Of times gone, of memories bright
We are lucky that there are so many tools to capture memories now. But there was a time they lived in our minds
These last couple of weeks my mind has been wandering off to far off memories. Memories which I rarely indulge in but which I am sure embody my being every single day. If I connect the dots backwards now, it all makes sense. It makes sense to ask why I would hum "Tumne Mujhe Dekha, Hokar Meherban, Ruk Gayee Ye Zamin, Tham Gaya Aasman" while taking a hike or simply walking in a park surrounded by greenery. In fact it makes sense why I find so much peace and happiness in my walks. This song is from the sixties, way before my time. The music of the time seems to hold more magic than any other time.
The lyrics are sheer poetry and touch the soul. Songs like "Sau Sal Pehle Mujhe Tumse Pyar Tha" or "Likhe jo khat tujhe, Woh teri yaad mein, Hazaaron rang ke, Nazaare ban gaye". They have you in their first lines. There are so many from that era, but that is not what I wanted to write about.
I know my mother loved music, as I have seen how she enjoyed the songs from the Dilip Kumar movie Aan and another song I recall, "Dewana Hua Badal", picturised on Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore. I have never seen my father listening to music, but I hear he had a great love for movies during his college days in Calcutta. The person that I had seen was a man who would spend the mornings poring through all the newspapers. In the evenings he would wait for the 8 o'clock news on BTV. I also saw him praying five times a day.
In fact, my first learning of the Surahs came from just hearing him while he was on his prayer mat. I remember playing with his keys when he came home from work. While he used to have lunch and spoke to my mother, who sat on the chair next to him, I used to be on the bed pretending the keys were ducklings and the key fob the mother. I slid them along an imaginary pond. My father had also given me my first ever cricket bat. He had a carpenter in his office cut and shape a piece of wood in the form of a bat with a handle for my siblings. He had a smaller one made for me, which I probably used for my first few shots ever.
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The next time I got a cricket bat was from my eldest brother who had gone to Delhi and I am sure that is what I had asked for. He actually carried it with him on the plane. It was a different time, but it must have been quite a scene, a journalist carrying a cricket bat all the way with other fellow journalists. It was when I started college that my second brother got me a full set of cricketing gear. The next time I got myself a complete set was when I came to the US.
One of the earliest memories I have of my mother is drawing on a comic book, Tintin, with a pencil, bullets from a fight scene in the desert. I remember the interest with which she listened as I explained what was going on. I could not even read at the time, but she never corrected me. I still remember where I was sitting on a table which had a small window that had light pouring in. On the right was what is called an "Alna", a piece of furniture that predates a wardrobe or the closet. The Tintin I later realised was "The Crab with the Golden Claws". A few years later, the same one, a different copy which I had taken to school to lend to a friend, landed me in trouble.
The memory that I shared of my mother was the first home that I can recall living in. That was in Wari in old Dhaka. I was also enrolled in my first school there, and I was maybe there for two years. In those days, you had small suitcases to carry your books. One day mine broke as soon as I was dropped off. That made me panic. A friend and I ran back home, which was quite close, but you still had to cross the street, which was something I had never done by myself. I took the suitcase to my sister. I think the latch had just come off and she put it back and we were back in school before classes started. She is still the person that I go to when there is an issue.
Then one day, I remember sitting on a truck with my eldest brother on my left and the driver on my right and even as I was taking in the fact that I was in one of those big trucks, I was syphoned off to our home in Mohammadpur. This is where I grew up for the next two decades. My school was in Dhanmondi and I had been going from Wari for the past year there. Now it was not far at all. I had started making friendships at school and in the neighbourhood that have lasted till date. I had an Alsatian dog which we had named Lassie. That made me very popular with my neighbourhood friends.
The school was maybe fifteen minutes ride by rickshaw. My eldest brother and sister-in-law both taught there for a while. I used to go with them for a while and then the task fell to my third brother Nazrul, till finally I was allowed to take the trip by myself. Right around the corner from the school there was an ice cream shop called "Snow White". The days when we would stop to get an ice cream cone which I lapped up while on the ride back home were the best of days.
I did the same for my niece Binita. I was an undergrad and had flexible timings with my classes. When coming back home after picking her up from school, I would stop by to get her an ice cream cone. I did not get to share that with my twin niece and nephew who are my third brother's children. I did on a trip back home accompany them to school for a few days. When I went in the morning, as soon as the car door opened, they rushed out seeing the camera in my hand as they did not want to be embarrassed in front of friends. All I got was a picture of the back of their heads.
In many ways, they are lucky that there are so many tools to capture memories now. Most of mine live in my mind. I recall the bike rides my brother Nazrul used to take me on. I used to sit on the rail in front and it used to hurt by the time we got back, but I would not change that.
I remember around the same time I used to give my Bruce Lee and Six Million Dollar Man postcards to my second brother Sadrul to take with him to his office and make photocopies. He used to work for a foreign embassy at the time and this was a new thing I discovered. It was black and white but still, I had more now. He also took me for walks on winter mornings to Sangshad Bhaban. I still go for my weekly runs/walks in a park that coincidentally is about five minutes away from where he resides now.
There are some more vivid memories. I remember playing outside on a summer afternoon and out of nowhere my sister came, grabbed my hand and took me home and washed my face and made me sit under the fan saying that I had gone red. My neighbourhood friends who have children of their own now often confess that they were scared of her.
This was also the period in my life when I used to go to the under construction second floor and have imaginary sword fights with any piece of metal that I had found. I remember collecting tadpoles (I thought they were fish) and putting them in a container of Dano with water and I even put grass and held them with rocks under to make it seem like the ocean bed. The house help assisted me mostly by not divulging my activities to the family.
In the afternoons, when I was inside, there was a huge collection of books that has grown more and over continents now and that belong to my eldest brother. I used to check out the magazines for pictures of aeroplanes or tanks. I even started reading books like the Hardy Boys around the time. I had my own collection of comic books that I was building.
I do not know exactly when, but soon after I had moved onto the next phase where I began to spend more time participating in outdoor sports and had a group of friends to hang out with. It was around the time cable television had started coming in. I am glad that did not happen sooner, or I would have missed out on those afternoons of magic and discovery.
I still see the old magic in my nieces and nephews and friends' children. I listen intently when they share their thoughts, as there is nothing more beautiful than looking at the world through the eyes of children.
Syed Nadeem Ahsan writes from Maryland, USA
