Tea-stall and the Kite

A Story by Subham Chatterjee

Short story

Tea Stall and the Kite : © THE GINGER

by Subham Chatterjee on Friday, July 1, 2011 at 3:14pm

TEA-STALL AND THE KITE

author's note : most of my friends wanted me to write a simple short story , I have tried my best.

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© THE GINGER

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The draft of this short story is subject to copyright

ACCENTUATION : 70 B Moore Avenue ,

Tollygunj , Kolkata - 40 .

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Tea stall and the kite

For ‘cow’ , who has other names .

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Prior to this week, I was in intensive care unit at a private hospital in Cochin, thanks to my upper respiratory tract infection, which in turn earned me few days of leave from my otherwise busy and tightly scheduled corporate life. Somehow every time I come back to my room, I tend to search for my notes (I am still old-fashioned enough to make notes) so that I can complete with my ‘onyo porichoy’ , a screenplay for a Bengali film I have been writing since January this year, and there suddenly I come across few yellowed pages of a torn LIC diary, penned down in 1998 with its light blue Camlin ink fragrance still intact .

It was just another damp rainy July afternoon, the roadsides lush with monsoon foliage, some 20 years ago. When it rains, it always gives Durgapur pretentious greenery, masking more than a hundred large and small scale industries which sprout tones of carbon each day. When I first came to Durgapur (I spent most of my early childhood at Asansol and Ranigunj), I was three, and we lived in a rented house at Benachity. Most of you are aware how that place was and almost is part and parcel of everyone’s life in Durgapur, even now when the city is flooded with malls and multiplexes. I remember my home, before we had this one in City-centre, and it was a monsoon day " ferns and orchids growing profoundly green, the wild mustard in flower with an uncared yellow tinge to the garden, hibiscuses on the weary concrete pathway, and a lark busy feeding her young atop the ventilators. Our house was on old Durga Mandir road opposite the market.

I remember old Ashraf, the man who used to run small errands for the two families, ours and the house owners. He was old and he defied the notion “change is the only thing constant in this world”. He had that same beard, the same grey hair, the wrinkled eyes, the stoop; he never changed in my eyes. And he talked the same way. Except the squirrels and the baby lark, nothing else fascinated the small me much save Ashraf. It’s his story , an old man , a face hard to forget and that place aloud with rickshaws pumping air horns and people bargaining " the buzz still alive with in me.

Ashraf had a tea-stall, shakily curbed from old smoked small house of his, often moist with the steam which sank in on the cool green walls of his home, with his two full sleeved shirts hanging, while he served tea and discussed politics with all his customers, my father included. This tea-stall was a lone one then, beside a laundry shop at the old Durga Mandir road. Ashraf had a grandchild Aseef, who went to Holy Junior’s school then. From my balcony up, I could see Ashraf all day, serving tea, helping at the laundry, chewing tobacco and faithfully praying at naamaz, every time a distant soothing voice came through the old mosque at Naimnagar. But I loved him most, when he used to make kites for us, my visit to his house was but conditional, only had he started using thin paper, light silk, and flexible bamboo sticks than I was there, vying for the more fluorescent, the bigger kites of the lot. Aseef, the elder of us, was always more understanding I believed and let me have the one I had set my eyes on since seeing Ashraf work from my balcony. Aseef, barefooted and in his school uniform would run along the cobbled much trodden street keeping behind the Krishnachura tree, the temple, past aside the lazy ox and leaping over its dung, crossing the market place dodging numerous people and their loud voices and grunts, until he reached the field, each grass blade moist with the afternoon rain, me running behind him, covered with a huge green kite, with small round mirrors on it and a tail larger than my legs, me grasping for breath. Aseef had taught me how to fly a kite when I was just a kid, and he used to claim “ ek din baaj paakhir moton udabi re “ ( you will fly like an eagle).

Old Ashraf, whilst break, I thought, remained dreaming in his room. His grocery shop was gone due to enormous debts; his kite shop in his backyard was eaten up by a massive timber workshop (few of you who visit Benachity can still relate to that place), and still while he smiled with my dad or cheerfully greeted my mom, a sense of pathos always haunted me, as I grew to understand his life. Ashraf still, used to make kites and hang them on his green walls- pink, pale yellow, white with stripes, varied in shapes and sizes. Though people there were fond of kites, I remember Viswakarma puja in early autumn when people used to rush to Ashraf for kites and we had this Kite Festival at Nachan Maidan, with time the color of the sport faded; while adults disdained it, children in schools preferred spending their money more on ‘Anuradha’ cinema hall. As that place and me passed by , in days there were not many empty spaces left in Benachity for the flying of kites, save rooftops, with a major portion of the market place encroaching the nearby open places as the demand of the common man sky-rocketed.

When not discussing politics, government, or pension schemes in Life Insurance Corporation of India, Ashraf and my dad (my dad comes from Ranigunj, a place where still one finds kite lovers and kite shops humbly camouflaging behind narrow aisles) used to have these animated and lively talks about the time when grown men flew kites to flaunt strength and unity, when great battles were fought across the streets, “ padai padai juddhyo” he used exclaim in Bengali, the kites swooping " snapping " swerving and tangling with each other, money betted on them frequently changing hands, till the defeated but liberated kite would fly across many a same looking house, with same yellow and red clothes atop their roofs, sometimes to be stuck in electric poles, sometimes branches of tall trees. But even eighteen twenty years ago, everyone hurried for their lives in Durgapur, the town was amidst a change. In heat of hope, in realms of penny " delicate things like the kite and your backdoor invasion of squirrels were trampled underfoot. Kite makers, like writers who scratch up from old notes, once had their patrons, and with time the Ashraf tea stall, his kites, the little Subham running down the lanes of old Durga Mandir road were but past. People who lived there- none had time for the old man or those memories, as Durgapur was swept by a swiftly changing and dynamic world and Benachity became a vast trading centre with no concern, a raucous toiling sweating mass of humanity.

It had been many years we left our Benachity home and shifted to City-centre, my mom’s wish to be in a posh surrounding with malls and multiplexes around. Still I wondered how Ashraf had adapted to those changes to which we have been escapists. He had nothing to leave behind for his Aseef save a tea stall and few beautiful kites.

Perhaps one day, Ashraf was thinking of two of us, how we flew kites, how I used to write my name on my kites, so that if my twine snapped someone would return the kite to me, how we used to make sounds like flying an airplane steering away from buildings and trees smoothly, how my mom used to click my photos with kites bigger than the size of me. Perhaps that day Aseef lost a kite to an electric cable, shouting for Ashraf from the lane opposite for a stronger better one. Ashraf heard Aseef’s voice in the distance, but couldn’t realize the boy was calling him; the voice seemed to come from very far away.

Faint sunlight lit the place beside the tea-stall where Ashraf was sitting, his room as usual moist with damp monsoon air, and his old rugged two full sleeved shirts hanging over his green wall. A lark playing comfortably near his hand as he has known him for years, his squirrels peeping to gauge an easy runaway from his plate of puffed rice and a day old vegetable curry, and a fly restless around his well kept beard and a sudden gust of wind pushing a pale pink kite of his to dislodge and fly unsuccessfully over his unkempt bed. When Aseef kept his hand over his grandpa’s shoulders, he met with no response. It was just a sound of two dry leaves rubbing each other. Aseef ran down the street towards the market place shouting. It was a monsoon day " ferns and orchids growing profoundly green, the wild mustard in flower with an uncared yellow tinge to the garden, hibiscuses on the weary concrete pathway, and that lark busy feeding her young atop the ventilators.

Somehow, Aseef’s kite stuck to the electric cable freed itself, with the monsoon wind carrying it far above the struggling city, into the vast blue blind sky. I sometimes now wonder, if the “dead” are not more present, more in comfort, more here than most of the living. Somehow, Ashraf, his kites, Aseef and my home at Benachity will always be alive in me thanks to my notes and my home coming.

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---- Subham Chatterjee. July 2011 . Durgapur.

© 2011 Subham Chatterjee

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Reviews

Carrion.

very good:D descriptive, monsoon? I think thats in the middle east? xD I dunno. but I adore how you went out to get different names and such.
Love it.

Posted 12 Years Ago

Pradnya

nice work

Posted 12 Years Ago

Ruth

Subham...I truly think I love your style! lol This is surreal and free flowing...superb work..I am completely taken aback from reading you! So good to read your work! xx