MY CHILDHOOD, MY DREAM...
by Rahul Gam on Monday, May 2, 2011
Yesterday my first cousin from Canada came to Dibrugarh on a two-day visit. He’s an AMC and a PGI alumni and currently super-specialising in neonatology from Hamilton, Ontario. We went out in the evening to see him around the small sleepy town where the ever-changing unpredictable weather lulls everyone to their sleep under the quilt of the clouds.
Over an evening round of single malt we talked about many things… how almost 80% of the faculty in his institute is of Indian origin, how close Niagara Falls is to his residence and how I must join him there next year…
Our small talk also drifted to our childhood days in Dibrugarh. Suddenly I recalled so many of the things from my times of yore, which may bear a strapping impression on the person that I am today…
As a young doctor, my dad was posted in the world’s largest river island of Majuli at the Kamalabari civil hospital. I was about 4 years old then. And since there wasn’t any reputable school out there, I was kept with my jethai-jethu (maternal uncle-aunty) in Dibrugarh.
Picture a kindergarten toddler staying away for three years from his parents who only used to come to visit him for a day or two every three to four months and that too at a time when there was no telephone connection in the whole of Majuli…
It was not just a hard thing for me, but for my parents too. On visits to Dibrugarh my mother made it a point to leave town for Majuli early in the morning not simply because it was a day-long journey, but because she wanted to leave before I woke up in the morning. And when I finally used to wake up, I used to cry “ma, ma…” when a faint recollection of her kissing me good-bye in my sleep would come to me. Then I would look under the pillow and find a five-rupee note that she usually kept for me. I never spent those notes away…
As I reached class II, I matured. Yet I always yearned for my ma, baba n Lipba… I remember that I used to sleep with jethai-jethu and on some nights would simply awake in the middle of the night and miss them so much that I would weep silently and ask God to make me stay with them and in exchange, I would become a good boy…
Although I don’t quite remember it, my cousin told me about an incident yesterday. I was in class I/II at that time and my mother had come to visit me. The day she left, I cried the whole day and towards the evening, was so enraged at things that I took a blade and stroke violently at the bed, cutting the bed-sheet into pieces…
My jethai-jethu were very caring and patient but then, can someone take the place of your mom and dad?
At last, God heard me half and my mom and sis shifted to Dibrugarh permanently while dad was transferred someplace else. Till date, my dad has been posted at many different districts except in Dibrugarh. Lakhs of rupees has been wasted at the Secretariat for a transfer. But the Assam government is Assam government, bhai! Last year my sis got married and now my mom stays with my dad in Golaghat leaving our Dibrugarh house under my responsibility. Dad now heads three offices in Golaghat single-handedly and has become busier than ever. Tomorrow I may go abroad and may as well get settled there.
My childhood dream of a complete family where every morning the mother cooks break-fast and the family eats together before leaving for their respective work only to return in the evening for a dinner together, never came true…
That was my story… but then, isn’t it the average Indian story???
