‘What’re these?’ I asked them, pointing at the tiny burrs trapped in my new trousers up to my thighs. I couldn’t find anything to say - so I merely said, ‘Oh!’Īt that moment I had suddenly realized my legs and thighs were itching, and I needed to scratch them desperately. ‘I’m leaving Bombay for good,’ he said to me, and then resumed talking to my father. His face had lost its colour, and wore a morose, confused look. He was not his usual cheerful, jovial self: he seemed dejected, even depressed, and was lost in his own thoughts. As I learned later, this visit was for the last time.
#A story about my uncle last level full#
I returned home late that evening, full of gladness at being young.
The touch-me-nots shrank into themselves at my gentle affection, while forget-me-nots shook their heads, knowingly, over my innocence. That was the first time I was allowed to wade through the mud on the fields, and, after a few days, I explored gardens flamboyant with gorgeous tropical flowers and orchards redolent of mango blossoms, where myositis and mimosa had come alive. We lived on an estate of the company, a sort of finca next to its sprawling factory, on the slopes of the Sahyadri mountains in a suburb of Bombay. My father worked in a multinational engineering company that had been established years ago in Glasgow, Cynosure Engineering. I watched, awestruck, the explosion of green, green, green in the valley: tall tropical grasses, lantana shrubs, musk roses, and wildflowers. I also remember that it was the day I put on my first full-length trousers, graduating from half-pants - and I think now, half in wonder, how little it took to make a red-letter day for me at that age!Īfter the showers of the first few days, the wild grasses were soon tangled and redolent, mantling the hill slopes with swathes of emerald verdure. The rains arrived, on its normal onset date of 7 June, and the first blue cascade washed away the sere dryness of India’s searing summer. The monsoon was due that week, and a breathless, expectant hush hung over the sunny June sky of Bombay. I still remember my eleventh birthday as clearly as though it were yesterday. My sister Suroma had been born a few weeks ago, and my mother was busy with the baby most of the time. He would often drop by since he hardly knew anyone in Bombay, and my father was more like his own brother than just his cousin. Those three years were an exciting, exhilarating time for me. Gradually, I became obsessed with that soft warm fuzzy feeling you got after reading ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, and an almost numinous mystique haloed the names of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, of Zorro and Elena de la Vega. He sometimes took me to film shows, when he got the time - from Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy to ‘Witch Mountain’ and ‘Born Free’. He not only read to me - this was before the days of television in India - but also brought me books ranging from Tintin and Tarzan to the Hardy Boys and Enid Blyton. I realise now, in hindsight, how extraordinarily kind it was of him to befriend a lonely, sickly boy like me, afflicted with polio since the age of five, with no siblings and few friends. It was he who introduced me to the world of Peter Pan and Wendy, to The Scarlet Pimpernel and Captain Nemo, and also to the classics - David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, Mowgli and the Secret Garden. He displayed a most gratifying knowledge of such topics of vital galactic importance as the composition of Kryptonite and the colour of Darth Vader’s light sabre. ‘So, Master Bitan Kushari, what do you read, apart from Donald Duck and Superman?’ĭelighted, I launched into my recital, and he (most surprisingly for a grown-up) evinced keen interest in my litany. He came to my room and started flipping through my stacks of comics. Not at all like the image I had of what a staid accountant was supposed to look like. Not just the bone structure of his face, he was athletic and graceful - he was an expert rower - and looked quite like a film star. He was extraordinarily handsome for a Bengali. He was very tall, very fair, with jet-black wavy hair, light grey eyes, aquiline features and an aristocratic jawline. When I first saw Ujan Kahali, I gaped at him open-mouthed. He has taken up a new job in Bombay and will be staying with us for a few weeks, till the firm he will join arranges a flat for him.’
He was in England all these years, studying chartered accountancy. ‘Your Uncle Ujan will be staying with us this weekend.’ My father had said to me at the dinner table that evening, casually, I vividly recalled the day I last saw him, when I was nine years old or so.