"My Superman"
As a kid, I always enjoyed the times I spent with my grandpa.
He was a freedom fighter, he told us fascinating stories of how he and his
friends fought for our freedom and ended up in a jail more than once. I was so
proud of my grandpa that I would never miss an opportunity of talking about him
to all of my friends in school. He always got an invite from schools and other
organisations to hoist the flag on Independence Day and give away a few words
of advice.
My grandfather, a freedom fighter was also known for his
generosity in our locality. There was not a single passer-by who didn’t know of
him. They always made sure they visited him during the day, have a chat, share
some news and views, a cup of coffee and a huge smile on their faces.
He always had a smile on his face. He was a man, independent
in many ways. He did carpentry, he even had his own set of tools, ready to
repair anything that needed his attention. I enjoyed helping him while he mixed
cement and patched it around a few broken walls. The way he kept the rats from digging
holes in the small godown we had that stored loads of banana plantains, gunny
bags and anything worth a storage.
I remember hiding there while we played hide & seek with
my brothers and sisters. It was always dark, chilly and smelt a mixture of the
dampness, old newspapers and dusty gunny bags. You could spend an entire day
excavating the place, listening to the stories he had to say for each of those
items stored inside and all that we did was stare at him with wonder. He was a
Superman.
My brother Varun and I enjoyed our special time with
grandpa. Every Monday at 7.30, soon after the broadcast of the local news on
TV, he and I would sit out in the verandah, with taatha (grandpa) sitting on a
chair, smoking his Ganesh beedi, to listen to the most amazing horror stories.
Yep believe it or not, the man who fought against the Britishers for freedom,
had a few encounters with the devil as well. Wow! He’s such a brave man.
Before I get into details, let me describe him to you. He
always wore khaki. A pair of white pants and a white half sleeved shirt. A
sleeveless khaki jacket that was mostly green or brown in colour. This jacket
had 4 pockets outside and 2 secret pockets on the inside. He always kept a
matchbox and a beedi packet in one of the lower outer pockets. And his money
was always in the secret pockets. Only Varun and I had access to those pockets.
I’m sorry, but I have to gloat here ;)
We were 5 cousins, my sister and I born to my mother and 3
brothers from my mom’s elder sister. Our age group differed by a year or 2 from
each other. We played together and danced together. We had a lot of ek minute
contests between each other. Varun always won, when it came to “how many
glasses of water can you drink in a minute’. Boy, he could drink. We were the
Panch Pandavas of the house. Varun definitely being the Bhima: D
Coming back to my grandpa and his tale of ghost encounters.
He had this talent of creating an interest out of nothing at all. He spun the
stories well enough to keep us sitting as closer to him as possible. Sometimes
to an extent of hugging his legs while he narrated his stories.
My grandpa, was a skinny man, with dimples on either sides
of his cheeks. Really deep dimples. He had a few teeth and they were definitely
long. He had lost a few canines wich made him gat toothed. He had a beautiful
long nose and white stubbles, he was a smart man, fair complexioned, silver
haired and grey eyes to make him look extra handsome. No wonder he had 2 wives:
P
The story begins when he had a small grocery store in the
heart of the city. It was a market place, with a theatre at the corner of the
road, a fort opposite to his store and also a hospital closeby. Since during
that time the late night show would finish only by 11.30 – 12.00 midnight, he
kept his store open for those customers who would have their last few smokes
for the night before they retired to their houses respectively.
So grandpa, always closed his shop much later than the other
shopkeepers in the venue. He was helped by his younger brother in the store.
They both would close the shop and go to a nearby pond at the back of the
hospital to take a leak before getting back to their house. This pond was also
closeby to the morgue of the hospital. The pond was shadowed by a few coconut trees.
It was almost 1 in the morning, pitch dark in those days due to shortage of
street lamps, chilly and dead silent. He happened to go near the pond and just
when he got busy to take a leak, a handful of small jelly stones fell on the
back of his head. Since it was dark, he couldn’t make out who threw them at
him. He looked right in the direction from where the stones fell, but couldn’t
find anyone there. He yelled on top of his voice asking who it was, but no one
replied. They had these small kerosene lamps that they carried around with
which he tried to see if anyone else was present apart from his brother and
himself. But he couldn’t find anyone.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a black dog jumped towards him,
with such strength that its legs hit his cheek hard enough to break a few of
his teeth, making his mouth all bloody and yikes. He mistook the dog to be his
own pet dog called tiger, and kept calling out his name hoping it would return
back to him. He was so furious at what it had done, that he stormed back home,
fuming with anger, ready to give the dog a piece of mind. He yelled at my
granny asking for the dog, and why she hadn’t kept it tied at home. She was
equally shocked to see his bloody face and to hear that the culprit behind that
was tiger, since he was tied to the window of their house before everyone had slept.
He saw the dog sleeping peacefully and realised that it was no dog that had
attacked him with stones and broken his tooth, it was a GHOST!!!
Varun and I gulped our fear and asked grandpa to open his
mouth and show us the teeth that he had lost in this encounter. And held our
breath when he displayed his open mouth for both of us. And then it was the end
of story time. Grandpa, having amazed us with his tale, would place a 10 paise coin
in both of our hands. With a smile on our faces, and a satisfaction of time
well spent and invested, we would run back to our houses. I would retell mummy
the entire story and ask her if she knew about it and exhibit the ten paise
that he had given to me.
The beautiful aluminium coin, shaped as a flower petal,
would then be flashed to my sister to make her jealous and show, what she had
missed. The smallest pleasures in collecting money and making it become 25
paise, just so I could buy a milk burfi, was always ecstatic.
Thus, my grandpa, a freedom fighter, a story teller, an
entertainer and a man loved by all in our society, was definitely the best
prize of my life. It’s been more than fifteen years that I lost him, but even
today, his jacket hangs at the very same spot at my granny’s place where he
always hung them. And the many tales of his bravery, encounters with the
British and the ghosts, stays alive in my heart.
