt. Roy’s residence was never the same again. Pinku, their only son, flew from the Gulf to complete his deceased father’s final rites, whom he lovingly called Bapi, performing the Antyesti rituals. Sangeeta, their only daughter, and her mother mourned, accepting that the whirlwinds of fate/destiny had caused this.
(End of Part 3 of 5)
(To be continued…)
(End of part XIII)
By Arindam Moulick
Capt. Roy sold his beloved old scooter: the two-stroke, blue-and-white classic vintage piece of old-world steel which was the backbone of his household in Meadows Barracks and later in Trishul Park until he retired from service. He sold it to someone who didn’t care for its vintage quality. This clueless, ignorant hombre rode it for a year or so before getting rid of it to someone else who preferred to cavort on a popular new-age, contemporary scooter with several gears, scrapping an antiquated Lambretta that had once, in its long life, seen glory days under Capt. Roy’s most caring upkeep. Oh my God! It’s never gonna ride back into his life. Once it’s lost, it’s lost forever. Those days have long passed.
--∞--
Much has happened in the decades that arrived early. The first loss was the sweet old feeling of freedom and happiness—the kind that immersed one in life—vanquished by urgency, responsibilities, and everything else. Arin and his friends, Subramanium Strong, Satish Gupta, and S. Bhale, had no idea what the future held because it never mattered to them. Perhaps a job would be fine, and everything else would fall into place. For Arin, however, going abroad on a work visa, specifically to the post 9/11 US, would never happen, not even to Lakshadweep! Subramanium Strong completed his master's and shifted to Delhi after clocking a few years of experience in non-IT (yeah, that’s how they’d like to differentiate between IT pros and non-IT pros); Satish Gupta hit an exciting milestone when he acquired a master’s degree in Economics and Accountancy and had been jobbing ever since, settling down to a normal life, sidestepping unnecessarily ambitious activities that the mind perpetrates! And S. Bhale, the Goan lad, whose sarcastic viewpoints were as stinky as a… skunk, took off to being a Medical Rep before he could complete his bachelor’s degree, during which his grandpa had tragically died falling into a water well at their rented house.
India’s multicultural cum multi-religious civilizational blessing has lately been in good stead. Though a tsunami of political and economic troubles has persisted since independence from foreign imperialism, the new Indian dispensation of ‘shining India’ has ensured that such escalating crises are better understood in the context of opening up economic possibilities for all societies, and likewise to be seen through the lens of the lives and livelihoods of the millions in our country, concretizing real development that defines capitalist growth. But unfortunately, Capt. Roy (Ray Kaku) was no longer alive to see, or ‘feel good’ about (or be unmindful of), the blinding changes in today’s data-driven, info-driven, tech-driven society: technologically fluent and digitally savvy. He’d no longer ask Arin to write a few official letters for him because he’d ping messages, type emails, or browse websites instead—all done digitally, tapping away from his handheld device. He died in 1996, too early to get familiar with the Internet, Google, computers, or the alien invasion of AI (artificial intelligence) now. The general takeover is already here, and even the funny-looking robotic humanoids that jab at you, do human tasks, and, surprisingly, dance! That last part leaves everyone in stitches!
(Those are going to be mean machines; they say they can “exterminate humans within the decade.” True or not true, no one knows.) What have we come to? OH GOD ALMIGHTY!
No one to tell those stories of valour, puns, and one-liners from his Army days. Sadly, his scooter was sold and taken; it was his last ride. Thirty years have passed, and not everyone looks back. Nostalgia is hard to accumulate. Many years have passed. Capt. Roy, Alwal’s greatest foodie ever, is gone to perform the rites of death. And now, Mrs. Roy has departed, slowly fading from memory. The tears begin anew, mourning her elderly presence in the former world: the world that has gone on.
--∞--
Mrs. Roy was devastated when Capt. Roy passed, more so because she thought destiny had struck a blow so early in her life that she might not be able to come out, as though condemned to live a widowed existence that would grow lonelier by the moment in her two-bedroom apartment, filled with the indelible yet haunting food-blended fragrance of her husband’s longing for food refreshments, even as he entertained guests and socialized pretty often. For Mrs. Roy, it was a cruel reality to abide by, coming to terms with a patriarchal death in the family. She felt hard done by fate, which could have turned out differently for her, because her spouse was only in his late sixties, destined to enjoy retirement before fate struck a sudden blow.
Ever since then, Capt. Roy’s residence was never the same again. Pinku, their only son, flew from the Gulf to complete his deceased father’s final rites, whom he lovingly called Bapi, performing the Antyesti rituals. Sangeeta, their only daughter, and her mother mourned, accepting that the whirlwinds of fate/destiny had caused this.
(End of Part 3 of 5)
(To be continued…)
(End of part XIII)
By Arindam Moulick
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