Mallika Bhaumik

Kolkata, India

Reading newspaper was an integral part of our growing up years and our parents wanted to inculcate this habit from our junior school days. I guess, like me, many of my contemporaries start the day by flipping through the pages of their favourite daily, but back then, it was not something that I looked forward to. The news items, their insensitive data and dry heaps of information offered me little interest, however the page that reported missing persons with their pictures intrigued me, as untold human stories rested there. It talked about people who were away from their dear ones, with a flickering hope that someday like an ocean tide they might return to their shore. I remember the page of a very popular Bengali daily to see those missing reports under the heading, 'niruddesh'/'missing.'

The fear of children getting lost was not entirely fictitious and we were warned not to talk to strangers or accept any goodies from them. I recall Tagore's short story 'kabuliwallah' as a relatable source where the little girl Mini was scared to see an Afghan trader passing by her home. The Afghan trader (popularly known as Kabuliwallah) carried a huge bag on his back, which, Mini presumed, carried children like her. The story, among other things, mirrored the fear instilled in children, mostly in girls, about strangers.

As for myself, I never saw Afghan traders with huge bags near our house, still as evening set in, my mother or mother of any of my playmates would come to fetch us and see to it that each one of us went home safely. It was the fear of 'cheledhora' that prompted our mothers to escort us home, as dusk fell. The girl child was at a greater risk of getting lost and our mothers and their mothers and grandmothers were aware of that without being informed by any newspaper or television.

Years later, while commuting within the city, my eyes fell on a wall graffiti that shook me. Later I noticed many such wall graffiti in different parts of my city. A charcoal sketch of young girls as mute bystanders breathing out the dark side of life with number scrawled by its side and the word 'missing,' reflected the robust flesh trade that has thrived silently through the years. A group of nameless, faceless young buds, systematically plucked off from the healthy branch of life, without any hue and cry by the mainstream media, be it print or electronic, sent a shiver down my spine.

My grandma, who was my companion during those newspaper reading sessions, used to heave a sigh, imagining how an empty mother's lap would grieve an absence. The address of reference used to be Lalbazar, the Police Headquarter of my city. I used to see pictures of many grown up people and feel baffled since I was sure that they knew their way back home. My grandma would tell me that they left intentionally, being unable to cope with the hostile circumstances of their lives.

My home has always been my 'castle' or more precisely a blanket that has kept me warm against the chills of the outside world. Hence it troubled me greatly, when I learnt at that age, that some people left home and their familiar world to merge into the grey of anonymity. I came to understand that the world of the adults was grim and complicated.
As I was growing up, I became aware of the nuances of meaning that a word might convey, depending upon its use. Thus the word 'niruddesh' lost its grimness when I read Tagore's 'Niruddeshjatra,' which roughly translated might mean a journey without fixed destination. The very fact of any destination remaining unknown infused a spirit of adventure and wanderlust bordering on the classical renaissance concept of the desire to know the unknown, to see the unseen, to tread on paths hitherto untrodden, set my heart aflutter.

While in college, the title of this poem was very wittily used by a friend as she pillion rode on her boyfriend's bike waving back to us. Someone must have asked her as to where she was headed, to which she shouted back,' niruddeshjatra y' (destination unknown) Her filmy style of waving, her dupatta flying in the air made us look commonplace as we walked towards the bus stop. We must have felt a pinch of jealousy at her carefree romantic escapade; yet at the same time, I did not fail to marvel at the apt use of the words (the title of the poem) by her as she rode towards happiness.

The image of her waving back has remained etched in my memory though I lost touch with her later. We often retain some moments within us, about any place or people or incidents long after they have ceased to be a part of our lives, perhaps as a subconscious effort to hold on to portions of our own life, to not let them go missing from us.

Much later in life, I came across a young girl who had come out of her home to see the 'big city.’ One of our domestic help brought her and after a flurry of questions it was revealed that she used to sell guavas near her village railway station and simply decided to board the city bound train. She got up on a random bus from Howrah Station and got down near our bus stop since she was hungry. She could not tell the name of the station from where she got up. Her name was Namita and she happily settled down with our domestic help.
A year and a half passed when we learned that Namita had left just the way she came. No one had any idea if she had returned to her village home or gone out for another adventure. Her disappearance created a giant crater in the life of our domestic help who lost her sleep, went into depression and finally discontinued working. A debate arose in our home as to whether Namita was a disloyal person or if she worked for any robbery gang and would eventually pass on information about various households or she was just a 'rolling stone' enjoying the rainbow hues of life's journey that normal people fail to do. I would love to believe that she had the soul of a bird who wanted to fly and might have perched herself on some shady branch of a tree, only for a while.

The sad little boxes of my girlhood day's newspaper, conveying the absence of people from the lives of their close ones, with a vague physical description, gradually became irrelevant to me and the idea of missing attained a wider perspective as I crossed the years and found the world to be a cruel place, where we lose things and people we love, keep calm about it and go on living as if nothing has gone amiss.

Thus the hole in our heart has often taken the shape of our favourite green eyed cat that left one day or misplacing of the special new year card growing yellow in a drawer, or the pen pal who suddenly stopped writing, or the youngster in school who planted the first kiss on the cheek; mowed down by a speeding car. The list can grow longer.

We might have patted ourselves too, for walking bravely through the accumulated pain of losing and missing and filling such holes with other attractions. We might come to the realization that each loss has scraped a portion of us and someday while walking alone through a hilly road, we might find ourselves blanketed by a white mist and realize that somewhere, we have gone missing too.

Glossary:
niruddesh - missing

jatra - travel

cheledhora ~ literally translated means (boy kidnapper) but used as a general term (child kidnapper) in Bangla