MY EARLY LIFE(Santanu Halder) It is very tough for me to remember each and every episode of my early days of life when i was in my childhood. Childhood is an innocent period when everyone shines in an angelic blissful radiance. So these glorious days of my life have made a deep impact. Some events of my then life are glowing brightly in my memory and some became obscure. On 25th of September I was born at our local subdivisional hospital. Ours was a joint family and there were nearly 11 members in our family when i was born. My father was the eldest among my uncles and aunties. Since the birth of my younger aunty-(i fondly call her Phool pisi still, and she was ten years senior to me) there were no children born in our family. We were very poor. Keeping my father in lap, my grandpa and grandma during the communal riots and partition of Bengal, came to India empty handed, first stayed in a refugee camp near Sridharpur in Nadia district, from there they went to Sripally Barrackpur and permanently settled there. What i was telling, is that when i was born there was poverty and starvation in our family. My grandpa had to work hard for feeding so many mouths.

The news that I was born was so much heartening and exciting that my maternal uncle and my grandpa came to hospital walking nearly two kilometers barefooted and wearing very ordinary dress. They forgot everything in joy. All the people rushed to the hospital to see the new born babe...a baby they thought and desired would brighten the name of the family.

Especially my four aunties happily cheered thinking that they had got their little companion whom they would caress the whole day. I was a healthy tall baby with fair complexion. Everybody came to see me in hospital and they kept me in their lap and caressed me deeply. I was crying sometimes and the rest of the time i had been sleeping and sucking one of my fingers. Then after 5 days the doctor told my mother that-
- Both you and your baby are okay. You may go home today with your baby.
Hearing this my mother became so much happy. My father also came there to bring me and ma back to our home. My father hired a rickshaw and we reached home after an hour. Then all the people from our neighbouring areas, my relatives, came to see me.

Then I was not in a condition to realise these events because i was so tiny, only 5 days old. All these things which I have been telling, I heard from my mother's lips. We had a little hut where my grandparents, my two uncles, and four aunties used to live. And we -my parents and the little me- lived in the adjacent kitchen under the thatched roof of which leaked during rainy days. On one hand the happiness that a little sweet child was born enlightening their thatched home, and on the other hand poverty, starvation, poor income. The members of our family were being sandwiched everyday. My grandpa was a hard working person and he from dawn to dusk without taking a little respite had been earning money in order to feed us and for the education of our aunties and uncles.

My father had also been helping him in his work. Later he started a bicycle shop in order that he could earn more for helping our family. The life of my father is the most tragic one. When i heard this from him that what he had done for his family, for the education of his little brothers and sisters, tears came to my eyes. At a tender age when his friends were playing in the field, he had to go to market to sell the bundles of bidi from one shop to another shop and then after collecting money he used to return home after buying rice in order to feed all the members of our family. Because at that time my grandpa had fallen ill and he could not work since so many days. And my uncles were too little to do any work. My father could not read ever. After completing matriculation, he stated working as a wholetimer in the farming fields as labourer in order to earn money so they everybody gets food, so that his younger brothers and sister get scope to read, can go to school. Without my father's earning the school would be their dream. I have even heard that my papa sometimes begged door to door for buying books for my elder uncle. By doing private tution at night and working as a daily labourer he supplied money to our needy proverty striken family. And his dreams of becoming a well educated person shattered. But since the illness of my grandpa it was his duty to shoulder the responsibilities of the family. And i guess he had performed the duties well like an honest man by sacrificing his desires of life.

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