The Man at the Window - "Bum maaro guddi" - 3


Poppy always welcomed me with a smile; quiet by nature it took some pursuing to get him to tell me his stories. As I settled in with a cup of tea, the pet cat hopped up on his lap and stared at him. She made herself comfortable almost as if she too was waiting to be transported to a different time.

“It was 1962” he began, the family had moved to Calcutta. Now, given the British regime was over and their kind, not welcome, Poppy and his family faced a tough time finding a place to stay. After a lot of scouting, they found a one room house in what is called a basti in India. A basti is a slum and their house was just one roof away from being called a “shanty”, literally because it had a proper roof and not asbestos sheets like the others houses. He recalled his mother’s expression when she saw it. “Mother was brought up in a mansion, was chauffer driven around in the family Chevrolet and had butlers, maids and chaperones and to see her have to settle for a one room home was heartbreaking” he said grimly. In the days to come, that one room home would be the place where many dreams would be seen and realized, the place that would give him friends for life.

One fine morning, Poppy dressed in his Sunday best, and was taken to the most famous and oldest school in Calcutta. He had an interview with the Principal in the hope that he would finally start his academic journey.  Confident though soft spoken, Poppy was all set to make a good first impression but when the Principal asked him to take dictation, Poppy’s plans fell through. Poppy spent the next two years helping his mother at home and trying his best to learn when she taught him in her free time. His mother was a trained nurse and worked to support the family. When Poppy was not at home, he was seen running down the streets with his two friends Gulal and Gattu, from the neighbourhood. The trio, were the dadas’ of the para, among those of the same age. For those of you wondering who is a dada … it is a colloquial term for boss or leader and para means locality in Bengali. Poppy’s pronunciation of these words made me laugh and feel connected at the same time. Those lanes were home to him, to them. They ran around barefoot chasing kites and collecting old tires and had competitions to see who rolled it down the road faster.  “Bum maaro guddi!!!” was their war cry as they raced through the lanes collecting fallen kites. Poppy explained it was their lingo for cutting someone else’s kite and racing to find it first. The school may have rejected him but life didn’t. Poppy found happiness in that little house, lessons & adventure in those narrow lanes and in Gulal and Gattu, he found partners in crime.

It was about dinner time, so I bid Poppy goodnight and left. As I walked down the road to my house, I imagined a smiling young Poppy running down the road kite in hand, what a simple world it must have been!!


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