Our member Ms K. Chatterjee takes us back to the monsoons of her youth, when rains meant closeness and warmth within a large household.

As the monsoon season draws to a close, I find myself returning to memories of the rains in my childhood. I studied at Kamala Girls’ School, and whenever it rained heavily, the streets around Southern Avenue would be waterlogged, making it difficult for buses and cars to pass. We would then splash through the streets, chatting and wading our way back home at leisure.
Bengal has always had a deep and often strained relationship with the rains. I remember flying over Bangladesh on my way to Agarpara many years ago and seeing vast stretches of land under water. My father’s elder brother used to say that the rivers of India are no match for those of Bangladesh. The Padma, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna are wider and turn far more threatening during the monsoons than any river in India.
The houses in Bangladeshi villages were designed with the annual floods in mind. A homestead consisted of several huts or units serving different purposes—kitchen, bedrooms, office, bathroom, outhouse—each built on raised platforms. When the rains came, the courtyards would inevitably flood, and makeshift wooden bridges would be laid to connect one unit to another. You could sit on a doorstep and drop a line to catch fish, since floodwaters linked courtyards and roads to the ponds and rivers nearby.
Each neighbourhood had at least one boat to ferry people around. Some elderly men with boats even collected grocery lists from several households and did the shopping for everyone. You didn’t need to travel to Thailand to see a floating market!
After Partition, my family moved to India, and several of us ended up living together under one roof. During the monsoons, when heavy rains kept us from going to school, the house would be full, but never dull. We sang together, played carrom and ludo, and relished our simple meals—khichudi with vegetables tasted more satisfying than any rich spread of meat, chicken, or biryani I had later in life. After lunch, we would curl up next to my grandmother and listen to her stories. As a child, I never knew boredom.
I consider myself fortunate to have known the joy of a large family and the abundance of love that came with it. Today, we live in small, matchbox apartments, guarding our privacy fiercely—“hum do, hamare do” (“two of us, two of our own”), and often even fewer. I, for instance, live alone in this apartment, with far more space than I truly need. I have realised that having plenty teaches us very little. The nuclear family may offer independence, but it misses the lessons of compassion, cooperation, sharing, and collaboration that were naturally instilled when many of us lived together.
During the monsoons of my childhood, when we were forced indoors, we never complained. We grew together, learning from each other and strengthening our bonds. Life today is not without its blessings, but I feel a deep pity for the modern city-dweller who has never known the fullness and love of a large family.

(as narrated to Support Elders by our member)

Books once shaped Ms D. Bhattacharyya’s world, during her student days in Guwahati University. Though mobile reading now dominates her time, her most cherished memory remains a gift she once gave her father.

I used to be a voracious reader, but nowadays I barely read. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, but the main reason for my shift away from books is the mobile phone. Most of my reading now is on the phone—news articles, recipes, opinion pieces, critical commentaries, excerpts from books. My reading diet has become so restricted to the short form that books—novels and even short stories—feel slow. I feel a certain lethargy when I sit down to read them.
As a student at Guwahati University, from where I graduated with a BA degree, I was very different. There weren’t too many Bengali books available in the market in those days. Bengali speakers like us would have to ask relatives back in Bengal to post boxes of books to us. For me the college library was a wonderland filled with all my favourite authors.
I would devour books by the dozen. If a book caught my fancy, I would not take more than three days to finish it. Before exams, one of my professors would scold me and even ban me from borrowing books. Only after exams were over would my borrowing rights be restored.
I remember once, near the end of my schooling days, that a teacher urgently needed Tagore’s Sanchayita for an occasion. He asked if any of us had a copy at home. My father owned an old print of the collection, and I lent it to him. The teacher never returned it, claiming he had left it at someone else’s place.
I was heartbroken. I knew how precious the book was to my father and regretted lending it out. Later, when I started earning, I bought him another copy of Sanchayita. It was perhaps the first book I ever gifted him. Though I gave him several books over the years, that copy of Sanchayita remained his most treasured possession. It carried immense meaning for him—not only the words of Tagore, but also the proof of my love and respect for him.

(as narrated to Support Elders by our member)