Tales of Triveni

 

The winter that year had teeth. The train bit into the fog somewhere after Bandel and chewed till Tribeni, and I, wrapped in a sweater knitted by Ma with a wool supply clearly calculated for the Himalayas, tumbled out onto the platform like a woollen potato. Tribeni, they said, was where three rivers met—Ganga, Jamuna, and Saraswati. I discovered, very quickly, that it was also where three more dangerous currents converged: gossip, ghee, and goosebumps.

By the time I reached Mama’s house, the fog lifted like a theatre curtain to reveal the full cast: Mama with a shawl and schedule, three Mashis with spoons and strategies, Nana with philosophy, Nani with sandal, and cousins in every available size.Boro Mashi swooped first, warm as a quilt and twice as heavy, her hug pressing the breath out of me and a laddoo into me in the same motion. “You’ve grown thin,” she declared, which in our family was an accusation, a diagnosis, and a threat of rehabilitation—all at once.

“Thin? Where?” Mejo Mashi peered at me the way a school inspector peers at a blackboard. “Just you wait. By the time you go back, even the weighing machine will say ‘oy maa’.”

Chhoto Mashi, the strategist, had already whisked my bag away. “Tea first. Then breakfast. Then proper breakfast. Then quick lunch before lunch. Sit.” In this household, food was not a menu; it was a timetable with ambitions.

If Tribeni had three rivers, our house had three kitchens—technically one kitchen and two annexures, but when aunts are involved, annexures become annexations. Boro Mashi was minister of Mishti Affairs, and her foreign policy was strictly pro-rasgulla. Mejo Mashi held the portfolio of Leafy Substances, spinning out shukto and shaak with such inevitability that even Popeye would have signed a ceasefire. And Chhoto Mashi, commander of Curries, maintained a navy of ilish, chingri, and anything that once swam, making gravies so sharp the fish looked ready to file a complaint.

“Tea,” announced Chhoto Mashi, placing before me a glass that steamed like a locomotive doing pranayama. “With nolen gur,” added Boro Mashi, as if announcing a national award. “And muri,” said Mejo Mashi, sliding in a mountain of puffed rice that clearly expected mountaineers.

I had barely lifted the glass when a swarm of cousins materialised—winter mosquitoes, impossible to swat and immune to quilts. They circled me with the precision of a science experiment.

“Dada, did you bring the comic?”

“Dada, is your school stricter than our headmaster?”

“Dada, what’s in that other bag? Does it explode into chocolates?”

Before I could answer, a little one tugged my sleeve and announced, “Dada, I have a loose tooth.” He shook it for demonstration, as if tuning a radio.

“Don’t bother him,” scolded Boro Mashi, bringing a plate of sandesh large enough to qualify for municipal registration. “Let him drink his tea.”

I tried. Every sip invited another spoon from somewhere. In this house, spoons had legs. They arrived like breaking news: one delivering a taste of payesh—“just a spoon, strictly medicinal”—another arriving with a reconnaissance ladle of fish curry—“only for colour on the tongue”—and then the artillery: patishapta marching in formation, rolled like diplomatic cables and equally binding.

“Eat,” demanded Mejo Mashi.

“I am,” I said, mouth obedient, eyes pleading.

“Eat properly,” corrected Chhoto Mashi, which meant I had been eating incorrectly—an offense punishable by seconds.

Outside, the winter sun tried to clock in for duty but the fog was a strict supervisor. Inside, warmth rose from the angithi like a satisfied sigh. Somewhere in the courtyard a kettle sang, a pressure cooker answered, and a hen, feeling left out, contributed a commentary. Tribeni wasn’t a place; it was percussion.

Mama, meanwhile, bustled in with a shawl and a smile that had inherited the family’s surplus. “Arrival successful?” he asked, as if I were a courier parcel that had escaped customs.

“Successful and ongoing,” I said, nodding at the food.

He beamed. “Good, good. Have some luchi. You are looking thin.”

This was the family chorus. Thinness, in our genealogy, was a myth like Saraswati—present, invisible, and much discussed. A plate of luchi descended: perfect, puffed, and persuasive. Alur dom followed, stout and philosophical. I took one obedient bite and the aunts exchanged glances of national importance, like cabinet ministers after a confidence vote. Nana sat on the taktaposh like a judge. “Food is memory,” he said, peeling a guava with the wisdom of three centuries. “Eat slowly.”

Nani, the only moving thing faster than winter wind, dashed between kitchen and courtyard. “Eat quickly,” she contradicted. “Before the monkeys hear.”

The word “monkeys” wrinkled the air like a bad report card. It was my first reminder that Tribeni had two populations: official humans and unofficial landlords.

Between jokes, sneezes, and spoon-fed diplomacy, I ate my way into the house. The courtyard smelled of woodsmoke and nolen gur, the walls of gossip and old photographs. The three rivers might have been murmuring history, but our angithi hissed louder, and every new plate arrived with ancestral authority. I surrendered, as any civilised guest must

Conversation flowed. Boro Mashi reported on the neighbourhood—who had installed a new handpump (scandalous), who had bought a television (revolutionary), and who had been seen buying onions twice in a day (suspicious). Mejo Mashi debated the moral properties of mustard oil. Chhoto Mashi delivered a lecture on fish freshness so vivid I could almost hear the hilsa refusing to be caught without prior appointment.

Between courses, the cousins auditioned their talents. One whistled the Doordarshan signature tune, getting only as far as dooor before running out of breath. Another recited a poem about winter that rhymed “shawl” with “football” and then lost both. A third juggled oranges until gravity, tired of being mocked, intervened.

“Where will you sleep?” asked Chhoto Mashi, more logistics than hospitality. “Boro room, mejo bed, chhoto quilt?” In our house even furniture had birth order.

“Anywhere,” I said bravely.

“Not anywhere,” corrected Boro Mashi, “Here we sleep strategically. You will be under the big kantha. It has a constitution.”

“And foreign policy,” added Mejo Mashi. “It doesn’t let legs escape.”

The cousins cheered. The kantha, heavy with history and cotton, had a reputation. People entered it thin and emerged testimonials against dieting.

“After tea, we’ll go to the river,” Mama proposed. “The fog sits on the water like a lazy cat. You will like it.”

I nodded, imagining the Ganga wearing a shawl. But first came second tea, an institution with equal rights. The aunts consulted their spice cabinet the way astronomers consult stars, and within minutes a second universe appeared on my plate—just to “taste.” In our family “taste” was a unit of measurement somewhere between “boulder” and “monsoon.”

“You’ve brought your notebook?” asked Boro Mashi. “Write down what you eat. Your Ma will be pleased.”

“Or alarmed,” I said.

“Pleased,” she repeated firmly, and that was an order.

As the angithi hummed, my bones thawed, my sweater negotiated peace with my appetite, and I felt the old winter magic return—the kind that turned breath into smoke signals and gossip into central heating. Tribeni’s three rivers flowed silently beyond the lanes, but in our house three tides rose with full force: laughter, ladles, and the law according to Mashi. Somewhere down the corridor I heard two names ricochet like marbles—Somand Bhola—promised trouble in stereo. I tucked the names into my pocket for later, the way one pockets a toffee for a journey, and surrendered to another patishapta, rolled tighter than destiny.

“Thin,” Boro Mashi murmured happily, watching me eat with the pride of a gardener. “Very thin.”

In Tribeni, I realised, definitions were different.

Winter was warmth. Thin was plenty.

At Tribeni, where rivers all meet,

Three Mashis declared me too “neat.”

With rasgulla, shaak, fish,

They reloaded my dish,

Till my stomach surrendered in defeat.

The Aunts’ Rivalry

If the three rivers of Tribeni ever quarreled, they could take tuition from my three mashis. Each of them ruled her kitchen like an empire and defended it with the ferocity of frontier kings. To me, it felt less like a vacation and more like a culinary Kurukshetra.

Boro Mashi, armed with trays of rasgulla, took the field first. “One more,” she commanded, lifting a syrupy globe that wobbled like diplomacy. “It’s light as air.” I swallowed obediently, though I suspected the air in question was borrowed from an elephant’s lungs.

“No, no,” cried Mejo Mashi, advancing with a bowl of shaak. “Sweet makes teeth fall out. Shaak makes hair grow. Just look at mine.” She shook her bun like a witness. The bun quivered so solemnly that I nearly apologized to it.

Chhoto Mashi, meanwhile, launched her torpedoes from the curry section. A hilsa, stewed in mustard, floated toward me with such menace that I half-expected it to speak. “Protein,” she declared triumphantly. “Brain food. So you don’t fail in exams like your cousin.” At which point the cousin in question slipped quietly out of sight, leaving only a guilty slipper behind.

I was the battleground. One aunt piled rice on my plate, the other removed it, the third replaced it with luchis. My mouth worked like a telegram office: always open, always busy, delivering urgent messages to the stomach. But my poor stomach sent back frantic replies: STOP. URGENT. FULL. REPEAT FULL.

The cousins, of course, took advantage. They scuttled about as secret agents, carrying intelligence from one kitchen to another. “Boro Mashi,” whispered one, “he said your rasgulla is softer than the pillow.” Boro Mashi beamed. A second cousin dashed to Mejo Mashi: “He said your shaak tastes better than spinach in comic books.” She preened. A third carried a message to Chhoto Mashi: “He said your fish curry is so good even the fish would eat it.” She looked suspicious but pleased.

Of course, these were lies of the first order. I had said no such thing. I had said only “more water, please.” But my words, by the time they reached the kitchens, had been garnished, deep-fried, and served back to the cooks with lemon on the side. The cousins were expert translators—of hunger into compliments, and compliments into extra helpings.

The rivalry escalated at breakfast, which in Tribeni was a misnomer: it lasted till lunch. By the time I staggered out into the courtyard, I had eaten more than an ox cart at harvest. The hens watched me suspiciously, as if fearing I might eat them next.

In the afternoon, when the coal stove was lit and the fog crept into the rooms like a nosy neighbor, the real debate began. The three aunts sat around me like examiners and demanded: “Tell us—whose dish was best?”

It was a trap. A tiger’s den disguised as a drawing room. If I praised Boro Mashi, Mejo Mashi’s eyebrows would shoot higher than the Howrah Bridge. If I praised Mejo Mashi, Chhoto Mashi would sulk so fiercely that the ilish itself might refuse to appear on the dinner plate. And if I praised Chhoto Mashi, Boro Mashi’s rasgullas might harden into stones out of sheer vengeance.

I smiled weakly, attempting diplomacy. “All three were delicious. The best part was how they went together. Rasgulla makes the shaak sweeter, and shaak makes the fish easier to digest. Together, they are like Ram, Lakshman, and Hanuman.”

The aunts blinked. For a moment, silence hovered like a mosquito that had lost direction. Then, slowly, smiles broke out. Boro Mashi clapped her hands: “Ei to bhalo chele!” Mejo Mashi patted my head. Chhoto Mashi announced I should be given another sweet for my wisdom. I sighed. Victory in diplomacy meant defeat for digestion.

As dusk descended, I thought the matter settled. But no. The kitchens were already preparing the next battle—pithe season had arrived. The aunts sharpened their ladles like swords, murmuring strategies. “Rice flour or atta?” “Coconut filling or kheer?” “Steam or fry?”

The cousins, giddy with anticipation, whispered in my ears: “Tonight will be the Great Pithe War. Som and Bhola are coming. You’ll see.”

Their eyes gleamed like fireflies. I shivered—not from cold, but from the knowledge that my stomach, already swollen like a political budget, was about to become the arena for one more round of winter warfare.

 

 

 

 

The Arrival of Som and Bhola

It was just after evening tea—the one that arrives disguised as a light snack but secretly carries the load of a marriage feast—when the courtyard gate creaked. Into the fog marched two silhouettes that looked as if they had been invented by a cartoonist in a hurry.

“Ei see, Som is here!” cried a cousin, bouncing with excitement.

Behind him, at half-speed and half-dignity, came Bhola, his very name wafting in with a fragrance the wind seemed reluctant to carry.

Som was the sort of boy who laughed before finishing his own jokes, leaving the rest of the world guessing whether to join in or call the doctor. He wore a muffler wound so many times around his neck that he looked like a reluctant snake-charmer carrying his pet python. His smile never left his face—so much so that even the fog seemed to part to avoid being mistaken for his teeth.

“Dada, do you know why winter is better than summer?” he asked me at once.

I shook my head, fearing the answer.

“Because in summer, people sweat. In winter, they wear sweaters!” And with that, he burst into such a laugh that the cowshed echoed like a drum.

Before I could recover, Bhola tripped over the threshold and landed in the courtyard like a fallen meteor, scattering hens in protest. Bhola was older, sturdier, and perpetually attached to mud. If there was earth within a mile, he wore it. His trousers bore maps of Hooghly’s agricultural history, and his fingernails had seen more soil than a plough. The village claimed he once slipped in a cowshed and never quite came out of it.

“Arrey, dekho, gobar-e dhaka Bhola!” shouted one cousin gleefully.

Bhola ignored the insult with philosophical calm. “Mud is the proof of life,” he declared, wiping his hands on his already encyclopedic trousers. “Trees grow on it, crops grow on it, and I also grow with it.”

The two together were a study in contrast. Som was all noise—jokes, riddles, songs sung off-key—while Bhola was silence that arrived only to sneeze or sneeze again. Between them, they created a duet of chaos.

Soon, the courtyard became their stage. Som tried to recite a patriotic poem:“O my country, O my land—”

But before the line could land, Bhola sneezed with such force that the hens once again resigned from the premises. “O my sand!” shouted a cousin, and the poem collapsed into coughing laughter.

Then came riddles.

“What has four legs in the morning, six in the afternoon, and eight at night?” Som demanded grandly.

“Bhola on a bad day,” replied another cousin before anyone else could answer. Even the angithi gave a little wheeze of smoke in amusement.

Games followed. Hide-and-seek ended when Bhola hid in the cowshed and emerged decorated with straw, smelling like a philosophical cow. Somattempted to juggle oranges but only succeeded in launching them like artillery across the courtyard, one narrowly missing Mejo Mashi’s forehead. “It’s practice for the cricket match!” he protested, though no one had invited him to play.

I, the new arrival, found myself sandwiched between their performances. If I laughed at Harshavardhan’s joke, Bhola accused me of ignoring the depth of mud philosophy. If I listened to Bhola’s earth-bound wisdom, Som threatened to tell me another twenty riddles.

By the time night fell and the pithe trays arrived, my stomach trembled with more fear than hunger. The aunts spread out their arsenal of sweets while Somprepared new jokes and Bhola sneezed at the smoke from the oven. The Great Pithe War was about to begin, and these two clowns were clearly drafted as the infantry.

“Tomorrow,” whispered a cousin in my ear, “we’ll play the Quilt Game with them. Then you’ll see real fun.”

I shivered—from the certain knowledge that Som’s jokes and Bhola’s sneezes were about to join forces under one kantha. And survival under that quilt, I realised, might need more than digestion. It might need divine intervention.

In to The Evening

After dinner, the house arranged itself the way winter houses in Bengal always do: the fog locked the courtyard outside, and inside everyone circled the angithi like moths around a flame, only these moths carried shawls, monkey-caps, and an appetite for storytelling. That was when Som and Bhola blossomed into full performance.

Som began with a riddle. “What has no legs but runs?”

“Your nose,” replied a cousin instantly, pointing at Bhola, who was sneezing so regularly it seemed like the foghorn of a ship lost in Hooghly.

“Wrong!” Som insisted. “The answer is water.”

“Then why did you look at me while asking?” Bhola grumbled, sniffing. “Even water doesn’t sneeze like me.”

The laughter that followed cracked louder than the firewood.

Next, Som tried a proverb game. “Early bird catches the worm!” he declared proudly.

Bhola sneezed again and retorted, “In our house, early boy catches the cream. The worm can wait.” Which immediately became the night’s new motto.

The cousins joined in, mangling more sayings. “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” shouted one.

“No,” corrected Som, “a rolling rasgulla gathers no loss.” He illustrated this by rolling a leftover rasgulla across the floor until a cat, interpreting the proverb differently, gathered it quite successfully.

“Health is wealth!” another cousin said.

“Then Bhola must be the richest man in Bengal,” Som smirked.

Bhola, unfazed, spread his muddy hands and replied, “True. I invest all my wealth in the soil.”

Even the grown-ups chuckled, though Chhoto Mashi muttered darkly about the fate of her newly scrubbed floor.

As the jokes flew, so did small disasters. Som sang a patriotic song, but forgot the lyrics halfway and replaced them with the names of vegetables—“Tomato, Onion, Brinjal, My Motherland!” Bhola tried to clap along but sneezed at each beat, producing an accidental tabla that no musician could reproduce.

Then someone suggested ghost stories. Som took the stage. “Once, in this very courtyard, a white figure appeared…”

But before he could continue, Bhola sneezed so thunderously that the lantern flickered and half the cousins shrieked, convinced the ghost had arrived on cue. The hens outside, already traumatized from the day’s adventures, cackled in protest, while Boro Mashi shouted, “If you children don’t shut up, the only ghost you’ll see is my rolling pin!”

The ghost story dissolved instantly.

By the time the pithe was served, the fog outside had thickened into a quilt of its own. Inside, the jokes still floated, like steam from the gur. Somchewed noisily while promising that tomorrow he would reveal the “great secret of the three rivers.” Bhola, half-asleep, muttered that the only river worth knowing was the river of hot milk flowing into his pithe bowl.

And I—half-laughing, half-buried in sweets—realised that Tribeni had its own language: a tongue of riddles misfired, proverbs misquoted, songs mistuned, and laughter mistimed. And at the center of this tongue sat Somand Bhola, twin translators of the absurd.

The Great Quilt War

Night in Tribeni did not arrive quietly; it staged an invasion. The fog barged into the courtyard like an uninvited guest, the angithi sighed its last smoky breath, and everyone scrambled for quilts as though quilts were national property. In our house, they practically were. Each kantha had a history, an ancestry, and a geography so vast that it required its own map.

I was assigned to the “big kantha,” which cousins described in hushed tones, as though it were a military posting on the frontlines. “Under this quilt,” they whispered, “you either sleep or suffocate. There is no middle path.”

By the time the quilt descended, we were packed tighter than hilsa in a fish basket. Som lodged himself on my left, smiling as though we were about to share a honeymoon. Bhola plonked down on my right, bringing with him a nose that sneezed in surround sound. Around us, cousins wriggled in like earthworms after rain. Someone’s elbow lodged into my ribs; someone else’s heel claimed squatter rights on my stomach.

Then came the whispers.

“Dada, tell us a story.”

“Dada, no, a ghost story!”

Som volunteered, of course. “Once upon a midnight dreary…” he began, only to giggle before finishing the line. “No, wait. Once upon a midnight dairy! Because, you know, the cow—”

Bhola sneezed so loudly at this point that the quilt ballooned and fell back with the weight of a small earthquake. “See?” Som announced, “That was the ghost entering!”

The cousins shrieked and clutched each other like lollipops in a bundle. I gasped for oxygen. Somewhere in the chaos, a small cousin began reciting multiplication tables as an exorcism.

Every few minutes, a foot strayed beyond the quilt’s borders, only to be yanked back with shrill warnings: “No legs outside! The ghost will bite!” Som took advantage, pinching random toes and howling, “The ghost got you!” Bhola, sniffling, muttered, “If any ghost comes, I’ll sneeze on him till he drowns.”

The quilt grew hotter by the second. I felt myself steaming like an idli. The cousins thrashed, whispered, argued about who was taking up more space. Elbows flew like unguided missiles. At one point, Som claimed the quilt had a “demon wrinkle” and tried to iron it with his head, knocking my nose in the process. Bhola sneezed again—this time so explosively that the lantern in the corner flickered, throwing shadows that looked suspiciously like dancing goblins.

“Bachcha gulo, chup koro!” thundered Chhoto Mashi from the other room. “Sleep now, or tomorrow no pithe!”

This was more terrifying than any ghost. Instantly the quilt fell silent, like a battlefield after surrender. Only the muffled sounds of Bhola’s congested breathing and Som’s suppressed giggles remained. Slowly, the cousins drifted to sleep.

I lay there, trapped between a joker and a sneezer, pinned under a quilt heavier than destiny, wondering if I’d make it till morning. The Ganga outside might flow freely, but inside this house, I was a prisoner of the kantha—smothered in love, laughter, and body heat.

 

 

Mango Diplomacy and Broomstick Defense

The monkeys made gardens their ground,

With mangoes and jamruls around.

Bhola tried “peace,”

Got chased without cease,

While Nana declared, “Let fruits fall, profound.”

Our garden was a syllabus—mango for summer exams, jamrul for surprise tests, kanthal for practicals, and coconut for viva voce. The monkeys had obviously graduated with distinction. They held their morning assembly on the jackfruit limb, then marched to the mango wing for breakfast. We stood below with broomsticks, like a very underfunded police force.

Mama tried negotiation. “Ei, babu, leave some for us.”

A senior monkey—distinguished grey beard, chairman of the board—broke a mango, tasted, and looked away with the bored elegance of a food critic. Som applauded. “At least they’re not eating Mama’s manners.”

Nani hurled verbal warnings and, occasionally, a chappal. The monkeys returned the chappal after due examination, unsatisfied with the leather-to-nut ratio.

Bhola, who claimed kinship with all things muddy, attempted diplomacy in his dialect. “Brothers,” he said, offering a banana, “let us share.” A junior artist accepted the banana, another accepted the offer, and ten accepted the rest of Bhola’s dignity by chasing him in a figure-eight around the tulsi altar. The cousins cheered as if for a circus; only the tulsi looked scandalised.

Boro Mashi developed a system: one cousin clapped tin plates to sound the air-raid siren, another waved a towel, a third announced the casualty list (“Two jamruls, one half-ripe mango, one coconut in critical condition”). Mejo Mashi proposed netting the trees. Nana vetoed. “Let the forest remain forest,” he said. “We must remain human.” Nani added, “And humans cook. Back to kitchen!”

By afternoon the monkeys retired to the banyan for committee work. We inspected damage like post-storm villagers. Mango skins on the path resembled crime-scene chalk drawings. “They eat like us,” I said weakly.

“They eat better,” said Som. “They don’t wait for aunts.”

I laughed because he was right and also because I was beginning to fear I might be related to the timid species: city boy, sweatered, nervous. From the highest branch a little one looked down and bared teeth in a smile that felt like foreshadowing. Evening promised pithe, proverbs, and a lesson in primate politics. I was not ready for the third.

 

 

 

Balcony Nights

 

To the balcony toilet I crept,

Where a monkey in silence just kept.

I froze like a stone,

Couldn’t utter a groan,

And back to my quilt I just leapt.

It happened on a Tuesday that felt like a Wednesday pretending to be brave. The moon hung over Tribeni like a white rasgulla, and the courtyard slept beneath quilts heavy with history. I woke to a biological memo and tiptoed towards the first-floor balcony where the toilet lived, open to stars and philosophy.

On the sill, exactly where the night kept its elbows, sat a monkey of managerial rank. He was not doing anything except existing with authority. He turned his head slowly, the way landlords turn pages, and regarded me with the thoughtful neutrality of a bank manager declining a loan.

I froze. Breath stopped, knees filed for leave, tongue resigned. My mother was inside the room, two doors away, but my voice had turned into an ice-sculpture of silence. I considered solutions: salute the monkey? Offer rent in gur? Sing Rabindrasangeet? Every option seemed medically unwise.

The monkey scratched his ear with dignified boredom. I stood like a lamppost without electricity. Somewhere inside, Som snored through a punchline, Bhola coughed in the bass, and the house creaked like an old harmonium. No cavalry.

We held our positions: I a statue of fear; he a statue of ownership. After one year—by clock, five minutes—he yawned expansively, as if opening a new branch, and shifted exactly two inches. The two inches were not in my direction but hope, like steam from the angithi, rose and vanished.

I executed a strategic retreat, step by careful step, back into the room, back under the kantha, back into humility. The body, when frightened, invents poetry. Mine wrote couplets about patience and a bladder’s tragic dignity. I slept eventually, and dreamed the monkey stamped my passport with “No Entry.”

In the morning, I confessed to no one. Courage, I had learned, is louder in stories than in stairwells. The balcony remained under enemy occupation. Som announced at breakfast that I looked pale. “White as nolen gur before boiling,” he said. I said nothing and drank tea with an expression that suggested deep respect for closed doors.

Food Inspectors from the Banyan Board

In the kitchen the monkeys broke through,

Stole luchis and gur for review.

A coal made one scream,

Like steam in a dream—

“Food inspectors!” cried Harsha’s crew.

The monkeys escalated. Why raid retail when you can capture wholesale? One bright noon they marched into the first-floor kitchen like auditors. The window’s latch, a gentleman of loose character, betrayed us. Boro Mashi stood mid-luchi, the dough puffing like patriotic speeches, when a junior officer snatched the first specimen off the plate and bit. He announced the verdict with a chirp that translated to “Acceptable. Send more.”

The kitchen became Parliament. Mejo Mashi waved a ladle. “Out!” she shouted, as if language alone could evict wildlife. Chhoto Mashi advanced with a fish slice like a tiny sword; the monkeys admired the fish but preferred sweets. Nani threw a sandal with improved aim; it bounced off the chairman’s head and landed in the rice tub. He investigated the grain and rejected it, perhaps for being too democratic.

Som stood at the door making sports commentary. “And here we see the visiting team, excellent fielding, strong on the backfoot, playing the sweep shot—oh! that is literally a sweep.” A cousin had joined with the jhadu.

Bhola sneezed at a volume that briefly equalised species. Two monkeys fled; three remained to audit the gur. One bright scholar lifted a live coal from the angithi, misled by its sweet red face, and dropped it instantly with a yelp so human even Nani sympathised. “Hot things are for halwa,” she explained sternly, as if lecture would repair evolution.

The raid ended with a negotiated exit: two plates lighter, one coal wiser, several reputations dented. Nani scrubbed the window frame like a crime scene. Nana, summoned to declare a verdict, stroked his chin. “They are guests who think they’re hosts,” he said. “Like humans in forests.”

That evening the house ate indoors, doors bolted, windows latched with renewed morality. I ate indoors and indoors, too, my fear finally acquiring a room of its own. The balcony remained off-limits; my bladder and I agreed to schedule our ambitions with sunlight. It was no way to live. Mama decided, like a statesman after a long border skirmish, to change the map.

 

Grills and Glory

Mama built iron grills to defend,

And an attached bath marked the end.

Local boys laughed aloud,

“Monekey-dada!” they vowed—

My balcony freeze was their trend.

Iron arrived in the morning, measured our shame, and became civilization. The mason clanged at the first-floor balcony, welding a promise: no more midnight landlords. The welded grills glittered like a new constitution. “Now monkeys can watch,” Mama declared, “but they cannot vote.” The cousins approved. I saluted silently.

Alongside the grill, an even greater revolution: an attached bathroom, tiled, latching, blessed. Inauguration involved incense, turmeric, and three aunts arguing about where to hang the towel. Nana cut a ribbon with a butter knife. Nani placed a bucket as if installing a deity. I stood there, a patriot at independence, and whispered to the tiles, “Freedom.”

News travels faster than bicycles. By afternoon, the para kids gathered outside, elbows on the low wall, eyes shining with mischief. “O re! Monkey-dara!” one announced, reenacting my balcony statue-pose with forensic accuracy. Another clutched his throat and mouthed silent “Ma! Ma!” until the lane exploded in laughter. A third delivered a lecture on city boys: “Metro-para, mono-para,” he declaimed, “jokhon bandar dekhe—para-para!” Wordplay requires no permission slip.

Som amplified the mockery with a poem: “Bandar on balcony, bladder on strike—city boy freezes like coconut in ice!” The cousins clapped, the para kids hooted, and even a monkey on our jackfruit branch seemed to grin. Bhola, compassionate for once, offered, “It happens. I also fear exams.”

That evening, behind the grill, I stood at the balcony and inhaled. The air tasted of iron, jasmine, and faint defeat. From the banyan came the chitter of committee meetings. We were separated now by bars and better plumbing, but I felt curiously equal—two species living parallel lives, stealing glances, sharing fruit by rumour. The new bathroom whistled like a modern idea. At last, relief required privacy, not primate permission.

 

Nani inspected the grill. “Good,” she said. “Now sleep.” I did, for the first time in days, with the calm of a locked diary.

The Morning After and Farewell

At parting, the monkeys still played,

The cousins still joked, aunts still swayed.

With ghee, fish, and gur,

Memories secure,

I left—full of laughs (and afraid).

Morning in Tribeni was a slow miracle. The fog still hugged the riverbanks like a shawl too shy to be removed, the hens scratched the courtyard with the weariness of clerks returning to files, and my eyes opened under the great kantha with the sensation of having survived a natural disaster. Somwas already awake, grinning at me like a sunrise gone wrong. Bhola, on the other hand, was still snoring with such thunder that even Saraswati herself would have abandoned her veena in despair.

The cousins rose one by one, rubbing their eyes, their hair resembling defeated brooms. The kantha, now tossed aside, looked like a collapsed battlefield where ghosts, jokes, and sneezes had fought without cease. I crawled out, gasping like a fish thrown back into the river, and stumbled into the courtyard.

The aunts were already in full swing. Boro Mashi stood with a tray of steaming luchis, crisp and puffed, as though the sun had been fried and multiplied. “Quick, eat before the fog eats you!” she ordered. Mejo Mashi brought a jug of green shaak juice she claimed would “clear your system.” I wasn’t sure which system she meant—digestive, political, or railway. Chhoto Mashi was busy supervising a pot of payesh bubbling like a philosopher’s cauldron.

I tried to protest. “Mashis, please, my stomach—”

But it was useless. Each morsel was thrust upon me as both blessing and burden. I was fed with the certainty of someone being vaccinated—resistance was not only futile, it was considered rude. Between spoonfuls, Somslipped in another joke: “Dada, why do luchis puff up? Because they’re full of hot air—like Bhola!”

Bhola, affronted, sneezed into his payesh, which promptly rippled like the Hooghly in storm. A cousin screamed, “Earthquake!” and ran, while the rest dissolved into laughter.

Then came the moment of departure. Mama emerged with his shawl and a sigh. “So soon?” he asked, as though I had lived there for fifteen minutes instead of three digestive centuries. The aunts bustled around me, packing my bag with laddoos, pithe, and enough sandesh to start a wholesale business. Boro Mashi slipped in a jar of ghee “for strength.” Mejo Mashi added guavas “for health.” Chhoto Mashi insisted on a small packet of dried fish “for memory.” My bag groaned like an unwilling porter.

At the gate, Som saluted dramatically. “Dada, remember: sweaters are better than sweat!” He laughed so hard that a passing dog fled in alarm. Bhola attempted dignity, but slipped on a patch of cow dung and sat down with such gravity that the earth itself seemed amused. The cousins clapped, the hens cackled, and I realised this was Tribeni’s way of sending me off—with one last performance.

As the train pulled out of the station, I looked back. The fog had thickened, the rivers flowed unseen, and somewhere in the mist, the echo of laughter and sneezes lingered. My stomach was heavier, my heart fuller. Tribeni had given me more than food; it had given me chaos that tasted of love, jokes that outlasted their punchlines, and memories that refused to fade like the glow of jaggery in winter.

I leaned back against the seat, clutching a patishapta for emergency. And I thought: if three rivers could meet and make history, surely three aunts, two clowns, and one kantha could make a vacation worth retelling for a lifetime.