************************************************************************************************************
The first substantial gift I got was a silk shirt bought in Madras by Father. I was all of ten then. Father and his Drill Teacher were on a visit to Madras to buy some sports goods for their school at Muthukur and on their way back they did some shopping in the Moore Market by the Madras Central Station.
I was as excited as a sparrow that just got its wings. Silk shirt! The shirt lasted for 6 months of the roughest wear and tear. Some Silk!
Father also bought some knickknacks for everyone in the family and a gorgeous model of Taj Mahal as a showpiece. Moore Marketeers said it was ivory. The ivory peeled off within a year and rusting metal rods underneath it peeped out.
I used to visit Moore Market fairly regularly during the six weeks I was attending to Father in the orthopedic ward of the Stanley Hospital in Madras in 1976. By then it was a flourishing flea market for used, unused, misused, disused and missing goods, from the proverbial pin to elephant. It carried the heritage charm of its 75-year history by then.
Many of my generation, not to speak of Father's, miss their Moore Market even now:
The Achilles Heel of this majestic market was that it was built by the side of the Madras Central Railway Station, an iconic monument by itself. Every movie made in Madras during my boyhood had to have this landmark in one of its romantic scenes. Like every Bengali film then used to have a long shot of a running and chugging train.
The Indian Railways inevitably started expanding like gas into vacuum, and was eying its Moore Market cousin for its suburban train terminus. Everyone resisted. Including traders and the nostalgic public. For a whole decade.
All of a sudden, Moore Market got accidentally burned down in a single night's holocaust:
The next set of gifts I got were from my many relatives and friends during my Upanayanam ceremony in 1958 just before I was kick-started from Father's home for higher studies elsewhere. Since it was the first major function in our home every one of my kith and kin attended it with their families. It was a grand gathering.
Sometime after I was threaded ceremonially, the Pundit shouted:
"Gifts please!"
And there was this rush towards the podium. Sitting by me were my parents, but just behind us sat an uncle with pen and paper. As folks were doling out currency notes one after the other, this uncle was busy jotting down. And later I saw it was a listing, like Abu Ben Adham's Angel's, of who gave how much...this chap Rs 2, that one Rs 5 and the other all of Rs 10...
I asked my mom what was the point of this listing...all cash was equally welcome, big or small. Mom then told me that the listing was imperative since, when their kids got their threads, we have to return-gift them an amount not less than what we received from each. Protocol. It all seemed so silly. But there you are! No gift comes without strings.
All I got for myself was a badminton racket from our Drill Teacher and a torch light from my friend. These were fond mementos till now green in my memory.
When my sisters eventually got to know much later that I was blessed with a son in the Leela Bai Acharya Nursing Home at Jalgaon, everyone of them was pleased. My eldest sister said that it is good that the first issue is a boy since we can then continue to bat till a wicket falls in the shape of a girl.
My next sister happens to be an outspoken lady. She saw my son when he arrived at Gudur in his fifth month for his grand Namakaranam Ceremony (Name-Giving Baptism). And looked at me and him alternately and pronounced:
"It is nice that your son is fair and lovely unlike you"
And I muttered, like Bernard Shaw:
"All I can hope is that he gets my brains instead"
Pat came her riposte:
"Anything but that!"
**********************************************************************************************************
The first substantial gift I got was a silk shirt bought in Madras by Father. I was all of ten then. Father and his Drill Teacher were on a visit to Madras to buy some sports goods for their school at Muthukur and on their way back they did some shopping in the Moore Market by the Madras Central Station.
I was as excited as a sparrow that just got its wings. Silk shirt! The shirt lasted for 6 months of the roughest wear and tear. Some Silk!
Father also bought some knickknacks for everyone in the family and a gorgeous model of Taj Mahal as a showpiece. Moore Marketeers said it was ivory. The ivory peeled off within a year and rusting metal rods underneath it peeped out.
I used to visit Moore Market fairly regularly during the six weeks I was attending to Father in the orthopedic ward of the Stanley Hospital in Madras in 1976. By then it was a flourishing flea market for used, unused, misused, disused and missing goods, from the proverbial pin to elephant. It carried the heritage charm of its 75-year history by then.
Many of my generation, not to speak of Father's, miss their Moore Market even now:
The Indian Railways inevitably started expanding like gas into vacuum, and was eying its Moore Market cousin for its suburban train terminus. Everyone resisted. Including traders and the nostalgic public. For a whole decade.
All of a sudden, Moore Market got accidentally burned down in a single night's holocaust:
Job done!
Wiki says:
...The government later built a new commercial complex named "Lily Pond
Complex" to rehabilitate the traders of Moore Market, further west of
the original site. Built in 1986 at a cost of 
66 million, the shopping complex lies mostly vacant due to poor patronage.[4] Majority of the traders continue to live on the streets to this day, hawking used mechanical and electronic goods...
66 million, the shopping complex lies mostly vacant due to poor patronage.[4] Majority of the traders continue to live on the streets to this day, hawking used mechanical and electronic goods...
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
The next set of gifts I got were from my many relatives and friends during my Upanayanam ceremony in 1958 just before I was kick-started from Father's home for higher studies elsewhere. Since it was the first major function in our home every one of my kith and kin attended it with their families. It was a grand gathering.
Sometime after I was threaded ceremonially, the Pundit shouted:
"Gifts please!"
And there was this rush towards the podium. Sitting by me were my parents, but just behind us sat an uncle with pen and paper. As folks were doling out currency notes one after the other, this uncle was busy jotting down. And later I saw it was a listing, like Abu Ben Adham's Angel's, of who gave how much...this chap Rs 2, that one Rs 5 and the other all of Rs 10...
I asked my mom what was the point of this listing...all cash was equally welcome, big or small. Mom then told me that the listing was imperative since, when their kids got their threads, we have to return-gift them an amount not less than what we received from each. Protocol. It all seemed so silly. But there you are! No gift comes without strings.
All I got for myself was a badminton racket from our Drill Teacher and a torch light from my friend. These were fond mementos till now green in my memory.
When my sisters eventually got to know much later that I was blessed with a son in the Leela Bai Acharya Nursing Home at Jalgaon, everyone of them was pleased. My eldest sister said that it is good that the first issue is a boy since we can then continue to bat till a wicket falls in the shape of a girl.
My next sister happens to be an outspoken lady. She saw my son when he arrived at Gudur in his fifth month for his grand Namakaranam Ceremony (Name-Giving Baptism). And looked at me and him alternately and pronounced:
"It is nice that your son is fair and lovely unlike you"
And I muttered, like Bernard Shaw:
"All I can hope is that he gets my brains instead"
Pat came her riposte:
"Anything but that!"
My next sister had already had her first issue, a son, 3 years old. And apart from giving my son the default cash, she brought, all the way from her place at Madurai, a cute baby-walker. They had bought the gadget for their son who enjoyed it till he outgrew it, leaving it as good as new...this nephew happens to be a 'good boy'.
And my sister said that they would be happy if my son uses it since it was gathering dust in their home.
And I demurred. I was averse to carrying uncomfortable luggage in the blessed Howrah Mail. I would have preferred more good old cash instead.
But you can't refuse a gift for your son from his auntie. So I had to carry it all the way to KGP ensuring it didn't get broken into two or more pieces.
It arrived safe alright and my son soon grew to use it and was doing his merry-go-rounds in it in the spacious hall of our Qrs C1-97. It was sheer pleasure to watch him. But he has my rowdy gene and he used to enjoy dashing the walker against the wall, the door, and the doorstep. And lug it around later on as a wheelbarrow and bang it on the floor and jump on it like a monkey.
With the result that it went quite out of shape by when he got bored of it.
And then my relevant sister announced the great good news that she got another issue in the shape of a cutest daughter.
And I began to worry.
For, this lady will soon grow to assisted-walking age and would love to have a baby-walker.
There were many alternatives:
1. I could gift her a new and similar baby-walker. The argument against it was that there were no baby-walkers in the Gole Bazaar of KGP and I was reluctant to go all the way to Calcutta. And in any case my budget didn't permit a fancy new Calcutta-baby-walker.
2. I could give a depreciated amount of cash as a return-gift. This would be the simplest thing for me to do but will raise eyebrows.
3. I ought to return their own baby-walker to them. This would be wonderful since this automobile would have a deep sentimental attachment for them. The catch was that my sister would have a heart attack on seeing the current condition of her original gift.
So the thing to do was to touch it up, polish it and burnish it, and make it as new as it was when we got it 2 years back. So I had to go through the drill of discovering a cobbler who would sew its seat with exactly the same material as the original and find rolling beads that fitted its handlebar. This turned out ok.
But the coating of the whole shiny frame got peeled off exposing the rusted iron beneath it. So I had to do a survey at Inda, the industrial area of KGP, to find a chap who could do thing up. And after three days of hunting I succeeded in finding a brooding chap who looked at it and said that it needed Chromium Plating. And that he had the machinery to do it. And that pleased me immensely since I would then have a ringside view of a process that I read about in school and answered a question on it in my school final exams...electrolytes, anode, cathode and stuff.
That was great fun and was worth the trouble...And my sister was absolutely delighted and exclaimed:
"This looks better than NEW!"
Noblesse Oblige!
**********************************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment