Guest column by Madhura
Storytelling is an art. To keep your audience engaged with an incident about which he/ she is quite ignorant requires an extra gift. Specially if the audience happens to consist of kids below the age of ten years, making them sit at one place is a herculean task. But not so for my grandfather, my mother’s father- whom we called Dadu.
As a kid, we were lucky to be surrounded by our grandparents- grandmothers from both side and maternal grandpa. They had different way of showering their love. For my dadu, it was the different anecdotes of his life which he would present in the most dramatic way in front of us. Whether it was his day long adventure of running away from home when he was a teenager or whether it was his student job of librarian in Dacca University when he was an Undergraduate student- his stories never failed to enthrall us. His stories about his professional life was no less adventurous. He was the Principal of Basic Training College and had different postings in rural Bengal. He spent a decade in a remote village of Bankura district about which he had very fond memories. I would mentally travel with him to this village and felt very drawn to that life of his as it was so different from the city life where we were growing up.
Dadu pampered us a lot. Endless sessions of chocolates and different mouth watering snacks were always there to greet us whenever we would go out with him. He also showered us with innumerable books depending on our age. Right from fairy tales to Bengali periodicals- we had it all. Even today when I open those books- his signature writing reminds me of his unconditional love for us.
It’s a decade today when he left us for the heavenly abode. We love you Dadu..
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