COPYRIGHT @ COPYKITTEN

The Copy Kitten (my younger daughter) desperately wishes to grow up double-quick to catch up with Lil Cat (her elder sister). To hasten this disappointingly slow process (frequent comparisons of height in the mirror reveal very minuscule changes), she tries to use big big words in a grown-up manner. The only snag is that she has not learnt the meanings of all the little little words yet, so the results of her efforts are often quite surprising.

One day, demanding some medicine for a stomach ache (she frequently claims to have this, with accompanying expressive groans and grimaces), she said, “Give me some Harry Potter”. It was only after investigating the medicine box that we realized that she meant “Gripe Water” (which, incidentally, I also loved so much that I would feign stomachaches quite often).

Another day, wanting to try on her Dida’s (grandmother’s) deodorant, she kept on asking for ‘aloevera’. To complicate our confusion, she insisted on pronouncing it as ‘aloe-beral’. Since ‘beral’ means CAT in Bengali, we were all very much amused. But the gutsy little kitten stuck to her guns, saying, “Na, aloe-beral boley aekta jinis hoy” (No, there is something called aloeberal).

Last year, an over-excited Copy-kitten, dressed in her chaniya-choli finery, had announced to the family that she was going to dance the ‘gabra’. Since then, our Navratri celebrations have centred round the ‘gabra’ rather than the ‘garba’.

Sometimes, she mispronounces P as K. So the song about the POSTMAN becomes:

“COASTMAN aaya, COASTMAN aaya/ Kitney letters laya, kitney letters laya?”
(The Coastman has come, how many letters has be brought?)

In her defence, it may be said that since Mumbai is a coastal city, the mailman may be regarded as arriving from the coast.

And, of course, the Pussy Cat who went to visit the queen often becomes the KHUSI CAT (‘Khusi’ means ‘joy’ in Bengali). But that is OK with us, because she is after all a Khusi Kitten. And her big sister, the Lil Cat may laugh at her attempts, but it is all in good sport and fun, like the real kittens under the stairs play.

NOW WE HAVE THEM ALL

I am a major fan of A A Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh series, with the line illustrations by E H Shepard. (NOT the remixed, dumbed-down, sanctimonious, over-sweet, botoxed and multi-coloured DISNEY version, which is good only for kids and cakes - this year my three-year old had a Pooh cake for her birthday).

I mean the original books, which number only four. Of these, I had managed to get three earlier (Pooh-book hunting adventures recounted earlier in this blog).

Recently, at the Crossword Sale, I found the remaining book, NOW WE ARE SIX, which is a collection of whimsical rhymes about Christopher Robin's childhood, till he reaches the immensely self-important age of six.

There are poems about 'Us Two' (Who else, but Christopher and Pooh), about his golden-sunlit 'Buttercup Days', about fascinating 'Old Sailors' and 'Charcoal Burners', about the wheezles and 'Sneezles' which force you to be bundled in bed, when all you want is to be 'Busy' going round about and round about.

There are poems which will transport you back to when you were six or so, when you had your own special imaginary friend Binker, who was as fond of sweets as you were, and for whom you had to take two sweets, one for you and one for him, and both of which you had to eat (because his teeth were new, or something).

Adorable, delicious and quite quite wonder-full.

HAPPINESS IS ...A WET TISSUE

This evening, the spouse returned from a work-related three-day trip to Bangalore. Joy and jubilation all around, because the kids had been missing him madly. (Yester-night, the copy-kitten, my younger daughter, had jumped when the doorbell rang, shouting "Baba is back" in the face of the surprised andawalla - person who sells eggs door-to-door - so badly was she missing her father).

The spouse gave her and her elder sister, Lil Cat, the freshen-up tissues given on flights. Their smiles could've lit up the runway. They opened the small grey packets with whoops of joy, smelt the fragrance like connoisseurs, ooh-ing and aah-ing, wiped their darling faces many many times, stuck the wet tissues on the mirror as part of a "magic trick" and fell blissfully asleep with the near-dry and crumpled tissues under their pillows, perfuming their dreams and wafting in their sighs.

When was the last time such a small thing made me so ecstatically happy? I guess childhood is all about finding joy in the newness of experiences. But when we begin to put a material value to happiness, we lose that innocence, and childhood slips through the very fingers we use to count the costs of pleasure.

REMEMBERING RAPUNZEL

A few days back I was walking with a friend when we both noticed the very long, oiled, braided and flower-bedecked hair of two women walking in front of us. This is a fairly common sight in our part of the world, where many women still find the time (and have the inclination) to oil and be-flower their tresses. Unlike me, whose shoulder-length tresses are always falling out or turning alarmingly-greybeneath their hennaed-hideout under a hastily put-up perpetual-ponytail (Because of stress? Genetics? What is the bald truth?).

When I was young, my unruly-curly locks were tamed by a succession of severe ‘boys’ cuts’, and it was my secret, rebellious desire to grow-up and grow down my hair till my waist at least, sometimes to be demurely plaited (without the dodgy scent of hair-oil, though), sometimes to be left free (but miraculously tangle-free).

Alas, that was not to be. I have never had the fortune or the fortitude to grow my hair really long. And though I once shocked my family and erstwhile colleagues back in Kolkata when I appeared with temporarily truncated-to-my-ear-length tresses (somebody amiably compared me to a hen shorn of its neck-feathers), my usual hair-length varies, through steps and layers, from neck to shoulder. Rapunzel remains a distant, gradually-turning-grey, dream – to modify Shel Silverstein’s ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’:
“At the age of 35 – (long ago, actually)
I realized I’d never ride –
Though Mumbai –
In a Mercedes –
With the sea-wind in my waist-length hair.”

PRAGMATIC P.S: Can anyone tell me why all the hair that falls with monotonous regularity from my head are always black, and the ones that determinedly cling on are grey?

MOTHER’S DAY…AND MONTH…AND YEAR EVER AFTER

My maa is the unsentimental type,
She's not moved by any Mother’s Day hype.

(She’s not a person who cuddled and snuggled or read bedtime stories to us. But she always managed to cook our favourite dishes, and sew new outfits and knit new sweaters into which we could snuggle up, anyway. She’s still busy-fingered, clack-clacketing knitting needles and trailing strands of wool, knitting for her four granddaughters.)

Her knees give her trouble, her back gives her pain,
Yet when I need a helping hand, she’ll visit again.

(When my elder daughter was born, I stayed with her for three months. She would get up at dawn, cook all kinds of food supposedly good for lactating mothers, go to work, come back late after shopping for 1001 baby-stuff, AND, after all this, would stay up half the night singing lullabies to the baby, just so that I could sleep a little.
She stayed with me for five months after my younger daughter was born, and helped me just as much as before, if not more.)

She never uses make-up, her hair’s almost white,
Yet she’s fun and sporting, and a FRIEND all right.

(My brother and I never really had any generation-gap issues with her. She’s such a calm person, that we spontaneously and naturally shared all our adolescent indiscretions with her. She let go so confidently, never panicking, hardly-ever scolding. We came running back to her with our confidences. Now that the decades have ironed out the adult-child barriers, there is an ease, a comfort, a warmth, a PEACE, whenever she visits.)

You may think she’s boring, a plain-dull house-wife,
Yet she travels a lot and experiments with life.

(When we were young, she would read up, write-down and cook-up new recipes from newspapers and magazines. The whole family loved her kitchen-surprises. She would collect knitting-patterns and embroidery-designs and she also learnt dress-making. My childhood wardrobe was full of maa-made garments. All this while looking after a family of six almost single-handedly.
Now that we are all grown-up, she and her girlie-gang of sisters and cousins often take off together, traveling to various parts of India, usually to places with a religious connect. And from all accounts, the entire group of giggly sixty-pluses have a blast together.)


She never reads my blogs, though she’s hooked to Microsoft solitaire,
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, Maa, and week and month and year.

(Thanks for being strong as a rock, comforting as a cushion. I wish you were here.)

TAGORE AND THE TALENTED BENGALI

Today is Pochisey Baisakh (the 25th day of Baisakh month in the Bengali calendar), and Bengalis all over the world are probably celebrating Rabindra-Jayanti, the birth-anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, the unchallenged Colossus of Bengali culture.

Little girls in plaits and pleated saris will sing Rabindrasangeet (Tagore’s songs) and dance with lissome, undulating (if un-athletic) movements (Rabindranitya). Little boys, chafing in uncomfortable kurta-pajamas (or dhotis) will recite lisping poems from SHISHU (The Child). Their suddenly-self-conscious parents will clear their throats and launch into reinditions of songs, poems, or verse-plays from the prolific output of the Gurudev (Spiritual Father), accompanied by the tabla and the harmonium. The chief guest will place the mandatory garland-of-white-blossoms on the framed portrait of the white-bearded, visionary-eyed, loose-robed gentleman. The boredom of listening to his (the chief-guest’s) long bhason (speech) about the ‘importance of Kabiguru (Poet-prophet-teacher) in Bengali life and culture’ will be somewhat mitigated by the tantalizing aroma of frying luchis (a preparation of refined flour) and alurdom (curried potatoes). Finally, having gorged on food and culture, everybody will return home, criticising the performance of the neighbour’s son/daughter (“Ki aar emon gaye” – no great shakes) and praising their own offspring (“Ki darun aabriti korlo, aamar toh chokhey jal eshey giyechhilo” – his recitation brought tears to my eyes) in true Bengali spirit.

But such obvious (and sometimes odious) panegyrics aside, Tagore is present in the Bengali’s life and self-fashioning in subliminal, sub-conscious, all-encompassing ways. All Bengalis will proudly declare to the rest of the world that Rabindranath Tagore was the FIRST Indian to receive the Nobel Prize (For literature, for his book of poems – GITANJALI - Song Offerings). The Bengali holds his head high during the national anthem, Jana gana mana adhinayak jaya hey (Hail the ruler of the hearts and minds of the people), because Tagore penned it. Each Bengali has his own individual relationship with Tagore’s poems and songs (the bearded-bespectacled-Bengali-intellectual has an almost proprietory relationship with Tagore’s novels, plays and paintings as well).

Most Bengalis grow up force-fed on his songs. That is not to say that they do not like it. When I was young, my father would often, in the evenings, open the battered blue-bound family-copy of GITABITAN (a collection of Tagore’s songs) and randomly sing songs in his untrained-but-melodious baritone and we would all join in at will; Didia (my cousin) would hum a few notes and I would amateurishly dance my self-choreographed dances.

Now, with my daughters, I am going through the rich legacy Tagore has left for children, the simple-but-graded stories and the lyrical nuanced poems of SAHAJ PATH (Easy Reader). I share their wonder at:
“Kal chhilo dal khali,
Aaj phuley jaye bhorey;
Bol dekhi tui maali,
Hoy shey kemon korey?”

("Yesterday’s bare branches
Are today in full flower;
Can you tell me, O gardener,
Who wroughts this strange power?") – Imperfect translation by me.

Each Bengali grows up with his own memories of Tagore. His lyrics-of-many-moods comfort us, cheer us, make us weep, sustain us through the seasons of joy and sorrow, hope and despair. All nostalgia-haunted-Bengalis, separated from home and childhood-friends by time or distance, have sung (or lip-synched or listened to) “Purano shei diner katha bhulbi kirey haye (How can we forget those old days…)”. My aunt had once told me (when I was dismissive of Tagore as overly-sentimental and old-fashioned), that as we grew older, the relevance of Tagore would increase. How true she was! Now in my thirties, though I still have a lot of uncharted Tagore-territory to travel, and though I still do not agree with a lot of his opinions and emotions, in my heart the bond has grown stronger.

A BENGALI LESSON IN TIMIDITY

I have started a much-awaited task this month - that of teaching my elder daughter the basics of the Bengali script. At school she learns English and Hindi, so we decided that it was time for home-lessons in her mother-tongue (which she speaks at home, and has also started to read now).
To teach her, I fell back on the age-old primer, Barna Parichay, the favourite introduction to the Bengali language written in the nineteenth-century by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (and read by generations of Bengalis - my parents and myself included).
Although Vidyasagar (his name literally means 'sea of knowledge') was a remarkably courageous man and a pioneering social reformer, re-reading his book with my daughter gave me a few insights on why the typical Bengali bhadralok (gentlemen - and women) are regarded as timid, cautious-about-health-and-weather and scared-of-catching-a-cold.
In his lessons in Barna Parichay, Vidyasagar cautions in the same breath : "kakhono michha katha kahio na (do not lie)" and "roder samay daura-dauri korio na (do not run about in the sun)." Then again, he warns incipient naughty children, "tumi douria jao keno, poria jaibe (why are you running, you will fall down)".
As a piece de resistance, the final lesson contrasts the life of a good boy,Gopal (who revises his lessons, never fights with others, and always eats what his parents give him - I should be so lucky!) with that of a bad boy, Rakhal (who enjoys nothing more than a good fight or a good rough-and-tumble game and who apparently manages to lose four sets of schoolbooks in a month - not that he reads any of it, anyway). Obviously, the subodh balak (good boy) is excessively loved (otishoy bhalobashen) by his parents.
No wonder, Bengalis are deemed to excessively love their iconic monkey-caps and umbrellas, especially at the first hint of cold or cloud. Umbrellas, of course, are a must-have outdoor accessory, come rain or shine.
Bengalis also love arguments but abhor fisticuffs, being content to shout "maar, maar shaalake (hit him, hit the rascal)" from the sidelines of any streetfight. And all self-respecting, brought-up-on-Barnaparichay Bengali babus (gentlemen) will diligently shun any work which might take them out under the hot sun.
Lessons learnt at their mother's knee, with a little help from Vidyasagar?