After we set out from my first friend’s house this morning (that story coming later), we headed towards our last destination with our parents which was kept a complete secret. My brother and I had worked this out. Parents had no idea but we were attempting to go visit my eldest cousin (Kajol-di) – my dad’s only brother’s eldest daughter. The challenge – which turned out to be the least of our challenges was that I was not being able to contact her on her mobile phone. The phone would ring, she would pick up and then there were only inaudible noises. I had been attempting this for over two weeks. I could not even find out where her village was.

All I knew was that her village was called Norja. Every attempt to search for Norja or Narja on Google maps promptly landed me in Norway. As smart as Google is, it had not a clue that I had no desire to visit the land of difficult spellings :-), at least as of now! I kept on searching for those two names on the internet and finally stumbled upon a government tender to bid for road construction between the villages of Basuda and Norja. Finding Basuda in Google Maps was rather easy. And then started looking for roads coming in and out of Basuda. And that is when I found a village called Narjja!! Why they put two “j”s I don’t know but I found my village.

As I started giving instructions to my brother on the road directions, my biggest worry was whether my cousin would be home. This cousin is special to me. There is a history here. My parents had taken over the responsibility of raising this cousin since my uncle had four kids in quick succession (including a set of twins) and was struggling a bit. Eventually a few years after my sister was born, she went back to her dad. But in the meanwhile, she lived with my parents and went to school. Also, she took care of me and played with me and all that when I was barely months old. You can see me in the black and white pictures from those times.

Within a few minutes, my dad grew suspicious that we were not heading home. He kept on asking where we were going and my brother and I kept on evading giving a straight answer. And he kept on getting impatient. Then we met our next challenge – A sign that said “Road closed”. That is it! No guidance on diversions or alternate routes – just that the road is closed!!! My brother, who has always treated all road signs as merely suggestions just went around the sign and proceeded.

We soon realized why the sign was there. The bridge on a river was broken. Literally snapped!! There was no road around it!!! But this is India!! People make roads when and where they need them to be. My brother, along with a tractor and a few other assorted vehicles left the road and start climbing down and then drove over hard fields at a snail’s pace, crossed the river which did not have much water to write home about and then came up the other side over complete dirt. Finally reached the road on the other side and then proceeded like nothing had happened!!

Eventually, when we were within a kilometer of the village, I called her again to get some directions. The good news was that I could actually hear her. The bad news was that she told me she was not in her village. She had gone to another village ten kilometers away!! Since we had managed to get past a broken bridge, this was not going to stop us. Found out the other village (Bhatar) in Google maps and headed in that direction.

Before long, I was able to see my cousin – who to be honest, I did not recognize at all even as she approached me at the tea stall in that village where we were waiting for her. Her first reaction? She just started crying seeing us. I am sure she had flashbacks of those days when I was barely months old and a complete nuisance to her 🙂 We chatted for half an hour and had two rounds of tea.

I had only two pictures of her from those days. I had copied them on my phone before I left Atlanta just to show her if we met her. Which I did. But more importantly, as you can see in the pictures, I got everybody to take pictures today standing in exactly the same sequence as those two pictures. I just wanted to see how two pictures with same people would look forty eight years later!! You can see for yourself! Cool or what? 🙂

Eventually, we gave her a lift home to her own village. As we said good bye to her, you could see her pride welling in her seeing that little month old cousin of hers has grown up so much! Every villager that came by – and there were quite a few since a car is a very unlikely sight in those dirt roads – she would introduce me with three phrases – “Kakar chheley. Engineer. America-y thhakey” (meaning “My uncle’s son. Engineer. Lives in America”). And that is all there was for anybody else to know, she figured. You have to be in the context of small villages in rural India to understand the power of the words “Engineer” or “Lives in America”. That “Kakar chheley” part wasn’t that powerful though 🙂

Where my grandad had his hut (dad’s birthplace), my dad’s hut (my birthplace), three houses where my dad raised us and finally the house where my daughters are being raised…

Having knocked off the first goal yesterday, the second goal fell today. After leaving his birthplace yesterday, my dad agreed to go to Durgapur. My bet that he would be more pliable after visiting his birthplace was well placed. And today, somewhat reluctantly, he agreed to visit our old homes. The first two were fine … he was a lot more emotional with the third one. This is the house he last lived in Durgapur.

In fact, he stayed in the car and declared he would not come out. After letting him stay for some time, I told him to come out to take a picture. It was almost he needed one more nudge. He came out, went inside the house, talked to the new owners for quite some time and took quite some pictures…

None of the three houses look anything like what they did when we lived there. There has been a ton of improvements and reconstruction done. One common theme though – all of them still have the beautiful flower gardens my dad had built out….

On Monday night, as my brother picked me up from Kolkata airport and drove us to Kalyani, I explained to him the history of my father’s side of the family – to the best as I knew at that point of time. He had very little idea of it. That set the background for our trip there.

While we were there he spent a lot of time understanding the history of the village rather than our family. You can see him talking to a local to understand the village’s history, political leanings, economy, access to education etc….

During all the furtive photo taking and talking to villagers, at one point I noticed that my dad had separated himself from the rest of the crowd and had settled himself down in the sun on a raised platform inside the temple compound. As you can see in the picture, he was very busy in his thoughts and seemed to be gesturing with his fingers.

After giving him some time, I walked up to him and asked if he could recognize anything. He slowly explained that, that was exactly what he was trying to remember. He was too young (Two and a half years). Then he said that one scene that came to his mind was the day his dad had died. All he could remember was his mom sitting by the post in the “dalan” (the overhang portion of the hut that is outside the walls) and crying. And that they lifted his dad and walked down the road in front of the temple and went away. He thinks he was crying too but it was because everybody around him was crying. He had not yet understood the true meaning of death. Or that it was the last time he saw his dad. For that was his last travel down the road.

I went ahead and took a few pictures of that road.

Here is the intriguing part. He told me the whole story without any signs of emotion at all. There was no tinge of sadness. He was sad about the “helpless” situation his mom and siblings found themselves in but reacted to his missing his dad in a very different way.

And that is when it hit home for me. He never had something I have had all my life – a dad. He never played with his dad or had fights or ran to him when he needed to help. So, he had no basis to miss anything. Dad was just an entity to him that was never in flesh or blood.

And then it hit me again like a ton of bricks. This will be far more personal to me some day. There will be the long road for him too. And I will have no ability to hold back my emotions. I know that for sure, because I can feel that lump in my throat even as I write this story out…

Everywhere we went, we raised enough curiosity of the villagers that there was always a bunch of folks around us helping us answer questions and take us to different homes…

While trying to locate the exact location of my dad’s birthplace, we talked to and made friends with a lot of the villagers today. At some point, I had the presence of mind to ask one of them to lead me is the eldest person in the village with the assumption that he or she would know somebody that my dad had heard of.

The news must have traveled thru the village soon. While we were busy checking out my granddad’s temple, we saw an old man hobbling towards us. Before we saw him, we heard him. He was yelling “Ami Kali Roy-er chhele. Ami Kali Roy-er chhele”.. (I am the son of Kali Roy). My dad paid no attention since he is pretty hard of hearing anyways 🙂 That confused the elderly gentleman no end. Somewhat clueless, he looked at all of us and asked “Damu konta?” (Which one among you is Damu?). That is when my dad asked him who was he.

Turned out that he is a blood relative of ours. Kali Roy was my granddad’s first cousin. And this gentleman knew my granddad. Again, my dad and this gentleman had never met each other – just heard of each other. But there was a high level of excitement as they met for the first time in their lives at pretty much the far end of their lives.

He also asked us to visit another gentleman – which we did. (He himself did not join us though – and from another villager I gathered that the two families are not on talking terms!!!) We went to another house and told them about who our dad was and if we could meet the person we were looking for. The folks there brought us chairs to sit down. And we waited and waited.

Eventually a very old man came out – taking one painful step after another helped by his walking stick and a young child. He trudged his way to my dad and asked “Tumi Nitai-er bhai?” (Are you the brother of Nitai?”). Once my dad confirmed that, he could not help control his emotions. He started talking about how he had seen my uncle last in 1940 and that they used to play together and never got a chance to talk to him after my dad’s family left the village. And then he asked the inevitable “Kemon aachey?” (How is he?). His face completely fell when he realized that my uncle is no more. “Ekey ekey bondhu gulo sobai choley gelo” he murmured (“One by one all my friends went away”). Anyways, he stood there for some more time and talked about our ancestral family.

It is these two gentlemen who helped me narrow down the exact spot where my granddad’s hut was. Thru them, I reconstructed a few more family facts. Evidently, my granddad was a deeply religious person. He used to shave his head off (that DNA has flown thru to me :-). Unlike me though, he had a “tiki” – which is that tuft of hair in an otherwise shaven head that you might have seen on some old Hindu pious men or even ISKCON disciples.

Evidently my father was the youngest of four siblings. Only the eldest (Nitai) and my youngest (my dad) survived. My granddad died of throat cancer. Unfortunately, nobody has a picture of him!!

But watching people who got separated about three quarters of a century away reconnect thru technologies like Google maps and Wikipedia … that was a lovely treat!!!

His dad had built this temple. He was aware of that. That was the only known artifact left from his dad. (His mom and his brother has long left him too).

He slowly went up the temple with mom and then looking at the idol, simply collapsed. Remember he has an almost non working knee. He cannot sit down on the floor. He always is in bed or at best in a chair.

He was transfixed looking at the idol. And then, right in front of our eyes, he slowly sat down (we have not seen him sitting on the floor for years!!!!). Mom sat next to him.

A few minutes later, I walked up too. After quite some time, he explained something to me. And I learnt another new family history item. He explained that the name of the God is “Damodar” ( I believe that is an incarnation of Narayan). That is why the temple is called Damodar Temple.

Then it all started to make sense to me. My dad’s name at home is “Damu”. My grandmom had once told me that my grandad had christened him so after Damodar. I always thought that was in reference to the river by the same name that flowed by where we lived (Durgapur). I had probably wondered what was the connection between my granddad and Durgapur but figured Damodar was a very well known river in West Bengal anyways – specially because of the untold miseries it created for people on either bank during monsoons.

Turns out Damodar is the name of a God. My granddad was an ardent worshipper of this God. He even built a temple for the God Damodar. And that is what drove him to name his son “Damu”. Not the river!!!

After a rather long journey – only in time, not in road distance – thanks to the terrible conditions of the roads inside remote villages near Gushkara, West Bengal, and all those people stopping us and asking for donations for the upcoming Saraswati Pujo, we finally stood at the spot where my dad was born! Google maps was very accurate in getting us to the village. Then getting to the spot of his birth took a little more time. But the villagers were very curious and very helpful. The key was one hint – that my grandfather was a very God fearing person and that he had built a temple right next to his hut.

The temple – like every village temple I guess, has been well taken care of. On the other hand, the hut did not have any such luck. It collapsed in one of those furious monsoons (nobody occupied it for some time) and all that remains is a round mound of dirt and a lot of undergrowth.

You can see the temple on the left and the space in between (before the hut you can see on the right). That space is where my dad was born. This was confirmed by somebody else (see a later post).

He has no recollection (other than the fact he had heard about the temple his dad had built) of the place but seemed to reach an inner peace once he saw his birthplace.