One rainy afternoon.The irresistable smell of fried illish maachh and ghee in khichudi. Manna Dey's soulful voice singing Coffee houser shei addata.. And My father started reminiscing about his college days.How they used to sit on the ledge at the canteen,play carrom and 29,some of them made passes at the passerby women(at this juncture, Ma and I looked at him intently,about to press for more personal details but he completely ignored us! ),the samosa-and-tea breaks in between boring lectures,the recitations of Banalata Sen, a couple of chengra chhokras, all inspired by the sudden glimpse of the too familiar laal orna..how they broke into an impromptu jig with Ke tumi Nandini in the background while poor laal orna had to endure their hoola dance and do some quick disappearing act to avoid further embarassments.Ma punctuated his recollections with sporadic outbursts of eeesh!!ki oshobhyo chhile go tomra! which sadly went unheeded as both me and Baba convulsed into laughter.Or Baba used to retaliate with a aha!!jeno tomra koto kochi khuki chhile! It's hard to take sides without implicating either parent!

When it comes to Ma,she makes it a point to remind me at every point that she was a very good,sober,serious student...(you get the drift,don't you?).But then,I thwart all her plans to take a leaf out of her book and pester her with questions like Ma! oi chheletar golpo bolo je Presidency te shob meyeke dekhe kobita likhto..Stuffs like that just to embarass her a little bit but then to make her smile at the bittersweet memories!Baba joins in the camaraderie and poor Ma has no other option but to give in to my whimsical demands.And so, one whole afternoon is dedicated to the poor,bespectacled,apparently bhalo chheler moto dekhte dejected,jilted Romeo who found solace in writing secret poems about his muse(out of pity I refrain from using the plural form) and then got laughed at when they were discovered in the yellow pages of his chhera khata. And also to the studs of the college,half-lit ciggies and all that. Ma used to be a model student but then she took part in fair deal of mischief in class too like writing poems mocking teachers,drawing cartoons out of them,aiming erasers etc.It was rather hard to imagine that my Headgirl-in-school Ma had actually succeeded in shocking the hell out of her Chemistry professor by calling her Mota Umadi in front of everyone in the class.She insists it was a bad slip, but then we like to think otherwise!

Baba was in the college football team,carrom team.He played the violin.He was a star 29 player.He bunked pass classes and sneaked into movie halls with friends to watch Uttam-Suchitra romancing on the silver screen.And now, he sits on the sofa,newspaper in one hand,or with a laptop,setting his glasses and typing at a furious pace to finish an assigned project.Occassionally when the radio belts out an old Manna Dey song about a group of seven friends,the Grand er guitarist, the kobi kobi chehara whose poems were mocked at just as his life,the art colleger er chhele or the shukhi meye with the lakhpoti shwaami and the others,all drifted apart in the big bad world by the tides of time,he looks up,with a smile and shining eyes and says..Ei gaanta Sumanta ledge e boshe khaali golay gaito....Sumanta amader dept e ekmatro CAB r player...

And I try to imagine what life would be like after 3 years.