My Brother, My Friend!

Given the amount I usually put in relationships to make them work, I am amazed how easily, how without any effort, this one worked. Right from day one. I can't quite remember the first time we ever met or what we said to each other.

My earliest recollection of us is in Calcutta in our maternal grandpa's house, both of us lying on the bed, facing each other, with an open book in between. I couldn't have been more than eight, he was two years older. He was reading one page, and me another. The trick was we had to read at the same pace, so that one could turn the page without inconveniencing the other. The name of the book was 'Dubojahajer Urro Koyedi' (U Boat's Pilot Prisoner), a Bangla book, which was a translation from English.

It was a World War II story, about an Allied pilot who was a prisoner on a German U-boat. I have never been able to remember who was the author, or any other details about the book. But I remember very clearly, both of us read the book at a breathless pace, skipping baths, finishing meals quickly, not paying any attention to whatever was going around us, until we finished it.

From that day onwards, two things remained constant between us -- his bucktoothed smile and our passion for books. Both of us started out with Deb Sahitya Kutir's translations, and graduated to more exotic stuff. We were both voracious readers, and every summer vacation when I landed up in Calcutta, we would compare notes on what we had read over the year -- a habit that lasted both of us a lifetime.

When I was in Class XIth, I recommended him John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Next time when we met, we discussed the character of Cathy for hours. Until then she was quite the most fascinating woman character we had ever encountered, in fiction or in real life.

Next year, he introduced me to Drishti Prodip, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's classic tale of two brothers and a sister. During our college years and later, I became his window to English literature, and he was my guide to everything good in Bengali -- from books to theatre to food.

He was always a man of few words. A smile here, a gesture there, would be all that was forthcoming to show he cared. One day he showed up in my house in Calcutta with two tickets for Jogonnath, one of the most memorable plays I have ever seen. Another day, as I packed my bags for Delhi, he casually handed over a book to me. "Got this one for you, I know you will like this." It was Shesher Kobita (The Last Poem) by Tagore. Till today I can't turn a page of that book without remembering him.

In 1975, he came to Delhi to visit me. We both were seriously into table tennis then. World Cup Table Tennis had just got over and a Hungarian had won it. We played our own World Cup -- me, him and few of my friends. We even made a cardboard cup. He took the cup to Calcutta after he beat all of us. The highlight of the stay was watching Sholaay. We were both most distressed by Jai's death, and over the years discussed several alternative endings. Now I can't ever think of him, without thinking about alternative endings.

One summer afternoon in Calcutta, I was in Class XIIth and he was in his first year of Engineering, we browsed books on College Street, had the mandatory coffee in Coffee House, then saw a movie (can't remember the name), but both of us wanted something more. After we had checked we had enough money between us, we decided to have some beer. The only hitch was what if someone we knew saw us. We knew we were in an area which was frequented by the elders in the family.

So, drawing upon our considerable combined wisdom, we decided to don sunglasses and walk confidently into a pub. The plan was breathtakingly simple -- even if someone saw us, we would be unrecognizable because of our dark glasses. We were already so charged with the task on hand, the beer hardly hit us, and we came back home, thrilled to bits, mission accomplished.

About a week later, we had just finished our evening smoke, when our youngest maternal uncle, Tomal Mama, materialized out of nowhere, put his hands on our shoulders, looked into our eyes and said in his deep gravelly voice : "Ki re, kalo choshma porey beer khele kauke aar chena jayena na? (If you wear dark glasses and drink beer, you think no one will recognize you?)"

We stood speechless, our bad karma having finally caught up with us. Then Tomal Mama's face creased into a huge grin, and he said : "Theek aachhe, ghlabrash na, etai to boyesh beer teer khabar (Don't worry, after all this is the age to drink beer)," and then the frozen blood in my veins thawed again.

That was the first of several more memorable binges over the years. None more funnier than the time I had landed in Calcutta after getting my first job with The Statesman. I had to meet a friend at the National Library at 11 a.m. who eventually didn't show up, and on a working day I was left with nothing to do. I phoned him up (a year ago he had joined as a junior engineer with a private sector company in the city), asked him if he could meet me. There was a moment of hesitation at the other end, and then he said: "Give me 30 minutes".

I waited on the curb across the National Library, in front of the Calcutta Zoo. He showed up exactly after 30 minutes, with his bucktoothed grin in place : "Tor jonney mone hoi amar chakri ta jabe (Because of you I think I am going to lose my job)." I asked him what was the Plan of Action. He lit a cigarette, smiled at me enigmatically and said : "Just wait patiently."

He had barely finished speaking when a taxi came to a halt right where we were standing, and the eldest of our cousin brothers got down. Another brother had produced another enterprising excuse to get out of office on a working day. What followed was some serious daytime drinking, of all the places, in Calcutta Zoo. The zoo had a bar on its premises and my brothers were in no mood to waste any time, going to a pub which was some distance away. Not that I was opposed to the idea.

I realise the futility of trying to capture a relationship of a lifetime in few hundred or even a few thousand words. Which is what I had been trying to do until now. To share with you all, my memories of someone very special, very dear to me. They are good memories, great memories of growing up together.

They are my own Wonder Years. I horde these memories, when I am alone I often count them as if it were a currency, and check and re-check the tally againt the last such count. You become like that, a little obsessive, when all you are left of an association of four decades are just memories.

I have been like that, a little obsessive, the past six years. For six years ago, on this day, the man, who was not just my brother but as close a friend as one is ever likely to have, died.

This blog is about someone who made my life great by just being part of it, and left an aching hole in my heart that time can't even come close to healing. If there was Internet in the sky, I would like him to read this piece and know just how much that bucktoothed grin is missed.