MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES - IV                    

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

-        Graham Greene

Three books recently published.(a) Sahitya Akademi (b) Publications Division & (3) Contact:9868035385

Photo Captions (going down)

1. Bhaiya & Chanda Bhabhi in Unwans home (1949)

2. Bhaiya's hostel friends at B.N. College (1953)

3. Bindu Didi and Sudhanshu Kant Ranjan(1948)

4. Saroj Didi & Virendra Narayan (1948)

5. I with my Chhapara school friends (c. 1954)

6. Rajendra Collegiate School (1947-'49)

10.

To resume my story, after Babuji’s return from Patna when his special leave had come to an end in September, 1947, I was admitted to class VII in Rajendra Collegiate School which lay adjacent to Babuji’s Rajendra College. Babuji’s diary entry here says:

Went in morning with MM on a rickshaw to the Rajendra Collegiate School. One Bengali teacher of the school (perhaps, the Headmaster, Shri Ghosh) had come to accompany me there. There was also a ‘Tulsi Jayanti’ function in the school. I was made to preside, and spoke on ‘Ramayan’ for about an hour. (12 Aug).

My home coaching had already begun before I went to Patna with Babuji in his one-year special college leave. A Brahman priest from the Dharmnathji temple, Pt Yagyanand, taught me Sanskrit, with another teacher, Yadunath Prasad, taking care of my regular English, Maths and other school subjects - both at home. As I have said, I spent most of my time with my father when he was studying in his small study room, sitting alongside on his mat and looking at pictures in ‘Kalyan’ or books and magazines which came in Babuji’s post almost daily. And I remember here; it must have been sometime in February, 1946, when the book ‘Achchhi Hindi’ by Shri Ramchandra Varma had just arrived in post for a book-review in ‘Himalaya’ and Babuji had just opened the packet, when I took the book and read it from cover to cover – a book of good usage of Hindi language – but I found myself deeply engrossed in it and had my first lesson of what was good, correct Hindi writing. I was hardly ten years old then and it must have been my precocious interest in Hindi language that made me predisposed towards a keen interest in correct language use.

I have memories galore of my two years(1947-’49) spent in my school at Chhapara – memories of my friends, of my school teachers. I also remember some of my school-mates – Shankar, Yogendra, Naimuddin, Balmukund, as well as some of my teachers – Yadunath Babu, Jitendra Babu, Jagdish Babu, Devnath Babu – our Scout-teacher, with his polished ever-shining shoes - and our Bengali Headmaster, Shri Ghosh, et al. I remember Jittan Babu with his thorny palm-cane which made us remember the Auxiliary verbs in English within a week. All our teachers were excellent teachers and I have great respectful memories of all of them. I also remained in contact with some of these friends even in later life, particularly with Shankar and Yogendra.

                                                                        11.

Recently, my Hindi biography of my father ‘शिवपूजन सहाय: जीवन और साहित्य’ has been published by the Publications Division in which some of these happenings – for instance, his editorial assignment of ‘Himalaya’ and its ultimate closure, and my father’s resignation, etc have been discussed in detail.

It was now January, 1948. And the year had begun with the tragic assassination of Gandhiji.I have a clear memory of that ominous evening. Babuji had come back from his college and was in his study. And I was playing on the road with my neighbouring friends. A stone’s throw from our house to the west was the palatial house of Babu Lallanji, the renowned businessman of the town and our landlord. His was, perhaps, the only house in the town, or in that locality, which had a radiogram. The news of the shooting of Gandhiji was suddenly broadcast on the radio as I was playing around there. At once there was an loud uproar. I only heard from people there that Gandhiji had been shot, and I at once ran to inform my father of the terrible news. Babuji’s diary entry for that momentous event has it:

Jan 30: Just as the evening was darkening into night, sudden news came that a youth named Nathuram Vinayak had shot three bullets into Mahatma Gandhi around 5 in the evening at Birla Bhawan in Delhi, and Mahatmaji fell dead instantly. Luckily for the Muslims the assassin was a Hindu. Had it been at the hands of a Muslim, the whole Muslim population in the country would have been massacred in a day. Even in his death, Gandhiji protected the Muslims.

And then I faintly remembered how in March, 1947, when the pre-partition virulent riots in Noakhali and Bihar were taking place, and Gandhiji was camping in Patna near the big Patna Lawn, holding daily congregations of people, I had gone there with my elder cousins and seen and heard Gandhiji, from a long distance, speaking in his slow, faint voice that was hardly audible.

In all the long college vacations in summer and winter, Babuji used to stay mostly at our village home, and I’ve countless memories of those long periods of our village stays when I used to live with my siblings – my eldest brother AM who’d bolt himself whole day long in our long library room which had gradually filled up chock-a-block with books and journals, and my two elder sisters who loved me most, fulfilling for me my need of motherly care and affection. And then there were my numerous co-villager childhood playmates with whom we would often play cloth-footballs on our chabutara in front of our outer verandah. And we would also, with my village playmates, help in dusting and arranging of books in the library during day hours.

While in the village, we all lived together a life of great happiness and contentment in a large joint family atmosphere. Every morning we would go to the lotus-pond to the north of our village for our morning ablutions, and then, after our breakfast, proceed for bathing in the Kochan river, about a furlong east of the village. Babuji would mostly be engaged with the books and journals in the library, or in conversations with co-villagers who would always crowd round him in our outer’dalan’ (verandah). In the evenings, Babuji generally would be expounding the episodes in the Ramayan or the Mahabharat to the co-viilagers and there would be singing of bhajans with drum and cymbals almost every evening.And in villages and even in smaller towns, those were days of earthen lamps or lanterns, and only on special occasions, of petromax lanterns.

 

                                                                    12.

All through 1945-’46, Babuji had been worrying about the marriage of my two sisters – Sarojini (now about 16) and Vinodini(about 14) - and finally in 1948, he was able to fix their marriage – of Sarojini at Bhagalpur, and of Vinodini (‘Bindu’) at Dumraon. And now in the summer vacation of 1948 both marriages were scheduled to be performed: of Sarojini with Shri Virendra Narayan, a writer and journalist, son of a practising lawyer, Shri Harendra Narayan of Bhagalpur, and of Vinodini with Shri Sudhanshukant Ranjan, a graduate son from the Muntazim Estate family of Dumraon (where Babuji had worked as a home tutor of the would-be bridegroom’s father when my father was a teacher in Ara).

In his diary for 1948, Babuji notes that we had all been in our village during the summer vacation (from 18 Apr. to 30 Jun). Unfortunately, during the period of the marriage ceremony preparations and performance, Babuji remained under seriously ill with typhoid fever, with little or no proper medical treatment available. These diary entries tell that story:

Apr. 23: It was lunar eclipse tonight, and became bed-ridden with fever. Just when the ceremony of ‘Kanyadan’ (giving away of daughter in marriage) was to take place, I was down with fever. I have high fever and severe bodyache all over. (I write this diary a month and half later. The diary of Apr. 23 right upto Jun.7 was written on Jun.7). Apr. 26: Very high fever – bodyache, extreme thirst, suffering. Even loss of consciousness at times. Giddiness most of the time. Unaware of all that’s happening around me. Apr. 27: Barat came today. I was carried on an easy chair to the ‘Mandap’ (wedding canopy) for the ‘Kanyadan’. Apr. 28: A doctor from Nihalpur came and gave me enema. After ‘Bidai’ Sarojini went on a car and Mangal went with her…May 21: The Bhagalpur maariage was fixed because of Benipuriji. That gratitude can never be recompensed in this life. [Here he expresses in long entries his deep regret for not being able to participate fully in the celebrations and give personal welcome to the large number of literary figures who came on the occasion in the village home to bless the couple.]

May 22: Barat from Dumraon came. I’m still very weak from my illness. Can’t walk properly. But I was able to perform the ‘Kanyadan’ and other rituals properly and well this time. The famous humour-write Shri G.P. Shrivastava had come in the barat. I came under heavy debt in these two marriages, but everything went off well. May 29: Tomorrow I’ve to go to Buxar to get part of my sold farm lands registered in the court. May 31: In the Registry court. The Registrar – a Muslim officer – made me sit alongside him on a chair on the Registrar’s dias and readily signed the three registry documents for me.

With the marriage of his two daughters in two good families, with good husbands, Babuji was now in great relief. But now he wanted his eldest son, AM, also married soon. AM (now  19) had just cleared his Matriculation examination - after failing in two earlier attempts - and was soon to get admitted in Intermediate at H.D.Jain College, Ara. In one diary entry Babuji wrote:

June 10: Night before yesterday’s, I saw in a dream AM mother (my late wife), dressed in pure white sari and a round red ‘sindoor’ mark on her forehead, stood smiling before me. Her hair appeared to have grown white, but the vermillion mark was round and aglow. Her body,too, appeared to be effulgent with light. She then called ‘Badka Babua’ (AM) before me who was wearing only a vest. Pointing to him, that ‘devi’ asked me –‘When will his queen come in your house?” Absolutely surprised, my eyes suddenly opened. I felt, my wife was now quite worried for ‘Babua’s’ marriage. [Incidentally, everyone called my brother by this monicker ‘babua’ only!]

Marriages in our joint family of our cousins in my generation had already been going on. My youngest uncle’s second son, Manoranjan had just been married to the second daughter of Munshi Navjadik Lal of Chilkahar (Ballia). Munshiji had worked with my father and Niralaji in Calcutta in the early 20s as one of the editors of the famous satirical Hindi weekly ‘Matwala’, and after Munshiji’s death the family was in severely indigent condition. My father, as a gesture of favour and compassion had got that marriage solemnised without any dowry. (All marriages in my father’s own family have been dowryless.) In fact, I’ve vivid memories of that marriage of my elder ‘Lala Bhaiya’ (Manoranjan), because I was the ‘shahbala’ with him in the bridegroom’s palki. Sacks of rice and other provisions (along with monetary help given) had already been transported from our village on bullock carts and on boats across the river Ganga to the bride’s village to help in the marriage provisions.

The very next year, AM’s marriage was fixed in the same family with Munshi Navjadik Lal’s third daughter, Chanda, and the same rigmarole was repeated – again with me as the groom’s ‘shahbala’ – a veritable replication of the earlier marriage, again dowryless, with provisions for the marriage transported in the same way across the river to the bride’s home in Chilakhar.Babuji wrote in his diary:

1949: Jun.6. All three bullock-carts of AM’s barat proceed to Kotawan ghat for crossing the river. After crossing the river by the road at Ujiar ghat we camped in a nearby grove till the bullock carts also arrived. The next was the night camp at Narahi. It was a great delight to sleep in a moonlit night in the open. Next morning we bathed in the Saryu river and reached Chilkahar by the afternoon. The Barat ‘welcome’ was by the evening and the marriage was solemnised by midnight.

I can still visualize very vividly all those events, the great festivity and the great merriment, and my happiness to have accompanied my new ‘bhabhi’ in her palki, and to have once more a mother figure in my home, because Chanda Bhabhi, indeed, loved me truly as her own son as long as she lived with us – which was not, alas, to be for very long.

After the timely and satisfactory completion of marriages of his three children and my school education going well in Chhapara, Babuji was now much relieved of his worries on these fronts. But bereft of proper and good care and nourishment in the absence of my deceased mother, Babuji’s health was rapidly declining.At one place in his diary he writes:

The thought of quitting college lecture work is getting firmer everyday. Mentally also, I think, I am prepared for it. Long speeches in lectures cause dizziness now. After repeated lectures, the giddiness increases; I start stumbling while walking back from my lectures; it seems as if I might fall. Hence, it’s best to quit this job in good time now, otherwise some untoward incident might happen someday. I might even lose consciousness and fall down. (8 Oct.,1949)

He was experiencing marked increase in frequency of urination and spells of giddiness – both symptoms (as I know know) of diabetes and high blood pressure (hypertension). The frequency of travelling between Chhapara and Patna, as well as other places, also created its own pressures on his failing health. And it was in this situation that efforts had started for his shift to Patna in a government job as Secretary of Bihar Rashtra Bhasha Parishad. (I have written in details about it in my recently published Hindi biography of my father.)

                                                13.

In July,’49, I had been shifted to Patna to live with my elder sister Saroj Didi where my brother-in-law Virendra Narayan was working as Assistant Editor of the political weekly Janata and the Hindi literary monthly ‘Nai Dhara’, both under the editorship of Shri Ramvriksh Benipuri, who had actually helped so much in my sister’s marriage to Virenji. AM was soon to be admitted in H.D.Jain College in Ara making occasional visits to our village home where Chanda Babhi was now looking after the village farming affairs. I had been admitted into the Patna Collegiate School in class IX. As Babuji writes:

I took MM to the Patna Collegiate School and met its Headmaster Satish Babu with Dikshitji. There I met MM’s teachers – Rudraji, Pt Janardan Jha ‘Pankaj’and Pt Rajendra Dubey who is MM’s class teacher for class IX, and after leaving MM under their charge, returned to Sammelan Bhawan. (5 Jul.,1949)

Efforts were continuing in Bihar Govt for Babuji’s appointment as Secretary of the newly created Bihar Rashtrabhasha Parishad and he got the first letter in Chhapara on 12 Dec.’49 intimating him about his ensuing appointment. In his diary entry he wrote:

The Bihar Govt wants to appoint me as the Secretary of the Rashtrabhasha Parishad. In my talk, I clearly told Shri J.C. Mathur (ICS, Education Secretary, Bihar) that I’m not interested in the raise in my salary, because I can easily earn as much or more by my literary writings; but my real worry is that I can thus pursue my literary mission of serving Hindi literature and getting valuable scholarly volumes published by that institution (14)….Applied for three months’ leave from the college (26)… Got relieved from college. My heart filled with overwhelming compassion for the students as I took leave from them.(29)…Felt deeply emotional as I left Chhapara by the midnight train.(31 Dec.)

  

                                                                        14.

Our final shift to Patna was now the beginning of the end for my father’s long perilous life of ceaseless struggle, exploitation and penury  – as also his final shift to the centre stage of literary eminence. I have told that story in my recently published Hindi biography of my father शिवपूजन सहाय:जीवन और साहित्य (and also in my English version of his compiled autobiography which is also shaortly to be published).

With this shift to Patna, I had slowly been shedding off my childhood and entering into my adolescence. Living with my elder sister Sarojini, and frequently visiting my village home where Chanda Bhabhi showered her ample love and affection on me – I had discovered in both of them my ‘mother figure’ which had been lost and yet deeply embedded in my childhood consciousness. Youngest in my generation of siblings and cousins, I had a surfeit of love and affection by all my elders in the family which had given me a childhood of great happiness and bliss.

In my retrospection, I now feel that my father, in his fraternal love, had been singularly guilty of crass negligence towards both my mother and my new Bhabhi, Chanda, who also was a pure divine being like my mother. I strongly feel now that it was on the envious insistence of my vile uncles and vicious aunts that my father forced both my mother and my Chanda Bhabhi to live in that remote village with no nearby medical facilities, which led to their tragic untimely deaths, in nearly identical circumstances, causing great disastrous consequences in our family.

Babuji had joined Bihar Rashtrabhasha Parishad (BRBP) as Secretary on 20 July, 1950, but he was living alone in a small room in the Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan (BHSS) in Kadamkuan in Patna. In May, 1951, he was allotted a govt quarter in Bailey Road in which he lived only for a very short period of a few months. It was during this time that Chanda Bhabhi came to Patna some time in June and also stayed in Babuji’s quarter till October. AM also, meanwhile, had joined B.N. College in Patna for his English Honours studies and was living in its hostel.

In his pressure of work, in organizing and setting up the activities of BRBP, Babuji’s health was deteriorating further, and soon due to his aggravated diabetes, by July, 1952, he was affected by tuberculosis with occasional vomits of blood. I had passed my Matric exams in 1952 and had been admitted to my I.A. couse at Patna College. To make matters worse, I met a bicycle accident, fracturing my femur bone which necessitated critical surgery (on Sep 2)by Dr B. Mukhopadhyay. This had made me miss my college attendance for months which had resulted in my not being sent up for my I.A. exams in 1954.

Our shift from Chhapara in 1950 was thus a transition from my childhood to adolescence – to a time when ‘innocence was closing his eyes’, when that glorious time of childhood had suddenly vanished – a time, in William Blake’s immortal words, when one could -             

…see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

 

15.

I had started this story of my childhood experiences with memories of the death of my mother in my infancy. That doleful experience of deprivation of motherly love hung constantly like a dark cloud on the horizon of my entire childhood spent in Chhapara, in spite of its overwhelming compensation by my father’s constant care and affection, and by the love and care of my two doting sisters and finally, towards its end, by the overly gentle love and affection of my Chanda Bhabhi. And now at the critical juncture of my journey from my childhood into my puberty I want to recall - in great sorrow - my second crisis at the beginning of my crucial age of adolescence of a loss of ‘motherly affection and care’ in the sudden tragedy of the passing away of Chanda Bhabhi, who was like a divine reincarnation of my own lost mother.

There had been an upheaval caused by the shift from Chhapara to Patna, augmented by the marriages of my siblings and their moving away to different places, and the new pressures and complications generated by Babuji’s change of vocation from teaching to secretarial office work – an assignment that required a lot of foundation-laying and logistical organization – further complicated by the rapid deterioration in his  health leading to the onset of tuberculosis, and so forth. In December, 1952, for reasons of the problem in commuting from the govt quarter in Bailey Road (4-5 kms away), Babuji had moved into a small flat in the premises of BHSS in Kadamkuan itself, where BRBP had newly been situated. When my father’s health condition deteriorated further, he was moved to my sister, Saroj’s house in Bihari Sao Lane, Langartoli, more than a km to the east of BHSS. This was also the time (Feb.) when I had to appear for my Matric exams which I had passed in April in IInd division. I had still been living with my sister when my father was brought there during his serious illness for a couple of months. And as ill-luck would have it,  just during those days, I met a bicycle accident on Aug 24, fracturing my femur thigh bone and had to undergo  a 6-hour long surgical operation in PMCH (on Sep.2) in which the broken thigh bone had to be pinned, and Virenji had to go to Calcutta to bring that pin. I was put under plaster cast chest downwards and came out of it only by October-end.

It was now 1953. I had joined Patna College for my Intermediate studies. Babuji had recovered from his serious illness, and resumed his work at BRBP, and now we were all living in our new small flat in BHSS. It was just then, on April 6, that a telegram came from my uncle at Unwans that Chanda Bhabhi (ChBh) was gravely ill, and was in a serious condition. At once, I rushed to my village and found ChBh’s condition really very critical. Immediately, next morning, I arranged for a palki to carry her to Buxar – 15 kms north, then the sub-divisional town with a govt hospital - for proper medical treatment. I accompanied the palki carrying ChBh on a bicycle all the way. AM and his friend Gauri Shankar, and a few others from our village also had joined there. ChBh’s illness was diagnosed as meningitis in a very critical stage. The doctor advised against moving the patient to Patna because of her serious condition. Whatever best treatment that was possible there was given to ChBh, but she expired on the evening of April 15. I can never forget that ominous night with my inconsolable brother almost insane with grief.

Babuji’s condition, too, had worsened in Patna when he had heard the news of ChBh’s death. The very next day, on April 16, he was admitted into the T.B. Hospital in Patna next to the G.P.O. building in a very serious condition with occasional vomits of blood. He remained in that hospital under intensive treatment for the next 10 months.

I now think and reflect on these circumstances which had led to Babuji’s shift from Chhapara college to BRBP, Patna, and all the adverse situations that had developed in the family during this period since 1950, and feel that had Babuji not shifted from Chhapara to Patna, and had he allowed ChBh to stay with him in Chhapara, continuing with his college job, things would have taken a turn for the better for the family. But destiny has its own inexorable designs which play out with their relentless inevitability, making life flow like a straw in a stream.

Fitzgerald puts it in his Rubaiyat in a verse:

It’s all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and stays,

And one by one in the Closet lays.

                                                     ooo

All photos & Text © Dr BSM Murty