AGE OF INNOCENCE

Tulku , this one is for you . And Esha and Kushi - a story for you when your father was young .

AGE OF INNOCENCE


“ Ma , you don’t love your son . This is not the way to treat your boy . Come babu , we shall not stay in this house any more". Face purple with rage , Chichad picked up Tulku and stormed out of the house .

It was an incongruous sight . Chichad a grimy lungi clinging to his sinewy dark body, picked up Tulku , who was as always prettily dressed in a bright smock with a hen embroidered on the top and stormed out of the house . They would return an hour later , Tulku ensconced in Chichad’s rickshaw like a smug little emperor sucking on a lollipop , smiling beatifically . Chichad’s little rickshaw bell would tinkle contentedly , and we would know that all was right with the world .

By the time he was three years old , Tulku had perfected the art of tantrums . In a house where we lived with our grandmother and several neighbors who believed that Tulku was born with the express purpose of being adored , it was not a difficult feat .

Tulku timed his tantrums perfectly – always when there was someone around to pick him up and give him whatever he had demanded . And one of his daily demands was to be taken out by Chichad in his red rexin covered hand drawn rickshaw every evening. My mother and grandmother were a little uncomfortable with this arrangement : I suspect partly because of hygiene concerns or perhaps the loss of income it meant for Chichad . Nonetheless , Tulku’s tantrums were always timed with Chichad’s entry into the house , with its inevitable outcome.

Chichad was our water bearer in our Manicktolla house . In those days we had little faith in the Corporation’s ability to supply the requisite quality and quantity of water , and so all water for cooking and drinking purposes was brought in large aluminium buckets , twice a day .

The Bihari rickshaw pullers who plied their trade in our narrow lane had the stamina and strength to perform this strenuous task and at a nominal rate . We had several of these rickshaw pullers doing this , and Chichad was one of them . Once a year they use to vanish like a migratory flock to Bihar to work as agricultural laborers. Tulku for these two or three months use to disconsolately wander around like a dethroned emperor . Even his tantrums lost their strength and passion when Chichad was not there . My family use to anxiously worry over him and take him for medical check ups at the unnatural calm . I think we all used to breathe a collective sigh of relief when Chichad came back.

Chichad came from a small village in Madhubani district of Bihar . His father died when Chichad was five years old . He fell into a disused well walking back one dark night across the rice fields . Chichad’s father was twenty three years old when he died and his mother nineteen .

His mother remarried after a couple of years and moved to a different village , looking after four stepchildren and sundry sister and brother in laws . Chichad , neglected, grew up wild and unschooled , beaten when he refused to work in the family fields . At fourteen he ran away from home and boarded a train to Howrah. There, as migrants will , he found himself a group of his community at Manicktolla . Biharis had a flourishing trade in rickshaws , laborers who worked in scrap iron trading shops and unloaded trucks at the fresh market at Manicktolla.

The worldly possessions of these migrants comprised a tin trunk garishly painted in canary yellow , shocking pink and banana leaf green. Each had a little brass lock , the keys to which was threaded through a string worn around the owner’s waist . We looked upon the trunk as a Pandora’s box and were immeasurably excited when Chichad opened it one day to display his possessions.

Two baggy half underwears to be worn under the half lungi , two lungis , one sleeveless vest and one trouser . A picture of Ram and Hanuman , smeared reverently with colour and crumbling at the edges and a small plastic pouch bulging with coins - his savings. And of course , a little box of snuff , which he took a frugal pinch of after a days hard work . Chichad’s chest swelled with admiration when he saw the look of unmistakable awe and covetousness in our eyes and rashly promised us a trunk a piece when we were a little older . I dreamt for many days what I would keep in the trunk and where I would hide the keys.

Chichad slept under the portico of our house , along with other rickshaw pullers .The the seat of the rickshaw served as a pillow and when he slept , his arms stretched protectively over his trunk. During rains when the sprays lashed the portico , they could sleep no more , but sat huddled in a relatively dry corner and in soft murmurs sang songs from their childhood – mostly about Ram’s bravery , Hanuman’s devotion and Sita’s disconsolation at being apart from her husband. Perhaps this is when they remembered their wives and families left behind at small and remote villages away from bustle of the big city .

A rickshaw pullers earnings those days would have been around three to four rupees ; a fare could be as low as four annas . This earning was jealously hoarded and frugally spent to be collected and taken back home . Chichad’s meals comprised ‘chatu’ for eight annas for lunch and dinner . It was nourishing and filling and gave him the strength to pull two or sometimes even three or four passesngers over moderate distances.

One or two rickshaw wallas would sometimes bring back mango pickle from their homes in an old Horlick’s jar , which would be carefully shared by their close group of friends. The ‘chatu wala’ use to be located right in front of our house , and we used to watch them eat , carefully mixing the chatu with water , kneading to a firm consistency in a spotless aluminum plate with a raised edge and a ‘lota’ filled with water . The eight annas also bought a sliver of onion and a spicy garlic chutney as accompaniments.

When they had finished eating , they would carefully wash the plate and ‘lota’ and return it to the chatu wala. We would have died to partake of this heavenly feast , and on special occasions we were allowed to buy ‘chatu’ , which we would mix ourselves squatting on the floor . It tasted heavenly , even though our plates were stainless steel and we had no ‘lotas’.

When Chichad was eighteen , he went back home for the first time , a prosperous catch with two hundred rupees of savings . He was promptly married off , his bride all of fifteen years . At nineteen , Chichad was a father , and at twenty one , he had a son who was Tulku’s age .

In those days , wool was not available in civilized balls . My grandmother bought skeins of wool , which had to be carefully unraveled into balls . This was painstaking work , and my grandmother used to summon Chichad for this task . He used to sit at her feet with the skein around his knees and wind the wool into balls. During this time he kept up a non stop chatter – talking about his life and his dreams. We were two small huddles sitting beside Chichad , and Tulku’s huge eyes would glow darkly in excitement and adventure as he tried to get as close to Chichad as possible to be a part of those dreams.

Chichad’s dreams were magnificent in their simplicity . He wanted to save enough money to go back to his village and open a pan bidi shop . That would give him enough money to help him build a ‘pucca’ house and put his son to school . That was very important to him .

“My son will study like babu ,and go to school everyday .”

School was ten km away in another village , which was no distance really for Chichad . He would sit his son astride his shoulders and make that trip four times a day , for a better future . His son would be a primary school teacher and when he was twenty one he would get him married . His eyes lit up as he foresaw his young daughter in law bringing him lunch at his pan bidi shop every afternoon. He would have two buffaloes and once a year he would come to Calcutta to bring the rich pure ghee from his buffaloes for us .

Chichad chewed contentedly on the left over roti and ‘gur’ which was his remuneration for rolling up the wool and dreamt on .

When Tulku was six or seven , we moved from Manicktolla to Kankurgachi , about ten km away to a block of flats . We had guards at our gates and our neighbors were professors who had moved from USA to India . There were imported perambulators and second hand station wagons and Corvettes . We nodded politely to their children who spoke with strange accents and missed our neighbors – Rekhadidi , Chitra , Neri terribly . We even missed our Chatu wala ,who gave Tulku a red plastic horse as a farewell gift .

Kankurgachi had plenty of water – twenty four hours a day . There was no need for a water wala any more . But Chichad still came , though clearly uncomfortable in this alien world where he had to climb four flights of stairs and had to press a bell to enter the house . He came with his rickshaw trudging ten kms , to give a young boy his rickshaw ride , a boy who was the same age as his long unseen son .

As things will be , over time Chichad’s visits to Kankurgachi dwindled . Those were troubled times – the Naxalite movement was in its incipient stage , and Kankurgachi being a new area used to be a little uncertain in terms of safety . We heard of bodies being dumped in the pond in front of our house and by early evening Kankurgachi used to bear a deserted look , so different from our little lane at Manicktolla . By this time Tulku had also started appreciating the relative superiority of a second hand Corvette over a hand pulled rickshaw , and while he was still very happy to see Chichad , the rickshaw did not exercise the same attraction as before .

I saw Chichad infrequently after that , when he used to come over to me as I waited to catch my schoolbus at Manicktolla . He wanted to know how Tulku was – was he taller , how much taller , was he eating well ? Did my parents scold him still , did they buy him lollipops everyday ? Did he still cry when he went to school every day ?

By this time , I had become a citizen of a modern high rise building and my friends were born in the USA – a long way from the narrow ill lit lane at Manicktolla with its old house and the red cemented portico . I was embarrassed to have others watch me talk to the stringy rickshaw puller in his faded half lungi and grey vest . I think Chichad understood , because I used to see him sometimes in the opposite footpath as I waited for my school bus . He looked at me longingly , his eyes full of questions about Tulku , but never came upto me again.

Chichad continued to be a rickshaw puller and perhaps now carried water up steep stairs into other peoples’ kitchens and bathrooms . When it rained he sat huddled under the portico and thought about Tulku and his long unseen son . And if he dreamt , his hands flung across his tin trunk , it was of his son growing up to be a school teacher and his ‘babu’ being driven to school in a car .

Many years later , another of our water walas – Ram came to Kankurgachi . He brought with him a Horlicks bottle of mango pickle prepared at home and news of Manicktolla . My grandmother , who was then alive , asked detailed questions about who had died , lived and got married in our old neighborhood .

The old chatuwala was still there , as was the ‘telebhajawala’ who used to fry ‘beguni’ and ‘alu chop’ in a black ‘kadai’ while he pumped his ‘hazak’ lantern in the gloom. The ‘belphulwali’ was still plying as was ‘kala buri’, the old half blind woman who used to sell bananas and was my unofficial guardian as I waited to catch my school bus . Neither Tulku nor I was very interested in Ram’s narrative , we had almost forgotten Manicktolla.

“ And Chichad ? How is he ? Is he still there ?” My grandmother asked , when Ram was almost leaving .

Ram was initially embarrassed and then upset . And while we listened to the last of Chichad’s story in our modern , smart living room , we were transported – perhaps for the last time to our time of innocence , into the dingy lane in Manicktolla with its red portico house .

Tired of his eight annas of rickshaw fare , Chichad left Calcutta and went back to his village . He tried for several jobs – but jobs were scarce . He then took up a radically different occupation , he joined a gang of dacoits . They used to raid villages and steal grain and money . If there was resistance , they fought with sickles and knives , fatally injuring or killing people.

One night , Chichad was not so lucky . He was cornered and almost beaten to death by villagers whom he had attempted to rob. In a rage , the villagers then threw kerosene soaked hay on him , and burnt him to death when he was still alive .

We mourned Chichad – not the man who gave up his dreams and died brutally . We did not see the bloodied face and his half dead body writhing in agony as the fire consumed him . Nor his young son , who probably had to leave the village in ignominy and is now perhaps a day labourer in a city and dreaming his own dreams. Neither did we mourn the small pan bidi shop that will never be.

We mourned Chichad in his grimy lungi pulling his red rexined rickshaw , the little brass bells ringing contentedly , entering our lane in the dusky twilight . His face almost cannot be seen in the gloom , but his white teeth gleam in the dark . The indescribable fragrance of alu chops mixed with bel phul assail our senses . And there atop the rickshaw , is Tulku , a little emperor , sucking on a lollipop and smiling triumphantly .