WHERE TROUBLES MELTED LIKE LEMON DROPS

We were having this conversation the other day about growing up in the 80s in middle-class Bengali families and it was so comforting to discover that the children of the 80s had certain common features in their lives that locked them together in a very special bond. Darby and I set out to recall what bound us together though we were unaware of each other's existence then and two unforgettable memories came up tops.

1) Our love for 'Camlin Flora' and 'Apsara Beauty' pencils,the first all white with pink flowers spiralling up and down as you twirled one in your chubby hand; the other mysterious, dark, alluring, evocative of power with its glistening black body and its flaming red blob on the top. I do admit that their names were as cocky as they can get. For some odd reason such pencils were never bought for us. Perhaps they were more expensive than the boring red-and-black striped 'Nataraj' pencils that we got, rationed and doled out to us, even as we broke them, lost them or schemed to lose them in order that we may be given the priceless floral 'Camlin Flora' or the attitude-flaunting black 'Apsara'.

2) Our love for 'Gold Spot',...our liquid desire for all things twisted, tangerine and tangy. O what divine pleasure the mere thought of being allowed to buy one only once in a blue moon! As children we could only hope for 'Limca', the lesser of the two evils but 'Gold Spot' was a big no-no for it was supposed to be detrimental to our oral hygiene, our overall health. But, if we were really lucky, if we had not pestured our Moms to distraction, we would sometimes, on liquid gold summer afternoons, win the prized bottle of liquid gold. I can still see ourselves,my friends and I, chubby little kids, mothers' little cherubs, sipping at our drinks, gleefully aware that with each sip, our tongues would change colour. What fun then to stick them out at each other, comparing whose was the tangier. Though occasionally we pined for a bottle of 'Thums Up', that was truly off limits,...bottles of carbonated pleasure for thirsty adult souls. I remember how while playing I once pretended to be the grown up sophisticate, pouring 'Thums Up' into a tumbler and believing for a brief playful moment that it was my glass of wine.

Those were the days, my friends, of living with minor childhood deprivations, of crying into fluffy pillows for requests turned down, and of occasionally waking up to find some long forgotten wish fulfilled. We are a humbler, happier generation for we know the pleasures that a mammoth fifty rupees can buy. We are children of no lesser God and our childhood of frocks and 'check-shirts'... a place from long ago where troubles melted like lemon drops.

THE BONG CONNECTION

The incident that I will now recall took place two Saturdays ago. Darby and I had been invited to a party at Polish Doll’s place. She lives in a pre-War apartment and I cannot even begin to relive what I felt going up the stairs of a little piece of history. But that is not what this post is about. After a lot of drinking and dancing to Bollywood numbers that I do not even remember, a few of us decide to head towards Łodz Kaliska. It is a Saturday night and the place is teeming with the sloshed and the not-so sloshed gyrating to European chartbusters. Nothing is short of fever pitch. Darby and Joan make their way towards a corner and take their seats. Foot-tapping continues as Darby and Joan spot a couple of guys whose features betray that they are from the sub-continent. Darby and Joan have been spotted too. The guys come forward. Here’s the brief conversation that took place between the two pairs.

Guy 1: Are you from India?

Darby: Yes. And you?

Guy 1: From Bangladyash. Where from in India?

Darby: Kolkata.
.
Guy 2: Arre Dada (Brother), Bengali?

Darby and Joan: Yes, Dadas (Brothers), Bengali.

Guy 1: Kotodin bhalo maach khaini, Dada. (Haven’t had some good fish in a long time,
Brother)

Darby: Arre Dada, she katha ar bolben na. (Oh Brother, don’t even remind me of this.)

Guy 2 (referring to Joan): Apnar bandhobi? (Is she your girlfriend?)

Darby (Grinning from ear to ear): Hyan kintu abar stree-o bote. He, he, he… (Yes, but
she’s also my wife. He, he,he...)

Guy 2 (hesitantly): Dada, ekkhan katha boli…kisu mone korben na. Ehane prosur maiya, kintu amago Boudi shobseye shundor! ( Brother, let me tell you something...please don't mind. there are lots of girls here but our Sister-in-law is the most beautiful!)

The conversation stops abruptly as a sozzled Polish beauty, doubly drunk, what with the music and the atmo, chooses to come and sit on Joan’s lap. Ouch!!!

O bother, my Brother!

NEIGHBOURHOOD TRUTHS

I have been in the silent zone for no other reason except that I am neck deep in hedonism, living my version of the perfect sybaritic life. Reading, travelling, watching films, socialising, wining, dining, appreciating good looking women and even better looking men, clubbing, pubbing, jamming…the works. You name it and Joan has been doing it.

My White Mughal showed us ‘There Will Be Blood’ and I realized the movie was from the same year that had another movie with blood in its name—‘Blood Diamond’. Wedged between Gregory and Mrs. Perth, I felt like I was watching Doordarshan with Mom and Dad on either side. The evening had rambled on and I was crestfallen. However, thankfully for me, now that I am in a different frame of mind altogether ever since I left Kolkata, Brit tragic hero and I seem to have struck up an unspoken arrangement, taking frivolous flirtation to a new level altogether. Let’s consider what happened yesterday. While returning from an absolutely gorgeous walking tour which deserves some space…but later on, Darby and I came face to face with him. I don’t exactly look dainty anymore but it takes a sensitive Englishman to appreciate beauty even in spare tyres. I had some wild flowers in my hand including a pretty yellow one that I do not know the name of. And immediately, Brit tragic hero comes up with, ‘Are they for me? Really?’ and I serenade, ‘uhmm, uhmm’, and we both gesticulate and shoo away a helpless Darby. I quite like the role reversal bit of it but there is nothing remotely intellectual about this little bit of drama played out under a huge chestnut tree. The discussions in Sarnia get more cerebral only after midnight perhaps when novelists and the advantage of their form of expression, or screenplay writing and its essential lack of latitude take over harmless and inane flirtations.

Let me give you two more examples of the inanities. English Babu tells us tales of how Polish students reel under the baggage of the English language in his class. Knowing their tendency to take down the words of the Anglo-Saxon lecturer as if they were part of the Delphic oracle, once he had chosen to flummox them with the line, ‘…and so when the Normans came they burned down the women and raped the churches’ and he succeeded! They had taken down his words and only after a couple of minutes managed to point out what turned out to be their own momentary lapse of reason. The inanities gain momentum when Irish Gregory joins us. I ask tragic hero, ‘…so tell me A, why haven’t you married?’ He shyly admits, ‘Not from a lack of trying’ and Gregory quips, ‘Why don’t you ask him why he does not have children and he’ll say the same…not from a lack of trying’. And so life goes on in Sarnia…

A PERFECT DAY FOR A LAZY BONG

I woke up on Saturday morning to find Łodz all yellow and gold. It was the warmest day so far since our arrival here. We had to turn off the heater in our sun-drenched bedroom and just fresh from a tropical country, that was quite an achievement.

I love sunshine. Have I ever said that before on my blog? I don’t think so. But O yes!…I luuuv sunshine. It makes me walk with a spring in my step…adds a zing to my life. With no fixed agenda for the day, I decided to take over and planned the perfect day for Darby and myself. My Friday night’s date with Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp Minor (currently, I am into most things Polish, including music composers), left me craving for more even in the morning. But this time I planned to listen to good ol’ Bocelli. As I googled for Bocelli, I also came across ‘Cinema Paradiso’ with English subtitles on You Tube. Perfect! Sure…I was going to have my kind of day. Feet up on the table and a bowl of yogurt and wheat flakes in hand, I began my cinematic adventure. And boy…I was hooked. Once again last Saturday I fell in love with the movies. It was interesting watching Phillipe Noiret in ‘Cinema Paradiso’ as the lovable and encouraging cinema projectionist in a Sicilian village, whose death makes a film maker return to his roots after 30 years of self-imposed exile. If you love movies, you will share the characters’ palpable passion for the magic called movies. Why do I say that it was interesting watching Noiret in this 1988 movie? The death of his character, Alfredo, the film projectionist, forces the return of Salvatore to his village and sets him on a journey to his childhood. The last film I fell in love with back in Kolkata was ‘Il Postino’ in which Noiret plays the Chilean poet Neruda who returns to the land of his exile, Italy, and hears of the death of the postman, Mario Ruoppolo, played by Massimo Troisi. Watching ‘Cinema Paradiso’ was thus, in a sense, like coming full circle. I can watch these two movies again and again and yet again because I find in these bittersweet tales a reaffirmation of my faith in the transcending power of art, friendship and human goodness. And, because ‘Cinema Paradiso’ tells me that sometimes you have to go back, no matter how painful it is, so that you can finally let go…because sometimes only going back can ensure liberation… because liberation is a wiser option than escapism.

My morning was a triumph. I had planned lunch outside. We had Chinese at a not-so-great place called ‘Ha Long’ on Piotrkowska. We have had a meal there only once earlier and already the joke about it is, ‘Ha Long until you stop dining here for ever?’ I would have preferred ‘The Wook’ but I wanted to save some money for my weekly indulgence—coffee and cheesecake at Café Verte. I absolutely adore this place. Tucked away in a dark courtyard off Piotrkowska, it is esoteric in spirit and generally the hub of people from the local theatre scene, although there are plenty like us who frequent it. If I were some ‘dhuandhaar aantel’, I would have done up my home in exactly the way Verte’s interiors have been done up. Its dirty rose walls are complemented by what is, to my taste, rather postmodern monochromatic photographs mounted on black frames. The whole effect is eerily semi-erotic, slightly oppressive in a very European way. In fact, semi-erotic in terms of design is something they do really well in Łodz. They even have the club ‘Łodz Kaliska’ to boast of. However, since Verte is not a club where PDA is rampant, it is even more intoxicating. The photographs on the wall test your self-control in a public place where you have just come to have some coffee. The furniture is all wood and very, very pretty, complemented by lace and candles. Quite a yin-yang place, I would say, setting off the feminine against the masculine. If any of my readers plans to visit Łodz, the Café Verte experience should be on your must-see list, particularly if you are all arty-arty. And how can I not mention Verte’s absolutely adorable waiters and waitresses, probably just four in all…all of them as cute as buttons; or the music they play there. Till date I have listened to Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and songs from ‘West Side Story’. Joan says, ‘Not bad…not bad at all!’

AD-LIB

 

Gosh! The things people come up with. I am obviously referring to the image above.

AD-LIB

This is just to let a very cool cat know that the cups of tea are not really all that helpful. Brit tragic hero came up just now to invite me to a movie tonight at his apartment. I found the invitation obviously exciting. However, the earth came crashing down in seconds. I will be sharing the sofa with Mrs. Perth and Gregory. Darby might squeeze in as well. It won't be uncomfortable but I don't see how the arrangement is conducive to any kind of flirting. Then again if that were not enough, we will be shown a Daniel Day Lewis film which I have not seen. I have nothing against Daniel, particularly since he will always be known to me as also the son-in-law of Arthur Miller. That ups his celebrity quotient because Miller was once married to Monroe. Considering that I am becoming flippant by the hour, this piece of trivia amounts to a lot. Anyway, the sad part is that though it is supposedly a good film, it's off-putting name is 'There Will Be Blood'...that kind of scares me. Ek phool, do maali, blood and two witnesses...