The Purulia Diaries -Part 1

Note: This is part of a series of posts on my recent travel to India from December 19, 2022-January 1st, 2023.

Takes about 25 Hours from Stanford to Purulia.

The bump in the car woke me up - all I could make out in my heavily jet-lagged eyes, and my somewhat seminal Bengali reading skills, that we had crossed Durgapur. The time in the car read 1:40 am. Kanchan uncle was driving in the pitch blackness of the road, every now and then I could see his well-coifed hair and mustache illuminated by the piercing bright lights of the TATA good carrier trucks that rumbled past us. A far cry from the floodlights of Kolkata Airport at Salt Lake where I was picked up by my dad a couple hours ago.

Funny, I thought, less than 24 hours ago, I was arguing with the Air India Travel agent to get on a flight to India. My flight had been unceremoniously moved up in the morning of the December 19, instead of being in the afternoon. I had no notification, so imagine my surprise when I woke up to see my flight had flown!

Even funnier enough, the speed bump that woke me up, had hit my head exactly where I had fell and received a concussion a week ago. The heavens had opened in California after a drought filled year, and I had been biking extremely fast with no helmet. I had turned a corner and a gust of wind knocked me off my bike. I vividly remember, the bike slipping underneath me, and me flying across the other direction. When I came to a few seconds later, I saw that I was in a water puddle, and my bike spinning forlornly a few feet away, while the tear drop shaped rain fell from the grey overcast skies with unrelenting grief, as if to say, "I'm sorry to have been gone for so long."

EVGR at Night

So there I was - adjusting my eyes to the rolling fog that marked the road from Kolkata to Purulia, wondering where I had gone wrong. My mind wandered to the hell of the past 2 weeks, where I was rushing to finish something for my research, which had no business of being finished. I was rushing between classes, research, and home, and I had forgotten to take a breath. I couldn't sleep at night, took to taking walks in the cloudy night skies. And nor could I effectively finish my task with great success. Things broke in my hands, things never seemed just right, and something was about to go haywire.

But then, I started wondering, did I actually go wrong just 2 weeks ago? or was it perhaps longer? But at the same time, I couldn't believe that I was in India - a country that I had officially forsaken just 4 months ago, when I obtained my U.S. Citizenship. More so than India, I had forsaken my ties to my birthplace; knowing that I would never return back to Purulia. It would always remain a series of letters, that would simply follow in the birthplace portion of any official form.

I was apprehensive when I boarded the flight to India on the morning of December 20th from SFO; was I happy that Air India Agent got me a seat on the flight that morning, or was I scared because the distant possibility of Purulia suddenly became reality?

Purulia, a home, district, a town, a reality, a history - Purulia is the name of both the main city, and the district. Located in the easternmost part of West Bengal, about 250 km away from Kolkata, the district which is perhaps more rural then urban, more tribal than nuclear, more desert than lush, is my birthplace. I was born there in February 21st, 2000, following my father who was born there in 1972, and my grandfather who was born there in 1941.

I left when I was 5, and was only sporadically back every other year or so. But this was time different, I hadn't been back in Purulia since 2016; more than 6 years had passed. Purulia remained unchanged in my first 16 years that I had known, the sleepy town always seemed sleepy - the morning the milkman, the fisherman, and the vegetable man came to drop off produce, at night, we would go to Mohan's sweets to get milk cakes, and other Rosh (sugar syrup) based sweets which Purulia is famous for. I would spend my entire day in my grandparent's house, bored out of my mind and fending off mosquitos or sweltering in the heat.

In the darkness, as we hurtled at probably very questionable speeds, to Purulia from Kolkata, I was wondering what lay ahead of me. Was it another week of mind-numbing boredom, or was it something else?

The tree branches swayed in the night wind, and the rural chill had started to set in. I was glad to have worn my fleece jacket, which in Kolkata seemed uncomfortably warm. My dad was asleep in the back of the car, worn out from the travel to and from; Kanchan with his steely eyes that never left the road and steady hands shifting smoothly.

Around 2:30 am, we came to a stop to a roadside Dhabba (roadside eatery). The man was making hot milk tea, and despite my recent coffee binge the 2 weeks prior, the scalding hot tea served in misspelled Nestle cups seemed more appetizing than all the barista coffees that I had had!

The smell of the tea, mixed with the ashes from the coal oven, cigarette smoke, sugar/spices from the cookie jars, the faint sweet smell of the long grass carried by the wind, and the subtle sharpness of urine and cow dung, somehow tugged at my heart strings. I wasn't sure whether it was nostalgia, or was it the smell of vibrancy/chaos which is never present in the too sterile Palo Alto?

After our tea break, we got on the road again - circling around massive tour busses (apparently Purulia had become a tourist destination for Kolkata denizens), avoiding TATA good carriers, veering off road to avoid speed bumps, driving on opposite side of the road to overtake other stray cars that happened to be on the road. After all traffic rules in India are merely suggestions - you probably shouldn't drive on the opposite side of the road, you probably shouldn't go above 50 km/hr, etc.. you probably shouldn't be avoiding speed bumps. But anyway, you do what you have to do - which is what I picked up from Kanchan uncle!

Cow Herding in Action

Suddenly around 3:20 am, Kanchan uncle had braked pretty harshly. Our headlights illuminated rows of glistening eyes in the road ahead. The bobbing of the heads, and the swishes of the tails, and the size pretty much gave away that we had come across cows. Turns out that we had rather unceremoniously interrupted an early morning cow-herding session; the next few kilometers were filled with us driving and braking repeatedly as we came across groups of cows, buffaloes, and bulls. Each bovine was paired up with another one, to prevent one from running off (turns out there is a saying in Bengali about cows being notoriously hard to find - I have searched for something like I have searched for a cow). In between the herds, the herdsmen could be seen - their worn faces, with thick red/purple sheets draped over their shoulders for warmth, and with a long bamboo stick for herding. Here, I was returning from airport in relative comfort, while these men had just started their days!

The final few kilometers were uneventful (by Indian traffic standards!), and we entered the main city of Purulia. We drove by the neon lights of the new hotels that sprung up around the Saheb Bhandh Lake and we reached my grandparents home around 4 am in Huchukpara, the neighborhood locale in Purulia. My first ever school was just opposite of my grandparents house - Margaret Noble School, and could be seen in the rearview of the car mirror.

The marble nameplate of the house - Elan (vivaciousness)- was visible from the car. The house towered in the neighborhood, after all, a recent floor had been added. The purple color cement cement glowed faintly in the moonlight, and the street dogs that lay out near the front had scattered. The great peacock gate in front of the house swung open, and we came to a stop.

Purulia was here, and I had arrived after 6 long years.