In Search of the Echoes :

In Search of The Echoes : 

Rhea, while waiting on the lounge of the Bangkok airport for the connecting flight to Kolkata, stood up to look at the showcases at the nearby counters. There were various gift iems. She loitered near the counter before making a purchase of the Chinese culinary set for her sister (uncle's daughter), though she had more than two hours to kill. The few relatives at Deblane 14, the ones she met in Kol when she flew over with her late Baba in the early 90s, would be pleased.

Thinking of Baba, her mind went back to the days when she visited Kol with him in connection with a sister's wedding. When the sister's father (a brother of Baba) died young, Baba made a promise to the widow to be present at the time of her only daughter's wedding, no matter what or where. Rhea always felt small yet like a princess while walking by the side of the hunk of a man that her father was. 

There were many people waiting outside the gate as the car trooped into the bylane with the dead end. Their ancestral home was a palatial building with two squarish, fenced gardens in front. 

Cries of "Debu esechhey. Debu esechhey", (Debu's come. He's home.) rented the air, as they got out of the cab. Then as her Indian uncles and cousins started taking the luggage out of the car, Baba would catch her tightly by her small hand and walk up the stairs to go to Thamma's ( her grandmother).

Baba, despite years of staying abroad, was a pacca Bengali at heart. On entering thamna's room, he would bend down to touch her feet while the dear, octogenarian lady beamed with tears of joy and happiness coursing through her eyes.

The next few weeks of their stay were spent in visiting his relatives across Kol, eating out and making merry. Her grandfather, by the way, had passed away a few years back. 

The first hand experience of the wedding of a sister, the daughter of the late uncle, was something the likes of which she had never experienced before. There was an unending sea of relatives coming in and out, running one errand or the other, helping with the wedding preparation. The ancestral home was filled with laughter and love. 

Her father told her on the day that sister was to leave their ancestral home that there would be a lot of crying and wailing at the time of Seemadi's departure for her husband's home. 

She could recollect the exact words she had whispered into her ear then: Aren't you supposed to cry right now? Why aren't you crying then, Seemadi?" Rhea's question made Seema along with her close friends near her, laugh out loud. 

Seema, was getting married to her longtime, childhood sweetheart. 

"All passengers of Thai Airways 2347, are requested to board the flight without any further delay… "

The announcement being made across the lounge at that precise moment, cut into her reverie as she picked up the packet lying by her seat and headed towards the glassdoor separating the lounge from the terminal. 

Once she was seated by the window in the business class, she looked at her watch. It was 1.45 pm (IST). There was still 20 minutes for the flight to take off. She reclined in her seat and smiled at the elderly man beside her before closing her eyes….. 

Though Baba kept visiting his siblings at Deblane,14 even after Thamma's death, those visits became few and far between with the passage of time. Then Baba had to stop travelling long distance altogether after 2002. That cursed year, he suffered a massive heart attack on the day he, along with Mom, was to get back to Australia. 

He was shifted to a Sister's house somewhere near Salt Lake after his release from the nursing home.And Mom stopped approving of Baba visiting Kol again from that year on. 

As the passengers were being asked to unfasten the seatbelts, Rhea cast one more look down at the city she was visiting nearly after 30 years! 

She knew that she owed it to her late father, who loved his birthplace like crazy. Whether it was Tendulkar scoring a magnificent 150 at Sydney or the Hindi movie "Disco Dancer" starring a Bengali, Mithun ( She even had learnt to dance to some of those catchy tunes like "I'm a disco dancer" from the movie in her childhood), Baba couldn't stop gloating either about India or the Indians. 

Her connection with her relatives in Kol got severed with time. Strange as it might sound, whatever little she heard about the relatives, was from a cousin settled in America now. 

He sent her an email a few weeks before her impending visit, telling her about another cousin, Pommy, (an uncle's daughter) who stayed at Deblane 14 still. 

The cab drive from Dum Dum International airport to Deblane,14, took half an hour. She was surprised. Last time she came, it took nearly 1 and a half hours due to the traffic congestion. She even recollected her aunt (Baba's sister at Salt Lake) having sent her Volkswagen to pick them up at that time.

As the cab reached Sealdah Station, she couldn't help exclaming to herself: "How Kolkata has changed!" But her surprise knew no bounds as they drove past Philips and turned to CIT Road in the heart of the city.

"God! Baba'd have been ecstatic finding these skyscrapers in this new-look Kolkata!" She mumbled again. 

The memory of Baba sitting by her side in the car as it crossed BoI during their last visit, hit her hard. She could visualize that kid, cross with Baba one afternoon, sitting on the very step of Bank of India. Who was that uncle trying to pacify her at Baba's request then?

"Please turn left and stop near that galli." (What made her remember the bengali equivalent of a 'bylane' after all these years?) She shouted out to the cab driver. 

There were skyscrapers all over the place. On either side of the bylane there stood towering buildings too. The last house on the left at the dead end had to be the one, she thought to herself as she picked up her suitcase and asked the cab driver to keep the change.

Then, with her heart in her mouth, Rhea broke into a run then :

There were echoes of "Debu esechhe! Debu esechhe!"

There he was, Baba, tall and hefty holding baby Rhea tightly by the hand, just outside the entrance of Deblane,14! 

A lady in shirt and geans came out just then. 

"Rheadi? "

"Pommy? "

They exchanged squeals of pleasantries before hugging one another. 

It pained Rhea to find out later, that though the number of the building was the same, another skyscraper had surfaced in place of where the magical, palatial building with the two squarish, fenced gardens used to be not so long ago! 

The end