The Legacy of Debendra Nath Das

He was my grandfather. When a person whom you have known all your life dies, there are so many memories and things to write about him that you don’t know where to start. I am not very good at dealing with death, I guess no one is, but since I don’t talk about it, it consumes me from inside. But I thought of writing about Dadu today.

On February 13, 2010, we would have celebrated his 93rd birthday. Will any one of us live so long? Almost a century. Would we want to live so long? Was it worth it, for him? He lived long enough to see his son die, his wife die. I am digressing as usual. Like I said, I am not good at dealing with death. But this is a tribute to him, not a judgment on his life.

Speaking of his long life, the first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that he was a very disciplined man---yoga exercises every morning, meals at proper timings, right amount and variety, he had a very healthy lifestyle. I wish I could follow even a fraction of it. Well, Rima and I would groan every time he would make us walk instead of taking a rickshaw or bus. But we had a gala time when Thamma and Dadu took us to Shillong. I don’t remember much of that trip, I think I was in class 2, or maybe bigger. But I do remember I had fun, we visited lots of places. And we walked a lot!

Another hobby of his was gardening. He would walk kilometres and kilometres to get saplings from there, seeds from there and with strange interesting looking tools, he would turn the backyard of our RBI quarter into Farmville! I felt like Alice in Wonderland in that little farm of ours. You know, when you are young, everything seems to be so big, so all the fruit trees seemed gigantic---mango, coconut, guava, banana, jackfruit, and vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes, three types of chilly and the intoxicating lemon trees, cucumber, melons, gourds, the lovely carrots with the fern-like leaves, radishes, turnips, brinjal, beans, ladies finger, spinach, mint… oh I could go on and on. He didn’t grow flowers, he thought it was useless and not productive to waste space on something that only looks pretty. Well, he was practical. I remember the midnight snail hunts we went on together--- I would hold the torch and he had a sack of rock salt (Yo Supernatural!) , and then we would smother the poor snails with salt and find them dead next morning. I felt a little bad, but they were destroying the crops and I hated the crunching sound of snail shells breaking under my shoes! Making the fence with him was another fun job, we would break the bamboo and cut and slit them and since I had soft hands, my job was just to tie them up, he did the cutting part! Those were the days when I found creepy crawly worms fascinating. Oh my beautiful garden, I could get lost there forever.

Now everyone who knows me knows that I love photography. I am always the girl with the camera. It’s my way of holding on to a moment, everything seems to slip away from my hands and I try so hard to hold something, I fear I will forget it, so I have to capture it. Now, Dadu had a salary of Rs 20 back in 1930s but he loved photography too. So he bought a camera for Rs 75! Way to go Dadu! You know, those cameras where you sort of have to look through from above coz the lens is on top and you rotate this thing, like you see in old movies. I had it with me since a long time. But I think it’s been misplaced.

Speaking of cameras, another prized possession of his was his binoculars. Very good quality, one of my uncles gave him that. I loved those binoculars. I would spend hours lying on the terrace staring at the stars and searching for constellations. One of the most happiest moments of my life. I also loved his watch, which he had been wearing since decades, with his initials engraved on it. Ma has kept it for me, I will treasure it forever.

Travelling. He loved that. Thamma and Dadu saw a lot of places. Those were the days when you had to carry air pillows. ‘hold-all’, ‘bedding’ etc and travel in trains for days, and with three boys it must have been tough. But he saw some amazing places, and has the photos to prove that. My father and my uncles looking dashing in their blazers and caps and boots. Even when he was ‘old’, Thamma and Dadu went to Badrinath and Kedarnath and other places together. A story he always used to say was how another elderly couple sat in the tourist bus somewhere in the midst of the majestic Himalayas and the hubby would tell his wife: ‘Sharod dekho, ki drisshyo’ (Sharod see, what a scenery!).

Speaking of stories, another oft-repeated story was, of course, the ‘dhutra ful’ story, I don’t know what that wild flower is called in English, but it's only edible if u cook it. However, in Kaziranga or some other national park, an elephant ate that flower and ran amok and scared everyone. He would tell me this story again and again… although I was a kid then, that was one of the first times I realised that he was getting old, because he never remembered that he had told the story already. Old or not, he loved ‘Knight Rider’, and whenever David Hasselhoff would come running in the beaches on Baywatch he would point and say ‘Knight Rider’ every time. And call Salman Khan ‘Solmon’ haha. Teaching him Assamese was fun too, he loved it when Rima and I used to explain him the meanings. His fav word was ‘bhori’(leg), he said ‘puro body’r bhor ne pa gulo’ (The legs take the pressure/weight of the entire body), I had never thought of it that way before. ‘Athuwa’ (mosquito net) and buka (mud) he found fascinating. But I think Thamma spoke in Assamese more. He just learnt it, but felt more comfortable in Bengali. He would tell stories of pre-partition days, about our ancestral house in Silchar and also about places which are in Bangladesh now. How they just had to sit in a boat and cross the river to come to what is now India, how borders came up within someone’s land, compound. Fortunately, he had settled and had a steady job in a tea corporation in Assam before Partition so didn’t have to face the horrors, but he grew nostalgic talking about the places he went as a child, people he would never see, and people whom we have never seen.

When u have a tough life, with so many people dependent on you, you tend to be very economical. And money management is something I learnt from my father, who I think learnt it from Dadu. They were both so organized and planned so well, and it had been engrained in me since my childhood, when I was given Rs 2 as pocket money in nursery. Dadu gave me Rs 2,000 for my first NSC of Rs 5,000, which will mature this year, I will give a part of it to the poor in his name, and the rest I will invest again in his name! I think no matter how much you earn you can always spend (obviously), save and invest some amount and I subconsciously picked it from him. And I thank him for that.

You know, there are so many things I can say, I keep remembering this and that. But these memories will stay with me forever. I guess that’s what legacy is all about. He was not perfect, but there are some things about him which will continue to live even though he is no longer here. The last time I met him he was a withered old man, battling the cold like it’s the hardest thing in the world. My last words to him were almost the same as what I had told my father when I saw him last: “Don’t worry, everything will be alright”. Well things didn’t turn out alright but for one moment if they found peace in those words I would be happy. That day, we saw old pictures of Dadu and others, when he was a young man, self-reliant and strong, and that’s how I would like to remember him. He is grand, he is my grandfather.