Sunday, July 04, 2010

Losing a bit of my past

How can you lose your past? For that matter how can you change your past? I too thought these were not possible, your past was your past - not losable, changeable or even forgettable. But all that change with a brief two minute phone call which casually informed me that that a particular house in a particular town in Bihar was sold. No other details about the sale was available and still is available. Someone ran away with a part of my past and don't even know who it was. The more I think about it more helpless I feel. THe house in question was nothing extraordinary, a two story heap build built in the middle of a 5 acre plot in 1908 by my maternal great grandfather - a local lawyer and a grandee - Jyotish C DasGupta. A rather upright and strict man who lived till the ripe old age of 100. A poor man who had economically and socially risen in life - the first by building up a successful law practice in the district town of Purnea and at the same time marrying [ as a ugly but bright boy] the daughter the local magnate: Kusum DasGupta [a woman of cosiderable beauty and weath]. Nishikanta Sen, my greatgrandmother's father was as seriously well known as he was rich and he was also Roy Bahadur. The land for the house in question was "given" to JCD by NKS to build the house [JCD was stricly against dowry]. The house was the marital home of JCD and KD and was strategically located too. It was just outside the football pitch type compound of NKS's own chateu like house [the original was destroyed in the 1934 Bihar earthquake and the remake still stands: last heard it was taken over by the CPM and converted into a party office, but that is another story!] It was in this house that JCD and KD lived for nearly 80 years of their lives saw the birth of several children [8 of whom survived], saw a few grandchildren, and a fewer great grandchildren and kept them all under their wings till 1979 and 1981 repsectively before they passed away. I had the honour at a tender age to bear on my shoulders both of them to their funerals. Things changed rapidly after that. For a few decades three unmarried children and my grandmother kept the house going with all its verve intact. In the 1990s oly two unmarried daugters lived in the house. The others mainly children of his sons were waiting for the last two daughters to call it a day. One passed away couple of years back, the other is till alive [my mother's family members seem to be blessed with long lives] and has apparently beeen moved to a flat in Calcutta. I should have no attachment to that house: economic, social, emotional. But apprently I do. My grandmother, my mother and I were all born in that house. The house will witness many more births and deaths, sale and resale, but I have irrevocably lost a part of my past and dont know how to recover it.

4 comments:

The Unadorned said...

Aha! a nostalgic account...and poignant too. A magnum opus can flow from this.

Thanks for sharing.

A. N. Nanda
http://ramblingnanda.blogspot.com

Subho Ray said...

Nanda ji, this is the first instalment of the magnum opus:)
thanks for your comments.

soumya said...

Very well written. Touched a chord!

Vishwas Patel said...

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Our minds are our predicament. Kya Karein? Only time is the healing factor...As they say..this thing too will pass.