“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter’s night.” – Virginia Woolf

What would be the earliest memory you have, of winter? A dark, gloomy, foggy day? A sharp, bitter cold morning? A nippy, sunny afternoon? Mellow sun? The silence that descended upon night when all sought a warm spot under the blanket, even the neighbourhood strays? White Christmas? Rainy and freezing cold? The frozen tip of your nose? Numb fingers and chattering teeth? Feet that refused to get warm under layers of blankets? Nolen gurer sandesh? Aromas of freshly fried koraishutir kochuri wafting in from mum’s kitchen? Men and children in trade mark ‘monkey caps’ (which for a long time was thought to be a Bengali idiosyncrasy, I beg to differ)? Maidan and boi mela, bags full of new books? Losing your way home on foggy Delhi nights? Chai-pakoda? Piping hot instant cup noodles thawing your frozen organs, from the inside, on a freezing cold November afternoon at Jungfraojoch? Fond memories? Dark, depressing thoughts, best forgotten with that long winter night of the past?

Are you wondering why I’m asking so many questions? Why am I romanticising about winters past? Don’t you see that I am wistful? Why? Because, I live in Bombay. Because the time on my watch is almost half past three, the sharp light has just started to mellow outside my window and the fan rotates lazily overhead. Because we are in the last week of November. Because the temperature in Bombay everyday adamantly ranges between 34° and 25°.

Anyway. My earliest memory of winter would be of a particularly bitter winter in the ’80s. That winter evening in Calcutta, when in all my five year old innocence, I went to complain to my mother about her sudden, unannounced absence from my life, she introduced me to this funny little bundle, swathed in a new blanket, called My Sister. That winter I had been strategically usurped by this little creature, who didn’t even know how to burp by herself, had no control over her fine haired, tiny, nodding head, could not even sit up and gurgled when she was happy.

Everyday, around noon, she would be given a massage with oil – perfected to a polish, packed off to the terrace and then put out in the sun, ‘to strengthen her bones’ – as my grandmother would put it. This evidently was a routine for a new born, I was told. And evidently once upon a time, even I had been subjected to this ‘ritualistic-bone-hardening’ pickling. A bevy of aunts, of all shapes and sizes, joined my mum on the terrace, draped in shawls of varied hues, soaking up the golden, mellow sun as their nimble fingers worked deftly at knitting needles. Balls of colourful wool fast transformed into wales of purl, ribs of cable and further into scarves, frocks, booties, caps – tiny and cheerful. I would loll, snuggle up to my mother, to warm my cold fingertips, toes, try to win back her love and then run away to join the giggling pride of cousins in their games. Soon, to my surprise, either the gurgling, tiny bundle’s warmth, or perhaps the long hours spent in the sun, not sure which of the two, thawed my resentment, and I transformed into a proud Didi.

A few winters later, the doe-eyed little riot was running around the same terrace, in woollen dresses that were once mine – her wild, curly mane following her as she chased me around, with a chubby fist full of orange peel – to squirt into my eyes. The devil! And a few winters further down in life, she and I lay on quilts put out to sun, on the same terrace, soaking up the same languid sun, reading, laughing, pulling at each other’s pigtails, with older cousins learning their ropes at the knitting needles while their curious, teenage eyes strayed from the wool, on to the neighbourhood terraces, boys etc. Winter spelt the end of school year, so only books of ‘consequence’ found favour – only lazy afternoons, on the terrace, spent with cousins of all shapes and sizes, had the permission to be a part of my winter day. No television, no mobiles, no video games, BBs, PSPs, iPods, iPads  - nothing to distract the lazing mind rolling under the slanted rays that cast longer shadows.

Winters kept descending upon Calcutta. And oh, the joys it brought forth! Book fairs, nolen gurer sandesh, nolen gur, bowls of diced tomatoes sprinkled with salt, freshly rolled, still-warm-to-the-touch narkel narusprinkled with khus-khus and smelling faintly of camphor, the aroma of Koraishutir kochuri frying in the kitchen, afternoons on the terrace and long wintry nights. One particular year, the terrace changed address. I was older. The new terrace had a new skyline, more palm trees peeping from behind neighbourly terraces, pots full of zinnias, dahlias, marigolds nodding their heads from balconies, new faces lazing in the winter sun on their old jute carpets, some interesting, some curious, a few who spoke loudly, from across terraces – our new neighbours, in another part of my city. Some knitted, some read the day’s paper, some were lost in a siesta under blankets put out in the sun and some, young buccaneers, who hid in the shadow to steal glances at pretty, long haired girls who, in other seasons, barely graced their terraces.

And I had thought winters were all the same, perhaps everywhere, other than the places where it snowed, as suggested by pictures in the Readers’ Digest. I had also imagined, in my teenage folly, that my winters would forever be the same. Like a winter’s day, short but full of promises. Camping by the banks of the Brahmaputra in December, winter nights spent at the foothills of the Mathaburu hills, watching the winter sun rise on the Ghats of Banaras, the crispy Christmas dawn in Shillong, the icy slopes of Rohtang Pass did correct my presumptions of teenage but every time I returned to Calcutta and these brief experiences became part of memory.

But Delhi decided to teach me a different lesson about winters, in particular. The mild, sunny Calcutta winter had been replaced by a long spell of bitterly cold winter. I would no longer return home to Calcutta. The gloomy, foggy, cold Delhi was home. The long, lonely park across from my balcony started to look barren with tall trees and their bare branches stretching skywards and one cold December day the children that came to play did not return any more. The long French windows on the western face of our C R Park house were visited by the setting sun’s tepid, slanted rays before evening descended with thick, dark fog that turned everything of the night into dark, eerie shadows. The cold and lonely terrace did not seem inviting either, not a soul to share it with, no one to chase me around, no cheerful chatter, and no clicking knitting needles weaving fancy patterns. Later, in the winters that followed, I had made enough friends to chatter away the winter blues, with steaming cups of adraki or elaichi chai, crispy, piping mirchi pakodas, had learnt to soak up the early winter tepid sun as long as it lasted and also the secret of drying stubbornly wet clothes with the help of a room heater. Foggy nights did not scare me any more – not even after we lost our way home a few times and once up the hills, on our way to the camps on the slopes of Mukteshwar, overlooking Ranikhet. I was warming up to the winter in Delhi, though every year, the tip of my nose refused to ‘unfreeze’ till winter left us.

I had never imagined that of all cities, I would reminisce about Delhi, about missing Delhi, that too, missing the winters in Delhi. I guess, it may not have been so, had my current ‘permanent address’ not been in a city that has only two seasons and winter does not figure on that list. Three years back, when we had wanted to run away to the distant Swiss Alps, in November, to renew the feel of winter – we went hunting for winter wear and Maximum City sprang a surprise on us. No malls, no stores in town or in the suburbs had any stock of woollen wear! We were finally directed to ‘that-market-even-sells-tiger’s-milk-if you-can-afford-it’ Crawford Market – to a particular departmental store, perhaps one of five in the city, where we found woollens for our trip. And that memory, of thawing internal organs over piping cup noodles – yes, that was from the Swiss Alps, under scarves, multiple layers of sweaters and jacket lined with down, one that I keep going back to as much as to the ones from Delhi – as I brave the 33°, in the last week of November, in Bombay.

But curiously enough, this year departmental stores in Bombay have, take a breath, sweaters, yes, woollen sweaters, shrugs, pullovers et al, being displayed on shelves. The afternoon sun is sharp and golden outside my window, the fan is still running at a high speed and I am wondering, ‘what do those stores know, that I haven’t guessed as yet? Do they have news of the ‘missing’ winter finally descending upon us?’

Picture courtsey : www.prasundutta.com, http://witwokandwisdom.blogspot.com, google images.

Among the mundane and the glitterati, I spotted one of my favourite gracefully aging actresses and I remembered that my Facebook friend request – sent in awe of her acting – was still awaiting a response. She seemed distant, lost in the cloud of smoke she kept bellowing and her animated conversation with her companion. I could have walked up to her, but what could I have said? ‘Please accept my friend request on Facebook?’ Or ‘I used to follow you on Twitter but stopped because you rarely tweet’?

I pondered on that whole ‘to approach or not to’ dilemma for a while, gave up and turned to join the Bee and the Giggle waiting by the gate. There by the gate was yet another familiar face, walking in with his wife, perhaps. Wait, wasn’t he the writer I had recently befriended on Facebook? He removed his sun glasses and I was sure it was him. I even remembered the cover of his recently published book, not his wife, because none of his albums ever had her pictures. Did he really smile at me or was I imagining it? We had conversed on his wall a few times and had exchanged polite birthday greetings. So, was I going to walk up to him and say ‘hello’? But the earlier dilemma was still troubling me, so I walked right past him and out of the gate, half hoping that he would stop me dead in my tracks and do the needful. Alas.

My tweet, from that afternoon read, ‘Prithvi disappoints, yet again.’

Public places open up such Pandora’s boxes for me. Faces in the crowd suddenly seem familiar; it seems I know their profiles, what they do, and their points of view on matters of national importance. I even know where they vacationed and what they ‘did last summer’.

Life for the last two years has been a flurry of updates. There is this tearing need to talk to the world out there, to tell them what is on my mind and what’s happening in my life – all in 140 characters. And then comes an incessant wait, the obsessive refreshing of a page, the frequent glances at the blackberry, the craning of the ear all in the hope of seeing one red dot, one new comment, one more thread to a new conversation, hearing one new message, anything. Some sign that someone noticed my virtual existence, someone has paid attention, and someone thinks I am right. A friend, who had joined one of the social networks much later had called me a ‘social-networking diva’ – an epithet, which I am not sure, is quite a compliment anymore.

Yet, when it comes to meeting these people in person – my ‘friends’ on the ‘social network’ whose attention I crave and with whom I spend many hours in intense discussion, I shy away. Ever since I took to virtual socialising, I find myself transformed into somebody who is far more vocal and opinionated: I think the world has more cynics and critics than ordinary people; someone who judges, analyzes, weighs in behind an argument and then retreats behind an often changing profile picture. In fact, I don’t think I pay as much attention to the ‘me’ I meet every morning in the mirror anymore, as much as I pay attention to my ‘DP’.

Over time, I have come to believe that these pictures – these frozen frames in pixels – that we present to the outside world on the social media are very much a single dimension, not to be mistaken for a person’s true persona. Thus when one meets in the otherwise mundane brick-and-mortar world, the other dimensions of that person may or may not agree with the perceived image of the person in question on the net. I have only plucked up enough courage to visit a ‘tweet up’ a couple of times to realise that I am as disappointed as those who I meet in what they see in me or I in them – very different people from what they project or what  they had perceived.

Are these virtual friendships really a replacement for the real life? Can they really move across dimensions without truly disappointing? Can connections on the intellectual plane with acquaintances on the net give rise to more than a momentary high? Well, ‘You’ve got mail’ does continue to be one of my most favourite movies of all time. However, the few friendships that I have been successful in taking across dimensions constitute nothing more than a rounding off error in the light of the total universe of people I apparently know on the net. But those are friendships I truly cherish; people I love to meet, to share a laugh and a cup of tea with; to spend more than a single evening with.

Late night and a cold computer screen glows brightly in the darkened room; two laptops sit opposite each other, respectively busy, on the corner table at the bustling neighbourhood café; the lonely Blackberry buzzes in the darkened, smoke-filled  balcony, while a party rages inside; tired fingers tap on an iPhone on the back seat of a car as it winds through a never ending street; impatient scrolling, while waiting for the ever elusive relationship manager to arrive at the bank; the minimized browser, on the desktop, in an office cubicle;  mobile screens suddenly come alive at the movie/ match during the commercial break/ interval. They are all my fellow tribesmen, all those you see around you, busy in a world which is far away from reality, from the café, from the party, from the movie – connected to each other over the Ethernet, in a somewhat real, virtual world.

Sourced from YouTube

©Sony Pictures Entertainment

Exactly a decade ago on this day, as daylight was fast fading into the evening, a television set blared in a familiar drawing room in Calcutta. The park outside was full of little voices, swinging, chasing, hanging from monkey-bars or just squealing at the sheer joy of running around free. The streetlights were coming to life one by one, slowly encroaching upon the gathering darkness of that ill fated September evening.

Inside, there were adults glued to their television screen that showed billowing black smoke from what was nothing short of a towering inferno  – one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Fire raged on the upper floors, glass panes shattered in the heat. A cloud of smoke had started to engulf the crystal blue September sky. And then suddenly, completely out of the blue, another plane darted into the frame and crashed into the other tower, as everyone watched in bewilderment. More flames. More shattered panes and debris from the exploding plane. Even the newscasters on CNN were rendered completlely speechless. Slowly, but surely, the azure New York sky was turning gray. Outside our window, in Calcutta, it was already night. Too many questions and the fear of death hung heavy in the air as the government warned of further attacks.

Today is 11th September, 2011. Ten years have passed since that evening on 11th September 2001, when I sat watching the unfolding of the episodes that would change the way we looked at the world. Too many images have stayed on in our minds from that eventful day, as have the first person accounts of the survivors, accounts chronicled by the kin of the dead, live video footage, images of the burning Twin Towers, of men jumping to their death to escape the towering inferno, of proud, erect buildings being razed to the ground.

In the last ten years, fighting terrorism has become serious business. Wars have been wrought across the world as countries have brought down other counties and dictators on their knees, in their efforts to combat terror. Thousands have been killed; some, no doubt innocent bystanders who have been caught in the crossfire between those who have doled out terror and those who have striven to contain it by any means at their disposal. The question that however begs to be asked is that if we are any closer to winning this war? Terrorists driven by the solemnity of their beliefs have continued to use every opportuity to strike fear into the hearts of people, even as governments have more often that not stuggled to keep pace with happenings around them. Several terror strikes have happened in India since our very own 26/11 occured. Hundreds have fallen prey to shrapnel and misguided bullets; however, those who imparted terror to begin with still continue to walk free or live with impunity, albeit behind high walls.

Have we really been able to cage terror or has terror caged us? I still remember the feeling of freedom I enjoyed in walking through a part of the country that was alikened to heaven on earth when I was a teenager; the luxury of driving into a hotel lobby and meeting a warm smile rather than a cold stare; and the hassle free experience of catching a flight, which today seems a distant dream.

Fortune and my fate nearly drew me to Nigeria a couple of years ago. A West African country known for its lion-hearted footballers as much as for their oil, their street smart conmen and the atrocities of the Niger delta. I remember being taken to an international school there on Victoria Island – the place where the children of all well paid expatriates studied. I remember stopping as I stepped out of the car – armed guards, metal detectors, sniffer dogs, an electrified fence and 16-foot high walls. Was this the freedom I wanted to give my child? Was this all necessary? Yes, it was, I was told. In a land that has been torn asunder by insurgency and terror, this was part of the normal – a ‘normal’, I simply wasn’t ready to accept.

A decade later, it is almost the same time of the evening. Outside our window in Mumbai, it is the last evening of Ganpati Visarjan, fireworks light up the dark skies and then vanishing into the darkness, the air is heavy with drum rolls. I look down from my perch at people on the street and wonder how many of them, like me, occasionally glance over their shoulders or jump at a sudden shaddow crossing their paths on a dimly lit street unsure of what can or will happen next. Terror, it appears, is fast becoming part of our new reality. Is this something we are ready to accept?

Ground Zero, on 13th December, 2010.

Picture courtesy : Sukanti Ghosh

It all happened within thirty odd seconds or perhaps a minute. On July 19th, Rupert Murdoch was almost done with his ‘answers’ at the ‘News Corp-Hack Gate’ hearing, at the House of Commons’ Select Committee in the UK, when Jonathan May-Bowles aka Joanie Marbles almost thrust a pie of shaving foam at Murdoch Sr. What followed has now gone down in history as the ‘prowess of the tiger wife’, Wendi Deng. The third wife of octogenarian Rupert Murdoch  lunged at the comedian and showered punches on his ‘unsuspecting assailant’. “Some attributed Deng’s “slam dunk”, half-jokingly perhaps, to her volleyball skills that date back to her high-school years in Jiangsu province”.

So, was this attack by Wendi ‘Tiger’ Deng a manifestation of her fierce feline protectiveness?

Well, two self-proclaimed aantels (‘intellectuals’-for the non-Bengali reader) were engaged in a virtual adda on the social media, with Wendi pinned under a microscope, awaiting dissection – hidden from prying eyes, in the privacy of off the record direct messages….

-”…did you see that? She pounced, slapped the joker and got all the flash bulbs in her face. She has stolen the show! Poor Murdoch! Isn’t China simply proud of its ‘exported’ trophy wife?”

-”But she did what she thought was right, to protect her husband. What’s there to doubt that? She comes across as quite determined.”

-”Determined? You haven’t Googled her yet, have you? Two marriages, a string of affairs, a would-be husband who was almost twice her age…and then a steep climb within News Corp! Do you know that she is already being referred to as the “de-facto diplomat” of NewsCorp, in China? She has also made sure that the two daughters she had with Murdoch get a unknown, but a generous share of this pie!”

-”And you mean to say that ‘whack-in-time at the Pie-cide assailant’ was completely staged as well? To take the attention off Murdoch? To soften the degree of public scrutiny?”

-”Well, let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me…”

- “What else could possibly be the reason?”

- “There could be several…..loyalty or protectiveness perhaps?’

- “Loyalty? That’s an emotion of the past!”

- “You have obviously forgotten our very own ‘Rajmata’ who guards her husband’s throne as her son graduates through the Gurukul of life, having mastered the art of taking on his harshest critic before he takes hold of the nation’s reins.”

-”Isn’t that loyalty? In her own way, hasn’t she proven her loyalty to the family, to the predecessors and the dead King? She is a Tiger widow, madam, looking out for her cubs’ future.”

-”Hillary Clinton?”

-”Now that’s another fine example of a Tiger Wife! She didn’t let the ‘Lewinsky’ episode deter her from fulfilling her political aspirations. She steadily forged ahead, from being an acclaimed lawyer to a highly respected senator; from being the Democratic Party Presidential candidate to now becoming the revered Secretary of State for one of the largest democracies in the world. Here’s what she had to say about herself, “I’ve done the best I can to lead my life … You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life” – that kind of sums it up, doesn’t it?”

-”Right! Both of them are great examples of Tiger Wives, dear. The ‘Tiger’ trait rides high on women who wear the pants. Read this, TIME’s take on the real “Tiger” Wives. Then talk to me.”

A brief pause later, the thread comes alive.

-”These women, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rani Laxmibai, Michelle Obama - they are made of a different fibre, aren’t they? They maintain their poise and dignity all through life, even in the worst of times.”

-”Exactly! And that is what makes them stand out and makes them the real Tiger Wives.They are fiercely independent, strong women who simply cannot be put down, be it by a cheating spouse or death.”

The upheaval that the Tiger Wife’s resounding left hook caused will take a long time to die down or be forgotten. The ripples will reach far and wide, resulting in more such conversations, that discuss her life, her nature and the exact ‘reason’ behind her act. Was it loyalty? The knowledge that she would secure a place in his will? Whether the whole ‘show’ was staged to buy public sympathy or was an act of genuine kindness will never be known, nor is important.

The fact is that there has always been and will always be (today, increasingly so) a growing, though grudging respect for strong, courageous women in the world; women who step beyond the role of a consort and take on the role of a fiercely protective partner when times are hard with equal aplomb as the progressive partner when times are good. One who is increasingly a protagonist in her own right; not scared to seek out or eke out her place in the sun, even as she turns to the world and says, ‘C’mon, give me your best shot and then watch when I give you mine!’

Mumbai, 16th July, 2011.

Day three after 13/7. The 19th victim has succumbed to his injuries early this morning. The city that had already been upon its feet from the morning after – had dusted off the harsh pieces of shrapnel – has today picked up the missing diamonds strewn around in the narrow alleys of Opera House. The diamond merchants of Zaveri Bazar and Opera House are still debating over whether or not to move base to another part of the city and the pros and cons of moving into a new bourse. Several hospitals have decided to issue ID cards to blast victims who have shrapnel permanently embedded in them so that they don’t set off metal detectors. And today, a national daily’s headlines screamed, “CM: City not equipped to tackle terror” – the Centre and the State are still obviously locked in a debate over whose line was it anyway.

But, this time, something has changed. The much patronised “resilient” Mumbai has refused to accept the adjective as much as the lauding of its “spirit”, because therein lies the parallax, an error in judging Mumbai’s so called ability ‘to bounce back’. It is not ‘resilience’ – that the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness; elasticity’ that causes Mumbai to bounce back each and every time. ‘Resilience’ is far too romantic an expression to describe the city’s state of being. It is in mourning, it is numb with pain and sick of being an orphaned, stationary target. It has crossed the thin red line between waiting to be repeatedly bludgeoned by terror attacks and growing numb to the continuous onslaught of pain, picking up the pieces and continuing.

No, do not discount it as apathy either. The city that lay within and beyond the terror triangle of Wednesday, both to the south and the north, huddled over telephones to make frantic phone calls, jammed mobile networks to make sure that their closest people, their friends were safe. Mumbaikars, who have looked terror in the eye several times over the years, stayed put in their offices aiding the affected, disaster management teams housed in corporate establishments swung into work, strangers opened up their doors to strangers, ferried people stranded in the chaotic, rainy streets of the city. Netizens on social networks went overboard trying to reach out to people on the ethernet, collated and created spreadsheets of emergency numbers, hospitals, blood-banks, phone numbers of people who had opened up their houses to shelter people for the night. In spite of the CM not being able to reach the Police Chief because of the network being jammed, there was an invisible machine that slowly kept turning its wheels, cogs nudged other cogs into motion and by late night, with the death toll at 18 and over 130 injured, Mumbai was assisting its injured, preparing to bury its dead and most people had reached home, scared but safe.

They didn’t wait for the ‘Spirited Mumbaikar’ certificate to arrive at their desks the next morning, despite the incessant rain they just reported back to work. The kids were back in school, some of us we were back in front of the computer, on social networks, with steaming cups of coffee, condemning the blasts, tearing the newspapers apart for putting up gory pictures, criticizing television channels for their insensitive, invasive, sensationalised reportage. The daily bread had to be earned, thus people across social strata – vegetable vendors, masons, workmen, white collared workers and the social elite, left their chawls and mansions and took their ‘trains’ back to work. It was back to being just another day. And to the world at large, it seemed that Mumbai had ‘bounced’ back on its feet, the parallax.

In the last three days, nothing much has changed other than trying to sift through the rubble, looking for clues in the craters left behind by the ammonium nitrate-based explosives, searching for more dead bodies, VIPs visiting the injured and the State announcing monetary aid to the families of the dead. Thankfully, no candle light vigils have yet been organised at the Gateway of India. Nothing much more will change in the coming days. Least of all the coming of an assurance that such blasts will not recur or that Mumbai will not be targetted anymore.

The city is learning its lesson the hard way, almost like an orphan, to cope with disaster, one bomb blast, one terrorist attack, one siege at a time. The novelty had worn off within the first few times the city was under attack. It is a sense of helplessness that is growing rapidly, alongside a disdain for the meaningless sympathy that is often heaped upon it. The fear will remain; people will keep looking over their shoulders for a while and pray that they don’t fall prey to the next blast.

As a friend shared, the morning after, “I will have my running shoes on more often now and exercise to ensure I have stronger shoulders so that I can lend a helping hand to people who might need my help the next time around.”

“If you visit Calcutta and you don’t visit Paramount, it is the same as not visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris”, said the ‘intellectual’ Bengali babu, in an olive green Khadi Kurta, complete with a Shantiniketani jhola bag, holding his glass dangerously close to his brown, parched mouth. “And when in Paramount, you must have this ‘Daaber Sarbat“, he recommended, raising the glass, after he had slurped a mouthful. His companion, the dapper, pot bellied Frenchman was still inspecting the generous scoop of the white, gelatinous ‘tender’ coconut poised in the translucent liquid, the glass sweaty from the summer heat.

We were waiting on the narrow bench next to theirs, for our glasses ofDaaber Sarbat, Grape Crush and Lemon Cream. I ran over a list of places I would have liked to compare to the Eifel, or perhaps not. But it was strangely reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one prone to such hyperboles. Paramount, the Sarbat shop, with its narrow benches and marble topped tables, a couple of antlered trophies and raftered ceiling (and no air-conditioning) has stayed afloat “since 1918″. One notices the notice boards, strategically placed at the entrance, full of new paper clippings, articles that have ‘talked’ about Paramount over the years and the walls lined with framed pictures of dignitaries, who have drunk the ‘Paramount’ glass. The ‘Sarbat’ shop stands under a patio next to the Mahabodhi Society Hall, at the other end of College Square.

Returning to Nahoum …

As mentioned in my earlier post, when in Calcutta, I embark upon frequent expeditions to Hogg Sahib’s market. Note to the foodie self on those days reads, ‘while browsing the shops in New Market, must eat chicken puff from Nahoum‘. The shop has looked exactly the same from when I have walked around New Market, in a frock, clutching at my mother’s slender fingers, eyes wide with wonder at the colours, the sounds and the smell of the place. The aged yet polished, shiny glass panes proudly show off shelves of cream rolls, rum balls, brownies, cheese samosa and meat puffs. As you walk in a barrage of flavours, cinnamon, vanilla, the fresh lemon tart and at times the warm smell of freshly baked bread hits you. And you are hit by this sudden desire to take home all that lie around you,  craftily lined up in wooden trays on the window or carefully placed on the counters.

Christmas, in my days, was never celebrated the way it is now. Christmas was the arrival of the Plum Cake and Mince Pies from Nahoum in white paper boxes, tied up with strings. Nahoum never disappoints me, neither do the crispy, flaky Chicken Puffs. It tasted much the same this time. And we did remember to get some Cream Rolls and Macaroons packed for tea time. A variety of flavoured biscuits accompanied us back to Bombay.

Tryst with Biryani

Calcutta’s tryst with the Biryani evidently goes back to the time when the last nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, was exiled and made Metiaburuj, in Calcutta, his home. Rumour has it that because the Nawab had fallen on bad days, the meat in his ‘Awadhi’ biryani used to be replaced by pieces of potato. The Nawab, in his own way, left his mark on this signature Mughal dish that was later perfected into the present day mildly spiced, aromatic Calcutta Biriyani. Walk into any of Calcutta’s many Mughlai restaurants and you will be served a generous portion of the mildly spiced white and saffron rice, two healthy pieces of meat or chicken and the all important potato. The clever nawabi chef’s ploy to keep the nawab happy ‘Bengalicised’ the Awadhi Biryani. And we, the Bengalis, cannot imagine biryani without the delightful saffron coloured ‘subterranean  stem’, fried whole and then slow cooked with the rice layered with meat.

This time, the meal of the Mughals came home from Shiraz, an old favourite restaurant of the Bee. Shiraz, in the last couple of years had been disappointing, the Biryani in particular had tasted spicy and had left furrows of grease on the plate. And we had almost shifted our loyalty to the new Mughlai restaurant in town, Arsalan. But this time we returned like the old faithful to Shiraz and the meal really surprised us. The Biryani was fragrant, mildly spiced, with tender chunks of meat and the ‘Nawabi’ piece of potato, did not leave a trail of grease on the plate and left behind its aroma that hung in the air, long after we had finished lunch.

Badshah, Anadi Cabin, Kalika etc.

A walk through the streets of Calcutta only asserts the fact that we Bengalis ‘live to eat’. An abundance of street-food stalks you from almost every pavement. Phuchka, aalu kabli, jhaal muri, tele bhaja, fish fry, moglai porota, egg rolls, Kobiraji cutlets pounce on unsuspecting pedestrians from dimly lit shops, temporary tin boxes, tin stalls as much from Badshah, Anadi Cabin, Hot Kati Rolls, Kalika, Lakshmi Narayan, Mitra Cafe, Nizam’s, Regent to name a few. While talking about egg rolls, I must mention the chicken rolls we had for dinner this time, from a little known restaurant called Padma on Amherst Street. Crispy, fresh and well stuffed, the rolls were a revelation as were their fish fries, made from ‘Bhetki and nothing less’ as claimed by the manager.

Dida’s Mochar Ghonto and Paratha

Picture Courtesy : PreeOccupied

It was late afternoon, I sat watching her add a few bay leaves to the mustard oil, foaming and smoking in the pan,  already spluttering with the jeera(cumin seeds) she had added first. The rest of the ingredients for her ‘mochar ghonto‘ were waiting for their turn to be added, in sequence. The kitchen, the tiny store and the small passage adjoining the store was where I had been initiated into the fine art of finely slicing and browning the onions, roasting the spices, kneading the flour to just the right texture and other things crucial to making a good meal, that I had to know, before I learned how to cook. This was the house where the little girl in me, who was a ‘legendary’ fussy eater, had first learnt to appreciate food, thanks to the culinary expertise of my grandmother. And today, as always, I sat watching her and trying to take mental notes of how she turns finely chopped mocha into an aromatic delight, best enjoyed with her flaky parathas, another art I had promised I had to ask her to teach me. So that afternoon, the dilettante, I, spent a long time, taking lessons in my grandmother’s secret recipes (which should make up another post later) at her house that stands tall on Golap Shashtri Lane, near Lebutala Park.

This food trail is a never ending tale, I know I have only touched the tip of the iceberg called food and may have left out cuisines but I must end it here, before you fall asleep. And it must end at my mother’s kitchen. Every summer when I return to her, her kitchen comes alive with all my childhood favourites – her signature Mishti Pulao, Chingri Machher Malai Curry, Luchi, Alur Dom and of course, her signature Kosha Mangsho, that till date can give Golbari a run for its money. Like all doting mothers, she makes sure that the couple of kilograms that I may have lost throughout the year are returned with interest to boot. And does the foodie in me sound like the kind who will ever complain?

Picture courtesy :  PreeOccupied 

Picture courtesy : Sukanti Ghosh

A food trail through the serpentine alleys of old Calcutta, some forgotten restaurants, memories of delicacies, little known little shops that sell great food, the almost ritualistic visits to the ‘must-eat-at’ places, the ‘just-can’t-miss-it’ food, some delicacies that I get to eat only in my mother’s kitchen, some recipes that my aging grandmother wants to pass on as a legacy- these are a few things that I will freeze in my frame this time, as part of my Calcutta travel diary from this summer.

No stories about Calcutta can ever be complete without stories of food. Not mine, at least.

Khetra makes my morning before morning shows me my day:

None of my Calcutta mornings are ever complete without Khetra’s kochuri. The first turn around the park that stands before my father’s house leads into a by lane that meanders a while before opening out on to a broad intersection. Halt. Turn to your right, and the hole in the wall that you will peer into is Khetra’s unnamed shop that offers hinger kochuri/alur torkari, singara, jilipi andchhanar jilipi, that would melt in your mouth, to all and sundry, every morning for breakfast. And my breakfast, for the days that I spend lounging in my mother’s drawing room, is Khetra’s bill of fare. ‘Is it that no one can make hinger kochuri better than Khetra in Calcutta?’ – you might wonder. The Bee begs to differ with me. His favourite hinger kochuri is made by a shop in Chaltabagan, near Manicktala. Perhaps, there could be more treasure-troves, tucked away in other street corners, around other alleys, catering to another para of babus. But old habits die hard and my habit of feasting on hot hinger kochuri, wrapped in ‘shaal patar thonga‘, that comes with alur torkari in matir bhar is a habit that I cannot give up on, not at least till Khetra decides to shut shop.

And while I take you along with me to wander in my city’s alleys, smell the food on the way and take a picture or two, I will also tell you stories about a few favourite eateries that most people don’t know about or prefer not to talk about.

The little window in College Square:

One such place is the canteen that is housed within the compounds of the YMCA Swimming Club in College Square. In its heyday, while the members of the club were privileged to sit and eat within the club walls, a tiny window to the outside world used to serve the ‘mango people’ manna – piping hot mutton ghugni and soft, fluffy omelettes sprinkled with freshly crushed black-pepper. I graduated to their chicken stew when I reached college; and every Tuesday, and at times, on Wednesdays, I used to take a detour to have their stew with a friend who lived in the neighbourhood.

More back-alley fine dining and a chai-wallah of yore:

As you can understand, my salad days were well spent eating at small joints and more holes-in-the-wall in the southern half of the city. One such back-alley ‘fine diner’ was a favourite for its Tibetan Momos and Thukpas, and I am not talking about Orchid here, which used to seem ‘expensive’ in those days (for those who are familiar with the establishment). Walk in through a rundown doorway on Ashutosh Mukherjee Road and the narrow lane takes a couple of twists and turns before reaching the ‘restaurant’ door. The restaurant named ‘Tibetan Delight’ was, perhaps, an extension of the Tibetan family’s drawing room, had four tables and about twenty plastic chairs of various hues. But their Pork momos (they had chicken, mutton and vegetable momos on the menu too) served with steaming soup replete with freshly chopped shallots and fiery red chilli sauce on the side was something to die for. An early afternoon Momo binge, almost fifteen years later, at Tibetan Delight helped refresh those crazy, carefree days. R, quite the foodie, feasted on their Thukpa, as she giggled merrily to stories from my college days.

The chai-wallah, who sat on the pavement, across from my college gates, used to serve chai, in earthenware cups – ‘bhaar’ – best had standing huddled under an umbrella, on a rainy day. Found him with his family of battered tin mugs, old glass jars of biscuit, Horlicks bottles of tea and sugar, his busy brass stove – still serving piping hot tea in his earthen bhaar. I missed the rain but R returned happy with a burn on the tip of her tongue, having been initiated into tea.

French windows, new and old:

A surprise discovery on a Saturday morning, thanks to a dear friend, was Piccadilly Square, a new eatery on Sarat Bose Road, who open rather early, to serve breakfast, of the English kind. I would recommend their freshly made waffles, pancakes and crepes and ask you to finish the meal with a Blueberry cheesecake. Wash it all down with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, all while you watch the early morning traffic whizz past you from your table by their long French windows.

But it is hard to beat the hours that stretch longer and longer watching the busy road outside while you sip tea or coffee and nibble on a rum ball or Chicken Patties and Chicken Rissoles or an old fashioned English Tea Sandwich, by the French windows of Flury’s ‘tearoom’, on Park Street, a permanent name on my ‘must eat at’ list. As an annual ritual, it mostly follows the same pattern: retail therapy at Hogg Sahib’s Market, a walk down to Oxford Bookstore on Park Street, stroll down to Flury’s, call up a few friends and watch afternoon darken into evening from the old, favourite French window. If you have breakfast at Flury’s, which we did on a few occasions, must try their crispy bacon, the French style light and fluffy omelette, grilled tomatoes and hash brown along with some freshly baked bread. The foodie recommends Open Swiss sandwich with shredded chicken and ham or bacon and their Chicken Mustard Sandwiches. Wash it all down with some Viennese coffee or Darjeeling tea. Li’l R recommends the filled Croissants.

Mughlai, Mughlai and more Mughlai food:

My ‘must-eat-at’ list can go on and on, but the ‘must-eat’ list is quite short and reads ‘Mughlai and mostly Mughlai’. I have grown up in a house where eating out was not much in fashion so the mutton rezala and tandoori rotis used to come home from Sabir restaurant, mutton chaap from Royal and biriyani from Shiraz and Aminia. Though Nizam’s at New Market, Shiraz at Park Circus and Arasalan outlets across the city have ‘rezala’ on their menu, there is nothing that truly compares with Sabir’s signature rezala. So on a sultry, summer afternoon, we found ourselves in the heart of Calcutta’s Chandni Chowk, better known for its rows of shops selling electronic parts, computer hardware, car parts and electrical equipment, to mark another pilgrimage. ‘Dada and I used to come here when he was assembling his music system’, recalled the Bee. The rezala was still the same: thin, white, slightly sweetened yogurt gravy, lightly spiced with aromatic Kashmiri red chillies and before you knew it, the succulent pieces of mutton had already melted in your mouth. The tandoori roti was as soft as I remember from when I was younger than R. We were still hungry for more and the mutton chaap turned out to be just right to satiate the gluttonous souls. We also polished off the meal with small, earthen bowls of Phirni, for dessert.

More Mughlai, a drink detour and my mother’s best recipes are a few things to be explored in the next post…

There is nothing political about this post. These are strictly the observations of a fence-sitter, who is exactly one year and eleven months older than the erstwhile Left government of Bengal and is in Calcutta now, among other things, to taste the season’s first mangoes and watch the downfall of an arrogant Communist government that has outlived the Berlin wall by 7 years, but only after leaving a 2 lakh crore debt burden for the state to reel under.

Here are a few entries from her chronicle:

12th May, Thursday: The aeroplane hovered over the northern suburbs of the old city for sometime for the landing corridor and then a slight turbulent ride later landed us on home turf. I was home, with the little daughter in tow, home for the summer. As I walked out of the comfort of the air-conditioning, a sultry, clawing humid blast hugged me like a long lost sister. A sea of gray heads waited for their wards and kinfolk alongside my handsome, graying father. My R observed, ‘Ma, isn’t Calcutta much greener than Bombay?’

She knew what she was talking about. She had pointed out at the sea of palm trees clustering around the neat rows of houses beyond the Calcutta airport boundary wall, a picture very different from the blue and gray sea of slums that meets the eye while descending upon  Maximum City. The election results were far from my mind.

13th May, Friday: ”8.30 AM: the Left leads in 3 seats in Bengal. This is when you need a Duckworth-Lewis rule in elections” – an eminent Translator and online professional, on Twitter.

The better part of the morning I kept flitting between Facebook, Twitter and various news channels on television, blaring in the dining room. I was suddenly interested to know whether the end was near or not, for the Leftist regime. I had lived life under this regime for far too long to even believe that a ‘change’ was even possible. Growing up in Marx’s Calcutta, I had been witness to a mass exodus, of fine young people, cousins, friends et al, the young and the restless who had one by one deserted the mother ship in search of better clime, education and jobs. And eventually, I had left, too. But the other occupants in the room, who, unlike me, had participated in the electoral process, begged to differ with my scepticism. I was watching something altogether new in this otherwise old, familiar dining room. I was looking Hope in the eye and that surprised me. They had suddenly started to believe otherwise, they had started to believe that ‘change’ was here and was here to stay.

“Friday the 13th, is green” – a much known fire brand TV journalist, live from Calcutta, on NDTV.

By noon, Didi, aka Mamata Banerjee, was leading in the ballot counts. There was unbridled joy even in the Star Ananda young journalist’s voice that he didn’t want to hide any more. Heads had started to roll and now there was no stopping the landslide. The eminent party panelists returned one after the other, initially to boast, later to point fingers and then to put their feet firmly into their mouth.

“CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, finance minister Ashim Dasgupta, Industries minister Nirupam Sen, all set to lose. Top knocked off. With Buddha’s resignation, curtains come down on world’s longest serving democratically elected Communist Government.” – An eminent journalist and political analyst, live tweeting from Kolkata.

By late afternoon on Friday, the 13th of May, 2011 green abir had coloured faces, had carpeted the streets, microphones at street corners had suddenly started to crackle into life to add Rabindrasangeet to the chaos.

‘This is the right time to get a feel of the streets,’ observed my father and I had no reason to say no.

‘Kalighat?’ our driver sounded a little sceptical, perhaps a little scared. ‘Aaj odike ektu gondogol hobar chance achhe.’ (There are chances of some disturbance in that part of the city)

Thus we drove through deserted streets of the boi para, on to one of the oldest arteries of the city that leads to the old, trading district of the city, Burrabazar. Shops were mostly closed, only some people reluctantly sold their ware, the summer heat was the easiest excuse for people to huddle under shades and watch strategically placed televisions giving the minute by minute election results. It was 3 in the afternoon. We drove over the Hooghly, took a ‘U’ turn into Brabourn Road, down more deserted roads, past the Lalbazar crossing, Cannng Street. Only the TMC tricolours, tied to the railings running down the middle of every road fluttered as we drove past. The otherwise brave Shantuda had safely brought us home, cutting the adventurous father-daughter’s expedition really short. 

An impromptu adda in my father’s drawing room this evening ended in a feast. They, my aging uncles and aunts, had all converged to apparently meet me and the daughter. The conversation had very soon turned to Mamata, Bengal, Leftists and Change. There was much hope floating and I wanted to believe.

14th May: ”Didi Blasts Front Door” – TOI, Calutta edition

I was out in the morning, walking through my favourite streets. Today the deserted boi para was back to business as usual. The muriwallah was laying out his battered tin cans on his meager plank, the book shops round the bend that specialise in Made Easy books were busy stacking up books on Medicine, music, Geography, Shakespeare, Botany, Russian Revolution – all made easy. I walked through the haze of burning camphor and a sudden burst of agarbati fragrance rising from a publisher’s office. I didn’t notice any visible difference or any effect of the change that had already taken place. But did I catch a smile on an old face? Did the man in a gray bush shirt have a spring in his middle aged cautious steps? The girl under the floral umbrella seemed to have her chin up, didn’t she?

I overheard: “Pranabda aschhe aaj ke” (Pranab da, Pranab Mukherjee, is coming today); “Kaal paraye ja shankh bajlo na!” (So many shankhs were being blown in our neighbourhood, yesterday)

As I walked out of one alley into another, most splattered with the last afternoon’s green abir, microphones still blared Rabindrasangeet.  Dailies announced the “Change”; “Baam Bidaye”; “Bangla Mamata’r”; “Historic Thunder” …

15th May: Almost 3 days have passed since the red fort fell in Calcutta and the dust seems to be settling. I have happily feasted on some Himsagor mangoes and a variety called Gobindo Bhog awaits dinner time.

I have just received one phone call today. From my eldest aunt. She has lost two of her sons to the exodus. One lives in Chandigarh and the other in Osaka, Japan. I had a long conversation with her, about a lot of things. I heard the sound of hope in her voice. She sounded so happy when she shared that my cousin from Japan has finally decided to shift to Delhi from Japan. As if I heard her say, ‘Some day, perhaps …’

‘Here is the dream-catcher,’ he said … ‘Every morning I is going out and snitching new dreams to put in my bottles.’ - BFG, by Roald Dahl.

And all that the BFG, Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly dream-catching Giant, wanted to do with his labelled jars of captured dreams was ‘to blow dreams into the bedrooms of sleeping children. Nice dreams. Lovely golden dreams. Dreams that is giving the dreamers a happy time.’ But all that is possible in a world of the BFG, in a world where dreams are ‘very mysterious things. They is floating around in the air like wispy-misty bubbles. And all the time they is searching for sleeping people.’

In the real world, there are no such big friendly dream-blowing giants who are happy to see happy, dreamy kids. There are only dream-merchants who have made capturing and selling dreams their business. They have been capturing our dreams, labelling them, indexing them and sealing them in glass jars. And while the fictitious BFG is more than happy with sleeping children dreaming happy dreams, the real world dream-catchers run a business of selling these beautiful dreams in colourful packages, to the old and the young alike.

Why do I say so? Read the two conversations I have mentioned below and then decide to agree or disagree with me. These are two of many conversations that I have had with children of various shapes and sizes and snippets that I have overheard in busy malls, supermarkets, shops, grocery stores.

“So how do those boys know that Samantha has a brother called Bosco? And a tattoo?” My daughter, a 10 going on 11, asked me without taking her eyes off the television, “How would they know she wears socks to bed? Look, Ma!” She wanted me to watch the commercial in question and answer her, in details (exactly like my seventh grade Biology teacher). I knew the answer but wasn’t sure how to frame it for her.

“Not sure.” I shrugged. “Why?” I was very curious at her curiosity.

“Just …” her little voice trailed off unenthusiastically as her attention had moved on to the next commercial that promised a fairer and lovelier man, all day long.

Another day, another child. He was dressed to kill, this six year old son of a friend of mine and he insisted he wanted to wear a particular brand of men’s deodorant. I was intrigued.

“Why do you want to wear your dad’s deo?” I asked.

He smiled an impish smile through his missing incisors, “I like the fragrance.”

“And the real reason is?” I probed further.

He lowered his voice to make sure his mother was not listening and told me, “If I wear it, people will come running to me. I saw it on TV.”

The two apparently innocent conversations left me part amused and part worried. What amuses me is how children latch onto ideas and make them their own, much faster than we adults imagine they do. Imagine a little boy of six yearning to wear deo to get the right kind of attention. And what worries me is the impact of the same ideas that trickle down to these nascent and fertile brains. This constant exposure to all things not-so-young, not-quite-innocent and more often adult, I’m sure, have adverse effects on their receptive minds.

Over the years, the real world dream-catchers have sought out mostly the adult variety of dreams and hidden desires, analysed them in labs, chemically tested and tabulated them under various heads to formulate marketing strategies based on their findings. Creative wizards have recreated beautiful images of their findings, frame by frame and sent them back to us via the satellites, from the remotest corners of the earth. These images are nothing but an extension of our secret desires for bigger houses, imported cars, ‘taller, sharper, smarter’ children, blemish-free, wrinkle-free youthful skin, ‘no grays’ bouncy, lustrous hair, fairer men, whiter clothes, cooler acs, slimmer bodies, healthier hearts as well as crystal clear HD TVs. This colourful world of smiling people, beautiful images, catchy phrases, smart jingles is no doubt appealing to all of us. But the children, they love it much more because it is their window into the adult world. The adult world of dreams becomes an extension of the real world for them. But because they cannot differentiate between dreams, desires and reality, they confuse this world with reality. To them both merge and become one.

Add to that confusion the continued bombardment of how to begin a relationship, reasons to continue to believe in relationships, the University of Freshology’s ways of answering unanswerable questions, reasons to agree with parents, how to take parents for a ride, how to continue loving more than one, how to separate the men from the boys, so on and so forth adds more chaos. What we all seem to overlook is that while we, the adults take this carnival of dreams with a pinch of salt, the children lap up everything. The lingo, the body language, the catchy phrases, the jingles all become an integral part of their life.

While most friends I speak to share my concerns, there have been some who tell me not to react to such ‘minor’ things as ‘it is just a passing phase and children will get over them.’ But I still tend to worry. I continue to raise questions.

What I worry about is simple. Are these children suddenly exposed to much more than they are equipped to handle? Instead of the much deserved warm, fuzzy, golden dreams are we crowding their minds with the adult ways of the world, too fast too soon?

And then again, there are smaller mercies that help me keep afloat and keep my faith. My impressionable 10 going on 11 yesterday turned around and said, “I think those boys had a pajama party at Samantha’s house. That’s why they know so much about her, right Ma?”

She had framed the answer, perhaps in her dream. I nodded in the affirmative, happily.

In the dead of the night, in a dark, desperate hour, a woman sat brooding. Should she or shouldn’t she? She asked herself…This wouldn’t be the first time nor the last that the thought of jumping to her death has crossed a mother’s mind, to end it all, the pain, the shame, the guilt, the harassment – everything that had been plaguing her. And it wouldn’t be the last time that the memory of a touch, of a tiny palm clutching on to hers, a soft face pressed against hers, the sound of a little voice or the silhouette of a sleeping child next to her at night would bring a mother back from the brink and urge her to live on, to continue, to compromise, to concede that life may not be perfect, but an impulsive decision on her part would change the life of her child forever.

But, then again, there are mothers who don’t wait to ponder or wait to look back. There are mothers who give up their right to fight and give up on life. They give in to their pain and end their lives, an act that some may have contemplated for a long time and some who just give in to a momentary lapse of reason. Their reasons being varied, and often stranger than fiction, they don’t even have a moment to think about the children they leave behind; children left to fend for themselves, motherless (and often father less) in an otherwise cruel world. And as we have in the past, so we continue to condemn, investigate and analyse the triggers that may have led to the suicides. The law of the land continues to set examples, as it has in the past and continues to punish the abettors while pleading helplessness at addressing the issues that led to the unfortunate act to begin with. And the same question, once again, prevails on our minds, ‘what about her children?’

Every time a mother ends her life, our thoughts, among other things, turn to her children, the helplessness that surrounds them, the part in them that dies with their mother. What would have gone so wrong that she did not want to continue living? Was there no hope left in her to continue? Was living on for her children’s’ sake not an option anymore? Weren’t the little faces in her thoughts? What would happen to them now? Would they ever rest easy henceforth? Would they ever believe that life could be happy again and not as cruel? But the questions remain unanswered.

Almost twenty years ago, when a distant aunt of mine had ended her life leaving her twelve-year-old daughter behind, I had found myself asking the same questions. Whatever had plagued her – and had pained her – were mostly personal issues and had ended with her, but for her daughter this was life’s cruelest joke. Life had taken away her mother from her, the person she had loved the most and perhaps, depended on the most. Fortunately, life did not continue to be as harsh as her ‘new’ mother proved to be a good mother. But this distant cousin of mine never seemed the same anymore, a part of her had died with her mother. Her loss was so deep, that even after a year, I remember her telling me that she did not sleep well and was not sure when tragedy would strike next to snatch away someone dear to her. And all I had felt was a surging anger, for my aunt who had escaped from her miserable life without thinking about the daughter she had brought into this world and had loved for twelve years. She had chosen to desert her daughter and run away from her miseries.

The bizarre suicide cases of Nidhi Gupta followed by Deepti Chauhan, shocked us and raised several difficult questions again. Nidhi Gupta, a Chartered Accountant by profession, jumped to her death from the nineteenth storey of her apartment a little over a month ago, but not before she had flung her two children, Gaurav, six years old and Mahika, three years old, from the nineteenth floor refuge area. The three of them succumbed to multiple injuries. And Deepti Chauhan, last Saturday blindfolded her six-year-old son, Siddhesh, on the pretext of playing blind man’s bluff and pushed him off from the seventh floor terrace of her building and then followed him. She had evidently been contemplating on how to end her life for a while, to put an end to the harassment that she faced from her relatives and had evidently spent eight hours the previous day on a train with her mobile switched off.

This was unfortunately not the first time that a parent has decided to end the life of his or her children and then follow them in death. This is not the first time that children have died because their parents did not have the courage to continue struggling or continue to fight. Children have been poisoned, flung in front of trains or pushed over the top before the parents have followed. Despite my best efforts, what I simply can’t fathom is what is it that leads parents to kill the very children that they have brought into this world? How can a mother who has played an integral role in propagating this miracle called life seek the end the very essence she has brought forth? Does she think that she has the right to take life just because she gave birth to her children? Or is it a deep sense of insecurity as to what might happen to the children after she is no more that leads her to putting an end to the innocent? Why is it so difficult for the parent to choose life for the sake of his or her children instead of choosing death for them too?

Over time I have come to believe that suicide is no more than a way to escape ones miseries. When one believes that he or she cannot fight any longer, when one feels that there is no hope left, one selfishly chooses death over life. There are no doubt many who would disagree with this posture, those with a prolonged terminal medical condition perhaps being a case in point. However, what I can’t accept is that for some this may be in their minds the only way to teach a lesson to those that have hurt them for so long, a justified way to show them (and the world) how deeply they have been hurt, often forgetting that those who stay behind – their children – have nothing more than a painful memory and a sense of emptiness to turn to and live with for the rest of their lives. Whatever be the reason as to why people choose death over life, whoever be the trigger, this is an impulsive and selfish act of cowardice which defies logic.

Why not give life a second chance? Why not live for the sake of your children? Why rob the pleasure of life from those who have just begun to live? Why not live and let them live, too? How about choosing life, mother?