Sukalpa Dhar, Kolkata: Whenever I think over my childhood days innumerable funny incidents flash by and I still laugh heartily and enjoy. Now I’m going to share with you some of those funny events of my life. We stayed at Chilarai Nagar Path, Bhangagarh at Guwahati. It was a three storied building. We lived in the first floor. Our landlord lived in the ground floor. Next to our building lived a lovely Sikh family. Every afternoon I used to visit their house. Gurjeet Singh became a very close friend of mine. He was two years elder to me. Gradually, his younger brother, Paramjeet Singh too joined the duo. I used to call them by their pet names. Gurjeet’s pet name was Chotu and Paramjeet’s was Pummi. Chotu used to come in our house everyday at 2 pm in the afternoon and we used to ride tricycles. I had two tricycles one red and the other one was blue in colour. I used to ride the red tricycle more compared to the blue one. Chotu too loved the same one but I didn’t want to share that with anyone else. So once he gave me an idea to play a game where there will be a traffic police standing in the middle of the room to give directions and only one will ride a tricycle where invariably I used to be the traffic police and he used to ride my tricycle. I used to stand in the middle of the room and showed directions. When Pummi grew up he joined our company. Every year in the month of March we played holi in our locality and the main spot would be the space in front of Chotu’s house. We used water guns to sprinkle coloured water in each other’s body. By the time we concluded playing holi, we would completely drench ourselves in a plethora of colours.
We played cricket in front of Chotu’s house where a few other boys from our locality also joined us. One afternoon I along with Chotu and Pummi and some other friends were playing cricket in the courtyard of Chotu’s house and as usual after winning the toss Pummi chose to bat first. It was a sunny afternoon. I was bowling. After two overs I started to field. In the last ball of the over he stroked it so hard that the ball went high and landed in a smooth flat surface at a corner of the house. I ran after it and found that the ball had landed in a dark flat surface which was only a few steps away from me. So I rushed forward to pick the ball up. As soon I placed one of my feet on the soil I found it a bit soft then I tried to move forward towards the ball. After a few steps I felt that I was sinking down and down. I didn’t know that actually a huge quantity of cow dung was stored there. It was a storing place for cow dung. They had a number of cows kept in their backyard. They used it for producing gobar gas. Before I could realize anything my feet started sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire of cow dung. Looking my horrible condition my friend started shouting loudly. Chotu’s mother and Chotu’s aunt and some others came out from the house running to find out what really had happened. One of their servants rushed towards me and pulled me out from a safe distance. I couldn’t help but leave my sandals deep inside. The lower part of my body was amuck with cow dung and a pungent smell vitiated the atmosphere.
Everyone around me couldn’t stop themselves from laughing to their guts end. Aunty washed my feet and brought me to my house and narrated the entire story to my mother. She regretted that my sandals are lost in the cow dung but she assured that she would surely anyhow retrieve it later. We said that we won’t need it any further. Then of course, one can imagine what an arduous task it was for my mother to remove the smell of the cow dung from my feet. I often remember that childhood incident and laugh.
I think everyone has some memorable incidents surrounding a saloon or parlour. I’m not an exception in this matter too. Often on Sundays my father used to visit a saloon named ‘The Modern Saloon’ which was located in the Pan Bazaar area of Guwahati. At times, I went with him to trim my hair. It was and is still now a very hard task on the part of the barbers to manage my curly hair. Because most of the time they ponder about the fact that from which way they will begin the trimming session and where and how should they end up. They say your hair is very dangerous. At school my friends used to insert pencils in my curls and it would never fall or come out unless and until someone pulled them out physically.
A new hair dressing saloon named ‘Kailash Hair Dresser’ was recently inaugurated in our area. One day my mother took me to Kailash to trim my hair.
She made me sit in the saloon and came back home. After almost about an hour she found that I wasn’t returning back home so she worriedly came out of the home to find out what has happened. She went to the shop and met a shocking scene. I was sitting in the chair looking straight to the mirror and I was made almost bald. She was very angry. She ordered the barber to stop trimming immediately. The barber said, ‘Oh ! It is almost done only a little more is left.’
But she saved me that day from becoming a complete bald. When we were returning home from the shop we met across Pummi on the way. His jaws just dropped down and he was gazing at my face in astonishment. It was as if he was unable to recognise me. He said ‘Sukalpa what happened to your hair?‘ saying that he laughed and ran away. So now I can say that I have a practical experience of Kailashey kelenkari.
