The connoisseur

Rana Roy was my father’s friend. He was an extremely docile man with clean habits. Neither did he smoke, nor drink. He spoke softly and I had never known him to get angry. He wore a neatly pressed full sleeved shirt and always tucked them. He was brown, not very tall, and wore a neat moustache by his clean shaven bumpy cheeks. On asking about them, he had once told me how a terrible bout of pox almost killed him as a child. His mother had saved him then.

He owned a camera – the only one in his circle of friends. Except for entities I could draw, I barely understood the pictures which adorned the walls of his small but neatly arranged apartment. In one big get-together, his friends commended his creations. Instead of blushing – Rana Roy explained how to capture them correctly, the challenges he faced, the techniques he used and after all what it meant. Even pictures had meanings! The most interesting part about all this came twice a year, when this esteemed man made portrait shots of me. Not that I looked like a model then, but he used to do portraits for all his friend’s children – just for his and their fun.

Audio recording and playback instruments were the tech marvels of those days, and he possessed two of them. One of them had two casette decks with which he would create customized music collections for his friends, including my dad. His showcase had one shelf of audio casettes and three shelves of books – including the volumes of Tagore’s Complete Works. Tagore’s works are a status symbol that every Bengali loves to keep on display. Almost no one ever reads a single page. However, I liked to believe he had read it all.

He was the only cool artie cum techie I knew in our small town, who did these things for pleasure. Rana Roy was not very good looking, yet he was so polished and intellectually attractive. Please feel free to not trust his perfection, I must say – I adored him too much.

Rana kaku soon got married to a woman, called Chhanda. She was little fairer than Rana kaku, a little plump, had beautiful eyes and always wore a smile on her face, quite in contrast with the usual serious countenance of Rana kaku. She talked a lot and liked his friends’ families. Our get-togethers continued.

They soon had a son. A lot of friends and their families were treated in the baby shower. I did not like this little boy in the beginning. But soon started to like him – after all he was Rana kaku’s son.

—

Few years later we moved out to a different locality. I’d grown up too. The get-togethers thinned out and the photoshoots were gone. I was having strange thoughts about my adolescence, girls and acne. I definitely blamed it on my acne.

Till one evening, we visited his place. Chhanda kakima had invited us to see her newly born second child. It was years I had been to his place. The whitewash had greyed out a bit, and the all but one wall photograph was hanging, though a little tilted and on a different wall. The rooms otherwise looked familiar in arrangement, however a little more packed. The show case looked similar. I could not find the double decker casette player below the new color television, though the smaller one was there.  I did not see his camera around.  Unlike other times, only one other friend has turned up to celebrate the occasion, and he leaned on the safa. I had seen this tall, fair and a good looking relatively new friend in previous get-togethers, and he always turned up alone. He talked less too, but with Rana kaku there he did not stand a chance in my likes. And he smoked too.

I was barely allowed to touch the chubby pink baby. His elder brother looked a little more serious than I had known him to be. Rana kaku himself was sitting on a chair and spoke lesser and with a lower voice than usual. His shirt was not tucked and he was tapping his right leg. His first bad habit, I thought. I overheard Chhanda kakima discuss with mom about Rana kaku not keeping well of late. They were consulting a doctor in Calcutta.

—

A few more years later,  my parents out to the market, I opened the door on a knock. A rickshaw wallah was supporting – a worn out Rana Roy on his shoulders. The rickshaw man was too confused to ask for money – he ran away dropping him like a garbage bag. Rana kaku chose to sit on the ground. He had grown very thin – he looked haggled, unshaven and dirty. He wore an untucked half sleeved, crumpled, dirty shirt. His limbs jerked involuntarily, his face showed strange twitching movements and I barely pulled the sweating Rana kaku inside the room. What was in store for me was an experience I would never forget. He could not lie down straight and kicked me. He then turned over to be in a crawling position, but something threw him back. He tried to sit straight on the floor against the wall, and it looked like the wall kicked his back. Then he swerved like a snake on the floor. He looked so worn out, and yet kept jumping around – helplessly and haphazardly for 30 more minutes. People would have laughed at the sight – I swear. But I wept.

—

A few months later, when Rana Roy died of Parkinson’s disease, he was living in a shabby tent outside their quarters. His wife could not throw him away. She made sure her elder son also lived with her, supported by his retirals and her politically connected live-in partner. No one dared to object to this arrangement. I do not know how it felt being the elder son.

I know why Hindus believe in Karma. They think life is fair!