She is away at a party. Gives me all the time to settle down for some ghazals with a cocktail. (which beats samosa with wine!!)
This evening, we are with Suman Kalyanpur. Another gift from Swami family.
Five of the closest friends from high school days. This goes back nearly four decades. This is how geographically not-so-close we are now: This Durgapur diaspora now lives in as far flung places as Perth (Australia), Singapore, Bangalore, Atlanta and Bay Area (US).
The name DRAMA was derived from the initials of the first name of each person. That there was always some or the other drama going on in somebody’s life at that age was completely coincidental !!
“Gaye dinon ka suraag lekar
Kidhar se aaya kidhar gaaya woh
Ajeeb maanus ajnabi tha
Mujhe to hairan kar gaya woh”
Poet: Nasir Kazmi
Roughly translated…
“With that sudden hint of long lost past
She came from nowhere; and then vanished – I know not where
It be so strange that a complete stranger like her
Could leave me so utterly listless”
An evening by myself with Habib Wali Mohamed. I expect very few listeners today to recognize him. He had focused most of his time on studying and running his family business. But in between, when he recorded some songs, they were golden. Born in Yangon (Burma), he lived twice in India, twice in Pakistan and twice in the USA (first time he got a MBA from Syracuse and the second time was in his sunset years – he died surrounded by his family in Los Angeles).
This rare LP is one more that I inherited from Deval’s dad.
Thank you Deval, Krupal and Shaku : without your magnanimity, this evening would have not happened for me.
While I have not done office meetings in India for a long time, I can still visualize them the way they used to be. Invariably, there would be a water bottle at every chair and first order of the day would be the office help coming around and taking our tea/coffee orders!
Check out the size of the laptops. And the total mess of wires on the table. This was par for the course twenty years back. Wonder how meetings have changed these days in Bangalore.
Geoff has lost a lot of weight from those days. Dilip has lost all his hair on the head (he shaves his head like me now). Willie has not changed a bit. I have not seen Brandon in a long long time. And unfortunately, we lost Chandran way too early.
Geoff, Dilip, Willie, Brandon – do you remember this meeting?
Went for a typewriter show and tried a few. I think I am zeroing in on what I want. In all likelihood, a portable Royal (e.g Royal Arrow). Last time I had typed on a real typewriter was in 1983. After my tenth class exams, I had started going to a typewriting class in Benachity.
That old feeling of tactile feedback came back all over again. (Very different than computer keyboards). Also got to know Tom – who is an absolute authority on typewriters. He has a collection of over 100 typewriters. That matches my fountain pen count.
But unlike my fountain pens, he makes some serious money by simply renting out his typewriters to movie sets!!
Two years back, on this day, around this time, I had called my brother. Like I had done every morrning for many, many years. Instead of the usual pleasantries, his immediate question was “Khobor peyechhis?” (“Did you get the news?”)
In a flash, I knew what must have happened. Dad was in his last legs shuttling between nursing home and home almost weekly. He had lost his will to live for over five years. Mom dying a few weeks back had added unthinkable amount of psychological pain to him over and top of the physical ones he was enduring.
“Andaaj kortey paarchi”, (“I can guess”) I said after a brief pause. Somewhat relieved that dad might have finally been released from all his anguish and granted his wish to die.
“Thik aachey, tora bero. Sabdhaaney jaas.”, (“Ok. You guys go ahead. Stay safe.”) I told my brother. They were getting ready to go to my dad’s place to take care of all the last rites and formalities.
The one regret was that my visa to India had not arrived yet. In spite of getting my second vaccination a week before, I was not able to make it to India to see him one last time since my special visa had not processed yet.
Which was a bit of an anti-climactic end to the once-a-quarter trip I used to make to see him. Honestly though, if the actual suffering he was going thru was even a fraction of what I could see in our video calls, I did not want him to drag one for even one more minute waiting for me to get my visa. I was content to live with the memories of those near 50 visits to see him before the pandemic.
That said, “Ekbaar aay. Ma maara jaabaar por dekha hoyni”, (“Please come once. I have not seen you after losing your mother”) – those words from the previous night over the video call rankle my mind till this day and I wake up at nights with cold sweat.
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The first ever picture I have with dad (circa 1966) and the last ever picture I have (a few weeks before the world shut down in 2020)
