When I was young, my maternal grandparents used to reside in their old house in North Calcutta in a place called Paikpara. Paikpara is a quintessentially middle-class bong locality full with all the para-club adda/nuisance, CPM posters over all houses and windows (which my late grandmother would particularly detest) and skinny kids playing football barefoot in the various wiry gullies.
We would visit my grandparents atleast once every week, especially when I was really young. The visits were a medley to chaos with us leaving in the morning after numerous calls from my grandparents to hurry up and through another set off calls checking "Kotho duur pou-chiyecho?" (How far along are you?). I remember my father cursing through it all having been "put under stress" by his in-laws on a Sunday, my mother patiently bearing my father's outburts and my tantrums (I recall myself being extremely irritating, but ofcourse I was just a kid) trying to keep us all in one piece till we had navigated our way through the North Calcutta traffic and pollution to reach Mamar-bari where I would be greeted by the fragrance of cooked meat through the door.
My grandparents had left that home and come closer to our family by the time I was in 9th or 10th std. And with it ended my weekend visits to Mamar-bari, which was now 5 minutes walk from my place.
Yesterday I was travelling to the city from college by a bus, when I noticed the houses fleeting by outside the window. Towards the roof on most walls visible to me were these various crudely carved designs. The designs took form due to the shapely holes made into the wall. Ventilators. I hadn't seen such ventilators since...well since my visits to Mamar-bari had stopped. The old house at Paikpara had such ventilators and they would be a life saver in the few summer nights that I would spend over at my grandparents.
I felt a little sad and now cannot really pinpoint why. I don't remember what I was thinking except that I fell alseep soon after.
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