A house in Gola

The wall art - fabulous to me, mundane, routine at Gola. 

Don't miss the happy (drunk I think) elephant!

A school in Gola

 This beautiful mud house with the bright blue door is a village school. But where are the children? Not quite sure. It was locked at noon when I visited the hamlet in Gola Block of Ramgarh District on a tuesday.

Hope he children are learning. Barely legible scrawl on the walls spells out that this is a village school. The teacher's name is Geeta. This is followed by messages on organic farming! Go figure.

Nevertheless, as I walked into the near empty roads of the village that afternoon, the white and blue school looked very beautiful.

Goodbye Mr. Chips ...

Came across your old possibly second hand copy of "Goodbye Mr. Chips". It was there last night out on the centre table along with ma's bagla magazine. She must have dug it out of the bookcase to read. Anyhow, having never have read it (imagine that!), I picked it up post dinner tonight and finished the 18 chapters or so in about a hour? Well at any rate while the oldies finished their dinner and before Maya came into clear the table and do the dishes.

And just as well that I had not read it earlier. Was able to have those magical moments of reading something so utterly charming (though so tragic and sad). Unlike earlier when I was young, I'd have mopped on a bit about the sadness of the passage of time and how it was for Mr. Chips. Now I kept seeing myself in the near future, Ms. C. Remembered as funny, weird, irritating perhaps fun. Jai Hok. Loved every bit of it. Thankyou, so many many years later - Mr. Hilton.


And the last few pages came up, out fell a hand written note in ink now faded to grey from black written on a a paper blotched with stains.

The poem in this 

letter was in a fit

of abstracted dementiousness

If you dont ignore that,

you;ll be ab even bigger

P. R. that I thought.

(Pompous rogue)

Proux / Brown (illegible to me)

PS: I head you were born today

I pity the world

Peb / Deb (cant read it clearly)

So, I wondered who wrote it? And I turned to the beginning to see where the "poem" was.

There it was at the beginning, Summer is over with a word changed here and there ....

Time runs away with the day
The grass that was green is now hay
The world goes around without even a sound
And I guess our summer is over

The rains tumble down in the sky
Young swallows have learned how to fly
The leaves that were green are no longer so green
And I guess our summer is over

The sun and the moon take turns in the sky
The days drift on by too soon
Friendship is kissed by by the cold winter mist
I guess our summer is over

Fly away to a warmer sun
Dead leaves touch the ground one by one
But we cant sit by
Without even goodbye
Though our summer maybe over

[Signed by what reads like "Prosin"]


Aww ... so it was a break up gift? The love, the thoughtfulness, the heartache? What was it? a summer or perhaps holiday romance?

And finally after the cover page, in red

"When the chips are down, I guess you've got to say Goodbye. But its been a nice thing while it lasted. So for now, and for many more to come, Happy Birthday. [Sign illegible]
25/7/87

***

Sigh! 29 years ago. Who wrote it?For whom? God knows ... but a tiny little "what might have been" nestled in another more famous love story.

The book's yours. So you must have read it. Quite sure the writing and the poem is not your own, even though the copy is yours. Thought I'd share it here and now. For you R.....

Missing you in so many ways!!
Aka What I found inside a book!!

Durgotsab 2016 - Hindustan Road

Build up to Maddox Square

Photos clicked on Sunday, two days after Mahalaya .. part of the build up to Durga Pujas. Maddox Square was a hive of activity. Still continues to be this morning when I went for my morning walk .. though only finishing touches remain as the race to complete by Shosti is on. Perhaps it was just as well that I went for a preview. The crowd is IMPOSSIBLE from Shosti to Dashami. Better this way. 

Subho Mahalaya!

Mahalaya. Mahishashur Mardini on AIR with ma at early early am. Then what a great idea to go to Prinsep Ghat. Only so did a lot of others. Many many others. And followed us right upto Srihari for Kochuri and Langcha. But what the heck. Durga Puja is here!

For whom the bells tolled, pealed and madly so ...

The Cathedrale Saint-Etienne was very close to our house, possibly the tallest structure in Meaux and can be seen from miles around. It has a bell tower which clangs to announce - you would think - the hour? Well, it rang at 1/4 past every hour, 10 minutes before every hour and sometimes much more than the hour it was supposed to announce! I'd catch myself gnashing my teeth ever so often and then stop as these were after all god's bells.

I lived in Meaux for two years around 2003 - 2004.