How the World Came to Me [16]

There was a time when I frequently used to morph into Atahutatem – the Pharaoh who wielded magic but not very effectively. Atahutatem wanted to be a tyrant and a villain but was just too goofy to be either. He had his competitors in the goofy goons played by Sanu.

I do not remember anymore exactly when I thought up Atahutatem, probably when I was in the tenth standard. My imagination might have been prompted by the animation series Mummies Alive. It was broadcast on AXN. I wasn’t terribly fond of Mummies Alive but Sanu was. The show was about a group of mummies who return to life in the 21^st century and take to the superhero’s trade. They had more than faintly inspired the hero, Taraka, which Sanu and I created. I always found those swaggering, muslin draped mummies supremely idiotic and could not understand why Sanu is so awfully fond of them. It is likely that Atahutatem was meant to be my answer to the heroic mummies of Mummies Alive. I cannot say for sure after a decade and a half but it is indeed very possible.

I do not think I spent a lot of time practicing being Atahutatem. Once I thought him up I began to play him often. Long ago, before my age was in double figures, I used to tie a gamcha around my neck and play Superman around the house. I was, thus, not entirely a novice in the thespian’s craft. There were, however, some challenges to be overcome this time. Earlier I simply reenacted the situations Superman used to find himself in the comic strips, this meant that I had a script to follow or improvise upon. With Atahutatem, since he was my own creation, it could not be. Whenever I played Atahutatem it had to be ad lib.

Atahutatem was a villain. He had to be one for young boys find villains cool. He was irascible and an eccentric. He was a conjurer but a rather inefficient one. I wanted him to be an inefficient conjurer lest he run amuck. I do not think he was much concerned with running Egypt. Atahutatem’s passion was carrom.

The chief villainy that Atahutatem engaged in was distracting Sanu when we played carrom. I will assume my Pharaohnic persona when it will be Sanu’s strike and try to laugh the way I thought a wicked Pharaoh should. Many a times Sanu’s hand quaked and the striker missed its target. Sanu too retaliated the creative way, we both, after all, were artists. After losing a few games because of Atahutatem’s villainous ways, the peaceable Sanu began to metamorphose into a threatening thug every time it was my turn to strike. The result was that, besides our carom skills, we immensely developed our declamatory talents. Both the Pharaoh and the many thugs Sanu played often engaged in verbal duels.

I never inflicted Atahutatem on anyone but Sanu. I was a growing lad and tried hard to be cool in school and on the playground. Goofy Paharaoh’s were definitely very unlike cool. I was, thus, somewhat fazed when Sanu informed me that he has told some of his friends how well I play a Pharaoh of my own imagining. The fear that Sanu’s classmates, my juniors in school, might be making light of me mildly mortified me. You cannot, after all, be awfully respectful of a senior who has a penchant for tomfoolery.

Both Atahutatem and the thugs who were his adversaries were quite opinionated. Thus, if they were to be discussing a comic book or A.R. Rahman’s latest release they will dig in their heels and refuse to budge even the millionth of a millimeter from their respective positions. They were witty as well and there were times when they used to brim over with wisecracks. Our alter egos were making Sanu and me increasingly raucous over the carom board. Sometimes, Ma had to yell from the kitchen to hush us up.

Atahutatem began to fade once I moved into the twelfth standard. Not because I grew less garrulous as I grew in age but because Sanu and I could not play carom that often anymore. The burden of studies was just too great now, the ‘future’ was almost here and the need to prepare for it a lot more immediate. However, forgotten Atahutatem I have not. Sometimes, he still rambles inside my head, remembers the good old days and yearns for a game of carrom.

How the World Came to Me [15]

In some corner of the world there was a country called Magyar, but I did not know where. It frustrated me. Like all countries it issued postage stamps. I had a few of them, they bore the name Magyar Posta. Sanu had given them to me. His father worked in the town post-office and he often gave me stamps of countries I could not locate on the pages of the atlas. I possessed stamps of a country called NOYTA CCCP. I never managed to trace it on a map of the world. I sometimes pored over a map of Europe or Africa trying to locate these lands. I never found them. Do they exist at all, I wondered.

It was Shiv who first began to collect stamps in our class. We were in the seventh standard then. In our tiny town not too many received mail from abroad. So, acquiring exotic stamps was not easy. But Shiv persisted and built a fair collection within months. I think, he took the trouble to befriend Padam Sharma, the town postman. Often, he paid a visit to the town post-office after school to enquire the health of Padam bhaiya. His collection grew steadily. Shiv, Dibakar and I were fast friends and sat on the same bench. Inspired by Shiv, Dibakar and I too decided to be philatelists. I did not have a stamp album and did not know where to buy one. I ripped pages of my mathematics notebook and sewed them together to create a stamp album. I was not very satisfied with it, but it served the purpose. The first few stamps of my collection were donated by Shiv. If I remember correctly, he gave a few to Dibakar too.

Within days I was a passionate philatelist. Unlike Shiv, who had a large collection of European stamps, I mostly had Indian and Nepalese ones. The latter were colourful as butterflies and much prettier than our own. My Nepali friends, whose kin wrote to them from their homeland, supplied me with those. However, no matter how pretty they were, Nepalese stamps, being from a country next door, were not foreign enough for me. They carried images of mythological heroes I was all too familiar with, or of sacred hills, temples and sadhus. None of these motifs carried the enchantment of strangeness. Naturally, I yearned to make more exotic acquisitions for my collection. 

There lived a boy in Shiv’s neighbourhood who was rumoured to have the largest collection of stamps in the town. Shiv’s younger brother was friends with him. Shiv knew that my collection is not growing as fast as I would want it too. One day, he told me in school that the lad is ready to trade stamps for comics. I jumped at the idea. The boy, I fail to remember his name, was a year junior to us. We decided to meet in the playground after school. Shiv was to accompany me to mediate the negotiations. I have always been a very bad bargainer. When we met, and the negotiations began, he turned out to be hard-nosed businessman. A stamp for a comic book was his demand. I was outraged and tried to put some reason in his head. As a comic book is so much bigger than a stamp physically, I should get at least half a dozen stamps for one, I argued. A valid enough argument it was, both Shiv and I thought, but he was adamant. I gave in as I was desperate for some exotic specimens. The next day was a Sunday and he promised to come over to my house in the afternoon with the stamps. I barely slept in the night and woke up very early to an overcast Sunday. By noon it was raining cats and dogs. I was fearful lest he not turn up. But turn up he did around three in the afternoon. He had on him four tiny United Kingdom stamps, all alike, badly soaked. United Kingdom has always issued the drabbest stamps, bearing nothing but the Queen’s profile and the denomination. I was speechless with disappointment. I had expected some colourful Czech or Rumanian issues. But it was too late now and I had to keep my part of the bargain. He selected four of the most exciting comics from my collection and left. 

The disappointment was indeed bitter and I was morose for the rest of the day. Baba noticed my muted spirits and I told him what had happened. I think he saw the injustice of it all and promised to have a word with Padam Sharma when he will come to deliver the office mail. I could not have asked for more. A couple of days later, upon returning from office, Baba handed me a stamp from Oman. Padam Sharma had sent it for little brother. I was beside myself with joy. Soon, it became a frequent occurrence. Padam Sharma, if he happened to have any, passed on to father a foreign stamp or two. Baba gave them to me in the evening. My collection was growing at last. But I was still not satisfied. No collector ever is. I had a fantasy, a particularly wild one. I wished to discover a trove of stamps somewhere in our backyard. One day the fantasy came true, just like that. By then I had moved on to the eighth standard. The winters had set in, the half yearly examination had just ended. Every year during the winters we grew some vegetables in our backyard. That year too we had planted some beans, cabbages and potatoes. One day, late in the afternoon, I was taking a stroll amid the cabbages when I discovered that the earth beneath my feet is strewn with stamps. They had apparently originated in the strangest of lands, some bore the name Magyar Posta, some NOYTA CCCP, a few were from some country called Deutsche, some others from Dai Nippon. It was all for real, they all lay beneath my feet waiting to be picked up. That day I knew that joy numbs too, too much of it. I was numbed to the extent that I could begin sticking them in my ersatz album only next morning. But whence had they come? As it turned out, Sanu had had them for quite some time. Postage stamps held no special charm for him as his father worked with the Postal Department. One day he decided to get rid of, what were for him, these useless bits of paper and dumped them all in his backyard. Some gust of wind must have blown them into ours. From that day on, till the day I left home, Sanu fed my collection along with Padam Sharma. He also did what Padam Sharma could not. He helped me plan trips to the countries whose stamps I possessed, especially the ones I could not trace on the map. I do not know if I will ever actually get to make these trips, though I have them all planned for so many years now. I have even discovered on the map the countries I could not find then. Today I know that Magyar is Hungary and NOYTA CCCP is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics abbreviated in Cyrillic. But in those days, when I wondered on my own, or with Sanu, what lands these are, their stamps carried a greater enchantment. Knowing dulls the world.

How the World Came to Me [14]

Mr. Das joined our school when I was in the eleventh standard. His reputation had preceded him. Much before he walked into the classroom we knew that we had an eccentric to deal with. He had descended from the far hills of Anini to teach us History. Mr. Das walked with a little stoop and wore a pencil moustache. Thought gnarled his brows. It was hard to guess his age but I reckoned that he must be in his mid-forties. But, like the subject he taught, he seemed to bear the weight of centuries.

Mr. Das always had strong opinions and did not flinch from expressing them. He also sought to elicit strong opinions from the young folks around. Soon, it was apparent that it is being hard on the tender minds. In the beginning kids were merely shy of him. As a few months elapsed, they began taking flight at his approach, especially those of the junior classes. Flight was indeed the best measure, because running into Mr. Das might mean needing to express a strong and clear opinion on the geographical provenance of the Aryans or Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq’s monetary policy. Often, in the school corridors or on the playground, he sought the opinion of some lad or the other on these weighty matters. If you babbled some incoherent nonsense he will shake his head and say, “Clarity my son, clarity is very important. I could not qualify the UPSC test because I was not clear-headed enough in my youth. It does not pay to have muddled brains.” You will nod sagely and Mr. Das will potter away wading deep into his thoughts.

Mr. Das was a kind man, the kindest I have known. He was also genuinely interested in getting us thinking by ourselves. Often, after having done the day’s teaching, Mr. Das initiated a discussion. It could be on just about anything, from Buddhism to who, or what, was responsible for partition. Though he expected our opinions and ideas to be “strong and clear,” he attached himself to no dogmas. He listened to us sixteen year olds with all seriousness, with furrowed brows and stroking his chin. Being a boy who read indiscriminately, I was often the most garrulous of all. In a few months, Mr. Das and I were talking after school too. He guided me to some wonderful books, Basham’s The Wonder that was India and Nirad C. Chaudhary’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian and A Passage to England. I remember having devoured The Wonder that was India in less than a week. The Autobiography too I enjoyed immensely, though I often needed the assistance of a dictionary to find my way through Chaudhary’s English prose. I never finished the A Passage to England, however, having found it rather dry. I regret it today. Apparently, the book is out of print for many years now and is not to be found anywhere. Even the libraries fail to yield it.

I had already worked my way through a fair bit of the school library, at least the bit that interested me. Starting with Enid Blyton a few years ago, I had reached as far as Freedom at Midnight by then. Mr. Das told me that the District Library our town is home to held greater riches. Soon I was a member. I glittered with pride as I showed Ma the crisp, shiny library tickets. I had three of them. The first book I borrowed was Dom Moraes’ biography of Indira Gandhi. Mr. Das and I had a lot more to talk about now. Besides Shyam’s bookstall, I had another place to visit after school. For a town of only ten thousand, our library is actually rather large. Seemingly, those who read had already finished all that was worth reading in it. In a population so tiny they must not have numbered too many anyway. So, it was not a place many visited. It seemed to me that the bored folks who ran it looked forward to my visits. I was some break from the monotony. It helped, because they often went out of the way to find some book I looked up in the catalogue.

Teenage angst often broiled me. When it did, Mr. Das served as the father confessor. Displeased with the state of the world, one day I declared to him that the day I turn twenty-five I will launch my political party. The very next day, I had thought up a name for my party – Party for Progressive Socialism. PPS had faintly authoritarian intentions, I was to be its President for life and Kasu my deputy. Kasu and I also designed the party flag, five stars arranged in a semi-circle against a red background. It did look like the Chinese flag somewhat, but the sidereal semicircle was in its centre, not the upper left corner. It was not a verbatim copy. When I proudly showed our standard to Dibakar, he chuckled, so did everyone else. So, I never showed it to Mr. Das. But I did show him some of my early poetic efforts. Kasu and Ajoy had dismissed them as humbug, but I was confident of their merit. I was sure that a more informed mind will appreciate them better. However, as it turned out, Mr. Das was not so much into poetry. All the opinion he expressed after seeing one of my verses was a “hmm.” Three years later, in college, when I edited the departmental magazine Vatayan, I inflicted some of them upon my classmates and the faculty members. Having quit the vice of versifying now, I shudder at the cruelty of it.

Day followed day like a poet’s stanzas. I swallowed the contents of the District Library by the large mouthfuls. As far as possible, Mr. Das helped me digest what I consumed. I was in the twelfth standard now, the board exams were unrelentingly closing on. I quaked at their approach but Mr. Das often told me that they are only a minor hurdle beyond which the world awaits. I too could not wait to be past them but the world which lay beyond made me nervous. By now I knew that I will study History in college and one day discuss Buddhism stroking my chin, just like Mr. Das. When the result came out, Mr. Das was not very happy. I had done just about all right. It was enough to get me into the University of Delhi though. I have studied History since. Once, when I was enamoured by wisdom, I used to stroke my chin too. Wisdom bores and tires me now, but I miss Mr. Das.

How the World came to Me [13]

I was in the second standard when on one overcast day I was playing hide and seek during the recess. I had hidden behind a frangipani bush. I was nervous lest those hunting me find me. Of a sudden, a boy my age parted the branches concealing me and grinned. “Found you,” he said and ran. It did not matter though, he was not playing with us.

A few days later, I found myself sitting on the same bench with this boy. He was never quite. He told me about his pet python. He told me that his name is Dibakar.

Dibakar kept his pet python beneath his bed and fed it on biscuit crumbs. It was a tame reptile and was fond of him. Did it have a name? No he had not bothered to give it one. I wanted to see it so dearly. But whenever I expressed the wish, his python will be unwell. Dibakar had also driven a jeep all the way to Deo and back. I came to admire him immensely for his daring. As time wore on my admiration remained untempered. But since both the existence of the python and the exploit with the jeep remained unverified, it was his tale telling that elicited and retained my admiration. Only Shiv was to match, and occasionally surpass, this skill of his many years later.

After a few days on the same bench with him, I took to sitting with Tope. I sat with Dibakar again in the sixth standard. After that it was constant carnival. We grew together, guffawing together, punished in unison in school. We spent most classes tittering. As the teacher taught, Dibakar paraphrased under his breath, adding his own bits to the knowledge dispensed. He will invent countries on strange latitudes, devise ingenious arithmetic. What do you get when you multiply a cow and a cat? A porcupine he will tell me, of course not bothering to explain how he arrived at the answer. Like me, he was not so good at the more traditional arithmetic. He was an earnest mimic who believed that teachers exist so that they may be mimicked and young fellows like us enjoy some unqualified mirth. He had a couple of favorites, Mr. Sharma who taught us English and Ms. Madhumita, the Math teacher. One might recall that the Math teacher lived on the same street as us. So, in her class I will ask Dibakar to desist from demonstrating his art. But he never saw any reason for caution. After all, he lived two streets away. Our faces often gave us away as they will be red with suppressed laughter. They gave us away twice in Ms. Madhumita’s class. But all she did was to make us sit on separate benches. Mr. Sharma however brooked no jesters in the class. Having caught him in the middle of a performance once, he made Dibakar recite Give a Man a Horse He Can Ride. We had this James Thomson (1834-1882) poem in our text-book. Nevertheless, if this was meant to be a punishment he refused to get the point. On the contrary, as though inspired by the poem, he became even more of an individual choosing to ride horses of his preference.

He could disarm even the class bullies with his sense of humour. Gimpe was actually a good natured fellow but he wanted to be a tough guy. So he decided to be a bully. Unfortunately, he chose to inaugurate his career as a bully by picking on Dibakar. He was a stuttering wreck in no time. The rascal had confused him utterly. Besides, it was not easy to maintain the demeanor of a bully when talking to Dibakar. One could not help breaking into a smirk and ceased to look tough the instant one did. Gimpe went back to being good natured.

Dibakar could confuse all pretty well, both teachers and pupils, even though we tried our best to beware knowing his felicity with words. He often managed to bowl four ball overs or bat twice in an innings when we played cricket. We hoped that he gets into the Indian team and revives its fortunes. He will, we belived, turn out to be more than a match for the vigilant umpires, even the likes of Bird and Venkatraghavan. The Indian team was doing rather badly in the mid and late nineties and often faced dire situations. We all unanimously agreed that what the team needs are the disputatious skills of Dibakar. Imagine India following on and Dibakar managing to return to the crease at number seven after opening the innings and getting out. I wanted him for our Prenex Cricket Club but unfortunately he played for a rival team. Our faith in him was enormous, we knew that he could confound not just the umpires but also fifty thousand spectators. We drew our faith from how splendidly he fuddled our teachers. There were occasions when as homework we will be asked to study a lesson. The next day we were expected to answer questions based on it, all of us. Dibakar, however, managed to escape sometimes. “Oh, I have answered a question already Sir, in fact, I was the first to answer one,” he will say when asked which part of India has alluvial soil. “How can you be the first when you are sitting in the fifth row?,” Mr. Thakur will express a very genuine reservation. “Actually Sir, when the class started I was occupying the very first bench, but you might recall that you went out for a couple of minutes when the peon came to deliver some mail, that is when I came and sat here,” he will glibly explain. In case he is asked if he had a telling reason to do so he invented one instantly. “This fellow,” he will say pointing to the boy he will be sitting with, “is not feeling very well. I thought I had rather sit beside him and see him through the class.” Mr. Thakur was a very simple man, he will give our friend a smile of admiration and approval and then ask the next boy which part of India produces the most cotton. On so many days Dibakar was the only thing exciting about the Geography class.

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.

How the World Came to Me [8]

When did I feel the first stirrings of thought in me? Who or what first led me into a world of experience within me? Among people there was Baba and among things there were just too many. Baba won’t mind spending a weekend making a bow and a quiver full of arrows for me. I had those first at the age of four. Thus armed by him, I was readied to make forays into a world of enchantment. I am glad that since then the gossamer drape of enchantment around the world has not been ripped entirely for my eyes.

The walks with Baba helped too. Those resulted in a lively exchange of ideas. Then we were living in a small town in Assam. Our house was on the outskirts of it. We will walk into the town to a newsstand and buy comics. Generally, it will be a Phantom or a Mandrake or the latest issue of Amar Chitra Katha. We bought those in Bengali, they used to come out in translation then. Perhaps, Baba preferred that I listen to those tales of heroism and magic in our own tongue and, may be, learn to imagine in it too. Upon our return, in the evening, he read those out to me. We avidly discussed every twist and turn in the plot. Even when not identified, I learnt to recognize the villain of the tale pretty early. “He is the Bad guy,” I will say, putting my finger on the illustration of the likely villain. “Hmm, seems that he is,” Baba will nod gravely. Phantom’s Dengali became real to me. It remains almost real still. I pestered him endlessly to re-read each comic countless times. The result was that he took to the practice of dramatizing them, recording the dialogues on our tape recorder. Thus, besides the world I was born in, Dengali was the first foreign land revealed to me.

What was it about the Phantom I liked? Hooded and masked, he rode a giant white stallion and was followed by his faithful wolf-dog. He lived in a cave the shape of a skull. He even had a pet stegosaurus on a far-away islet. Like all heroes he was all rippling muscles and sinews. But he was still all too human. Immortal to all but those closest to him, he was stalked by death every moment. The Phantom was a god who was very human. His flesh bled, suffered and died like ours. And yet he lived on as a myth and a man. When a Phantom died he was succeeded by his son who became the new Phantom donning the hood and the mask. Thus, this line of heroes lived a vow their forebear had taken four-hundred years ago.

It was the sixteenth century and Kit Walker was journeying to the new world. His ship was attacked by the pirates of the coast of Dengali. They torched the ship and put to the sword everyone aboard. Kit was the only one to survive. Kindly providence bade the sea wash him ashore. When he came to he swore that he and his descendents will fight to free the world of evil and villains.

The meaning of evil and villainy was still simple enough for me. Evil was when you were not bought a comics, villainy was when someone snatched your candy. They caused a catch in the throat and made the eyes well up. I understood perfectly well that the Phantom should want such ugly things removed. One has to live a while to realize that often evil and villainy come twined with so much else that it is hard to tell them apart. But I did not know this then and was better for it. I think, even as a four year old I faintly experienced the romance of Phantom’s beginnings and the epic quality of his striving. And, of course, I liked Dengali.

A post-colonial scholar will not like the place. Dengali was meant to be an African country and was inhabited by far too many stereotypes. Western gaze is the only continent this country could have belonged to. But I feel now that the creator Lee Falk routed this gaze through the store of gentle decency in him. The ‘natives’ were indeed types, the Bandar pygmies armed with poison arrows, the Llongo, the Mori who unquestioningly accepted Phantom’s immortality. But they were also noble and incorruptible. It was the white man who was generally the villain in the Phantom tales. But I have felt and known all this only after living and growing a while. When I was four Dengali was merely the land of the incredible. It was the country I wanted to visit. Actually, it was where I would have liked to grow up.

Dengali had a little of every continent and, in fact, of age. It resembled Zimbabwe and South Africa in having a white minority. To its east lay a mysterious country simply referred to as the ‘Eastern Dark.’ In their attire and ways its people corresponded to the medieval Arabs. The denizens of ‘Eastern Dark’ were particularly evil slave traders. Somewhere to the north of Dengali were the ‘misty mountains.’ This land was ruled by scores of princes. Today, they impress me as Lee Falk’s adaptation of the colonial era Indian princes. Dengali itself was a tapestry of the prosaic and the fantastical. This country had the most modern of cities. For an African country Dengali’s cities looked like the American cities far too much. They were surrounded by unbroken forests where lived the Llongo, the Mori and so many other tribes. Somewhere deep inside them stood the ‘Phantom Peak.’ Long ago, the black emperor Junkar had had it chiseled in the likeness of the Phantom’s countenance. It was a generous emperor’s gift to a friend. The ‘little people’ lived very far away, in the crater of a dead volcano. They grew no more than one’s thumb and dressed like the Greeks of classical antiquity. The Phantom was friends with them and their prince who was called Vlad. The Phantom kept his pet animals on an islet upon a river. This ‘Isle of Eden’ was a remarkable place where the fawn grazed by the lion unharmed. These beasts of prey had been raised by their master from cubs. Fed only on fish they had turned peaceable and harmed no one, not even the animals they otherwise preyed on in the wild. As a child, I wished very dearly to have a pet lion which will eat nothing but fish and will harm no one. It was on the ‘Isle of Eden’ that the Phantom kept Stegy, his pet stegosaurus. Stegy was kept company by two hominids, a male and a female; they were called Hzz and Hrz. I am afraid, I fail to recall who was the male of the two. But I do remember how desperately I wanted Dengali to exist. I still do.

How the World Came to Me [7]

Tope’s laughter was unalloyed. He could find an inspiration for laughter in almost everything. He and I very quickly earned some ill repute for talking in the class. We used to sit together and endlessly discussed things that were of concern to us. What, for example, could be done to make hair grow back upon Mr. Thakur’s bald pate? Should he apply cow dung on his scalp to make it more fecund? Or, for that matter, could ghosts be really spotted where our town ended and the woods began? He assured me that they indeed could be. His house was on the farthest edge of the town and he had sometimes seen them floating by in the night. As far as we were concerned, we conferred on cerebral enough matters. But by the time we were in grade three it became necessary for the teachers to make us sit on separate benches before they started the class. Mrs. Mamang and Mrs. Tiwari always took this precaution. We found this rather cruel. Not talking did not help either. For then the teachers will get jittery expecting some more serious mischief from us.

I admired Tope for the skills he possessed. The way he cycled and handled the dao made me eager to acquire these skills. Tope could cycle with his hands off the handle bar and never took a second strike of the dao to chop a bamboo in half. After all, his people are famed for their dexterity with the khukri. At the age of nine, in grade four, I managed to persuade Baba to buy me a bicycle. He was reluctant because I was absent minded and accident prone. Rarely did one set of cuts and bruises heal that I will acquire another. My knees always had a little skin missing.

My bicycle arrived one evening, the answer to some passionate prayers. It was an earth brown in color. However, I did not even yet know how to get into the saddle. But this was a small deterrent. I was determined to maintain my bicycle with sufficient spit and polish. The very next day I bought some machine oil to grease the chain and the ball bearings. Not that the brand new bicycle needed the care, but I thought why take chances with its health? Now came the more difficult part of learning to ride. I was confident that under Tope’s tutelage it is only a matter of time before I am cycling to school. Every day one hour after school was allotted to my struggle with the vehicle. I will wobble down the street, dangerously unsteady, and Tope will run after me yelling instructions. I ran into cows and I ran into people. Thankfully, I grew up in parts where both cows and people were rather gentle. The people have changed character since; fortunately, the cows have remained the same.

I made slow progress. After a few days’ struggle I learnt to get off the saddle on my own. But Tope still had to hold the bicycle steady as I mounted the saddle. Frequently, I avoided riding my bicycle into a drain by a hair’s breath. Even if Tope felt exasperation he never displayed any. He was a patient teacher. I was a lousy pupil but was fortunate to avoid any serious accidents till one fateful day.

My afternoon training sessions with Tope continued for a few months. The unsteady cyclist and his yelling teacher became a familiar sight on the street we lived on. Sometimes, some other friends too dropped in to lend some courage and confidence. Devender was one of them, another champion cyclist who rivaled Tope with the range of his skills. He had recently picked up a pup from the streets and was trying to train it. Sometimes, all of us went to our school football ground. Sharp edged rocks peeped out of the earth there and the place was not the safest for a rather inexpert cyclist. But when you are nine losing a little skin of your elbows is a small concern. So, there will be days on which a strange sight could be witnessed on the ground. The inept cyclist, his patient teacher, a pup and the lender of courage will be seen going round in circles. Seventeen years have passed since and I have realized that those willing to lend some courage are far rarer than those willing to lend some money. I am grateful to Devender that he ran in circles to lend me some.

As the days drifted by I finally learnt to ride steady. But mounting the saddle without support still eluded me. The acquisition of this crucial skill had to be postponed for some time since the exams were drawing close. We decided to suspend the training sessions for the time being and both the bicycle and the pupil retreated into the house. In the month of March as the earth awaited spring and the far away peaks thawed, we awaited the exams, our courage too melting with each passing day.

When the exams got over and the result came out I was second in the class, just as the earlier years. And just as the earlier years Ma told me that if I had read a few comics less perhaps I could have been first after all. The fuss never made any sense to me. In those days I spent the summer vacation at my maternal grandmother’s and soon it was time to leave. Though we boarded the bus at six in the morning Tope came to see me off. “You are lucky to have a friend like him,” Ma told me. I knew that I was.

When I came back a month later the rains had set in. The acacia and the flames of the forest were in bloom all over the town. They also lined the street we lived on and formed blotches of yellow and red against the often grey skies. The school was soon to reopen, yet there was no sign of Tope. The school reopened and we all took admission in the new class, yet there was no sign of Tope. One rainy morning, perhaps it was a Sunday morning because I was at home, Tope’s mother came to see Ma sobbing. Tope had run away from home. Some days later I was to run my bicycle into a truck ending my cycling for then. I rode the bicycle again many years later as an M.A. student. Tope reappeared in the town in about a year, but that makes for a different tale.

How the World Came to Me [6]

The rain did not deter us, nor did an excess of sun. We just played on. We imagined ourselves to be surrounded by cheering millions. In our imagination that jagged plot will sometimes be the Lords and sometimes the MCG. No quarters were asked for and none were given. Pride mattered a lot. While fighting for pride I also realized the stark poetry of this fight. I have been aware of this poetry since and the pain that it often entails. In a human life this pain is often.

There was a lot of physical pain too since we were chronically short of equipment. Sometimes, we managed a pair of pads and gloves which the two batsmen divided between them. Toes and fingers were bruised often. Looking back, it seems like a miracle that none of us were ever seriously hurt, though we often played with a cork ball. None of us, however, ever made it to the school team. Actually, we did not even try.

Just as the houses in the town, our school too stood on stilts. I loved and hated school, just as all boys do. I was fond of all things about it which bore no relation to the studies. I loved the flames of the forest and the gooseberry trees on the premises. I loved the knoll standing behind school and being in the goofy band my mates and I formed. Of course, I hated the studies. School meant reading things which I never wanted to read. It was no fun knowing the Latin name of an insect. It was so much better catching it and keeping it in a jar.

Even when I was very little, my parents never accompanied me to school. So, even as a six year old I walked to school on my own. Then cars were few on the streets and our little town held no threat for a child. It was less than a kilometer’s walk. I walked across the school football ground which was about a hundred meters from our house. Once I had crossed the ground, I crossed a street and will be at the gates of the school. A short enough walk it was. But when you are little that is a very long way. As far as I was concerned, I crossed a continent every day. The flames of the forest which stood on the other side seemed mired in a haze. I imagined their branches to be swaying under the breath of an unseen monster. On many days I picked up a little stick on the way. Those days I used to kill a dragon or two almost every day on the way to school. Those were hostile lands that I crossed. It rained often on the way to school. I always carried an umbrella. With the umbrella unfurled I could imagine myself a brave paratrooper landing in hostile lands. Sometimes, it served as a shield during battles with monsters and enemy soldiers. The junior classes started early. So, as a six year old I set out from home at six-thirty in the morning. The classes began at seven. In the winters it will be misty in the morning. I will not be able to see the trees and the school up yonder. Then, I will fear what if I do not find them where they were? Fortunately, they never played the trick on me. However, I would have been happy if the school did, at least once. The school never did go away. It always remained where it was.

When I was little, I always wished the Sunday to last forever. But the Sunday never did. The rest of the week did seem to last forever. Monday morning always came bearing clouds of sadness. I will be sad because sometimes school seemed to be too cruel. In the class I often sat by the window and invited trouble. I will be caught looking out and chastened with words which stung. There were teachers who struck terror in our hearts. There was Mrs. Mamang who always did. It took me many years to realize how kind she actually was.

When you sat by the window the sunshine outside beckoned. But the call had to be ignored because there were sums to be learnt. Mr. Das taught the sums to us. One day, when I was in grade one, I was telling my friend a tale – how Tarzan once ripped the belly of a giant serpent. Our squeaky voices could never escape him. He overheard me and gave me a scold. I loathed him from that day regarding him quite a philistine.

Strange trees formed a thicket behind our school. They did not bear flowers. Instead, their leaves turned crimson before dying and became flowers in their moments of death. I was told that a ghost or goblin lives in the thicket. Some of my mates even claimed to have spotted it. I regarded myself fortunate that I never did. Nevertheless, I sometimes lingered around the place gingerly during the lunch break. But I never dared to venture into the twilight beneath those trees. It could be an excellent place to conceal oneself during a game of hide and seek. But the twilight beneath those crimson leaves was just too forbidding. However, some years later when they chopped those trees down to raise our new science lab no goblin escaped from their midst. May be, it did after all. But goblins had ceased to be real to me by then and I failed to notice.

Sometimes, during a class, I will look out of the window and see the clouds tangled in the forest upon the hills. The forest will wear the clouds upon its canopy and they will gently shift shape. I never stopped marveling at the sight. Marveling, of course, had its perils because a multiplication table might escape your attention. It took me some time to learn those. The clouds distracted and the rain distracted too. So, I sometimes irritated Mrs. Partin and sometimes Mrs. Pillai. “This boy notices everything except the book in front of him,” Mrs. Pillai said to me once. Since I generally managed to be sufficiently flippant with my answers in the class, I found this to be a rather unfair observation.

I became friends with Tope in the second grade. With a name like Tope Bahadur Tamang this Gorkha boy wore his martial ancestry on his sleeve. And a true Gorkha he was. Tope was simple and guileless and could be fierce when protecting his friends. I never saw him fearing humans, or an animal for that matter. But his world was populated by multiple goblins. I do not think he quite feared them, but he definitely treated them with a nervous respect. Tope was among my very first friends.

How the World Came to Me [5]

Prenex needed a place to practice. We could not always use the school ground, because we could not always wrest it from the bigger boys. Behind our house there was a little plot of land overgrown with bushes. We decided to clear it. It was our summer vacation and there was no school to worry about. Thus, every morning a band of boys aged between thirteen and fifteen will descend upon this length of earth and raise absolute mayhem. Many of us will be armed with the dao, the short tribal sword. I had my own dao with about a twelve inch blade. I was fond of it and sharpened it every second day or so. I felt awfully brave whenever I held this weapon in my hand. We will slash at everything that came in the way, plants, bushes, little trees. The ground yielded wonderful things, once the skull of a monitor lizard. Every now and then I will do some random digging expecting to strike the remains of a lost civilisation. Sanu who shared a little of my idiocy and hopes expected the same. Of course, mostly we uncovered empty beer cans and bottles of whisky.

After about a week’s slashing and burning the plot was finally clear. To our dismay we discovered that the plot has an inclination. Once the pitch is laid, the batsman’s end was going to be almost a foot higher than the bowler’s. I must add that we bowled only from one end. So, there was no hope of the ends ever being changed and the bowlers getting a respite from their plight. Undaunted, we decided to soldier on. What if the batsmen were to enjoy a slight advantage? The good length spot had little edges of rocks sticking out of it. We bowlers could always tap the batsmen on the head if we landed the ball on the right spot. On the edge of the plot stood an acacia tree, quite old and rather tall for its kind. It seemed to me that it is slightly bemused by what it is witnessing. Nevertheless, this tree marked the boundary. Beyond it lay the street and you were out if you hit past the tree.

Every afternoon Prenex divided itself into two teams and played some passionately fought out games. I especially remember one valiant captain’s innings I played. It was a seven a side ten over game. We bowled the opposition out for forty-one. We started badly. The ever steady Lingi and not so steady James got out in quick succession while I held fort at one end. At the end of eight overs we were twenty-nine for five. Now I had to face the very irritating Raju who let out a Red-Indian like whoop every time he released the ball. Earlier, when they batted, he had hammered me for a few runs. I blocked his first two deliveries and tension mounted in our camp. I sent his other two for straight sixes which fortunately did not go past the acacia. I ran a single of the fifth ball. We had won.

I was obsessed with my bowling. As long as we kept playing on that plot I kept a count of the wickets I took. I remember that the final count was one hundred and four. I tried hard to copy the actions of my heroes. Some day I tried to bowl like Chaminda Vaas. I was the only one in our team who knew his full name - Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas. He still had not had his shoulder injury and was quite fast. Another day I will be Alan Donald and the next day Fanny De Villiars. Above the foot-board of my bed I pasted a poster of Curtly Ambrose exuding pure ferocity in full delivery stride. Above the head board I gave place to Glen McGrath. When these gentlemen retired and walked out of the arena they took away with them great chunks of my boyhood. I had a nineteen ninety three edition of the Wisden Cricketer’s Almanac I had snatched from a poor cousin. Every now and then I leafed through it for some inspiration, just as a pious man will leaf through his scriptures. Of course, I showed it off to my friends too. I eagerly awaited the issues of the Sportstar. Each issue carried a poster of the sportsperson of the week, often a cricketer. I pulled them out and tenderly filed them away. They could serve as currency if something had to be acquired from a friend. I felt a catch in the throat each time India lost a game. In those days that was often. That is perhaps why I have troublesome tonsils today.


For a change, there was one very ordinary and unheroic player I identified with one day. It was the year 1997. India was playing New Zealand in the Independence Cup. New Zealand batted first. I do not recall how much they scored. At one point during the Indian rejoinder Sachin and Ganguly were batting together. Then the ball was tossed to Simon Doull, a nondescript medium pacer I had never heard off before. He went on to bowl a disastrous five overs peppered with wide after wide, many of them consecutive. By the time he was taken off the attack he had given away fifty-two runs. The crowd was booing him and I could see on the television screen that he is teary eyed. I remembered the day when I had walked back home lonesome through a drizzle. I knew then and I know now what it is like not to be a hero, for I am not one too.

For a boy of fourteen his heroes are immortal. But today I know that no hero is. Heroes too must be middle aged men one day. One day they must take off their armor and hobble into the sunset with a sour shoulder and crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes. And this heals the ache of not being a hero or of seeing the heroes crumble. Heroes must be forgiven if they do. Heroism is but a few discrete and difficult moments. And those moments can never be forever.

One day, when we were in the middle of a game, a middle aged tribal gentleman walked into the ground stopping play. “Did you clear this plot my sons?,” he asked us. “We did sir,” we replied to the nabah. “You have done me a very good turn my sons,” he said, “it is I who owns this plot. I wanted to clear it for long but was too lazy to do so. But now that you have done it for me I can plant some ginger here.” We were left quite aghast. We could not imagine ginger growing on the pitch we had laid with so much pain and love. However, the nabah never came back to plant his ginger. Maybe, he was too lazy once again.

How the World Came to Me [4]

Beneath our feet there will be pebbles and rocks, some of them colored. Cheta’s waters were so clear that one could see the pebbles on his bed. One could see the little fish swimming amid them. There was a bamboo grove that Cheta flowed through. The bamboo twined above him and formed a canopy. It let in discrete beams of sunshine which lit up his waters with quivering patches of light.

Iphi lay farther southwards where the tribal hamlets began. His pace was languid and bed wide which he filled up during the monsoons. I still do not know whence this river came. It drained somewhere in the plains of Assam. His bed yielded strangely shaped rocks. Some looked like faces, some like people. In autumn kans grass grew on this bed. The banks of Iphi had not been bridged. One had to ford him. When you did so the ice cold water tickled and numbed your feet. Many fish swam in it. Some had an ochre back. With a little skill and patience, you could scoop one out of the water with your hand. In autumn and winter we will picnic on the banks of Iphi. I was nine when I raised a castle of sand and pebbles on his bank. I also brought back a stalk of kans grass.

Deo

To reach Sally one had to walk northwards. You crossed Deo on the way and trudged up a hill. It will be a couple of kilometers’ walk before you reached this lake. Clouds rested here sometimes when they got tired of their vagabondage. If lucky, you could find yourself in the embrace of a cloud. I cannot describe what it is like to be embraced by a cloud. You know the feeling only when you have known the embrace. Sally’s water was a blue faintly tinged with green. Sally was surrounded by a brooding, frowning forest. The canopy of the forest here was sparing in letting in even sunshine. There were trees around which bore blossoms when it was time for them to. When they did many shades of ochre and red reflected in the water. Sally was a watering hole for the animals inhabiting the forest. If you were lucky you could catch the sight of a mithun quenching its thirst. These bisons with their stockinged feet roam the forest and are prized by the tribal people for their meat and hide. One day I walked through clouds and a shower of rain to reach Sally and heard the mating call of the mithun. If you dared to stand on the edge of a precipice which was close by you could see the flat plains of Assam far away and the broad expanse of the Brahmaputra. If it were to be a rainy day you had to be careful. The trees above, the grass below, abounded in leeches. Some were thick as a human finger. It was not unlikely to have one drop inside your shirt from some branch.

Our playground too abounded in leeches and was ringed by the flames of the forest. In June and July they will be in full bloom. An especially big one stood by the fine-leg boundary. When fourteen, Shourob and I decided to raise our cricket team. I was a lanky lad, rather tall for my age. I will bowl gentle off-cutters, at least tried to. I was no tear away. But on a good day I could be rather good. On a bad day, though, the ball just won’t heed my hand. I was thirteen when I had bowled five consecutive wide balls in a game. It was drizzling that day. But it did not matter since we played with a synthetic ball. The first ball of my first over will always make me cold and nervous. Then I used to bowl what was my idea of off-spin. I will pitch the ball a little way outside the off-stump and hope that it turns in. Of course, many times it turned away instead. As I ambled in I knew that I am not gripping the ball well. When ten minutes later I walked back to where I was fielding I was struggling to hold back my tears. We saw ourselves as a brotherhood and I had let my mates down. That day a very lonely thirteen year old boy had walked back home through a drizzle.

The pitch on which I bowled five consecutive wides.

                                                   
Shourob and I did raise our cricket team. He was the captain cum the wicket keeper. He managed to get his father to buy him a pair of ‘keeper’s gloves. Shourob had a lot of enthusiasm. But he was rather roly-poly and no good at keeping wickets at all. But, then, he will say, “If Ian Healy can make it, so can I.” This Australian was rather portly too, but could be as nimble-footed as a fawn. We were fourteen young gentlemen who called ourselves the ‘Prenex Cricket Club.’ What does ‘Prenex’ mean? This is what I had asked Shourob when our team was named. The name was his choice. He was gracious enough to own that perhaps it means nothing but at least it sounds stylish. Today I know for sure that ‘Prenex’ indeed means nothing.

We had our tasks allotted. Shourob’s responsibility was to pick up fights with the boys of other schools and neighborhoods and then challenging them to a game with us. Being well endowed, he was difficult to beat up. I, as the vice-captain, was expected to practice my bowling a lot and keep in top form. Lingi was supposed to be a handy bat and bowl tight when needed. I feel that he had some genuine talent. He discharged both roles honorably. He was a buffoonish boy, even for a fourteen year old boy. He too was into making comics and hired Sanu as his illustrator. Together, they produced a strip populated by bald headed gangsters. Sanu was one of our strike bowlers. He bowled his off-breaks firmly rooted in the crease without a run up. We all were mystified by this preternatural talent of his. There was James who played no role in particular. Generally the last ‘man’ in, he will walk to the pitch dragging the bat in his wake grinning from ear to ear. Mostly, he will return a ball or two later grinning from ear to ear. And there was Langkam whose deliveries sometimes bounced twice before they reached the batsman and exhausted themselves before they reached the ‘keeper. We were a league of extraordinary gentlemen.