Some Friends Are Forever (4)
Chapter – 4 BHAIYA
“My world revolved round these amazing people till I stopped believing in friendship ……”
Last time, I told you about Bapi or Babna, my cousin brother. One of the most enviable characters I have had the good fortune of coming across in life. We spent some unbelievable days till I graduated from MAC in 1983 and then we got lost in our own worlds.
I came to know about his life- threatening car accident some years back when I was down in Kolkata during the holidays. Someone must have told me how badly injured he was! Every single bone in his ribcage was either broken to pieces or badly damaged. Anyone in his place wouldn’t have survived! But this cousin bro of mine is made of sterner mettle. He is a fighter to the core. He was discharged from hospital after weeks and went back on with his life as if accidents and mishaps are a part and parcel of life and the sooner you realize it the faster you get back to discharging your earthly duties!
But besides Bapi, there were some other relatives-cum-friends, who enriched my life, made me grow as a human being. Today, I want to introduce you to one of them called Bhaiya.
Bhaiya is a derivation of the Bengali word, ‘bhai’ and would mean ‘the brother’ in English. I have added the definite article before bhai as this bother was a brother to all!
Bhaiya came to my life quite late, in my mid twenties. I have already mentioned him while writing about my best buddy-cum-nephew, Subho. My other nephew, Krishna (Subho’s eldest brother), had recently got married to a very chubby, friendly, lovely lady from Ranchi. His father-in-law was the Headmaster of the Bengali School there. Some months after their wedding, one breezy evening Subho and I found ourselves boarding the Tata Steel Express from Howrah. We were headed for the lnlaws’ of my nephew in Ranchi.
Ranchi, which is under Jharkhand now, was a lively, chirpy town in Bihar then. The kind of relationship and rapport that the people over there share, is hard to describe. Bhaiya used to invite us to play Badminton or Volleyball with his friends from the blocks of buildings situated at equidistant within a housing complex.The volleyball court was situated in the middle of all those buildings.
Sorry, while writing about Bhaiya, my mind is racing ahead. That is why I forgot to give you anything about his physical features. Some 5’8″, broad-shouldered, moustachioed with a hairstyle reminiscent of the Hindi Matinee idol of yesteryear in his prime, Dev Ananda, Bhaiya was a live wire, to say the least. The best thing about him was his winning smile. He could melt the most stone hearted lady with that smile of his!
Bhaiya was very athletic. Always dressed in jeans and punjabi with the collar open at the neck, he was as different from us as lime and ….what is the other word? At Ranchi, from morning to evening, we were served with the choicest of dishes.The afternoons though would be spent in inviting and listening to Ms.Nilima Thakur, who was slowly making her mark as ‘the Lata Mageshkar of Bihar’. The evenings were spent playing cards with his friends like Mukund; cursing or patting each other’s back when a particular pair won a round in the Game of 29; singing at the top of our voices, making merry and back to eating again! I spent some of the best days of my life in Ranchi during that first and last visit.
Bhaiya was universally popular and in the last few days of our stay, took us around to many of his friends’. It is a shame that other than Sharmita, most of those wonderful people have been lost to me with the passage of time. But that unforgettable visit to Ranchi in the summer of the early 80s, will be etched in memory as long as I breathe. Ranchi not only drew us three closer but cemented the bond between us. After that visit stretching more than a week, Bhaiya became an inseparable part of our lives. So much so, that after Subho’s marriage ( I feel sorry for the ladies who wanted to be Mrs. Bhatta), as the hour drew near for me to return to Kolkata, we three were crying like babes, holding each other tightly with our hands, our heads buried into each other’s shoulders!
Talking of which, I am reminded how Subho had taken off the wristwatch he had bought earlier and put it round my wrist with tears in his eyes. He gifted me his most cherished treasure till then as he was offered a Titan as a wedding gift. The world seemed such a carefree, rosy, dreamy place then. Oh, how I wish that the feeling of friendship, camaraderie, love to have lasted a lifetime!
Both Bhaiya and Bapi were charmers and I don’t know how they always ended up finding their ways to the hearts of the girls I simply adored!
Bhaiya in those days was another desperado. One night, he kept both Subho and me enthralled and awake with stories of his feminine conquests. He was ruthlessly frank and had no doubts about our reliability.
I would like to narrate something in this connection. I used to visit this sleepy town called Jiaganj in north Bengal quite frequently in those days. A year or so after the wedding of my nephew, we three were there together again. The friends of my nephews would tease me from time to time with a girl or two there. Life was innocent but pure bliss.
There was a lovely lass I had made friends with, somehow related to my bhagnas. I liked her simplicity, beauty and goodness despite her unwomanly reputation. Before we could know one another well, she was given off in marriage and our friendship couldn’t really blossom into anything at all. She even wrote a touchy letter to me once.
At the time of the incident I am going to narrate now, her sister, some five years her younger, had grown up to a ravishing beauty. Not only did she have the most striking pair of eyes but her face was also what prompted the Muses to inspire the poets to write poetry!
I loved this beautiful lass. But she always looked upon me as an elder brother, someone to be cared for and respected! That evening I was sitting on a step leading to the roof, utterly bored, not knowing what to do with the time in hand. The sun had set behind the coconut trees leaving the sky a crimson hue. The river on the western side, was more gurgling in a gleeful spree than merely flowing. Amidst the shadows on the walls, I was startled by the sight of Bhaiya coming up to me. What startled me more was to see the sister behind Bhaiya! They were holding hands!
Now, dear reader, let me tell you something straight away. A goody goody boy like me can never be jealous of somebody or anybody for the matter.
Bhaiya ran up to me and blurted out in a hurry:
“Bappa, we’re going up to the roof. Please let me know if that brother of hers comes looking for her..”
Bhaiya in some kind of urgency and in the blink of an eye, ran up the stairs with that sister in tow, got out of my view, leaving me shattered and pining.
I was shattered because I really liked that sister a lot. I was pining for love as I had read poets express it through their writings, great writers glorify it and people martyring themselves in search of and for the sake of true love. It was hard for me to accept the truth that Bhaiya was manlier than me. It also hurt my ego to know that what I couldn’t do in years, Bhaiya, a comparatively late entrant on the stage, could hit it up in minutes with the girlie as if love was meant for the winning twosome!
I don’t know what I was reeling under, when the brother of the girl sauntered up the staircase.
“Swagata, have you seen Rimi?” He asked me earnestly like a truly concerned brother should. I nodded my head in reply!
“Where?” The bro was almost pleading.
I pointed towards the roof with my finger as the brother with a quizzical look on his face, galloped up following my direction.
Later, much later, when I was lying in bed, Bhaiya, his hair ruffled, with a look of worry writ large on his face, entered the room.
“Bappa (another nickname of mine), something really bad has happened, yaar,” he looked rattled.
“What?” Feigning innocence was never one of my problems.
“I’s just talking to the girl holding hands, you know. how it is when there is love in the air….that rascal brother of hers sprang up from nowhere. He snatched her hand away from mine and led her down the stairs forcibly….I kept looking at the retreating figures as there was nothing I could do..” He sounded hurt and pained.
“I know, Bhaiya. I sent the bro after you two love-lorns.”
“You swine!” Bhaiya was besides himself as he threw up a pillow from nowhere and rocketed it at me with all his might.
I laughed ducking under the pillow and we were crying and laughing too. Our friendship took such roots that it couldn’t be shaken by the petty challenges of this mundane world.
I thought about the incident a lot afterwards in life. Whether on that serene summer night I was taken by the pangs of jealousy or I had Bhaiya’s best interest at heart, I am not sure of the answer even today. But my mind keeps telling me that my action of that evening must have been driven more by the later than the green-eyed monster.
After all, all these people had absolute trust in me and loved me to the birth of the next world….
