Nestled in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas is the place of my childhood, Siliguri — gateway to the lofty blue hills of Bhutan and the verdant forests of Dooars. Today it is a major commercial hub. However, three decades ago the place, with its cobbled streets, wooden houses and quaint cycle-rickshaws, still had a small-town charm. There was none of the luxuriant frivolity of the big cities. Instead, there was an immense capacity to rejoice in the simplicities of life.
The town had a leisurely pace, and everybody knew everybody. Early in the mornings, the men, having been sent out to the bazaars, would stand about on the pavements exchanging sports news and slurping tea. As the day progressed, the morning peace would be broken by a procession of bicycle-powered vendors, each with his own distinctive street cry: the newspaper boy, the fish-monger, the milkman and the man with the vegetable barrow.
My favourite was the blind old man who would saunter past the houses, singing sacred hymns. Besides the usual share of alms, the loose sack flapping on his shoulder would get filled with rice, lentils and leftover vegetables from benevolent housewives.
We lived in a rented house, the rent of which was 700 rupees a month. The chaotic, cluttered and mouldering mass of housing blocks all around almost resembled a set of barracks. The houses, though nestled together, had tiny square patches of green in front. And the whole complex, with its warren of ever-narrowing lanes and alleys, past crumbling brick walls and collapsing water tanks, made up a veritable paradise for the children living all around the neighbourhood.
Raju was my first friend in life. Every December, Raju’s family would come down from the hills of Darjeeling to spend the winter in warmer climes. Raju’s mother was no more. With closely cropped hair and gleaming black eyes, he resembled an imp. An early-riser, he would knock on the glass window pane beside my bed and gleefully display his catch of the day — a caterpillar, a snail or sometimes, when a sense of beauty overpowered him, a butterfly.
Despite being the most frail kid in the neighbourhood, Raju never tolerated the older kids bullying me. At the slightest provocation he would rise up in protest, jaws tightened and nostrils dilated, ready to charge like a furious bull. Such unconventional feats would successfully ward off the tormentors and this would only make Raju strut off with the boy scout air.
Every Christmas-eve we hung our socks together and waited with bated breath to see our goodies. That year I had discovered my real Santa Claus when I bumped into my dad, surreptitiously trying to stuff goodies into my socks. I kept tossing around in my bed waiting to tell Raju about my discovery. The next morning, I saw him sitting on the porch poring over a letter held nimbly between his fingers.
A great cloud of apprehension seemed to have descended over him. His long-deceased mother, who he believed was in Santa’s abode, had apparently written the letter and Santa had kindly delivered it to him. In that letter she had urged him to give up on his pranks, concentrate on his studies, and do all things necessary to make him the proverbial ‘good boy’. The handwriting seemed vaguely familiar to me though Raju was clearly too overwhelmed to notice it. It was a moment that still sticks out clearly in my memory.
Watching him fold the letter carefully and tuck it away safely in his pocket had brought a lump in my throat that day. I was only too happy to leave the boy in solitude with endearing thoughts of the mother he had never known. Every time I have relived that moment, I have felt the same lump slowly rising through my throat.
We were to spend only a few more Christmas seasons together. Those years would see both of us growing up together, riding around the town on our bicycles, me sneaking out cigarettes from my dad’s packet for Raju and he coyly confiding in me about his first crush. An unsavoury incident had happened between the two families, and the next winter Raju’s family didn’t come.
A couple of years later we left Siliguri and moved to the big city. That childhood friend got lost somewhere in the frenzy of the new life.
I haven’t been able to find him even in this era of Facebook; probably I will not even recognise his face in the profile picture. For the picture that I have of him in my mind’s window is still that of an elfin — that small boy from that small town.
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