There are two places every human being has to visit willy-nilly, 'alive or dead' (as our ex-Pres was fond of pledging...they did get him alive but found it inconvenient to keep him so).
One is the Marketplace and the other the Casketplace...the latter defined by Webster as:
'Casket 2 : a usually fancy coffin'. One is for keeping the body and soul together and the other to take them apart...
I don't want to talk much about the latter tonight, except to say that Nino wrote a hilarious piece: 'Driving Nails into My Coffin'...excerpts from which I shall reserve for another day.
But I did visit the Cremation Ground at IIT KGP half a dozen times to bid warm sendoffs to dear departed souls. It was not warm...it was pretty hot ;-)
This warm-hot thing recalls Dr V D Chitnis to my mind. He did his Ph D at Cornell, and held some positions here and there in the US, but wanted to return to his home country and settle down here. So, he was a Pool Officer staying with us in the Faculty Hostel for a couple of wonderful years (He flew back to the US since he failed to get a suitable post here...he was middle-aged and couldn't very well start from the bottom upwards once again). He was one of the most widely read I ever met, well-versed in music, fine arts, sports...a 'complete' human being (Purna Purush); and a very friendly soul.
Once I was saying, "It is very hot today," and he gently corrected me: "Very 'warm'...'hot' is for spices like chillies...". In his Farewell, I went to the dais and spoke a few emotive words (a very rare thing for me to do) and he was so touched he patted me gently on my shoulder after the meeting was over, in a nice gesture of 'Thanx'. When he was leaving us for good to the US, he gifted me as a memento a king-size gray-steel stapler 'Made in America' (China was then busy with her Cultural Revolution and Japs were making mini-staplers made of cheap plastic), along with a boxful of matching 'staple-centipedes' that would have lasted me a lifetime. One evening, my friend NP borrowed the lovely stapler and a couple of days later returned it...the stapler was intact like the gums of old folks shorn of their teeth; the staples were no longer in their big box but gift-wrapped in the center-spread of The Statesman. On opening it I discovered that all the thousands of staples were picked apart nicely into individual pieces and gathered into a heap losing not a single one...NP's 3-year-old son Dudu was playing with them like Ishani does nowadays with my dozen-odd ball-pens, dismantling each one of them and then trying in vain to mantle them back at random. So, Dr Chitnis' gift-stapler remained a true memento to be gawked at and appreciated but not used. It is worth pondering how miserable staples become once they are taken apart...something like Humpty Dumpty...'All the King's horses, and all the King's men, Couldn't put Humpty together again'...an irreversible thermodynamic process.
I wanted to talk about the Marketplace; and here I am talking about Dr Chitnis...this is becoming 'cream of consciousness'...
Marketplace can wait for another day but let me tell you the pleasure I got from it today...just human interest:
Around 9 PM I was at the corner-medical stores in our new locality buying a bottle of Aristozyme. 9 PM suits me because Santhosh, the young shopkeeper, is free with few customers breathing down his neck. And then there was this petulant power outage. The whole marketplace was dark and I helped Santhosh with my pocket-torch to light his candle. Everything looks different in candle-light:
"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays"...Henny Youngman
So, Santhosh and I were chatting and waiting for the power to arrive. And from the darkness arrived a young tech-couple at the counter, the wife saying to her hubby: "Tumi bolo" and the husband; "Naa, tumi..."
She then asked Santosh for a pain-relieving ointment. And he promptly fetched a tube of Moov. She declined it saying in "Bhindi", "Eta hum try kiyaa hai, useless!". And he brought a tube of Volini...and she repeated, "Etavu hum try...". He then asked what for she needs one. She then spread her left palm on the counter and said: "dekhiye...eta thumb phoola hua hai" And he asked her to show her right palm for comparison. And then she did that famous Feynman trick:
"...The psychiatrist says, 'Turn them over.' I turn then over. The one that was up goes down and the one that was down goes up..."
And a peal of laughter...
And Santhosh asks: "Chot laggaya kya?"
And she becomes glum, pats her smiling hubby on his pate and complains: "ini hum ko mara hai"
And another peal of laughter.
Santhosh is by now fed up and says: "I suggest you take a tablet of Brufen"
And she raises one forefinger to her lips and says: "Ekhoon tablet khana mana hai!"
And the lights come up in a flood. And they jump down the steps laughing; and I withdraw...
Back to Bengal after a long while!
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