Impressions of a lifetime

                                                           My favourite man

He was my dadu, my mother’s father.  He was the only grandfather I knew as my father’s father had passed away when my dad was quite young.  Today is dadu’s birthday – 9^th September and he would probably have turned 130 odd years if still around. God bless his soul.

I remember my grandfather always dressed in white khadi shorts (reaching below his knee) and white khadi bush shirt.  His only companion during walks or marketing was his strong walking stick – I guess it is still somewhere around the house.  And of course, who can forget the white ked shoes; shoes that even our generation wore to school for P.T. classes.  Dadu loved to dye his absolutely white hair and as a child I soon learned that it was time for dyeing when his hair colour changed into a combination of red-orange-beetroot.  I particularly loved those days because dadu would be in self-indulging happy phase, singing or humming hymns standing in front of the mirror in the huge bathroom.  No he was not a Christian; he was a Hindu and personally conducted the grand Lakshmi pujo every year in the pujo room on the roof.  I still love Lakshmi pujo for the typically Bengali coconut laddoos or ‘narkeler naroo.’

We did not live far from my ‘dadur bari’ (house), just a ten-minute walk from Sarat Banerjee Road to Lake Avenue.  Dadu would stop outside our door on his way back from his morning walk to collect his share of the sandwich toast (sandwich toaster was a new addition in our house and made breakfast more exciting in those days).  He would announce his presence with two sharp taps of his hardy walking stick, take the packed sandwich and be off to sit at his breakfast table by 8 a.m.  I have often been invited to his breakfast and knew his menu by heart – a glass of eggnog, an egg poach with lightly buttered toasts or the sandwich toast, jam and a cup of Darjeeling tea poured from the teapot.  Sometimes the menu changed to Indian ‘luchi’ and ‘tarkari’ – most often on special occasions like a grandchild’s birthday, festival or ‘jamai-shoshti’ etc. 

Dadu often invited my dada and me to special Sunday lunches at sharp 12.30 p.m.  We soon knew these lunches would have exotic fowl meat on the table, cooked to perfection under his scrutiny.  On such days he would go to New Market very early in the morning, buy his favourite partridge or bard, and come back home, send a handwritten note inviting us and then get down to the business of supervising the lunch preparations. 

I often had my birthday lunch with dadu on the 5^th of September and I remember eagerly watching out for the handwritten invitation every year.  On one such birthday dadu sent me a note with a message – “Be learned like your mother and educated like your father.”  I shall never forget that sentence. 

Dadu’s dinner time was 8 p.m. after which he would sit down to write his diary and I wrote many pages in his diary as per his dictations.  Yes, I enjoyed taking his dictation even though there were sentences and words I did not understand at that young age.  My parents would drop me off at dadu’s place before their evening walks and then fetch me before nine.  Dadu had a tin box divided into different sized sections and each night he would keep his accounts and then put every coin into the right section – I enjoyed doing that too!

Who was dadu?   He was Preo Nath Hore.  He had lost his own mother when a small child but grew to love and respect his step-mother.  She lived in their village home with her biological sons, but always looked forward to the yearly visits my parents and I made loaded with love and gifts from her beloved stepson – my dadu.  My grandfather studied in St.Xavier’s Calcutta and graduated from the same college to become a popular Inspector of schools in the Darjeeling district under the British rule.