A Bouquet of Memories

A Bouquet of Memories

The Bhadralok Janata Express chugged into Hargaon just as the sun broke through the clouds on the second morning since I had boarded the train at Kochi. I lumbered out of my sleeper and stretched my tired bones. As the train slowed down, I bent down to look out of the window. There was the usual clamour of the locals hawking "samosa"1 and tea, but, by and large, the derelict station of this sleepy village was quite deserted at this dawn hour. I could hear the tinkle of tea cups and saucers being moved at the tea shop that stood about 8-10 meters away from the edge of the platform. A cock crowed somewhere, and a chattering group of parrots took flight from inside a "mahuva" tree located by the side of the platform.

I picked up the two bags I had brought with me, one, a brief-case and another, an overnighter that I had used to keep my toiletries, my camera and a few other odds and ends. Stretching again, I waved a perfunctory "bye" to my train co-passengers, and then moved down the corridor to the exit at the end of the coach.

After a gap of nearly 19 years, I had come back to my home town. I couldn't wait to visit all my old places!

**********

I was once again a 12-year old boy running past the sweet-meat shop run by Banwarilal. The shop seemed spruced up, and a much younger version of the genteel Banwarilal was ensconced in the faded blue-fabric chair in the left corner of the shop. The sweets were all arrayed in a delightful row - with jalebis, halwas and cashew paks jostling for space with gulab-jamuns, dahi-wadas, mohan-thaal and rabri. I took in the colourful sights and fragrances and was transported into the past when my father used to give me some coins and ask me to "enjoy the day". My first visit would inevitably be to Banwarilal's shop, where I would exchange some of the coins for a small platter of sweets. I would race past the shop on some days, though, and land up at Kishorilal's Chaat shop, located a mere 100 yards away. There, I would eat chaats 2 of different kinds - but my favourite was the bhel-puri chaat, which was a mixture of puffed rice, lentil strands, boiled potatoes, chick-peas, ground nuts and the most divine chutneys - one, a sweet concoction of dates and jaggery, and the other, a spicy one made from chillis and other pungent stuff.

The chaat shop, alas, was no longer there. In its place, there stood a three-storey building with the board "Magan Guest House" hanging askew from the door. A lazy young watchman stood by the door, chewing on the ubiquitous tobacco mix that goes by the name of "gutkha" in India. Men dressed in the local garb of a dhoti and a banian top with a small gamchha3 went about their business.

I had come to pay a visit to Mr. Mungerilal Yadav, an old face from my past, who must be, by now, more than 70 years old; he had summoned me on "a special request" as the letter I had received had put it. It had taken me almost a week to organise the trip, as scheduling my projects, re-arranging bank re-payments on my home loan, and re-organising the very many inconsequential things of an energetic urban life had taken up all the time. My rail tickets, though, had been delivered by courier to my home, thanks to an e-purchase I had made on the railway's marketing site.

I made my way to the far corner of the village, walking past the lone, shallow-filled pond in which milch buffaloes were wallowing alongside some local women who were washing and beating clothes on the rocks on the near bank. I also went past the post office, the akhada 4, the temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, the Destroyer deity of Hinduism, the dairy shop, the local stationer, and the local hardware shop. Finally, I was past all these, and a decrepit building stood before me. My school.

**********

The Hari Om Sharan Pathshaala was, in my days, presided by our most dynamic principal Mr. Mungerilal Yadav. He was a powerhouse, and ran the whole show virtually single-handed. His assistant, Mrs. Premakumari Yadav was, by comparison, a mere speck in the sky of Mungerilal. Between the two, and to some extent helped by a few young employees, they ran the school-ship tightly indeed, and the proof is the way many of my friends and I have turned out - successful, confident and eager to give something back to society.

I approached the dusty path to the main gate of the school and drank in the atmosphere. It was here that I had spent nine of the twelve years of schooling, and the closer I went, the more the memories welled up in my heart. I could visualise my friends and my own self, coming jauntily from distances of a few hundred metres to over a few kilometres to study in the hallowed portals of this school. My mother used to bring my lunch at or around 1 o'clock, and my father would come, plying his 'Atlas' bicycle on some evenings, to pick me up and take me back home.

The school building was a single floor structure that had a verandah running all around it. Masterjee, as we used to call our principal, and Masterneeji, (Miss Premakumari) would walk with dignity from one classroom to the next between periods. We would all clamour to run to whichever classroom they went to, and there, with limited comfort and electricity that "came" and "went" several times during the day, we would listen attentively to these two teachers taking us through the various classes. Sometimes, we would learn "new mathematics", and sometimes, we would recite Hindi poems in a raucous chorus; sometimes, it was learning how the plants made food with chlorophyll, and at other times, it was mastering the names of the various rivers that dotted India's landscape.

I opened the gate, and it made an awful noise, as if it was in its last throes. Lugging my two pieces of luggage, I walked down the courtyard, past a rusted flag pole, past the school building now standing silent and desolate, and reached the smaller cottage by the side of the school, where Mungerilal, our beloved Masterjee, still lived. Worried if he might be resting, and not knowing if he lived alone or with his wife Pratibhaji, who also taught us then, I gently lifted the knocker and brought it down on the wooden door. The clank it made was rather frighteningly loud, or so I thought, but it must not have registered on the room's inhabitants, for the door stayed closed. I pushed it then, and it opened with a sad but long creak. The inside of the house was eerily quiet, the silence intermittently disrupted by what seemed to be the chirping of a bevy of budgerigars or sparrows.

"Is anyone there?" I asked aloud, to no one in particular. Before I could repeat the question, I heard someone approaching the door from the darkness inside. The step was quick, much too quick, for either Masterjee or his wife, and I peered into the dark to see who it was. The silhouette changed from an indeterminate one to that of a man who, like me, was on the happier side of forty, and whose face looked familiar.

"Nattu! Come in, come in," he said. His hair was neatly combed, pepper and salt coloured, and he wore, like me, a nifty urban attire with light brown chinos and a casual shirt with sleeves rolled up. Instantly, I recognised him. He was Bishnu, or Bishi, as we used to call our favourite class-mate. I leapt to him and hugged him, calling out his nick-name as I tried to say several things to him at once.

"Bishi - what a pleasant surprise, I say!"

He seemed to be apprising me as much as I was looking him over. His face broke into a smile as he hugged me back and led me inside.

I could hardly stay silent. I held his elbow and stopped in my tracks. I turned him so that he and I faced each other, and asked, "So many questions in my mind - but the one that I need you to answer first is: What are you doing here?"

"I will tell you, Nattu, but first," he answered quietly as he once again took my arm and began to walk onward, "come and say hello to Masterjee."

We stepped into the inner room, and there, upon a cane and rope bed, lay Masterjee. Clearly, he wasn't well. His face looked a lot thinner than I had imagined it to be. His forehead was wet, and a man I did not know sat by his side, mopping his forehead with a wet cloth. It wasn't that Masterjee was old, or that he was ill which struck me as unusual, although I was taken aback by these things; it was the fire in his eyes that I had been used to: that had gone out. I stared dumbfounded at him as he breathed in and out, his eyes open but staring vacantly at the moth-rubbished ceiling.

"Sir? Masterjee?" Bishnu went closer to the bed and put his hand gently on Masterjee's chest. The man in the bed turned his face, ever so slowly, in our direction, and gazed through the bifocals Bishnu had just placed over his nose. "Natwar is here, sir," added my friend, and he stood up and walked away, urging me to step up.

Tears in my eyes, I went up to the bed and did a respectful namaste to the teacher who had moulded me through almost a decade of my childhood.

"Masterjee," I said, gulping back the lump in my throat that threatened to turn into a flood of tears. He looked at me, his hand moving up to brush aside the cloth being placed there by the other person. Suddenly, his face cracked into a wan smile, and I burst into tears.

"Nattu, Nattu ..." he said softly, and then, as I bent forward to hear him whisper, he added, " Don't cry, Nattu. It is nothing ... just a fever ... and my old age cannot take so much."

"I ... sir ... how ... what ..." I stopped, looking to Bishi for answers.

Bishi drew a stool next to the bed and sat down.

"It was I who gave out your address to Masterjee's son here," he began, and waited while I looked at the other man again. Naresh? But of course! I remembered him very well. He had studied with us, only a class or two above us - to be exact. I remembered how Masterjee was as strict with him as he was with the rest of the children. I remembered how he was once made to sit outside the class for the whole day for something he had done. When I had pointed out to someone that he was the principal's son, I remember being told that it was the Principal himself who had punished him. This one act of Masterjee must have given us more moral education than the hundreds of things taught to us "officially" in our value education classes in the high school in the city.

"Hello, Naresh," I said, as the latter extended his hand towards me. We shook hands, and I waited for Bishi to continue.

"Well, Naresh and I had kept in touch over the years - he is in Kolkata too, working in the State Bank of India as a teller, by the way," he continued. "Through him, over the years, I have kept getting information of our village here. Thus, I learned that he lost his mother about five years ago. Also, I learned that the school was facing real hard times, and then, one day, he came to me with a message from Masterjee."

Naresh looked at me and said, "Papa wanted all his favourite students to visit him one time, together. I was in touch with Bishi, and he helped me contact you and a few others. They should be coming too."

"Masterjee wanted us to walk around the class-rooms. Can we go now, sir," said Bishi, addressing the question to our teacher.

"Haan ... go, see the school and come back." Masterjee indicated to us to carry on, and asked his son to minister to him once again. Naresh dipped the cloth into a bowl of water, squeezed it, and re-applied it to Masterjee's forehead.

**********

We excused ourselves and walked out into the sunshine. We entered the school building, and immediately I realised that the school was not in use. There were leaves all over the corridor, and cobwebs hung in almost every corner. Stains of dark brown dotted the floor wherever we went. I looked into the first room, and a memory came into my mind unbidden.

It was our second standard class room. The plaster on the ceiling had come off in several places. The triple black-board seemed to have been wiped off in a hurry, and the table sat right there, in front, in mute testimony to the days long forgotten, yet remembered afresh in my mind.

Sunlight came in from the window on the left, and the far end had a special teacher's entrance built into it. The floor was covered with bits of paper, dried leaves that must have been brought in by the wind in the corridor, and pieces of broken plaster. Not surprisingly, there were no desks or chairs. I stepped into the classroom and recalled the memory that surged into my conscience. It was the 15th of August, and the school had been spruced up for the celebration of the Independence Day. I was in Grade 2, and a mere 7 or 8 years old. I remembered the festive atmosphere as the teachers and students milled about, in preparation for the hoisting of the Indian National Flag in the courtyard outside the main building. A bell was rung at precisely 10 o'clock, and the students rushed out of their class rooms to reach the courtyard where Masterjee awaited his staff and students for the solemn occasion of the hoisting of the flag. As we all rushed out, some students slipped in the corridor, and then, before one could stop it, there were students falling all over each other, crushing those below them. Cries of students in pain and agony must have reached the teachers a few minutes later, and they ran in from the courtyard, but the resultant meleé claimed a few lives of boys snuffed out by the weight of their own friends.

I remembered this, and I also recalled that I had been picked up by none other than Masterjee himself, and he had then asked his wife and Masterneejee to take me and a few other injured students to another classroom. His quiet and dignified manner as he faced a police enquiry is the stuff legends are made of. He automatically assumed first and full responsibility for the disaster, and was even criticised by the village elders, but the villagers came forward to give him their full support and put the calamity down to an accident for which he was not responsible.

Now, as I faced the room, once again I cried. I cried for not just the state of the classroom, but for the precious teachings that Masterjee had drilled into our minds, for the time that would come no more, and for the sense of loss that I experienced right then.

"I ... I don't think I want to see any more, Bishi," I said with a choking voice, as I turned around and began to walk back outside.

**********

Bishi walked me back to Masterjee's house. He explained that Masterjee was looking to seek our help to revive the school. As I was a civil engineer, my help would be paramount to the revival plan. As we walked in, I saw that two other colleagues of ours had just arrived. While I recognised Sameer, the other person came up to me and reminded me that he was Kunal. We hugged each other, and then went back to the inner room.

Masterjee looked at all of us, and his eyes sparkled for the first time since I met him in the afternoon. "I know you won't let me down," he said, as his brow furrowed once, and he added, almost timidly, "will you?"

We rushed to him then, and held his hand.

"I am with you, Masterjee," I said, as I lay my head on his fist and cried.

******END******

Written as "Team India" 's entry for Round 11 of

FORUM

Project Write World  (13+) A celebration of writers and their distinct cultures to bring us all together. #1254279 by iKïyå§ama

Author's Note: The picture of the classroom is the prompt for the story.

© Dr. Taher Kagalwala, August 2009.
Word Count:2823

Footnotes
1  A fried savoury designed like a triangular packet stuffed with cooked vegetables
2  savouries
3  A colourful towel slung over one shoulder (usually the left)
4  the local gymnasium