Between the Lines Chapter 9

My parent's house in Ranchi was in a quiet neighborhood of the city. Morabadi was old world, as people would call it. Not that much of the rest of the city was a new world. We lived in an era of neighbors, open vegetable markets, and petty gossips. Our house was opposite Divyayan, a nonprofit organization run by a Hindu Missionary. Divyayan trained poor young men from nearby villages farming techniques, and dairy and poultry raising skills. They sold everything from milk, eggs, vegetables, chicken, plants and even hand made pottery. They also ran a library which I used to visit often. 

A typical day in our lives began with fetching milk from Divyayan.Almost the whole neighborhood fetched milk from the tiny window at the entrance gate of Divyayan. There was the housemaid from Renuka auntie's house, what a house they had! There was Dolly, Suparna, Mrs. Chakrovorty, Shibu, the most eligible bachelor of our neighborhood, Julian da and Meher's brother, and others, Ma stood at our gate, as I and Guno started our day, fetching milk from the window opposite our house. Our house was in a prominent position, sitting prettily right opposite Divyayan.

The story behind the window was, that with increasing customers, it became extremely difficult for the guy at Divyayan distributing milk to handle everyone at the same time. So they decided to close the main gate and create a small window near the main gate. Arnab the guy who distributed milk, sat behind the window, took the milk cans that we gave him, and filled it up with the requisite amount that we were buying. They also created a card, to have a note of the amount of milk, we purchased every day. The cards were like present day excel sheets, the first row for the name of the cardholder, and his address, then a column for the day, a column for the milk purchased, and a third column for the price of the milk. At the end of the month, they calculated the totals in the bottom row of the card, and we paid the bill in the main office in their campus inside.

But fetching milk was more than a routine. It was the form of life for our neighborhood. We met each other, chatted with each other outside the window, and shared our lives with each other standing beside the window. "When is Guno turning one?", asked Uncle Pandey to Ma. "In another month, God how they grow up. I am already sad as my son-in-law will come to fetch them back next month", replied my mother. Mrs. Pandey had joined her husband that day to fetch milk, They stayed in the lane opposite our house. Mrs. Pandey replied, "Grandchildren are even more dear to heart than our own kids. But she has to go one day". "Yes, I know, I am happy that she is going to stay with her parents in their house, but I wish she stayed with us a bit longer. I will miss her terribly", Ma told her. Mrs. Pandey was standing at the other end of the lane. She crossed the lane and comforted Ma. "Don't worry, Mrs. Chatterji, she will come back for holidays. And you can go to your daughter's house to meet her", she said. Ma nodded her head in agreement, wiping her tears. "It's just that they stay so far away across the seven seas. Going to her house may not happen in this life for us maybe". "When is her year one birthday party?", asked Mr. Pandey. "We are waiting for Shubho to come, and then we will decide, but most likely in the beginning of January. Nakul will also be coming then during his college vacation. I will inform you as soon as we decide", Ma said. "Please come and have some tea, this queue is not going to end soon. Yo can hand over your milk can to Guno. She can fetch yours while we have tea", Ma added. "Yes, auntie, I will fetch your milk, no worries", I said.

Mr. Pandey was a professor and had a class to attend that morning. So he excused himself after the first cup of tea. Mrs.Pandey stayed back for a few more cups. The milk waited for her, cold and fresh in our refrigerator until it was 11 am and Mrs. Pandey decided to hurry home to prepare lunch for her younger son.The window at Divyayan opened at 7 am, we called it the milk window, and it closed around 8 am. Arnab, the milk distributor then worked in the egg and poultry shop for the rest of the day, till 5 pm when the milk window opened again for an hour in the evening.We fetched milk twice a day, not many people in the neighborhood had refrigerators in our town those days.Milk in Divyayan was sold right after their cows had been hand milked, twice a day.  

We had pet names for everyone at home, Ma was a real expert when it came to assigning names to people. Arnab was the "Dabba", meaning Can in Bengali, Mr.Pandey was "Teko" meaning the bald man in Bengali, and the librarian of our neighborhood library was "Natu" meaning short in Bengali. Natu was rude as hell and guarded his books like diamonds in a gold mine. Most of the books in the library were in Bengali and Hindi literature, but it also had a huge collection of English classics. They also had a huge collection of encyclopedias, but those were not allowed for borrowing. You could only read them in the library. In the children's section, they primarily had books on Hindu mythology, and I felt Guno was too young to understand those books. So I often took her to the library to read the encyclopedias. Guno turned the pages, and as soon as she found something interesting she pointed to the picture and said, "Mama". I used to then tell her what that was, and she often tried to repeat after me. "Yes, that's a pyramid", I said. She parroted after me, "Pyimeeed", and I clapped and said, "Wonderful, Great job Guno". Guno laughed and shouted, "Yipee". Natu peeped from his desk corner and pointed to the Silence poster on the wall opposite us. "To hell with Natu, and his stupid rules", Ma said when I came home and told her about our visit. "Ever since Natu, became the librarian, people are visiting the library less often", she added. "Ma he is just doing his job, poor thing", I replied. "Now don't start defending that creepy thing. Last year, when we went to the temple to get the Bhog, Natu was asking people to remain quiet in the Bhog queue, imagine his audacity. Thankfully, Mrs. Banerjee, gave him a piece of her mind, and he then tried to mind his own business", Ma said. Almost every quarter, R.K.Mission, the parent organization of Divyayan, and the library and a host of other buildings in our neighborhood, organized ceremonies and festivals. They were followed by Bhog(rice and lentil porridge)distribution, and people queued in to get the  Bhog. Bhog was considered a form of god's blessing.

17th December was Sharadama's birthday, the wife of the founder Guru of R.K.Mission. Guno's birthday was a week away. We queued up for the Bhog in the temple grounds, after the Bhajan (devotional songs) and ceremony. I was holding Guno's hand. The sun was bright, and I tried to screen my eyes with the edge of my scarf. Ma decided to wait for us on the temple steps and would join in later as the queue shortened. Baba was in front of me. Budhan was embarrassed to stand in the queue. She was always too embarrassed when it came to asking for food, even at home. That day she had decided to stay at home. Ma had warned Baba that if we left her alone at home for the day, she might go out and have her Handia(local rice beer), and not come back home in the night. Baba did not agree.I felt he wanted to give Budhan her space, and some freedom on her drinking habits. So Budhan got to stay back at home. She did go out that day to her Handia place and came home in the wee hours of the night, God knows when, as next morning we could all smell it from her foul breath. But we all kept quiet about it, we had tried talking with her on her habbit before, but she had said she would rather give up her job, thatn give up her habbit, it was something she could not live without. 

By the time the Bhog queue shortened, I had already got a migraine. Suddenly I realized, I was not holding Guno's hand. I looked around me, She was not there. I panicked. Our Bhog queue got disrupted, and many of our friends in the queue started looking for Guno. But Guno was nowhere to be found. After an hour of frantic search, a neighbor at the gate informed us that he had seen Guno with another child outside on the road a while ago. We rushed outside, uncle Akinchen, Auntie Reema, Dolly, Ma, Baba. I can't remember who else, but they were at least ten of us looking for Guno that day. 

About a few meters away from the main gate of the temple, we found Guno with the six-year-old daughter of our neighbor standing beside the road having ice cream lollies. The orange lolly was dripping from her mouth like the rubber from a rubber tree, sticky gluey fluid dripping slowly on her beautiful white dress. The glee on her face was replaced by the worry of a sinner when she saw me. I shouted, "Where were you Guno. I almost got a heart attack", and picked her up.She started crying, and then as Ma, Baba and the rest of the clan started joining us, she started wailing. I started cajoling her. "What happened Guno?", I shouted in panic. She pointed her little finger at the ice cream man, opposite the street, and said, "iiceam". I was confused. The poor ice cream man was smiling at us. He said, "She wants more ice cream, Bibiji(madam)". Ice cream was not sold in fancy shops those days, it was in a few, but mainly on the streets in boxes on wheels by hawkers, who shouted slogans like "Icecream, colored yummy ice creams", and kids dashed out of their houses at their call, sometimes with their mothers in tow. We had hawkers for everything. The fisherwoman in the morning sold fish, followed by vegetable and fruit sellers in the late morning, and utensil and other household item sellers in the afternoon. Come evening, there were ice cream sellers, samosa sellers, peanut sellers, kebab sellers and even sweet sellers. And then as darkness dawned, everything was quiet again, including the streets. You could hear the street dog wailing, and the fireflies swarming near the street light, as people retired to their homes to prepare for another day.

Baba brought Guno another ice lolly. As soon as she was handed the ice lolly, she was back to her chirpy self, the corners of her mouth curving into a bright smile, laughing at us silly creatures dancing to her tune. We discovered that Neha, the neighbor's daughter had taken Guno with her to the street and bought Guno and herself an ice lolly with the money she had found from her father's shirt pocket that morning. She knew, hunting for money in her father's pocket was considered stealing in her house, and so she found a partner, to justify her wrong deeds, a partner in crime.