Admissions to Different Environments: My Unfolding Voyage 47

We get admitted to new environments. Some touch our environment. A few enter our environment and forge new environment.
My brother, Suku, passed the higher secondary examination when I got my Bachelor's degree. He did exceedingly well with distinction in all his science subjects including mathematics. He wanted to study engineering. I had filled in his application form for admission. He was selected for Architectural Engineering when the University announced the results. Strange things used to happen those days also: suspected case of cheating. I took my brother and visted the University office and said there is something wrong. My brother was definitely selected for Electronics and not Architecture. The official asked me how could I say that. I said that I had filled in his form and juust ticked only two streams that he would consider to study: first preference was electronics and second preference was Chemocal engineering. I did not tick any other preference. And Suku's score was among the best to be considered for electronics. There is some mistake somewhere. Those days the University officials were yet to become arrogant and had difficulty in ignoring logic. He called for the papers and was satisfied that what I had said was indeed true. But he appealed that we did not create further problem and offered Suku Electrical engineering as he had difficulty in putting his name in Electronics. I understood the problem: electronics had been recently introduced and there were limited seats while there was considerable demand from students to get into electronics by means fair or foul. Replacing Suku's name from electronics by some one else could be easily termed as a clerical mistake. We knew the possibility of such fraud. Honesty is not really the monopoly of educational institutions. We could have insisted on Electronics but thought that it might lead to delays and complications. So we agreed. Suku completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the same university.

Around the time Suku started going to engineering classes, one of my uncles visited us. He brought his maternal cousin to show what is Kolkata. She appeared a nice girl to talk and discuss economics She was from the Burdwan district and was studying undergraduate Economics Honors. bdgs Three of us made a single day trip in buses to various places and also saw a movie at a theatre. Since she was not used to riding buses, especially double-decked ones and smell that burning diesel creates, she started vomiting while on the bus and we had get out of the bus soon and walk a long stretch for her to become comfortable. Despite all this, the day did have a touch of romance. But she was also interested in getting my undergraduate class notes in economics. I gave them to her and she said she would return them by post in two months. During the next two months she would write mails to me and request more time for returning my class notes. Not that I needed these notes urgently, but I was not happy with the breach of conditions. I wrote a letter back to her expressing my unhappiness. She returned the notes soon. We had not met or exchanges letters since then. I wish I could have ended the borrower-lender relationship with a little more patience. In my unfolding voyage I had to soon become comfortable with treating my loans to others as a highly probable unintended gift: a few such loans indeed materialized into forced gifts. Much later I realized that possessions that I valued much did not remain so valuable when I lost them through loan that were not repaid or lost otherwise.

A year into the post-graduate studies, one of my uncles (father's cousin) and my elder brother, Mejda, would get married. As per the custom in the family, the bridegrooms need to use their sacred threads (nine threads of equal radius tied together with appropriate knots sworn as a garland - not around both sides of the neck and falling on the breast but worn around the left shoulder, touching the breast and then circling back under the right shoulder) when they perform the marriage ceremony rituals. These two gentlemen had missed their thread-wearing ceremony normally conducted before the age of fourteen and this ceremony involved shaving of the hair on the head. Now they were close to thirty and could not have gone to get married with shaven heads.So, the priests had a solution: everything would be done except shaving of the head in lieu of which a few haies would be cut by scissors and an additional monetary compensation was to be paid at the Alter of God and to be collected by the priest. I took advantage of this solution and joined my uncle and elder brother to secure the sacred thread for me. With the sacred thread ceremony, a man was said to have taken the second birth born. So, I became as senior as my elder brother and uncle who were 12 to 13 years older than me.
Both the marriages went of well with frequent interactions and feasts among families, relatives and friends amidst fun and festive mood with opportunities for coke-fizz like romantic moments for the young. The new brides had to find their own ways of getting into the strange environment after marriage. Both found a helpful friend in me, especially the new aunt who had to deal with a mother in-law with apparently harsh voice: my grand aunt was in reality so loving and affectionate to us.
My nephew, Joy, had in the meantime become a primary school student. We were spending lot of time enjoying his company. I would occasionally give him a cycle ride to school. Usually, he would go to school in a rickshaw. One day on his return from school he claimed that he had seen a 'twelve hand's' idol of Goddess Kali being worshiped in a pandal on the way. I told him that the maximum number of hands the Hindu Goddesses had so far been allowed is only 10 and he could not have seen a twelve-hand's idol of Goddess. But he insisted that he had seen that idol. He was right. In Bengali, height of an idol or length of a cloth was often measured by the length of a standard fore arm. So, an idol's height was measured sometimes by this measure: thus a twelve-hand's (Baro hath or Baro Hathi) idol meant an idol whose height is approximately equal to twelve times the length of a standard human fore arm. Joy in his childhood was a great pleasure to observe. Once when were in a restaurant he started shouting to the waiter: 'lickly, lickly'. We could realize later that he had just been in the process of picking up the English word 'quickly' at his school.
He was very fond of wearing the dress of military personel and would act as if he was in the battlefield engaging the enemy forces. He was very comfortable with people of varying ages and even strangers. He would soon have a beautiful sister, Munni, six years younger to him. Unlike Joy, Munni in her childhood was reserved and scarcely spared a smile for a stranger. She was very fond of her uncles and would seek the company of the uncles even when she was crying in pain or distress.
New admissions changed the environment without our knowledge.