The Cassette Women of Calcutta

My childhood can also be described, on certain sunny Sunday afternoons, as a beautiful Bedouin breeze. Beautiful, because I had so few choices. Bedouin, because I never believed in roots. And like a breeze, because just like a breeze, childhoods come. And go. Never to come back again.

My childhood was also filled with women. From the ones that brought me up to the ones that brought me up to speed. From those that taught me to see stars to the ones that taught me when to wink and when to think. And every once in a while, some of these women will bring their own doorbell along, stick it to the front door of my memory mansion, and leave it ringing.

There's Rawnjona - teaching schoolboys how to grow up from audio tape cassettes, taking form and shape via the tired voice of a middle aged, born-again male singer but leaving him far behind to elope with the imagination of every ten year old boy who heard snatches of the song as he snuck past a girl's house on a borrowed bicycle.

Then there's Bae La Bosh. Again, taking form, shape and phone number from the aforementioned male singer's voice but training young, amateur Archie-comicbook-trained lovers how not to give up on love. Even though they were too young to know that comic book love disappears as soon as you turn the page.

Of course, there are others. Like the ethereal Lisa Ray, looking into the great wide unknown from Calcutta hoardings in her hurriedly photoshopped bikini-turned-kameez.

And the delectable club singers of Park Street, who always came on stage after the rag tag cheap-beer crowd of schoolboys left after dusk. So while they appeared for the uncles inside, they could be heard from outside the doors of the clubs.

Calcutta was a haven. Where many heavenly women docked their ships. And brought beauty and grace and charm and etiquette to the shores. To trade them for love. Most of them felt the trades were one way. Because men are ungrateful. But the boys were a different custom altogether. Boys were grateful and thankful and giddy with love and spinning in the imagined embrace of a heaven they were yet to fully appraise.

My cassettes stopped spinning a long time back. But the magnets work. Even better. Till this day. The tapes don't emit music any more. But they bind me. Ever so beautifully, to the anchors of my childhood.

I don't believe in roots. But I worship anchors, you see. Because what is a man if he isn't anchored to the loveliness of his boyhood.