grew up in this yard. It’s big, right in the front of our six roomed stereotyped, sprawling house – sprawling on its right and left.
The yard was not grassy, but it had patches of green grass and a bosk of shrubs intermingled around a big clear central ground for the children like me to play.
Four tall upright coconut palms almost touching a piece of blue sky overhead, a robust mango tree with boughs and dense leafy branches and a big wood apple tree are very caressing spreading a canopy of shade here almost over the whole yard. There was another, a short bushy flower tree in the yard. It bore many beautiful white rosy flowers all over itself. And it was an evening attraction too for the villagers as these beautiful flowers gave off a very sweet, charming scent,the essence of which was so compelling that there used to be a rush among the boys and girls in the evening to get a flower of that kind. We called the flower, ‘Gandhoraj’ (the king of scent).
In those summer evenings, I, along with my two brothers, would become the true king of the children of my ages because of that plant, because of the flower-plant belonging to our yard. Sometimes we would ask the boys and girls to stand in a rank or form a circle to get a flower from me.They would follow how we wanted. I was the sole custodian of the flowery plant. When I was not there, there were my brothers.
Our house stood along the whole north-line of my paternal land, without a fencing. The yard, as well as our house, was a total open place. Open and welcoming to all. Of course, the time I am writing about, tells an equal tale for every other house there. At that time, the villagers lived openly. Barely did there exist any house that had limited its openness by a fencing. I am only talking about the houses the owners of which had just afforded to live in the roofed houses. The houses predominantly of the lower middle class families.
Our house, by the way, as I heard from my father and from my eldest paternal uncle, had had the honour of being the first brick house in the village; and the glory went past several other adjacent villages. And, it cannot be gainsaid that thisinvisible badgeof being the first brought us some importance. We were the first dwellers of this village, which barely had two or three families to settle downthere from East Bengal (now Bangladesh). And may I take some pride again to say that my eldest paternal uncle, my father and my youngest paternal uncle, the three brothers, the three fortune seekers were three great strugglers too. They employed their energies and merits to put them up on their feet from a state of having nothing. The beginning of a new era, newer circumstances, the changes of fortune, in this new land, the new country, which they were thrown into after having been driven out of East Bengal following partition in 1950. The three poor small brothers with poor humble parents had fled their motherland. They had to. The cross-border migration had made them “refugees of ‘50”.
Anyway, back to the yard, we have a cemented well with a pulley on the west of our courtyard. Those days the courtyards mingled with each other, they were not separable. Families lived side by side with large open spaces without a restriction. People of different yards had a similar right to enter each other’s land and had an equal feeling of togetherness. And, it is this togetherness which made them talk together, sit together, eat together on and off occasions. And, it is this togetherness that made them feel for each other. They would be happy with the happy moments of their neighbours, they would be sorry with their fellow inhabitants feeling sorry. Not that there was not any conflict. The neighbours would be falling out, quarrelling, neighbour would be jealous of his neighbour's little possession. But, the sooner they got into a brawl the sooner they forgot it. They were emotional. Emotions got over their weaknesses at times. But, these were fewer in number, not so grave. They would not think twice to stretch helping hands to their neighbours, who they got into a habit to see from early morning to late at night. He might be the man whom his neighbour had fought yesterday, for the right to use the roadside tap water. A single man, a single woman, a single child, in short, a single family they thought to be theirs. To help them overcome their difficulties, sorrows and depressions, the neighbours would think their obvious duties. It’s like a unit, impossible to be disunited. People today will think this absurd.But, people in those days thought this obvious. People loved to live in broad free openness and were broad minded. Over the time, we have narrowed down our broadness; no offence saying so, I have seen this transition. And, since I don’t put myself outside of this transition, I believe, you will not hesitate to admit that.
Oh! The well. It was a big concern of my mother for me. I still remember how careful she had been about my curiosity to look down the well. I was a five years old child then. And, my mother would not spare five minutes to let me out of her careful eyes, ever. Pages will fall short, yet words may not if I start talking about my mother. Rarely there could have been a cell alive in my body, whose nucleus is not my mother. Taking apart many events of failure, many flaws in me to draw me back from going ahead, many shortcomings in me not to blame misfortunes, I have been so fortunate as to get parents like my mother and my father. I am not being mushy or like every other son or daughter who thinks this way about his or her parents; no it’s different. When I say my existence is their existence, it will not be explaining enough how that is. Nevertheless, as I’ll be writing on, millions of bits and bits about them will be bringing them to you, proving them to you how about a pair one in a million to me.
