How the World Came to Me [12]

It took me two years to find a practical application for my Morse Code oscillator. As an eleven year old, it was a chafing disappoint for me when its signals failed to venture beyond our drawing room. So I dismantled my marvelous contrivance and forgot about it for a while. And a long while it turned out to be.

In those days our town had a few devout who will loose themselves upon unsuspecting folks’ gardens before the break of dawn. After generously filling their baskets with flowers, they will make for either of the two temples in the town. Our garden was often raided thus while we slept. This pained Ma for she was fond of growing flowers, she still is. Moreover, she needed flowers for her everyday puja. I felt that I must find some means of deterring the raiders. Having attained the ripe age of thirteen I was filled with a sense of responsibility. I felt the need to contribute my mite for the defense of our home and hearth.

The solution that I came upon was to contrive to have my old oscillator function as an alarm. I brought down the circuit board gathering dust upon a shelf and re-did the warp and woof of wires upon it. The most ingenious part of my plan was to have our gate serve as the key which will complete the circuit and release the signal. The device went extinct a long time ago, but those who have seen it must know that a Morse Code transmitter had to be worked with a key. Each time you pressed the key, it looked somewhat like a see-saw, the transmitter sent across a radio signal which was received on the other end as a beep. The International Morse Code assigned each character of the Roman alphabet a number of beeps, long or short. ‘A’, for example, was ‘dot-dash’, that is, a short beep followed by a long one. When I was small, Baba had a transmitter in his office and had taught me the code. Then I could not wait to grow up and operate it with enormous headphones cupping my ears. Alas, the wish remains unfulfilled for the transmitter was junk and the technology obsolete before my voice cracked.

A picket gate led one into our garden. It was a double gate with a little tin latch on top holding the halves together. I drove a nail about an inch above the latch. I took care to place it thus that when raised the latch must touch the nail. Now I twined one copper wire around the nail and another around the latch and led them into the circuit kept in the house. I had my key. Every time someone opened the gate raising the latch metal touched metal and the circuit was completed. I had persuaded Baba to buy me a small ten watt speaker which I connected to my oscillator. When one opened the gate, a shrill, very shrill piccolo note sounded on the speaker. It was rather devilling, that yowling contraption of mine. But it told us that we have a visitor much before he reached our threshold. My device was a success and, I think, Baba was quite pleased once again. He spent some time inspecting the entire arrangement. All the while he stroked his chin and said a periodic “hmm”. I knew that for a sure sign of contentment in him.

The usually reticent but all important commendations of Baba generously added to my confidence. My alarm might caterwaul, but at least Baba did not find it ridiculous. That was all I needed. It was time I unveiled my creation before my friends. Next day in school I expended a lot of eloquence upon Shiv, Dibakar and Rajpallav making an account of my wondrous creation. I recall that Shiv and Rajpallav came after school to make an audit of my effort. Both bestowed the most lavish approval upon it. Shiv observed with his inimitable solemnity that verily even aliens will not be able to breach such a defense. Dibakar, Karge and Jumli too turned up one by one and expressed similar sentiments. I was indeed rather flattered. One feels truly blessed to have generous friends.

The alarm graced our gate for the next year and a half. I removed it when the wire fence surrounding our house and the picket gate were replaced with a brick wall and a metal gate. The clang of the new gate when opened let us know that we have company. Besides, I knew of no solution to the practical difficulty of keeping the alarm from perpetually wailing when all the gate was metallic. Completing the circuit was no more an issue, breaking it was. The challenge turned out to be insurmountable for a fourteen year old.

How the World Came to Me [11]

Sanu, he was known as Shashi in school, was a year younger to me. His parents moved into the house next to ours when he was an eight year old with a perpetually running nose. Sanu was a pale, fragile looking child. It took us a couple of years to be friends. Sanu’s shyness was too acute and he seemed afraid of everything. Often, in the afternoons after school, I will plant three stumps in our lawn and bowl at them. I used to perform great feats of bowling thus, playing Walsh and Ambrose. Sanu watched intently from the other side of the fence. But if I invited him to be the batsman he refused with a shake of the head. One day, I think I was in the sixth standard then, he agreed. He was very clumsy with the bat, but, at least, I had someone to bowl to.

It took another few months before we began having real conversations. All this time, if asked anything, Sanu only mumbled a reply, gaze firmly planted on the earth below. We got talking once we discovered that we cared for the same things. Sanu and I had a shared liking for the Phantom and could go to great lengths to buy or cadge a number. Sanu’s sources were diverse and numerous and he managed to extract of them great many issues of delectable old comics. He always loyally shared his quarry with me. I took that as my natural due, for, I do not remember when, Sanu had taken to calling me bhaiya, elder brother. I, on my part, had come to expect of him the deference and loyalty due to one. After a while, having grown comfortable playing big brother, I began fixing arbitrary rules when playing with him. Even when clean bowled by him I will find some excuse to continue batting. I recall one instance when a ball bowled by him bounced of my right thigh and hit the stumps. I insisted that I am not out as the ball had struck the thigh first. As usual, I claimed to have read about the rule in the Sporststar. That is how I always established the veracity of non-existent Cricket rules. Rearranging the bails I ordered Sanu back to the bowling mark. He seemed to be in a shade of doubt for a moment but took me for my word. Looking back after all these years I realise what a rascal I could be on occasions. But, then, twelve year old boys have perhaps never acquitted themselves with any significant measure of nobility when playing big brother.


Sanu learnt well and quick. Very soon, with his rather unusual action he was giving me enough trouble with the ball. He never ran to the bowling crease. Instead, he stood on the crease with a formal air as though about to deliver an address. Sanu held his legs firmly together and jumped a few inches’ height when delivering the ball. The delivery will reach my end vaguely resembling an off break. He was difficult to read. With the bat Sanu never made any substantial improvement, but he learnt enough to be a handy tailender. Later, when Shourob and I founded the Prenex Cricket Club, Sanu made some vital contributions with the ball and performed honorably enough with the bat. He never learnt enough of the Cricket rules though. Sanu, with a credulity which moved even the rascal in me to repentance, continued to regard me the sole authority in the matter.

Carom was another great passion of ours. We spent entire mornings on holidays and at least an hour and a half in the evenings on school days looming upon the board. Sanu grew to be so good that I had to summon the entire range of my skills to beat him. I recall that once he remained undefeated for whole two months. I prided in my pupil though wearying in the defeats. The striker tamely heeded Sanu’s hand. There was a beautiful geometrical precision about the way he dispatched the coins. We kept up a constant chatter while playing. Just as Shiv, Sanu was an excellent teller of tales. He made them up impromptu, sometimes casting ourselves, sometimes our friends in them. Of course, the plots and the situations imagined will be the most fantastical and hilarious possible. There will be times when the two of us laughed till tears ran. Sanu and I liked to play roles too. I played a wicked ancient Pharaoh I had thought up, I called him Atahutatem. Atahutatem wielded magic but not very effectively. Sanu preferred to play gun brandishing outlaws, their names kept changing. Like my Pharaoh, they were somewhat clumsy in the trade of villainy. Once we recorded an audio cassette of our exchanges. Besides Atahutatem, I remember having played a number of other characters. All were idiots of various grades. Sanu stuck to playing buffoonish thugs and goons.

When we grew a little older, I having reached the tenth standard and he ninth, we took to tramping. On a holiday we might walk the length of the town for a caper. Sometimes, we walked all the way up to Sally and back, a good ten odd kilometers. During the summer vacations we went to Deo almost every day. As we rambled, we drew numerous plans. Sanu and I trusted ourselves to visit the remotest and the most incredible of countries. In the summer of 2000, we decided to draw a comic book, something we had been planning for quite some time. That is how Taraka, mentioned above already, was born. I made Taraka a resurrected mummy. He was an Indian mummy though, the work of a mysterious pre-Harappan civilisation. An expedition of scientists digs him out of the sands of Thar. Taraka caused an awful lot of alarm when he suddenly emerged out of the swathes of bandages after being unearthed. It turned out that he had not died after all. His people had acquired the technology of slowing down a man’s metabolism and putting him in hibernation for thousands of years. Sanu drew our hero bald headed. I trust him to have improved as an illustrator in all these years, then he was comfortable drawing only bald headed men. However, I thought that a barren scalp suited our hero fine, though he looked slightly like a Buddhist monk. When we began, we were sure that we are headed for immortality like Goscinny and Uderzo. We idolised the two and were glad to be following in their hallowed footsteps. Sanu even took the trouble to learn reading Bangla so as to read the Bangla Asterix I had. Unfortunately, our work did not progress beyond two pages. So I never got to explain why my hero was chosen for the honour of being buried beneath desert sands for a few thousand years.


It was also in the summer of 2000 that we became frequent visitors to the two ‘video halls’ in the town. In the mornings and the afternoons they showed B-grade martial arts films, mostly Chinese and Korean, on a CD player. In the evenings, because of the kind of films they showed, they turned into places of disrepute and we avoided them then. Sanu was immensely fond of a Chinese action hero – Jet Lee. After watching a few of his films I grew to like him too. The plot of his films did not tax the brain much. Throughout the length of a film he will go about beating people for reasons comprehensible or incomprehensible, mostly incomprehensible. Inspired by Jet Lee’s heroism, Sanu and I decided to practice some martial arts too. So we began kicking and punching each other in the evenings for an hour or so. But we soon tired of flailing our limbs about and stopped the effort at being martial artists.

Sanu shared my fondness for music, more particularly, Rahman’s music. I have ceased to be fond of him now but in those days I devoutly followed his work and bought every new album he released. Sanu borrowed the tape as soon as I was done listening. Rahman’s harmonies and the sense of balance he possessed then had come to hold a mystical appeal for me. I think Sanu was drawn to his music for the same reasons. Sanu will insist that I play a Rahman tape when we played carom in the evenings. As we played, we discussed his recent most work, comparing it with what he had produced earlier. Often, I mutated into Atahutatem and Sanu into one his outlaws for augmenting the weight of our respective arguments. Having tried our hand in making comics and martial arts, we wondered for a while if we ought to give composing a chance. Thankfully we did not and our neighbours slept soundly.

How the World Came to Me [10]

Shyam’s bookstall lay at the southern end of our town. His was one of the last shops in our little market place. When I was little, I walked to his shop holding Baba’s hand a couple of times a week. Mostly, this will be in the evenings after Baba returned from the office. He kept a few books but mostly dealt in magazines and comics. Either he or his old father sat behind the counter. Shyam always looked melancholy.

Every visit began similarly but could have either of two possible ends. Baba will greet Shyam and ask, “Is there anything?” Standing on tiptoes, trying to look over the counter, I will hold my breath. If I will be lucky, the barest hint of a smile flitted across Shyam’s somber face. Looking at me, he will nod in the affirmative. I will let loose a little whoop of joy and Shyam will take out of a drawer and place upon the counter an issue of the Anandamela or Shuktara. These were Bangla children’s magazines that we bought. I impatiently awaited each issue and the arrival of each infected me with a delirium of joy. When returning home I will saunter ahead of Baba. But this was no more than twice a month, thrice at most. Most of the visits to Shyam’s ended in disappointment. Then no smile rippled his eyes and I released no whoop of joy. “Not today little brother, may be there will be something next week,” he will say. I will sigh and turn back clutching Baba’s hand. “Never mind, you have a comics to read for now, don’t you?” sometimes Baba tried to console me. But even if I did it will not be much of a consolation. After all, I will know that it will be over before dinner.

I was five when I visited Shyam’s bookstall first and I continued to be a patron till the age of seventeen. In all these years Shyam married, had a child and began to gray. But the melancholy in his eyes never went away. Nor did he cease calling me little brother.

When I turned fourteen, I started walking to Shyam’s bookstall on my own. Now I no more needed to stand on tiptoes to look over the counter. After school, at least thrice a week, I visited his bookstall. I will be expectant, just as I used to be when little. I will be especially expectant in the months of August and September, for that is the time when the special puja numbers of the Bangla magazines come out. The puja numbers of the Shuktara and Anandamela meant the world to me then. Shyam got them for me each year. Every year, for getting those, he received a little advance of money from Baba and express instructions that he must not disappoint me. He never did, as long as he ran the business.

Shyam always managed to gather the most wonderful collection of comics upon his shelves. We all school boys of the town ogled the pile greedily. The Indian edition of Phantom was being brought out by Diamond Comics then. Shyam unfailingly got all the issues. Unfortunately, by the time I was in the fourth standard, my comics reading had come to be rationed. Baba insisted that I do more ‘real’ reading. Perhaps, he also feared that I might catch the contagion of the blithe comics’ grammar. Nevertheless, I still managed to bug a Phantom out of him once in a while. May be, like me, Baba too held a measure of affection for this hero. After all, Phantom’s were the first stories that he had read out to me.

It was the spring of 1996 and the Cricket World Cup was on. Shyam broke to my father that he is planning to wind up his business. I was shattered. His was the only bookstall in the town then. Soon after, he disappeared for a few months, leaving behind his father to run the business. The old gentleman definitely found it difficult to cope. Those were difficult days for me. Sometimes, for a month at a stretch, nothing new arrived on the shelves the old man sat beneath. That drawer too will yield nothing. I was sad beyond measure, there was a limit to which I could re-read my old books and comics. Fortunately for me, whatever other plans Shyam must have made did not amount to much. By autumn the same year he was back in the town. Very soon, once again, the shelves were lined with comics. The odd Phantom again made its appearance. Once again, issues of Anandamela began to emerge out of that drawer, the fount of my most important joys. Shyam was not leaving after all. Not for the time being at least.

When the first faint trace of a moustache apppeared beneath my nose, I grew pretences to wisdom. I took to reading news magazines and Shyam, as far as possible, tried to keep me supplied with those. He seemed rather pleased that little brother is now grown up and attempting to wallow in wisdom. Though I tried real hard to pretend otherwise, my passionate fondness for comics had still not died. I glanced over the newly arrived comics on the shelves with a furtive greed. But every time I did I felt a pang of guilt. It is time for me to outgrow all this, I will tell myself. So, despite wanting to, I bought no more numbers of Phantom. However, I have successfully managed to overcome that first flush of adolescent wisdom. As when I was small, now I buy and read as many comics I can.

An Archie’s gift shop now stands where Shyam’s bookstall once used to be. It sells glossy cards and cuddly toys. I do not know if any wide eyed little boys come to it holding their fathers’ hands and try to peer over the counter. I hear, Shyam left our town a few years ago. May be, he broke the heart of some little boy.

How the World Came to Me [9]

I was five when I started reading on my own. What I read generally stayed with me for a while. At times the torments of the people and animals I read about almost moved me to tears. Ma was pleased. She had much rather me read than go digging about or waging battles in the backyard. But, of course, treasures I still dug for and battles I still waged. Only now I enacted what I read.

My games changed with the seasons and with my moods. On a sunny day I might bury a treasure and find it all on my own. I liked the sun then and still do despite living on the scorched plains now. If it rained for too many days I sulked and felt a twilight in me. I won’t be able to wage battles because on rainy days my armies bivouacked. I will be restless and will bother Ma asking her what do I do. Mostly, she will ask me to re-read my old comics. Sometimes, I found something to do on my own. I will try to forge a wondrous contraption with sticks and pieces of card board. I invented many a things thus, once a periscope that could spot ghosts. The inspiration behind it must have been some story I read. Except Baba no one showed any real interest in what I invented. No doubt, Baba was so visibly proud when I built a rudimentary morse code oscillator at the age of eleven. I managed to make some feeble transmissions from our bedroom to our drawing room. Baba received the signals on our radio on medium wave. For the next few days, whenever his friends dropped in, he showed them the miserable twists of wire I had knitted on a circuit board. With the pride in his voice barely concealed, he will ask them, “My son is rather precocious, isn’t he?” The encomiums inspired me to erect an antenna upon a pole in our backyard and try making a longer distance transmission. But this time the radio received nothing, not even when placed at the foot of the pole. My device was far too feeble and could not cast its voice too far out in space.


I liked to know how things worked and often wrecked them in the process. When I was very little none of my mechanical toys survived more then a week. Often, I took them apart on the second or the third day and put them back imperfectly or not at all. The operation of springs, gears and motors held a strange fascination for me. I think they do for almost all boys. Of course, I annoyed Ma because I collected nails, bolts and bits of wire and piled them in odd corners of the house. In fact, when I was little my life’s ambition was to be a truck driver. To get to tinker with a truck’s engine every now and then and get your hands and clothes smeared with grease seemed such a wonderful idea. I parked my toy trucks in a corner of our veranda which was kept aside for me. I spent many an afternoon there taking them apart and assembling them back. In their case I did manage the assembling, they were simple toys and contained no gears or springs.


For some time after Tope ran away from home I had no real friends. At least not someone who took interest in all I did. It changed when I met Shiv. I remember I was in the sixth standard when he enrolled in our school. He was painfully shy in the early days and hardly ever spoke. Being an early grower he towered over us. I am sure that already at the age of eleven he was at least five and a half feet tall. He seemed so like a giant to us. Naturally, his shyness notwithstanding, he was not to remain indistinct for too long. And it was not his height alone that lent him distinction. Soon, word spread in school that the new boy has a great collection of comics. You just had to name the comic that you wanted, the character and the issue, and he had it. It helped that he was generous too. He never minded lending them away. That is how I came to know him like many in the class and the school, by borrowing his comics.

By the time we were in the seventh standard, we had struck a fast friendship. Shiv, Dibakar and I now sat on the same bench. We talked and laughed endlessly. Shiv was shy and reticent with strangers but when with friends never ran out of stories. We never ceased telling each other stories, not even when a class will be on. Soon, teachers took to the practice of separating and dispatching us to different corners of the classroom before they began teaching. Our Math teacher, her name was Madhumita, always did that. Though I hated what I saw to be her tyranny, I also secretly knew that I ought to be grateful to her. She lived on the same street as us and could have reported my doings to my parents. But she was kind and never did.


Our stories were of all kinds, mostly made up impromptu. We loved to cast our teachers in them, have them abducted by villains and aliens, and imagine what they will do. As they never failed to act like fools, we always had enough to laugh at. The best of such tales were always told by Shiv and Dibakar, I was not very good at the task. Especially Shiv with his limpid simplicity could imagine situations which I never could.


Shiv and I often discussed the comics we read. We tried to imagine how a certain story could have been concluded better. Both of us shared affection for the Phantom. I remember he gifted me an issue of the Phantom on my twelfth birthday. Besides comics, Shiv collected stamps. The notebook in which he stuck them was a wondrous world for me. Wanting to gather a similar world I too took to collecting them. Shiv was very typically generous in donating me a few from his collection with which to start my own. A beautiful set from Nepal and Bhutan, I have them still. Shiv often came to our house after school or on Sundays. We will perhaps play a game of carom or wage a battle with the GI Joe action figures. I delighted in displaying my ‘inventions’ to him for he admired them keenly. After Baba he took the most interest in my morse code oscillator. One day, when he visited me with his younger brother, I remember showing off my antenna pole to him. And I remember how genuinely disappointed Shiv was when I told him that it failed to make a transmission. His house was a couple of kilometers away from mine. Had the thing worked we had pondered the possibility of us exchanging messages on the radio.