THE FUNKY WRITER

I remember the day Dad was smiling at me, standing outside the college auditorium. He could still notice my anxiety amongst 800+ students on the campus, trying to make a space of their own.

I was dressed up in formals- no heels, no makeup, and hair tied back into a bun. I looked plain and ordinary. I was brimming with excitement, yet, somehow, I had a feeling that I did not belong here.

Dad left for Ethiopia around afternoon, while I was in the mesmerizing auditorium of SBM, NMIMS, one of the top 20 B-Schools of the country.

Ever since I had started my preparation for CAT, my dad had envisioned me studying from this university. Somehow, he could feel the resonance between my strengths and NMAT. Somehow, he knows everything.

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8^th Sept, 2020

Dad was 3 days old in quarantine, and he called me to the first floor. I stood outside, while he was sitting on a quaint chair in the centre of the room.

“I want you to type out a scholarship form and a notice.”

“What for?” I was curious.

“I want to give some money to meritorious girl students from my old school every year who are not getting any sort of assistance from the state government to fulfil their education.”

“But, but….. you don’t have a job right now!”

“I have created a fixed deposit just for this cause. It won’t be a burden. Just a few thousand rupees every year. Just think how much value it will bring into the kids’ lives!”

There was a long pause.

“I have paid minimal fees for my schooling, and now, I have everything one could ever ask for. I can never repay back the burden of the debt that I carry on my chest.”

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My father was born in 1966 in a remote village of Kendrapada district in Odisha. My grandparents had 6 other kids to look after, and were poor farmers. There was never enough food for everyone at home.

My dad was not the brightest of all the siblings, but he was the most determined of the lot. He knew he could change his destiny.

“If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor, it’s your mistake.

-Bill Gates

I remember one story from his childhood about how his school uniform was torn beyond repair and he had to borrow a pair of trousers from his neighbour to attend school that day. Another story of how my grandma used to go to bed with an empty stomach on a regular basis gives me the chills because by the time Dad used to come back from his tuition classes at night, there would be no food left.

Dad wanted to become a doctor, but he did not have enough percentage to be accepted into the Science stream of his local junior level college. So, he decided to take up Commerce and became a CA instead.

Years of burning midnight oil has partially damaged his left eye. But any damage to his dedication and confidence? Never. Dad still did not have money when he was in Kolkata, while preparing to be a CA. He would end up sitting in the library for straight 12 hours a day, would have 2 meals a day and walk to destinations to save money.

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It has been nearly 27 years since he had started his career, and my father is doing well. He resigned as a General Manager of Finance and Accounts of a Mumbai based construction company. He was posted in Ethiopia, a country in Western Africa, and was heading the construction of a National Highway between Sudan and Ethiopia, backed by the World Bank.

From carrying his old cycle across muddy pools of rainwater in the late 1970s to making his daughter study at such a prestigious (read expensive) institution, my father has surely come a long way.

I start questioning my existence when I wonder about him and his sacrifices. My schooling, my graduation, and now my Masters….he has always risen above my expectations. He has always motivated me to work hard and excel. He is the one who teaches me how to dream. I can’t remember the countless souls who have given up on me; but my father has always had my back. Now when I finally see him in front of my eyes after 6 long months (he came back via an Air Bubble, thanks to the Indian Embassy), I feel that I am the luckiest daughter on this planet.

I have never, ever felt like I did not have an opportunity that other kids of my age have/had. Now as I am growing up, I realise that our parents sell their dreams to buy ours.

Life has been harsh to him; has pulled him down, tossed him here and there, and ridiculed him. But he has no regrets. He is grateful to God for all his blessings.

I wish we could all take a page or two from his story.

P.S. God could not be everywhere, so he created Fathers!

What a sheer coincidence that I decided to write this piece on International Literacy Day, 8^th Sept! This story reminds us that education is multidimensional, and helps in the upliftment of not only the current family, but subsequent generations.

Regards

Debashrita 🙂

At 2.30 a.m. in the morning, Mommy got a call. She switched on the lights, and sat with her head downcast for a few minutes. Tears were streaming down from her eyes. Then she frantically started moving around the room, arranging stuff, making more calls to daddy.

I woke up in this commotion to realise that Grandpa is no more.

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My Grandpa was 90+. He was the tallest in the family: 6 feet, and not a single child from his seven children could grow up to that stature. He was twice the height of Grandma, the domination visible even before we could take a sneak peek into their lives.

Grandpa had been sick since a few months but recently he was making rounds in various hospitals. My parents and his other children were taking turns regularly to be with him. Towards the end, he was at the ICU and the day before he left us, he was already on the ventilator.

The last time I had met Grandpa was a couple of days ago. I remember going to him with Daddy and Nishi. It was pitch dark outside when we reached our uncle’s home. Grandma hugged us tightly.

“Both of you’ve grown up! Nickie, you’re getting darker and thinner. You don’t take care of yourself. Look what have you done to your skin. Nishi seems all right, all sweet and cute like she was since she was a child.”

The three of us held each other and cried. Grandpa was there on the bed, barely able to move; his tummy was swollen and he had a catheter attached. He wasn’t eating anything, and had a bad pain in his lower back.

“See your grand daughters have come. Have a look! Nickie and Nishi have come to meet you!” Grandma said, all excited.

My grandpa was moaning. He took my hands and  made me touch his forehead. Grandma said that he was giving his blessings. He then signalled me to press his back, the pain was getting unbearable.

He asked where my mother was, and why hadn’t she come that day. He ordered daddy to bring her the next time we come to meet him. He was missing everyone and wanted to see his children. I was shocked to see a man like him, lying like that on the bed, desperate and helpless.

Auntie was trying her best to make him eat something, but he won’t budge.

You’d have been shocked as well if you’d have seen him in that condition: Grandpa was thin, yet strong. He could still walk for long distances and could stitch clothes with ease. He was a very active person, always doing something or the other. He had a sharp brain, and remembered everything. In short, he was a self made man who made his own decisions and listened to no one.

Grandpa used to come home when I was a kid, and he used to tell me lots of stories from The Mahabharata, The Ramayana and The Bhagavad Gita. He always told me to pray and believe in God. I could listen to him for hours, the daydreamer I am, and when he used to ask me for a pen I’d hand him over an entire packet.

Grandma used to say me that she had once married man when she was 20 years old, not rich like her family but well to do. Some days later, there was a robbery in her household and that left them with just fields enough to survive, not live and they became poor. Grandpa was living with his parents and siblings and their spouses and children, plus his wife and children, plus the livestock, the pond and the agricultural fields.

It was not enough to sustain such a huge family.

So grandpa worked in the fields and ran small shops to finance his children’s education. He always saw to it. Whenever he used to go out or come back into his mud house, he would spank his children. “Are you studying or sleeping?”

So it had to be like that. I am keeping daddy’s deeds for another day, today’s it about our old folks. There was always a financial crunch back at home and daddy was preparing to become a Chartered Accountant in Howrah, but he always sent him money, however little in amount. He wanted Daddy to become rich and successful, even though it meant sacrificing his own comforts for it.

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How do we all remember our grandmothers? Loose skinned, white haired, old ladies who don’t understand a thing that we say, don’t know that you don’t need to put turmeric while preparing Maggi. Pray to God the whole day for our happiness, prosperity and longevity. Don’t know a thing about phones. If they’d know, won’t they learn to make calls themselves? Don’t understand English and yet are proud that we can speak in a tongue not so native, not so close to their hearts and that its taking us apart.

We think that we’re too smart, don’t we?

My grandma must have been beautiful during her youth. She’s got probably more hair on her scalp now then I’d be having in my entire life.

Grandma claims to have seen the Britishers before India’s independence in 1947. I really don’t support the story, but it is funny and interesting to listen to her: her stories of ghosts, ghouls, souls, spirits, werewolves, Gods and Goddesses and what not. She can keep any child captivated with her enthralling style of storytelling. She even says about the big orchards bursting with fruits they had, the large ponds filled with fishes to the brim, their rice fields covering hectares of land and the large vegetable gardens. No matter how hard I try, I can never be as good as her.

I remember Daddy telling us so many times about Grandma going to the bed with an empty stomach, lying to him just because there was no food for her child.

“Today’s my fast, I won’t be eating tonight.”

“But Ma, today’s not a Thursday.”

“You don’t know anything. Now finish off this rice gruel even before it gets more thinner.”

Grandma was working hard, supporting her husband, helping with the housework. She bore her last child while she was working in the rice granary, trying to separate rice grains from the chaff. Just in case, if you think that these old ladies are weak.

Grandpa was ten years older to Grandma; she dutifully abided to her husband till his death. She supported all his decisions, whether right or wrong, knowing that sometimes she’d be judged as a mother, an in law, a sister. But she never paid heed to her reputation, because she was a trustworthy housewife, taking blame for her husband’s faults, listening to the tantrums of her children and filtering them before presenting them in front of Grandpa, and loving her grandchildren unconditionally.

Grandma was with me for a few months when I was born. But when my parents had brought Nishi home, perhaps Grandma was the happiest amongst all of us, because she was entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of me and my sister while my parents were away on work for long hours. Those were the days my mother had just started her own venture, back in the 2000s, it wasn’t easy for a female entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, a daughter in law. But Grandma is perhaps the sweetest mother in law I’ve ever seen in my life. She loves my mother unconditionally. She took care of the entire household, the cooking. Sometimes she would make my mother’s hair or would put her headache to rest. Or maybe made a cup of tea for her. All of this, while managing little Nishu. Nishi literally lived on her, breathed her, exhaled her, ate on her, spit on her. Grandma bore it all. If she loves my sister so much, I can’t imagine how much she’d have loved her own children throughout her life?

I remember while Daddy was leaving for Sikkim, my Grandma cried. She was very disturbed by the fact that her son was going to a state she had no idea about. She cried when he left for Libya, too. She was so confused about what was going on, why her son had got this need to go to a foreign country when he could work here. Poor grandma, how could she ever understand brain drain?

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By the time I’m writing this, it has been already 21 hours since grandpa left for God’s home. Grandma’s life whisked away within a second, just like that. Sixty years of togetherness gone within a whiff, just like that. “Till death do us apart”, they say. See, death is here, and has taken away the man of the house. No matter how strong the lady might be or how populous her family might be, no one can replace her husband, her companion for life.

Sometimes I think of death. I feel afraid. I know cowards die thousands of times before their time comes, I might be a coward; I might be imagining myself in a heroic scene being killed for the nation but the next moment I get up and think about what happens after death.

One day, we are all going to close our eyes and are never going to open them. I fear death. Death is like a shadow; it follows us throughout our life till it gets a chance to get inside us and take our souls away and leave behind a lifeless body, a body without its achievements, its history, its future. Just a concoction of  bones and muscles.

Death can be painful. It is painful for the ones who are spared by it. The person dying might undergo a lot of trauma, but the people surrounding him to get a hole in their hearts, that gets filled with time but there’s that mark that says that it has been operated upon. We don’t forget the past, the dead, we just become accustomed to the silence and loneliness associated with it. Because that’s what life teaches us: to accept and move on.

Red bangles and vermillion, her saris all snatched away from her, because it is the norm. What kind of norm is this? To let a widow die under her grief? To make her collapse under depression? To make her realise every minute, every second of her life that her life is over despite of the fact that her heart is still beating, she can count her heartbeat, she can feel her heart that bore seven children and many grandchildren, that heart that she gave to no one save her husband, that heart which was there with her, pumping blood and mixing adrenaline, estrogen and oxytocin in her veins.

Well, who am I to question the authenticity of these customs and rituals? They’re being done since generations, so they must be right, they say. These customs that literally suck the life out of a living human being, why to talk of a dead one?

How ironical is this. White is not the same for Christians and Hindus. One girl starts her life wearing white, while another keeps fasts to stay away from it, because she knows that the color looks good only on a bride’s face. One world and infinite differences.

I must stop here, I can’t go on anymore. I can’t imagine light colors on grandma. She must be looking beautiful in tragedy. She is beautiful.

This society can never be mine.

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To the guy lovingly called SSDPS by his best friends.

He had his birthday a few months ago. Usually guys ask for gifts or treats. Better, they don’t ask for anything from girls (how cute they are :P) But this man had something else in his mind.

One fine day, after a few days of his birthday that he celebrated by taking all his friends to a posh restaurant, he thought that he should give me a treat as well {let me tell you that last year too, he had taken me for a lovely treat :)} So after a delicious lunch, I asked him what gift he needs (because I am a dumb when it comes to gift, especially to guys :P) He posed a very strange request.

“I need a greeting card.”

So I took him to Archies and told him to pick one card. But he was adamant.

“No, I want a handmade greeting card.”

I looked at him. Never ever in my life had I heard of a 20 something guy asking for a card. Men love perfume, shaving kit and stuff like that, as per the websites disseminating knowledge on *top 101 gifts for men* ”

I thought about my last art and craft project at school back in 2006. It had been so terrific that I had been awarded a C grade.

“I need a handmade greeting card”, he continued, ” so that I can keep you alive in my memories forever. This is our last year in college, you know.”

Each and every word of his seemed legitimate to me. The word memory hung in the air.

I came back home and begged my sister to draw something exciting for him.

“I’m busy. And moreover, he’s your friend. You should put a personal touch in his gift.”

And hence started my epic journey towards the center of the DIY gifts on YouTube. Let me tell you that the journey is not easy. Channels of these Indian viners come in between and distract you from your main goal 😛 Anyways, I found an idea that looked easy and I started making it.

It has been more than a month but the craft’s still incomplete.

2013 was a year full of new experiences. It was a big change for me: getting out of DAV- my home for 14 straight years. I had got habituated with the same classrooms, same building, same teachers and friends. Even the barren school field reminded me of the infinite happy moments spent, sprouting from the gardens of friendship and innocence. It seemed as a big family: a home away from home.

My mind races back to my initial days at KIIT. August 2013. I had just got enrolled in the B.Tech course of Mechanical Engineering. New institution. New faces. One classroom. 70 hearts.  I had to quickly replace my Odia with Hindi: KIIT has students coming from all over the country. The campus is always over flooded with people,  bursting with excited talents , ever ready to showcase their best. A person coming from a limited sphere like me felt lost in the ocean. The once outspoken girl in me suddenly changed into a quiet person, quite often forgotten in the crowd. I always tried to mingle but then again stayed aloof from everyone. I was scared of the new surroundings. What if I said or did something wrong? Then people would laugh at me. Nuts. All screwed up.

One day while a professor was taking our introduction, SSDPS got up and said his name. Durgaprasad Sahoo. From West Bengal. DAVian.

Whoa! It struck a chord with me. Finally, an Odia guy! I had noticed him before, but he never spoke in his mother tongue.

I went to him to talk. And he was (and still is) a very shy guy. Would only answer to your questions. Didn’t blabber like me the whole day. Reserved kind of man, but very sweet, cute, knowledgeable and kind. Perfect person to make a friend!

Our interactions are always limited to library, classroom and WhatsApp. Our conversations are always related to assignments and exams. Durga never misses to notice and comment on my changed WhatsApp profile picture. While I keep on changing my status every now and then, his status reads “Patience is the key” since June’16. He truly lives up to his status. He’s a brilliant and a hardworking guy. He can always be seen inside the library, his nose buried in books. Whenever I need any help while solving assignments, he’s always there. Whenever I need to get any information from the notice board, he’s usually the first person to convey that message to me. When I go out of the line and I don’t feel like studying, he’s there to boost my morale and bring me back to the right track.

But sometimes we manage to have fun, like we went to watch Airlift last year with nearly 15 friends and had a lunch program afterwards. (we managed to achieve this after bunking K.C. Singh sir’s class…we should be given a medal for this magnanimous feat :P)

There must be zillions of moments like these, we have created a lot of happy moments that are gonna be cherished for a lifetime. Maybe we didn’t have much fun (I couldn’t join him for trips and photo shoots). But our extraordinary friendship that stemmed up from an ordinary conversation is unique and special, and I have loved and enjoyed every moment of it. I hope that you have enjoyed it as well.

Gifts might get broken, photos might get deleted, contacts might get lost, but the place reserved in your heart for a friend is never sold off to someone else. Sometimes it lies forgotten, but never lost.  I am freezing you in my memory with this blog post. Do remember the link 😛 Even if we stay across the globe, my wishes and prayers will reach out to you, no matter what. May you get the laurels and rewards that you deserve. You have done a lot of penance.  Now it’s time for the golden ripe harvest! I hope that you get success in each and every road you take.

Happy birthday, Durga, not only for this year but for all the good years that God has set for you in future.

Your crazy friend,

Debashrita