It's an evening of a weekend. I am leaning over the head board of the bed in the room on the second floor of our ancestral house at Sealdah. My dad's friends and their families have come. Someone is playing harmonium, accompanied by "tabla" and "nal" whereas somebody is busy shaking the malacas to the beats. Masala "mudi"(puffed rice) has been served as snacks and my dad is singing. The types of songs range from those by Sachin Deb Barman to Mrinal Chakraborty, Tagore's songs to Nazrul Islam's, that of Ramkumar Chattopadhyay's to Nidhu Babu's "tappa"(a form of Bengali music) and from Harry Belafonte's Jamaica Farewell to Goanish "Kaibaroto Kumro Muzo Maima Kadilo" - a typical Bengali "adda".
This was a very common picture when I was in my primary school days. Sometimes I used to enjoy those evenings and sometimes I felt bored. But subcounsciously and unknowingly the memories of those childhood evenings of mine occupied an underlying space in my heart and soul which I had never realised this way before.
Yesterday I went to watch Guzaarish. In the last scene of the movie which was the day before Hrithik was supposed to die a Goanis song was sung in chorus. And I felt something! Something just flashed like a retrospective! Oh my God,it's the same song "Kaibaroto Kumro Muzo Maima Kadilo" that I used to hear my dad singing decades back in those old childhood evenings of mine. I felt strange. I felt sad. But I felt contented! I started missing my dad, I started missing my childhood all of a sudden, all over again. I sensed a strong, peculiar, different, usual but a lost connection with those long passed happy childhood evenings of mine. I couldn't believe that I still remember the song. I still have not forgotten even a trivial thing like the origin of it which years back my dad must had told me and I listened to it giving least importance like any other usual knowledge shared by parents! My heart got filled with the warmth and the sweetness of those golden childhood evenings of mine. Every moment of it suddenly has become so live, so fresh, so pure , so naive that I can still see my dad singing the song in one of those old lost happy childhood evenings of mine...
This was a very common picture when I was in my primary school days. Sometimes I used to enjoy those evenings and sometimes I felt bored. But subcounsciously and unknowingly the memories of those childhood evenings of mine occupied an underlying space in my heart and soul which I had never realised this way before.
Yesterday I went to watch Guzaarish. In the last scene of the movie which was the day before Hrithik was supposed to die a Goanis song was sung in chorus. And I felt something! Something just flashed like a retrospective! Oh my God,it's the same song "Kaibaroto Kumro Muzo Maima Kadilo" that I used to hear my dad singing decades back in those old childhood evenings of mine. I felt strange. I felt sad. But I felt contented! I started missing my dad, I started missing my childhood all of a sudden, all over again. I sensed a strong, peculiar, different, usual but a lost connection with those long passed happy childhood evenings of mine. I couldn't believe that I still remember the song. I still have not forgotten even a trivial thing like the origin of it which years back my dad must had told me and I listened to it giving least importance like any other usual knowledge shared by parents! My heart got filled with the warmth and the sweetness of those golden childhood evenings of mine. Every moment of it suddenly has become so live, so fresh, so pure , so naive that I can still see my dad singing the song in one of those old lost happy childhood evenings of mine...
