Paas woh aaney lagey zara zara, zara zara zara zara zara zara... was playing in a loop. The fairground was just waking up from its slumber— the ferris wheel (or what I knew as fairy’s wheel) and the merry-go-round were being oiled, the first batch of jilebis were already floating on the golden simmering sugar syrup and set and the shops were rolling up their covers and sleeves for the evening crowd. It was not a planned trip. The bus was stuck in the Moulali crossing and I suddenly remembered my visits to the Rother Mela which used to take place each year in this very place, leading to huge traffic jams. Today, the Mela was making its presence felt like never before with its absence. The signal was about to go red, I suddenly heard the conductor shout: ‘Astey, Bachcha achhey’ and I saw myself get down from the bus — my grandfather grabbed my hand as soon as I hopped onto the street.
Grandpa was a well-built, tall and serious man who mostly wore white and resembled Chhabi Biswas (the stern, no-nonsense father in Bengali cinema) from every aspect —so much so that I often wondered how the 6-foot-tall man manages to enter the small television box (it was much later, while reading Alice in Wonderland that I realised the trick! Of course the homoeopathy medicines he took were spiked and they had properties that can make you tall and short).
It was on rare occasions that he would manage some time off his busy schedule as a doctor, and be a full-time grandpa. It was on one such evening that I had landed in the same place (which turned into a fairground during this time in those days) with my hand tightly held by my grandpa — I was barely a 4-year-old then. At first I was scared of the crowd and the chaos and being a ‘short’ person made matters worse. If not for grandpa’s tight clasp I would have got lost at least a hundred times amid those tall, fast-moving legs.
It was supposed to be a Rother Mela but I couldn’t discern any roth (chariot). Instead, there were brightly coloured wooden toys, intricate clay vegetables/fruits/fishes, the ‘very expensive’ gas-balloons, and scary-looking paper-mache dancing dolls with large faces and big eyes, some even taller than me, which would roll their heads and waist every time I looked at them. And then there were the exotic winged prisoners — iron cages stashed with birds of myriad sizes and colours. Grandpa would ask the shop-keeper the names and their specialities and would then patiently explain them to me.
As I walked through the same pavement which now seems to have forgotten its past, I struggled to remember the names of those birds, the smells of the achar and papad bhaja, and the feel of grandpa’s huge palm that the little me found almost half of me clasped in.
My stream of thoughts was broken by a cacophony of birds and almost like déjà vu, I saw myself standing next to a row of shops selling birds! ‘Now, that can’t be legal...’ I heard myself mumbling. I could/should have dwelled on that thought but I was too excited to meet my childhood on the lost toyshops and fairy’s wheels. The fair is now held in a park and its past grandeur was trimmed down to fit into the small space. As the afternoon rolled towards evening, the makeshift bamboo shops got ready for business and they sold almost everything under the sun — hair clips, bangles, plastic guitars, bats, and dolls, achaars, hojmi and muri lozenge, stickers, clay figurines, kitchen utensils, customised key-rings, wooden temples, gods, dresses for gods, dresses for children, and dreams for all. However, the paper-mache dancing dolls and the wooden toys that were so unique to Rother Mela were missing from the show. It now looked like any other fair. But, so do the annual fair next to our house. Subhash Mela used to be quite an event. I remember going there with ma almost every single day and was allowed to shop as much as I wanted as long it was within 25 paise! It was the age of the epics and wooden bows and arrows, silver-paper wrapped swords and plastic gada were a favourite among us kids as were wooden drums, flutes and bhempus and the huge horses made of bamboo and hay. But the best thing about Subhash Mela was not these but the palki ride! They had an original palki which was carried by four men and kids like us (after being a ‘good girl’ for days) were allowed to take the royal ride for just about `1 (which was considered a rather expensive affair then and could be indulged into only once or twice a year). I would wait for the days when thamma would take me to the fair — there would be no 25-paise-limit then and I could take ‘as many’ rounds of palki ride as I wanted!
As I grew up, the fairy’s wheel got more giant and the simple merry-go-round lost its fans to the more suave (and complicated) Tora Tora, the toy train lost its sheen and the palki was discarded. But, the fair remained — now instead of toys and dolls we would bargain for colourful glass-bangles and kuler achaar and posters of the cute Aamir Khan!
And going to the fair on the evening of Saraswati Pujo became a ritual almost as important as the morning anjali. Love usually bloomed during this time of the year and usually came with an alert sign — and it was impossible to play blind to the fact that suddenly all the flower that were supposed to be going towards the goddess during the anjali was in fact landing on you! Then the chits would arrive, some friend would be bribed to play the messenger, a time would be fixed to meet near the comparatively less crowded turnstile of the fairground, some friends would again be bribed to tag along (by the girl) and some to ‘not’ tag along (by the boy) and eventually it would be a girls’ party sponsored by the boy and the trick here was for the boy to convince the girl that (A)he actually liked all her friends and is happy that all of them came along, (B) by ‘like’ he meant that he regarded them as sisters, (C) he ‘really likes’ her a lot and by this he ‘does not’ mean he likes her as a sister, and (D) the saree is looking great on her and she is not looking rounded at all. The fairground would then double up as Cupid’s playground. The two-seaters of the fairy’s wheel were the ideal place to romance then (provided the girl didn’t have vertigo like me!) and the best way to impress a girl was to shoot the maximum number of balloons stitched on newspapers on slow, rotating boards. Subhash Mela stills readies itself for the crowd each year on 23rd January but the shops are few and the guests fewer—the lovers now prefer multiplexes and the ‘warrior’ kids are too tech-savvy to venture out of their video games, and the middle class have just too much money to be tempted with the yellow board saying: “ja neben 7 taka”! (Anything for `7)
Charak Mela near Beadon Street was a fair I discovered at an age when none of us really bothered about going to fairs anymore (apart from of course the new breed of wannabe Raghu Rais).
This was a fair that came with an ‘A’ certificate— ma would always tell stories of how macabre the practice of Charak is where people would pierce their tongues with iron spikes and hang with ropes from a tall bamboo structure for hours—it was definitely not a site for children. So, I had to wait till I was ‘old’ enough to first venture into a fair that was at a stone’s throw distance from my school. I was a tad scared to go there alone, but it was impossible to convince ma to accompany me to see this ‘horrible practice’. It was much easier to persuade my boyfriend. As we reached the venue I saw a man was indeed hanging from a poll with a rope but I couldn’t discern any iron spike coming out of his mouth. I never imagined such a mad rush and was feeling almost dizzy staring up at the tall poll.
I was beginning to feel like the 4-year-old lost in the crowd when I felt a tight grip on my hand — Grandpa! I turned around ...only to find my boyfriend grinning at me...he had bought me a taal-patar shepai. I had almost forgotten how I adored these palm-leave soldiers when I was young. And it is perhaps a kind of collective amnesia that killed the fairs which once sold unadulterated joy for just 25 paise!
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