~ The Brown Diary #24Jan2015 I know, you guys are waiting for my short story Suicide Room - Part 4 and Im sure admins will publish it in an hour or two. But today I wanted to chat a little bit about my other experimental project that Ive recently started working on : Seven Heavens. This one goes back to my childhood. I was born and brought up in a neighborhood at Shyambazar, North Calcutta. Our house was quite a landmark. The owner belonged to one of the greatest and most successful families of old British Calcutta but he, himself was big failure. His biggest earning was by renting his forefathers gigantic house in parts. The parts were divided rather idiotically without any consideration of ones privacy or comfort. I dont know how my father found or liked that dark, old and excessively damp place. But considering he was almost broke back in 70s and started his career from scratch - that choice made sense. Honestly as a kid I enjoyed the no privacy thing. I was mostly found at the neighbors or playing at the street with the other kids. Our colony had a nice balance of people from different economic conditions. We had a few wealthy ones mostly rich because of inheriting property from the British era - the kids with cycles. As a child that was my benchmark for identifying rich kids. He has a cycle. He must be damn rich. I used to tell myself. Then there were middle class people - most of them. We, our family was considered one of them. We were not poor by the definition of it but my father didnt make enough to get me a cycle. Hence, we were stuck at the middle class. Then there were the majority of them for whom the rice at lunch or roti at dinner was the priority and everything else was simply luxury. I had friends from all the different economic backgrounds and luckily at that age all you bother about is your unconditional friendship and you dont think about the quality or the neatness of their clothes or what their father did for living before hugging them. I was a curious soul from the childhood and my friends fascinated me. I used to play with them by the railway tracks behind the Belgachhia slum - just to know them better. I had no idea how they managed a smile each time after a day that started for them working - selling newspapers, working at a restaurant at the minimum wage or sometimes doing laborious works like carrying bricks at a construction site - all for 5 Rupees a day or may be 10 if they are lucky. I didnt understand how they could live with that uncertainty that they might have something for dinner or not. I didnt realize how the definition of right and wrong, moral and immoral blurs when you are hungry - all that matters is a piece of bread. They lived in a world no one cared about and honestly they didnt care about our world either. Why would they? Some questions, some ideas, some dreams are only sensible when you have your stomach full. But they had a story like all of us. They loved too - may not be in the most literary way that you and I would prefer, but they did. They believed in friendship, they had their own dreams and heartbreaks. I still remember a few of my friends from those days. I dont know what they are doing now or even if they exist anymore. But Seven Heavens is my attempt to go back into their world, think like them, be one of them and tell their story. Ive some idea that my readers love the most when I write about romance - but I think its a story I need to share for the sake of myself. And I hope youll be open to read about a world that we know exist but we often choose to forget that it does. I hope youll empathize with their emotions - dark, crude, violent yet 100% real. I sincerely hope you do. Happy Sunday. Suman Bhattacharya
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 01:36:42 +0000
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