In memoriam

January 03, 2024

The similarity was uncanny. Over the years, I remember comparing my palm side-by-side to his - it is an almost identical copy of Dadua’s. In fact, I would say it with pride – a cherished emblem that I carried with a sense of honour. When I heard the heartbreaking news at three in the morning, my immediate response was to look at my own palm in the dim light of the smartphone, not knowing what this meant or how to feel about it.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

As a child of parents with transferable jobs, my boyhood unfolded across various locations: Alipore, Birbhum, Bardhaman and Salt Lake. One place that was constant throughout was Lake Temple Road and Dadua. My earliest memories as a child were with Dadua. His cane with an elephant’s trunk curve at the end, his fast strides which were so hard for my short legs to keep up with, the crisp morning air of Rabindra Sarobar lake before day break, and of course the “notun jinish dekhbo” which was an euphemism for toys without my mother realising I am asking for something new.

While I was too young to fully remember the morning walks I took with Dadua, fragments of those memories linger in my mind. I recall moments such as meeting his friends by the lake, to the local chaiwalla who knew precisely what everyone wanted, to the almost superhero names I had for each of his friends (like Amloki-dadu and Bhim-dadu). Sometimes in the evenings he would take me for a walk around the lake as well, but this time, it was not to meet his friends, but to have a Vadilal ice cream and sometimes freshly roasted peanuts. To this day, the smell of warm peanuts takes me back to that time. I was old enough when I got the news of him passing away in his sleep, yet deep down, I was still the little boy who yearns for one more morning walk with his grandfather.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

In Bardhaman, we resided in an expansive estate adorned with boundless fields of crops and parks full of flowers and orchards teeming with trees. I remember Dadua took me on a tour of the estate sharing his knowledge about crops and the art of nurturing plant life. As a lifelong gardener himself, he imparted a wealth of wisdom to my uncomprehending preadolescent ears.

Although I may not recall the intricacies of gardening techniques, certain moments are indelibly engraved as if they were from last week. One such recollection is him showing me how to collect dried seeds from different fruits and use them as beads to play with and make little craft items of it. Of all the toys I received as gifts that birthday in Bardhaman, today I seem to only recall this: a concoction of odd plant seeds that remain etched in memory because of the loving embrace of a grandfather and the spark of creativity that was so very characteristic of Dadua.

He not only was creative himself, but ignited creativity in others too. I daresay, my mother’s fondness for recitation was kindled by Dadua. During one summer, I made a toy “smart” watch from a piece of black cardboard and a few hand-drawn digital dials. Mimi took me to a tailor to procure an elastic strap for the watch band, and with Dadua’s assistance, we assembled it all together. While I merely did it to emulate all the watch-wearing grown ups around me, Dadua confided in me that as a boy he also used scrap material as a child to craft things. This early inclination eventually led him to create his vast collection of handmade artefacts. I recall he said to me a few years later that art is different to each of us – everyone looking at the same tree but since every other person is seeing it from a different vantage point, it is not really the same tree they are looking at – everyone’s impression of the same tree is different.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

Atop the four-storey building on Lake Temple Road, was a sanctuary of lush platlife – all meticulously tended to by Dadua. For the longest time, Lake Temple felt akin to the story of Charlie’s chocolate factory, only healthier – abounding with banana, papaya, cauliflower, coriander, mango, pumpkin, chillies, shojne, and the lemons. On numerous occasions, Dadua would take my brother and me to the roof to pick out lemons straight from the tree. As we plucked the fruit from the plant, the natural aroma of the gondhoraj lemons permeated the air while we helped him bag the lemons for us to take home.

At one point of time, there was even a water reservoir to cultivate fish on the same rooftop. Picture this: smack in the heart of the urban grey slate of Calcutta, a green nugget of nature nestled in the unlikely location of a rooftop, tended to by one man - where plant and waterlife thrived alike. I would call that Eden on Earth, wouldn’t you?

আমার মুক্তি আলোয় আলোয় এই আকাশে
আমার মুক্তি ধুলায় ধুলায় ঘাসে ঘাসে

Dadua was a man at one with nature, and nature reciprocated that connection. He used to often tell us that plants have feelings and plants understand when they are cared for. During his younger days, he ventured far and wide in search of plants that were uncommon and unthinkable to grow on small pots. The mango plant for instance, that grew on a pot and bore fruit all throughout the year, was an accomplishment that filled him particularly with pride.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

As I grew from a toddler to “a young man”, as he would phrase it, Dadua shared stories, folktales, Sanskrit slokas and poems with me and my brother. He tried his best to instil in us the wisdom from passages from many pieces of literature. Long before I could grasp the concept of religion, I had already committed to memory some of the verses from Ma Durga’s prayers. Even these days during Ashtami anjali, the verse “Sarbamangala Mangalyay” triggers the memory of Dadua sitting on is armchair, with his red book of Hindu Slokas in his hand reading passages out to us in the backdrop of the soft rustling of leaves from the trees he planted in the driveway of Lake Temple road.

Dadua was known to be a master-reciter, with the innate ability to recall thousand-line poems like he was reading an invisible paper in front of him. Once on Rabindrajayanti at the Lake, he brought me to one of his performances. Although I did not understand the poem, I did understand that everyone’s attention was pinned on his recitation. He taught me many poems from the “Sishu” collection of Tagore’s poems made specifically for children.

মনে করো যেন বিদেশ ঘুরে
মাকে নিয়ে যাচ্ছি অনেক দূরে
তুমি যাচ্ছ পালকিতে মা চড়ে
আমি যাচ্ছি রাঙা ঘোড়ার ‘পরে

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

Dadua was a captivating storyteller. As I grew older, the stories he told me also took a more mature form. What were stories from the Ramayan and Mahabharat, became anecdotes from his own life and choices that defined who he was. He recounted the river next to his childhood home in Comilla where fishermen sold fish right after catching it, his boyhood days spent in his school Ishwar Pathshala, his meeting Rabindranath Tagore, about his aspirations for going to art school, fond recollections of his mother, whom he lost at an early age, of the stern yet spirited chancellor of BE college of yesteryear and of Vergese Kurian, founder of Amul, who was his classmate at National Dairy Research Institute in Bangalore.

His home in SN Banerjee Road was close to Anadi Cabin. On the day of his graduation from BE College, he recalled how much he enjoyed a plate of Mughlai Parathas – he fondly recalled that the owner of the restaurant (I think Anadi himself) decided not to charge him when he found out it was his graduation day.

I felt a profound connection to his stories, bupt none more than those centred around Kurseong and Keventer’s. Even till this day, a trip to Darjeeling is incomplete without visiting Keventer’s restaurant. His stories always took me to faraway hill stations that he visited – sometimes to supervise tea estates – sometimes to overlook another part of his business. On one occasion, he told us how he found his way to a cabin when his car had broken down in a hilly deserted forest, and in his hour of despair, he met a classmate from BE college.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

Mimi’s passing marked the end of what I recall as childhood. The house became quieter and both Dadua and Dia suddenly seemed to age overnight. Thus began a different era in Lake temple. Over the ensuing years, Dadua got ill a few times. After coming back from the hospital one time, he was quite frail and could barely make it to the dining table. Words that will forever keep ringing in my ears were “Dadua kheyecho” (he used to call me “Dadua” as well) – even in the weakest moments, he was still enquiring about my well-being. Lake temple right there, as it was, and as it is today, will always be defined by moments like these – transforming what I used to call “Daduar bari” to much more than a house and into something greater than myself, a cornerstone and source of eternal strength.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

The day after I got the news, I was looking for some photos of Dadua – I found many of Dia’s, only a few of Dadua’s. In one of them during bhai-phota, Dadua was there just in the background. I was about to scroll past it when it struck me that that was him in his true essence – ever present and away from the limelight. Even then, there was one photo on a warm summer’s noon, when he was front and centre, smiling as bright as the sun overhead. Being the eldest, I was the first in my generation to get a job. Mimi had long left for the heavenly abode and in the ensuing five years, the deepest sense of pride I ever allowed myself was when using my own money, I bought Dadua a Panjabi and Dia a saree. Oh you should have been there to see his smile. He didn’t have the habit of dressing up or going outside to restaurants but in his words “it’s to celebrate my Dadua’s first job, of course I will dress up”. One of the photos from that day captured his effervescent smile so well that it is being framed to be the photograph to remember him by. To mean as much to someone is not something I know how to put into words.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

Mohana met Dadua only after we got married. But she knew of him from our college days – till date, she recalls how awestruck she was hearing of Dadua’s technological prowess. Back in the early 2010s, we were all on the broadband bandwagon and it was liberating to have an omnipresent connection called “wifi”. It might have been considered a young man’s experiment in most households, but not in Lake Temple Road. Not only did Dadua have his own laptop, smartphone and wifi setup, he became quite famous among my friends for insisting to upgrade his poor BSNL network to a faster Airtel one! He honed new ideas for handicraft from the internet and I often got to see him trying new tools like a hot glue gun and coloured glue sticks, which he used to make desk items like pen holders.

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.

If you pass by Shib Mandir, you may be forgiven for not noticing the otherwise unremarkable building that stands at Lake Temple Road. To me though, it is a foundational pillar to who I was as a child and who I became as an adult, and Dadua is an integral part of that and I will forever miss him. I met Dadua for the last time on March 24, 2023. I am still grappling with the harsh reality that I will never see him again. What stays with me are his stories, his lifestyle, his teachings, and his appreciation for the arts. I recall him reciting the following passage often with glistening eyes. Today it holds a very special place as I cling to his memory.

ফিরায়ে দিনু দ্বারের চাবি, রাখি না আর ঘরের দাবি—
সবার আজি প্রসাদবাণী চাই॥
অনেক দিন ছিলাম প্রতিবেশী,
দিয়েছি যত নিয়েছি তার বেশি।

I kept staring at my palm in the engulfing darkness of the cold Dutch night.