A Cup of Tea, And A Lost Memory

Our flat in Sodepur had a half-glass half-wooden cupboard in which Maa used to keep her precious crockery sets. A few cups, plates and serving bowls which were kept stored with loving care, only to be brought out on special occasions when a large number of guests will arrive. These occasions were very few and far between. But never, never will we be allowed to use those sets for ourselves because they are expensive items meant to be “maintained” for better days. I guess this was true for most middle-class families at that time.


I was a tea addict and had an eye for a set of two cups – light pink in colour and made of fine bone China. Baba bought them in 1961 for a then-princely sum of 16 rupees from Kamalalaya Stores, a reputed British-era departmental store of Dharmotolla Street, Calcutta. This meant that they will be saved for a possible visit by the royalty and not to be given to a clumsy college-going youngster. And of course, I am not a bull in a China shop but I admit that there were high chances of the cups vanishing from the earth just like Kamalalaya Stores if I was allowed to have tea in them. But the denial of access used to upset me, nonetheless. 


Now on a visit home, as I was taking out some spoons from the once-glossy shelf, I saw the cups under a layer of dust. One of the dishes had a visible crack, which occurred due to the laws of nature, or maybe due to boredom arising out of an endless wait.


So, I washed them, gingerly, and had a morning tea seeped in nostalgia with Maa. Yes, yes, with her permission. By the way, my mom had her birthday today. She is nearing the nervous nineties and had been a loyal reader of The Statesman for 58 years. But that is another story of nostalgia.

A pen-pal of a different kind

The school where I studied from class V to X, Sodepur High School for Girls, was not a very reputed or well-known institute. Rather, it was a limited morning affair running at the premises of our more famous cousin Sodepur High School for Boys. Situated amidst a crazy and congested market, its only advantage was that it was just 7 minutes walk from our house and I will be back home by 12.30 pm, getting the whole afternoon for myself and having the opportunity of devoting my time to important international causes like cutting football players' photographs from newspapers and learning how to make my sketch pens last a little longer by injecting water into their sponge cylinders.

Speaking of pens, among my prized possessions in childhood  were two pens – one brought from the US of A by my mamaji who was a professor there – made by a firm called Tiffany & Co., kept in a sky blue box, on a soft foam bed. It had ink the colour of the sea,  initially. Refills brought later from Chowringhee, Calcutta, did not have that rich tone, though. It stayed with me till 2010 when I lost it during ond of those routine yearly house shiftings in Delhi.

The other favourite pen was an ordinary one purchased for me by my father from a pen stall near our school. Its claim to fame was it had three colours – blue, black and red. The mechanism was simple; it had a three-sided cap and you will just have to push down the side you want to use. But I found it pretty fascinating at that age.

The pen stall from where my father purchased the multi-coloured one was actually a tiny kiosk made up of one very small table, put up in front of a lane some 50 metres from my school. A variety of pens and pencils used to be displayed on it, some jutting out precariously, always giving an impression of an imminent fall. But this unassuming kiosk saved us from an embarrassing situation at school one day.

It was the day of the farewell for class X students. I was in class IX and in the organizing team. The outgoing batch was to be greeted with pens and roses. There were arrangement for some sweets too. We were under budget constraints (as usual) and one of the teachers suggested buying 20 pens less than the total strength of class X as many of them usually don't turn up for the farewell function because they are busy studying (and now that I think of it, a two-rupee pen and a half-dead rose would not have been that much of a lure, anyway).

However, 5 minutes before the programme, we realized that all but 5 of the class X students have arrived! Someone rushed to the nearby flower shop for roses. A friend and I slipped through the back gate, ran up to the kiosk and told the seller, “we need 15 pens in separate cellophane packets, in two minutes". I was in one of my perpetual panic modes which still can be seen by my colleagues during office events.

The kiosk owner smiled, told us not to worry and handed over the pens quickly, after meticulously putting each of them into separate packets. We paid and ran back in time, before class X realized anything is amiss. The pen-friend saved the day, I thought.

A few weeks ago, I was near my old school,  looking for some necessary items in the market, when someone called me from behind, “tumi ekhon kothay thako" (where do you stay now). I was surprised.  I didn't know this middle-aged man with white specs in his hair, broadly smiling at me. I was slightly irritated, even.

And then I saw the pens.

It was still a kiosk, only slightly bigger, and along with the pens there are boxes of colours and crayons too. Yes, the pen-friend is at the same place, though it had been 26 years since I left school. “I didn't recognize you,” I said, “but school memories are crowding back seeing this stall".

He asked me where do I work now and if I want to buy anything. I made small talk, went through the items at the kiosk, but I was actually not there. I was  remembering those walks past the kiosk, eyeing the pens and dreaming of a day when I will buy a Parker for myself (which he never stocked, I guess).

I didn't need anything.  But I bought a box of Camlin oil pastels. Just for old times' sake. I am using them for filling up the pages of my colour therapy books now.