Who am me?

Long, serene summer noons with Busybee (Behram Contractor) are Rama-made chilled, thairchadam (curd rice with Chitale dahi). Am reading BUSYBEE: Best of 1988-89, illustrations by Behram's probably best friend Mario Miranda. In Remembering The Good Old Days, Busybee types as he alone can: 'Around this time of the year, I tend to look back. ...Four schools, two colleges, five houses, four newspapers. The first salary that I recieved. It was Rs.125 and the tragic part was that I did not get it on the day I should have - I got it 15 days later .......And the friends I made over the years. Fifty per cent of them are dead by now, no 70 per cent. But it is pointless looking behind. In life, you always look ahead, onwards to 1990.' Do not know if the younger generation of Mumbai journalists care to read him, a privilege of  'looking behind.' At 70 you look back and forward, lose direction, when Ganesh Natarajan mails me asking if Calcutta is still in me. Ganesh, will put down a few facts and you sort them out on your computer. Its all about street eating or breakfasting. Perhaps the oldest eatery on Yogi Nagar Road, senior to Yogi Nagar, is Shree Mahalaxmi Sweet and Pharsan Mart; many have come and gone, but Shree Mahalaxmi is steady. On Sunday mornings the cook at the shop is alone busy with Yogi Nagar asleep. Over a gas fire, he fries faffda and jilebi wrapped in street dust and sprays of spit as he ladles the faffda in something like cooking oil; his assistant churns out jilebis in oil and sweat in another warm, vessel. Some mornings, Rama and me are first in the line to chew up the salt-sweet mix with tea. Rama does not like it much but she goes along as she can bunk cooking. Thambi is upset when we do not visit his vada-dosa chutney-sambhar cycle stand. 'Enna Saar, idli-wada vendama,' he asks in wonder. Rama practicing Panchsheel picks up a few wadas and idlis. 'Numba idli saar,' Thambi says and today does not charge. In the 1950s, in Kottarakara there was Alamelu's Potti Shop near Munnu Randal Mukku (Three Lamps Corner) near the famed Ganesh, no Shiva temple. Dear grandmother, on Sundays would hand over two annas and me stood in front of the crowded shop. Spotting me Alamelu mami would walk up and ask: 'Kannadi Vakil Swami's Perana (Grandson of spectacled Vakil swami)? Me would nod my head and she would pack in old copies of The Hindu paruppu wadai and dosas for all of us, free. Me handed back the two annas. Counted as lawyer fees to my grandfather for old and future disputes. In Calcutta, in the 60s, there was the mishti dokan (sweet shop), off Lake Temple Road, for shingaras and rusagullas in tiny pots; me would dip the shingaras in rasagullas and forget home. Raja Anna used to take Vidya, Dakhi and Ganesh every morning to the sweet shop at the corner of Hazra Road for shingara, rasagulla and sandesh. A ritual they relate today with love. Raja Anna worked in The Institution of Engineers on Gokhale Road housing on the ground floor a chanachur shop. The entire office could be found at the shop, all times, and the manager sent the attendance register to the shop; he could not absent them as they were gherao days. Evenings, Raja Anna would supply the kids with chanachur, cheenabadam (groundnuts) and ice-creams while at home Rukmini Manni turned out murukkus. All for the kids. In Mumbai, me family grew on wada pavs, bhels, kulfis.... So Ganesh Natarajan, me has Kottarakara, Calcutta and Mumbai in me. In what proportions you may decide. A confession - Calcutta wafts.