While on the Bandel to Calcutta trip, here's another one:
Mini just adored her Thakur-Ma, Thamma for short. (Paternal Grandmother for the uninitiated.) So whenever we made that trip, she knew it was to visit her grandmom.
But there was a firmly fixed idea in her three-year-old little head - When we reached Howrah station, the main railway station for Cal, we'd all talk about having arrived. Getting off the train and all through the ride to Dover Road where they lived, we'd try to tell her that we were now in Calcutta.
But no. She was not to be kidded. "Kolkatta aekhono aashe ni." "Calcutta has not yet come." She was VERY FIRM in this knowledge and would watch the roads very intently.As the car or taxi turned into the drive-way of Number 10, Dover Road, she'd turn to us and announce smugly, "Eyi to Kolkatta, Thamma-ar Baadi!" "Here it is, Calcutta, Thamma's house!"
As if to say, "You guys! You know nothing!"
And guess who enjoyed it the most? Big, wise older brother, Bozo, of course! - he thought it was tho thweet...
I shot a smile into the air, It came to earth I knew not where. Perhaps on someone else's face, In some forgotten, quiet place. - Michael Leunig
