Aditi Chakraborty
Illustration by Aditi Chakraborty
“Which story are you going to tell me today, Dadai” asked six-year-old Piyu, digging into one of the homemade cookies that her mother had lovingly packed along with the luggage before leaving Nasik.
Of all the time through the long summer days, this would be the most precious hour for Piyu. Looking at the busy street below from the verandah of the seventh floor apartment, she would eagerly await the tempting aroma of the tea slowly infusing in the hot water to drift out of the kitchen. It signalled the beginning of the customary story telling session that accompanied the tea and tasty snacks made by her grandmother, Indubala. They were the ones that would give flight to Piyu’s imagination and take her to the land of the brave prince who saved the princess from the clutches of the wicked witch.
Piyu, who lived in Nasik with her parents, loved to spend her summer vacation with her grandparents in Bombay. Her grandfather Dayashankar was a retired postmaster at the General Post office of Bombay. Migrating to Bombay, from East Bengal following Partition and raising four children in an expensive city, life had been a hard struggle for Dayashankar and Indubala. With their modest savings they had finally managed to purchase this tiny apartment in a chawl in one of the busy bylanes of Bombay.
It was the month of May and Bombay (this was long, long ago when Bombay had not been renamed as Mumbai) with its extremely hot and sweaty afternoons could be quite unbearable. Here it needs to be mentioned that, the chawl life of Bombay was quite different from what you see in today’s apartments. A typical feature of a chawl is that all the apartments have access to a long passage which runs the length of each floor that is interconnected by a single staircase. The passage would be open on one side and would have a row of doors, each being the entrance to an apartment, on the other side. Thus the passage would act as a partial verandah and give access to people residing, to socialize with each other while gazing at the street below and getting some fresh air and sunlight.
The customary story telling session would be preceded by a chain of events, right from Indubala, wringing the gamcha dry on the verandah railing after her evening bath and then walking to the kitchen and carrying the tray with fragrant tea and snacks to the verandah. Any hindrance in even one of these events could cause a delay in the story telling sessions. Many a times, Indubala would invite over a friendly neighbor orget caught up on some stray conversation, thus causing a lot of anxiety to the six-year-old.
But today, things were going to be different for little Piyu. It was towards the end of May and the past few days had witnessed the presence of puffy clouds in the sky with a relieving breeze blowing into the sultry Bombay. As a result the evenings would turn dark, cloudy and relatively cooler. Indubala had just hung her gamcha to dry on the verandah railing and returned to the kitchen for her evening chores. Suddenly there was a gust of strong wind which blew her gamcha off the seventh floor and into the air along with dust and dry leaves from the nearby tree.
Now the gamcha, a thin, coarse towel, as many of us know, is a quintessential item in most middle class Bengali households. In those days the gamcha was not available in places other than its native land and in this case needed to be brought from Kolkata during occasional visits to the city. For Indubala this was the last of the bunch of gamchas that she had bought on her previous visit to Kolkata, during Durga puja. And Piyu being a regular visitor to the household predicted a disastrous outcome that lurked behind the loss of the gamcha. Her ingenuous mind drew the conclusion, “If there is no gamcha, there would also be no story telling”.
And so Piyu quickly jumped up and dashed down the stairs of the seven storied chawl, in search of the gamcha. On reaching the street below, Piyu looked around for the frail length of fabric. There, it was precariously stuck to one of the lower branches of the nearby banyan tree that stood on the pavement- blowing vigorously in the wind.
Whoosh, whoosh, blew the wind, and Piyu looked up helplessly as the gamcha, detaching itself from the tree flew ahead and limply fell on a dabbawala’s trolley, that stood far ahead. The dabbawala is a lunch box delivery system that delivers hot lunches from homes to people at work and back and is still an iconic establishment of Mumbai.
Now by this time, Indubala having served tea to her husband began shutting the windows to prevent the dust from blowing into the house and not seeing Piyu around asked Dayashankar about her whereabouts. Just then one of the neighbors came running and informed that he happened to see Piyu rushing down the stairs and his repetitive beckoning had gone unheard as she raced down the stairs. Both grandparents were alarmed and hurried to the far end of the passage and bending over the railing of the verandah frantically called out for their little one.
Meanwhile the dabbawala, Shankar, after completing the evening delivery of all the empty boxes in this locality began pulling his trolley on his onward journey home bound. Little Piyu desperate to bring the gamcha back, ran behind the trolley, calling out loudly
“O Dabbawale uncle, O Dabbawale uncle…”
But ‘Dabbawale uncle’ was unaware of the all the happenings around him. Eager to reach home before the sky opened up, he rushed forward with his empty trolley. Little did he know that the major miscreant of this entire episode, the gamcha, lay bundled up at one corner of the trolley. After having travelled for a while, Shankar realized that a faint voice from far behind was calling out to him. He stopped to turn and looking behind, found a little girl running towards him frantically waving out to him.
It took him a while to figure out the situation. After asking Piyu as to where she lived, Shankar took Piyu and her precious gamcha safely back to her grandparents’ home, where her relieved grandparents shared another round of evening tea and cookies along with him and the neighbors. Although a little sad on having missed her storytelling session, Piyu was proud to have recovered the precious gamcha, and tired after the evenings adventure fell fast asleep.
As for the favorable gamcha, it continued its prodigy at all arenas. From luggage carriers at railway stations to priests at the local temples, this plaid patterned cloth has been popular at all places. With time the hand patterned cloth that is so important in many households had evolved. Weavers from different regions have now come up with different patterns, colors and textures. One hears that the humble gamcha is now even an iconic accessory in Bollywood. From luxury labels to high-street fashion, gamchas have taken the fashion scene by storm.
Time had flown by without a break. Piyu has now reached her golden years and her memories from the yesteryear have become faint. But even today as she narrates little stories from her life’s chronicles to her grandchildren, the gamchaincident makes her eyes crinkle in a smile.