Fireflies in Gyanganj

Arrival

One of the magical things of childhood is in the sense of infinite time. In the quiet, unspoken confidence of a child that everything will reveal itself, just as it always had so far. Life teaches most to those who want to learn her rules. And not to those who want to impose their own. Children know that ... Instinctively ... Until time steps in.

I wanted to make it known, in no uncertain terms, to my 12-year-old baby sister that I was a "connoisseur of serious music" and not the "crap" she listened to.

"You just talk bhaiyya," Simi said to me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I loved my sister. Simi was probably the most intelligent girl I'd ever known. But she had this really mean manner of cutting straight to the heart of the matter. I would (could?) never be mean to her, but then there were occasions ... sometimes ... like just about now ...

I flung the morning newspaper at her and dashed out of our third-floor apartment before she could shout and call mom. After I got downstairs in the building compound, I began mulling on my next course of action to prove her wrong and that I was "serious" about music. I would have thought about it for maybe five minutes when Jeetu shouted out to me from his first-floor balcony.

"Hey, Shashi."

"Hi."

"Boss, you want to play carrom?"

"Let's", Shashi replied, dropping what he'd been thinking of, until more than a year later. That's when we met Dada.

----

Our father died when I was six and Simi was three. Mr. Acharya was -- I always called him that -- a movie stuntman by profession and a despicable creature by disposition. That was at least according to Mrs. Acharya, his wife, and our mother. He was accidentally shot and fatally wounded by an unnameable method actor, a popular lead hero of the 80s, who insisted on shooting the scene with a real gun. He ended up shooting my father instead. To me, it always seemed like a heroic way to go while on duty. Why my mother loathed him so only became gradually clear many years later.

I never really got to know my father. He always seemed to be out and about town, meeting lots of people, women mostly, for work. And making sackfuls of money while at it. He'd sometimes come home carrying a plastic grocery bag with bundles of cash in it loosely tied together with rubber bands. Those were the only days I remember when Mom and Mr. Acharya used to get along. And they got along quite famously too on those days as I'd usually end up being kicked out of the house by my suddenly coy and bashful mother and asked to go play with someone so that the two could discuss important matters.

Immediately post Mr. Acharya's death, we moved to our current residence which is a relatively palatial triple bedroom 1200 square feet apartment compared to the earlier single room chawl home (a kind of cheap housing for the lower middle class) we had earlier.