THEY DON’T MAKE THEM ANY MORE

He had a stocky build with thick, curly, black hair, sparkling white teeth, a broad smile and bow legs. He was our Man Friday, our Ramu Kaka, our Jeeves and our Uncle Tom all rolled into one. He was our Bhola.

When Bhola first set foot in our house he was just a fourteen year old boy. It was the year that I was born…when he first set eyes on me I was just a few days old and my elder brother was not yet seven. Bhola came from a village near Panskura in the Midnapore district of West Bengal. His elder brother had worked in our house for some time, but when my father found out that he had done quite a few years of schooling and had dropped out in order to earn, he helped him to get employment with the Indian Railways. My father did the same for Bhola as well as his younger brother. I do remember his brothers but somehow Bhola will always have a special place in our hearts. One reason being that his stint in our house was the longest (he was with us for almost 10-11years) but mainly because he stood out among the trio.

I never called him Bhola-dada a suffix we had been taught to use for anyone older and admonished on several occasions for not doing so. I did call his elder brother dada, who often came to visit us, but never him. Bhola was our friend, philosopher and guide. Bhola had the solution to all our childhood problems; he was our protector (mainly from my mother’s wrath), our companion and our partner in crime. Many a times he bore the brunt of my mother’s anger just to save us from some misdeed or the other. Once, as a toddler, I turned the garden hose pipe on myself on a hot summer afternoon and the poor fellow was sent home packing for failing to take care of me. My brother did try to reason with my mother that the entire fault was mine but to no avail. But fortunately for us, when my mother’s anger had subsided, his elder brother brought him back.

He had lost his mother when he was quite young and he called my mother ‘Ma’ and my Dad ‘Babu’. My brother still recalls how my mother once dragged him from under the bed to give him a sound thrashing and may be that would have been the end of my brother till my screams alerted Bhola who immediately came to the poor fellow’s rescue. Whenever my mother got angry with us, which incidentally was quite often in those days, she would leave the house in a great huff. Bhola would take care of us ,give us our food and later in the evening take us to Chakravarty Jethima’s or Ghosh Mashima’s house(in that tiny colony there were only a few houses she could possibly go to ) to bring her back. Bhola completed my brother’s cricket team, wrestled with him, partnered him in many a TT or badminton match, he taught me to ride a bike, to climb a tree, to go fishing. His transistor would always be on, even in the kitchen, and it was here that we were introduced to the immortal tunes of Binaca Geet Mala. He made us bonfires, lit all the crackers that frightened me and when my dad suddenly said no to water colours one particular Holi  he made sure that our pichkaris  were all ready before the ‘water brigade’ from the neighbourhood turned up. He taught me how to make a mud house and how to spin a top in the palm of one’s hand. He taught me to play marbles and even made a slingshot for me. Nobody could sharpen pencils the way he did and many years later I really missed him every time the lead kept breaking while sharpening my little girl’s colour pencils. He taught me how to polish shoes the way shoe shine boys actually did with the cloth and also how to roll out chapattis without them looking like the map of Sri Lanka. We knew he had a family of his own but somehow we could never imagine him to be not part of ours.

From Chittaranjan he went with us to Bombay (this was mid seventies)… that boy from Midnapore who still spoke in his dialect was completely at a loss in that big city unable to understand any language. But even though he had never been to school, he was so good with languages that by the time he had left Bombay he was fluent in Hindi and could manage a decent conversation in Marathi and Gujarati. Initially, he would get lost in that city every time he went out despite my dad telling him where exactly to alight. He would invariably get off at the wrong station unable to speak the language or read anything. I was then, I think, in the fourth or fifth standard and that is when I embarked on my first adult education programme. Bhola enrolled as my one and only student and since I chose English to be the medium of instruction, he was initiated directly to ABCD and 1234 without going through the Bengali or Hindi alphabet or numerals. At the end of a lot of screaming, hitting, scolding, Bhola could sign his name in English, manage his own bank account, and rattle of the grocery accounts to my mother in English—“palak two rupees fifty paise, alu three rupees seventy five paise.….total fifty eight rupees fifty paise” much to my mother’s annoyance. Bhola knew how to get his bank work done but unfortunately he still needed my mother to write his letters to his father for him in Bangla!

He was so intelligent that he could repair almost anything from an electric iron, toaster to a radio. He had learnt from no one but this uneducated man had a natural gift with gadgets. He would open up everything, with my mother yelling behind him to stop, and gradually reassemble everything to a perfect working condition. Probably he had a genius in him which went unnoticed and untapped in his struggle for survival against poverty and illiteracy.

There was, around this time, a pan India railway strike and we were stuck outside Bombay (it had not been rechristened as Mumbai). Relatives were expected from Paris and it fell on Bhola to receive them at the airport and look after them till my parents reached home. My uncle and aunt were so pleased with his hospitality that they decided to take Bhola with them to every place they visited in Bombay including a dinner at the Copper Chimney!

My father very often mentioned one guest from office and landed up with three for lunch, two of whom would turn out to be vegetarians! In Bengali homes fish is always ready but a variety of veggies unlikely. Sometimes he even ‘forgot’ to mention that there would be guests with him! Even though it was my mother who had taught Bhola to cook(she always mentioned that as a boy he was so enthusiastic to learn he would stand on a flat stool to reach up and look into the pan while cooking), later in such situations, she depended entirely on him. He had such a quick mind for ‘jugaad’ and such nimble fingers that by the time my Dad and his colleagues would sit down for lunch everything would be ready-from the dal-fry and bhindi sabzi to the mutton rogan josh. Even when my friends came for lunch, he was so partial to me that he would ensure, while serving, the largest prawns came on my plate! I once had jaundice as a kid and for quite a while had to survive on boiled khichdi and sweet lime juice. The moment the doctor said I was fine, Bhola got me a Kwality Chocobar, and believe it or not, he actually ran with it all the way home so it wouldn’t melt just because that was the first thing I wanted!

Bhola too loved my parents no matter how much my mother scolded him. One day she found him talking to my Dad on the internal railway phone. My mother was furious with him and reminded him that we were not allowed to call him up from home any time and disturb him…he could be in a meeting, she admonished. Bhola quietly told her that his Babu had specifically asked him to follow the cricket commentary and keep him updated from time to time!

In the 22 houses that we shifted to and from during the course of my father’s transfers none of my mother’s precious stuff would have lasted till the end if Bhola had not overseen the entire packing and transfers. When we moved back from Bombay to Kolkata, Bhola stayed on as his job with the railways was confirmed by then, but he was there with us every time we moved house, every time there was a wedding or celebration in the family. The relief that I saw on my mother’s and aunts’ faces every time he turned up at any family function was enough to explain everything. His loyalty to the family was so fierce that he could be trusted with everything… from kids to keys. The last wedding he attended was mine. The moment he landed with his brother everyone just slumped back in their chairs ready with their demands and Bhola was there to make everyone happy!

With time each one of us moved on. We had heard of Bhola’s marriage and about his wife and two daughters who lived in his native village. He commuted to his place of work from there. His brothers had also settled down and everyone became busy in their own little spheres. The last time we all met was at my wedding. When my father suddenly passed away, my mother wanted him to be with us. She tried to reach him but was unable to do so. There was no news for quite some time and my mother was a little sad that even on hearing about his ‘Babu’s’ demise Bhola did not come to see her. But how could he? We came to know later that the poor fellow himself was no more in this world!

DS