Coal Comfort for Entertaining Life: My Unfolding Voyage 077

Life during the Coal India employment period was becoming increasingly
interesting as time passed. A decent pay and coverage of all medical expenses of my family and colleagues, mostly mining engineers, finding me acceptable though the thrill of working with inspiring and caring Chairman like Lt. General Grewal was lost soon after he was forced to go, provided a decent support to life at home. I had already shifted to a sprawling flat just opposite to my parent’s residential home resulting in daily interaction with my parents and my two sons growing up with daily sessions with their grand parents, uncle, aunt and elderly cousins, enjoying their time, attention, care, love and affection and making daily evening one-hour session with my in-laws living seven minutes walking distance away. At the same time, we had all the privacy and fun at home with the sons growing up – learning to walk, talk, play and entertain. My younger son was taking a longer time to grow his first tooth and my mother in-law was very worried: I had to tell her that I had never heard of an infant growing up to be a toothless man or woman and if my son happened to make a record, he could be a great source of money. He did not get to making money for me that way.

Running an independent family gave us the freedom to invite friends and
relatives for lunch and dinner at my residence. We would have special beer-
dinner sessions: the most common participants in such parties were recently-wed couples – Ashis and Ruma, Pai (Tapan) and Ruby, Chanchal and Mahua. Some times other friends like Gopal and Robi Ghose (Tapan) would join. One of them would become intoxicated even before the bottles were opened. Ashis, Chanchal and Gopal played soccer with me in my school days. Chanchal was a classmate in the higher secondar school.

At United Bank we had six days a week but in Coal India, it was five day a week. Two days of great fun. On Saturdays I would make the weekly purchases of groceries, mutton, chicken, potatoes, vegetables and fish. Sometimes I would take my elder son along to the market place. We would go walking and return in a cycle rickshaw. My father in-law felt he could help me as he goes to market daily: so, I gave him the opportunity to ensure that he still would select the daily fish for his daughter but at my expense. He would deliver the fish and have some sweet exchange with his grand children every morning on weekdays after I would have left for office around 8-15 AM.

Soon we had the first TV at home,thanks to Suhash Talukdar, an ex-colleague
at United Bank of India who had already turned an entrepreneur and whom I had
provided some services twice a week in the evening in exchange for 8
rossogollas as evening snack. He and his family loved us very much. He took us to various places like Bankura, Bishnapur, Kamarhati, Digha, Nabadweep-
Mayapur (ISCON temple) in tourist buses: he operated a tourist transport
operation business, publications business, matrimonial matching services and
newspaper business. He gifted us a black and white TV manufactured by
Cinevista (manufacturer of Mumbai that closed operations after a few years).
Those days, TV telecasting was limited to few hours in the morning and evening on weekdays. We used to go to my parent’s residence or my land-lord’s flat to enjoy the Sunday films or Calcutta soccer league and shield final matches, especially those between East Bengal and Mohan Bagan or Md. Sporting clubs. With the TV at home, we could enjoy all that at home now. But my wife did not like the idea of sons looking at TV all the time as this could affect their eyes and concentration: we had to allot a limited time for them. But if they were at home and we two were only watching TV; they had to be forced to play elsewhere. One afternoon when we two were enjoying a film, my wife suddenly found two pairs of eyes under the curtain of the entry door to the TV room: the two sons quietly lying down on the floor outside the TV room door and watching the film! My grand daughters are luckier: my sons and their souses allowed virtually free access to
TV and computer viewing to their children at least during the first three/ four years of life.

Since Jhupa and Chupa was already walking and running, it was time to get
them a tri-cycle. I got a tri-cycle with an additional seat at behind the saddle: funding was by my mother in law. Jhupa learned to cycle quickly, Chupa was lazy enough to be satisfied with getting the ride for quite a while. On a winter week-end, four of us went out to the Zoo, had lunch at Chan Gua, a Chinese restaurant, now not as popular as it was then and then enjoyed a circus show: wild animals were still on the show those days. The children had a ride by a double-deck bus. On return home, Jhupa asked me to buy him a double-deck bus. When asked him as to where we could keep the bus, he had pointed out to the 30 square-feet vacant plot of land near our residence. It took a little while that the idea of buying a regular double-deck bus was not a feasible idea. But both were happy when I bought them a toy chariot car each that they could pull along with the help of a string and a toy steam driven steamer that would move along the water in a large vessel when a candle inside was lighted.

Jhupa would often go with me along to the market walking down the lane.
Sometime, I would buy him some candy on the way back with some to spare for his brother. One day he would suggest to me that I buy him some chocolate
while we were on our way to the market. I told him that he could buy the
chocolate now if so wished but might like to consider using the money later to buy the same thing or something else of his choice later. If he would chose the option to buy immediately; he would be foregoing the option to buy something later as the money available is fixed and once spent cannot be reused later. I had felt then that he scarecely understood what I had said at that age: probably he wanted to take more time to understand and decided to buy chocolate later. Once when four of us went to the Rathayatra festival, we brought some toys for the sons. While returning, Jhupa suggested “what if we had tasted some fried papad sold at the fair!” His mother would not agree to allow children to take fried papad from wayside vendors. So, all of us had to return home to enjoy papad fried by the Lady of the House.

A three-minute walk from the residence, we had a nice, clean restaurant called Quality. Being on the main highway Jessore Road and beside a petrol-pump (gas station), it had roaring business during the day but was relatively less crowded late in the evening. Sometimes Topu would call off cooking the dinner and we would walk down to Quality to enjoy Chicken Curry or Punjabi Traka (special pulses preparation) served with hot roti straight from the oven. The boys liked the Tarka very much. On our way back home, we would buy hot loaves and "S"-shaprd biscuits, fresh from the small counter at the wayside bakery.

Jhupa being 15 months elder to Chupa got eligible first to get into play school. But those days there was shortage of play schools and I had already been influenced by the Soviet Land Magazine that children should not get into formal education until five years old. So, I would postpone getting Jhupa admitted to a play school. My friend suggested that I was committing a mistake and must find a good school for my sons soon. Thanks to Chobi Didmoni, our next door neighbour. She was the Assistant Headmistress of Girl’s High School about 10 minutes away from our residence by cycle rickshaw. The School had started a Nursery Kindergarten section in theSchoola few months back. She had been observing and conversing with my wife and children everyday over her first floor balcony having a clear view of my children’s open verandah play site. She suggested that we get Jhupa admitted to the Nursey class, even though the classes had already started a few months ago. The next day, Jhupa, aged three, got admitted to the School. That marked the beginning of his long 21-year journey in formal education ending with three master’s degrees including two from US universities.