Titin - Chronicles of an improbable journey - The accident

The accident

My father, rues the lack of enjoyment in his strange and eventful journey, from a half naked kid in Aksa village, Madaripur subdivision, Faridpur district of what is now Bangladesh, to the retired executive of Steel Authority of India Ltd., even today. There is a lot of truth to it. He hardly had an enjoyable childhood by any decent standards; youth was spent in struggling to get a foothold somewhere, to overcome excruciating poverty. A lot of the middle-age spent to getting his two sons ready for their struggles in the world, and when the time and means came to enjoy, his health gave in. I beg to differ at points on this theory. It takes a certain degree of mental strength to rise above our daily platter of anxiety, anticipation of the dark to enjoy the “now” moment of life. I think, he never could go there. Well, some people can and some can’t. That is how it all works; so be it.

In early 1977, the only vehicle that belonged to the Ray family in 21/24 Vivekananda Road, was a bicycle. Yes, it was a run-down concoction of mostly steel and a seat that was hard enough to saw through one’s butts. This was a contraption built somewhere in the prehistoric ages – I would put the date somewhere in the late 1950s to early 1960s. My father had managed to bring it along from Agarpara, our hometown (in India at least)– about 10 miles from the city of Calcutta – when he decided to start his life in Durgapur. He would go to the market – Benachity Bazaar, run errands – pretty much whatever took him out. He traveled to the plant, in the blue and white company buses, and occasionally when he was late, he would travel the whole 10 miles to the plant riding the bike. There was really nothing wrong with this scheme of things. Except that at a certain point, he decided that he had taken enough of the abuse of day-to-day struggles and was now entitled to a little comfort. The answer was a scooter. It came in the form of a brown and white spanking new Lambretta scooter. Oh my friends, Sri Pranabananda Ray was proud, Amitava Ray (that would be me), danced around for a full day in excitement and Smt Archana Ray could not contain her grin for the next few weeks whenever she talked to her neighbors.

Dad got his license to ride the scooter, and soon he started to use it as a replacement for the bike. He would take us occasionally for a ride – not too far usually – and that I relished as a kid. But even then, I could feel that he was not entirely comfortable with this motorized form of two-wheeler transport. More so, when I stood in front of him and Mom sat in the back. It is one of those rare pleasures that a kid growing up with Dad having a scooter, gets. You get to stand, right in the front, wind blowing directly onto your face. The thrill of going fast and feeling it; feeling how slow everything around seemed; somehow feeling superior to those poor souls that trudged along by the side, those insufferable samples of the human species that got honked out of the way. The street dogs that reverently made way for me on my Dad’s scooter who otherwise wouldn’t have two cents worth of respect for a superior species on two legs instead of four – walking on the same road. There was the occasional day when Dad would get up late (intentionally I think), to go to his office on the scooter. Then, Mom and I would stand in the front porch, proudly gaping while Dad kicked on the starter to get the scooter started. Off he went, and I tried to make the same noise with my hands stretched out in front like riding the thing – “Vrooooooooooooooooooooooooooom” and ran inside.

And so the days passed – till one evening, Dad went to Benachity to buy our daily fare of vegetables and fish and meat and other things that Mom would use to cook. We did not have a fridge then – that luxury, if I remember right was the sole dominance of the Roys in the locality. Going to the market was almost a daily affair. I went off to play with the kids in the block. Now, the exact sequence of events, I cannot recall today. But I can vividly remember someone, literally plucking me up while the game was in progress and take me down to the site of the accident. It probably was Mom. I can close my eyes and see the scooter, its smooth contours contorted – lying on its side. Its new and glossy paint peeled to reveal ugly gashes. Dad lay on his side, blood was all over the place. On the other side, stood a black Rajdoot motorbike. Its owner, standing by in a complete state of shock. It was at the corner of Sister Nivedita Avenue Road and Aurobinda Avenue. Dad was groaning, his head, quite soaked in the red fluid. Yes, he had tried to be smart – did not bother to wear his helmet. There were no siren blazing police cars, there were no red and white ambulances, there was no fire-truck. Chances of getting those together in emergency are very close to nil in modern India. This was 1977. A rickshaw was called. The crowd helped to get Baba on it. Mom sat down beside him, holding him tight. I stood holding the rickshaw pullers seat. That guy, understood the situation and he rode fast and hard, as hard as his taut muscles and under-fed body could stretch. I remember I kept asking – “Mom what happened to Dad?” over and over again; and Mom kept on weeping, without saying a word.

We landed in the emergency of the Durgapur Steel Plant Hospital – one of several times in the next twenty years for various ailments of different people. Fear, probably was the keyword that evening. Panic, that I could see in Mom’s eyes; panic that I felt somewhere deep inside, yet I was too young to comprehend. As a five year old, the fact that there was a faint possibility of human mortality making a random hit to take away one of my parents, never occurred to me. The moments of anxious wait, outside an emergency procedure facility is nerve-racking. Those who have to undergo such torture – to know that there was a loved one in there somewhere hovering between life and death – and you cannot do a thing, I empathize with them. I understand them. A minute seems like years. While Mom, waited her eyes wide open, tears continuously streaming down her cheeks, her disheveled hair, her eyes swollen – told the story. I remember – may be we, guys, are born with this – even as a five year old who had no idea of what was happening, I tried to console my Mom. There was no way, I could have known what I was trying to convey – but if it was today and I saw a child like that I can tell what he is trying to tell his Mom – “I am here for you. Things will be ok”.

In my numerous phases of philosophizing through these thirty five years, I have gone back and forth between the spiritual, agnostic and atheistic mind so many times, I admit with my pants down, that I am hopelessly confused. I wish, I had the boldness of belief of Swami Vivekananda to proclaim spirituality as the final truth. I wish, I had the guts of Bertrand Russell to proclaim the divinity of the celestial teapot. I have neither. Yet, friends yet… I would, if this were to happen all over again, pray feverishly in front of Buro Shibtola (this is an 800 year old temple near Durgapur). I don’t know why – I do not have an answer to that question. But, I saw my mother, close her eyes. I knew, she was praying silently while tears streaked down in a steady stream. It was late, when we were informed that my father had had a significant head injury. His condition was far from stable – there was every possibility of some very bad news. They doctors, wanted 24 hours of constant monitoring. They sent us home.

I did sleep through the night. Mom could not get her eyelids together. The next morning, Dad’s colleagues arrived early in the morning in a black Ambassador car. There was Dilip uncle, Goswami uncle and a lot of others. They had been summoned from the hospital – my father’s condition had worsened. He was in a stage when the angel could come any moment. Since my Mom was all alone, Dad's friends were sent in to set her up for the news. I saw the tense faces, some of them gently held me and stroked my hair. Their serious, drawn faces told the story. Mom slumped into the bamboo chair on seeing the car.

Somewhere in the course of the day, an angel arrived in the hospital, in the form of Dr. Samar Mukherjee – a general surgeon (he would be our neighbor in the coming future). And somewhere in the entropy of the universe (which is how we explain cosmology and time nowadays), something did change. I call it the hand of the Almighty, I call it the fighting spirit that never quit all the way from a penniless kid in rags from Bangladesh to the scooter riding officer of DSP, I call it the will of my mother, I call it the delicate fingers of an angel of a surgeon, and yes – I call it the God that lived in the soul of a five-year-old named Titin. The hemorrhage stopped.
He was back at home after a month or so. Still not fit enough to walk on his own. The scooter was repaired and sold. Thus July 1977, saw me, Mom and my Grandma with some of our belongings – mostly pots and pans – riding on a rickshaw, with Baba riding the bike ahead of us – leaving Vivekananda Road to live in a different quarter, in a different place – Tagore Place. And while we rode by Fine Arts Club, a plastic mug, that was used mostly in the bathroom, fell down from the loosely packed stuff we had with us. Mom yelled out loud asking the rickshaw wallah to stop. He did stop, so did Dad on his bike, while I ran and picked the mug up. So begineth the story of Titin, alias Amitava Ray, alias Saheb (that’s what my Grandpa used to call me) at 4/7 Tagore Place, Durgapur. So endeth, one of the most intense incidents that I can recall in my life.