Chapter 4 - Prison of Joy

I was just nine and a half years old when I got a call from Ramakrishna Mission, Deoghar that they had selected me. I and Ashu were on a virtual scooter ride in the imaginary streets of Venicia on our old Vespa when the postman came with an envelope with the Ramakrishna Mission seal. Even before we had opened the envelope, both of us knew that this letter meant that I would have to leave behind my school, friends, parents and Ashu to study at some much coveted place.

Two months before that I had gone through a rigorous series of written tests and interviews. I did not know much about this school then except that my Papa wanted me to crack it. The thing about Papa was that he never told you to do something but expected a lot from inside. This time also, even though he had not told me specifically to do well in this exam, his eyes were chock-a-block with anxiety and anticipation. There were over 3500 applicants for just 30 odd seats and it was probably my first brush with competition. All the guys there seemed more primed and gifted than me but somehow I kept on pushing myself. It feels as if it was yesterday. Papa was waiting outside the examination hall with fruits and cup-cakes and despite all his attempts to hide his impatience, he asked me, “Do you think you will able to get through?” I thought for a while and I nodded, “Yes, I will.”

So, I actually did get through and what a party did we have. All my friends had come and Ma had prepared chaat for all of them. Gifts were exchanged, a puja was done and photographs were taken. It was only 5-6 years later that I noticed that Ashu was not present in any of the photographs taken that evening. He later told me that he had been crying in the balcony all the time. While I was happy to embark for a new tryst with my providence, my wooden horse knew that it was his turn to be alone now.

Ramakrishna Mission, or RKM as we called it, is one of the best boarding schools in Eastern India. Situated in the holy city of Deoghar and run by monks, it is more of an ashram than a school. The place is still run in the ancient Gurukul tradition; morning and evening prayers, meditation sessions, drills, community service and doing all the daily chores like sweeping, gardening etc. The place is a prison in itself with complete social seclusion. Even the parents are not allowed to meet their children for more than just a few hours in an entire term. The good thing is that the place is self sufficient in its lush green 60 acre land with its own dairy, gymnasium, mango groves, departmental store etc. The life there is bound by numerous rules; punctuality, discipline, cleanliness. Most of the monks are very similar in their demeanor; harsh from outside and squashy from inside. Same could be said about life there; harsh from outside and squashy from inside. (All this in present tense because nothing has changed since it was founded in 1922)

The first few days were exciting. Everything seemed fresh and liberating from my life back home. New friends, soccer sessions, Swami Vivekanand, music classes, Bhagvad Geeta chanting, Crichton’s and Rushdie’s, Alu Poshto – everything seemed fascinating and otherworldly. While many of my friends were being home sick, I was completely immersed in my new life. I never shed a single tear, thinking about anyone back home. All of this was going quite well until I received my first postcard from home, after a fortnight or so. As soon as I read it, all the dams cracked apart and I locked myself in the toilet and kept on crying for an entire hour. When Papa came for his first visit, I hugged him tightly and asked him to take me home. He took me on a walk, gave me a sweet chikki and told in an even sweeter voice, “You have always seen me as a successful doctor. But I was not like this always. It has taken me a lot of nerve, faith, endurance and a dogged determination to surmount all obstacles. There is a reason why you are here. A diamond is just a chunk of coal that has withstood extreme pressure. Always remember my words and never ever give up, my diamond.” As you can see, I still remember those words. Life took on a new meaning there onwards. It was not that I stopped feeling home sick. It was just the feeling that something great awaits at the end of this odyssey.

As is typical to boarding schools, RKM also was divided into two well defined, broad categories – Bullies (with a Big B) and sissies (with a small s). Since I have decided to be as true as possible, I must admit that back then I was a sissy. The Bullies ensured that a major share of their sweeping, mopping and gardening was outsourced to us. Also, they used to snatch all the eatables which the sissies brought from home. They scared us with their larger bodies and closeness to monks. The sissies had an underground society as well which constantly made plans to overpower the rule of the bullies. A spontaneous upheaval was required to break this bipolar dystopia and finally, it was ‘The Great mango Revolts of 1995’ that ended the tyrannical rule of the Bullies and restored Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité to the Republic of RKM.

As mentioned before, there were many mango trees inside the campus. Though forbidden by the monks, one of our favourite activities was to ‘steal’ green unripe mangoes. Their citric taste was divine to say the say the least. We often got caught, punished and beaten for this but the magic of mangoes always pulled us back to the groves. With the mango melting in our mouths, we felt free. These mangoes were something we were not ready to share with anyone, even the Bullies. One fine day, we were informed that the Bullies had declared to levy Mango Tax – a tax of one mango per day per sissy for the Bullies else they will complain about us. Already the Bullies had exclusive rights over the bigger mango trees and such a tax seemed completely unfair. In one of our secret society meetings, we decided to end this rule once and forever. It took the tang of the green mangoes to arouse the rebel in us. We had just read about Gandhi and we started our own Non-Cooperation Movement. We were ready for punishments but won’t work anything beyond our fair share. Within days, the boundary between the bullies and Sissies fell apart. I had learned yet another important lesson of life; I had learned to say NO.

The next few years were really thrilling. We didn’t just grow up, we grew up TOGETHER. From locking a monk inside his room to crossing over the campus walls to watch movies, we did it all. We did all kinds of mischief but as the punishments became harsher, they also turned more and more meaningless. Inside its barb-wired walls, RKM offered us a completely new world to explore. The once innocent kids experienced their first twinges of love, hatred, friendship, ego, philosophy, compassion and well, lust within those walls. We had no idea of the world outside except from what we saw during the daily news, the only thing we were shown on TV except monthly movies and Sunday cartoons. When we had come, we were all so different but as we grew up, all of us thought, acted and dreamed exactly alike. As is obvious from this paragraph, RKM turned ‘Me’ into ‘Us’.

I don’t know when it happened; whether it was because of my addiction to Swami Vivekananda’s words or because of the confident persona of Bishwaroop Maharaj (one of the brightest monks I have ever known). Whatever must have been the reason, one fine morning, I woke up with a smirk on my face. I had finally decided what I wanted to become. I wanted to become a MONK, to roam around the length and breadth of the country in an orange robe, to help people, to perform miracles, to explain the virtues of scriptures, to change lives. That day itself, I rushed to Bishwaroop Maharaj and told him that I wanted to join the order and become his monastic disciple. He was shocked, but somewhat happy, to listen of such a thing from a thirteen year old. He added a word of caution though, “Just stay away from girls. Their mirage will never let you see the Truth.” “Girls...huh... who cares”, it was an obvious thought back then. I had no time or intention to complicate my life as everything seemed beautiful and effortless. My life had a purpose now.

Life was still pretty simple but then, I didn’t know that it was just the lull before the storm.

Chapter 3 – The Dusk of Innocence

Ashu came one night out of nowhere without any prior notice. Ma had gone out for just an hour or so, leaving me behind with Baby Mausi, her youngest sister. And when she came back, she had something in her arms. I was just a three year old kid then and had never seen any other baby before. It wasn’t pink. It wasn’t howling. I looked at his closed eyes, clenched fists and small toes, and I just kept on staring and staring, mesmerised and dumbfounded. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

As time moved on and I saw this baby grow up, I realised that since I was not the youngest, I was no more a kid. I sometimes played the boss, sometimes the fan, sometimes the contender. In all those roles, one thing was common; we were a team. Not exactly ideal but a closed knit one. I had my pangs of jealousy but it was always followed by a sense of guilt. We were very different from each other, even back then. He was rebellious, I was blasé; he was indiscreet, I was manipulative. Sometimes I feel that an arithmetic average of Reshu and Ashu might be the proverbial ideal man philosophers and scientists have been searching for since aeons. Despite all the differences between us, one great thing in common was that we both loved to imagine. Our favourite sport was not cricket or hide-n-seek but screenplay, direction and acting in our self written short movies. We used to spend hours designing and enacting our stories. And they belonged to all possible genres; all except romance, of course. But here also, we had a bipolar attitude. He was obsessed by horror stories and I was struck with mysteries. Whenever I try to remember those days, I can see two happy little kids playing in the backyard of Raj Kunj at Sahibganj and in this particular case, the story they are enacting is of Sherlock Holmes solving the case of the Frankenstein; not very original, I guess.

“Ravana, you are dead now”, I said. We were playing Ramayana. Being the elder one, I always picked up the role of the victor and this time also, I was playing Rama and he was Ravana. I shot him once again to verify. I was getting restless by now. I said, “This time you are dead for sure. Arre... why are you still laughing? You are already dead, you evil Ravana.”

“Ravana might be dead but I am his ghost and you can never kill me”. This small incident clearly conveys what Ashu is. His ‘Never Say Die’ attitude was not just for the role of Ravana but for life itself, come what may.

By now, Papa had already started his medical practice and our family had moved to a petite but chocolate box town called Sahibganj. On its three sides were the primordial Rajmahal Hills while the mighty Ganga flowed on the fourth. It was just like the magical city in our games. We spent our mornings seeing the sun come out of the Ganges and then see the hills gobble it down every evening. From exotic immigrant birds to Bangladeshi refugees, Sahibganj was indeed the haven for anyone who needed a home. The most fascinating community in Sahibganj were the old British Sahibs who had preferred staying back at this picturesque town rather than their motherland which they had never known. Since Papa was a nature-lover and an adventurer to the core, he ensured that every weekend we had a picnic, sometimes jumping over the rocks at the waterfalls or sailing to the other bank of Ganges on a sailboat. Sahibganj remained our home for the next eighteen years (till the day tragedy struck but let’s not get ahead of the story) and still is an integral part of my existence.

Life was pretty simple then.

Papa was home by 4 in the evening and since we had no TV, it was his story sessions that we awaited every single day. He also made certain that he brought a gift for Ma and us every single day, even if it was just a 10p sugar candy.

Life was pretty simple then.

There was no pressure of studies; except the fact that since our class topper was a girl and the child of a doctor, my Ma always poked me to put in a little more effort. The doctor wives’ had their weekly kitty parties on Thursdays in which the girl’s mother always used to flaunt a lot about her topper daughter. I really dreaded and even hated these kitty parties back then as it was only on Thursdays that my Ma would make me sit on the study table for 2-3 hours.

Life was pretty simple then.

It was in Upper Kindergarten that Sister Lily became our English teacher. She was a 20 something nun and had travelled from far-off Malta to come and join the missionary. To be truthful, I don’t remember her face but somehow remember it to be fairer than anyone in the class and prettier than anyone I knew. She always came like a cool breeze after the volcano of our Maths teacher Mrs. Banerjee had left us sweating. Sister Lily talked about ancient cultures, extinct birds and exotic lands and the entire class would listen to her, rapt by her Maltese accent and melodic voice. Back then, we always talked in ‘toota-foota’ English with each other as we had a rule of ‘one cane per Hindi word’ in school but despite being an English teacher, Sister Lily allowed us to talk in Hindi as well. In her white dress, she looked just like a lily, a fragrant white flower which is said to be of divine origin. She sang songs of love and talked of feelings I had not known before then. I and a few of my friends (Rajiv, Arijit, Prakash, Amit) loved making small skits and staging them before the class during free periods. Sister Lily always encouraged us and even suggested stories for the skits. Once when I was playing the role of Hamlet in one of our short plays, she had complimented me, “Aayush, you are a Superstar”. And then she had smiled. I guess that must have been my ‘first blush’. She taught us for the next two years before she moved on to her next mission in Nigeria. I still remember the entire class weeping out loud at her farewell. I might have been just 5-6 year old then and didn’t understand that strange heart-ache I had as she spoke her final words before boarding the school van. Years later, I had a similar pain when I saw the Sinha family go away in a jeep, but let’s not rush to that story so easily.

Life was pretty simple then.

There was a Peepal tree near our home. This was where ‘our ghost’ resided. Every child in India has ‘a ghost’. Whenever a child in India doesn’t drink his/her milk, the mothers usually warn them about this very ghost. Whenever they fight over something, they are told that the ghost will punish them. Whenever there is a bad news in the newspaper, the blame is put on this very ghost. It is this ghost we pray before exams and fear before stealing biscuits from the kitchen. In our case, this ghost resided on a Peepal tree nearby. One fine evening, Ashu and I had a bet if either of us can go and touch that tree. Being a self proclaimed ghost buster, I decided to go first.

As I moved towards the tree, my heart started pounding harder. I had encountered many a ghosts in my magical world but this was for real and all my gallantry seemed useless here. It was murky and dim all around and all the usual sounds of the dark felt scarier than ever. As I got closer to the tree, I was shocked to see a few white figures at the base of the tree. I froze where I was. I could see those shadows move and the fear of the unknown gripped me over. But, if I returned back without completing my bet, my little brother would have a lifetime of a laugh. All my bossing around would not be effective anymore. I needed to make a choice between the fear of losing my life and the fear of losing my nobility. I chose to complete my bet and moved closer to the tree. As I approached nearer I could see a woman dressed in a whitish sari and surrounded by two naked kids. I could feel my legs shake as I sweated and shivered at the same time. As I came still closer I realised that this was just a homeless family which was planning to sleep by the Peepal tree. All my fear vanished in a second as I realised that these people were themselves quivering with fear thinking that I was a ghost. Since it was as dark and dusky for them as for me, they had seen me emerge out of nowhere and move stealthily (and supposedly scarily) towards them. From that day onwards, the tree held no more importance to me. Needless to say, I didn’t divulge this secret to Ashu and the Peepal remained ‘his ghost’ for a couple of more years. My second encounter with the Supernatural was not as stirring as the first one but taught me a great lesson for life – all our ghosts are imaginary, we just need to get closer to them to know this.

Life was pretty simple then.

I was in Class Two when Ashu also joined the KGs in the same school. His classes would end one and a half hour before mine but everyday he waited for me and we would return home together at around 4pm when my classes ended. One day my class ended around two hours before schedule. I came back home talking to a friend of mine. When it was around 5 pm and Ashu hadn’t come that I realised that he was still waiting for me at school. I ran back to school to find him still sitting at his usual spot, convinced that I will definitely come. The school guard had spotted him and was frantically trying to induce him to go back home before it got too dark. As soon as our eyes met, he was all smiles and I was all tears.

Life was indeed pretty simple then.

Chapter 2 – Till the time I was the Only One

Dr. Ashok was leaving for a lecture on Heart Ailments when he received the telegram that he had become a father. He decided to bunk the class (something which he regretted later but I won’t get ahead of the story) and packed his bags for Bettiah.

Ashok had always wanted a son, a son just like him; calm yet ambitious. He himself had dreamt of becoming a doctor when he was just seven and fulfilled it without fail. During those times, a poor student becoming a doctor was today’s equivalent of a Bangladeshi astronaut going to the Moon; near to impossible. But Ashok had achieved that impossibility by his sheer hard work, grit and according to him, his father’s blessings. Ashok had always been an obedient son and the moment he secured a position in medicals, his father wanted him to get married and give him a grandson. On his father Ramdeo Babu’s insistence, he married a young and youthful girl Renu, even while he was studying at Patna Medical College.

Unlike today’s fast forward love stories, Papa and Ma had met only once before marriage, at their engagement. And while the young Medicine student slipped a gold ring in the finger of his bride to be, he whispered in her ears, “Have you ever been to Kashmir?” The answer was a shy No. This was the only conversation they had before they got married a month later. Needless to say, they had their honeymoon, a rarity in those days, in the snowy lap of the Himalayas at Kashmir. I sometimes like to assume that I was conceived in this Paradise itself and that is why I have a little bit of Kashmir in me, that I am a down-to-earthling and a militant at the same time.

Papa reached the Christian Quarters, a week after my birth and as he held the still so pink, still so howling me in his arms, he must have watched his version of my entire life flash in front of him in a matter of seconds. He must have seen me- top the classes, win the races, woo the ladies, lead the people and become the person he had always strived to be.

He named me Reshu – a word which represented who I was; the Joint Venture of Renu and Ashok Ltd. But the word would not have made much of a sense for the rest of the world. So, they gave me another name, Aayush – ‘someone who lives long’ (or maybe just ‘someone who LIVES’). And that is what I have always been since then, Reshu at home and Aayush for the rest of the world.

The next three years were the years for the usual ‘firsts’; something which always amazes us mortals despite its blatancy and certainty. My list of ‘firsts’ was as comprehensive as the rest of us; my first words, my first steps, my first nursery rhyme, my first day at school, my first full course meal, my first.. oh no, that followed much later. And somehow my parents always found something worthwhile in my futile ‘firsts’ and I have pictures of nearly all of my ‘achievements’.

However immodest and clichéd it might sound but I was very different from the guys of my age. I started talking when I was just one year old and was reading books by the time I reached two. By the time I was three, I already knew that my bench mate Carol was a girl and I was a boy. This does not mean that I was a prodigy or something. I was just different. I just could not memorise many nursery rhymes but somehow wrote a few of them. I never figured out why it is ‘men’ and not ‘mans’ but I loved talking to myself in fictitious languages. I did not know the capital of Brazil but I visited a new country of my own every single night. I never ever talked to the guys at school but my wooden horse chatted and played with me. Yes, I would love to believe I was different but isn’t that something every kid likes to believe in.

My life then was a never-ending Enid Blyton adventure. Me and my wooden horse would travel to far off lands, unearth treasures and win battles together. We met the fairies of Oz, defeated the three eyed Kajhu of Fenkistan and travelled on the flying carpet of Aladin. My wooden horse was my best friend and my biggest confidant. And however implausible it sounds now, he also talked back to me. We would sit together for hours and delve deeper into the labyrinth of life. When Badi Ma, my Bade Papa’s wife, once saw me discussing the secrets of the kingdom of Tecrona, she assumed that it was the same Victorian ghost back again and took to me to numerous temples and churches in Bettiah. But to no avail.

I guess, Papa must have noticed me ‘talking to myself’ or seen that I don’t have many friends. He must have had a concerned discussion with Ma in which they must have decided that my being alone is making me ‘different’. Or maybe it must have been something completely unplanned. Whatever be the case, since one fine day, I began to see my Ma get fatter and fatter. But, instead of dieting, she was taking double the food and instead of getting concerned, she seemed happy about some mysterious thing. Even my wooden horse had no answer for this one. I was on the verge of asking this at school when I got to know the truth. I still vividly remember Mrs. Sen, our neighbour, come to me one day and say, “Hey Reshu, you are getting a new brother. Are you happy about it?”

‘Brother’, did she really say brother, she said it as if Papa was getting me some new toy from a Mela. I didn’t know how to react. I knew what brothers were and I had always wanted one since I had seen Ronu’s elder brother Sonu giving him a chocolate. It was only two years later, when I saw a classic Ronu Sonu fight, that I realised that having a brother is not a Bourbon but a Krackjack. I still remember Mrs. Sen taking my hand and putting it on the big tummy my Ma seemed to love so much.

And I could feel it move and sense and think... and talk.

There he was in the safe haven of the ever-growing belly of my Ma; a younger brother (I always knew it had got to be a boy), a new friend, my new wooden horse.

Chapter 1: Knock, Knock... it's Me

“Oh no! The baby’s legs are coming out first. We need to take her to the doctor immediately”, the village midwife sounded worried.

“But the town of Bettiah is 120 kms and it’s already midnight. It might get really dangerous for both the mother and the child”, Ramdeo Babu was in a state of dilemma and unlike his repute as a tranquil and collected person, seemed in stress.

“But we have to take this risk. Indeed, this child will be really lucky if everything goes well and it sees the light.”

It took another 120 kms, 3 hours of bumpy jeep travel and 45 minutes of surgical procedure to make me see the light. I was indeed lucky as both my Ma and I were unscathed. As the morning sun tinted the Bettiah skies ruby, I affirmed my arrival with my first cry. And they say it was more of a howl coming out of a wan child.

Ramdeo Babu or Babajee, my grandfather was the chief chemist at the Narkatiyaganj sugar factory and was responsible for testing the sugarcane samples. He was known to be a stringent chemist and only the best of sugarcanes passed his scrutiny. All of this testing had given him a strange habit of judging everything before giving his approval. It is said that when he hold me in his hands for the first time, he evaluated, scrutinised and analysed me for over ten minutes before flashing his smile of consent. People say, Babajee was quite rapturous about my birth and despite being known as a little too cautious of his pockets, distributed sweets worth 50 Rs. among the hospital staff. His son had arranged an air-conditioned cottage at Patna for the birth but destiny and a pre-mature arrival ensured that it was in the sleepy town of Bettiah that he held his grandson.

A quick telegram was dispatched to my Papa, my Ma’s family and a hoard of close relatives and as was typical in those days, it took me another week or so to announce my arrival at those places. While some of them will feature quite prominently in the later part of my story, let me introduce the one person who was as much the part of the painful process of my birth as me. Renu, my Ma was merely twenty two when she gave birth to me. She still says that despite all the pain, she never let a drop of tear come out of her eyes. Never except once. The moment she held the pink howling bundle called me, drops of joy leapt out of her eyes.

After getting discharged, the trio of us shifted to the house of my Bade Papa, my father’s elder brother, who was then posted in the same town. I was to stay there till my week long birth celebrations were over and my Papa had come to fetch us. It was in the drudgery hall of this very house that my first encounter with the Supernatural happened. In the last twenty six years of my existence, I have meandered a lot in the similar alleys of imagination and reality. This ‘encounter’ might have been the reason why I still tend to see the unknown in the gust of wind or the shadow of night.

Christian Quarters was set up by Anglo-Indians in 1879 after they received a grant from Bettiah Raj for curing the local ruler of his rare illness. For over last 100 years, this dusty row of colonial houses had witnessed births, deaths, revolutions and exodus. Every house had a story attached to it, sometimes pleasant but mostly creepy. The house in which my Bade Papa’s family lived then was said to be the eeriest of them all. The scariest and the most recent story about that house, was about a young lady doing suicide after she was found to be pre-marital pregnant. Many people had claimed to have seen a young English woman, dressed in an immaculately white Victorian gown, roaming in that house. Some had seen her singing lullabies to an imaginary baby, while some had seen her jumping from the roof of the house again and again. It might have been my mother hallucinating after a tough surgery or maybe she had conjured it all up to seek more attention but it was in this dilapidated colonial house that she, and maybe I, experienced something she never forgot.

I was just a day or two old and my mother was alone in the hall resting on a wooden cot. Suddenly, out of nowhere a young and striking English woman came and sat beside my cradle. There was an aura around her which seemed ethereal. Before Ma could shout and call others, she took me in her arms, kissed me and started singing a lullaby. My Ma was shouting as loud as she could but no one seemed to be hearing. Then the woman put me back in the cradle, turned to my Ma and said something in heavily accented English. Then she dissolved in thin air, just like that. No one has ever seen her since then.

Ghost or no ghost, what the woman did not realise was that my Ma didn’t know much of English and whatever she said held no meaning for her. Since then, I have grown up with speculations around me, some referring to her last words as angelic blessings while some terming it a green-eyed curse. I sometimes wonder what her words might have been and what was there in me that helped her get away from the clutches of this mortal world.

Preface to Self-Obsession

Hi Everyone,

How often do you hear of a 26 year old writing his memoirs. We tend to assume that mere twenty six summers can not provide the hoard of interesting experiences required to write an autobiography worth reading. Maybe this assumption is true to some extent, but in this blog I will prove it wrong and try my best to guide you through the intricate labyrinth called Me. I will post 2-3 blogs every week and ensure that we have something comprehensive by the end of this year. For friends and family, kindly provide me with some anecdotes and incidents we have shared together (if you don't, you might lose the HUGE opportunity to star in a best-seller). Jokes apart, it's an honest effort from me to trace back through my existence and understand who I am.

Have Fun and give Comments.

Aayush