Jessore Utsav

During our trip to Pabna, there was much talk about the forth-coming Utsav at Jessore.   At that moment I did not quite know what the references were to.   However, on our return it was clear even to my seven year old eyes that some important event was about to take place. 

A Trip To Pabna

My story today is from the memories of a six year old.   Fragmented, somewhat disjointed, but gathered assembled arranged and decorated with fanciful imagination and then cemented with love.     To understand the story, however, the reader would need a few background notes that the six-year old is not in a position to provide.   For a few minutes therefore I would have to hip-hop between my ‘me’ of to day to the ‘me’ of 1940 as I lay down the back ground, often from hearsay information from an era a decade before I was born.

Learning the ‘3R’s

 

 I often think back and try to recollect how my parents went about my education, and every time I am amazed at the daring non-conventional approach that they had adopted.   I must have been given picture books of nursery rhymes when I was very young.  

Of Spirits and Things

We had just moved into our new house, so lovingly named after me by Baba, when an unfortunate ‘Spiritual’ upheaval came about.   Niranjan the manservant and Jeevnath the cook had been freshly appointed into their household jobs and they were permitted to move into the spacious Naukraan – a euphemism for a single room under a corrugated tin shed graced with one door and one window on the two inner walls.  The two outer walls were parts of the boundary wall around the inner courtyard of the house.   They were quite happy as they rightfully should have been;   they were well paid and well housed!   However, very soon thereafter both of them became unhappy about the room they were asked to live in.   They were convinced that the room was haunted.

A house in my name

There were snatches of conversation at home where I heard of the ‘New House’.   Some how, it was always connected in my mind with my parents as well as with an elderly gentleman named Mr. KN Ghosh.   He was the retired District Engineer of Jessore.   The three of them would sit down in the Baithak and pore over large blue sheets of paper and talk about things I did not understand.    What I did understand was that the elders were engaged in something that was very important to them.  

Chaurasta

I have no recollections earlier than our being in the house above the Chaurasta or the cross-roads.   Actually, it is amazing that I remember any thing of Chaurasta at all, as I was really a small guy at that time.   I was born in July 1934 and I now know that we left our hired house on the Chaurasta in mid – 1937.    I should not really expect any memory of that age at all, but I find that in the rearmost recess of my childhood memory I have a vivid picture of that house and I can recollect clearly my playful days there