Pishemoshai : 1st March, 2025

A favourite someone with whom I had warm childhood memories. 

His home used to be my post annual exam getaway almost every year till high school. Pishimoni's cooking and Didi's disciplining I remember, but the fonder memory of those days were conversations with him. 

He had a deadpan humour, and often asked a pre-teen me pretty serious questions about life and other goings on, with a straight face. I felt important and special and loved talking with him. 

Their bedroom window opened to an unhindered view of sky and grass across a playground. It remains the same till date. He loved that window. When I met him last, he was seated on his bed beside that window, which he always liked keeping wide open, of late secretly, without heeding the daughter's reprimand. It is a south facing large window that brings in mixed breeze when seasons change, and he had bad lungs with COPD. Regardless, he always liked his window open. I too would like that I think. Even as I shook my head when didi mentioned his childish irresponsibility, I kind of understood. I have a feeling I will do the same when I am very old. 

He would be genuinely unhappy if I would visit him with mishti or cake or fruits. Bags of spicy potato chips were mandatory, and never failed to bring a smile to his face. So I would never forget the must-bring. 

1990s. School summer holidays, I would be at Pishimoni's place for weeks on end.  Calcutta then used to have these dim and lazy loadshedding evenings. Lights and fans out for an hour, sometimes longer. We would gather in the semi darkness of Pishemoshai's room. The windows would be open - everyone said, and it was a fact that the room did not need a fan even in peak tropical summer, the cross ventilation was ample and cool breeze would keep sweeping across the field into the room. Four of us, them and I, would gather in that play of light and shadows, and he would often ask me to sing a song. 

I would sing Rabindrasangeets mostly. On some occasions, a Hindi song I liked and picked up but couldn't sing at home because it was forbidden. Sometimes an English song whose lyrics I had learnt by heart to impress a friend in school. I would sing with all my heart and in my best voice with all melodic nuances, to an absorbed audience, and emotions would trickle and flow. The moment would be full. When the song ended, pishemoshai would say every time 'Are ... Tuli r golay besh shur achhe toh. Meyeta gaan shikhle kaje dito', or something to that effect. 

'She has music in her'. 

I would be shy and happy. I would smile and want to sing another one for him.

The outro was a fade out. A silent few hours to ending before dawn broke. Pishimoni in her wheelchair was silent except for tears flowing, without words, when they took him away. So was Baba; silent, tearful. He lost a friend. Heard Pisho had wanted to talk to Baba the previous day, before going into ventilation, for Baba to urgently intervene as an adult (among  docs and daughter acting like kids) on his line of treatment, arrange for him to be released from the pipes and tubes, and taken home. 

The last time I met him, this January, we took a selfie. He had his dark glasses on as he wanted to look cool in the photo, so I too put mine on. He made a serious face. One with which he said when pishi asked after my daughters, 'Tuli r abar dui meye, or nijer ee toh tero bochhor boysh. Ki je shob bolo tomra.'

'what strange things you say.'

Realised, yet again, that you never know when you're meeting someone for the last time. 

...