The first thing I noticed was the black
and white cat dozing on a stack of old books. That is how I knew it
was a REAL old stuff. Grand dad called me to segregate the books I
might need from the huge smelly bawdy stack of books, before he sold
them. I just took a bath; therefore was reluctant to touch them. I
was having a look at the whole thing before I could contaminate
myself. I could identify many of my junior school books.
Radiant readers – part II written in bold red on the blue
cover with a rainbow beneath; I pulled it out and turned the dusty
pages. Radiant readers were poorly binded so mother often used to
bind it with her book binding needle and a white cotton thread which
was now pale yellow.
“.......................
Class – 2 , Roll – 4(it was 4 in my entire junior school and I was kind of bored)
English I”
was written in cursive in a half childish handwriting . “The Gulliver's travel” , “Timothy boon” .... my eyes ran across the “Contents”. Some of them was ticked with pencil, with “h.y” and “f.e” written beside them. They stood for Half yearly and Final exam! Inside the chapters words like “departure”, “embarrassment” (probably because of the excessive number of 'r' and 's' in the spelling) , “tediousness” ... underlined as they were “difficult words” , then. Something tickled my palm, I closed the book to see a brown arthropod trying to dig through my skin. I kept the book aside dusting the bug away!
“Beti jo bhi lena hai jaldi karo!” . I grew up seeing this Hindustani man visit every 2-3 months. He was a regular buyer at our place. Unweariedly, he was constant. He was the same ancient grizzly-bearded person to me who made the same red piece of “gamcha” his turban, wore a blasphemous kurta with sleeves rolled up his elbow, and a once-white-now-brown-and-bawdy dhoti below, over years. Today, he was in real hurry to clean up the mess and leave. The next day was his son's marriage.
I tried to pull a red diary out of the huge wobbly stack. In no time it lost equilibrium and fell. I was embarrassed. Ram was already in a hurry; over and above I increased his work. I picked the diary from the mess and then tried to undo the disarray, but Ram's gestures were enough to infer that I should stop fouling up further. I stepped aside and flipped through the pages of the diary. Scribblings in black and red cursive ingested the pages. One of the pages read ,
“Honey, save the last piece for me.. Waiting for dumplings, never for long though.
The warning: Chilli oil with dumplings is isnt what you think. It is water with a slick of oil on top!!
The familiar terracotta colored bowls remind me why I love this city.. Hmm.. is it indeed manageable?? With a bike, or a train ticket , its yours.
The Shanghai fried noodles are oily.. So are the spinach dumplings.”
Am I reading the diary of a foodie..? A Shanghai foodie?? Well none I know of, from my family who had been to China, or could cook Shanghai! Yes, Chinese restaurants do line up Kolkata “office para”s and also Park street, but I thought I could smell the roots of Chinese origin. I turned a few more pages to read, “ ......the state of Chǔ suffered under a king who made a concubine of his own daughter-in-law. Since he had been advised against this course of action by a virtuous minister named WǓ Shē , he had Wǔ Shē imprisoned.
A corrupt minister forced Wǔ to summon his two sons, WǓ Shàng and WǓ Yún to the capital. The older son, Wǔ Shàng, went at once and was arrested and executed with his father. The younger son Wǔ Yún was suspicious, and did not go at once. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and pictures of him were posted about the kingdom.
Wǔ Yún determined to flee to the neighboring state of Wú to save his life, raise an army, and avenge the deaths in his family. And so he fled towards Wú. On his way, he was sheltered by an old man named DŌNGGĀO Gōng , who lived near the Zhāo Pass on the road leading into Wú. But the pass was too well guarded for a known fugitive like Wǔ to get through without being arrested.
For a week Wǔ stayed with Dōnggāo, but no plan could be developed. One night, unable to sleep, he worried so much that his hair and beard turned white in that single night. Before his hair turned white, Wǔ looked much like Dōnggāo's neighbor, HUÁNGFǓ Nà , but after his hair turned white, he looked much older.
Dōnggāo had them exchange clothes. Huángfǔ then tried to journey through the pass and was arrested. This created enough distraction that Wǔ was able to pass through into the state of Wú without the border guards noticing.
When Wǔ was safely through the pass, Dōnggāo came and identified Huángfǔ and convinced the soldiers to release him.
Wǔ, saved by the miraculous change in his hair color, was now free to gather an army in Wú and return to avenge the death of his father and brother......”
I ran to my room and looked into the mirror to decipher if I look anywhere close to the Chinese! No, I dont! Then who is this Chinese forefather(I imagined him to be one...) in my family? Wow... DO I ve a Chinese Origin! :D O_o
I tried to discover the owner of this epic journal. No name was there anywhere...
(To be continued..........)
