Chapter 5: jurithewriter has started writing her story

 

Writing Chapter 4 made me wonder many things. I didn’t know the dates of the floods. Dad’s narratives were like fiction, a third party story of someone called Kokadeota, Grandfather, someone who was fiction for us as we had never met him. Being raised in the NDA culture and environment and never having experienced the Palasbari lifestyle made the stories even more fictional, ‘all this happens to someone else, never to us’ kind of fictional.

When I went to Mirza from work last evening, I saw my father’s only surviving brother Arun Khura sitting on the verandah with Khuri, his wife and watching the people and traffic pass by. He is 81 years old, 4-5 years younger than my dad. He told me he didn’t have much recollections of the first time their house was engulfed by the floods, it must have been around the 50’s, but the second time was in 1960 after grandfather had died. They had been put up in a student’s hostel for 2 months, which had been vacated for the flood affected people.

The government then gave them the Mirza plot (a bigha I think) for a premium of Rs 500/- which was a princely amount in 1960. I asked Khura who paid the amount? He told me it was my dad who paid it, he was the oldest in the family and he had somehow managed the funds.

They then constructed a couple of rooms on their newly bought plot with their own hands. The original rooms were of ‘kher,’ straw. What we saw in our visits to Mirza from Pune during vacations was picturesque. A lovely central courtyard with Assam type chambers lining the courtyard. The entrance had a garden with a flowering korobi (oleander) tree, a couple of tamul (betel nut) trees with paan (pipre betel) vines creeping around it, a pomegranate tree and a mango tree too. The hedges surrounding the garden were made of interlocking bamboo sticks. The sticks were cut into half vertically and then weaved. The hedges were to prevent cows and goats from entering into the garden and destroying it.

Aita’s, grandmother’s room was opposite the entrance gate, next to the kitchen and the strongest memories of Aita, were in her hand loom woven white xuta Mekhela Sador, sitting regally on a ‘murha’, a cane stool; and sipping tea in a glass made of ‘kaanh’, bell metal while biting into a piece of jaggery; or pounding the tamul (betel nut which was not dried, special to the north-east part of India, other parts use supari, where the nut is completely sundried) and paan with little bit of ‘chuna’, lime in a ‘khundoni,’ mortal and pestle made of teak wood I think, which was hand crafted and sold by the artisans. There would always be a couple of guests who would be sitting with Aita and catching up on the latest neighbourhood news.

On the right of the kitchen was a gohali (cowshed), where there were 2 or 3 cows and a dheki (a rice grinding equipment), which was used to pound rice to make pithas, pancakes. Neighbouring village women would also use it to pound their rice.  On the left of Aita’s room was the naad, well (deep cylindrical waterhole) which was source of all the water and the water was pulled up with a pulley attached to an aluminium bucket. Behind the well were some kothal, jackfruit trees with huge luscious fruit hanging, but quite smelly, and mango trees.  

These are my memories post 1974 and beyond, when I was old enough to retain some memories. You can imagine why this was like fiction to me if you understand my NDA upbringing. The house in NDA was an apartment with all the amenities in-built. There were taps in the kitchen and bathrooms which had 24 hour water supply of the purest water as NDA had a very sophisticated filtration and water transportation system even back them.  The roads were paved, each public area was landscaped and maintained by expert gardeners. We moved around on scooters, bicycles and our feet.

NDA also was like a village but with houses that were built into the existing forest, preserving the forest architecture, albeit with amenities which were far more ahead compared to the rest of the country. 

For those of you who haven’t seen the other picture ever, it will still seem like fiction, someone else’s story.