THE ETERNAL BELOVED - CUTTACK FROM MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
I was born, as Bishnu Kumar Sarangi, at Cuttack in 1953, a non-descript year by all historical accounts. Cuttack in those days used to be the biggest town of Orissa, though in a few years the newly built capital at Bhubaneswar outpaced it in every respect, except in the typical spirit of camaraderie Cuttack residents are proud of. Having spent the first nineteen years of my life in Cuttack, the cute little town, surrounded by the rippling waters of Mahanadi on one side and Kathjodi on the other, remains embedded in my heart. Its cacophonic bazaars, sprawling green maidans, tree-lined streets and vibrant community life keeps the image alive in me of an ever-young, ageless beloved who welcomes me in an adorable embrace every time I return to visit her.
The earliest memory of my childhood is the fullness of the house where my parents used to live with us, seven children, and an endless stream of guests who used to come from our nearby village mostly for medical treatment. It was a government house. My father, a police officer, stayed in that house for sixteen years till his retirement in 1968. Although it had two large rooms and a separate visitor's room at the front entrance, almost all the space was used as sleeping quarters. A huge verandah cascading into an even bigger courtyard served as the dining space cum gossip centre. The courtyard was the most coveted place in summer for spreading the bed and sleeping in the open waiting for sporadic breaths of air from the stifling sky. Hand-held fans made of palm leaf were hardly adequate to produce the required degree of coolness, but one would eventually go off to sleep with the palm leaf fan slipping noiselessly from the tired hands. Morning sun, hot and burning even by six o clock would wake us up and made us scurry into the cooler shelter of the verandah. Electricity was still in the wombs of the future, a few years away.
In late fifties and early sixties the whole of Cuttack had only half a dozen cars and may be around fifty scooters. Bicycles were relatively larger in number and cycle rickshaws were the only means of aided transport available. We used to walk everywhere, to the school, the river, the markets and the playground. With at least half a dozen children available in every home, there was no restriction on our movement. One could leave home at any time and return at will, enter any neighbour's house and gladly eat whatever was offered. Parents would worry only if a child doesn't report back by evening.
On one such evening, when I was a four years old brat, my parents and brothers panicked as I didn't return home. Everyone remembered me leaving home around noon, going for a stroll (!) but no one had seen me after that. My father and brothers fanned out in different directions, all neighbours were enquired, some of them joined the search and when I could not be located, they were sure that I had strayed somewhere and might have been kidnapped. My mother started crying and my father had no words to console her.
Somehow before it became completely dark, I walked down the long grassy path of the colony and came home. Needless to say, my parents were overwhelmed with joy and relief. No one knew where I had gone, I myself had no clue. Out of great relief my father announced grandly, "Bishnu Kumar, today you have conquered death. From now on you will be known as Mrutyunjay".
When I was told this story in later years by my father I didn't believe him. But he had proof. He asked me, "do you know why your pet name is Biku?". I had no idea. He explained, "your eldest brother had derived this from the initials of your original name - Bishnu Kumar Sarangi - BKS - Bikesh - Biku! And from the day you were lost and found I named you as Mrutyunjay, the conqueror of death." The name has stuck ever since.
Those who knew me in my school and college days will find it hard to believe that till about six and a half years of age I was a big "Paath Chor" - someone who runs away from school and the very mention of studies arouses the caveman in him! My father tried his best to take me to school, but I would always find some excuse to run away. Sometimes the plea of an inescapable urge to go to toilet, sometimes a head ache and at other times a clever distraction by me made my father loosen his grip on my hand and I used to disappear into nameless hiding places till the evening. When the cows came home, I also did so, cautiously and stealthily, to escape my father's beating and mother's scolding. After repeated failures my father beat me black and blue one day and announced that he would never try again to take me to school and as soon as I am able to work he would put me as a helper in the bicycle repair shop in the market. I happily looked forward to the prospect of becoming a bicycle mechanic in due course.
I don't remember what made me change my mind, but one day I started going to school at the Baxi Bazar Police Line. A young teacher who had newly joined the school miraculously found some merit in me and put me in the second grade in the middle of the year. He also coached me for the district level scholarship exam for the third grade next year. Another miracle, I won a scholarship of three rupees a month and never looked back after that.
For the fourth and fifth year I had to shift to another school at Machhua Bazar, half a kilometre away. But the walk was adventurous, through a busy market and a narrow lane dotted with houses on both the sides. It was interesting to see old people playing cards, grand mothers giggling with small kids and women quarrelling at the top of their voices. I remember some of the most colourful expressions in Odiya - both printable and unprintable- were acquired by me during those pleasantly formative two years and have remained with me, always eager to come out on apprpopriate occasions.
As children we had household duties assigned to us. Although electricity supply was given for street lights in Cuttack around 1963 or so, domestic connections came only in 1964. Till that time we had to depend upon kerosene lamps and lanterns. Somehow it fell upon me to shoulder the responsibility of cleaning up the glasses of the lamps and the lanterns. After I was around eight years old, I also had to walk to the Baxi Bazar market half a kilometre away to buy vegetables, fish and mutton twice a week. Fish was available for one rupee and mutton for six rupees a kilo. I somehow remember we never had chicken in our early childhood. The first time we had chicken and eggs at home was around 1966 or so, when one of our cousin brothers, a Veterinary officer, came to stay at our house for a couple of days. He had brought chicken and eggs with him which my mother refused to cook in the regular kitchen. They had to be cooked in a special chullah in the courtyard. I also remember once my fingers almost got chopped off in the mutton shop in the market when I tried to push the mutton to the centre of the cutting log when keema was being made. The butcher got so angry that he threw some hitherto unknown expletives at me and I had to ask my more accomplished friends in the school the meaning of those bombshells!
Toffees, which were euphemistically called lemonchush, ice creams and lassies were the stuff of our dreams and we had to work hard to get the money for them. Somehow all my elder brothers and most of the visiting cousins had this near hysterical weakness for body massage which essentially consisted of me or my younger brother walking over their prone bodies, stamping our feet on their back or even doing stationary jogging on their legs and outstretched hands. The reward was a princely sum of one anna and sometimes two annas if it was just after their payday. With that fortune in hand we used to run for the icecream, usually the stick variety. In our limited vision we used to think licking an icecream stick was the ultimate pleasure God has granted to humans! We had an icecream factory near our house. Seeing the ice cream being made and drawing the sticks out of the mould was a lifetime experience! One had to save for a few days to have a go at the lassi but it was so unbelievably delicious that the pleasure was worth the wait.
Cuttack of my childhood days was a place of dreams - the dim lights of the streets, the colourful shops with their varied wares, the football matches in the Police line ground, the occasional film shown in the maidan, the playing of the police band, the lawns, flowers, in the big IG's office - all this wove a magic which kept our minds floating in a gentle dream of mild euphoria. Walking down the streets without any fear of getting trampled gave the feeling as if we owned the streets and everything else of Cuttack. There was no fear in our minds. We loved Cuttack and Cuttack loved us in return, making us feel safe, wanted and helping us grow.
The nearby Amareswar temple in the main road, a mere hundred meters away from our home offered endless excitement with melas, kirtans and bhajans. The evening Aarti and the morning prasad - everything drew us to the temple like a magnet. On the mela days dozens of shops used to spring up selling innumerable goodies, from animal shaped sugar candies to balloons and toy pistols. A small sum (probably eight annas) was given to us as mela expense and we ran to the Mela like an Arab Sheikh out to buy a Mediterranean island! When I was eight (or nine?) years old our neighbour aunty spotted me in the temple and entrusted her seven year old daughter to me asking me to hold her hand while the aunty goes and finishes her darshan. Being a hopeless, congenital sucker even at that tender age, I fell for the girl's charms and spent my entire mela fortune on her, buying ribbons, candies and hair clips. And when the mother came to fetch her, la belle dame sans merci left without even a glance at me, let alone a smile!
I left Cuttack in 1972 for post-graduate studies in Bhubaneswar. I have not gone back to Cuttack to live there again. But Cuttack has never left me, not even for a day. Wherever I see dim street lights creating an enticing mixture of half light and half darkness, Cuttack comes to my mind. When I walk under a canopy of trees lining the streets, Cuttack nudges me to remind me of Cantonment Road and often in my dream I see the temples, the fairs, the lantern-lit shops, and the loud banging of cymbals and dholaks.
I imagine the dawn in Cuttack would still be opening up a clear blue sky with the stars twinkling their smiling goodbyes, the evening sky would be dotted with colourful kites and the lighted bazaars would be coming alive every day, welcoming customers like smiling damsels. I often see these timeless scenes marching before my eyes in a silent procession and realise with an aching heart, the Cuttack of my childhood is an eternal beloved, unparalleled in beauty and charm.
Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi is a retired civil servant and a former Judge in a Tribunal. Currently his time is divided between writing short stories and managing the website PositiveVibes.Today. He has published eight books of short stories in Odiya and has won a couple of awards, notably the Fakir Mohan Senapati Award for Short Stories from the Utkal Sahitya Samaj. The ninth collection of his short stories in Odiya will come out soon.
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